Something To Root For In ’09? How’bout Another Year For Billy Werber & Lonny Frey?
Posted by Steve Lombardi on December 31, 2008
I was just playing around with Baseball-Reference.com's Play Index Batting Season Finder...looking to see who were the oldest surviving "regulars" among big league ball players...and I set the controls for "For single seasons, From 1901 to 2008, (requiring birth_year<=1910, death_year=0, PA>=502, and birth_year>=1899), sorted by greatest OPSp." And, I got this list:
Cnt Player OPS+ BrYr DeYr PA Year Age Tm +----+-----------------+----+----+----+---+----+---+---+ 1 Lonny Frey 124 1910 585 1939 28 CIN 2 Billy Werber 119 1908 716 1934 26 BOS 3 Billy Werber 113 1908 663 1940 32 CIN 4 Lonny Frey 112 1910 588 1935 24 BRO 5 Lonny Frey 110 1910 620 1942 31 CIN 6 Billy Werber 108 1908 707 1939 31 CIN 7 Lonny Frey 108 1910 556 1934 23 BRO 8 Billy Werber 103 1908 576 1937 29 PHA 9 Lonny Frey 101 1910 663 1940 29 CIN 10 Lonny Frey 99 1910 607 1936 25 BRO 11 Lonny Frey 98 1910 667 1943 32 CIN 12 Lonny Frey 98 1910 629 1941 30 CIN 13 Billy Werber 96 1908 599 1938 30 PHA 14 Billy Werber 96 1908 549 1935 27 BOS 15 Lonny Frey 94 1910 557 1938 27 CIN 16 Billy Werber 90 1908 639 1936 28 BOS Seasons/Careers found: 16.
What's really cool about Werber and Frey is that they played in the infield, together, for the 1939 Reds.
It would be nice to see Cincy have a day for these two in 2009 - since it's the 70th anniversary of when they were teammates there. And, of course, it would be nice to see these two get another year of watching baseball in 2009.
December 31st, 2008 at 3:25 pm
If you set death_year>=2005 or so, do they start to move down the ranks? How far back before they're not the best oldest players?
December 31st, 2008 at 4:06 pm
See: http://www.bb-ref.com/pi/shareit/4Upg
January 2nd, 2009 at 2:58 pm
How strange. Do good players die earlier? They made more money and spent it on booze?
January 2nd, 2009 at 5:48 pm
I do seem to recall once seeing a study that determined that "successful" people (in all walks of life) die earlier, on average. I don't think this was just looking at people who earn law degrees and make six figures with a happy family, who you'd expect might live longer, as presumably they had a healthy childhood. It was more about the very upper echelon -- presidents and the like. Maybe whatever it takes to reach the pinnacle of whatever one chooses to do also causes one to eventually break down sooner than expected.
January 3rd, 2009 at 11:23 pm
The following numbers are not exact. I subtracted birth year from death year to get my "age".
I compared players who had at least 3000 career PA and were no longer alive. The top 200 in OPS+ lived an average of 67.52 years. The bottom 200 lived an average of 71.69 years.
The average lifespan of the 144 HOF who are no longer alive was 71.68 years.
Al Lopez who died at 97 in 2005 was the oldest Hall of Famer ever. Currently, Bobby Doerr and Bob Feller are the oldest living Hall of Famers at the age of 90. ( http://www.bb-ref.com/pi/shareit/xCzZ )
January 22nd, 2009 at 11:09 pm
[...] the story. I’m pretty sure this makes Lonny Frey the oldest living ex-Yankee. January 22, 2009 | Filed Under Yankees [...]