Baseball Remembers: Piper Davis

The What-If Game is a baseball staple.

What if Ted Williams hadn’t missed all that time serving in the Marines? What if Joe McCarthy had started Mel Parnell instead of Denny Galehouse? What if the Dodgers hadn’t lost Roberto Clemente to the Pirates in the Rule 5 draft? What if Bart Giamatti hadn’t passed away shortly after banning Pete Rose? What if Cap Anson hadn’t been a racist? What if the Cubs hadn’t traded Lou Brock?

We could go on and on, obviously. The moment you heard those two little words, “what if,” you probably thought of whatever scenario you and other fans of your favorite teams have always wondered about. For Royals fans, it could be “What if Bo Jackson hadn’t hurt his hip?” For Cubs fans in this century it would be “What if Alex Gonzalez hadn’t booted that ground ball?” For the Pirates it’s probably, “What if we had a real owner?”

Some people seemingly have an endless string of what-ifs that don’t go their way. Rather than being victimized by just one such scenario, they instead run into them at every turn. As a Red Sox fan, I could provide you with a dozen situations the team puts its fans through before finally winning the World Series in 2004. The Guardians fans reading this are probably typing their lists in the comments section right now.

If there was a player who faced the same sort of endless string of unfortunate what-if outcomes that didn’t go their way, it would be someone like Lorenzo “Piper” Davis.