Satchel Paige, under today’s rules, could have been voted Rookie of the Year in his league (in 1948, there was just one award for both leagues), but Paige didn’t receive any votes (somewhat ironically, Alvin Dark of the Braves won).
However, the difference between Paige’s situation and Patrick’s is that Paige was kept out of the ostensibly highest level of professional baseball. The Negro Leagues were very good, but they still weren’t the majors.
With Lester Patrick, he didn’t play in the NHL when he was younger because there was no NHL. There were other pro leagues for Lester Patrick to play in. And he was considered an excellent player.
Were all the players who played in the National League in 1876 “rookies” because that was the first league that it existed. Nearly all of the players had played in pro leagues, most notably the National Association, that existed prior to the establishment of the National League.
RUNNING COACH send me a PM with an email address and I will have a short video clip of Fred Whistle being inducted into the Minor League Football Hall of Fame in 2015 which describes his being a 51 year old rookie in 2009 emailed to you.
On 30th November 1928 Bert Oldmonger, aged 46y 237 (born 7th April 1882) became the oldest Australian to make his Test debut in the 1st Test vs England at Brisbane.
His record lasted barely two weeks before Don Blackie was chosen in the 2nd Test at Sydney on 14th December 1928 to make his debut aged 46y 253 days (born 5th April 1882). Ironmonger also played in that fixture making them arguably the oldest and least experienced pair of bowlers in Test history.
Almost a century on and Blackie & Ironmonger remain as Australia’s oldest Test cricketers on debut.
The oldest cricket player on Test debut was England’s James Southerton 49y 119d in the first ever Test played in 1877. He also has the record as being the first Test cricketer to die.
Second ranking is Pakistan’s Miran Bakhsh for Pakistan aged 47y 284d v India in 1955
Blackie & Ironmonger are 3rd and 4th respectively.
Curiously enough, all four were bowlers and renowned batting bunnies.
Wasn’t there an NBA player who retired and then went to play professional baseball? Was it Magic? I can’t find it now,but that must have been an older rookie moment. . .
Yes, this is a zombie thread, but I’m surprised there’s no mention of Jim Morris, who made his MLB debut at 36. He gets a lot of attention because there was a movie made about his short career, but he wasn’t close to being the oldest rookie.
Paige’s birthday was a bit fuzzy when he was younger, but Cleveland physically verified the original copy of his birth certificate when he was signed and he was indeed born in 1906. There’s no reason to think the certificate was not authentic, and it fits perfectly with other events in his early life.
Paige’s birthday was a bit fuzzy when he was younger, but Cleveland physically verified the original copy of his birth certificate when he was signed and he was indeed born in 1906. There’s no reason to think the certificate was not authentic, and it fits perfectly with other events in his early life.
Paige continued to sometimes allude to the notion that he didn’t know how old he was, but quite honestly I think he was just toying with people and playing up his image as the grandfather of pitching. He was an intelligent man, and it’s hard to believe he would not have remembered his own age, but easy to believe he’d have known the marketing value of a good story.
Right, and it was sad that Paige still thought he needed to play the shuffling darkie even after he had been a major star athlete for decades. You can’t read “How to Keep Young” without feeling a little embarrassed for him.
I’ll put this in for an oddball. There was a baseball player named Ollie Carnegie, born circa 1899, who played minor league baseball briefly in 1921. He left because he wanted to live in his home town of Pittsburgh, PA so he got a job with the Pennsylvania Railroad and played semi pro ball. In 1931 he lost his job because of the Great Depression and became a fulltime minor league player, primarily the Buffalo Bisons of the International League at the highest level of minor league ball. He was pretty good as a power hitting outfielder but no major league team would acquire him because of his age.
I’m surprised no one’s brought up Manute Bol. If the stories about him are true, he was actually 17 years older than he really was thereby making him around 39 when played his rookie season in the NBA.
I will be playing professional jai alai at the Fort Pierce, Florida and the Miami, Florida frontons, beginning June 1st. I was born in December 1955. I began playing jai alai as an amateur in 1980, at the age of 25. I have worked in the industry in several roles, including ball boy, announcer, on-court judge, promotions coordinator, assistant player manager, and current player manager. I will play my first game of full scale jai alai - with a ball that can break bulletproof glass, often thrown at speeds in excess of 150 mph (last season, one of our players set a new Guinness record of 190 mph) on a 180-foot long court - as a paid (very well paid) member of the roster at the age of 62!
