Progress: 1st of this card
154 of 407 37.8% complete
How acquired: $5.26
Condition: Good
This is a card I've wanted for several years now. It typically sells closer to the ten dollar mark, and as such, I've held off on it. Easter, despite breaking the color line in 1949, is conspicuously absent from all the list I could find of the first players to do so. If anyone knows exactly where he falls on the list, or where I can find a more thorough one, please share it with me.
Easter has one of the more entertaining wiki pages that I've across while doing this. A power hitter, he was the first player to hit a home run into the center field bleachers of the Polo Grounds, a feat he accomplished while playing with the Grays. Teammates dubbed his home runs "Easter Eggs." His age is also a bit of a mystery, and there's an entertaining anecdote how he ran a sausage company while playing in Buffalo, and would give 5 lbs of sausage to teammates who hit home runs. I want to share a quote attributed to him when a fan told him he had witnessed his longest home run in person; "If it came down, it wasn't my longest." This larger than life slugger was tragically murdered by two shotgun wielding robbers while transporting payroll checks in 1979.
Stats: MLB; 6 seasons, 472 hits, 93 home runs, .274 avg. (Really all done in 3 full seasons)
All Professional Stats (AAA, NLB, MLB) 18 seasons, 267 HR, .289 avg.
Best Hall of Fame Showing: N/A
Larry Doby was the first to break the color line on the Indians slightly after Jackie Robinson entered the league. He wasn't even second on the team. Satchel Paige was second.
ReplyDelete@Rumpleforeskin What I'm looking for is an actual list of the first 20-50 players, not by team, but for the entire league as a whole.
ReplyDelete