Bob Horner, a former No.1 overall pick who went straight to \u2060the big leagues and once hit four home runs in a game, died Tuesday at the age of 68.<\/p>\n
A Kansas native, Horner was drafted first overall by the Atlanta Braves in \u200bthe 1978 draft out of Arizona State and \u200cmade his \u200cMLB debut about a week later, on June \u200b16, at the age of 20 against the Pittsburgh Pirates. Horner homered that day off future Hall of Famer\u00a0Bert Blyleven.<\/p>\n
Horner hit .266 \u2060in 89 games with 23 home runs and 63 RBIs that \u2060year and was named the National League Rookie of the Year, beating out \u200bshortstop Ozzie Smith.<\/p>\n
On July \u20606, 1986, Horner blasted four home runs at Atlanta Fulton-County Stadium during the Braves\u2019 11-8 \u2060loss to the \u200bMontreal Expos. Horner is one of 21 \u200bplayers to accomplish that feat and the only Braves player \u200bto do \u200cso other than Joe Adcock, who hit four against the Brooklyn Dodgers on July 31, 1954, while with the Milwaukee Braves.<\/p>\n
Plagued by injuries throughout his career \u2014\u00a0he appeared \u200cin 120 games or more in just five of 10 MLB seasons \u2014 Horner, who played most of his career at third base, still managed to hit 218 home runs and slug .499. \u200bHe \u200bwas an All-Star in 1982, when he hit 32 \u200bhome runs with 97 RBIs to help lead the Braves \u2060to the National League West division title.<\/p>\n
Horner spent nine seasons with the Braves (1978 to 1986) and one year with the St. Louis Cardinals (1988) after spending 1987 with the Yakult \u200bSwallows in NPB\u2019s Central League, where he hit 31 home runs and batted .327 in 93 games.<\/p>\n
Horner\u2019s passing comes weeks after the loss of former Braves manager Bobby Cox, Horner\u2019s first manager, and former owner Ted Turner.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Bob Horner, a former No.1 overall pick who went straight to \u2060the big leagues and once hit four…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":709866,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2302],"tags":[46,5,89049,2353,2352,4081],"class_list":["post-709865","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-npb","tag-atlanta-braves","tag-baseball","tag-bob-horner","tag-nippon-professional-baseball","tag-npb","tag-tokyo-yakult-swallows"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/116644935324528010","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/709865","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=709865"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/709865\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/709866"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=709865"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=709865"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=709865"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}