Great Willies of Major League Baseball

By Blaidd Drwg

Oh, get your mind out of the gutter, not that kind of Willie.

Last night, I had a wonderful time at the Everett Aqua Sox game with Coltrane and Annie S. of this blog fame (hey, 50% of the blog readership in one spot!). During the game (and after a couple of beers), we decided to pick a first name and name as many guys as we could who played baseball. The list we came up with quickly:

Willie Mays
Willie Keeler
Willie Bloomquist
Willie Stargell
Willie McGee
Willie Aikens

Not a bad list (well, except for Bloomquist). Surprisingly, there are 3 HOFers on that list (Mays, Keeler and Stargell); who would have thought that there would be that many guys in the Hall named Willie. Well, I decided to look it up on baseball-reference.com this morning and we missed another 3 (!!) Hall of Famers named Willie: Willie McCovey (how the heck did we miss “Stretch”), Bill Foster (a Negro Leaguer who apparently went by Willie), and Willie Wells (another Negro Leaguer who had the nickname “The Devil”). I have to admit, 6 players in the HOF who went by Willie is more than I would have ever guessed. In case you are wondering, the name with the most HOFers – Joe with 11, and, just for the heck of it – there is only one HOFer who went by the name of Mike – that would be Mike Schmidt.

Some of the other notable Willies that we missed:

Willie Randolph
Willie Horton
Willie Wilson
Willie Montanez
Willie Jones
Guillermo (Don’t Call Me Willie) Hernandez
Willie Davis

We did also come up with Willie Mays Hayes, but he doesn’t count unless you include fictional ballplayers.

Here is the complete list of Baseball Willies for your reading pleasure:   The Willie List