PIE TRAYNOR

'Harold Joseph "Pie" Traynor' (November 11, 1898 - March 16, 1972) was a professional baseball third baseman who played his entire career with the Pittsburgh Pirates (1920-37).
Traynor was born in Framingham, Massachusetts. He received his nickname for a fondness for eating pie. He is generally considered to have been the greatest National League third baseman before the 1950s. Although he played in the era before the Gold Glove award was created, he was regarded by most baseball observers as the best-fielding third baseman ever until Brooks Robinson came along. He had a lifetime batting average of .320, and was struck out only 278 times in 7,559 career at bats. Playing his home games at Pittsburgh's spacious Forbes Field kept his home run total low, reaching a high of 12 in 1923. However, those long distances also aided him in hitting doubles and triples, and he had over 100 runs batted in (RBI) in a season seven times. He had 208 hits in 1923, and was, incredibly, the last Pirate infielder with 200 or more hits until batting champion Freddy Sanchez, who had exactly 200 hits in 2006 (Dick Groat had 199 in 1962, with 201 for St. Louis Cardinals in 1963). Traynor also managed the Pirates from 1934 to 1939.
In 1948, Traynor was selected to the Baseball Hall of Fame, being the initial third baseman to be chosen by the BBWAA. He died at age 72 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, not long after the Pirates moved into Three Rivers Stadium and retired his uniform number 20. In 1999, he ranked Number 70 on ''The Sporting News' list of the 100 Greatest Baseball Players, and was nominated as a finalist for the Major League Baseball All-Century Team.
Traynor is also the only Major League Baseball player ever to steal home plate in an All-Star Game.
Traynor died in 1972 and was buried in Homewood Cemetery in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

Contents

See also

External links

See also

★ List of major league players with 2,000 hits

★ List of Major League Baseball players with 100 triples

★ List of Major League Baseball players with 1000 runs

★ List of Major League Baseball players with 1000 RBI

★ Hitting for the cycle

External links

★ Pie Traynor Official Site

★ Baseball Hall of Fame

★

★ Society for American Baseball Research (SABR) Bio Project

★ The Deadball Era

★ Find-A-Grave biography