Teen Spirit

Konnor Griffin’s injury to his left ring finger kept the Pittsburgh Pirates shortstop out for a while, ending his chance to have one of the best seasons by a player before turning 20. In 59 games, he batted .276 with five home runs, 25 RBIs and 20 stolen bases in 21 attempts.

He was 19 on Opening Day and turned 20 on April 24. The Pirates’ top choice in the 2024 draft was the first teenager to appear in a big-league game in seven years. Elvis Luciano was 19 when he pitched for the Toronto Blue Jays on March 31, 2019. The Dominican Republic native appeared in 25 games, going 1-0 with a 5.35 ERA. It was his only season in the majors.

The best season by a teenager since 1945, and perhaps ever, was Alex Rodriguez’s in 1996. The No. 1 overall pick by the Seattle Mariners in the 1993 draft was 18 when he made his debut on July 8, 1994. He appeared in 17 games and batted .204 in 59 plate appearances. The following year, he played in 48 games, hitting .232 with five home runs.

At 20, Rodriguez opened the 1996 season with Seattle and won the American League batting title, hitting .358. He belted 36 home runs, drove in 123 runs and finished second to Juan Gonzalez in the American League MVP voting.

Then there are teenagers who played their first full season without previously appearing in the major leagues.

For everyday players, it is either Tony Conigliaro, Ken Griffey Jr. or Bryce Harper who had the best season by a teenager playing a full season without previous time in the majors.

TONY CONIGLIARO

In his first game with the Boston Red Sox, on April 16, 1964, Conigliaro was 19. He appeared in 111 games, but missed about a month after a pitch from Cleveland’s Pedro Ramos fractured his left wrist on July 26. He finished with 24 home runs and 52 RBIs while batting .290. The following year, he became the youngest player to lead the league in home runs, belting 32 while batting .269 with 82 RBIs.

“Nobody knew he was going to jump from St. Mary’s High School in Lynn, Mass., to the major leagues in two years. I mean, he played one year in the New York-Penn League,” recalled Peter Gammons, the Hall of Fame columnist for The Boston Globe.

Conigliaro was having a good year in the 1967 “Summer of Love,” when the Red Sox were in the thick of the pennant race.

By that time, says Gammons, Conigliaro “was a personality, he recorded some records” that were popular in New England. “And was really good. I mean, he led the league in homers in his second year,” Gammons said.

“And as I always said, there’s no doubt he was gonna be a Hall of Famer. Unfortunately, he was like Frank Robinson, totally fearless at the plate,” Gammons said.

Even after his arm was broken by a pitch, Tony C. still crowded the plate.

By Aug. 18, 1967, Conigliaro had 20 home runs.

Pitching for the California Angels at Fenway Park that day was Jack Hamilton, who had won six and lost two.

John Rossi, an emeritus professor of history who taught baseball history and published four books on the subject, saw Hamilton when he was with the Phillies in 1961 and 1962. He was a right-hander who threw hard, Rossi said. “He’d go on a streak where he’d retire 10 or 12 hitters in a row, then lose his control,” he said.

In his career, Hamilton pitched 611 2/3 innings. He struck out 357 but walked 348. In his rookie season, he threw 24 wild pitches, which led the league. He was traded from the Phillies to the Tigers, then purchased by the Mets, who traded him to the Angels in May 1967. In 26 games with the Angels before facing Boston, he had hit one batter.

Conigliaro singled in the bottom of the second. He came to bat in the fourth inning and was struck in the head by a Hamilton pitch. Outfielder José Tartabull pinch-ran for him and took his spot in right field. Boston won, 3-2.

The following day, underneath stories about the Vietnam War, The Boston Globe ran a front-page headline alerting readers: “Conig May Miss Rest of Year.”

The story noted that “X-rays reported the 22-year-old star had a fractured left cheekbone. He also suffered contusions of the scalp, a closed and bruised eye and a severe nosebleed.”

Not only did “Conig” miss the rest of that season, including the Red Sox’s World Series appearance, he missed all of the following season. He had a pretty good year in 1969, batting .255 with 20 home runs and 82 RBIs. He had a better season in 1970, when he clubbed 36 home runs, drove in 116 and batted .266.

