Jim Thome Hit A Bunch Of Home Runs

Minnesota Twin's legend Jim Thome can still hit the ball pretty far for a 40-year-old. In Detroit Monday night, Thome hit home run number 599 and 600 to become just the eighth member of that particular round number club. While the Interwebs are abuzz with Thome Hall of Fame articles today, his march for the milestone wasn't met with much fanfare. Well, at least not as much gusto as Derek Jeter's 3,000th hit but I blame that on Thome for not dating a ton of hot, young actresses.

Thome has had an amazing career spanning 21-years and five teams (who can ever forget the four hits he had for the Dodgers in 2009?). Even though he has hit 600 home runs and has a career .403 OBP, Thome's 71.0 fWAR (Fangraphs wins above replacement) is only good for 81st in between Dwight Evans and Andruw Jones. Thome is obviously hurt by his positional value (first base and now DH) but that just shows how prolific a hitter he was/kinda is.

I realize everybody is writing something about Thome's Hall of Fame candidacy or Thome being such a nice guy or Thome's marvelous career (which Joe Posnanski, of course, already nailed) so I won't bore you with redundancy. Dude hit a bunch of home runs. Fact.

I'll always remember Jim Thome for hitting two home runs for me when I had my wisdom teeth pulled on June 25, 1998. I assume he got my AOL email on that magical day.