We don’t always get around to a Friday Funday entry here, as the day sometimes gets away from us. Can you blame us? Friday! But we do sit down to write at the end of the week, we like to have fun—duh. And today we think we have an entertaining subject: longtime MLB journeyman Vic Wertz. Most playing right field and first base, with a little center and left thrown in for good measure here and there, he compiled 26.9 WAR over his career, even though he was not a great defensive player at all, generally.

The four-time All Star played 17 years in the majors, with five different teams: the Detroit Tigers (1947-1952, 1961-1963), the St. Louis Browns/Baltimore Orioles (1952-1954), the Cleveland Indians (1954-1958), the Boston Red Sox (1959-1962), and the Minnesota Twins (1963). He only reached the postseason once, playing in the 1954 World Series for the Indians against the New York Giants. In that Fall Classic, Wertz hit .500 with a 1.435 OPS despite the fact his Cleveland team was swept in four games.

Alas, it is Game One of that World Series that Wertz made his name, for life, really. But we will get to that later …

He broke into the majors at age 22 with the Tigers, hitting .288 with an .809 OPS in 102 games. But his batting average dropped 40 points in 1948, and so it was not until 1949 that he established himself as the starting RF for Detroit—making the All-Star team at age 24 and finishing 10th in the AL MVP vote. With a .304 average and 133 RBI to go along with an .851 OPS, the future looked very bright for Wertz at the time. He was 1.0 WAR better (4.3) in 1950, although he did not make the All-Star team again.

However, he solidified himself well in 1951 and 1952 with two more All-Star nods and a combined 50 home runs in just 260 games. Yet the Detroit organization was put off by his .248 batting average in the first 85 games of the 1952 campaign and traded Wertz to the St. Louis Browns in an eight-player deal. He thrived with his new team over the final 37 games of his season, hitting 100 points higher. He regressed with the Browns at age 28 in 1953, but his OPS was still .842 overall, so Wertz had game to give.

This is where his story gets a little more interesting, of course: at age 29 in 1954, he got off to a horrendous start across the first 29 games as a member of the Baltimore Orioles, as the Browns were now known after a move to the East Coast. On June 1, the Orioles—who would lose 100 games by the end of the season—traded him to the Cleveland organization, which would go on to set the American League record for most wins in a season (111). Wertz added an .822 OPS for the Indians in 94 games that year.

But it was in October he made his mark: playing first base, he had four hits in Game One of the World Series, driving in the team’s only two runs in a 5-2 extra-innings loss. He had the extremely bad misfortunate of being robbed of a fifth hit by the most legendary defensive play in the Fall Classic hitherto, courtesy of some guy named Willie Mays. Maybe you’ve heard of him? The amazing play saved multiple runs for the Giants in the eighth inning of a tie game and changed the fate of the entire matchup.

Wertz still finished 8-for-16 in the Fall Classic, but he only drove in one more run in the last three games. The damage had been done, if not to his performance then certainly psychologically to the whole Indians team which had been so dominant throughout the regular season in winning the only AL pennant during the 10-year stretch of 1949-1958 not claimed by the New York Yankees. There are a lot of “what ifs” to consider about the career trajectory of Wertz if that fly ball had dropped in the Polo Grounds’ center.

Alas, he went on to play four more seasons in Cleveland (1955-1958), producing just 5.1 WAR total while making one last All-Star roster in 1957 at age 32. His .857 OPS that season was more than respectable, although his minus-1.3 dWAR at first base certainly diminished his overall contribution to the team’s causes. In his final year with the Indians, though, he played in just 25 games (.866 OPS), and the team traded him to Boston for the age-29 Jim Piersall. It was an interesting swap at the time, for sure.

Now at age 34, Wertz didn’t have a lot left in the tank. Over almost three seasons with the Red Sox encompassing 324 games, he hit just .274 with a .776 OPS for a total of a mere 2.2 WAR. He started at first all of 1960, though, driving in 103 runs and finishing tenth in the AL MVP voting—but with just 0.7 WAR that campaign, it was a result of poor analysis by the people with the ballots. Toward the end of a disappointing 1961 season, the Tigers claimed him off waivers, but Wertz played only eight games in Detroit.

As mostly a pinch hitter in 1962 at age 37 with his original team, he did very well, getting into 74 games, hitting .324, and posting an .843 OPS. It would be his last hurrah, however, as in 1963, he went hitless in just five ABs before Detroit released him in early May. The Minnesota Twins then signed him, and Wertz finished his career with 35 games there (.581 OPS). That would be his final MLB stop in a long career that saw him hit .277 overall with a lifetime .833 OPS and 122 OPS+ mark. He definitely could hit, eh?

With 828 walks to go along with only 842 strikeouts, Wertz was a guy who got on base (.364 OBP), and he had decent enough power, overall (266 HRs). His OPS was over .850 through his first 12 MLB seasons, with the four All-Star honors, and then it dropped a bit over the final five years of his relatively vagabond career. He didn’t win a World Series, obviously, but the opportunities were limited in his era, which makes what happened in 1954 that much more significant. But Wertz was more than …

That.