A few weeks ago, I introduced a new feature here at MetsGeek, Great Names in Mets History, which is a look back at some of the best baseball names in team history. These aren’t necessarily great—or even good—players, but ones that have memorable names if nothing else.

Benny Agbayani

A wonderful name, perfectly suited to the type of player Agbayani was: a pear-shaped Hawaiian, who moved faster than he looked (he stole 29 bases in Norfolk in 1997) and could hit pretty well, posting a .282/.372/.462 line as a Met. He didn’t always look great in the field and had a reputation for not keeping his head in the game at all times—once, thinking there were three outs, he gave a live ball to a fan—but he always looked like he was having fun, which should be a requirement of any ballplayer that goes by “Benny.”

The Mets tragically misused Agbayani throughout his tenure with the team. I think a lot of people looked at him and thought he wasn’t a ballplayer due to his build. He showed a strong batting eye and decent pop at every stop on his rise through the organization, but the Mets didn’t give him a real chance to play until 1999, when he was 27 years old. Even after that, the team treated him as a fourth outfielder for reasons I can’t quite comprehend. He wasn’t a perfect player, but he could help a team with his bat, and outfield production wasn’t the team’s strong suit in the late 90’s.

In 1998, for example, the Mets’ outfield had one decent player (Brian McRae) in center, but wasted plate appearances on Bernard Gilkey, an injured Butch Huskey, Tony Phillips, Lenny Harris, Jermaine Allensworth, Rich Becker, Wayne Kirby, Jim Tatum, and Todd Hundley. As a whole, left fielders hit .225/.325/.342 and right fielders hit .243/.302/.388, truly horrendous production. Meanwhile, Agbayani did his usual thing at Norfolk, hitting .283/.381/.478 with 16 steals. Considering the fact that the Mets lost the Wild Card to Chicago by a mere two games, it’s possible that their refusal to consider Agbayani for one of their glaring holes in the outfield cost the team significantly down the stretch.

Agbayani didn’t last much longer in the United States, fairly or unfairly, but he did thrive playing for Bobby Valentine in Japan, hitting .315/.426/.617 for Chiba Lotte in 2004.

The most underrated Mets of my baseball-watching lifetime (1988-2007), by position:

P: Steve Trachsel (pre-2006)
C: Todd Pratt
1B: Dave Magadan
2B: Jeff Kent
3B: Huskey
SS: Jose Vizcaino
LF: Agbayani
CF: Daryl Boston
RF: Bobby Bonilla

Some of those guys aren’t great fits and much depends on how you define “underrated,” but I have always felt these guys weren’t fully appreciated by everyone for the ways they could help a team.

Pumpsie Green

It should be noted that Green would have a great chance of garnering a comment even if he had no nickname; his given name is Elijah Jerry Green, one of just three Elijahs in baseball history. The nickname is one of the all-time greats. About that, Pumpsie remarked:

“Almost the first thing people do is ask me how I got my nickname. I figure eight million people have asked me so far, almost half of them sportswriters. When I get out of baseball I’m gonna write a book entitled How I Got the Name of Pumpsie and sell a million copies at a dollar apiece.”

So, surely the name has its origins on the diamond, perhaps describing how he pumped his arm before whipping the ball to first, right? Nope. The name actually is a derivative of “Pumpkin,” which is what his mother called him when he was three years old. If I were Pumpsie, I wouldn’t be advertising that little nugget, either.

Green, of course, is best known for becoming the first black player to play for the Boston Red Sox, making them the last team to integrate. Believe it or not, the Red Sox actually had the chance to integrate first, as they postured at auditioning Jackie Robinson at Fenway Park in 1945 at the insistence of Boston politician Isadore Muchnick. Alas, Boston would have to wait for Pumpsie Green, twelve years later.

Green disliked the emphasis placed on his race and made it known in spring training in 1959 that he wasn’t in camp to make history.

“So far as I’m concerned, I’m no martyr. No flag carrier. I’m just trying to make the ball club, that’s all. I’m not trying to prove anything else but that. I’m not even interested in being known as the first Negro to make the Red Sox. I just want to make the Red Sox and all the rest of it can wait.”

He was a man of limited ambition, which was doubtless one of the things Boston found appealing about him. He often said that he never dreamed of playing in the majors, just for the Oakland Oaks of the Pacific Coast League, something that probably says as much about Major League Baseball’s influence in California at the time as it does about Green. Green didn’t make the Red Sox that spring, though he was recalled from Montgomery after the Red Sox fired their explicitly racist manager, Pinky Higgins, in July. He was used very sparingly over the next couple of seasons, never getting more than 260 at-bats.

The second thing Pumpsie Green is known for is abandoning the Red Sox on July 26, 1962 when the team bus stopped for a bathroom break. He and pitcher Gene Conley, fresh off a trouncing at the hands of the Yankees and likely after a few drinks, decided it would be a good idea to fly to Israel. They never made it—Conley had visa troubles—and both men were heavily fined when they returned to the team two days later.

In December 1962, he was traded to the Mets along with Al Moran and Tracy Stallard for Felix Mantilla. He spent most of the year in Buffalo, and hit rather well: .308 with 17 homers and 67 RBIs. He was promoted in September and received 54 at bats while continuing his solid hitting. Looking back on it, I really have no idea why he wasn’t called up sooner. Second baseman Ron Hunt was the team’s best player, but they didn’t exactly get sterling production from their shortstop and third baseman. Here are the guys who saw most of the playing time on the left side of the infield for the 1963 Mets:

Player               AB    BA   OBA   SLG
Al Moran            331  .193  .274  .230
Charlie Neal        225  .225  .302  .316
Jim Hickman         494  .229  .291  .399
Chico Fernandez     145  .200  .244  .262

Moran couldn’t hit at all, and he wasn’t much of a defender either. Hickman belonged in the outfield—converting outfielders to third base never works—and Neal and Fernandez weren’t much better. There was no way Green didn’t belong on this team, especially when you consider his “fame” from his Boston days.

He returned to Buffalo in 1964 before quitting in 1965 as a member of Detroit’s Syracuse affiliate.

Notes and References

The first quote from Pumpsie Green can be found in Mike Shannon’s Tales from the Ballpark: More of the Greatest True Stories Ever Told.

The second quote comes from Howard Bryant’s Shut Out: A Story of Race and Baseball in Boston. It’s a fun read, and it has lots of other interesting stuff about Green and the mindset of the Red Sox organization in 1959.

Finally, Jonathan Mayo wrote an article about Green for Milb.com.

As a final note, if anyone wants to suggest a name for future use, feel free to do so in the comments section.