Fancy Boys Club founder Brandon Andeasen is slowly losing his mind as the ice cold of the Midwest stagnates. With the Bears season over, he is leaning into one of his favorite obsessions: random sports facts. Until morale improves, he will be posting stories about random sporting events, sports stadium architecture, and the stars that play on the field. Today, he looks at the most random Chicago Cubs to make the annual MLB All Star Game.
It started this morning. I woke up and saw that Chicago Bears cornerback Nashone Wright had made the Pro Bowl (this was somehow only the second most ridiculous Pro Bowl addition on this day, thanks to Shedeur Sanders) and I thought to myself “well, that has to be one of the most random all star selections in Bears history…” and then I had a second thought, “wait, that’s not the most ridiculous honor in Chicago history, though. There was that one guy. He played first base in the early 2010’s. The hell was his name? Micah Hoffpauir! Wait. No. That can’t be right. Who the hell am I thinking of…”
Instead of letting that thought go like a normal person would, I proceeded to start google spamming references that would help me figure it out. I happened upon Baseball Reference, and found my answer: Bryan LaHair!
How random was LaHair’s All Star season? It was his final season in Major League Baseball! And no, he didn’t retire. He was only 29 years old. He would spend the 2013 season playing in Japan for the Fukuoka Softbank Hawks. He spent a couple seasons trying to catch on with teams through the minors. When that didn’t work, he played a little indedpendent ball and then went into coaching. As of this writing, he is currently a coach for the Louisville Bats, the Cincinnati Reds Triple A affiliate.
His season is even weirder though, because he wasn’t even the primary first baseman by the end of the 2012 season. Hell, he wasn’t even their primary first baseman anymore when the All Star game came around in early July. In late June, a Cubs prospect that came over to the team in a trade that sent Andrew Cashner to the Padres was ready to become the day to day first basemen. Lahair ended up getting Wally Pipp’d by future Cubs legend and World Series champion Anthony Rizzo. Lahair would primarily play left field for the rest of the season, hitting one home run and getting 8 RBI’s during the second half of the season.
As a baseline, he is the most random Cubs All Star of all time. I don’t think that’s getting touched. That said, let’s see who can get close. I immediately eliminated any Cubs from the past decade, because Wade Davis was the only one remotely close, but even then, we are looking for randomness. I then filtered out anyone that would be synonymous as a Cub (Sosa, Dawson, Banks, etc). From there, I started scouring players for what happened in their careers before and after the All Star game, and where and if they found other success. Here is what i’ve got!
Ralph Kiner, Outfielder, 1953
Yes, I’m aware Ralph Kiner is in the Hall of Fame, one person reading this who actually knows who he is. The reason he is here is because he is only ever remembered as a Pittsburgh Pirate. In fact, he didn’t become a Cub until early June of 1953. He was part of a ten player trade, of which he would be the only player of consequence. He was traded after having a confrontation with Pirates team president Branch Rickey (yes, that Branch Rickey) in which Rickey famously said “We came in last place with you. We can come in last place without you.”
Kiner continued to be a very good player after the trade for the Cubs. He went on to hit 28 home runs that season for Chicago, and 22 more in 1954 with the team. Unfortunately, the end was coming soon for Kiner. After the 54 season, he would move on to the Cleveland Indians, where he would hit 18 home runs, but his career would be over after that season due to a neck injury. By the time he was 32, his career was over.
While you can look at Kiner’s stats and wonder, through a modern lense, how he ended up in the Hall of Fame, he put up a 40 career WAR in spite of really only playing 10 MLB seasons. He also lost the first years of his professional career to fighting in World War 2. Kiner wasn’t selected for military service, either. He enlisted after Pearl Harbor. He went to Navy flight school, and spent the final couple years of the war flying the Pacific as a submarine hunter.
By literally any metric, be it professionally or militarily, Ralph Kiner was an All Time Great American. He is officially the captain of the Random Cubs All Stars.
Steve Trachsel, Pitcher, 1996
The Cubs drafted Trachsel in the 8th round of the 1991 MLB draft. By late 1993, he had shot through the Cubs minor league system, and got his first major league action. He proved to be a reliable starter who could eat innings and miss bats. Going into 1996, an otherwise listless Cubs team was buoyed by his work in the starting rotation. Eight players would register starts for the team that season, with only two finishing with the positive W.A.R. for the year, Trachsel and Jaime Navarro, in his final year of competent pitching, before four terrible seasons that would spell the end of his career.
In the All Star game, Trachsel pitched in the 7th inning, getting Sandy Alomar, Cal Ripken, and Alex Rodriguez out on eight pitches. This should have been the first in many innings pitched by Steve in the midseason classic. Alas, despite playing 12 more seasons in the majors, he would never get back.
The wheels fell off for Trachsel being anything other than a journeyman back-of-the-rotation starter in professional baseball. In 1997, he lead the NL in home runs allowed. In 1998, he gave up Mark McGwire’s 62nd home run. He bottomed out for the Cubs in 1999, losing 18 games and racking up a 5.56 ERA. The Cubs would let him leave in free agency. He split between Tampa and Toronto in 2000, with little to no success. He would latch on for six seasons as a back end starter with the Mets. He would even win 15 games in 2006, a decade off his prior All Star season.
He would never make it back though, and ended his career after two disastrously rough seasons, back for a second stint with the Cubs in 2007, and finally as an Oriole in 2008. Trachsel was able to carve out a long career in baseball, and accomplished more than 99.3 percent of players that ever even make the big leagues. Ultimately, though, the All Star season of 1996 stands out as an incredibly random season in a long career.
