Lee MacPhail Marquee Hall of Fame 1998

Lee MacPhail ran two front offices and the American League, and his best-known ruling restored George Brett's pine-tar home run. Born in October 1917 and dead in November 2012, he was elected by the Veterans Committee in 1998; he and Larry MacPhail are the Hall of Fame's only father and son.

He ran the Yankees' farm system, then Baltimore, then the Yankees themselves as general manager, and became American League president in 1974. He was the quiet one of the two: he lasted in every job his father would have lost.

In July 1983 umpires disallowed a George Brett home run at Yankee Stadium because the pine tar on his bat reached past the seventeen-inch limit. Kansas City protested and MacPhail upheld the protest, reasoning that the bat was not altered to improve distance, and ordered the game resumed from that point. This archive has a page for it. He lived to ninety-five.