Gair Allie
Gair Roosevelt Allie (1931- )

Few players were recalled so long for so little – a .199 batting average in one season (1954) with the lowly Pittsburgh Pirates. His unusual first name kept this infielder's alive in my memory. That and his short stay with the minor league Syracuse Chiefs long after Pittsburgh let him go. Like the pop fly that sent Allie back back back back toward the outfield, only to have the wind-blown ball drop on the infield dirt. Grandstand analyists dismissed it as a case of a guy trying too hard. We wished him well because his name, at least, belongs in Cooperstown.

Flash Archdeacon
Maurice John Archdeacon (1898-1954)

I missed this name the first few times I scanned The Baseball Encyclopedia, but I'm certainly glad I finally found it. I haven't gathered a whole lot of information on Archdeacon, but found enough to give him his own page, not for his name, but for his 1920s claim to fame. See Flash.

Rugger Ardizoia
Rinaldo Joseph Ardizoia (1919- )

The pitcher, a native of Oleggio, Italy, lived his dream in 1947 when he made one appearance with the New York Yankees, working two innings in relief, giving up four hits and two runs. He then returned to the Pacific Coast League to resume a very successful minor league career.

Hank Arft
Henry Irven Arft (1922-2002)

The St. Louis Brown first baseman (1948-52) was stuck with an obvious nickname: Bow-Wow. He played 300 games in his five-season major league career, most of them in 1950 and '51. His batting average for those two seasons was .264, which made him one of the team's better hitters.

Arft once said that playing for the Browns had its rewards, especially after showman Bill Veeck took over the franchise. "Only a Brown can say he played alongside a midget and in a game managed by the spectators."

Orie Arntzen
Orie Edgar Arntzen (1909-70)

They called him Old Folks because he was one of the oldest rookies in major league history, a 33-year-old pitcher whose availability during World War II got him a spot on the roster of the 1943 Philadelphia Athletics, a team that lost 105 games. Arntzen fit right in, with a 4-13 record.

Early in his career, in 1933, he played on what is considered one of the top 100 minor league teams of all-time – Davenport (Iowa) of the Misisissippi Valley League. The team won 82 games, lost only 32. Somehow Arntzen managed to have a losing record, 2-6. Two seasons later, with Norfolk of the Nebraska State League, he had a 10-10 record and led the league in strike outs.

Arntzen kept playing after his stint in Philadelphia. The times were different then. There were minor league teams everywhere and most of them featured an interesting mixture of young players who hoped to go on to bigger things and old players who didn't want to quit.

And so it was that in 1949, at age 39, Orie Arntzen pitched for the Albany (NY) Senators of the Eastern League, about two steps down for the majors. No matter, Orie Arntzen had the season of his life. He won his first 15 games, and was within two victories of the league record when he ran into Binghamton and a young left-hander named Whitey Ford. Arntzen shook off the loss and won 10 of his next 11 decisions, finishing the season with 25 wins, two losses.

For that, Arntzen was named the 1949 Minor League Player of the Year, which is noted in a display at the Hall of Fame in Cooperstown.

He kept playing until 1951 when he managed the Duluth Dukes and had a 12-3 record as a pitcher. In all, Arntzen won 198 minor league games.

Yo-Yo Arroyo
Luis Enrique Arroyo (1927- )

The 5-foot-8 left-hander arrived in the major leagues in 1955 with the St. Louis Cardinals, went to Pittsburgh where he switched from starting to relief pitching. After a stint in Cincinnati, Arroyo landed in heaven, playing with the 1961 New York Yankees. He had a standout year, posting a 15-5 record, adding a victory in the World Series sweep of Cincinnati.

Casper Asbjornson
Robert Anthony Asbjornson (1909-70)

The Concord (MA) native was just 19 when he made his major league debut as a catcher, playing six games with the Boston Red Sox in 1928. Sounds like a dream come true for a Concord boy, but in those days the Sox fielded miserable teams, finishing last for six consecutive seasons, starting in 1925.

The next season Asbjornson played 17 games and batted .103. That was too low even for the Red Sox. However, in 1931, with the Cincinnati Reds, the catcher hit a solid .305 in 45 games.

Alas, his major league days came to an end in 1932 when his batting average was .172 in 29 games. One of his hits was his first and only big league home run. He also made it into the record book that June when he became the second out in the only triple play of the season, against Brooklyn.

There's some confusion over his name. The Baseball Encyclopedia lists him as Asby Asbjornson, making no mention of Casper, which apparently was his nickname. Most sources I found online indicated his last name was legally changed to Asby. I assume Asbjornson is pronounced As-B'YORN-son (think tennis great Bjorn Borg or singer Bjork).

Jake Atz
John Jacob Zimmerman (1879-1945 )

More name confusion here. Some sources say his given name was Jacob Henry Atz. However, most say he changed his name from Zimmerman to Atz after an unfortunate incident early in his baseball career reminded him it's often inconvenient to have a last name that begins with Z.