He was traded to the California Angels on Oct. 12, 1970.

“Red Sox Show Grit in Trading C” was the headline on the front page of the next day’s Globe. A smaller headline above it said the Sox’s general manager, Dick O’Connell, “Faces Ire of Hub Fans.”

Staff writer Harold Kaese wrote that the Red Sox “expected a lot of flak from Boston fans, some ridicule from the rest of the baseball world. Still, they went ahead and made their most controversial and unpopular trade since another slugger, Ken Harrelson, was shipped to Cleveland.”

The Red Sox acquired “three guys named Ken, Jarvis and Doug,” Kaese wrote. He added that the deal would be successful if:

1. They did not badly miss Tony C.’s 36-homer, 116-RBI bat.
2. Ken Tatum knocked them dead as a reliever.
3. Doug Griffin developed into a second baseman good enough to eventually take over from Mike Andrews.

The third player was Jarvis Tatum, an outfielder who spent the 1971 season in the minors. He later played in Japan, then in the San Diego Padres’ system, and ended his career in Mexico.

Supposedly, there was friction involving Tony Conigliaro, his brother and teammate Billy, their father, and Boston management.

“O’Connell denied Conigliaro was traded out of spite, that the Sox were out to trade him at any cost because of off-field conduct and remarks by his father Sal or his brother Billy,” Kaese wrote.

Conigliaro batted only .222 with four home runs for the Angels in 1971 and was released that November.

Four years later, he attempted a comeback with Boston.

“It’s just amazing. It was. I was looking at a picture of the ’75 Opening Day at Fenway and there’s Tony and Henry Aaron talking together,” recalled Gammons.

“He actually hit the first home run the Red Sox hit in ’75. I think it was the third or fourth game of the year in Baltimore. It wasn’t at Fenway, but he started on Opening Day,” Gammons said.

But in 57 at-bats, Conigliaro was hitting only .123, and in June he was sent to the Red Sox’s Triple-A team in Pawtucket, R.I. After hitting .204 in 37 games, he retired at age 30.

He died Feb. 24, 1990, of pneumonia and kidney failure at age 45, following the effects of a massive heart attack and stroke he suffered in 1982.

KEN GRIFFEY JR.

Ken Griffey Jr. spent parts of two seasons in the minor leagues before playing a full season in the major leagues. He made his debut on April 3, 1989.

Nicknamed “Junior,” the younger Griffey was taken with the first pick of the 1987 draft by the Seattle Mariners. Like his father, Ken Griffey Sr., he was born in Donora, Pa., where Stan Musial was also born and raised. When his father joined the Reds, he brought his family with him to Ohio.

After less than two seasons in the minors, Griffey Jr. came to spring training in 1989 and put on a show.

He made his major-league debut on April 3, 1989, at age 19 at the Oakland Coliseum. Batting second, he came to the plate in the top of the first inning against Oakland A’s ace Dave Stewart and launched a drive to center field for a double. He finished the game 1-for-3 with a walk and a run scored in a 3-2 A’s victory.

“Ken Griffey Jr., playing in his first major league game at the tender age of 19, not so tenderly smoked a double to the base of the center-field wall 375 feet from home in his first at-bat. It took all of four pitches for Griffey to step into the limelight of the big-time show, and from now on he’s likely to do a lot of showing,” wrote a reporter for a California newspaper.

“When he hit that ball, we looked at each other and said, ‘Didn’t take him long, did it?’” smiled Mariners manager Jim Lefebvre, a Griffey believer. “He’s a thrill,” Lefebvre added.

According to a SABR biography by Emily Hawks, “Just over a month after his debut, a Seattle-area trading-card company launched a Ken Griffey Jr. candy bar. Demand quickly soared, and ultimately nearly one million bars were purchased. Ironically, Griffey was allergic to chocolate.”

Griffey finished his first season batting .264 with 16 home runs and 61 RBIs. He finished third in Rookie of the Year voting, behind Baltimore’s Gregg Olson and Kansas City’s Tom Gordon.

