A Player with One Team & Three Era Longevity - Name Him.

[philliesfiend55]

I am working on a precise chronological listing of players by their team debut date and a corresponding photo project covering the entire history of the Phillies. ( I hope to finish this and publish some results here sometime in 2013.) I broke the franchise history into three Eras: Early Period; Start of the Franchise in 1883 to 1924; Middle Period: 1925 to 1945; and a Post World War Two or Modern era: 1946 to present. No Phillie player had a career long enough to span the three eras ALL WITH the Phillies.
There is one major leaguer, however, whose career began before 1925 and ended after 1945 and was played all with one team. Name Him! (Only Your Educated Guesses allowed. No baseball encyclopedia or internet lookups or research, please - otherwise there will be no challenge to solving this question).

[ian2813]

Without looking anything up, I'd guess Ted Lyons.

[philliesfiend55]

Got it 1st Try .- You've got to be a White sox fan! Lyons pitched for the White Sox from 1923 to 1942. Missed three seasons due to military SERVICE 1943-45 AND RETURNED TO THE WHITE SOX TO PLAY PART OF THE 1946 SEASON BEFORE RETIRING.
RED RUFFING ALSO STARTED HIS CAREER BEFORE 1925 AND FINISHED HIS MLB CAREER AFTER 1945, (1924-1942; 1945-1947, WWII; military service 1943-44) BUT HE PLAYED FOR THREE TEAMS.

[ian2813]

Why yes, I am a White Sox fan.

[philliesfiend55]

Why yes, I am a White Sox fan.

No one other than a White sox fan could possibly know that off the top of his head......And I thought I had designed a tough Trivia question - AWWWW!!!!

[ian2813]

Well, I didn't just get it off the top of my head. I thought through several different teams and different possibilities before Lyons came to mind.

[Brownieand45sfan]

Didnt know much about Lyons .. so I looked him up. I found this info from his SABR bio. Didnt realize how little I knew about the White Sox, either. Specifically. I didnt realize how much suffering the White Sox fans went through during their Middle Period (as philliesfiend has defined it):

The Chicago franchise, once the strongest in the American League, was a wreck. The club had been mediocre-to-awful since the Black Sox were banned in 1920, achieving a winning record only seven times in twenty-six years. Every other AL team—even the St. Louis Browns—had won a pennant during that time. Founder Charles A. Comiskey had died in 1931 and his son and heir, Louis, died eight years later. That left the franchise in the hands of Louis’s widow, Grace Comiskey, and her bankers and lawyers. Mrs. Comiskey held most of the stock in trust for her three children and delegated most decisions to the vice president and general manager, Leslie O’Connor, whose only baseball pedigree was his service as Commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis’s secretary.

The roster was heavy with thirty-something journeymen; the only star, Luke Appling, was forty. The Sox edged up to sixth place in 1947, though they lost four more games than the year before. That winter they traded Lopat, their best pitcher, to the Yankees for three more journeymen. In 1948 they sank to the cellar, losing 101 times.

The sole male heir to the Comiskey heritage, twenty-two-year-old Charles A. Comiskey II, claimed his birthright and replaced O’Connor as vice president in 1948.

http://sabr.org/node/17746

Well, I didn't just get it off the top of my head. I thought through several different teams and different possibilities before Lyons came to mind.