Fred Lynn played 17 seasons in the major leagues, beginning with the Boston Red Sox in 1974 and ending with the San Diego Padres in 1990. He arrived at 23 years old in a way nobody had ever arrived. In 1975 he batted .331 with 21 home runs and 105 RBI, led the American League in runs, doubles, and slugging, won a Gold Glove in center field, and became the first player in baseball history to win Rookie of the Year and Most Valuable Player in the same season. Only one player has done it since, and that was Ichiro twenty-six years later. The bar he set in his first full big-league summer is the one every story about him would eventually come back to.

He went to the All-Star Game nine straight years (1975 through 1983), won four Gold Gloves in center field, won the American League batting title in 1979 with a .333 average, and put up what is statistically his finest season that same year (.333/.423/.637, 39 home runs, 122 RBI, 8.9 WAR, fourth in the MVP voting). On July 6, 1983, at the 50th-anniversary All-Star Game in Comiskey Park, he hit the first and still the only grand slam in All-Star Game history. The year before, in 1982, he had hit .611 in the ALCS for the California Angels and been named the series MVP. The Angels lost the series. He remains the only player ever named MVP of a League Championship Series his team did not win.

Before any of that, he was a USC outfielder who won three straight College World Series titles (1971, 1972, 1973) under Rod Dedeaux, and the Red Sox took him in the second round of the 1973 draft. After Boston he played for the California Angels, the Baltimore Orioles, the Detroit Tigers, and the San Diego Padres, finishing with 1,960 hits, 306 home runs, 1,111 RBI, a .283/.360/.484 line, and 50.2 career WAR. Today he lives in Southern California, maintains an active public presence through fredlynn.com and frequent alumni and charity appearances.