Steve Dunn (1990s first baseman)
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- For the 19th century MLB player, see Steve Dunn.
Steven Robert Dunn (born April 18, 1970 in Champaign, Illinois) is a former Major League Baseball first baseman. He was drafted by the Minnesota Twins in the 4th round of the 1988 amateur draft, and played for the Twins in 1994 and 1995.
Dunn attended Robinson Secondary School in Fairfax, Virginia from 1984 to 1988 where he earned Washington Post All-Metropolitan Baseball honors in 1987 and 1988. Dunn was a top 10 Baseball America magazine prospect in 1988, but had committed to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill prior to the 1988 amateur draft which resulted in his slide to the 4th round. After attending a Minnesota Twins game in which he took batting and fielding practice with the team prior to the game, Dunn rescinded his commitment to UNC and singed with Twins for a $100,000 signing bonus.
In nine minor league seasons (1988-1996) Dunn put up consistently good numbers each year, and had a total of 110 home runs, 587 runs batted in, and a .283 batting average. Both in 1994 and 1995 he hit over .300 for the Salt Lake Buzz of the Pacific Coast League, earning call-ups to Minnesota.
He made his major league debut on May 3, 1994, starting a game against the Milwaukee Brewers at County Stadium. He went 2-for-4 with a single against Bill Wegman and a double against Mike Fetters. The Twins lost, however, 7-6.
In a total of 19 big league games he hit .195 (8-for-41) with five doubles and four RBI. In 15 appearances at first base he had a fielding percentage of .990. The Twins released Dunn on November 20, 1995 and he signed with the Cleveland Indians before the 1996 season. He hit .290 in 92 games for the Buffalo Bisons of the American Association, but never again reached the major league level. He went on to become both a baseball coach and a humanities teacher of East Tennessee's Alcoa High School where he still teaches. He is married and has three girls. The courses that he teaches at AHS are: Theory of Knowledge, World History, and Psychology. He maintains a notebook full of student quotes that he often says he will one day combine into a book for retail. He often brags to have trained in Thailand with an old taoist named "The Way". However, the crdibility of this story is questionable at best. He has recently gained school wide attention for placing a McDonalds double cheeseburger in his room as an experiment to see how long it will take for the burger to develop mold. This expirement is part of an on-going battle against junk food. His room (room # 110) is arguably the most interesting in the school and is rivaled only by the art room in color and the biology room in clutter. The desks in his room are arranged in a rough square with his desk at the front of the room and a large black disk lovingly referred to as "the rabbit hole" in the middle of the room lying on the floor. Even though no other teachers at AHS have tried as often as him, Coach Dunn does the "soulja boy" dance better than any other teacher in the school. As far as teaching philosophy goes, Coach Dunn believes that movies have a large place in the class room and shows several in his classes including: braveheart, contact, gladiator, the fountain, v for vendetta, serendipity, the truman show, and the planet earth series.
