Mike Donlin got called up from lock up.
Donlin became the talk of the Class E California League by hitting .402 for the Santa Cruz Sandcrabs in the first half of the 1899 season. A writeup in The Sporting News got the attention of Cardinals’ manager Patsy Tebeau, who contacted Donlin with a major league contract offer.
“Donlin got the news from the Santa Cruz Jail, where he’d been incarcerated for public drunkenness,” his hometown Peoria Journal Star newspaper reported.
It appears Donlin was great at two things – baseball and drinking.
He hit .