On July 12th, 1987, Shortstop Walt Weiss played in his first Major League Game.

I have said it here before, the most fun I have writing about baseball history on ClimbingSky is when I get to write about below-the-radar players that I think deserve to be more “remembered.”

Walt Weiss is one of those kind of players. He was a terrific shortstop and won the American League Rookie of the Year award in 1988.

Strength up the middle (catcher, shortstop, centerfielder) and pitching are what winning teams are built upon. The OAKLAND Athletics had Walt Weiss at short in their glory years. He is one of the big reasons that they won a lot of baseball games.

Looking at his Baseball Reference page, I was reminded that he only played half his 14-year career for OAKLAND. I really only remember the Athletic years. But that is not surprising since the last part of his career was spent on National League teams in the days before there was Inter-League play.

Weiss, who is younger than I am, was born in Tuxedo, New York in 1963. Looking at the Wikipedia page for Tuxedo, New York (a town of 3,811 founded in the 1700s), Walt Weiss is the one notable person listed as being from there. I hope they have some kind of sign acknowledgment.

A lifetime .258-hitter, Weiss was in the lineup for his glove, not his bat. In my memory, he was a Twins-Killer getting to a lot of balls that seemed like they should have been hits.

Memory, of course, is not always a reliable narrator. When I look at his defensive stats they do not look all that impressive. Especially if you compare them to a contemporary defensive wizard like Ozzie Guillen.

Since I do not really understand enough about defensive stats to know what they truly measure and cannot measure, I will rely on what matters most to me, my memories. And in my memory, Weiss will always be a prototype of the perfect shortstop.