Sparky Anderson

George Lee Anderson (Captain Hook)

Position: Second Baseman
Bats: Right, Throws: Right
Height: 5' 9", Weight: 170 lb.

Born: February 22, 1934 in Bridgewater, SD
High School: Dorsey HS (Los Angeles, CA)
Signed by the Brooklyn Dodgers as an amateur free agent in 1953. (All Transactions)
Debut: April 10, 1959
Team: Phillies 1959

Final Game: September 27, 1959
Inducted into the Hall of Fame by Veteran's Committee as Manager in 2000.
View Sparky Anderson Page at the Baseball Hall of Fame (plaque, photos, videos).
Died: November 4, 2010 in Thousand Oaks, CA
Cremated
About biographical information

View team uniforms at Dressed to the Nines a Baseball Hall of Fame on-line exhibit / Report an error

Hall of Fame

Standard Fielding

Adv Fielding w/ run summary

Year	Tm	Lg	Age	Pos	G	GS	CG	Inn	Ch	PO	A	E	DP	Fld%	Rtot	Rtot/yr	RF/9	RF/G	lgFld%	lgRF9	lgRFG
1959	PHI	NL	25	2B	152	145	122	1244.2	758	343	403	12	70	.984	-2	-2	5.39	4.91	.976	5.27	5.22
	1 Season			2B	152	145	122	1244.2	758	343	403	12	70	.984	-2	-2	5.39	4.91	.976	5.27	5.22
	1 Season			TOT	152	145	122	1244.2	758	343	403	12	70	.984	-2	-2	5.39	4.91	.976	5.27	5.22

Note: Fielding stats are a combination of official records and RetroSheet records. Both are likely to have substantial errors and will not match perfectly.

View Complete Notes on Fielding Data

Leagues historically made no effort to balance team, league, and player fielding stats. Since 1990 or so, computers have made this feasible, but prior to that there are hundreds or thousands of discrepancies each year in games played (even whether a player played a position), putouts, assists, double plays and errors.

Pre-1948 SB & CS data for catchers is estimated from catcher assists, games started and opposition stolen bases.
From 1948 on SB, CS, Pickoff, & WP data for catchers and pitchers is taken from play-by-play accounts in the retrosheet files. There are several hundred games without pbp from 1948 to 1973 and for those we may not have any data.
CG & GS come from the retrosheet data and should be complete and pretty accurate from 1918 on.
Innings played (like SB and CS) come from the retrosheet play-by-play data and should be considered mostly complete from 1948 to 1973 and complete from then on.
Stats (PO,A,G, etc) for LF-CF-RF positions (since 1918) is taken from play-by-play or box score data as available.
Stats (PO,A,G,etc) for C,P,1B,2B,3B,SS,OF positions is taken from the official reported totals and may have been corrected at various times since their publication.
For detailed information on which games retrosheet is missing play-by-play from 1948 to 1973, please see their most wanted games list
For detailed information on the availability of data on this site by year, see our data coverage page

Sabermetric Fielding

Year	Tm	Lg	Age	Pos	Rtot	Rtot/yr	Rtz	Rtzhm	Rtzrd	Rdp
1959	PHI	NL	25	2B	-2	-2	-0	-6	6	-2
	1 Season			2B	-2	-2	-0	-6	6	-2
	1 Season			TOT	-2	-2	-0	-6	6	-2

Appearances

Year	Tm	Lg	Age	G	GS	Batting	Defense	P	C	1B	2B	3B	SS	LF	CF	RF	OF	DH	PH	PR
1959	PHI	NL	25	152	145	152	152	0	0	0	152	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	2
	1 Season			152	145	152	152	0	0	0	152	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	2

Appearances table is calculated solely from full RetroSheet play-by-play data available from 1973 on. A combination of RetroSheet (starting with the 1918 season) and non-RetroSheet data is used for other seasons.

