(Entry No. 12)

Can You Name This Week’s Mystery Player?

How well you do know your old-time players?

My goal with this feature is to shine our baseball spotlight on some very good players from days gone by who have been overshadowed by the likes of Ruth, Gehrig, Speaker, Hornsby, Grove, Greenberg, Robinson, Paige, Gibson, and Williams, among many other superstars the game has produced. Hopefully, we can give them a little exposure before they are totally lost over the passage of time. 

As always on Baseball History Comes Alive, we can have some fun while enhancing our baseball history learning experience. Each entry will include a short description of the player and highlights from his career. Some of the entries might require you to do a little research on your own. I might even add a personal comment or two about him.

Player Identity: Lon Warneke

So as to give everyone a chance to guess without the player’s identity being immediately revealed, send me your answer via e-mail instead of leaving your answer in the comments section. Send your answers to me at: Livac2@aol.com.

This week’s Mystery Player (from Wikipedia): 

I’ve featured ballplayers and umpires in this Mystery Player series, so today I’m featuring a ballplayer who became an umpire! (Thanks to Don Stokes for sending the nice colorization of this week’s Mystery Player!)

The featured photo above is from the Charles Conlon collection. His entry in my Conlon book says: “He possessed the most perfect pompadour in baseball.” Looking at the pic you can see why!

This week’s Mystery Player was nicknamed ********* was a major league ballplayer and umpire.  His career won-loss record from 1930–42 was 192–121. He pitched for the National League in the first All-Star Game, hitting the first triple and scoring the first National League run in All-Star game history. He pitched in two other All-Star Games.

After retiring as a player in 1945, he was an umpire in the Pacific Coast League for three years and then in the National League from 1949 to 1955. After baseball, he became a county judge in his native Arkansas. 

This week’s bonus questions:

1. What two teams did he play for?
2. He pitched in two World Series, what years and for what team?
3. Fill in the blanks: He is the only person who has both played and umpired in both an __________ and  a _____________.
4. What was his nickname? Hint: He was from Arkansas.

Good luck! 

If you’d like to take a stab at identifying these players, please send me your answers via email. But feel free to add any thoughts or personal reflections you might have about him in the comments section below. Remember you don’t have to answer everything to submit an answer. Just give it your best shot!

Send your answers to me at: Livac2@aol.com

At the end of the week, I’ll post the names of everyone who go the correct answers, including the winner, the first one to get it right. 

Last Week’s Winners:

Congratulations to: 

Pete Aman

He was the first to identify last week’s Mystery Player and answer all the bonus questions correctly. The Mystery Player was:

Ossie Bluege

Answers to the Bonus Questions:

Ossie Bluege’s hometown was Chicago. As Twins farm director, he was said to have signed Tony Oliva and Jim Kaat, two of this year’s HOF selectees; He played on three Washington pennant winners: 1924, ’25, and ’33.

The following identified the Mystery Player and correctly answered the bonus questions:

Pete Aman, Terry Farmer, Paul Doyle, Michael Nobel, Ed Cassidy, William Carter, Michael Keedy, Mike Bresina.

The following identified the Mystery Player correctly but not all the bonus questions:

Dave Cunniff, Jim Wohlenhaus, Everett Shockley, Kevin Barwin, Bill Cunniff

Thanks to all who participated!

Click here to see previous Mystery Player entries