Freddie Lindstrom
American baseball player and coach
Died when: 75 years 314 days (910 months)Star Sign: Sagittarius
Frederick Charles Lindstrom (November 21, 1905 – October 4, 1981) was a National League baseball player with the New York Giants, Pittsburgh Pirates, Chicago Cubs and Brooklyn Dodgers from 1924 until 1936.
He was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1976.At the age of 23, Lindstrom hit .358 for the Giants and was named The Sporting News Major League All Star team's third baseman ahead of Pittsburgh's Harold "Pie" Traynor.
Two years later, he repeated the honor while scoring 127 runs and batting .379, second only to Rogers Hornsby among right-handed batters in National League history.
In 1930, Giants manager John McGraw ranked Lindstrom ninth among the top 20 players of the previous quarter century.Babe Ruth picked him as his NL all-star third baseman over Traynor for the decade leading up to the first inter-league All Star game in 1933.
Modern-day statistics guru Bill James, who rates Lindstrom No. 43 on his all-time third basemen list, placed him among the top three under-21 players at that position and called the 1927 Giants infield of Lindstrom, Hornsby, Travis Jackson and Bill Terry the decade's best.From his rookie season in 1924 through 1930 as a Giants third baseman, a span of seven years during which he batted .328 and played brilliantly in the field, Lindstrom seemed headed for a place among the game's all-time greatest players. "Those hands of his (Lindstrom's) are the talk of the baseball world.
Sensational playing places him among greatest in game," wrote sports writer Pat Robinson of the New York Daily News in the spring of 1929, after Lindstrom finished second the previous year to St.
Louis Cardinal first baseman Jim Bottomley in the National League's Most Valuable Player balloting. "The best third sacker in the National League, one of the greatest third basemen the game has ever produced," gushed William Hennigan in the New York World. "Lindstrom hit peaks of third basing never before attained during the final month of last season," added Ken Smith in the New York Evening Graphic. "An outstanding individual of the game, another Hornsby, Wagner, Cobb, or Speaker, this kid, ace fielder, hitter, thinker and runner." Joe Foley, in This Sporting Life, echoed a common theme among baseball writers during that stretch of Lindstrom's career when he named his perfect team: "Sisler on first, Lajoie at second, Wagner at short, Lindstrom at third, Ruth, Speaker and Cobb in the outfield, Kling catching and Brown, Walsh, Bender and Mathewson taking turns pitching." In 1931, injuries - including a chronic bad back and broken leg - brought about his switch to the outfield where for several years he remained an above-average but no longer All Star player.
He retired after 13 seasons in 1936.
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American baseball player and coach
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