Jerry Morales, Outfielder, 1977
What if I told you there was a player who managed to stay in the MLB for 15 seasons, and when it was all said and done, still finished with a career WAR of negative 2? Jerry Morales has one of the most boggling stat lines I’ve ever seen. Was he the greatest defensive outfielder ever? Was he a great clubhouse guy? Was his great grandfather Kennesaw Mountain Landis?
This isn’t even a situation of every team needing someone included on the roster. Four Cubs made the All Star team that year! Were there just no good outfielders in the National League that season? That doesn’t seem right. The guys with the 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 6th and 8th highest WAR in the NL were outfielders. The top three home run hitters in the NL were outfielders. Maybe Jerry Morales just had such an insane anomaly season in 1977 that he forced his way in. His stats? 11 HR/69(nice) RBI’s/290 batting average. -0.7 WAR. When he was traded to the Cubs in 1973, GM John Holland said Morales was brought in for his speed. That must be it. He must have had a ton of stolen bases, and voters were blown away by it. He stole **checks stat line** zero bases that season…that can’t be right.
His Wikipedia page said he hurt his back. He must have just missed the entire second half of the season, and his numbers were frozen and he couldn’t add to them. He played in **checks stat line** 136 games that season… Okay, maybe he was super durable for the entirety of his career outside of 1977. Over the eight seasons he played where he was an everyday starter, he averaged **does math** 135 starts per season.
That’s it. I’m lost. Nothing i’ve found on the internet really justifies any of this. I’m just throwing my hands in the air and moving on.
Hank Leiber, Outfielder, 1940 & 1941
Hank Leiber is remarkable because he had two great seasons. In 1935 for the New York Giants, he finished 11th in MVP voting with a .331 avg/22 hr/107 rbi stat line, and a really good 4.7 WAR. In 1939 for the Cubs, his splits were .310 avg/24 hr/88 rbi and a 3.9 WAR.
He didn’t go to the All Star game in EITHER of those seasons. He went to the All Star game more times (3) than he had good seasons (2). Let’s focus on the two seasons he went to the All Star Game for the Cubs.
Stat line courtesy of Baseball Reference.
In 1940 he was fine. 17 Home Runs. 86 RBI’s. .853 OPS. These are all solid numbers that will keep you in the Major Leagues, even today, for over a decade. Then 1941 happened. There has to be a reason for this! Oh, there is? Yes, there is. Leiber was notorious for crowding the plate, and took a pitch to what I can only assume is the orbital bone or temple on June 23rd of that season, ending his season. Here is the problem, though. He was complete and utter ass before he got hit. He was barely batting over the Mendoza Line. His home run totals were on pace, but his on base percentage was down 80 points from the prior season. His OPS was down a staggering 186 points. He was playing at a negative WAR level at the time of the beaning.
His career would end a year later, back with the New York Giants. For whatever reason, in spite of having never pitched in the majors before, Leiber pitched a complete game in his final game on September 25th, 1942. So there’s that.
Before we get to my favorite All Time Obscure Cub All Star, here are some honorable mentions:
Vance Law, 1988: Made his first All Star Game in his 9th season. He was out of MLB after his 11th.
Peanuts Lowrey, 1946: What a name! He had four home runs, 54 RBI’s, and batted .257 for the season. No clue, at all, how he made it.
Ripper Collins, 1937: What an even better name! Led MLB in Slugging and OPS in 1934 with the Cardinals. In 1937, his numbers were very Marlon Byrdesque. Speaking of…
Marlon Byrd, 2010: Made the team because at least one player has to be represented from each team. His season was…..fine.
Eddie Waitkus, First Baseman, 1948
Eddie Waitkus has one of the most absolutely batshit Wikipedia pages. Baseball is only a tangential part of it. I’m just going to gloss over the fact that he was rookie in 1941, then didn’t play in the majors again until 1946.
Waitkus was functionally a war hero. He wasn’t one of the MLB stars that would be sent into the military, then paraded around for exhibition baseball games and used to help sell war bonds and support for WWII. No, he actually fought in the Pacific Theater! He received four bronze stars for his efforts on the battle fields!
He returned to the Cubs in 1946. He would make the All Star team in 1948, before being traded after the season to the Phillies. Now hang on, this somehow gets more insane.
After being traded, Eddie would return to Chicago to play against the Cubs in June of 1949. At the team hotel, he had a note telling him that he needed to go to a hotel room for an urgent meeting. Waiting for him in that room was Ruth Steinhagen and a Remington 22 caliber rifle. She put a bullet into his chest, puncturing his lung and nearly hitting his heart. She had an obsession with Waitkus that had spilled overboard after he had been traded. He nearly died and she was put into an insane asylum. When police arrived to the hotel room, she was holding his head in her lap, caressing his face.
After missing the rest of the season, he would return to baseball in 1950 and help lead the Phillies to a National League championship and a trip the World Series. He would retire after the 1955 season, and die of esophegal cancer in 1972 at the age of 53.
If a lot of elements you just read sound like a certain baseball movie that was made in the 1980’s, it should be noted that Eddie Waitkus also happened to be nicknamed “The Natural.”
Yep, the book that the movie was based off of hijacked several important parts of Waitkus’ life and then it was later turned into a moving, starring Robert Redford.
Yea, Eddie Waitkus is a random Cub All Star, but he is also a random LIFE All Star. In 53 years, he lived three different lives. I’m going to end this writeup and this entire post with the final lines from Waitkus’ Wikipedia page, which makes absolutely no sense, which means it makes completely perfect sense in the context of Waitkus’ life: An episode from the 10th and last season of Beverly Hills, 90210 was called “Eddie Waitkus” and used the story of Waitkus’ history, near death and inspiration for THE NATURAL in relation to a character who was thought to be dead but turned out to be living in Federal witness protection under a new identity.
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