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William Benjamin "Ben" Chapman (December 25, 1908 – July 7, 1993) was an American outfielder and manager in Major League Baseball who played for several teams. He began his career with the New York Yankees, playing his first seven seasons there. During the period from 1926 to 1943, he had more stolen bases than any other player, leading the American League four times. After twelve seasons, during which he batted .302 and led the AL in assists and double plays twice each, he spent two years in the minor leagues and returned to the majors as a National League pitcher for three seasons, becoming player-manager of the Philadelphia Phillies, his final team. In later years, his playing reputation was eclipsed by the role he played in 1947 as manager of the Phillies, opposing the presence of Jackie Robinson on a major league team on the basis of Robinson's race with unsportsmanlike conduct that proved an embarrassment for his team. ==Playing career== Born in Nashville, Tennessee, Chapman batted and threw right-handed. He was a teammate of Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Bill Dickey, Joe DiMaggio and other stars on the Yankees from 1930 through the middle of the 1936 season. In his 1930 rookie season with the Yankees, during which he batted .316, he played exclusively in the infield as a second and third baseman; although he played only 91 games at third, he led the AL in errors, and after Joe Sewell was acquired in the offseason, Chapman was shifted to the outfield to take advantage of his speed and throwing arm. He led the AL in stolen bases for the next three seasons (1931–33); his 1931 total of 61 was the highest by a Yankee since Fritz Maisel's 74 in 1914, and would be the most by any major leaguer between 1921 and 1961 (equalled only by George Case in 1943). With the Yankees, he also batted over .300 and scored 100 runs four times each, batted in 100 runs twice, led the AL in triples in 1934, and made each of the first three AL All-Star teams from 1933–35, leading off in the 1933 game as the first AL hitter in All-Star history. In the 1932 World Series he batted .294 with six runs batted in as the Yankees swept the Chicago Cubs. In one game on July 9, 1932, he had three home runs, two of which were inside-the-park, and on May 30, 1934 he broke up Detroit Tiger Earl Whitehill's no-hitter in the ninth inning. It was in New York that the extent of Chapman's bigotry first surfaced. He taunted Jewish fans at Yankee Stadium with Nazi salutes and disparaging epithets. In a 1933 game, his intentional spiking of Washington Senators' second baseman Buddy Myer (who was incorrectly believed to be Jewish) caused a 20-minute brawl that saw 300 fans participate and resulted in five-game suspensions and $100 fines for each of the players involved. In June 1936, Chapman – then hitting .266〔(Ben Chapman at HickokSports.com )〕 and expendable with the arrival of DiMaggio – was traded to the Senators. The trade was ironic in that the player the Yankees received in return was Jake Powell, who would become infamous for a 1938 WGN radio interview in which he stated that he liked to crack blacks over the head with his nightstick as a police officer in Dayton, Ohio during the off-season. Furthermore, earlier in the 1936 season, Powell had purposely collided with Hank Greenberg, the Detroit Tigers' Jewish first baseman, breaking Greenberg's wrist and ending his season after only 12 games.〔 After the trade, Chapman rebounded to finish the year with a .315 average, again making the All-Star team and scoring 100 runs, and collecting a career-high 50 doubles. In June 1937 the Senators sent him to the Boston Red Sox, and he led the AL in steals for the fourth time with 35. The following year he hit a career-best .340 with Boston, after which he was traded to the Cleveland Indians. After seasons hitting .290 and .286, Cleveland sent him back to Washington in December 1940; he hit .255 with the Senators before they released him in May 1941, and after he batted only .226 with the Chicago White Sox over the remainder of the year, his major league career appeared to be finished. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Ben Chapman (baseball)」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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