Slaughter, Enos B. ("Country")
Baseball
b. April 27, 1916, Roxboro, NC
d. Aug, 12, 2002
The way Slaughter scored the winning run for the St. Louis Cardinals in the seventh game of the 1946 World Series typified his style of play. He was on first base with the Cardinals and Boston Red Sox tied 3-3 in the bottom of the eighth inning. Harry Walker singled to left field. Slaughter took off and never stopped running. Boston shortstop Johnny Pesky took the relay, held the ball for a split-second until he realized that Slaughter was headed home, and threw too late.
Solidly built at 5-foot-9 and 192 pounds, Slaughter wasn't very fast, but he ran as hard as he could all the time. He was one of the best at going from first to third on a single, and he was constantly diving for fly balls and charging hits to prevent a runner from taking an extra base.
A left-handed hitter and right-handed thrower, he joined the Cardinals in 1938. Slaughter hit .320 and led the NL in with 52 doubles in his second season. After batting .306 and .311 the next two years, he won his only batting title with a .318 average in 1942, when he also led the league with 188 hits and 17 triples.
Slaughter entered the service in 1943 and returned to the Cardinals in 1946, when he hit .300 and had a league-leading 130 RBI. He led in triples with 13 in 1949, when he hit .336. During the next four years, he hit just .300 once, and the Cardinals traded him to the New York Yankees in 1954.
Playing in just 69 games, Slaughter hit .248. The Yankees sent him to the Kansas City Athletics early in the 1955 season, and Slaughter rebounded with a .315 average. He was traded back to the Yankees for the pennant drive in 1956, when he hit .281 as a part-time player. He was platooned in the outfield and used as a pinch-hitter for the next two seasons and he finished his career with the Yankees and Milwaukee Braves in 1959.
In 19 major-league seasons, Slaughter batted an even .300 with 2,383 hits, including 413 doubles, 148 triples, and 169 home runs. He scored 1,247 runs and drove 1,304.