Great Platoons: 1918 - 1948

[bigh0rt]

There's some fantastic examples within...

The concept is a very old one: alternating two players at a given position, one a lefthanded batter, the other a righthanded batter, on the basis of which arm the opposing team's starting pitcher uses.

Platooning on this basis certainly wasn't invented by Yankees manager Casey Stengel in the 1950s, though his liberal use and great success with the tactic was surely a leading factor in its blooming popularity in that period. Left-right platooning goes back to the early part of the 20th century, as outlined so well by Bill James in his Historical Baseball Abstract article, "A History of Platooning."
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FULL STORY

[RynMan]

Interesting article!