Joel Youngblood
From The Met Wiki
Joel Youngblood was a member of the New York Mets from 1977 to 1982. He was a versatile player who could play many different positions. Joel played in 610 games and batted .274 during his time in New York.
Youngblood started his career with the World Champion Cincinnati Reds in 1976. He then spent the first half of the 1977 season with the St. Louis Cardinals, from whom the Mets acquired him for Mike Phillips in a trade on June 15. In 70 games as a Met in '77, Joel played all three outfield positions as well as second and third base. He had a batting average of .253 with 11 doubles, 1 triple and 11 runs batted in. At Shea Stadium on August 1, Youngblood drove in the winning run with a single in the 12th inning to give the Mets an 8-7 victory over the Dodgers.
In 1978, Joel hit his first major league home run in a 3-2 Mets win over the Dodgers on June 7. He ended the year with 7 homers and 30 RBIs. Youngblood hit a run-scoring double in the 11th inning to give the Mets a 5-4 win over the Astros in the second game of a doubleheader at Shea on July 20. He had a three-run triple and a two-run homer in the Mets' 12-3 win over the Reds at Shea on July 26. Joel also went 5-for-5 (2 singles, 2 doubles, 1 triple) at Montreal on August 9 in a game won by the Mets, 10-3.
Youngblood tied a team record for doubles in 1979 with 37 (set by Felix Millan in 1975) and also led the team with 16 homers and 90 runs scored. Joel got 162 hits in a team-leading 158 games and hit .275 in '79. At Shea on April 24, he hit a three-run homer in the Mets' 10-3 win over the Giants. He had a two-run homer in a 3-0 Mets victory at Pittsburgh on May 15. Youngblood also had three singles and a double on June 27 in the Mets' 12-9 win at Pittsburgh.
Joel had another quality season in 1980, batting .276 with 8 homers and 69 RBIs in 146 games. He also tied the Mets' record with 9 sacrifice flies, matching Rusty Staub's total from 1975. He got four hits (including a homer) in a 12-10 loss in 14 innings to Cincinnati to raise his season average to .300 on May 6. Youngblood's two-run homer in the 10th inning gave the Mets a 5-4 win over the Pirates at Shea on September 29.
In the 1981 season, Youngblood was leading the National League in hitting with a .359 average when the players' strike began on June 12. When play resumed, he appeared in his first All-Star Game on August 9 in Cleveland. Joel played in 5 games in the official second half of '81, but missed the final six weeks with an injured left knee. Although he finished at .350, Youngblood lacked the necessary plate appearances to quailfy for the National League batting title (won by Pittsburgh's Bill Madlock at .341).
Youngblood played in 80 games as a Met in 1982, hitting .257 with 3 homers and 21 RBIs. He doubled and homered in a 6-3 Mets victory at Cincinnati on June 6. On August 4, Joel got a two-run single to put the Mets ahead to stay in a 7-4 win over the Cubs in an afternoon game in Chicago. During the game, he was traded to the Montreal Expos. Joel singled for his new team in the seventh inning that night in Philadelphia, making him the first player ever to get hits in two different cities in one day.
Joel finished the '82 season with the Expos and played the next six years with the San Francisco Giants. He concluded his career in 1989 with the Cincinnati Reds, the team with whom he began.
