Over the holidays, we too soon lost one of the outstanding defensive centerfielders in baseball history. Longtime Oriole Paul Blair passed away in Baltimore, aged only 69.

Among contemporary centerfielders, Blair’s 174 WAR fielding runs from 1964 to 1980 were more than the combined total of Garry Maddox (102) and Ken Berry (69) in second and third place. That 174 mark ranks 4th all-time among centerfielders, close behind Jim Piersall (175) and Willie Mays (183), with those three trailing only the phenomenal total of 236 WAR fielding runs posted by Andruw Jones.

After the jump, more on the career of Paul Blair.

Here are those center field WAR Fielding Runs leaders.

Note that the last two names on the list are players who have played less than half as long as every other player above them (and less than one third of the time that some of the others have played). These active leaders have “benefited” (if that’s the right word) from the recent usage of Defensive Runs Saved (DRS) as the metric in WAR Fielding Runs. While DRS is generally acknowledged as more accurate than its predecessor, Total Zone Runs or TZR, it can tend to reward the top performers more handsomely than TZR (as an example, Gomez and Gardner score 40 and 41 for TZR, less than half of their DRS results; on the other hand, Andruw Jones maintains his huge lead on the field, actually scoring even higher with TZR which credits him with a 242 score).

After a September call-up as a 20 year-old in 1964, Blair was elevated to the Orioles’ primary centerfielder the following season, a position he would own for 12 straight years until traded to the Yankees following the 1976 season. In his time in Baltimore, Blair won 8 gold gloves, 7 of them consecutively from 1969 to 1975. Blair also had 7 seasons leading AL centerfielders in Total Zone Runs (plus two 2nd place finishes). He led players at all positions in TZR in 1969 and placed no worse than 3rd in TZR among players at all positions in 4 of 6 seasons from 1967 to 1972.

Blair’s first gold glove came in 1967, his finest offensive season, when he posted a 135 OPS+ and 6.8 WAR. His best WAR season was a 7.1 total in 1969, one of five seasons over 5 WAR. For his career, Blair’s 37.9 WAR was split evenly between offense (18.7) and defense (18.6). Of 26 players (incl. partial careers for some players) since 1901 with less than 40 career WAR but 15+ offensive and defensive WAR, Blair is the only outfielder (the others are 5 catchers, 3 second basemen and 17 shortstops).

The Orioles of Blair’s time boasted outstanding defense at 3 positions with Blair in center, Brooks Robinson at 3rd base and Luis Aparicio and, later, Mark Belanger at shortstop. Matched with a legendary pitching staff that produced no fewer than seventeen 20 win seasons, Blair’s Orioles won 4 AL championships and two World Series titles (plus two other seasons topping the AL East). Two more WS crowns would follow in  two seasons as a part-time centerfielder with the 1977 and 1978 Yankees.

Blair finished his career with one season of part-time play on a 1979 Reds team that won the NL West while boasting no fewer than 31 gold gloves split among Blair (8), Johnny Bench (10), Joe Morgan (5), Dave Concepcion (4) and Cesar Geronimo (4). Blair appeared briefly with the 1980 Yankees before retiring at age 36.

Quiz time: for you trivia buffs, Blair is one of just four retired players to play their entire careers since 1901 and record 5 or more 5 WAR seasons, but have no other seasons of 3 WAR. Who are the other three?