19-year-old Profar homers in his first MLB at-bat

19-year-old Profar homers in his first MLB at-bat

"Profar is the third teenager to homer in his first at-bat, joining the Giants' Whitey Lockman in 1945 and Reds' Ted Tappe in 1950, the Elias Sports Bureau said."

Profar was not the youngest man to pull off that trick. Lockman was younger. I remember him well from my childhood baseball cards.

18-year-old Whitey Lockman came up in July of 1945 and tore it up. After homering in his first plate appearance, he went on to hit .341 for the season. His potential seemed infinite. Hell, the kid had been playing in the International League at age 16!

The rest of his career path didn't lead to Cooperstown, but he did get to play on two World Series teams, including one winner, and he had one particularly memorable moment in the 1951 regular season. In the famous Bobby Thompson game, Lockman's ninth-inning RBI double drove starter Don Newcombe from the game, bringing in reliever Ralph Branca for his ill-fated appointment with The Flying Scot.

Lockman hung on for 15 years in the NL as a first baseman and left fielder, but his lifetime OPS+ was only 95, which is just below average. Despite his auspicious initial at-bat, his Achilles heel was his slugging average, which was only .391 over some 6600 plate appearances. That's a weak figure for a man playing the two positions normally reserved for the big bruisers.

Curiously, Lockman's managerial career followed the same sort of trajectory: in like a lion, out like a lamb. He took over the 1972 Cubs from Leo Durocher and steered them from fourth to second. The Cubbies went an excellent 39-26 (.600) under his direction, although the team had been a mediocre 46-44 before his arrival. Once again his career couldn't live up to its early promise, as poor performances the next two years caused him to be fired after a 41-52 start in 1974, leaving him just below average (157-162) as a manager, just as he had been as a player.

That was certainly nowhere near the end of his career in baseball, however. He was so well liked and respected that the Cubs didn't fire him as manager, but rather kicked him upstairs to Vice President and Director of Player Development, a position which he held for some 15 years with success which was ... well ... a bit below average, as you might have expected. The Cubs fielded a solid series of sub-.500 teams, interrupted only by the miracle of 1984 when Rick Sutcliffe, the Cy Young Winner in only half a season's work, almost single-handedly lifted them to a division championship. (The Cubs were 19-2 in Sutcliffe's 21 starts)

After Lockman left the Cubs, he worked for another decade or so with two other NL teams, finally retiring after 59 years in organized baseball.