Walker Cooper
| Walker Cooper | |||
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| Catcher | |||
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Born: January 8, 1915 Atherton, Missouri |
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Died: April 11, 1991 (aged 76) Scottsdale, Arizona |
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| MLB debut | |||
| September 25, 1940, for the St. Louis Cardinals | |||
| Last MLB appearance | |||
| September 20, 1957, for the St. Louis Cardinals | |||
| MLB statistics | |||
| Batting average | .285 | ||
| Home runs | 173 | ||
| Runs batted in | 812 | ||
| Teams | |||
| Career highlights and awards | |||
William Walker Cooper (January 8, 1915 – April 11, 1991) was an American professional baseball player. He was a catcher in Major League Baseball who played for six National League teams from 1940 to 1957. He was known as one of the top catchers in baseball during the 1940s and early 1950s.
A native of Atherton, Missouri, Cooper was a solid defensive catcher as well as a strong hitter, making the National League All-Star team every year from 1942 to 1950. After being stuck in the Cardinals' talent-rich farm system in the late 1930s, he finally broke in with the team in late 1940 at age 25 (and reportedly complained to umpire Beans Reardon about the first pitch he saw); but a broken collarbone limited his play to 68 games in 1941. On August 30 of that year, Cooper caught Lon Warneke's no-hitter. In 1942 he batted .281, finishing among the National League's top ten players in slugging, doubles and triples as St. Louis won the pennant by two games; brother Mort won the Most Valuable Player Award. Batting fifth, he hit .286 in the World Series against the defending champion New York Yankees, driving in the winning run in Game 4 and scoring the winning run on Whitey Kurowski's home run in the ninth inning of the final Game 5; he then picked Joe Gordon off second base with no outs in the bottom of the ninth inning, as the team earned its first title in eight years.
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