Earnest Baldwin

#22 - P, OF (profile)

Earnest was not an original member of Team inDRStructible, but having been temporarily reassigned to the Operations Division during the Tax Amnesty program in 1996, happened to be working on the 14th Floor when Jim Chakulski and Scott Deslaurier were first starting to get the fledgling team up and running.

After missing the first month of the season, Earnest heard about the team through the talk around the water cooler, and was soon part of the action.

In the beginning, DRS was always searching for bodies to man the outfield, so Earnest frequently found himself playing alongside Jim and Scott in the green pastures beyond the infield. But later, after the team had picked up a few extra players, Earnest found himself a more permanent fixture in the team’s pitching rotation.

Called “the Bull” by his teammates, Earnest was a full-time player between 1996 and 2000, before returning to play a handful of games in 2001. At the time he left the team, Earnest was by far the team’s all-time leader in games pitched and games won. His teammates voted him the club’s Cy Young Award (for best pitcher) three times.

Each summer, Earnest was away two weeks of the season while training with the National Guard. Though the team missed his pitching arm, Earnest made it up to his teammates by tacking on a short trip home to see family in Alabama, and bringing back some homemade moonshine. The ‘white lightning’ was a huge hit on the team’s annual bus trips to Fenway Park, and at season-end parties.

At the plate, Earnest was known throughout the league for the loud grunt he gave every time he swung and made contact with the ball. And when he swung, it usually meant a base hit; E.B. was one the better hitters on the team. In 1998, he batted .741 on the season, at the time, the third best seasonal average in team history. Even more impressive, during the same season, Earnest went a four-game stretch in which he went 21-23 (or .913) at the dish, getting at least 5 base hits in each of the 4 games.