Three Leagues, One Legend: Remembering The Life and Mets Days of George Altman

Baseball lost one of its great travelers this week. And I don’t mean the “Edwin Jackson played for fourteen different teams” kind of traveler. I mean the “he basically was the poster child for TSA PreCheck for three different baseball worlds” variety traveler.

George Altman — Negro Leaguer, Major Leaguer, Japanese baseball star, two-time All-Star, and possessor of enough passport stamps to make Rick Steves ask for travel advise, passed away at 92.

Bob Kendrick of the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum shared the news, and if there’s anyone who understands the magnitude of Altman’s journey, it’s Kendrick. Altman was one of only three people ever to play in the Negro Leagues, the American/National League, and in Nippon Professional Baseball. Baseball’s evolutionary chart could practically use him as the missing link between eras.

But to frame George Altman as simply “well-traveled” feels like calling the ’69 Mets “a cute little overachieving club.” He lived more baseball lives than most of us live regular ones.

George Lee Altman was born in Goldsboro, North Carolina in 1933, in a segregated town where the tobacco grew tall and the opportunities for Black kids did not. His mother died when he was four; he became an only child raised, as many were then, by extended family and grit.

His father wasn’t a sports guy at all. George, on the other hand, “lived and breathed sports” — and once cried because he wasn’t allowed to go play in bad weather. (I get it, that’s how I behave when the Mets have a rainout.)

He played everything: baseball, basketball, football. Tennessee A&I (now Tennessee State) recruited him for basketball, and he played under the legendary John McLendon a fitness fanatic whose practices felt like a cross between Mr. Miyagi’s discipline and Hans and Franz’s “pump you up” routine — a pretty good preview of the demanding Japanese coaches Altman would meet years later.

But one jammed knee later, his basketball future dimmed. A career in coaching beckoned, until the Kansas City Monarchs came calling.

Buck O’Neil saw something in Altman.

That sentence alone can make a baseball résumé.

Altman joined the Monarchs in 1955 and learned first base “the Buck O’Neil way.” He soaked up the stories, the nicknames, the swagger — Double Duty Radcliffe, Smokey Joe Williams, Boojum Wilson. He played just three months before signing with the Cubs, but the Negro Leagues left their mark, and George Altman was one of the last living links.

Altman’s climb wasn’t quick — it was efficient.

He hit 16 homers in Burlington, then went into the Army and helped Fort Carson win the All-Army title with a two-run inside-the-park homer in the championship game. That’s right: he beat the troops with an inside-the-parker. Willie Mays would be proud.

By the spring of 1959, he forced his way onto the Chicago Cubs roster.

Ernie Banks loved his strike-zone judgment.

Ty Cobb — who liked nobody — liked his batting eye.

Rogers Hornsby said he “couldn’t miss.”

That’s the American Idol judges’ table in baseball form: Lionel nodding wisely, Katy smiling like she knows you’re a star, and Luke quietly thinking, “Yep, that’s good.”

Altman rewarded them with a 12-homer rookie season, then a breakout year in 1961: .303, 27 homers, 96 RBIs, 12 triples, and his first All-Star selection. He homered in the All-Star Game off Boston’s Mike Fornieles. A month later, on August 4, 1961, he pulled off a feat that had never been done before: Altman hit two home runs in a single game off the legendary Sandy Koufax, leading the Cubs to a 4-2 victory over the Dodgers. At the time, no player had ever gone deep twice against Koufax in the same game, and only Ernie Banks and Felipe Alou ever matched it — both right-handed hitters. Altman, a lefty, did it first, cementing his place in Cubs lore and reminding the baseball world that he could handle even the toughest pitching on the biggest stage.

He was an All-Star again in 1962. Injuries began nibbling at his career, but he remained an extraordinarily complete hitter — patient, powerful, intelligent.

And then came the trades.

Altman came to the Mets in December 1963 in a trade with the Cardinals. And let’s be honest — 1964 was not a fun year to be a Met unless your name was Ron Hunt or you had a high tolerance for ninth-inning pain.

Altman played hurt, hit nine homers (again), drove in 47 (again), and hit .230. He later said:

“The year with the Mets was probably the least amount of fun I had in baseball.”

That’s understandable. Playing left field at Shea in ’64 was basically trench warfare.

But even one-year Mets deserve remembrance, and Altman’s journey crossed paths with our team, too. In 1964, despite battling injuries and a last-place team, Altman still delivered flashes of brilliance. On May 18 at San Francisco, he went 3-for-4 with a home run and three RBIs, helping the Mets edge the Giants 4-2. Later that season, on September 7 and September 16, he repeated the feat — 3-for-4 with a homer and multiple RBIs in each game — proving that even in a tough season, Altman could shine. You can picture him sitting next to Ralph Kiner on one of these nights at Kiner’s Korner, sharing stories or soaking in the fun. Here on the Korner, that earns respect.

By 1968, Altman’s MLB career was winding down. But he wasn’t done — not by a long shot.

Tsuneo “Cappy” