Lest We Forget: Hobie Landrith

The first thing you have to have is a catcher. Because if you don’t have a catcher, you’re going to have a lot of passed balls and you’re going to be chasing the ball back to the screen all day.

Casey Stengel on the decision to make Hobie Landrith the expansion New York Mets first pick.

So because of Stengel and being that #1 pick, Landrith will always be a key fgure in any book about the Mets, regardless of his limited time with the team.

Landrith passed away April 6 at the age of 93. According to The New York Times obituary by Richard Goldstein, “His death was announced on Saturday by Jay Horwitz, the Mets’ vice president of alumni public relations.” I kind of feel sorry for Horwitz; he’s going to be doing more and more of these. By a quick glance, Jay Hook, Craig Anderson, Ken MacKenzie, Galen Cisco, Felix Mantilla, Joe Christopher, Eddie Kranepool, Cliff Cook, Rick Herrscher, John DeMerit, Jim Marshall, and Roger Craig, the oldest extant Met at 93, are the only ones remaining from that 1962 squad.

Landrith played just 23 games for the Mets before being traded to the Baltimore Orioles for another legendary name, Marv Thronberry. All in all, he played for seven teams — The Reds, Cubs, Cardinals, Giants, Mets, Orioles, and Senators — over 14 seasons, batting .233 with 34 home runs and 203 RBIs in 772 games.

Because of the Topps scheduling, most Mets were depicted without hat or uniform for the 1962 set. In those years, the sets were released in seven series spread out over several months. Players whose cards appeared in the sixth and seventh series frequently benefited from the delay by appearing in their latest teams’ togs.

Here’s his story from SABR’s BioProject.

Tagged as: Hobie Landrith, New York Mets