11/21/24
May 16, 2012
Major League Baseball - Last Man Standing: A link to a quick project I worked on tonight to find the last man standing for each team (or league).
I whipped this up this evening during down time on other projects. It is a list of every defunct/moved team in MLB history, the year they moved, the last player from that team to play in the majors, and the last player from that team to be alive. I then added a section that has a list of the defunct major leagues of baseball, and the last active/living players in MLB for those leagues.
Major League Baseball - Last Man Standing
It is just a rough web page produced from an Excel spreadsheet, with all the research done on Baseball Reference.
posted by grum@work to at 01:59 AM - 5 comments
Love this stuff. I remember Toby Harrah being the last Senator. I didn't know Reggie Jackson was the last Kansas City Athletic.
Catcher Deacon McGuire carried the legacy of the Detroit Wolverines for another 24 years, though his final six were a bit cheap. Most franchises lost their last active player in around 13 years.
How could the last living member of a league not be the last living member of a franchise?
posted by rcade at 10:09 AM on May 16, 2012
How could the last living member of a league not be the last living member of a franchise?
The individually listed teams are only ones that actually existed in the National League or American League.
Some teams (like the New York Mutuals) survived the collapse of their league (National Association) by jumping to the National League (but only hanging on for one more year).
Some teams (like the Keokuk Westerns) didn't survive the collapse of the league. However, a player on that team might have kept playing for years and be one of the last surviving members of the defunct league.
posted by grum@work at 10:49 AM on May 16, 2012
So what happened in the 1970s which stopped the regular relocation of teams?
Expansion became a more popular option than relocation.
MLB headed off some relocations (the Giants had threatened to move to Toronto in 1976) by giving those new places an expansion franchise (Blue Jays).
Throw in a couple more expansion years (Colorado, Tampa Bay, Arizona, Florida), and you've pretty much choked off any movement for a while (until Montreal to Washington).
posted by grum@work at 10:52 AM on May 16, 2012
Catcher Deacon McGuire carried the legacy of the Detroit Wolverines for another 24 years, though his final six were a bit cheap.
Take a look at Nick Altrock (last of the Louisville Colonels, but didn't play in their final season), specifically his batting lines. He (technically) played in 5 different decades.
posted by grum@work at 10:57 AM on May 16, 2012
So what happened in the 1970s which stopped the regular relocation of teams?