Paul Blair, Center Fielder for Champions, Dies at 69 Paul Blair, the fleet and elegant ball hawk who roamed center field for four World Series champions, the Baltimore Orioles twice and the Yankees twice, died on Thursday in Baltimore. A spokesman for Sinai Hospital in Baltimore confirmed the death without giving a cause. Blair's wife, Gloria, told The Baltimore Sun that her husband had collapsed during a charity bowling event. He survived a heart attack in 2009. Perhaps the finest outfielder of his era, Blair was known for his speed and grace, and for his ability to read a hitter's swing and make a quick break on a fly ball. Brilliant at tracking balls hit over his head, he routinely positioned himself in shallow center to be able to snag line drives over the infield and to keep runners from taking an extra base on singles up the middle. Yet it was a rare fly ball that landed between Blair and the fence. His range was extraordinary - he twice led the American League in putouts - and his arm was strong and accurate; over 17 seasons, he threw out 104 runners from center field. He won eight Gold Glove awards, given annually to the three best outfielders in each league, including seven in a row from 1969 to 1975. Based on range factor - defined as putouts plus assists per nine innings - Blair was over the course of his career superior as a center fielder to both Willie Mays and Ken Griffey Jr. Blair was the Orioles" starting center fielder from 1965 to 1976. During that time the Orioles won the American League's Eastern Division title five times, the American League pennant four times and the World Series twice, in 1966 and 1970. For most of that time he played for the Hall of Fame manager Earl Weaver, who emphasized power, pitching and defense on the theory that denying a run to the other team is as valuable as scoring one yourself. Blair, who had the outspoken gratitude of Oriole pitchers, including the Hall of Famer Jim Palmer, was integral to Weaver's implementation of this philosophy, and Weaver once said admiringly that Blair never made a great catch because he never had to; he was always standing under the ball when it came down. In the 1969 World Series, when the heavily favored Orioles lost improbably in five games to the so-called Miracle Mets, Blair broke up Jerry Koosman's no-hit bid with a seventh-inning single in Game 2. In Game 3, he felt the sting of a turnabout when, with two outs and the bases loaded in the seventh inning, Tommie Agee, the Mets" center fielder, raced into right-center field, dived and robbed Blair of what seemed like a sure extra-base hit, forestalling an Oriole rally. Blair later said he would have made the catch without leaving his feet. His bat was not the equal of his glove, though he had a handful of valuable seasons at the plate, especially early in his career - including 1967, when he hit .293 and led the league with 12 triples, and 1969, when he hit .285 and drove in 76 runs - and he once hit a rare inside-the-park grand slam. He was significantly better over all in the postseason, hitting .288 in 28 games over six World Series, including 9 for 19 in the Orioles" five-game victory over Cincinnati in 1970. His home run off Claude Osteen of the Dodgers in Game 3 of the 1966 Series was one of only three Oriole hits, but it was also the only run in a 1-0 Oriole victory. The next day, in the eighth inning of Game 4, he robbed Jim Lefebvre of a home run, preserving another 1-0 victory and clinching an Orioles series sweep. And though Blair was only a reserve outfielder for the Yankees in their championship years of 1977 and 1978, his 12th-inning single gave the Yankees a walk-off win over the Dodgers in the 1977 opening game, setting the team on the path to its first World Series title in 15 years. Paul L. D. Blair was born on Feb. 1, 1944, in Cushing, Okla., but when he was young his family moved to Los Angeles, where he played high school basketball and baseball and was a high jumper. In 1969, Sport magazine reported that his middle initials did not stand for anything, though Blair was known as a chatterbox - his nickname was Motormouth - and one of his Oriole teammates suggested that the L. D. stood for Loquacious Delivery. Blair was signed in 1961 by the Mets - as a shortstop. He explained how he became a center fielder in a 1997 interview with USA Today. "The first day the coach told us to run out to our positions," he said. Well, seven players went to shortstop and six went to second but only one went to right. And I knew I could throw better than him and run better than him. So I ran out to right and played there. Then the center fielder got hurt and I moved to center. In a blunder, the Mets, after his first year in their system, left him eligible to be selected by another club in a player draft. At the Mets" behest, he feigned an injury to discourage interest in him during postseason instructional league play, but the Orioles took him anyway. He spent 1963 and 1964 climbing up the Orioles" minor league ladder, made his major league debut in September 1964, and started in center field for the Orioles on opening day in 1965. Blair sustained two serious injuries in his career. In December 1967, playing winter ball in Puerto Rico, he broke an ankle, and though he played in 141 games in 1968, he was slowed, batting only .211. In May 1970, he was hit in the face by a pitch from Ken Tatum of the California Angels. He returned to the lineup three weeks later, and though he always argued that he was unaffected by the beaning, he was a lesser hitter forever after. Blair was released by the Yankees in April 1979, and he played most of that season with the Cincinnati Reds. After a brief return to the Yankees, he was released in July 1980. After his playing career, he held a variety of jobs in baseball, including as a college coach at Fordham and at Coppin State University in Baltimore.