First Gloves: Bill Tuttle

Here’s a confession; I’d never heard of Bill Tuttle until this morning.

With it being the “First Gloves” turn in my writing rotation, I went to the handy bookmarked Twitter/X thread that was started a few months ago for people to post about their first gloves. I was hoping for someone relatively unknown, because they’re more interesting to write about. The moment I saw the post that simply said “Tigers outfielder Bill Tuttle,” I knew I’d found a good candidate.

I’m going to cut myself a bit of slack for not knowing of Tuttle’s baseball career. His major league playing days were over before my parents were even married. He never made an All-Star team, or led the league in any offensive categories besides grounding into double plays. He never played in the postseason, and was never a regular on a team that won more than 82 games in a season. Tuttle never drove in 100 runs, or hit 20 homers, or totaled 200 hits, or hit any major career milestones. He won no awards, or even came close. He was once involved in a 13-player trade for Billy Martin, but that’s not exactly noteworthy. A lot of people were traded for Billy Martin over the years (16 in fact).

He was a pretty good fielder if we look at just the traditional stats for an outfielder. Though he didn’t win any Gold Gloves, Tuttle did lead all center fielders in assists five times, and in putouts and double plays twice each. He also led the league in range once, and in fielding percentage, all of which added up to Wilson making a pretty nice glove with his name burned into the cowhide.