Editor’s note: This is the second no installment of a three-part series about some unusual happenings during a baseball game.
In the first story in this series, Texas Rangers shortstop Toby Harrah was featured for having zero fielding chances during a doubleheader.
As inactive as Harrah was during that 1976 twinbill, future Baseball Hall of Fame inductee Lloyd Waner was really busy on June 26, 1935.
Waner, who is the younger brother of Hall of Fame member Paul Waner, played 18 years in the majors mostly with the Pittsburgh Pirates. He also spent a little time with the Boston Braves, Cincinnati Reds, Philadelphia Phillies and Brooklyn Dodgers at the end of his career. In a strange connection with this series, Waner was born in Harrah, Oklahoma.
In what was a major league record performance, Waner had 18 putouts as the Pirates swept a doubleheader from the Braves in Boston 4-2, and 5-1. Waner had nine catches in center field during each contest.
Like Harrah’s three-homer day in the 70s, Waner wasn’t too bad at the plate. In game one, he was 3-for-5 and drove in three runs. He finished with a 2-for-4 performance with a RBI in the second contest.
The two bothers hold the major league mark for hits by a pair of siblings. Paul had 3,152 hits, while Lloyd finished with 2,459 for a combined total of 5,611.
Lloyd was a member of the National League All-Star team in 1938 and was enshrined in Cooperstown in 1967 as he joined Paul, who was inducted in 1952. He made his big league debut in 1927 as part of Pittsburgh’s National League championship squad that fell to the New York Yankees in the World Series.
Another mark that Waner holds is for the most hits in in a player’s first three seasons with 678. He would lead the NL with 20 triples in 1929 and 214 hits with in 1931.
The duo was the second set of brothers in the Hall of Fame with George Wright and Harry Wright being the first.