Dale Alexander played Major League Baseball for the Detroit Tigers and the Boston Red Sox from 1929 to 1933. He achieved a lifetime batting average of .331, with 2,450 plate appearances.

Throughout his career, Alexander exhibited humility and gratitude — even when he was summarily benched in April, 1932 by Tigers’ manager Bucky Harris and then traded to the Boston Red Sox in June of the same year. What happened next gave Alexander every reason to remind Harris what a substantial mistake that turned out to be.

In his 18 years of playing professional baseball, from 1924 to 1942, Alexander hit under .300 in only two seasons, including his final season in 1942, when he only made 19 plate appearances. Alexander is one of thousands of MLB players whose careers began and ended, in the words of Ernest Hemmingway, in reference to the sunrise, “gradually then suddenly.” In my opinion, Alexander’s MLB career ended too “suddenly.”

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