Hall Of Famer Frank Robinson Passes Away

Legendary Major League baseball player and manager Frank Robinson has died at age 83. 

Frank was the winner of baseball's Triple Crown and he was the very first African American to manage an MLB team.

Frank goes down as one of the all time greatest players to ever take the field. In 21 seasons overall, he batted .294/.389/.537 with 586 home runs, 528 doubles and 1,812 RBI. He ranks 10th all-time on MLB's career home run list.

The Hall of Famer had been suffering from bone cancer. MSN Reports:

"Robinson’s impact on the game cannot be overstated. A fixture in baseball for over 60 years, Robinson was the 1956 Rookie of the Year and won the MVP Award in both the National and American Leagues, in 1961 with the Reds and in 1966 with the Orioles. He was also the 1966 Triple Crown winner. For his career he was a .294/.389/.537 hitter who smacked 586 career homers, placing him 10th on the all-time list. He appeared in 14 All-Star Games and was the 1966 World Series MVP. A part of his game that often goes unnoticed: he led the league in getting hit by pitches seven times in his career. He crowded the plate and dared pitchers to throw him inside. They did and he never backed off. A fierce but not necessarily fiery competitor, Robinson was known to slide hard and otherwise play hard in every aspect of the game."

"That alone justified his induction into the Hall of Fame, which occurred in his first year of eligibility in 1982. But he was also a trailblazer, becoming the game’s first African-American manager when the Indians hired him as their player-manager for the 1975 season. He would go on to manage for the Giants, the Orioles, the Expos and, upon that franchise’s move to Washington, he became the Nationals first manager. His career record was 1065-1176, but a lot of that had to do with the fact that he took over some pretty bad teams. He rarely had teams which underachieved their talent level, and his managerial abilities were on perhaps their best display in Baltimore in 1989 when he turned around a dreadful Orioles club and was named the 1989 AL Manager of the Year."