Beginning in 1990, he started a string of otherworldly accomplishments. He led the league in home runs four times, and in two other seasons hit 40 or more. Starting in 1990, he won 10 straight Gold Glove Awards and won the Silver Slugger Award seven times.

On Aug. 29, 1990, the Mariners signed Griffey’s father; on Aug. 31, the Griffeys played their first game together against the Kansas City Royals. They hit back-to-back singles in the first inning and both scored. The Griffeys played 51 games together during the 1990 and 1991 seasons.

After the 1999 season, Griffey Jr. was traded to the Cincinnati Reds, the team his father had won two World Series with as part of the Big Red Machine.

In her SABR biography, Hawks wrote that after the 1999 season, “Griffey would leave for what he had hoped would be a storybook return to his hometown of Cincinnati. But frequent trips to the disabled list stifled the talents of one of the greatest center fielders to play the game, and Griffey’s carefree attitude seemed to dissipate along with his playing time. Still, although it is tempting to contemplate what could have been were it not for those injuries, it is still gratifying to marvel at what was. Griffey’s effortless home-run swings, dazzling center-field catches, and 1,000-watt smile lit up the game for an entire generation of baseball fans, and few would dispute that he saved baseball in Seattle.”

In 2008, Griffey signed with the Chicago White Sox as a free agent. He returned to the Mariners for the 2009 season and played in 33 games for Seattle in 2010. His last appearance, at age 40, was against the Minnesota Twins. Like his father, he played his final game on May 31.

In the bottom of the ninth, with the Mariners trailing 5-3, Griffey pinch-hit for catcher Rob Johnson with a runner on first. Facing reliever Jon Rauch, he grounded to second, forcing the runner. On June 2, he voluntarily retired.

He finished with 630 home runs, ranking fifth on the all-time list at the time of his retirement.

In the Hall of Fame election in 2016, 440 ballots were cast. Only three voters did not select Griffey, giving him 437 votes and 99.3 percent of the vote—the highest percentage in history until Mariano Rivera was elected unanimously in 2019.

BRYCE HARPER

The No. 1 pick of the 2010 draft by the Washington Nationals, Bryce Harper played a full season in the minors in 2011.

An Associated Press story stated that Nationals general manager Mike Rizzo “has stated repeatedly that he thinks all young players should spend time at each level of the minor leagues before moving to the big leagues. So while [Nationals manager Davey] Johnson wanted Rizzo to consider letting Harper skip Triple-A, the team sent him to Syracuse after hitting .286 in spring training this year.”

Then Ryan Zimmerman was injured, and the Nationals called up Harper. He made his debut on April 28, 2012, against the Los Angeles Dodgers at Dodger Stadium. He went 1-for-3 with an RBI.

With the score tied 1-1 in the ninth inning, the Nationals scored a run and Harper drove in another with a sacrifice fly. The Dodgers tied the game in the bottom of the inning, then won 4-3 in the 10th on a walk-off home run.

“Bryce Harper’s first day in the major leagues came with all the hype one would expect for the player dubbed ‘Baseball’s Chosen One’ when he was 16 years old,” wrote the Associated Press, referring to a Sports Illustrated cover story on Harper.

A Washington Post headline the next day stated Harper “Dazzles,” and the story reported he had a strong throwing arm.

Another Post headline on April 30 stated, “Nationals’ Bryce Harper: What we’ve learned from his first two MLB games.” The Nevada native had gone 1-for-3 in a 2-0 loss to the Dodgers.
In 139 games, he batted .270 with 22 home runs and 59 RBIs. He was named an All-Star and voted Rookie of the Year.
In 2013-14, he appeared in only 215 games, hitting a combined 33 home runs, 90 RBIs, and batting .274 and .273 respectively.

But at the age of 22 in 2015, playing in 153 games, he batted .330 with 42 home runs (tying him with Colorado’s Nolan Arenado for the league lead) and 99 RBIs. He was selected an All-Star and unanimously voted the Most Valuable Player.

