Bill Bergen

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William Aloysius "Bill" Bergen (1878-1943) was a Major League Baseball catcher in the early days of the 20th century. Bill Bergen played eleven seasons in the National League, three with the Cincinnati Reds and eight with the Brooklyn Dodgers.

Bergen's claim to fame is his complete inability to hit. The question of who was the worst hitter of all time is obviously a subjective one, but what is known is that no one played as long as Bill Bergen and hit so poorly. Bergen had 3,028 at-bats in his career, and in that time he compiled a batting average of .170, the all-time record low for players who compiled more than 2,500 at-bats. His career on-base percentage was .194. He had only two home runs. In 1909, Bergen hit .139, the lowest average ever for a player who qualified for the batting title. That season, he set another record for futility by going 46 at-bats in a row without a base hit, the longest streak ever by a position player (pitcher Bob Buhl went 88 at-bats without a hit).

Bergen was able to play for so long despite being such a terrible hitter by playing in an age where pitching dominated and by being a first-rate defensive catcher. Bergen ranks ninth on the all-time list for assists by a catcher with 1,444, despite never being a full-time player. In 1908, The Sporting News called him one of the best catchers in the game. On August 23, 1909, he threw out six St. Louis Cardinals on the basepaths. Another explanation was that most of the teams he played for weren't very good anyway: the Dodgers had a losing record every year Bergen was on the team, bottoming out with a 48-104 record in 1905.

After his terrible hitting finally cost him a job in the big leagues, Bergen played minor-league ball for a while and coached in minor league ball before retiring. He died in 1943 of heart disease.