Zachariah Davis "Zach" Wheat was born in Bonanza, Mo. , the son of Basil Curtis Wheat, a farmer, and Julia Davis. His father was born Basil DuBoise, but changed the family name to Wheat. In 1903 the Wheat family moved to Kansas City, Kans. , where Basil worked at the local stockyards
Zach played sandlot baseball and graduated from the Switzer School.
Wheat signed his first professional contract with the team the Enterprise of the Kansas League in 1906 and played the following two seasons with Shreveport and Mobile. Brooklyn Dodger scout Larry Sutton purchased Wheat's contract from Mobile in 1909 for $1, 200, despite his meager . 245 average. Wheat joined a weak-hitting sixth-place Brooklyn team that would finish fifty-five and one-half games behind pennant-winning Pittsburgh. He made his debut going hitless against the great New York Giant pitcher Christy Mathewson at the Polo Grounds on September 11, 1909, but quickly impressed his teammates and the league with his outstanding hitting and fielding. His . 304 average over the final twenty-six games of the season presaged hitting that Brooklyn fans had not seen since Wee Willie Keeler left the Dodgers after the 1902 season. An established major leaguer by 1912, Wheat married Daisy Forsith in 1912. They had two children. Based on Zach's success in the major leagues, the Dodgers signed his brother Mack, who caught for the team between 1915 and 1919. Before he retired after the 1927 season, "Buck" Wheat, so nicknamed because of his presumed Cherokee Indian heritage (a subject about which the reticent Wheat was quiet), established Dodger career records for most games played (2, 322), most hits (2, 804), most doubles (464), most triples (171), and most total bases (4, 003), records that still stood in the late twentieth century. Indeed, Wheat played in more games than any other left fielder in the history of the major leagues. Branch Rickey, longtime Dodger, Cardinal, and Pirate baseball executive, once described Wheat as the best outfielder Brooklyn ever had. The Veterans Committee unanimously elected Wheat to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1959. Standing five feet, ten inches tall and weighing 170 pounds, Wheat's size was typical of major league ballplayers of the early twentieth century. Wheat's major physical attributes were his strong wrists and forearms, which generated his powerful left-handed swing. At the plate, Wheat held the bat at its handle and took a full cut with each swing. He attributed his batting success to his strong wrists, which enabled him to snap the bat with great velocity when striking the ball. Wheat was a renowned curveball hitter, and John J. McGraw, manager of the New York Giants, forbade his pitchers to throw curves to Wheat. Although of average speed, Wheat was extremely graceful in the field, and his defensive skill earned the respect of his contemporaries. During his career with the Brooklyn Dodgers (1909 - 1926), Wheat patrolled a spacious left field, whose outfield fence was never less than 410 feet from home plate. Indeed, Wheat was regularly among the league leaders in outfield putouts, an unusual accomplishment for a left fielder. The hallmark of Wheat's career was his offensive consistency. Except for a . 258 average in 1915, he never batted lower than . 284, and he hit over . 300 in thirteen of his eighteen Brooklyn seasons, with a career average of . 317. During his years with the Dodgers, Wheat batted cleanup, the position reserved for power hitters, but Wheat's power resulted in doubles and triples, rarely in home runs. Indeed, in 1918, when Wheat led the National League with a . 335 average, he did not hit a single homer, the only time that has happened in league history. In the so-called deadball era, prior to 1920, Wheat's leading power season was in 1914, when he hit . 319 with twenty-six doubles, nine triples, nine home runs, and eighty-nine runs-batted-in. For the decade 1910-1919, he averaged twenty-five doubles, ten triples, five homers, and a batting mark of . 301. In 1916, when the Dodgers won the pennant for the first time since 1900, Wheat led the league with a . 461 slugging percentage. The 1920's heralded many changes in offensive baseball. Led by sluggers like Babe Ruth, Rogers Hornsby, and Lou Gehrig, batters sought to drive the ball over the fence rather than "hitting them where they ain't. " Although Wheat turned thirty-two in 1920, his most productive seasons were from 1920 through 1927, when he retired at the advanced baseball age of thirty-nine. In 1923 and 1924 Wheat hit . 375, but was outdistanced in the batting race each time. During the years 1920-1926, he averaged thirty-one doubles, nine triples, twelve homers, and an outstanding . 340 batting mark. Prior to 1920, the most hits Wheat collected in a single season was 177, but thereafter he knocked out 200 hits three times, including 221 in 1925. Wheat's career-long consistency made him a fan favorite who was never booed in Brooklyn. Perhaps that was due to his congenial, softspoken personality. His equanimity was evident in his never being ejected from a ball game during his long career. Extremely popular among his teammates, too, Wheat often invited six to eight players to dinner at his Brooklyn apartment after games. Fifty years after being teammates on the Dodgers, Casey Stengel remembered Wheat fondly, describing him as "one of the grandest guys ever to wear a baseball uniform. one of the truest pals a man ever had and one of the kindliest men God ever created. " Wheat was so well liked by his teammates that they helped him construct the elaborate stone walkway at his off-season Polo, Mo. , home. Wheat's fierce fortitude on the diamond was exemplified by two incidents in his career. In 1923 he played with a broken bone in his foot for one week until his condition was diagnosed. Limited to ninety-eight games because of the injury, Wheat nevertheless batted . 375. Hobbled by leg injuries for most of his final season with Brooklyn in 1926, Wheat's last major league homer resulted in a five-minute trip around the bases, due to a severe charley horse. Although Wheat was an extremely quiet man, he argued strongly for a higher salary. Wheat's stubbornness at contract time led to major confrontations with Dodgers owner Charles Ebbets. In 1914 Ebbets personally visited Wheat in Missouri to prevent him from jumping to the rival Federal League, and prior to the 1917 season, only the intervention of New York sportswriter Abe Yager persuaded Wheat to attend spring training. Wheat also promoted products ranging from iron supplements to flypaper. Indeed, the left-field fence at Ebbets Field contained an advertisement reading, "Wheat caught 384 flies last season. Tanglefoot caught 40 billion. " Wheat's greatest disappointment on the diamond was his failure to become Brooklyn's manager. Uncle Wilbert Robinson, the Dodgers manager since 1914, named Wheat to "replace" him in 1925, but the experiment lasted only a few games. Animosity between the two men hardened from that point and Wheat was released by the team following the 1926 season. Wheat played his final big league season in 1927 for Connie Mack's Philadelphia A's, and after playing for Minneapolis in the minor leagues in 1928 he retired from baseball. During the Depression, Zach had to sell his 162-acre farm in Polo, and he moved to Kansas City, Mo. , to operate a bowling alley. When that business failed, he joined the Kansas City police force in 1936, where, just one month into the job, he suffered severe injuries in a car crash while chasing a suspect. Forced to retire from the police, Wheat settled at Sunrise Beach, Mo. , on the Lake of the Ozarks, where he ran a fishing camp that attracted many of his former teammates. Wheat died in Sedalis, Mo. , at the age of eighty-three.
Quotes from others about the person
"One of the grandest guys ever to wear a baseball uniform, one of the greatest batting teachers I have seen, one of the truest pals a man ever (had) and one of the kindliest men God ever created. "
Casey Stengel
It was during the 1912 season that Wheat married Daisy Kerr Forsman, and she became his default agent, encouraging him to hold out for a better contract each season. They had a daughter.
