Today on the blog we add Cesar Tovar to the 1971
Topps "Baseball's Greatest Moments" set, one of the greatest oddball
sets ever made, celebrating his unique game where he played all nine
positions:
On September 22nd of 1968, Tovar
became the second Major League player ever (after Bert Campaneris of the
Kansas City Athletics) to play all nine positions in one Big League
game, doing so against the Oakland A's, ironically enough starting the
game as a pitcher and facing Campaneris, who was the lead-off batter!
As
a matter of fact, in his one-inning stint as a pitcher, Tovar even
fanned Reggie Jackson, before moving on to the other eight positions as
the game wore on.
Since then, Campaneris and Tovar have been
joined in the "all-nine-position" club by Scott Sheldon (2000), Shane
Halter (2000) and Andrew Romine (2017), still a very exclusive club
considering the game's long and illustrious history!
As for Tovar and his career, over his 12-year career he batted a very respectable .278 considering
the “modern-dead ball era” he played in, with 1546 hits over 5569
at-bats in 1488 games, with 834 runs scored and 435 RBI’s and 226 stolen
bases.
With guys like Tony Oliva, Rod Carew and Harmon Killebrew in the same line-up, it made for some good offense in their prime.
