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Wally Berger and 1930’s Braves Photo Gallery
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First Edition of: “Baseball’s Forgotten Stars!”
With today’s post, I’m starting a new feature that will focus on baseball’s forgotten stars, mainly form the 1930’s and 1940’s. Each post will “turn the spotlight” for a brief moment on a long-forgotten player who was a recognized star in his day. With each post in this series, I’ll be featuring one of the many fine ball players from decades gone by who were overshadowed by the likes of Ruth, Gehrig, DiMaggio, Feller, Hubbell, and Greenberg.
A few years ago, I worked on player identifications for the Boston Public Library Leslie Jones Baseball Collection. In this SABR project, I helped identify ball players in almost 3000 old baseball photos from the 1930’s and 40’s. While working on the project, I soon realized there were many fine ball players from this era whose names and accomplishments have been lost to the passage of time. With this new series, I hope to pull some of them out from behind the veil of obscurity. If you have a forgotten player you’d like to see highlighted, please mention his name in the comments section.
Wally Berger Autographed 8×10 Photo Boston Braves PSA/DNA AB51578
To start off, I’m going to feature an outstanding player many of you may not be familiar with. What if I told you this player’s stats compare favorably to at least two Hall-of Famers: Hack Wilson and Chick Hafey. For a better comparison, his 11-year stats are similar to modern players Matt Kemp, Mike Sweeney, Pedro Guerrero, and Hunter Pence. That’s some pretty good company. And yet he’s been lost to history and is a virtual unknown.
His name is Wally Berger, a long-overlooked star who played for the Braves (1930-’37), Giants (1937-’38), Reds (1938-’40), and Phillies (1940). Wally Berger was born in Chicago but was raised in San Francisco, where he was a teammate of Joe Cronin at Mission High School. Over his career, the 6’2” slugger hit .300 with 298 home runs, 898 RBI’s, .359 on-base percentage, and .522 slugging average. His 138 OPS+ places him well above average for major leaguers of his era (100 being the major league average). Berger had one of the greatest rookie years ever, hitting 38 home runs which set a major league record for that stood for 56 years and is still the National League record. Berger’s average that year was .310, and his 119 RBI’s were also a National League rookie record until 2001. He is one of three players to hit 20 or more home runs in his rookie year before July; and he still holds the record for being the fastest player to hit 20 home runs (51 games).
One of the league’s top sluggers of the early 1930s, Wally Berger was the National League’s starting centerfielder in the first All-Star game (1933), and was selected for the first four All-Star games (1933-37). His best year was 1935, when he hit .295 and led the league in home runs (34), RBI’s (130), and outfield putouts (458). He appeared in the 1937 World Series with the Giants, and 1940 World Series with the Reds.
In 1933 he finished third in the Most Valuable Player voting after hitting 27 home runs (half the Braves’ total), which was second behind Chuck Klein’s 28. That same year, Babe Ruth named Wally Berger as his centerfielder on his annual selection of the game’s best players. Eddie Mathews broke Berger’s Braves’ franchise record of 38 home runs in 1953, and surpassed his franchise record of 199 home runs in 1957.
Following his retirement as a player, he was a scout for the Yankees and managed in their minor league system. Wally Berger passed away in 1988 at age 83.
-Gary Livacari
BABE RUTH Autographed Cut Signature Facsimile Reprint Framed 8×10 Photo YANKEES
Photo Credits: Most from Leslie Jones Boston Public Library Baseball Collection; Others from Google Search
Information: Excerpts edited from the Wally Berger Wikipedia page.
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