Birdie Tebbetts Marquee

He caught for Detroit through the 1940 pennant, spent three years in the Army Air Forces, and had his best season for Boston in 1948 at thirty-five: .280 with 125 hits, catching 128 games for a club that lost a playoff for the pennant. He was chosen for four All-Star teams.

Fourteen seasons gave him 1,000 hits exactly, 169 doubles, 469 runs batted in and a .270 average across 1,108 games behind the plate. He talked constantly to hitters from a crouch — the nickname came from a voice his aunt said sounded like a bird — and pitchers said he ran a game better than anyone in the league.

He managed Cincinnati from 1954 to 1958, Milwaukee and then Cleveland, finishing 748-705, and scouted into his eighties. Two writers' ballots and two committees have taken him up. He died in 1999, at eighty-six.