He was a second baseman on a North Carolina minor league team that folded before the season ended. The owner announced he'd pay as many players as he could – in alphabetical order. He ran out of cash before he got to Zimmerman. That's when the player decided to have his name legally changed to Atz.

It makes for a good story that might well be true. However, it seems to me there's a possibility the name change was made for the sake of Atz's second job – vaudeville comedian. (He was billed Leave 'em Laughing Jakey.) Atz certainly sounds like a funnier last name than Zimmerman.

Why Atz? I've found no explanation, but my guess is it comes from a relative's initials, which in a way keeps Zimmerman part of his name.

Atz gave up comedy to concentrate on baseball, and in 1902 spent a few days in the American League with Washington, then known as the Nationals, which must have irked team owners in the older National League, men who didn't appreciate how the rival league suddenly materialized in 1901. (Years later Washington would be called The Senators, though the team that joined the National League in 2005 reverted to the earlier nickname.)

His Washington visit was brief – Atz had a single in 10 at bats. He returned to the minor leagues until 1907 when he was signed by the Chicago White Sox and played three games for them near the end of the season. Atz hung around Chicago for two more years, playing 118 games at second base in 1909 and hitting .236, which seems feeble until you dig deeper and discover that was 15 points higher than the team batting average of .221. Atz's season – and his major league career – ended prematurely, thanks to a Walter Johnson fastball that nailed him on his left hip. It was the last pitch Atz ever saw against major league pitching.

He was back in the minor leagues a year later, recovered from his hip injury, but not quite the player he used to be. Then in 1911 he made the career move that would earn him a place in baseball history – he became a manager for Providence of the Eastern League, replacing Jimmy Collins, a former third baseman who'd wind up in the Hall of Fame 34 years later.

Atz's managerial career got off to a rough start (Providence fired him at the end of the 1911 season), but he'd soon realize he'd found his calling. He spent 27 seasons managing in the minor leagues, most of them in the Texas League where his Fort Worth Panthers won six pennants in a row, which earned him a spot in the league's Hall of Fame.

Minor league baseball's website lists the 100 best minor league teams of all-time. You'll find that list in the history section of http://minorleaguebaseball.com

You'll notice that three teams in the top 20 (and four teams in the top 33) were managed by Jake Atz.

Elden Auker
Elden Auker (1910-2006)

His name suggests a character in a spy thriller, but this Elden Auker was a pitcher who won 130 games in his 10-year major league career (1933-42). He spent six seasons with the Detroit Tigers, one with the Boston Red Sox and finished with the St. Louis Browns. His best season: 1935, when he had a 17-9 record.

Auker stood 6-foot-2 and weighed 194 pounds, fairly big at the time, but he was not a strikeout pitcher, averaging fewer than three per game, not unusual for the 1930s. A football injury to his arm had forced Auker to develop an unorthodox sidearm, almost underhand delivery, which made him one of baseball's few submarine pitchers.

Auker's nickname was Big Six, but his size had nothing to do with it. He had starred in football, basketball and baseball at Kansas State University (1929-32) then a member of the Big Six Conference with Kansas, Missouri, Nebraska, Iowa State and Oklahoma. Auker was all-conference in all three sports. Thus his nickname. He is still widely regarded as the greatest athlete in Kansas State history.

As recently as the spring of 2006 Auker was doing interviews, often on the subject of Babe Ruth. At the time Auker was the last surviving pitcher who ever faced Ruth in a major league game. However, on August 4 that year Auker died about six weeks shy of his 96th birthday.

One other thing: the spelling of Auker's first name. For years I saw it as Eldon, but apparently is should have been Elden. That's how it appeared in his obituaries and on the Kansas State website. And I've got to figure Auker's college knows the correct spelling.

Joe Azcue
Jose Joaquin Azcue y Lopez (1939- )

Cuban-born Azcue made his major league debut with Cincinnati in 1960, catching 14 games for the Reds, hitting .097. Two trades and three years later he arrived in Cleveland where he batted .284, getting so many clutch hits that he was facetiously dubbed The Immortal Azcue.

It was in Cleveland that he teamed with another Cuban native, pitcher Luis Tiant, who felt he performed better when Azcue was catching him. Two other pitchers who had good luck with Azcue behind the plater were Sonny Siebert, who pitched a no-hitter against Washington on June 10, 1966, and Clyde Wright of the California Angels, who threw a no-hitter against Oakland on July 3, 1970.

It was another game against Washington, on July 29, 1968, that put Azcue's name in the baseball history books when his line drive to Senator shortstop Ron Hansen resulted in the major leagues' first unassisted triple play in 41 years.

Azcue remained a popular member of the Indians until 1969 when he began the end-of-the-career shuffle, going from Cleveland to Boston to California to Milwaukee where he played his final 11 major league games in 1972 – after being a holdout for the entire 1971 season.

• Favorite baseball names index: