Zack Wheat Autographs, Memorabilia & Collectibles

Full name Zachariah Davis Wheat
Born May 23, 1888, Hamilton, Missouri
Died March 11, 1972, Sedalia, Missouri
Buried at Forest Hill Cemetery, Kansas City, Missouri (Block 101, Lot 137, Grave 7)
First Game: September 11, 1909; Final Game: September 21, 1927
Bat: Left Throw: Right Height: 5' 10" Weight: 170
Brother of Mack Wheat

Selected to the Hall of Fame in 1959

ZACK WHEAT
This article was written by Eric Enders and is presented in part, courtesy of the Society for American Baseball Research

Zack Wheat remains the Dodgers all-time franchise leader in hits, doubles, triples, RBI, and total bases. Though he threw right-handed, Wheat was a natural left-handed hitter who corkscrewed his spikes into the dirt with a wiggle that became his trademark. Unlike most Deadball Era hitters, he held his hands way down by the knob of the bat, refusing to choke up. "There is no chop-hitting with Wheat, but a smashing swipe which, if it connects, means work for the outfielders," wrote one reporter. He was an outstanding first-ball hitter, and he was also so renowned as a curveball hitter that John McGraw reportedly had a standing order prohibiting his pitchers from throwing him benders.

But even after years of hitting .300, it was Wheat's stylish defense that won him the most admirers. "What Lajoie was to infielders, Zach Wheat is to outfielders, the finest mechanical craftsman of them all," Baseball Magazine crowed in 1917. "Wheat is the easiest, most graceful of outfielders with no close rivals." An extremely fast runner, Zack was as close to a five-tool player as anyone of his era. His only weaknesses were his poor base-stealing ability and proneness to injury (his tiny size 5 feet frequently caused nagging ankle injuries).

Zachariah Davis Wheat was born on May 23, 1888, at his family's farm near Hamilton, Missouri, sixty miles northeast of Kansas City. Missouri was still a wild frontier then; just six years earlier, Jesse James was murdered by a member of his own gang in nearby St. Joseph. Zack was the eldest of three sons, all of whom played professional baseball. The middle brother, Mack, spent five years as Zack's teammate with Brooklyn, while the youngest brother, Basil, was a longtime outfielder and catcher in the minors. Their father, Basil Sr., was a descendant of Moses Wheat, one of the Puritans who fled England and founded Concord, Massachusetts, in 1635, and their mother was said to be a full-blooded Cherokee. Zack was reluctant to discuss his Native American background, but his heritage was well-known in baseball circles. In an era that also produced Jim Thorpe and Chief Bender, Wheat's Indian blood was thought by some to be the primary reason for his excellence. "The lithe muscles, the panther-like motions of the Indian are his by divine right," Baseball Magazine wrote in 1917.