Willie Keeler

William H. “Wee Willie” Keeler was one of the smallest players ever in major league baseball at 5’4”, 140 pounds, but he had one of the biggest bats in the game, both figuratively and literally, weighing up to 46 ounces. His motto was, “Keep your eye on the ball and hit ‘em where they ain’t,” and it certainly worked for the third baseman-turned-outfielder. Keeler had 13 straight seasons in which he batted over .300 and he reached the mark in 16 of the 19 years he played. He had a lifetime average of .345 and for seven straight seasons he also had an on-base percentage that was above .400.

Willie Keeler; smallest man to play baseball

Career: 33 HR, .341 BA (14th), 495 SB (39th), RF, HOF in 1939, Highlanders/Orioles/... 1892-1910, b:L/t:L, 3x H Leader, born in NY 1872, died 1923

Major League Baseball Umpire. Between 1894 and 1890, he pitched in the American Association and the National League which later hired him in 1895. He worked the First World Series in 1903 and would work nine more in his tenure. He was the senior umpire behind home plate at the Polo Grounds in which Fred Merkle committed his boner which cost the New York Giants the League pennant to the Chicago Cubs in 1908. He would go on to umpire over 2,700 games in over a thirty year career ending in 1927. (bio by: Robert)

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A diminutive lefty who was one of baseball’s biggest stars of the rollicking 1890s, Wee Willie Keeler continued to “hit ’em where they ain’t” through the first decade of the Deadball Era. The tiny (5-feet-4½-inches, 140 pounds) right fielder’s career covered 19 big-league campaigns, and in 13 of them – every year from 1894 to 1906 – he hit over .300 and ranked in his league’s top ten in hits. Eight straight times he collected more than 200 hits, and his .424 average in 1897 is the highest single-season mark by a left-handed hitter in baseball history. Keeler compiled a .341 career batting average and racked up 2,932 hits – 85 percent of them singles – in 2,123 games. An amiable Brooklyn native who was the son of Irish immigrants, Wee Willie played for all three New York teams (the Brooklyn Superbas, the Highlanders, and the Giants), and was a key member of the raucous Baltimore Orioles dynasty of the 1890s.

William Henry Keeler (March 3, 1872 – January 1, 1923), nicknamed "Wee Willie", was a right fielder in Major League Baseball who played from 1892 to 1910, primarily for the Baltimore Orioles and Brooklyn Superbas in the National League, and the New York Highlanders in the American League. Keeler, one of the best hitters of his time, was elected into the National Baseball Hall of Fame. One of the greatest contact hitters of all time and notoriously hard to strike out, Keeler has the highest career AB-per-strikeout ratio in MLB history: throughout his career, on average he went more than 60 AB between individual strikeouts.[1]