My favorite major league ballplayer: Tony Suck

My favorite major league ballplayer: Tony Suck

Yes, that was really his name.

Sure, there have been other major league hitters who truly sucked. Bill Bergen, Casey Wise and Ray Oyler, all of whom had lifetime batting averages in the .170s, come immediately to mind. But none of them sucked like Tony Suck. Tony truly lived up to his name. Tony's major league batting average of .151 was only the start of his sucking. He took a year off from pro baseball (I read somewhere that he was a semi-pro star in the Chicago area), then attempted a comeback in the Southern Association, which at that time was a very low-level league, and hit a sparkling .091 (8 for 88) for the Augusta Browns.

Was Tony able to stay in the game for his glove skills, ala Bill Bergen and Ray Oyler? I doubt it. He played 32 major league games at catcher and made 32 errors. He played 15 games at shortstop and made 16 errors. He also subbed in the outfield, where his fielding percentage was .783. While 19th century fielding stats are misleading when viewed out of context because the game and the gloves were very different in the 1880s, Tony nonetheless seemed to be below average at everything.

There are those who say that our names play a part in determining our fates, and therefore that a guy named Duke Fister is more likely to become a successful boxer than a guy named Murray Finkelstein. There is undoubtedly at least a grain of truth to this axiom, thus explaining why a young man named Randall Poffo thought his wrestling career might go better as Randy Savage.

I wonder if things would have worked out any better for Tony Suck if he had changed his name to Tony Star.

Scoop's notes:

1. The term "to suck" in its modern context did not come into vogue until the early 70s. (The OED says its first appearance in print occurred in 1971.) When I was a kid in the 50s, the equivalent was "to stink." We did use the verb "to suck" in a non-sexual context on the playground, but it meant "to achieve undeserved success" or "to be unduly lucky" as in "he played like shit, but somehow sucked in a win." I guess the point of this digression-within-a-digression is that Tony Suck could not have known how we would view his name. On the other hand, I can think of some other reasons why he should have changed it.

2. After I rhapsodized the ineptitude of Tony Suck, I started to think, "Forget about those obscure 19th century players. Who was the worst hitter to play in the major leagues since WW2?" I started with the requirement of at least two years in the majors and 150 at-bats, and I came to the conclusion that it was this guy, Dick Smith. (1955 Bowman card below.)

He was a utility infielder in the majors for five years in the early 50s, playing for the Pirates. His lifetime batting average was .134 with no homers, and his big year was .174. He went below .100 once and came close (.106) a second time. I believe that he is the only non-pitcher in MLB history with 200 or more plate appearances to bat below .140.

You are probably wondering how a hitter that bad could hang in there for five years, even as a utility infielder. There are two reasons. The first is that Smith was a lifetime .271 hitter in Triple A, so the Buccos figured he couldn't really be as bad as he seemed in the bigs. The other reason is that the Pirates of that era consisted of entire teams made up of utility infielders. When Smith hit his resounding .106 in 1952, one of his fellow utility infielders was Johnny Berardino, who hit .143. Their team won 42 games and lost 112.

There was one thing that the 1952 Pirates were good at, although it had nothing to do with baseball. They were a great farm team for the television networks. The aforementioned John Berardino went on to be a soap opera star for 33 years on General Hospital; the team's catcher, Joe Garagiola, went on to become a game show host and a regular on the Today show.

Dick Smith has one serious rival for the title of "worst hitter since WW2": Brian Doyle, brother of Denny Doyle, a competent player who batted more than 3000 times in the 70s. Brian was a utility infielder for four years (1978-1981) with the Yankees and As. Although his batting and slugging averages were better than Dick Smith's, Brian Doyle had the additional talent of refusing to take a walk, so his .201 OBP was far below Smith's mighty .255. That gives Doyle a .392 OPS, lower than Smith's .421; and his OPS+ is 11, lower than Smith's 15, making them the two lowest in both categories since WW2.

Pitchers have been excluded from consideration, but it's worth noting for comparison that Bob Buhl, a solid pitcher in the 50s and 60s, batted .089 in nearly a thousand major league plate appearances, and hit only two doubles in all that time, for an .091 lifetime slugging average. Buhl's lifetime OPS was .220 and his OPS+ was -38. He once ran up an 0-for-87 streak. On the other hand, he amassed ten major league seasons with ten or more pitching wins, and once led the NL in W-L percentage, so the man was earning his pay without swinging the bat.