Roger Connor | |||
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First baseman | |||
Born: Waterbury, Connecticut |
July 1, 1857|||
Died: January 4, 1931 Waterbury, Connecticut |
(aged 73)|||
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MLB debut | |||
May 1, 1880, for the Troy Trojans | |||
Last MLB appearance | |||
May 18, 1897, for the St. Louis Browns | |||
MLB statistics | |||
Batting average | .317 | ||
Home runs | 138 | ||
Runs batted in | 1,322 | ||
Hits | 2,467 | ||
Runs scored | 1620 | ||
Teams | |||
As player
As manager |
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Career highlights and awards | |||
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Member of the National | |||
Baseball Hall of Fame | |||
Inducted | 1976 | ||
Election Method | Veteran's Committee |
As player
As manager
Roger Connor (July 1, 1857 – January 4, 1931) was a 19th-century Major League Baseball (MLB) player. He played for several teams, but his longest tenure was in New York, where he was responsible for the New York Gothams becoming known as the Giants. He was the player whom Babe Ruth succeeded as the all-time home run champion. Connor hit 138 home runs during his 18-year career, and his career home run record stood for 23 years after his retirement in 1897.
Connor owned and managed minor league baseball teams after his playing days. He was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame by its Veterans Committee in 1976. Largely forgotten after his retirement, Connor was buried in an unmarked grave until a group of citizens raised money for a grave marker in 2001.
Connor was born in Waterbury, Connecticut. He was the son of Irish immigrants Mortimer Connor and Catherine Sullivan Connor. His father had arrived in the United States only five years before Roger's birth. The family lived in the Irish section of Waterbury, known as the Abrigador district, which was separated from the rest of the city by a large granite hill. Connor was the third of eleven children born to the family, though two did not survive childhood. Connor left school around age 12 to work with his father at the local brass works.
Connor entered professional baseball with the Waterbury Monitors of the Eastern League in 1876. Though he was left-handed, Connor was initially a third baseman; in early baseball, left-handed third basemen were more common than they are in modern baseball. He came to the National League (NL) in 1880 as a member of the Troy Trojans.
In Connor's first year with the Troy Trojans, he teamed with future Hall of Fame players Dan Brouthers, Buck Ewing, Tim Keefe and Mickey Welch, all of whom were just starting their careers. Also on that 1880 Trojans team, though much older, was player-manager Bob "Death to Flying Things" Ferguson. Though Connor, Ferguson and Welch were regularly in the lineup, the other future stars each played in only a handful of the team's 83 games that season. The team finished in fourth place with a 41-42 win-loss record. Connor committed 60 errors in 83 games and sustained a shoulder injury, prompting a position change to first baseman for 1881.