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Edward Carl Gaedel (June 8, 1925 – June 18, 1961) was an American with dwarfism who became famous for participating in a Major League Baseball game. Gaedel (some sources say the family name may actually have been ''Gaedele'') gained recognition in the second game of a St. Louis Browns doubleheader on August 19, 1951. Weighing 65 pounds (29.5 kg), and standing 3 feet 7 inches tall (109 cm), Gaedel became the shortest player in the history of the Major Leagues. He made a single plate appearance and was walked with four consecutive balls before being replaced by a pinch-runner at first base. His jersey, bearing the uniform number "", is displayed in the St. Louis Cardinals Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum. St. Louis Brown's owner Bill Veeck, in his 1962 autobiography ''Veeck – As in Wreck'', said of Gaedel, "He was, by golly, the best darn midget who ever played big-league ball. He was also the only one." Gaedel was a professional performer, belonging to the American Guild of Variety Artists (AGVA). Before his appearance as baseball's most-famous pinch-hitter, Gaedel's most notable gig arguably was when he was hired in 1946 by Mercury Records to portray the "Mercury man." He sported a winged hat similar to the record label's logo, to promote Mercury recordings. Some early Mercury recordings featured a caricature of him as its logo.〔(【引用サイトリンク】title=Image: merc9.jpg, (400 × 400 px) )〕 ==Appearance== Browns owner Bill Veeck was a showman who enjoyed staging publicity stunts. He found Eddie Gaedel through a booking agency. Due to his size, Gaedel had worked as a riveter during World War II. Gaedel was able to crawl inside the wings of airplanes. After the war, Gaedel was the promotional mascot for Mercury Records. Gaedel was secretly signed by the St. Louis Browns and put in uniform (with the number "1/8" on the back). The uniform was that of current St. Louis Cardinals managing partner and chairman William DeWitt, Jr. who was a 9 yr old batboy for the Browns at the time. Gaedel came out of a papier-mache cake between games of a doubleheader to celebrate the American League's 50th anniversary. The stunt was also used as a Falstaff Brewery promotion. Falstaff, and the fans, had been promised a "festival of surprises" by Veeck. Before the second game got underway, the press agreed that the "midget-in-a-cake" appearance had not been up to Veeck's usual promotional standard. Falstaff personnel, who had been promised national publicity for their participation, were particularly dissatisfied. Keeping the surprise he had in store for the second game to himself, Veeck just meekly apologized. Although Veeck denied the stunt was directly inspired by it, the appearance of Gaedel was unmistakably similar to the plot of "You Could Look It Up," a 1941 short story by James Thurber. Veeck insisted he got the idea from listening to the conversations of Giants manager John McGraw decades earlier when Veeck was a child. 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「Eddie Gaedel」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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