All in the Family

One of the elements of baseball that I got to observe first hand while writing Safe at Home:  A Season in the Valley, is that baseball is a very small world.  Indeed, the Baltimore Sun recently featured a story that you can read here on Blake Davis, Justin Turner, and Scott Moore, 3 players who are all in training camp with the Baltimore Orioles and who all played together on the same youth league team when they were 12 or 13!

In the interest of the smallest of all possible baseball worlds, I have put together a theoretical, 25 man baseball team using only 8 families.

There have been many brother combinations to pitch in the big leagues; in fact, here's a list of brothers who pitched on the same team!  Taking Joe and Phil Niekro, Greg and Mike Maddux, Jim and Gaylord Perry, and as well as the Stottlemyres--Mel and his two sons Mel, Jr. and Todd gives us 9 pitchers and 4 families so far.  This is an excellent staff with three 300 game winners (Greg, Phil, and Gaylord).  We'll also include 3-time 20 game winner Mort Cooper, whose brother Walker was a catcher for 18 seasons.  In fact, Mort and Walker were battery mates on the St. Louis Cardinals from 1940-1945.

Sharing the catching chores with Cooper will be Bob Boone, whose father Ray is our shortstop and whose sons Aaron and Bret are our 3rd and 2nd basemen respectively.

At first base is Felipe Alou, who although he was primarily an outfielder, did appear in 468 games at first over 8 different seasons.  His brothers Matty and Jesus and his son Moises make up our outfield.  Moises' cousins Mel Rojas and Jose Sosa, who pitched for the Astros in 1975-1976 round out a 12 man pitching staff.

The rest of the squad are all Delahantys including Tom and Jim in the infield and Frank, Joe, and Ed in the outfield.  Indeed, Ed, is the black sheep of this family despite his Hall of Fame credentials and .346 lifetime batting average.  He died in the middle of the 1903 season when he was kicked off a train near Niagra Falls for being drunk and disorderly, and then either fell into the water or suicidally jumped in and was swept over the falls.

Baseball is a small world, indeed.  With only the Delahantys, the Alous (and their cousins), the Boones, the Coopers, the Stottlemyres, the Perrys, the Madduxes, and the Niekros, we can construct an entire 25 man roster, and a pretty good one to boot.  If anyone can top or tie this, please let us know!