MLB: Former Players Who Went On to Careers in Politics
The Republican National Convention is underway in Cleveland, and while sports and politics don’t always make the best bedfellows, MLB has a history of former players going on to careers in elected office.
When ESPN fired Curt Schilling less than a month into the 2016 Major League Baseball season, a message was being sent: keep politics out of sports. We can argue whether the move was justified or not and whether Schilling’s views are correct or not, but one things that seemingly can’t be argued is that the sports world eyes politics very warily.
As a result, most professional athletes choose to keep their political leanings to themselves, and those that do express their views tend to land in hot water more often than not. Thus it’s perhaps not surprising that very few professional athletes embark on political careers when their playing days are over.
But there are those rare few in the baseball world who have jumped from MLB to elected office. The most notable among them is Jim Bunning, a right-handed hurler who spent 17 seasons in the big leagues, most notably with the Detroit Tigers and Philadelphia Phillies, who was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 1996 by the veteran’s committee. Bunning posted a record of 224-184, with a 3.27 ERA, an ERA+ of 115, FIP of 3.22, 151 complete games and 2,855 strikeouts, which was good for a bWAR of 60.3 in his career.
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Bunning retired from baseball after the 1971 season and began his political career in 1977 serving on the city council in Fort Thomas, Kentucky, before being elected to the Kentucky State Senate. In 1986 he was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives and served five terms before winning a seat in the U.S. Senate and serving two terms there.
But Bunning isn’t the only former MLB player to hold an elected office. Walter Johnson, a Hall of Famer and possibly the greatest pitcher who ever lived, was elected to the Board of Commissioners of Montgomery County, Maryland in 1938 and ran unsuccessfully for Maryland’s 6th U.S. Congressional District in 1940 after his career with the Washington Senators ended.
Wilmer Mizell, a pitcher who spent parts of nine seasons in MLB and went by the nickname “Vinegar Bend,” was a member of the U.S. House of Representatives from North Carolina’s 5th Congressional District for a three-term stint from 1969 to 1975. Mizell, who missed two seasons in his prime due to service during the Korean War, had a career ERA of 3.85 and an ERA+ of 104 for the St. Louis Cardinals, Pittsburgh Pirates and New York Mets from 1952 to 1962.
And even today, former players occasionally find their way into the political arena. Recently, Raul Mondesi, the former outfielder for the Los Angeles Dodgers among others and father of Kansas City Royals prospect Raul Mondesi, Jr., was elected mayor of the city of San Cristobal in the Dominican Republic in 2007 and still holds that post today.
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Magglio Ordonez also became a mayor in Venezuela when his days with the Chicago White Sox and the Tigers were over, and Frank White, the longtime second baseman of the Royals, was elected as the First District At-Large representative in the Jackson County, Missouri legislature in 2014.