Home > Baseball > MLB Hall of Famers > Tony Perez

Tony Perez

Baseball is an outdoor sport in which a pitcher pitches a hard, fist sized ball to the hitting area of a batter. The batter hits the hard ball with a tapered, smooth, cylindrical bat made up of wood or metal. The batsman scores by running counter clockwise within the four markers called the bases arranged at the corners of a diamond. Baseball is sometimes called hardball to differentiate it from similar games such as softball.

Tony Perez was born on 14th may 1942 in Ciego de Avila, Cuba. His height is six feet zero two inch with weight 205 pounds. He was inducted with the Hall of Fame in 2000. He was one of baseball's greatest run producers, Perez retired as the 14th-best RBI, run batten in man in ML, Major League history. After sharing Cincinnati's first-base job in his first two years, Perez was switched to third base from 1967 to 1972 to get slugger Lee May into the lineup.

For ten years Perez was one of the leaders of The Big Red Machine, six times topping 100 RBI. With Perez in the infield, the Reds won four pennants. In 1970, his top season, he hit 0.317 with 40 homers and 134 RBI. He belted three home runs in the 1975 World Series against the Red Sox, two in Game Five and one in Game Seven when Bill Lee tried to fool him with a soft lob.

He later had several excellent years for Montreal and Boston and he remained a dangerous pinch hitter for several seasons after his days as a regular ended. He was often compared to first baseman Orlando Cepeda and Perez's final homer in 1986 tied him with Cepeda at 379 for the most career homers by a Latin player.

Atanasio Tony Perez Rigal was a fixture on Cincinnati's Big Red Machine clubs of the 1970s. A native Cuban, he left a job in a Havana sugar cane factory to sign with the Reds' organization. In 1967 he notched the first of seven 100 RBI campaigns, concluding his career with 1,652 RBI over 23 major league seasons. Respected for his clutch hitting, he belted three home runs in the 1975 World Series, including a key two-run shot in Game Seven, one of two World Championships he earned.

Back to MLB Hall of Famers