Red Lucas was not just a very good Pitcher during his career, as he was also used often as a Pinch Hitter.  They don’t make many like that anymore!

If you were to look at some of the all-time marks for Relief Pitchers, you would find John Franco in the upper echelon of those lists.  Unlike many of those hurlers, you would also see that Franco was not a journeyman who bounced from team to team.

Franco first cracked a Major League roster in 1984 with the Cincinnati Reds, where he played for six seasons and was an All-Star for three of them.  Franco led the National League in Games Finished twice and in Saves once as a Red, and the closer established himself as an elite closer during that time. 

In 1995, Franco was traded to the New York Mets, and while he was only an All-Star there once, he was a two-time leader in Saves and was the Mets’ closer for nearly a decade.  

As of this writing, Franco is in the top five in Saves, Games Pitched, and Games Finished.

We don’t talk enough about excellent fielding First Basemen, but if you are going to start with one, chronologically speaking, that is, Fred Tenney is the perfect place to start.

Preacher Roe played a whopping 2.2 Innings for the St. Louis Cardinals in 1938, and he went back to the minors for the next five years before being traded to the Pittsburgh Pirates organization.  The Pirates called him up, and at age 28 in the World War II depleted Majors, he had his second chance.