Luke Appling

Lucius Benjamin Appling (April 2, 1907 – January 3, 1991), nicknamed "Old Aches and Pains", was an American professional baseball shortstop who played 20 seasons in Major League Baseball for the Chicago White Sox (1930–1950). He was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1964.

Born in North Carolina, Appling briefly attended Oglethorpe College. He was signed by the minor league Atlanta Crackers in 1930 and debuted with the Chicago White Sox later that year. He interrupted his career to serve in World War II in 1944 and 1945. He played for Chicago until 1950, then was a minor league manager and major league coach for many years. He served one stint as an interim major league manager in 1967. He died in Georgia in 1991.

Early life and career Appling was born in High Point, North Carolina. He attended Fulton High School in Atlanta, Georgia. He later said that he had been lefthanded, a trait that he shared with his father, until he was in high school. At that point, he said that he became righthanded because he wanted to play shortstop.

Appling attended Oglethorpe College in Atlanta for two years. In 1930, the Oglethorpe baseball team was undefeated in a 15-game season; in his last game at Oglethorpe, Appling hit three home runs against Mercer University. Appling signed with the Atlanta Crackers of the Southern League that year. He was a good hitter in his first year, but committed 42 errors in 104 games. The Chicago Cubs showed some interest at first, but decided not to sign him, and the White Sox ended up purchasing him from the Crackers for $20,000.

MLB playing career

Early career Appling appeared in only six games for the White Sox in 1930. He hit for a .232 batting average in 96 games in 1931. In 1933 his average increased from .274 to .322 in his first of nine straight .300 seasons. He finished second in the AL Most Valuable Player voting and earned his first All-Star Game selection. He also turned a league-leading 119 double plays.

Later career

Appling hit .317 in 1937 as the White Sox finished in third place in the AL. He played in 81 games in 1938, missing much of the season with a broken leg.

In 1940, Appling hit .348 with a career-high 13 triples. Appling won another batting title in 1943 with a .328 average and also led the league in OBP that year (.419).

Appling was famous among his teammates for complaining about minor ailments such as a sore back, a weak shoulder, shin splints, or a sprained finger. While much of this complaining was probably for show it earned him the nicknames "Old Aches and Pains" and "Libby", the latter after blues singer Libby Holman. "His constant stream of complaints might have become intolerable to his teammates if Appling had not developed a novel remedy", wrote Robert McG. Thomas Jr. of The New York Times. "He simply took his misery out on opposing pitchers, rapping out 2,749 hits, all but 587 of them singles."

Later life

Appling was a successful minor league manager after his playing days were over, winning pennants with Memphis in the Southern Association and Indianapolis of the American Association and being named minor league manager of the year in 1952.

Beginning in 1954, he managed the unaffiliated Richmond Virginians, a Class AAA team in the International League which affiliated with the New York Yankees in 1958 but after 1964 moved and became the Toledo Mud Hens.

Appling's only chance to manage at the major league level was as a late-season replacement for Alvin Dark as manager of the Kansas City Athletics in 1967, which resulted in his major league managerial record of just 10-30.

Appling was a major league coach for the Cleveland Indians, Detroit Tigers, Baltimore Orioles, Athletics and White Sox during the 1960s and early 1970s.

In 1970, the Chicago chapter of the Baseball Writers' Association of America named Appling the greatest player in the history of the White Sox. In 1981, Lawrence Ritter and Donald Honig included him in their book The 100 Greatest Baseball Players of All Time.

On July 19, 1982, Appling played in the initial 1982 Cracker Jack Old Timers game (1982-1990) at Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Stadium in Washington, D.C., where the then 75-year-old Hall of Fame shortstop hit a home run off Warren Spahn in the first inning into the left field bleachers, the ball having traveled 265 feet.

On January 3, 1991, two days after retiring from the Atlanta coaching staff, Appling was in a hospital in Cumming, Georgia, suffering from an abdominal aortic aneurysm. He died during emergency surgery.