San Francisco

Maldonado, also known as "The Candyman" and "The 4th Out", was a major part of the Giants success in the late 1980s as a part of the 1987 NL West Champions and the 1989 National League Champions.

Although Maldonado had statistically good seasons in San Francisco, he was involved in one of the most infamous plays in Giants history. In game 6 of the 1987 National League Championship Series, he lost Tony Peña's 2nd inning fly ball in the lights. This play resulted in a triple for Peña. Peña scored on a sacrifice fly for the only run of the game, which the Cardinals won to tie the series at 3 games each, before going on to win Game 7.

Career highlights

Over his career, Maldonado was a better hitter on the road than at home, with a batting average that was 51 points higher in road games than in home games. On May 4, 1987, he became only the 16th player in San Francisco Giants franchise history to hit for the cycle. In 1994, Candy scored the first-ever run for the Cleveland Indians at Jacobs Field. In Game 3 of the 1992 World Series, playing for the Blue Jays, he hit a walk-off hit off of Atlanta closer Jeff Reardon. He also hit a solo home run in Game 6 of the series.

Maldonado was noted as a good home run hitter who did not usually hit for a high batting average, which was .254 during his career.

He played in eight different postseason series for three of his teams and won the World Series with the Blue Jays in 1992.

Recent career

Maldonado recently provided color commentary for ESPN Deportes' coverage of the World Baseball Classic and regular season games. He was recently named general manager of the Gigantes del Cibao of the Dominican Baseball League. Maldonado contributed a video to "La Esquina de Candy" (or "Candy's Corner"). Also, Maldonado was recently inducted to the Caribbean Baseball Hall of Fame with former teammate and National Baseball Hall of Fame inductee Roberto Alomar, Carlos Baerga and Luis "Mambo" DeLeón for the 2011 Caribbean Series. He was also inducted in his native Puerto Rico Hall of Fame.

[ Source: Wikipedia ]