Harper became a free agent after the 2018 season. The following March, he signed a 13-year contract worth $330 million with the Philadelphia Phillies, then the richest in baseball history. In 2021, he received his second MVP Award when he hit .309, had 35 home runs, 84 RBIs, and led the league with 42 doubles.

WALLY BUNKER

Would you call someone who played in four innings an experienced big leaguer? Wally Bunker pitched four innings for the Baltimore Orioles in 1963 when he was 18. He spent the entire season with the O’s in 1964, won 19 games against five losses, and had an ERA of 2.69.

If you want to get technical, Bunker had prior experience before his first full season in the majors, when he started one game. But should that decide whether to include him as having one of the best seasons by a teen in his first full season?

Bunker won 10 games in each of the next two seasons but developed arm trouble; in 1967-68 he won a combined five games.

He was selected by the Kansas City Royals in the expansion draft and won the most games for the team in 1969, going 12-11 with a 3.23 ERA. He made 31 starts and appeared in four games in relief, earning two saves.

His arm trouble resurfaced, as he went 2-11 with a 4.22 ERA and appeared in only seven games in 1972, his final year in the majors.

DWIGHT GOODEN

Dwight Gooden never played in the majors before his big league debut in 1984 with the New York Mets. Manager Davey Johnson coached Gooden in a special AAA championship series in 1983; Gooden was promoted from AA ball to pitch in the series, so Johnson was familiar with the teen’s great stuff and his mental approach to the game.

“He was poised beyond his years,” said Mike Fitzgerald, who caught several of Gooden’s games that season. “But Dwight didn’t need a whole lot of help. He needed me to just kind of give him little breaks in certain situations without him even knowing it, so that he could relax and maybe not get in too big of a rush.”

He said, “Not only did Dwight have fantastic stuff, he knew how to pitch and that’s something that he doesn’t probably get enough credit for.”

“I watched Dwight get out a lot of great major league hitters,” added Fitzgerald. “I could tell by looking in their eyes that they were facing somebody who they knew was going to be tough to deal with. The reaction from major league hitters was that they realized this kid was for real and they were in trouble.”

As the 1984 season progressed, Fitzgerald became the Mets’ primary catcher, appearing in 112 games. He said Johnson saw how he ran a game at AAA and realized he could be an asset.

“The best thing I did as a player was call a game, run a game,” said Fitzgerald. Gooden, he said, “was easy to catch. A guy that was throwing low 90s in the first inning, then mid-90s in the middle innings. And if it got close, which a lot of his ballgames were, he would even throw harder in the 6th, 7th, 8th innings. He was amazing, just amazing.”

Gooden was the fifth player taken in the 1982 draft. He spent that year pitching for three Mets teams in the lower minors. In 1983, he pitched for New York’s entry in the AA Carolina League, going 19-4 with an ERA of 2.50. In 191 innings, he struck out 300 batters.

At 19, he won his big-league debut on April 7, pitching five innings against Houston. He finished the season 17-9, with an ERA of 2.60, and led the league with 269 strikeouts. He was named Rookie of the Year, receiving 23 out of 24 first-place votes. Gooden finished second in the Cy Young Award voting (Rick Sutcliffe, who went 16-1 for the Chicago Cubs after a mid-season trade, received every first-place vote).

It didn’t take long for him to win a Cy Young Award; Gooden won it in 1985, pitching a season reminiscent of Bob Gibson’s dominant year in 1968.

Gooden was 24-4 with an ERA of 1.53, while Gibson was 22-9 with an ERA of 1.12 in 1968. Gooden led the league with 268 strikeouts and 16 complete games and was the unanimous choice for the prize.

You could say Gooden “slumped” the following year, winning only 17 games (against six losses) and failing to lead the league in strikeouts, complete games, or innings pitched. But the ’86 Mets won the World Series.

Two years later, he won 19 games, taking the Mets (who won 108) to the NL Championship Series, where they were upset by the Los Angeles Dodgers, who went on to sweep the Oakland A’s for the World Series title.

Arm trouble occurred, and Gooden developed drug and alcohol addictions, which likely cost him a Hall of Fame spot. His best moment after the glory years was in a New York Yankees uniform when he pitched his only no-hitter on May 14, 1996.

