Granny Hamner
In 1964 Robert Carpenter, the Philadelphia Phillies president and owner, declared, “Granny Hamner was the best clutch hitter we ever had.”1 During professional baseball’s 1969 centennial celebration, fans honored Hamner as the Phillies’ all-time greatest shortstop. These combined tributes seemingly describe a blissful, long-term relationship between player and team, but that was not to be. Gran […]