I think the name you are trying to come up with is George Ruth, also known as Babe.
Isn’t the trade to get money to finance a musical a myth?
Another example of the crapshoot that is the MLB draft: In 1990, Andy Pettitte was chosen with the 594th pick and Jorge Posada later with the 646th.
Did not know that, fascinating. The Royals picked some guy named Roy Branch in the first round and Phillies picked Roy Thomas who I don’t recall at all despite playing 10 seasons in MLB. These two Roys were both right-handed pitchers.
Had the Royals picked Schmidt instead, he may not have hit 548 homeruns and we would not have the Pine Tar Game. Different history all because of picking one guy over another.
I also note the Expos chose Condredge Holloway who went on to have a decent career as an athlete in Canada playing football.
I had no memory of that Roy Thomas at all. The Phillies back in the early 20th century had another Roy Thomas, an outfielder no one remembers but he was quite a good player, so he fits this thread.
The outfielder Roy Thomas might have been the least powerful hitter in MLB history who was a good offensive player. He only hit about ten doubles a year to go with seven triples and one home run. His career isolated power was .043, which is even lower than Otis Nixon, and that’s saying something. But for whatever reason he draw a huge number of walks, plus he batted .290 and ran well.
Excuse the hijack, but I keep getting notices of replies to this thread, and when I check to see why, I found out that I’m receiving replies as the creator of the thread.
Ummm…when I play Trivial Pursuit, the only way I can get the wedge for Sports & Leisure is to get a question about chess or mixed drinks.
How do I convince the thread gods that I did not create this, so I stop getting notification? [/hijack]
I bet that’s my fault. I accidentally replied to your baby shower thread, and that post was moved here. Report a post here (like this one, since it has explanation of what probably happened) and tell the mods.
OK-- thanks!
You simply posted in the wrong place. The mods did something that connected @RivkahChaya to this thread. Let’s see what happens next 
True, but there’s no evidence he traded him in order to finance any play. Certainly not a play that opened six years after the trade. Frazee did not mingle accounts.
Note that the play My Lady Friends (basis for No, No Nanette) opened three weeks before the trade and ran until summer – a successful run for the time. Frazee was making money from that, even if he didn’t have a full share, and he also owned a theater that was running another successful play. A Broadway show has its major cost before it opened. If Frazee traded Ruth because he was short of money for the play, he would have traded Ruth before the play opened.
Frazee traded Ruth because Ruth wanted more money. He had done the same thing to Carl Mays earlier that year, defying Ban Johnson. It was a major reason he traded to the Yankees – no team other the White Sox (who offered Jackson) would trade with them on Johnson’s orders.
Frazee did have the mortgage to pay for Fenway, which is why the Yankees offered money on top of the price for Ruth (not usually reported as part of the trade). But Frazee traded Ruth over Ruth’s salary demands and threat to go off barnstorming the next year. Given how he reacted to Carl Mays doing the same thing earlier that year, it’s not surprising he wanted Ruth out of there.
Another point people miss: No one expected Ruth to do as well as he had. He set the MLB record for home runs with 29. No one expected him to top that by almost doubling it. It’d be like expecting Roger Maris to hit 100 home runs in 1962.
Ultimately, Frazee’s decision to trade Ruth had nothing to do with his money problems, as attested to the fact that they considered trading him for Shoeless Joe Jackson, but passed on it due to rumors of the Black Sox scandal.
Even as a Packer fan (and Bart Starr fan), I’d lean towards Unitas, out of the three, due to being cut during training camp, and spending a year playing semi-pro ball before the Colts picked him up. At least the Packers and the Patriots hung onto Starr and Brady, despite being low-round draft picks.
Thinking about Unitas reminded me of another guy: George Blanda.
Blanda was drafted by the Bears as a quarterback and kicker in 1949, but for most of his ten-season career with the Bears, he was a backup quarterback, and primarily played as a placekicker.
After the 1958 season, he retired (at age 31), apparently because he was annoyed that the Bears didn’t use him at quarterback. When the AFL started up in 1960, Blanda signed with the Houston Oilers, and was one of the new league’s best passers in the first half of that decade…but after a subpar 1966 season, Blanda was 39 years old, and the Oilers cut him.
