Baseball Hall of Fame: Third Base
Best—Toby Harrah, 45.8 fWAR, 35th among third basemen
Toby Harrah has a couple of interesting items on his resume. He once played an entire doubleheader at shortstop without recording a single chance. In those two games, his double-play partner at second base, Lenny Randle, had 11 assists. Harrah may not have done much in the field, but he had a great day at the dish. In the two games, he was 6- 8 with two runs, eight RBI, and two walks.
He was also the last active major league to have played for the Washington Senators franchise (the one that began in 1961 and became the Texas Rangers). In his career, Harrah was consistently good at getting on base and providing impressive pop for a guy who played more than 800 games at both shortstop and third base (and 244 games at second base). He made the All-Star team four times and received MVP votes in 1975. He was named to the Texas Rangers Hall of Fame in 2009.
The video above shows one bright moment in Harrah’s career, which was a diving catch in the stands he made to preserve a perfect game pitched by Len Barker. If you were asked to list all the pitchers who threw a perfect game, Barker would be one of the more difficult ones to remember, right there with Dallas Braden.
Others—Tim Wallach (50th), Richie Hebner (61st), Don Money (78th), Terry Pendleton (95th), Ray Knight (192nd)
Wallach had the misfortune of being a good NL third baseman whose career overlapped with possibly the greatest third baseman of them all, Mike Schmidt. In 1985, Wallach broke the stranglehold that Schmidt had on the Gold Glove Award, which he’d won nine straight years. Wallach won the award in 1985 and 1987, the only two times in twelve seasons that Schmidt didn’t win it.
Richie Hebner was famously known as “Digger” which was short for “Gravedigger” which was the offseason job he had for much of his major league career. Since then, everyone writing about him is contractually obligated to mention it, so there it is. Hebner was at his best with the Pittsburgh Pirates from 1969 to 1974. His best year was 1972 when he hit .300/.378/.508 and was worth 5.6 WAR.