birthday note

Don Blasingame, born on this date in 1932 in Corinth, did a little bit of everything in a whirlwind baseball career. He played for five teams, played in both leagues, made an All-Star team, appeared in a World Series, played and managed in Japan. He hit .258 for his 12-year MLB career (1955-66), the first five years of which were spent with St. Louis. Four times in his career, Blasingame got the only hit by his team in a game. An adept bunter, he played hard and he played fast, a style he once said he adopted from reading about Ty Cobb. Nicknamed “Blazer” and the “Corinth Comet,” Blasingame stole as many as 21 bases in a season and three times had eight triples or more. In 5,296 at-bats, he hit into just 43 double plays, one very 123.2 ABs. For reference: Billy Hamilton, the “Taylorsville Tornado,” one of the fastest players in the game today, has hit into one DP every 146.5 ABs. Blasingame, who died in 2005, was inducted into the Mississippi Sports Hall of Fame in 1980.