New York Mets: Six wacky batting stances the fans will never forget

Bruce Boisclair

While Felix “The Cat” Millan was pouncing all over the opposing team’s pitchers with his choked-up approach at the plate, his teammate of several years, Bruce Boisclair, also made a name for himself with a noteworthy batting stance. Boisclair was drafted by the Mets in the twentieth round of the 1970 amateur draft and spent all five of his major league seasons in Flushing.

Of the 22 players that signed with the Mets out of that 1970 draft, Boisclair was the only one who made it to the major leagues.

The base of his hitting success came from his notably wide batting stance, which one Mets fan described in an online forum as “spreads legs just until you feel a groin injury kicking in.” Most players today have either an upright batting stance or a somewhat crouched one, but it is rare to find a player who stood with his legs as far apart as Boisclair did when he was hitting.

He was mostly a part-time outfielder and pinch-hitter with the Mets, never notching 400 plate appearances in a season. Nonetheless, Boisclair had two particularly productive years with the Mets in 1976 and 1977 when he hit .287 and .293, respectively. However, he never quite outshined other Mets outfielders from the mid-1970s like Dave Kingman and Rusty Staub, who both frequented the starting lineup more than did Boisclair. After hitting just .210 in 59 games in 1979, the Mets released him in early 1980. Boisclair signed with the Toronto Blue Jays in February 1981, but he never appeared in another major league game once he left Queens.

Boisclair played for several Mets teams that lost much more than they won, but the Danielson, Connecticut native and his sprawled batting stance did carve out a couple of nice years with the Amazins.