{"id":671887,"date":"2026-04-09T20:19:13","date_gmt":"2026-04-09T20:19:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/671887\/"},"modified":"2026-04-09T20:19:13","modified_gmt":"2026-04-09T20:19:13","slug":"random-philadelphia-phillie-of-the-day-valmy-thomas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/671887\/","title":{"rendered":"Random Philadelphia Phillie of the Day: Valmy Thomas"},"content":{"rendered":"


\n Phillies
\n <\/a><\/p>\n


\n \"Kevin
\n <\/a><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

1959 Topps baseball card<\/p>\n

Hello and welcome to a new series called \u201cRandom Philadelphia Phillie of the Day,\u201d in which we highlight\u2026 a random Philadelphia Phillie.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhy?\u201c, you may ask. Well why not? We\u2019ve got infinite space on this blog, it\u2019s baseball season, and the Phils aren\u2019t hitting anything at this particular moment, so we thought it would be quirky to ask the Sportradar AI to pull a random Phil from the database of more than 2,000 players who have ever donned the uniform. Then we\u2019ll drop in a paragraph or two and have a laugh. Maybe we\u2019ll learn something. <\/p>\n

To kick us off, the AI pulled Valmy Thomas, who played one season for the Phils in the 1950s. Here\u2019s a blurb from the Society for American Baseball Research<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Although Thomas still played in 66 games for the \u201959 Phillies, he spent most of 1960 and \u201961 in the minors, though he did get time with the Orioles and Indians. (Around then he became one of the first black men to play ball in Las Vegas, which was still partly segregated.) He was the only major-leaguer to play five years, each in a different city. His career totals: 12 homers, 60 RBI, and a .230 average in 626 at-bats over 252 games. An innovator, the backstop wore a light, flexible chest protector inside his uniform, even when he was at bat.<\/p>\n

Some of the these stories call Thomas a backup catcher, but it looks like he was more of a platoon guy in 1959 with Carl Sawatski, Joe Lonnett, and Jim Hegan. If the stats are correct, the Phils had four catchers who played 74, 66, 43, and 25 games that year en route to a 64-90-1 record under manager Eddie Sawyer. <\/p>\n

Looking through a 2010 obituary<\/a>, it says Thomas was born in Puerto Rico but moved with his family at a young age to the Virgin Islands and is considered the first Virgin Islander to play in Major League Baseball. After retirement, it notes that he returned to St. Croix \u201cto become a successful businessman as owner of United Sporting Goods in Watergut, St. Croix. He also served as an assistant commissioner of the former Department of Conservation and Cultural Affairs, where he oversaw recreation programs for hundreds of young sportsmen and women in the territory.\u201d<\/p>\n

There\u2019s also a crazy story at the SABR site<\/a> explaining that he survived a shooting before wrapping up his playing career.<\/p>\n

Valmy Thomas is your random Philadelphia Phillie of the day. <\/p>\n

SeasonTeamGPAABH2B3BHRRBIBBKAVGOBPSLG1959Philadelphia Phillies66151140282017919.200<\/p>\n

\"Kevin<\/p>\n

Kevin has been writing about Philadelphia sports since 2009. He spent seven years in the CBS 3 sports department and started with the Union during the team’s 2010 inaugural season. He went to the academic powerhouses of Boyertown High School and West Virginia University.
\n
\nemail – k.kinkead@sportradar.com<\/p>\n

\n You might also like…\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Phillies 1959 Topps baseball card Hello and welcome to a new series called \u201cRandom Philadelphia Phillie of the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":671888,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[2397],"tags":[5,4,144,25,4216,40],"class_list":{"0":"post-671887","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-philadelphia-phillies","8":"tag-baseball","9":"tag-mlb","10":"tag-philadelphia","11":"tag-philadelphia-phillies","12":"tag-philadelphiaphillies","13":"tag-phillies"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/116376607566215868","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/671887","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=671887"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/671887\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/671888"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=671887"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=671887"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=671887"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}