YAZ

Jeez, I watched Daddy Wags during his first season with the expansion Angels! When did time start traveling at close to the speed of light?

I didn't see the premier of Daddy Wags, but I did see the first home run ever hit in Shea Stadium (by Donn Clendenon of the Pirates in April 1964). I also saw both Mantle and Maris hit home runs in a Yankee Stadium game sometime during their summer-long chase of Ruth's record in 1961.

And the funny thing is that, like Jack Benny, I'm merely 39.

Yastrzemski's 1960 Topps rookie card says he's a second baseman. I once heard they put him in left field because he was the heir apparent to Williams so they put him in left field.
I think one of his old original Strat cards (1964?) also had him listed as 2b-4

Yastrzemski's 1960 Topps rookie card says he's a second baseman. I once heard they put him in left field because he was the heir apparent to Williams so they put him in left field.
I think one of his old original Strat cards (1964?) also had him listed as 2b-4

This is very interesting! That idea of "succession" was big at the time--Mickey as the successor to Dimag, so he goes into CF, etc.

One thing it did produce is that the Yankees had a sequence of three HOF CF covering all of a period of more than 4 decades essentially without interruption: Earl Combs 1925-1935; Dimaggio 1936-1951; Mantle 1951-1968. That's really pretty amazing.

The Boston Red Sox LF is remarkable in its own way--and involves an even longer stretch of HOF performance. Here we have Williams 1939-1960; Yaz 1961-1983; Jim Rice 1974-1989. Here we have an even long stretch--50 straight years of HOF LF for the Sox from 1939-1989.

Too bad Manny couldn't stay away from the juice, or he would have added some more years to that stretch, even if not consecutively.