A's History: The Home Run Hitting Former New York Yankee

Jason Burke | Dec 3, 2024

Aug 14, 2023; Atlanta, Georgia, USA; A detailed view of a New York Yankees hat and glove on the bench against the Atlanta Braves in the third inning at Truist Park. Mandatory Credit: Brett Davis-Imagn Images / Brett Davis-Imagn Images

A couple of days ago we mentioned an aside about how the A's, then in Kansas City, traded Roger Maris, before he set the AL home run record, to the New York Yankees in an era of Athletics baseball that kind of flies under the radar. Part of the return in that deal, Norm Siebern, just so happened to be a part of today's Daily Walkoff answer.

If you'd like to play along, here is the link, and if you don't know what we're talking about, here is the board for today's trivia with the names out of order. The game is to put the names in the correct columns.

A's Daily Walkoff 12/3 / Daily Walkoff

The complete trade was Roger Maris, Kent Hadley, and Joe DeMaestri to the Yankees for Don Larsen, Hank Bauer, Marv Throneberry, and Norm Siebern.

Siebern was 26 when the A's acquired him, and had won the Gold Glove award in 1958, with the trade occuring ahead of the 1960 campaign. Arguably the best years of his career ended up coming as a member of Kansas City. In the four years that he was with the club, he racked up 11.2 bWAR, hit .289 with a .381 OBP and averaged a 126 OPS+.

As a hint for today's Daily Walkoff, he also ended up hitting 78 of his 132 career home runs with the A's. While there have been a lot of players that have manned first base over the years that have hit more home runs than Siebern in an A's uniform, the big difference here is how often the leaders played first base. It's that one little caveat that shoots Siebern way up the home run leaderboard.

At the top of the list is of course Mark McGwire with 363 homers in an A's uniform, followed by Jimmie Foxx with 302. There's a bit of a dip before Jason Giambi at No. 3, who finished with 198, followed by Matt Olson's 142.

Two more recent first basemen that were close to making the cut were Brandon Moss, who hit 76 dingers in 376 games, and Scott Hatteberg, who hit 49, including the one that clinched the A's 20th consecutive victory, in 569 games played.

After four seasons with the club, Siebern was traded to the Baltimore Orioles for Jim Gentile and $25,000. Gentile spent a year and a half with the A's before being traded himself to the Houston Astros in 1965.

As for the rest of the Maris trade, Larsen went 1-10 with a 5.38 ERA in his first year with the club, then was traded to the Chicago White Sox in June of 1961. He held a 5.20 ERA across 30 games for the A's.

Hank Bauer was entering his age 37 season at the time of the deal, and finished out his career with the A's putting up bWARs of -1.7 and -0.4. He was released by the A's in July of 1961, funnily enough, while Maris was chasing history.

Marv Throneberry was a league average hitter in his year and a half with the A's, and was also traded to the Orioles, with Gene Stephens coming back in the deal. He played 67 games with Kansas City and hit .203 before being sent to the Chicago White Sox in an unknown transaction.

The answers for today's trivia are down below.

A's Solved Daily Walkoff 12/3 / Daily Walkoff