Advanced Fielding -- 2B*

											Putouts				Assists					Errors					Double Plays
Year	Tm	Lg	Age	PA	RHB%	BIP%	GBIP%	Fld	F2O%	FC	Tot	Cgt	Frc	Tag	Tot	1B	2B	Hm	Rly	Tot	Cch	Fld	Thr	ROE	Tot	643	543	463	43	GB	GBs	GBr	LD	LDs	LDf
1959	PHI	NL	25	5314	55%	81%	29%	524	95%	4	342	148	131	63	402	341	46	3	10	12	1	10	1	10	72	28	13	19	0	61	20	41	9	5	3
	1 Season			5314	55%	81%	29%	524	95%	4	342	148	131	63	402	341	46	3	10	12	1	10	1	10	72	28	13	19	0	61	20	41	9	5	3
	MLB Averages				62%	80%	28%		93%

* Many Detailed Statistics are based on play-by-play accounts accumulated by RetroSheet. These totals may be incomplete (3.6% of all plays from 1918 to 1973 are missing or have incomplete accounts, click link for year and team summary) for some players prior to 1974 and even complete seasons may not match the official totals due to errors in both the official totals and the play-by-play accounts. Pre-1954 seasons have a substantial numbers of games missing play-by-play accounts and should be viewed as essentially incomplete.

Appearances on Leader Boards, Awards, and Honors

Stats are Year-Value-Rank · Glossary

Hall of Fame 2000 Veterans (inducted) Selected to HOF in 2000 by Veteran's Committee	Awards (yr lg award) 1984 AL Mgr of the year 1987 AL Mgr of the year	Def. Games as 2B s c a p y 1959 NL 152 (1st)	Putouts as 2B s c a p y 1959 NL 343 (5th)
Assists as 2B s c a p y 1959 NL 403 (5th)	Range Factor/9Inn as 2B† s c a p y 1959 NL 5.39 (3rd)	Fielding % as 2B s c a p y 1959 NL .984 (2nd)

Other Resources & Links

Error? Compare Search SABR's Baseball Index Other Links@google.com Baseball Library Baseball-Almanac.com Retrosheet The Baseball Cube The Baseball Page WhatIfSports: Sparky Anderson

Viewed 36,223 times through May 30, 2012.
Name and misspellings: Captain George Hook Lee Sparky Anderson

Player Page Tricks and Tips

Sum any set of rows by clicking anywhere (not red or blue) on the first and last rows of your selection. We will then compute the totals for the player between and including those two seasons.
Default Setting for this feature: Turn On / Turn Off
Summation of season totals only works for the initial case when the table is in year order. On a sorted table the results may get a bit goofy.

HIGHLIGHTING: Adding a range or series of player's career seasons or career game numbers (like '#1972:batting_standard', '#1970-1980-sum:batting_standard', or '#1998,1999,2001,2002,sum:pitching_standard') onto the end of a player page url causes the seasons to the highlighted and summed. After changing address bar, reload the page to see highlighting. This will work even in links e-mailed to others. Note that for tables with multiple pages the first table is the default. If you want to create a sum for a table other than the first one, select the rows and after the summation window appears click on "permanent link" link.

The play-by-play information both shown and used to create certain data sets was obtained free of charge from and is copyrighted by RetroSheet.

Automatic Player Linking / Statistical Sharing Tool / Basic Player Linking / Data Coverage

See Front Page for time of last update

Much of the play-by-play, game results, and transaction information both shown and used to create certain data sets was obtained free of charge from and is copyrighted by RetroSheet.

Win Expectancy, Run Expectancy, and Leverage Index calculations provided by Tom Tango of InsideTheBook.com, and co-author of The Book: Playing the Percentages in Baseball.

Total Zone Rating and Wins above Replacement calculations provided by Sean Smith of BaseballProjection.com.

Full-year historical Major League statistics provided by Pete Palmer and Gary Gillette of 24-7 Baseball.

Player head shots courtesy of David Davis. Many thanks to him. We have only selected seasons (players who debuted before 1960) for which we believe the image has reverted into the public domain. We will quickly remove any images for which that can be shown to not be the case.Please let us know if you are aware of any such images on this site.

Play Index Loading Photos from the George Grantham Bain Collection at the Library of Congress.

A Sports Reference Site: About Baseball Reference | Found a bug or have a suggestion?
Privacy Statement | Conditions & Terms of Service | Use of Data

Part of the USA TODAY Sports Media Group.