|
A phantom ballplayer can be one of two things: * Someone who is incorrectly listed in source materials as playing in a Major League Baseball game, often the result of typographical or clerical errors. Most of these types of phantom players date from the 19th or early 20th century, with at least one showing up as late as World War II. * A player who spent time on an active Major League roster without appearing in a big-league contest before either the end of a season or a subsequent roster move resulted in the player being removed from the active roster. ==Phantoms who never were== *Edward L. Thayer supposedly played one game for the New York Mutuals in 1876; the player was actually George Fair, who adopted a pseudonym referencing the name of poet Ernest Lawrence Thayer, who would later go on to write "Casey at the Bat." (19th and early 20th century players sometimes played under assumed names in an attempt to circumvent contractual obligations with another club.) *Turbot (which is also the name of a fish) was once listed as playing one game for St. Louis in 1902. In his anthology ''This Great Game'', author Roger Angell listed him on his All-Time Fish Names Team and bemoaned the fact Turbot had been dropped from the encyclopedia. ("I don't know what happened to him, but we need him in the outfield.") *A catcher named Dienens (no first name given) was listed in early baseball encyclopedias as having played one game for the 1914 Chicago Chi-Feds of the Federal League. Later research showed that the game was actually caught by the Chi-Feds regular second-string catcher Clem Clemens—historians reading a handwritten scorecard of the game had incorrectly deciphered "Clemens" as "Dienens". *Lou Proctor was listed as playing one game for the 1912 St. Louis Browns, drawing a walk in his only plate appearance. Research in the 1980s, however, revealed that the at-bat actually belonged to the Browns' Pete Compton. According to legend, Proctor was actually a Western Union operator who inserted his name into the box score as a prank. However, whether Proctor actually existed—even as a prankish telegraph operator—is unknown. 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「Phantom ballplayer」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
|