Larry Woodall

Charles Lawrence Woodall

• Bats Right, Throws Right
• Height 5' 9", Weight 165 lb.
• School University of North Carolina, Wake Forest University
• Debut May 20, 1920
• Final Game May 9, 1929
• Born July 26, 1894 in Staunton, VA USA
• Died May 16, 1963 in Cambridge, MA USA

BR page

Biographical Information

After his playing career ended, Larry Woodall was a San Francisco Seals coach in 1940-1941, then a Boston Red Sox coach from 1942 to 1948. While coaching San Francisco, he taught Larry Jansen the slider and Jansen in turn helped popularized it at the major league level.

Woodall also managed the Portland Beavers in 1930, during a long playing run in the Pacific Coast League (1929-1939) after his major league career.

Woodall scouted for the Boston Red Sox from 1955 until his death in 1963.

Woodall did not really look like Hall of Famer Harry Heilmann, a teammate with the Detroit Tigers in the 1920s, but one of his photos from 1923 was mislabeled by the Associated Press as Heilmann's. It was used by Fleer to illustrate Heilmann's card in a 1960 set of baseball cards depicting old-timers and was then reproduced a number of times on other cards and on the web, each time to depict the wrong player. The error was only noticed and corrected in the 2010s.

Further Reading

• Matthew Clifford: "Harry & Larry: A Century of Confusion", The Baseball Research Journal, SABR, Volume 44, Number 2 (Fall 2015), pp. 63-68.