Some of baseball’s greatest players appeared in the majors for a cup of coffee, a few weeks or half a season before becoming full-time players at 20 or older. Here are a few notables:

When he was 19, Ty Cobb played in 41 games for the Detroit Tigers in 1906 and batted .233. At 19, Cobb batted .316 in 90 games for the Tigers. In his first full season in 1907, when he was 20, he won the American League batting title, hitting .350 in 150 games.

Mel Ott never played in the minor leagues. At 17, he made his big league debut with John McGraw’s New York Giants in 1926. He stayed with the team the entire season, appearing in only 35 games, but in 60 plate appearances he batted .383. The following year, in 180 plate appearances, he batted .282. At 19, in 445 at-bats, he hit .322 with 18 home runs and 77 RBIs.

Like Ott, Robin Yount never played in the minors (and made the Hall of Fame), making his debut with the Milwaukee Brewers on April 5, 1974, at 18. He batted .250 with five home runs his first season.

At 19, Walter Johnson pitched 14 games with the Washington Senators, making his big league debut on August 2, 1907. He was 5-9 but had an ERA of 1.88. The following year, he was in the big leagues for the entire season, and was 14-14 for the woeful Senators, with an ERA of 1.65.

Hall of Fame second baseman Eddie Collins made his debut at 19, appearing in a September 6, 1906, game for Connie Mack’s Philadelphia A’s. In six contests, he had three hits in 15 at-bats. Later, he was part of Mack’s “$100,000” infield that won four pennants and three World Series from 1910-14. When Mack broke the club up, he sent Collins to the Chicago White Sox. He played 16 seasons there, and avoided the “Black Sox Scandal” of throwing the World Series (he batted only .226 in the 1919 classic). He spent his last four seasons with the A’s and played a few games for the 1929 and 1930 teams that won the World Series. Collins is the only player who was with both Mack dynasties. He had a lifetime average of .333.

Bob Feller was 17 when he debuted with Cleveland on July 19, 1936, and pitched in 14 games. He was 5-3, with a 3.44 ERA. He made eight starts and completed five of them, and also had one save. At 18, he was 9-7 with a 3.39 ERA; he appeared in 26 games, making 19 starts and completing nine. He also had a save. At 19, he was 17-11, with a 4.08 ERA. From 1939-41, he won 66 games and led the league in strikeouts all three years. He also had 14 saves. Feller joined the Navy and served on a destroyer in the Pacific during WWII for three years.

Among Negro League stars who appeared as teenagers was Willie Mays, who was 17 when he played 13 games for the Birmingham Black Barons in 1948. He batted .233 with six RBIs. In 1951, when he was 20, he appeared in 121 games for the New York Giants, batting .274 with 20 home runs and 66 RBIs.

Roy Campanella was 15 years old when he debuted in the Negro Leagues with the Washington Elite Giants and is the youngest player to appear in the major leagues. He played sporadically with the Baltimore Elite Giants from 1938-39; in 1940, at 18, he hit .261 with six home runs. The following year he hit .320 in 128 at-bats.

Catcher Josh Gibson played a handful of games for the Memphis Red Sox as a 19-year-old in 1930. Four years later, he played in more than 120 games for the Pittsburgh Crawfords and won the Triple Crown, leading the league in average (.395), home runs (20), and RBIs (79). He won two more Triple Crowns in 1936 and 1937.

Showing how there never seems to be enough pitching, in 1973 three teenagers made their major league debut:

• Twenty days after graduating high school, 18-year-old David Clyde pitched for the Texas Rangers; he won his first game but was inconsistent thereafter.
• 19-year-old Larry Christenson broke spring training with the Phillies and won his first start, but after giving up 25 earned runs in 31.1 innings, he was sent to AAA. He became a key contributor to the team’s three consecutive NL East championships and 1980 World Series victory.
• Kevin Kobel was 12-8 at the Milwaukee Brewers’ AA team in Shreveport, LA, in 1973. He was a September call-up and made his debut that month. The left-hander appeared in two games, lost one, and in 8.1 innings had an ERA of 8.64.