ASU Baseball: Former Devil Andre Ethier Joins the Arizona Sports Hall of Fame
To be in the Arizona Sports Hall of Fame you have to be a few things. First, you have to be from Arizona, easy, and secondly, you have to be really good. Former Knight, Sun Devil, and Los Angeles Dodger Andre Ethier was just that.
Ethier was Phoenix born and raised having attended St. Mary’s High School where he hit .527 during his senior year and was named to the first-team all-region and second-team all-state. He attended Arizona State for the first semester of his freshman year before transferring to Chandler-Gilbert Community College. At Chandler-Gilbert Ethier was an absolute stud. He batted .468, named team MVP, named first-team All-ACCAC, and first-team all-region. His performance was also deemed well enough by the moneyball Oakland Athletics in 2001.
He did not sign and instead rejoined the maroon and gold.
In 2002 Ethier innovated before it was cool and became a one-man wrecking crew. Despite missing a month due to injury the slugger hit for plenty of power with 14 doubles, three triples, four home runs and had 19 multiple-hit games. Perhaps his greatest strength was hitting with runners in scoring position with a team-leading .422 and .455 with the bases loaded and tied for second on the team with 50 RBIs. All of these accomplishments led to him being named first-team All-Pac-10.
Ethier innovated one last time for his final season with the Sun Devils by hitting .377 with 75 runs scored and set new highs in triples (4) and home runs (10). He was once again a very clutch hitter with at least one RBI in 42 of the 68 games. The former Devil had hits in 28 of his last 29 games and finished with a 23 game hitting streak. He was once again received first-team Pac-10 honors and also was named an honorable mention All-American by Collegebaseballisnider.com and ASU’s Outstanding Defensive Player.
The local Arizona hero became the 14th ASU player to sign with the Oakland Athletics. However, he never appeared in an Athletics uniform because on December 13, 2005, the outfielder was traded to the Los Angeles Dodgers for another outfielder in Milton Bradley and also pitcher Antonio Perez. While neither Bradley nor Perez really panned out for Oakland, Andre Ethier in Hollywood was a star.
The season after the trade, Ethier was 5th in rookie of the year voting. Also keeping true to his hometown roots his first hit was at Chase Field. The two-time All-Star continued to be a consistent offensive force until 2016 and 2017 where an injury forced Ethier to play a combined 38 regular-season games. His career end would not be a tragic one though.
The 2017 Dodgers were in the first place when Ethier came back and set to begin what turned out to be an incredibly deep postseason run. It was game 7 of the World Series, Houston was leading 5 nothing in the bottom of the sixth, Joc Pederson was on second and with a 1-1 count, Ethier smacked a ball to right field to score what ended up being the only run scored for Los Angeles, and the final hit of his career. Ethier finished his career with a 21.5 WAR and never played a full season of less than a 0 WAR.
Andre and the six other inductees will be honored at the Arizona Sports Hall of Fame Induction Ceremony on April 23, 2021.
