Leonard had legendary run with San Jose

Stories of players who carried their teams to victory in individual games, divisional races and even playoff series are the stuff of which sports history is comprised. The idea of one person getting hot enough to spark his or her team has been around since the beginning of organized sports.

Mark Leonard's tale is just such a story. The former slugger had a modest baseball career, spending the majority of his 11 professional seasons in the Minor Leagues. Leonard got several short looks with the Giants and Orioles between 1986 and 1996, but was never able to match the success he had while playing for the San Jose Giants in 1988.

Leonard, whom the Giants chose out of UC-Santa Barbara in the 29th round of the 1986 Draft, tore up the Class A circuit during the summer of '88. He led the league in nine offensive categories, including RBIs (118), and finished second in three others while leading San Jose to a 91-win season and a second-half North Division title.

He was arguably the best player in all of Minor League ball during the month of August, when he hit .395 with five homers and drove in 34 runs. Leonard led the league with 17 game-winning RBIs, and eight of them came during the final month of the season. His exploits over the final 10 games are legendary in San Jose, where he retains a special place as one of the franchises greatest stars.

Leonard earned the nickname "Mr. August" that month as the Giants rallied from an 8.5-game deficit to catch and pass Stockton for the second-half divisional title. San Jose closed out the season on a 10-game winning streak, matching Stockton win for win, with Leonard serving as the catalyst. He hit .488 (21-for-43) during that stretch, picking up a hit in every game. Leonard scored 13 runs, drove in 22 and had five game-winning hits as the Giants went 32-10 down the stretch.

"It was something else to see," said Chris Lampe, a former longtime minority owner of the San Jose franchise. "I had never seen anyone do that. When you look at his stats and the game-winning RBIs he had, he had five in the last 10 games."

The Giants would top Stockton in a one-game playoff for the divisional crown, but the magic ran out of their season in the first round of the playoffs as they dropped a five-game series to the Ports. Still, what Leonard was able to accomplish 20 years ago this month has left an indelible mark on the franchise and the California League.

"It was one of those things that, even though it was long ago, it doesn't seem like it," said Leonard, who hit .345 in 142 games to finish second in the batting race behind Bakersfield's Adam Brown, who hit .352 in 92 games. "We were in a race to win the division and when you're young, that's a big deal. Every game seemed like a playoff game. It was exciting to go to the park every day and be around the guys who were all going for the same goal. What I did as far as the numbers go was great, but what I remember is being with the guys."

What made Leonard's exploits even more special were the circumstances surrounding the San Jose franchise. The club played as an independent team in the Cal League in 1987 and finished with one of the worst records in Minor League Baseball at 33-109 while playing as the San Jose Bees.

The Giants took over the following season, moving their Cal League team from Fresno, and it was magical almost from the outset with Leonard leading the way. What made it even more special for Leonard was that he was a local kid, growing up 20 minutes from San Jose Municipal Stadium.

"Stockton had won the first half that year and if they won the second half, we would have been shut out of the playoffs," Lampe said. "We had to win all those games at the end just to tie and force a playoff [which the Giants won]. And the last game of the regular season [Aug. 31 against Modesto], the San Jose Giants set an all-time attendance record at 7,1043."

Two nights before that record-setting game, Leonard went off against Modesto, going 5-for-5 with six RBIs in an 11-1 rout.

"I hit a double down the line in the eighth inning of that game to drive in a couple runs," Leonard said. "I remember bits and pieces but really, the whole month stands out. But if there was one game, that would be the one."

Oddly enough, Leonard didn't win the league's Most Valuable Player award in 1988. That went to Riverside's Paul Faries, whose numbers across the board were considerably lower than Leonard's. Faries didn't lead the league in any major offensive category. Speculation is that the league All-Star and Most Valuable Player voting was actually done in mid-August before the season's final weeks had played out.

Riverside wound up winning the league championship that year, and Faries did play an integral role, but from a standpoint of being more valuable, his contribution to the Red Wave's effort was far less than Leonard's was to the Giants. Ironically, Faries was traded to the Giants four years later and formed a friendship with Leonard, one they still share.

"I have no idea how Mark didn't win," Lampe said. "The guy who won had horrible stats. To all of us who were here, Mark Leonard got robbed that year."

Leonard would never quite be able to match what he did in 1988. He split 1989 between Shreveport of the Texas League and Phoenix of the Pacific Coast League, hitting 10 homers and driving in 58 runs. He got his first taste of the big leagues the following season, spending 11 games with San Francisco while hitting .176.

"It was one of those things where I came up with a big-league team that had a set outfield and Will Clark at first base," Leonard said. "They had a lot of well-established Major Leaguers. And I had some success early off the bench and got labeled as a bench guy. Having a left-handed guy off the bench was a nice commodity.

"Once you're in that role and you're not an established Major League guy, you're someone who can yo-yo up and down to Triple-A, and that's what happened to me. I never got the chance to fail in the big leagues. That's why I ended up not having as much time or doing as well as I would have liked."

He would spend larger parts of the 1991 and '92 with the Giants, getting 257 at-bats over the two seasons. But then San Francisco traded him to the Orioles in March 1993. He appeared in 10 games for Baltimore that year before re-signing with the Giants as a free agent. Leonard would spend most of the next two seasons with Phoenix, though he did appear in 28 big-league games before closing out his career in 1996 with Salt Lake of the Pacific Coast League.

"I never had any regrets that I made it," said Leonard, who still lives in the San Jose area and works as a vice president of US sales for the Black Hawk Network, a subsidiary of Safeway Foods. "The only regret I have is that I didn't get enough time to prove I was an everyday player.

"I had a great year in San Jose and my first full year [1990] in Triple-A. I was pretty close to a Triple Crown in the Pacific Coast League when I got called up in July. That year from a statistical standpoint was just as good as my year in San Jose."

That may be the case, but what he did in San Jose was the stuff of legend.