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Who was George Whiteman? This is oversimplifying things, but in some ways he was a cross between Roy Hobbs and Crash Davis. Eleven years after having a cup of coffee with Boston and five years after having another one with the Yankees, he became an unlikely World Series hero for the 1918 Red Sox. Then he went back to the minors and played many more years, setting the minor league records for most hits and most games played.

Before baseball, he worked as a diving acrobat. He toured the country with a partner. One day, his partner was killed while trying to dive into the shallow tank. George quit and turned to baseball.

The press didn’t vote for World Series MVPs back in 1918, but it was widely felt that Whiteman was the hero, a word used over the years by writer Fred Lieb to describe his timely and crucial plays. Even though he batted only .250 (5-for-20) and drove in just one run, he figured in eight of Boston’s runs and made a number of key defensive plays. Hugh Fullerton called him “greater than Cobb and luckier than C. Webb Murphy (owner of the Cubs during their glory days).” George shared a black Cuban wood bat for most of the summer with another George, Babe Ruth. It was this bat that hit the Series winner. The Babe let Whiteman take it home to Houston. (Whiteman’s family was also in possession of Ruth’s first Red Sox uniform. It was they who sold it to notable collector Barry Halper.). Because of the standoff between the players and the National Commission prior to Game Five, Red Sox players were never awarded the traditional World Series emblem. Whiteman wrote several letters to league presidents Ban Johnson and Garry Herrmann in the early 1920s asking for his emblem, but he eventually gave up. These were finally awarded 75 years later in a ceremony at Fenway Park on September 4, 1993. Some relatives of the players were on hand for the ceremony, including Whiteman’s sister-in-law, who was in her nineties. - SABR bio

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