Hoot Evers | |||
---|---|---|---|
Center fielder / Left fielder | |||
Born: St. Louis, Missouri |
February 8, 1921|||
Died: January 25, 1991 Houston, Texas |
(aged 69)|||
|
|||
MLB debut | |||
September 16, 1941, for the Detroit Tigers | |||
Last MLB appearance | |||
September 30, 1956, for the Baltimore Orioles | |||
MLB statistics | |||
Batting average | .278 | ||
Home runs | 98 | ||
Runs batted in | 565 | ||
Teams | |||
Career highlights and awards | |||
Walter Arthur "Hoot" Evers (February 8, 1921 – January 25, 1991) was an outfielder in Major League Baseball who played twelve seasons in the major leagues with the Detroit Tigers (1941, 1946–1952, 1954), Boston Red Sox (1952–1954), New York Giants (1954), Baltimore Orioles (1954, 1956), and Cleveland Indians (1955–1956).
Born in St. Louis, Missouri in 1921, Evers gained the nickname "Hoot" as a child when he was a devoted fan of the films of Richard "Hoot" Gibson, a popular cowboy who released nearly 75 short films during the first 10 years of Evers’ life. [1]
Evers graduated from Collinsville High School in Collinsville, Illinois, then attended the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign where he was a star baseball and basketball player. He is still among the school's all-time leaders in triples. [2] Evers was signed by the Detroit Tigers as an amateur free agent in 1941 and was considered one of the brightest prospects in baseball. After playing one major league game on September 16, 1941, Evers' baseball career was put on hold while he served four years in the military during World War II.