Victor Woodrow Wertz was a Major League Baseball first baseman and outfielder. He had a seventeen year career from 1947 to 1963. He was signed as a free agent by the Detroit Tigers in 1942 and played for the Tigers, St. Louis Browns, Baltimore Orioles, Cleveland Indians, Boston Red Sox and Minnesota Twins all of the American League.
He was elected to the American League All-Star team four times (1949, 1951, 1952 and 1957). He missed part of the 1955 season when stricken with a nonparalytic form of polio but returned in 1956.
In one of the most famous plays in baseball history, Vic Wertz hit the long fly ball that Willie Mays caught in the 1954 World Series (see The Catch). It went over 450 feet to dead center of the Polo Grounds in New York, and a sportswriter said, "It would have been a home run in any other park, including Yellowstone."
