[Mick]

I'm sure that Johnnie Lemaster was a fine person. But he was the worst shortstop in the history of baseball. And everybody knew it and said it. The Giants knew it too and he was gone.

Not really.  The Giants kept him on their roster from 1975 to 1985, and he played 100+ games for them for seven years in a row.  He was so unappealing to the Giants fans and they booed him so loud, long and often that in 1979 he went to the plate with "BOO" on the back of his jersey -- and played for the Giants for six more years after that.  In 1985, he played for the Giants, Pirates and Indians, and all three teams finished last.  Incidentally, LeMaster was the sixth overall pick in the 1973 MLB draft, but it was a very, very weak draft.  Dave Winfield and Robin Yount were the stars, both picked before LeMaster.  Eight of the 24 1st round draft picks never made the majors.  I only recognized 1/2 dozen others.  Of course, there were lots of good picks in later rounds, including Mike Krukow (8th) and Jack Clark (13th).

As an interesting side note, LeMaster was on a very cool 1987 Oakland A's team with Canseco, rookie Mark McGuire, Reggie Jackson in his last year playing baseball, Dave Henderson, Terry Steinbach, Carney Lansford, Dwayne Murphy, Ron Cey, Dave Stewart, Gary Lavelle and Dennis Eckersley just making the transition to reliever.  they had 1,679,000 in attendance that year, 200k more than 2017. 

That team hit 199 home runs.* 

*If you're a Giants fan, that's when a batter hits the ball so hard it goes out of the playing field and the batter is entitled to run around all the bases and score himself.  It is a legal play.

[Mick]

I'm sure that Johnnie Lemaster was a fine person. But he was the worst shortstop in the history of baseball. And everybody knew it and said it. The Giants knew it too and he was gone.

Not really.  The Giants kept him on their roster from 1975 to 1985, and he played 100+ games for them for seven years in a row.  He was so unappealing to the Giants fans and they booed him so loud, long and often that in 1979 he went to the plate with "BOO" on the back of his jersey -- and played for the Giants for six more years after that.  In 1985, he played for the Giants, Pirates and Indians, and all three teams finished last.  Incidentally, LeMaster was the sixth overall pick in the 1973 MLB draft, but it was a very, very weak draft.  Dave Winfield and Robin Yount were the stars, both picked before LeMaster.  Eight of the 24 1st round draft picks never made the majors.  I only recognized 1/2 dozen others.  Of course, there were lots of good picks in later rounds, including Mike Krukow (8th) and Jack Clark (13th).

As an interesting side note, LeMaster was on a very cool 1987 Oakland A's team with Canseco, rookie Mark McGuire, Reggie Jackson in his last year playing baseball, Dave Henderson, Terry Steinbach, Carney Lansford, Dwayne Murphy, Ron Cey, Dave Stewart, Gary Lavelle and Dennis Eckersley just making the transition to reliever.  they had 1,679,000 in attendance that year, 200k more than 2017. 

That team hit 199 home runs.* 

*If you're a Giants fan, that's when a batter hits the ball so hard it goes out of the playing field and the batter is entitled to run around all the bases and score himself.  It is a legal play.