(Entry No. 6)

Name This Week’s Mystery Player!

How well you do know your old-time players?

Click here to see previous Mystery Player entries

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. 

Player Identity: Riggs Stephenson

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.

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): 

This week’s mystery player was a left fielder in Major League Baseball. [He] played for the Cleveland Indians from 1921 to 1925 and the rest of his career from 1926 to 1934 with the Chicago Cubs. Benefiting from the offensive

surge of the late 1920s and early 1930s, he retired with a career batting average of .336, although he was only a full-time player from 1927 to 1929 and in 1932, with injuries and platooning limiting his role for the rest of his career.

[He] has one of the highest lifetime batting averages of eligible 20th-century players not in the Baseball Hall of Fame. [His] .336 career batting average is 22nd highest in major league history. [He] hit over .300 12 times, in all but two of his seasons in the big leagues.

This week’s bonus questions:

1. What was his nickname?
2. On Sept. 14, 1923, he was a participant in a play that had only happened four times previously in major league history. What was it? (Big hint: It also happened in the 1920 World Series).
3. In 1929, he teamed up with KiKi Cuyler and Hack Wilson for an outfield trio that produced something that has never been duplicated in National League history. What was it?

If you’d like to take a stab at identifying this player, please send me your answer via email. But feel free to add any thoughts or personal reflections you might have about him in the comments section below.

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

AT THE END OF THE WEEK, I’LL POST THE NAMES OF EVERYONE WHO GOT THE CORRECT ANSWER, INCLUDING THE WINNER (THE FIRST ONE TO GET IT RIGHT).

Last Week’s Winners:

Congratulations to Terry Farmer as the first to correctly identify last week’s mystery player as:

Leon Day

Bonus Questions Answers:

His teams were the Baltimore Black Sox, Brooklyn/Newark Eagles, Baltimore Elite Giants, and the Veracruz Elite Giants. He was a member of the Newark Eagles in 1946 when they won the Negro League World Series. He was elected to the Hall of Fame in 1995.

The following all identified the mystery player correctly. You guys really know your old-time baseball!: Terry Farmer, Pete Aman, Kevin Barwin, Mike Bresina, Mark Moreno. 

Click here to see previous Mystery Player entries

 

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