Other Crap

Oldest living major league player dies at 100

Bill Werber was a speedy third baseman back in the thirties. Unlike many of the players of that era, he was highly literate and quite well educated. He went to Duke, and later wrote three books.

When he was a young 'un, he had one tremendous year with the Red Sox. (.321, 200 hits, 40 steals, 129 runs scored. He led the league in triples and steals, and finished second in runs scored). He seemed to be a star-in-waiting, but he never had another season anywhere near that good again, although he was a solid player for a decade.

I enjoyed his last book (linked below), although he freely mixed facts with myths and didn't seem to know the difference. (He wrote it many years after he retired, and he didn't fact-check his memories, as we all must.)

The key fact here is that he has a far greater importance to baseball and to mainstream American culture than might be indicated by his own tepid career. His passing means that we have lost the last man to play with or against the Yankees when they had this Ruth kid on the team. Even before Werber made the bigs, he had the unique privilege of sitting on the bench of the storied '27 Yankees, probably the greatest team of all time. Although Werber was not on the roster, he was an undergraduate at Duke and the Yankees wanted to recruit him, so they let him sit there and watch Ruth and Gehrig and the other greats play that summer. (Needless to say, the players thought the apprenticeship concept was a chickenshit idea, so they ignored him.)

If you want to read more about Werber and baseball in the 30s, and you can't wait for the book, here is an long, excellent article which ran in the Washington Post this past summer.