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Hal Chase

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Baseball Player

The Resume

    (February 13, 1883-May 18, 1947)
    Born in Los Gatos, California
    First baseman for the New York Highlanders/Yankees (1905-13), Chicago White Sox (1913-14), Buffalo Blues (1914-15), Cincinnati Reds (1916-18), and New York Giants (1919)
    National League batting champion (1916)

Why he might be annoying:

    Despite his reputation as an outstanding defensive player, his fielding percentage was actually below that of an average first baseman of the era.
    Even at his best, he was a self-centered prima donna and disruptive influence in the clubhouse.
    He was repeatedly accused by managers of ‘laying down’ and not trying to win games.
    He accepted payoffs from gamblers to throw games.
    He tried to bribe teammates on the Reds and Giants to throw games.
    He was indicted as a suspected middleman between the gamblers and the players in the 1919 Black Sox scandal. However, California refused to extradite him because of a mistake on the arrest warrant, so the charges were never proven either way.
    He was banned from the Pacific Coast League after trying to bribe a pitcher (1920).

Why he might not be annoying:

    He mastered the difficult art of botching plays while still looking good, so that Babe Ruth and Walter Johnson insisted that he was the best first baseman to play the game.
    When he jumped to the Buffalo Blues of the Federal League, White Sox owner Charles Comiskey filed an injunction to stop him from playing. He challenged the injunction and won in court, scoring one of the few pre-free agency victories against an owner by a player.
    He suffered a severed Achilles tendon in a car crash (1926).

Credit: C. Fishel


Featured in the following Annoying Collections:

Year In Review:

    In 2023, Out of 2 Votes: 50.0% Annoying
    In 2022, Out of 7 Votes: 71.43% Annoying
    In 2021, Out of 13 Votes: 100% Annoying
    In 2020, Out of 11 Votes: 90.91% Annoying