A
power-hitting
outfielder who played for various
baseball teams from 1977 to 1990. Primarily remembered for his "
one flap down"
home-run trot, making him one of the few players in baseball history to actually have enough
balls to
taunt pitchers with a specialized
trot.
Leonard's best seasons came with the San Francisco Giants in the mid-80s. In 1984 he hit .302 with 21 home runs and 86 RBI for a terrible Giants team that was 66-96 for the season. Injuries limited his play in 1986, but he rebounded with a good 1987 season as the Giants won the National League Western division. In the NLCS against the St. Louis Cardinals, Leonard hit .417 with four homers, earning the series MVP trophy although the Giants lost the series in seven games.
On each of those homers, however, Leonard pissed off the Cardinals with the one flap down. The trot involved him slowly jogging around the bases with his left arm (the arm that's inside the basepath) extended straight and angled downward. His right arm was kept alongside his body, making Leonard look like half of an airplane making a left bank. (On rare occasions he'd do a "two flaps down" trot, with both arms extended downward.)
Such antics are tolerated if you're the only good hitter on the team, but with the emergence of young stars like Will Clark and Kevin Mitchell, the Giants didn't need to deal with Leonard angering opponents. He was traded to the Milwaukee Brewers for infielder Ernest Riles, a young player who never amounted to much of anything.
Leonard also played for the Los Angeles Dodgers, the Houston Astros and the Seattle Mariners in his career. He was an All-Star in 1987 with the Giants and in 1989 with the Mariners.
He is now the general manager of the Sonoma County Crushers, a team in the Western Baseball League, an independent minor league with five teams in California and one in Arizona. The Crushers are based in Rohnert Park, California.
Stats: http://www.baseball-reference.com/l/leonaje01.shtml