exactly the kind of player a manager like Rolfe disliked. So any attempt to see if benching would inspire Wakefield would further enervate already underwhelming te power.
Rolfe reports in his journals disappointment that ownership couldn’t find anyone, but stoically accepted their explanation that there wasn’t a lot of 1st base power available out there to acquire, and Rolfe knew from Spring Training there wasn’t a ton in their minor league system, either. In 20-20 hindsight, by the way, one could have suggested that Vic Wertz, a 23 year old outfielder who would grow to have remarkable power and been moved at age 29 to first base, could have been shifted, but that would have been really prescient…Wertz’ 1948 power numbers were more sluggish than slugging with a slugging percentage below the league average. One can forgive them the inability to see into the future and make that move.
But one can’t overlook whabest acoustic guitar string
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t would have been an easy, almost unavoidable experiment (not a guarantee, but a guarantee to been no worse than George Vico and Paul Cpbell).
Grab a slugging first-baseman from the Negro Leagues or Cuba. There’s not a hint of a mention of a thought in Rolfe’s journals that such a move was considered…even with the clear and critical need.
The erican League had been integrated for two seasons already when the Tigers faced the off-season preceding the 1949 season. The two most noteworthy slugging 1st basemen in the Negro Leagues were Luke Easter & Hall of Fe legend Buck Leonard. Easter might have been available, but the Cleveland Indians signed him over that off-season, so perhaps Easter’s 1949 was already spoken for before the Tigers could have gotten into the mix.. While Easter was probably a sl-dunk choice (prime of his career and would go on to average 301 homers/154 ges in the majors), Leonard, at 42 years old, was not remotely a sl dunk, though he would play two more seasons for the Homestead Grays, in Cuba and after that in Mexico; his skills were promising enough even three years later that Bill Veeck tried to enlist Leonard, known as the “Black Lou Gehrig”, for the Indians’ 1952 cpaign.