Luis Quinones stepped up when the Reds needed him

In this ongoing series -- inspired by Stereogum’s “The No. 1s” -- we’ll look back on some of the more interesting, notable, and unexpected players of the week in MLB history, an award that has been given out since 1974. While many players of the week have been written about extensively and are entrenched in baseball lore, that is not always the case.

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• Archive: Best Weeks Ever

The Week: Sept. 3, 1989

NL: Luis Quinones, INF, CIN
AL: Jose Canseco, OF, OAK

Every championship team has that guy who becomes the perfect hero when you least expected it -- or for him to be the guy who did it. The Cardinals had Pete Kozma; the Royals had Dane Iorg; last year’s Braves had Eddie Rosario. The 1990 Reds had Luis Quinones.

That Reds team was a blast, even if we didn’t quite realize it at the time. At the time, the Reds were just the upstart team standing in the way of the Oakland A’s winning their second consecutive championship and establishing themselves as a dynasty. But that Reds team was so fun. It had Eric Davis, Jose Rijo and Barry Larkin right in the middle of their primes. It had the best year of Mariano Duncan’s career. It had Ken Griffey Sr., when his kid was just starting to make waves out in Seattle. It had Chris Sabo and his goggles. It had Paul O’Neill before everyone started singing Scandal songs every time he came to the plate. And it had an all-timer of a bullpen -- the Nasty Boys of Norm Charlton, Rob Dibble and Randy Myers. But they’d have never won a title without Luis Quinones.

Quinones was already 28 years old by the time the 1990 season came along, playing with his fourth team, and he had established himself as the sort of utility infielder every team needs -- good defense, a little pop. (He had 12 homers in 1989, actually fourth on the team that year. But we’ll get to that.) But he wasn’t a starter: He had Larkin, Sabo and Duncan (not to mention Ron Oester, who was still hanging around) ahead of him. So he mulled around, hit .241, knocked a couple of homers and tried to stay useful.

Then came the NLCS against the Pittsburgh Pirates, led by Barry Bonds, who would hit only .167 with no homers in the series. The Pirates won Game 1, but the Reds won the next three, thanks largely to their bullpen, led by Dibble, who threw five hitless innings in the first four games, striking out 10. The Pirates won Game 5, and manager Jim Leyland tried something crazy in Game 6, starting a relief pitcher, Ted Power, in order to upend the Reds’ platoon advantage. It worked for a while, and the game was tied 1-1 heading into the bottom of the seventh. Oester lead off with a single off Zane Smith, and after Larkin failed to bunt Oester over (!), Billy Hatcher singled Oester to third. Pushing that platoon advantage hard, Reds manager Lou Piniella pinch-hit for O’Neill with the righty Quinones, who had two at-bats in the series and no hits, against the lefty Smith. On a 3-2 count, Quinones did this:

That pennant, the Reds’ first since 1975, remains their most recent one. Quinones was not rewarded for his hit: He did not get a single at-bat in the Reds’ four-game World Series sweep, hit .222 in 97 games for the Reds in 1991 and retired after going 1-for-5 in three games for the Twins in 1992. He ended up a Minor League hitting coach and instructor, and he’s still doing it: He was most recently the hitting coach for the Batavia Muckdogs, formerly the Marlins’ Class A Short Season affiliate. But he’ll always have that hit.

And, oh yes, he’ll also have that week in 1989 as August turned to September. Blessed with a rare bit of playing time thanks to an injury to Sabo -- and amidst a massive scandal in which his manager Pete Rose had just been fired and banned from baseball exactly one week earlier -- Quinones, out of nowhere, had the fortnight of his life. In six games from Aug. 28 through Sept. 3, Quinones hit .440/.500/.720, going 11-for-25 with two doubles, a triple, a homer and three RBIs.

On Sept. 3, he was more than halfway through an 18-game hitting streak. During the streak, he hit .466 with four homers and 12 RBIs. Sure, he’d end up going 2-for-his-next-28, but his hitting streak and his tear, considering the tumult going on his own clubhouse, could not have been better timed. And, of course, his best moments were a mere one year away.

The other Player of the Week that week was the polar opposite player, in terms of hype: Jose Canseco. Canseco won Player of the Week eight times in his career; this was his third. He hit five homers in four games leading up to the vote. He’d missed the first three months of that season, the year after his MVP season, with injuries. That week was proof he was fully back.

Around the world

This was Labor Day weekend in 1989, and Labor Day weekend in sports means the U.S. Open in Queens. On that day, Chris Evert beat a 15-year-old Monica Seles for her final U.S. Open singles win, then lost to Zina Garrison three days later and never played in a major again.

The No. 1 song

“Cold Hearted,” Paula Abdul

This was Abdul’s third No. 1 hit of the year, after “Straight Up” and “Forever Your Girl.” (It is the opinion of this writer that “Cold Hearted” is best of the three songs.) It would be supplanted by the New Kids on the Block’s “Hangin’ Tough,” which is worse than all three of them.

At The Movies

For the third consecutive week, John Candy’s “Uncle Buck” ruled the box office. It would be Candy’s final No. 1 box-office hit. It would hold on for one more week before Al Pacino and Ellen Barkin took it over with “Sea of Love.”