Earl Williams Marquee

Earl Williams hit 33 home runs for Atlanta in 1971 and won National League Rookie of the Year, which was remarkable partly because he had been converted to catcher that spring and was, by most accounts including his own, not much good at it yet.

Baltimore traded four players for him after 1972 and got two useful seasons and a reputation for indifference in return; he was back with the Braves by 1975. The bat was real — 138 home runs across eight seasons — and the rest was contested.

Born in Newark in 1948, Williams finished with Oakland in 1977 and later played in Japan. He was sixty-four when he died, in January 2013.