He had played in more than 1,300 major league games and slugged nearly 200 home runs by the time he joined the Orioles in 1966. You would think Topps could get his name right.
Among the 34 guys who played for the Orioles during their magical 1966 season, Woodie Held carried one of the lightest workloads. A 34-year-old acquired from the Washington Senators before the season, he played in just 56 games, hit just one home run and scored just six runs all season. He joked later that his place on the bench gave him a great seat for watching the Orioles run away with the American League pennant and sweep the Dodgers in the World Series.
But Held wasn’t a bit player earlier in his career. Far from it.
A California native originally signed and developed by the Yankees in their heyday, he was a smallish power hitter who could run — an unusual combination of traits that intrigued scouts and managers. “He’s a very good player. The ball sings coming off his bat,” Yankees manager Casey Stengel once said of him, according to a Society of American Baseball Research profile of Held.
After the Yankees traded him to Kansas City in 1958, he hit 20 home runs in 92 games for the A’s, establishing himself as a quality major leaguer. After another trade, he became an everyday player with the Indians in 1959 and hit 127 home runs over the next six seasons while manning an array of positions in both the infield and outfield.
Although he swung hard and struck out a lot, he had a keen eye, which led to walks and a high on-base percentage. His offensive skills and defensive versatility kept him on the field. “We haven’t had a player like him who can fill in at so many spots,” Senators manager Gil Hodges said after Washington acquired him before the 1965 season. (His seven seasons with the Indians were so good that in 2001 he was named one of the club’s 100 greatest players.)
The Orioles weren’t looking for a frontline contributor when they acquired him from the Senators a year later, but they were looking for another power bat and hadn’t traded for Frank Robinson yet. That deal with the Reds unfolded weeks after Held was acquired. If it had fallen through, Held would have played a lot more in 1966.
A couple of things struck me when I dug Held’s 1966 Topps card out of my decades-old collection. His piercing blue eyes certainly stood out, as did my mysterious scrawling on the front of the card. Wielding a marker as a 10-year-old, I’d crossed out his position (“outfield”) and written the number 2. It might’ve made sense if he’d ever played catcher, even in just an emergency capacity. But he didn’t.
Anyway, what really stood out to me was the first name Topps gave him — Woody with a “y” on the end as opposed to “ie.”
Oops.
Woodson George Held went by Woodie when he played and is recalled as such everywhere you look now, most prominently on baseball-reference.com. Nonetheless, baseball card companies seemingly couldn’t make up their minds on the subject over the years. He was Woodie on some cards and Woody on others.
It could’ve caused identity issues, but there’s no record of Held ever caring in the least. He put the cardboard confusion behind him and had a great life after baseball. He raced snowmobiles, moved to Wyoming, operated a dude ranch and left 15 grandchildren and 13 great-grandchildren when he died at age 77 in 2009.
I tried to reach him in 1986 when I wrote a series of articles for the Baltimore Sun about the players on the 1966 Orioles. He was hard to locate in the pre-internet years, but I tracked him down in Wyoming and was told by a source to leave a message for him at a bar.
I did.
Woodie (not Woody) never called back.
As part of my 1986 Baltimore Sun series on the ‘66 Orioles, I tried to identify what every player on the team was doing two decades later. I succeeded with everyone except Held and Sam Bowens.
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