artie wilson

Artie Wilson, former Birmingham Black Barons and Oakland Oaks shortstop, died last week at age 90.  He batted .402 in 1948; although he was not exactly the last man to bat .400 in professional baseball (depending on how you define the question, that man might be Aaron Pointer in 1961, Gary Redus in 1978, or Carlos Rivera in 2007, or various other Mexican League claimants, or maybe somebody else in some other league I missed entirely), he was one of the very few shortstops to do so.  He was an excellent player who, like so many others of his generation, never got a full shot at the big leagues.