Happy Birthday Boy! Bobby Wallace would have turned 148 this week

On occasion, Big League Stew honors a birthday boy per week by taking a longer look at his career. Please join us in lighting the candles. Bobby Wallace may be the greatest shortstop you've never heard of. "Perhaps the greatest defensive shortstop of his generation," as he is called by Scott Schul of the Society for American Baseball Research, Wallace is little-remembered today because he played 20 of his 25 seasons with two defunct teams, the Cleveland Spiders (who folded after 1899) and the St. Louis Browns (who moved to Baltimore in 1954). Moreover, Wallace played nine of his 25 seasons before the establishment of the modern World Series in 1903. Along with George Sisler and Rick Ferrell, he is one of only three representatives of the St. Louis Browns in the Hall of Fame. What's interesting is that Wallace left Cleveland under shady circumstances. The owners of the Spiders also owned the St. Louis Perfectos (who were renamed the Cardinals in 1900), and they deci...