Del Crandall Marquee

He caught 1,479 games in sixteen seasons and batted .254 with 1,276 hits and 179 home runs, which was a good catcher's line in an era that did not ask catchers for much else. He was picked for eight All-Star teams and won four Gold Gloves, in 1958, 1959, 1960 and 1962; the award did not exist before 1957, by which time he was twenty-seven.

He debuted for the Boston Braves at nineteen in 1949 and played 1950, and then the record skips to 1953. The missing two years were the Army, and the club moved to Milwaukee while he was gone. He came back to catch Warren Spahn, Bob Buhl and Lew Burdette through the pennants of 1957 and 1958, and the World Series they won in 1957.

He finished with a season each in San Francisco, Pittsburgh and Cleveland, then managed six seasons of his own, four with Milwaukee's new club and two in Seattle. The writers gave him four ballots between 1976 and 1979 and the Veterans Committee three more. He lived to ninety-one.