Who's the worst player ever, in a given sport?

Cafe Society
21

Got it right the first time. Messed up some details in the story (he hit a triple, was safe at third, but was called out for missing second base, and the coach, Cookie Lavagetto, told Casey that he missed first too) but that was essentially okay.

It’s a pretty foolish question, as has been noted, since you have to be pretty good to make the majors. If you’re really bad, you don’t stick around long enough for anyone to know who you are, and if you stick around a while, you tend to accomplish positive things (like Throneberry’s 16 HRs in 1962) that lesser players don’t achieve.

The questions needs some parameters like “worst player who batted 1000 times” or worst player to play 100 games in one season, or something, to make much sense.

22

If there is a winner, it’s Eddie. He was competing on a level playing field with the best ski jumpers in the world, and was so bad we all were actually nervous about his safety.

Second place is probably the Jamaican Bobsled team, also from 1988, they apparently improved remarkably in the years since then, but boy were they lousy that year!

23

Belak’s a good choice, but I’d lean towards Donald Brashear of the Philadelphia Flyers. His only saving grace is that he can fight. I swear, every shift he’s on the ice he takes a penalty. He’s incredibly slow and it’s kind to say that he has hands of stone.

24

He wasn’t that bad, his play was about average. The hype screwed him - no way he could live down playing average, but it hardly qualifies him as the worst player ever. One of the most dissapointing players ever, sure.

25

**Baseball (single player): ** Charles “Victory” Faust. Faust approached John McGraw of the NY Giants saying that a fortune teller told him that he would win the pennant for the team. McGraw took him on as a mascot, and, eventually, once the pennant was clinched, put him into a couple of games. It appears that other teams were in on the joke – they let him steal second, third, and home once he reached first after being hit by the ball, and they probably went easy on him when he was pitching.

He ended up in a mental institution.

Baseball (entire team):
On May 18, 1912, Ty Cobb began serving a suspension for attacking a fan in the stands. The Detroit Tigers, his team, went on strike in support of Cobb.* Detroit had to field a team in order to avoid a forfeit and a $1000 fine, so they rounded up a group of players from the stands. The team consisted of: Billy Maharg (third base), Bill Leinhauser (outfielder), Dan McGarvey (outfielder), Jim McGarr (second base), Deacon McGuire (catcher), Pat Meaney (shortstop), Joe Sugden (first base), Allen Travers (pitcher), and Hap Ward (outfielder). McGuire was the only one with ML experience, but he was 48 and was a coach on the Tigers. Maharg was the only one to appear in another ML game – once with the Athletics a couple of years later.

The Athletics took it easy on their opponents, but still won the game 24-2.

Here’s the line score (I can’t find a box score).

DET A 0 0 0 0 2 0 0 0 0 - 2 4
PHI A 3 0 3 0 8 4 4 2 x - 24 25

Here’s a contemporaneous story. It was clearly the worst team ever fielded.

*The team thought Cobb was justified. The epithet that brought it one was, evidently, calling Cobb “half-nigger,” which caused Cobb to blow up because of what it implied about his mother.

26

To expand on my earlier post now that I’m home: Akebono (aka Chad Rowan) retired from sumo a few years back as a Yokozuna (grand champion). A few years later, he was lured out to try his hand at K-1 fighting. Other posters have rightly pointed out that an athlete with no redeeming skills would never make it to the pros in the first place. Akebono was the next best thing: someone with zero direct experience in the sport he’s entered, but enough name recognition that someone thinks he’s worth a try.

His debut match was New Year’s Eve 2003 when he fought former NFL’er Bob Sapp. It was never even close. Akebono was knocked out before the end of the first round, and barely even put up a fight.

Since then, he’s fought and lost match after match after match. To my knowledge, he doesn’t have a single win (I may well be wrong about this, but his record’s bad enough that his celebrity status is the only thing keeping him on the fight cards. A nobody would have long since disappeared).

New Year’s Eve 2005 was a new low. His opponent was Bobby Ologon, a Nigerian living in Japan whose primary occupation is TV comedian. Bobby had been recruited into a kickboxing school about a year back as part of a TV stunt (kind of like Nasubi), and he turned out to actually be pretty good at it. Natural talent aside, however, Bobby doesn’t fight for a living, and doesn’t have the 15+ years of professional fighting experience that Akebono has. Perhaps even more importantly, Bobby is 6’1" and 190lbs, while Akebono is 6’8" and well over 400lbs.

Akebono can’t possibly lose. He’s fighting a TV celebrity with almost no pro experince, and all he has to do is fall on his opponent to smother him into submission (the rules for the match allowed groundfighting). That’s exactly what he tried to do several times, but Bobby kept smacking him and running away. Jab and run, jab and run, and by the end of the first round Akebono was completely out of energy, allowing Bobby to start pounding him in earnest.

Bobby Ologon won by a unanimous decision, and Akebono got thoroughly humiliated. Again.

27

And he used to not even be able to do that - he’d just make a couple of half-hearted jabs and then plead with the ref to stop the fight as soon as he got punched.

He didn’t have that long of a career so I don’t know if it’s enough to count, but for infamous nicknames, it’s tough to top Andre “Red Light” Racicot, goalie for the Montreal Canadiens – the red light being what goes on when a goal is scored.

