By Rob Neyer
ESPN SportsZone

Hi, Rob

This is my first e-mail to you but I'm a regular reader and I must say you're one of the most entertaining baseball writers I've seen. It must be tough to come up with fresh stuff in your column, day in and day out ... but you make it work. Anyway, I encountered a question on the Padres newsgroup and I was wondering whether you knew the answer (feel free to turn it into column fodder) .

Given the recent hoopla surrounding Dennis Martinez's attempt to become the winningest Latin pitcher in history, do people keep any other "race"-related records? In particular, the one for most career WALKS by a Latino player? Now, while I think for the most part race records are silly and an extra level of categorization, I am quite curious about the walk record since Latinos have a reputation of being free-swingers. (Actually, K/BB ratio might be better, but I'm betting that most serious stats aren't broken down by race, so walks would be easier to look up).

-- Eugene Hung

Thanks for the kind words, Eugene. Actually, it is tough coming up with fresh stuff every day (and some might argue it isn't always that fresh). Anyway, I couldn't do it without a lot of help from those of you who take the time to write.

There's an old saying (wish I knew how old), "You can't walk off the island," which means, essentially, that Dominican ballplayers aren't signed on the strength of their plate discipline. And that's true, because (1) a hefty percentage of Dominican players are middle infielders, so offense isn't a priority, and (2) scouts typically don't pay attention to plate discipline anyway.

As for your question, that record isn't kept, and in fact none of the "race records" are kept in any official manner. Wins and home runs are the only ones you'll ever see, along with maybe batting average, because they're easy to look up.

Walks by a Latin player would be interesting, though I'm not sure exactly what "Latin" means. People in this part of the world have been mixing for so long that "race" doesn't really have any precise definition. So for the sake of argument, let's use geography instead, and just say "Latin" means anyone who wasn't born in the United States, Canada, Europe or Australia.

	Sweet-swinging Rod Carew finished with 3,053 hits -- and 1,018 walks.

Looking at the career walks list in Total Baseball, the top Latin is Rod Carew (born in Panama, although he moved to New York when he was 17) with 1,018. He's apparently the only Latin among the top 100, which surprises me some. Carew's high was 78, in 1978. Checking some other guys ... Orlando Cepeda (Puerto Rico) never walked much, Tony Perez (Cuba) drew 83 walks in 1970 but that was by far his career high, Jose Cruz Sr. (Puerto Rico) was fairly patient but not exceedingly so. Luis Aparicio (Venezuela) didn't walk much, especially for a leadoff man -- his career high was 66, but he generally was between 30 and 50.

I'm sure I'm missing some guys, so I'll check for anyone who's ever received even a single Hall of Fame vote.

The Alou brothers -- Felipe, Matty and Jesus -- were Dominican natives, and were all champion non-walkers. In 1966, for example, Felipe drew only 24 walks in 154 games, and Matty, who hit .342 and won the National League batting title, also drew 24, in 141 games. Jesus was even worse, if you can believe it.

Let's use a systematic method. Rather than the obvious, figuring walks per plate appearance (which would require a lot of work), let's look at what we might call "Isolated On-base Percentage" (IOBP), which is simply on-base percentage minus batting average. This means we're also counting HBPs, but my Little League managers always said, "An HBP's as good as a walk," so let's try it. I'll enter the career OBPs and batting averages for every "Latin" non-pitcher who's gotten a HOF vote, and see what happens .

OK, there are only 16 of them, and that includes some lesser luminaries like Felix Millan and Leo Cardenas. The bottom three on the list? The aforementioned Alous -- all three of them. And on top? One of my favorite Hall of Fame candidates, Minnie Minoso. With a lifetime .298 batting average and .391 on-base average, that makes his isolated on-base a solid .093. Next in the group is Chico Carrasquel (.334 - .248 = .076), followed closely Jose Cruz (.074) and Rico Carty (.073).

Near as I can tell, among this group Minoso also owns the single-season mark for walks, with 86 in 1956. That 86 wasn't a fluke, either. Minoso was amazingly consistent in that regard. Here are his walk totals from 1951 through '57: 72, 71, 74, 77, 76, 86, 79.

I checked some current players, too, but Minoso doesn't have much competition . unless we cheat a little bit. Technically, Edgar Martinez doesn't qualify for this study, because he was born in New York. But he moved to Puerto Rico as a young boy and didn't come back to the States until he signed a professional contract. So far all practical purposes, he really does belong in a group with the rest of these guys.

And if you let him in, he's the champ. Martinez has drawn 100-plus walks in each of the last three seasons, he's on pace to do so again this year, and his career IOBP is .107, significantly better than Minoso's. With 753 career walks, Martinez has a decent chance of passing Carew on the all-time list, unless the DH is outlawed.

Rob Neyer is still in denial about the Strike of 1994, and has convinced himself that the World Series actually took place. Result: Cleveland over Atlanta, 4 games to 3. For game scores and statistics, e-mail him at robn@sportszone.com.