100 Greatest Phillies: 77 – Freddy Leach

Freddy Leach

Outfielder

1923-1928

Career w/Phillies: .311 AVG / 44 HR / 301 RBI / 14 SB

At age 21, Freddy Leach played his first game of baseball. Ever. Leaving the farm, Leach needed something else to do to make money, so he turned to baseball, which to him, seemed like profitable fun. By age 25, he was playing Major League Baseball for the Philadelphia Phillies. And by age 28, he was a regular, hitting .329 and slugging .484. For three seasons, Leach put up very strong numbers, recording an average of 170 hits. He was the team’s best pure hitter during that time. After the Phillies, he’d put up some nice numbers for the New York Giants before retiring as a Boston Brave in 1932 because he didn’t like the game that much. His legacy? The Phils traded him to the Giants in 1928 for Lefty O’Doul. Pretty awesome trade, really.

Comment: Leach was a fourth outfielder for a few years, before becoming a regular and putting up some real nice numbers. Interestingly, one of his most comparable players on his Baseball Reference page is Bake McBride. There’s irony in that fact.

Tim Malcolm

Tim first found the Phillies as a little infant at Veteran’s Stadium, cheering on a Juan Samuel game-winning home run in his very first game. With the pinstripes in his blood, he witnessed Terry Mulholland’s 1990 no-hitter, “Steve Carlton Night” at the Vet, game three of the 1993 World Series, countless games during the charmed 2008 championship season and various road excursions. Since November 2007 Tim’s been writing about them daily at Phillies Nation, becoming one of the world’s most popular Phillies scribes. You can catch him on Twitter and Facebook, as well. When he’s not talking about the Phils he’s relaxing with a St. Bernardus ABT 12 or one of his many favored brews.