Last Remaining Teammates of the All-Time Greats (MLB)

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At any rate, DiMaggio. He’s both one of the games' iconic greats and someone who retired such a long time ago that there aren’t too many of his teammates left. His last season was 1951, 62 years ago. His last game is about as close to us in time as it is to the Oklahoma land rush.

From those Yankees teams through 1951, there are exactly 13 survivors. Two of those survivors are Hall of Famers. Longtime Yankee ace Whitey Ford went 9-1 as a rookie for the 1950 Yankees. At age 84, Ford is the second-youngest surviving DiMaggio teammate, behind only Bob Wiseler, whoever he is.

Even more well-known that Ford is his old battery mate, Yogi Berra. Famous for his on-field ability and off-field mis-speakings, Berra won 10 world titles, more than any other player. He turned 88 years old on Mothers’ Day. Most of DiMaggio’s other survivors are forgotten role players and marginal major leaguers from the late 1940s and early 1950s Yankees squads.

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Two terrific players retired in 1947, and here’s where we run into the first player on the verge of fading completely from memory into history. Longtime Giants star Mel Ott was the first NL player ever to hit 500 home runs, and he has only one former teammate left alive: Charlie Mead. When he passes, there will be none left.

The other first-rate player to retire in 1947 is Hank Greenberg, and his teammates have had better health. Eight of them are still alive, including Hall of Fame slugger Ralph Kiner, who was Greenberg’s teammate in his last season with the 1947 Pirates. His most famous surviving Tigers teammate is a player no one associates with Detroit: pitcher Billy Pierce. The Tigers traded him to the White Sox, where he later became a teammate of Appling.

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Let’s take it back a few more years to 1930, when a trio of early Hall of Famers retired: Eddie Collins, Pete Alexander, and George Sisler. Collins, a four-decade second baseman with well over 3,000 hits, was last survived by first baseman Joe Hauser. The former Philadelphia A’s infielder died at age 98 on July 11, 1997.

Alexander is in the conversation for best pitcher of the 20th century, and ironically his career ended on perhaps the worst pitching staff of the 20th century, the 1930 Phillies. Another member of that Godforsaken staff was Ray Benge, who departed on June 27, 1997.

Sisler isn’t as big a name as either Alexander or Collins, and I’d skip over him if it wasn’t for the oddity of his last surviving teammate. Whereas almost every player’s last surviving teammate is someone he played with at the very end of his career, in Sisler’s case his last living teammate was someone from his rookie season. As a 22-year-old rookie with the 1915 Browns, he was a teammate with a 24-year-old pitcher named Chet "Red" Hoff. As it happened, Hoff became the longest living pro player ever, dying at age 107 on Sept. 17, 1998. Sisler was barely younger than his last living teammate—incredible.

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