Presidential Players

In honor of Abraham Lincoln (whose birthday was yesterday, February 12th) and George Washington (whose birthday is coming up on February 22nd), I made a list of MLB players who were named after–or accidentally shared the same names as–presidents.

The list below is ordered chronologically by president. I counted the number of players named after each president and listed all the notable players named after that president (using the very generous standard of just 10 Baseball-Reference WAR for “notable”). If there were no “notable” namesakes, as was usually the case, I picked out the best (or least bad, or longest-lasting) one.

My criteria were that the players had to have both the president’s first & last names in their name somewhere. In most cases, the players had the president’s names for their first & middle names. In a few cases, the player already had the same last name as the president; these qualified if either their first or middle name matched with the president’s first name. Some of the popular presidential namesakes are surprising, as are some of the presidents who didn’t inspire any future major leaguers.

George Washington

Number of MLB namesakes: 20

 (click to see the full list)
Best namesakes: George Bradley (17.8 WAR), George Harper (15.9 WAR), Jumbo McGinnis (13.4 WAR), George Case (12.9 WAR)

John Adams

Number of MLB namesakes: 1
Best namesake: Bert Adams

(-2.6 WAR) by default; Mike Adams (born: Jon Michael Adams) is debatable.

Thomas Jefferson

Number of MLB namesakes: 8

Best namesakes: Tommy Bridges (50.7 WAR) and Tom York (21.0 WAR)

Bridges’ full name is Thomas Jefferson Davis Bridges. Surprised his parents could fit “John C. Calhoun” in there somewhere.

James Madison

Number of MLB namesakes: 4

Best namsake: All had a negative career WAR… I guess Jim Pearce (-0.8 WAR) because he played the most seasons (5)

James Monroe

Number of MLB namesakes: 1
Best namesake: Larry Monroe

(0.1 WAR); Jamie Brown (real name: Jamie Monroe Brown) debatably would qualify

John Quincy Adams

Number of MLB namesakes: 1
Best namesake: Charles Strick

(-0.3 WAR)… he apparently went by John Quincy Adams Strick for a time

Andrew Jackson

Number of MLB namesakes: 5

Best namesake: Andy Leonard (7.6 WAR)

Martin Van Buren

Number of MLB namesakes: 1
Best namesake: Marty Walker

(-0.4 WAR)

William Henry Harrison

Number of MLB namesakes: 5

Best namesake: Billy Myers (12.8 WAR)

John Tyler

Number of MLB namesakes: 1
Best namesake: Johnnie Tyler

(0.5 WAR)

James K. Polk

Number of MLB namesakes: 0

Zachary Taylor

Number of MLB namesakes: 3

Best namesake: All have negative WAR, so I’ll go with Indians prospect Zach McAllister (-0.6 WAR but time to fix that)

Millard Fillmore

Number of MLB namesakes: 0

Franklin Pierce

Number of MLB namesakes: 2

Best namesake: Monty Stratton (9.5 WAR)

James Buchanan

Number of MLB namesakes: 2

Best namesake: Brian Buchanan (-0.2 WAR)

Abraham Lincoln

Number of MLB namesakes: 3

Best namesake: Sweetbread Bailey , I guess (-2.0 WAR); the others barely played in MLB

Andrew Johnson

Number of MLB namesakes: 1
Best namesake: Kelly Johnson

(15.2 WAR and counting)

Ulysses S. Grant

Number of MLB namesakes: 3

, plus a special non-MLB player (see below)
Best namesakes: Negro Leaguer & Baseball Hall of Famer Frank Grant

Rutherford B. Hayes

Number of MLB namesakes: 0

James A. Garfield

Number of MLB namesakes: 1
Best namesake: James Durham

(-0.4 WAR)

Chester A. Arthur

Number of MLB namesakes: 3

Best namesake: Chester Emerson (0.2 WAR)

Grover Cleveland

Number of MLB namesakes: 4

Best namesake: Hall of Famer Pete Alexander (104.9 WAR)

Benjamin Harrison

Number of MLB namesakes: 2

, plus a special non-MLB case (see below)
Best namesake: Negro Leaguer & Baseball Hall of Famer Ben “Old Reliable” Taylor

William McKinley

Number of MLB namesakes: 3

Best namesake: Pinky Hargrave (6.1 WAR)

Theodore Roosevelt

Number of MLB namesakes: 1
Best namesake: Ted Lilly

(27.2 WAR)

William Howard Taft

Number of MLB namesakes: 0

Woodrow Wilson

Number of MLB namesakes: 3

Best namesake: Woody Williams (2.7 WAR)… the one who played in the 30′s and 40′s, not more recent one

Warren G. Harding

Number of MLB namesakes: 0

Calvin Coolidge

Number of MLB namesakes: 2

Best namesake: Cal McLish (6.1 WAR)

McLish’s full name is awesome: Calvin Coolidge Julius Caesar Tuskahoma McLish.

Herbert Hoover

Number of MLB namesakes: 0

Franklin D. Roosevelt

Number of MLB namesakes: 1
Best namesake: Ted Wieand

(-0.4 WAR)

Harry S Truman

Number of MLB namesakes: 0

Dwight D. Eisenhower

Number of MLB namesakes: 0

John F. Kennedy

Number of MLB namesakes: 2

Best namesake: One John Kennedy had -0.2 WAR and the other played a lot longer but had -4.3 WAR. You pick. Both players were born well before the president, so their names are just coincidences caused by having a common name. I don’t care, though; they make the list.

Lyndon Johnson

Number of MLB namesakes: 0

Richard Nixon

Number of MLB namesakes: 1
Best namesake: Al Nixon

(-1.3 WAR) Another coincidence, as Albert Richard Nixon played in the 10′s and 20′s.

Gerald Ford

Number of MLB namesakes: 0

Jimmy Carter

Number of MLB namesakes: 0

Ronald Reagan

Number of MLB namesakes: 0 …but there’s this minor leaguer

.

George Bush

Number of MLB namesakes: 0 …but there’s this minor leaguer

.

Bill Clinton

Number of MLB namesakes: 1
Best namesake: Bill Zepp

(0.8 WAR)

George W. Bush

Number of MLB namesakes: 0 (see his dad’s entry)

Barack Obama

Number of MLB namesakes: None, obviously. The closest I could come is a combo of Lou Brock

and Sherman Obando . Give this one a few decades, though; I heard that Barack was a really trendy name in ’08 and ’09.

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What surprised me the most is how many namesakes some of the mediocre mid-19th-century presidents had, relative to some of the more heralded presidents. For instance, there were more “Grover Clevelands” than John Adamses, Teddy Roosevelts, and Franklin Roosevelts combined. And you can be sure that anyone named “Grover Cleveland ____” was not named by accident. (Some of the William Harrisons and Benjamin Harrisons, though, might be accidental.)

Overall, 28 of the 44 presidents had at least one MLB namesake. The ratio was much higher, though, for the early presidents. The first 10 presidents all had at least 1 namesake, as did 23 of the first 26 (through Teddy Roosevelt).

This makes sense, since the earliest presidents are among the most famous, and the late 19th-century presidents were around when baseball was becoming a popular professional sport. Plus, they’ve had more time to inspire namesakes.

I’d expect that some of the more recent presidents will get namesakes, eventually. However, they’ll probably never catch up to the Washingtons and Jeffersons. Anecdotally, anyway, it seems that presidential names have fallen out of fashion. The only active player who has an indisputably non-accidental presidential name is Ted Lilly (born Theodore Roosevelt Lilly).