George Altman obit

George Altman, who played in Negro Leagues, Majors and Japan, dies at 92

 He was not on the list.

George Altman, counted among the best-traveled players in baseball history, has passed away, Negro Leagues Baseball Museum president Bob Kendrick announced Tuesday. He was 92.

One of just three people ever to play in the Negro Leagues, AL/NL and Nippon Professional Baseball, Altman’s pro career began with the Kansas City Monarchs in 1955, where he was signed by legendary player-manager Buck O’Neil. When O’Neil took a scouting job with the Cubs ahead of the 1956 season, Altman was among the players he brought with him to the organization.

After a brief military conscription in the late 1950s, Altman made his big league debut with the Cubs on Opening Day of 1959. He enjoyed modest success at the Major League level, playing in parts of nine seasons with the Cubs, Cardinals and Mets. At his best, he made consecutive National League All-Star teams in 1961-62, hitting a combined .311 with 49 home runs and a .909 OPS over those two seasons.

Altman had a couple of especially notable moments within that period of brilliance; he recorded a pinch-hit home run in his first career All-Star Game at-bat in 1961 and weeks later would become the first player to have a multi-homer performance against future Hall of Famer Sandy Koufax.

Following the end of the 1962 season, the Cubs traded Altman to the Cardinals, at which point his Major League career stalled. Over the next five seasons from 1963-67, his performance suffered from injuries and increasingly limited playing time, and after spending most of the 1967 season in Triple-A, Altman, then 35 years old, signed with the Tokyo (later Lotte) Orions of the Japan Pacific League.

It was in Japan that he achieved another level of stardom, blossoming into a true slugging first baseman and outfielder; he’d spend eight seasons in NPB, hitting a combined .309/.378/.561 with 205 home runs in 935 games.

“I kept saying when I had a bad year, I would quit,” Altman told MLB.com’s Anthony Castrovince in 2023. “But actually, my best year ever was at 41.”

Ultimately it was a colon cancer diagnosis in the middle of his 1974 season that signaled the coming end of his playing career; after undergoing treatment Altman would return to play one more season with the Hanshin Tigers in 1975 before retiring.

After baseball, Altman began a secondary career as a commodities trader in Chicago and later retired to O’Fallon, Mo. with his wife, Etta.

He originally only played basketball at Tennessee State, as the school did not have a baseball team until his junior year. In his junior year, Naismith Memorial Hall of Fame coach John McClendon (who had actually played basketball under James Naismith) became the team's coach. Even before McClendon came on, Altman's Tennessee State team became the first HBCU school to participate in the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics (NAIA) national basketball tournament.

Altman's original plan after graduating college was to become a basketball coach, and he had been offered a position at Memphis’ Lemoyne College. But a Tennessee A & I official recommended him to the Kansas City Monarchs of the Negro American League. When he went for a tryout, he was immediately included on the team and his first professional baseball experience came with the Monarchs, where he played three months for the team in 1955. He then was signed by the Chicago Cubs in August 1955, on the recommendation of future Hall of Famer Buck O'Neil, the Monarchs player-manager who later became a Cubs scout in 1956.

 

Teams

Chicago Cubs (1959–1962)

St. Louis Cardinals (1963)

New York Mets (1964)

Chicago Cubs (1965–1967)

Tokyo / Lotte Orions (1968–1974)

Hanshin Tigers (1975)

Career highlights and awards

3× All-Star (1961, 1961², 1962²)