Player Profile: Michael Barrett

I have 33 cards of Michael Barrett. This one is from 2001 Topps.


Playing career: The Expos’ first-round draft choice in 1995, Michael Barrett played twelve seasons in the major leagues, mostly with the Expos and Cubs. In 2005 he won a Silver Slugger, hitting .276 with 16 HR and 61 RBI; he hit exactly 16 HR in each of his three full seasons with the Cubs.

Interesting facts: A competitive, fiery player, he got into a couple of highly-publicized brawls, slugging AJ Pierzynski and getting slugged by Carlos Zambrano. In one interview he said “I wouldn’t mind trying to be an ultimate fighter after my baseball career.” Instead he has gone into youth baseball instruction.

Where he is now: He owns Barrett Baseball in the Atlanta Area. He also owns a non-profit called the Michael Barrett Foundation that works with children’s hospitals. He has also worked with Kerry Wood and Ryan Dempster to raise money to help Derrek Lee’s daughter in the research for Leber’s congenital amaurosis, a rare eye disease.

My memories: I remember the fights but other than that he was a pretty generic catcher on some mediocre National League teams. I do remember seeing him with San Diego toward the end of his career at Yankee Stadium. I looked up the game on Baseball-Reference and he went 0-4 (including striking out to end the game against Mariano Rivera) and the Yankees stole four bases off of him.

Google Autocomplete results: He is first when you type Michael Bar, ahead of Michael Barbaro, a writer for the New York Times. Another prominent Michael Barrett is the Chief of Revenue at Yahoo. 

 Coming up next: The next profile will be Tim Barrett.