He then signed with the Raiders, who felt he could be valuable as a kicker and backup quarterback. In 1970, at age 43, Blanda was called on repeatedly as a relief quarterback, and led the Raiders to five straight wins; he finished second in voting for the AFC MVP award that year. He continued to play for the Raiders (mostly as a kicker) until 1975, when he was 48 years old.
Cecil Fielder was a middling Toronto Blue Jay who found his way to Japan. He then returned to the the States, got signed by the Tigers in 1990, and became the first major leaguer to top 50 homers since George Foster (more than a decade - no player reached that milestone in the 1980s).
Cameron Wake was a defensive end out of Penn State who was drafted by the Giants in 2005, but was cut that summer. He spent a few years in the CFL up in Canada before returning to the NFL with the Miami Dolphins beginning in 2009, where he would eventually have 5 seasons with double digit sacks, including seasons of 15 and 14.
Chris Carter was a drug addled wideout languishing for the Eagles before he was a perennial all-pro with elite hands for the Vikings.
Another great Vikings wideout, Anthony Carter, was originally a 12th round draft pick of the Miami Dolphins, but instead played in the USFL for 2 years.
And Warren Moon had to go to the CFL to play quarterback before the NFL would give him a fair shake.
Lou Brock came up to the majors with the Cubs in 1961, and played 2+ seasons for them, batting around .250 in that span. He was traded to the Cards in June of 1964 for an average pitcher named Ernie Broglio. He batted .348 the rest of the season and helped St. Louis win the World Series. He was elected to the HOF in 1985. Broglio went 7-20 with the Cubs over the next 3 seasons and was out of baseball by 1967, when the Cards won another World Series.
Quarterback Steve Young played his first two NFL seasons in Tampa Bay, where he threw a total of 11 touchdowns and 21 interceptions before he was brought to San Francisco to compete with Joe Montana, never supplanting him but eventually having a hall of fame career as his successor.
It’s a fun “what if” when you think about the fact that the Buccaneers of the 1980s had the rights to Steve Young and Bo Jackson at one point.
The 49ers traded Montana and kept Young. I’d call that supplanting him.
(And you left out that Young played two seasons of non-NFL pro ball with the L.A. Express. Unfortunately for this thread, his widely reported $1 mil/year, 40-year annuity contact didn’t actually happen.)
A lot of players are undervalued for silly reasons, a few of them are mentioned in the book and movie Moneyball. Some players look funny, throw funny, have what is considered an ugly girlfriend, a million other reasons that have nothing to do with the sport.
The worst to me, since I’m not a tall guy myself, is someone dismissed because of their height. I mentioned earlier Pedro Martinez. Although I’m not even a football fan, reading previous posts reminded me of Pinball Clemons who had a good long career in the CFL, I believe he was undervalued in the NFL because of his short stature.
I remember seeing a pitcher in the independent leagues, don’t recall his name, beat our team, not allowing them a run in two games one year. This guy knew how to pitch and I wondered why this guy wasn’t in the majors. A check of his bio provided the answer: he was just 5’7".
The poster child for this is Doug Flutie. The Chicago Bears wasted their draft rights on him, and he had to go to the CFL in order to have a productive career. By the time he came back to the NFL at the end of his professional life, he was too old to really lead a team. But Flutie, undoubtedly, had the talent and arm strength to be a top flight quarterback in the NFL.
Don’t tell that to Bills fans; Flutie was 7-3 as their starting QB in 1998, 10-5 in 1999, and 4-1 in 2000, despite the fact that Bills management wanted Rob Johnson (6’4") as their starter. And, that run as the Bills’ QB yielded the “Flutie Flakes” craze.
But, yes, his height was absolutely seen by NFL GMs and coaches as a detriment.
Russell Wilson was the same. Andrew Luck and Robert Griffin III were picked 1st and 2nd in the draft; that same year, Wilson was picked 75th. Griffin won Rookie of the Year.
Wilson has had the best NFL career of the three, and is the only one still playing. He’s 5’ 11".
The Jays liked Fielder, but had no place for him. The team was coming up with first basemen like they were growing dandelions, and they had to choose between Fielder and Fred McGriff (who had pushed out longtime first baseman Willie Upshaw, himself a good player.) Incredibly, they made the correct choice DESPITE Fielder blasting 51 bombs for the Tigers.
They then later traded McGriff because they also came up with John Olerud. Olerud was then traded because they’d come up with Carlos Delgado. It was a hell of a run.