May 24, 1928

The current issue of the Baseball Hall of Fame Magazine, Memories and Dreams, told the story of a lunch time discussion that led HOF staffers to the date at the top of this post.

The question posed at that staff lunch was "What regular season major league game featured the most number of future Hall of Famers?" Well, the HOF enlisted the services of the folks at the terrific Retrosheet website (www.retrosheet.org) and in less than a day, the Retrosheet folks came up with the parameters, programs, and algorithms to uncover the game. It took place on May 24, 1928 in the first game of a doubleheader between the New York Yankees (one might have predicted that the Yanks would be involved) and the Philadelphis Athletics.

Seventeen future Hall of Famers were active in that game. For the Yankees, the cast was Earle Combs, Leo Durocher, Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Tony Lazzeri, Waite Hoyt, and manager Miller Huggins. For the A's, Ty Cobb, Tris Speaker, Mickey Cochrane, Al Simmons, Eddie Collins, Lefty Grove, Jimmie Foxx, and manager Connie Mack. Finally, two of the umpires, Tommy Connolly and Bill McGowan also became HOF enshrinees. Also, on that Yankees team that day were three other future HOF'ers, Stan Coveleski, Herb Pennock, and Bill Dickey, who did not actually play in the game.

Does any name on these lists jump out at you as being out of place? The one that does for me is Leo Durocher.

In doing the research for this project, over 120,000 major league games were played where it was possible that 10 or more HOF'ers could have participated. There were four games, all played between 1925 and 1928, where there were 16 HOF'ers involved. And if you really want your mind blown, consider the second All-Star game, played in 1934. In that game, 28 players, plus two managers and one coach, 31 in all, were destined to enter the Hall of Fame. The last regular season major league game to feature as many as 10 HOF'ers was played on July 24, 1979 between the San Diego Padres and Montreal Expos - how many of you would have guessed those teams? - that featured 7 players, one manager, one coach, and one umpire.

Thought that this would be of interest to you.