Don Lang

Donald Charles Lang

• Bats Right, Throws Right
• Height 6' 0", Weight 175 lb.
• School Long Beach Junior College
• Debut July 4, 1938
• Final Game October 1, 1948
• Born March 15, 1915 in Selma, CA USA
• Died September 1, 2010 in Ventura, CA USA

BR page

Biographical Information

Third baseman Don Lang played pro ball for a dozen seasons, including two in the majors ten years apart.

Lang began his pro career in 1936 and reached the big leagues as a 23 year old with the Cincinnati Reds in 1938, hitting .260 in 21 games. Following four more summers in the minors, he served in the Army Air Corps from 1943 to 1945 while property of the Boston Red Sox. After World War II ended, he returned to baseball in 1946 and was traded to the St. Louis Cardinals in July of that year. When Whitey Kurowski suffered a career-ending injury in 1948, he was brought back up to the majors and was the Cards' regular third baseman, batting .269 in 117 games. He was back in the minors in 1949, however, and ended his playing career after the 1950 season.

Lang died in 2010 at age 95, and was one of the ten Oldest Living MLB Players at the time.

Sources

Principal sources for Don Lang include newspaper obituaries (OB), government Veteran records (VA,CM,CW), Stars & Stripes (S&S), Sporting Life (SL), The Sporting News (TSN), The Sports Encyclopedia:Baseball 2006 by David Neft & Richard Cohen (N&C), old Who's Who in Baseballs {{{WW}}} (WW), old Baseball Registers {{{BR}}} (BR) , old Daguerreotypes by TSN {{{DAG}}} (DAG), Stars&Stripes (S&S), The Baseball Necrology by Bill Lee (BN), Pat Doyle's Professional Ballplayer DataBase (PD), The Baseball Library (BL), Baseball in World War II Europe by Gary Bedingfield (GB) {{{MORE}}} and independent research by Walter Kephart (WK) and Frank Russo (FR) and others.