Month: January 2014

Loyal VORG reader Jeff Gelman emailed me recently:

A short time after his call-up to the majors I read that Andy Pettitte had become just the second major leaguer with 4 t’s in his last name, joining Mickey Tettleton. I don’t know if anyone else has since joined this club . . .

Anyhow, I thought that perhaps you’d research which player last names contain the most of each letter. In the event of a mega-tie, perhaps an indication of the number of players and which one made the most recent major league debut?

In the interest of being thorough, I compiled the record-holders for first, last and combined names, using the Lahman Baseball Database as a name/spelling source (we’re going by how they were referred to in their careers, not necessarily their given name). Each table below lists the letter tallied, the “record” for most of that letter in the name, the number of players sharing that record, and the most recent debut of any such player.

In the first name group, we’ve previously written about Atahualpa Severino. Severino is one of only three players to have a “letter record” all to himself. Meanwhile, no “2 V” player has suited up since Gavvy Cravath in 1908:

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