Heinie Manush

His father, George Manush, immigrated to the United States from Germany in 1878 and worked as a cabinet maker and carpenter for a railroad company.

His mother, Kate Manush, was born in Wisconsin, the daughter of German immigrants.

Manush was nicknamed "Heinie" due to his German ancestry.

He was one of eight children in the family, seven boys and one girl.

All seven boys took up baseball, five of them playing the game professionally.

Henry Emmett Manush (July 20, 1901 – May 12, 1971), nicknamed "Heinie", was an American baseball outfielder.

Manush was born in 1901 at Tuscumbia, Alabama, a city in the Florence–Muscle Shoals metropolitan area that is best known as the hometown of Helen Keller.

His brother Frank Manush was 18 years older than Heinie and played professional baseball from 1907 to 1921.

Manush was seven years old when Frank made his major league debut in 1908 and later recalled: "When I was as young as 7 or 8, Frank used to bring home all his baseball equipment and uniform. I would look at that weird paraphernalia and wish I could wear it. From then on, baseball was all I ever had on my mind."

Manush started high school in Tuscumbia but transferred as a senior to Massey Military Academy, located 80 miles northeast of Tuscumbia in Cornersville, Tennessee.

In 1918, Manush moved to Iowa to join another brother in the plumbing business.

He then moved to California in March 1919 and played semipro baseball with a club in Los Angeles.

He played professional baseball for 20 years from 1920 to 1939, including 17 years in Major League Baseball for the Detroit Tigers (1923–1927), St. Louis Browns (1928–1930), Washington Senators (1930–1935), Boston Red Sox (1936), Brooklyn Dodgers (1937–1938), and Pittsburgh Pirates (1938–1939).

A native of Tuscumbia, Alabama, Manush was one of the best batters in baseball in the 1920s and 1930s.

Manush began his professional career in 1920, playing six games for the Portland Beavers in the Pacific Coast League.

Moving to the Edmonton Eskimos in the Western Canada League in 1921, Manush hit .321 in 83 games.

In 1922, he played for the Omaha Buffaloes in the Western League, hitting 20 home runs and compiling a .376 batting average that was second in the league behind only Carl East.

After Manush's 1922 performance in Omaha, he was purchased by the Detroit Tigers.

In early February 1923, Manush returned a signed contract with the Tigers, joining a star-studded Detroit outfield that included future Hall of Famers Harry Heilmann and Ty Cobb, as well as reliable sluggers Bobby Veach (.327 batting average in 1922), Bob Fothergill (.322 average in 1922), and Ira Flagstead (.308 average in 1922).

During his rookie season with the Tigers, Manush played well enough to appear in 109 games, 79 as a left fielder, sharing the position with Veach.

He compiled a .334 batting average, tenth highest in the American League.

He also led the league with 17 times hit by pitch.

In 1924, Manush appeared in 120 games, 71 as the starting left fielder, and his batting average dropped 45 points to .289, though he again led the league with 16 times hit by pitch.

Ty Cobb later accepted responsibility for Manush's slump in 1924.

Cobb believed that, by studying the "science" of hitting, every batter could improve.

Accordingly, he took Manush aside for several days early in the 1924 season to work on improving Manush's technique and batting stance.

After working with Cobb, Manush's batting average and self-confidence plummeted.

Cobb eventually came to the conclusion that, like Babe Ruth, Manush was a "natural" hitter rather than a "scientific" one and that it was a mistake to try to change a natural hitter.

In 1925, Manush moved to center field as a backup to Cobb.

He compiled a .330 career batting average, won the American League batting championship in 1926 with a .378 batting average, finished one point short of a second batting championship in 1928, finished among the top four batters in the American League six times (1926, 1928–1929, and 1932–1934) and totaled more than 200 hits four times (1928–1929, 1932–1933).

In 1928, he finished second in the voting for the American League Most Valuable Player (MVP) award after leading the American League with 241 hits and 47 doubles, while also hitting 20 triples and compiling 367 total bases.

He led the American League with 356 putouts and a .992 fielding percentage in left field in 1928, and five double plays turned by a left fielder in 1935.

He was Again #2 in the MVP vote in 1929, albeit 'Unofficial' it was the same vote and system as before.

He also finished third in the MVP voting in 1932 and 1933 and was the leading batter on the 1933 Washington Senators team that won the American League pennant and lost the 1933 World Series to the New York Giants.

Manush compiled 7 five-hit games and 52 four-hit games in his 17-year major league career.

Manush was also a solid defensive outfielder, appearing in 2,008 major league games, 1,381 as a left fielder, 312 as a center fielder, and 153 as a right fielder.

After retiring as a player, Manush was a minor league manager from 1940 to 1945, a scout for the Boston Braves in the late 1940s and a coach for the Senators from 1953 to 1954.

He also scouted for the expansion Senators in the early 1960s.

He was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1964.

His 2,855 putouts in left field rank 21st in major league history.