28

I would like to nominate T.J. Rubley for American Football.

Back on November 5,1995 the Green Bay Packers were playing the Minnesota Vikings in MN. Favre and Ty Detmer, his backup, were both injured.

So the 3rd stringer, T.J. Rubley, is called into the game. The score is tied 24-24. There is less than a minute to go, the Packers have the ball on the Minnesota 38 yard line and it is 3rd down with about a foot to go.

Coach Holmgren calls a QB sneak. Very simple, just fall forward, get the first down and we’ll try a couple of runs to get a little closer and then we’ll kick the game winning field goal.

But T.J. had grander ambitions. as he steps to the line he calls an audible for a pass into the middle of the field. His own offensive linemen are yelling “Don’t do this!!!”, but he takes the snap, rolls right and throws a perfect interception. A few plays later, Vikings kicker Fuad Reveiz kicks the game winner.

29

I like Elvis “Toast” Patterson, the defensive back who picked up that nickname because he was always getting “burned.”

30

No one remembers Eric the Eel?

31

I challenge anyone to find a worse major league hitter than Bill Bergen. His career batting average was .170. His slugging percentage was .201. His on base percentage was .194.

His career OPS+ was 20. Mario Mendoza was twice the hitter Bill Bergen was.

And he played for eleven seasons. I can’t imagine any reasonable level of fielding skill that would make up for his sheer craptitude at the plate.

32

Sir, I give you Hugh “Losing Pitcher” Mulcahy.

Losing Pitcher Mulcahy

33

There’s one in The Fireside Book of Baseball. It includes this immortal line:

L’n’h’s’r, cf

Poor guy.

34

Re: Bob Uecker

The book “October 1964”, about the Yankees and Cardinals’ seasons and WS clash, makes the case that U was more valuable than the stats show, because he was great for morale and chemistry. He was commissioner of the pitcher batting practice league (where Bob Gibson was said to do quite well), invented a game of Hearts using mug shots from the Philidelphia PD, and dented a tuba trying to catch pop flies with it before a game of the WS, (IIRC). I love that he’s been able to parley this stuff into an actual entertainment career. Has anyone seen his Greatest Sports Legends episode, in which he insists that he was as good (or is it better) than Babe Ruth? He says it with a completely straight face. What an actor.

35

I remember back a few years when Letterman had Scott Hastings, a Detroit Pistons basketball player, on the show.

He contributed the lowest points-per-game of any player in the league. I have a Basketball card of him from the 1990 championsihp year. He’s playing, but his short are crumpled up his legs because he sat for so much of his time.

36

ping

And another minor worry vanishes. For thirty years since first reading MAS*H, I wondered at the single reference to Dago Red as “Losing Preacher Mulcahy”. Thanks! :slight_smile:

Fuck, yes. Talk about being afraid for Eddie the Eagle’s safety, this was an Olympic swimmer who looked in grave danger of drowning. :eek:

At the last Olympics IIRC there was a women’s hundred-metre runner from Afghanistan or somewhere of the sort, who not only wouldn’t have finished in the top three if she’d had a twenty-yard start but who would have struggled to beat my teenage self (and I was no sprinter, let me tell you). Something like a sixteen-second time I think.

37

Marc Sullivan

His father was the Bosox’ GM, and: 1. He still got traded; 2. His career was shorter than Uecker’s!

Basketball: Hard to top Yinka Dare, but (dis)honorable mention should go to Michael Olowakandi . My friend’s husband played with Olowakandi at University of the Pacific; to this day neither he nor anyone else can figure out how Michael managed to get drafted by the NBA. Apparently he was as much of a stiff then as he is in the pros.

Now for my particular area of interest: professional bowling. Here’s a sport where you don’t have teammates to hide behind; consequently, it takes real talent to make the TV finals. Still, the occasional marginal player manages to break through.

In the 1970’s, there was a bowler named Jeff Mattingly . Nicknamed “The White Whale” (what else would you call a 250-lb albino?), Jeff managed to make it to several TV finals despite the fact that, although possessed with a decent strike shot, his spare-conversion percentage rivaled Shaquille O’Neal’s free-throw percentage.

38

The “original” Mario Mendoza was surely Bill Bergen, a backup catcher who played for 11 seasons from 1901 to 1911, mostly for the Brooklyn Dodgers. His lifetime batting average was .170. Only once did he top .200 for a season.

39

What about Herb Washington, Don Hopkins, and Matt Alexander of Charlie Finley’s designated runner program?

40

I don’t think Washington and Hopkins should count because they were hired to be only one thing: pinch runners. At that job, they were at least adequate. Matt Alexander was not a “designated runner” but instead a typical utility player who did manage to last nine seasons in the majors. His .214 batting average is only .001 less than Mario Mendoza’s .215.

As for the twice mentioned Bill Bergen, you have to consider that he played during the so-called “Dead Ball Era” when batting averages were lower and almost nobody hit for power. Bergen was also a catcher which, like shortstop and second base, is a position where a weak hitting player can still have a fairly lengthy career if he provides solid defense. (The best example of this is Jim Hegan.) I’m guessing despite whatever offensive deficiencies he had, Bergen must have been a pretty good behind the plate to last 11 seasons.