Moisés Alou

Moisés Alou spent just three years as the Cubs' left fielder, but they were among the most productive and drama-filled seasons the team had experienced in nearly two decades.

Originally the second overall pick in the long-discarded MLB January Draft-Regular Phase in 1986, Alou was traded to the Montreal Expos shortly after making his MLB debut in 1990. He dealt with numerous injuries during his time in Canada, though he did explode onto the scene in 1994 under the stewardship of his father, Expos manager Felipe Alou, placing third in NL MVP voting in the strike-shortened season.

Alou left Montreal following the 1996 season, signing with the then-Florida Marlins as a free agent. His regular season performance wasn't too notable outside of the fact that he played in 150 games, but then, in the postseason, he and the rest of the Marlins roster caught lightning in a bottle. Alou led the team by hitting .321 with 3 home runs and 9 RBI in the World Series (although pitcher Liván Hernández earned the World Series MVP thanks to his wins in Games 1 and 5).

Alou then got traded to Houston, where he was unbelievable for three seasons from 1998-2001. Unfortunately, he missed the entirety of the 1999 season due a torn ACL sustained during a treadmill accident, but the .988 OPS he posted with the team was the highest of any stop in his career.

Finally, after budgetary constraints pushed him out the door in Houston, Alou signed a three-year, $27 million contract with the Cubs at 34 years old. Serving as the team's primary left fielder for the duration of that deal, Alou didn't live up to that contract until the 2004 season when he slashed .293/.361/.557 with a career high 36 home runs. However, most Cubs fans remember him for his blistering 2003 postseason, when he had an OPS of .974 while driving in eight runs on the team's march towards the pennant.

Of course, that pennant win never came to pass for the Cubs, in part because of the infamous Steve Bartman incident. I won't belabor that play here (lord knows we've heard it described every which way by now), but Alou did have a chance, however remote, at catching that ball. He's said so himself in interviews, even though he's waffled on it over the years while "trying to protect Bartman's feelings". I've long been of the opinion that it was actually the error by shortstop Alex Gonzalez that sent the whole inning (and series) tailspinning — which I wrote about at length in his bio on the Players Project — but Alou's tenure with the team has always been defined by that moment.

On a happier note, one of my favorite (or least favorite, depending on how you look at it) facts about Alou was that he, supposedly, would urinate on his own hands in an effort to toughen them up. He disliked the feel of batting gloves, so the Ol' Number One was meant to serve as a "homemade" remedy to the wear-and-tear of facing major league pitching with bare hands. It clearly worked, considering he hit 332 home runs in his 17-year career, but I still question the validity of the locker room science to this day. At least he looked like a badass in the batter's box with no gloves on — which, to a kid watching his favorite team, was all that mattered at the time.

Alou left the Cubs after the team didn't tender him a new contract following that brilliant 2004 campaign, which they publicly said was due to the outfielder's numerous feuds with umpires (Alou never backed down from that, by the way, repeatedly claiming that all umpires were "out to get him"). He reunited with his father on the San Francisco Giants for the 2005 and 2006 campaigns before wrapping up his career with two nondescript seasons with the New York Mets. Though he received just six votes (1.1%) in his lone season on the Hall of Fame ballot, Alou ended his career with a gaudy .303/.369/.516 batting line that would have looked a lot more impressive had he not played during the heart of the steroid era.