Chuck Hostetler

Charles Cloyd Hostetler

• Bats Left, Throws Right
• Height 6' 0", Weight 175 lb.

• Debut April 19, 1944
• Final Game September 23, 1945
• Born September 22, 1903 in McClellandtown, PA USA
• Died February 18, 1971 in Fort Collins, CO USA

BR page

Biographical Information

Outfielder Chuck Hostetler spent thirteen seasons in professional baseball. He logged ten seasons in the minors from 1928 through 1937. After a six-year lay-off (1938-1943), he returned and played two seasons during World War II, 1944 and 1945, with the major league Detroit Tigers. Chuck made one more comeback when he returned in 1950 as the third of four managers for the Chanute Athletics of the class D Kansas-Oklahoma-Missouri League.

During Hostetler's original ten-year tour of baseball, he had five seasons when he hit .300 or better. It appears that his best season came in 1931 when he hit at a .358 clip in 119 games for the class A Topeka Senators and followed that up with a .338 average for the Wichita Aviators of the same league. He finished his ten-season run in the minors in 1937, appearing in 1,172 games with 4,780 at-bats and 1,466 base-hits, that included 30 home runs, for a minor league career .307 average.

He played semipro baseball from 1938-1943. When he arrived back on the Organized Baseball diamond, it was a big league field and he was now forty years old and it was war time. Chuck stepped right in on April 18, 1944 and his forty-year-old legs got him through 90 games and carried him to a war-time .298 batting average. Chuck appeared in 42 games for the Tigers' pennant-winning run in 1945 but his regular season batting average fell to .159 and he went 0 for 3 in the Tigers' World Series victory over the Chicago Cubs.

On January 5, 1946, Hostetler was released by the Tigers. After baseball, Chuck worked for several years for the Boeing Aircraft Company until his retirement in the middle 1960s. Charles Cloyd Hostetler died on February 18, 1971 at the age of 68 in Fort Collins, CO.

Notable Achievement

• Won a World Series with the Detroit Tigers in 1945

Related Sites

• Chuck Hostetler at the SABR Bio Project
• BR Minors page