Player #139B: Charles S. "Buddy" Myer. Second baseman with the Washington Senators in 1925-1927 and 1929-1941. 2,131 hits and 38 home runs in 17 MLB seasons. He had a career OBP of .389. 2-time All-Star. 1935 AL Batting champion. 1928 AL Stolen Base leader. His best season was 1935 for Washington as he posted a .440 OBP with 115 runs scored and 100 RBI's in 719 plate appearances. He was involved in one of baseball's most violent brawls when he was spiked and possibly racially derided by the Yankees' Ben Chapman.
We will follow Myer's SABR biography as we track his career -- Part 2: . . . Myer’s next stop (in 1925, after rejections by Cleveland and Cincinnati) was the New Orleans Pelicans’ training camp. When the Pelicans offered him a contract, his older brother, Jesse, stepped in to represent him and asked for the same (as the one rejected by Cleveland) $1,000 bonus. New Orleans manager Larry Gilbert said he had never heard of a young player demanding a bonus (probably not true) and had never seen a young player bring along an agent (probably true). The team gave him what he wanted.
The Pelicans had an instant star, a left-handed hitting shortstop with quick feet and a quick bat. A first year professional in the fast Class A Southern Association got the attention of major league scouts. Washington scout Joe Engel claimed to have stolen Myer from under the nose of a rival from the Chicago Cubs. Washington paid $17,500 for him in June, according to contemporary accounts, and agreed to let him stay with New Orleans for the rest of the season. Soon other big league clubs were offering more money. The Pelicans tried to buy him back from the Senators, but owner Clark Griffith wasn’t selling.
In August Myer was batting .336 when a spike wound on his leg became infected. He contracted blood poisoning, had surgery, and went home to recover. Griffith, hearing that his expensive prospect was seriously ill, sent his own man to fetch Myer to Washington. The young player was carried off the train on a stretcher.
His sudden departure raised a stink in New Orleans. Some fans suspected that Myer and Griffith had concocted a fake illness so the shortstop could join the Senators right away. Griffith denied the charge in a letter to a Times-Picayune columnist, adding that Myer “was deeply grieved to think anyone in New Orleans would accuse him of disloyalty, as he gave everything he had when he was playing for them.” After several weeks of treatment, he got into four games at the end of the season.
The Senators won their second straight American League pennant in 1925. In Game 2 of the World Series against Pittsburgh, Washington third baseman Ossie Bluege was beaned. Myer, seven months removed from a college campus, went in as a pinch runner and was thrown out stealing. He delivered a single in his only at-bat. He started the next two games at third before Bluege was able to return.
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