The Pecan Park Eagle

"When you think of lefties, think of me. I'm 'The Babe,' who else couid I be?"

We are now five weeks away from the date that pitchers and catchers report for spring training. My apologies to those who wish and sometimes ask that I forget baseball for a while during the winter months, I cannot seem to avoid the early January effect upon my brain that normally leads me into thoughts of various silly name teams – or my favorite all star lineups based upon some common uniting characteristics.

With no place for steroid suspects, here are my starting roster and lineup for my Hall of Fame All Star Left-handed Hitting Club. I might have given consideration to Sandy Koufax or Rube Waddell here, but both of those lefty throwers disqualified themselves by batting from the right side of the plate.

I also used no switch hitters. Other than Ruth and Cobb, you could possibly argue for a number of other guys in the other spots, but that’s what makes this kind of exercise so much fun. The room for disagreement is wide and open.

My hope is that some of you will submit your own starting lineups, with batting orders too. Feel free to go outside the Hall of Fame group list to pick your own top nine lefty hitters by position too.

Here are my picks:

Starters By Position

Pitcher: Lefty Grove (300-141, 3.06 ERA, 2,266 K’s)

Catcher: Yogi Berra (.285, 358 HR, 1,430 RBI)

1st Base: Lou Gehrig (.340, 493 HR, 1,995 RBI)

2nd Base: Charlie Gehringer (.320, 184 HR, 1,427 RBI)

3rd Base: Frank “Home Run” Baker (.307, 96 HR, 107 RBI)

Shortstop: Joe Sewell (.312, 49 HR, 1,055 RBI)

Left Field: Ted Williams (.344, 521 HR, 1,839 RBI)

Center Field: Ty Cobb (.367, 117 HR, 727 RBI)

Right Field: Babe Ruth (.342, 714 HR, 1,983 RBI)

Game Day Lineup

Ty Cobb, cf

Charlie Gehringer, 2b

Babe Ruth, rf

Ted Williams. lf

Lou Gehrig, 1b

Yogi Berra, c

Frank Baker, 3b

Joe Sewell, ss

Lefty Grove, p

Have a nice day!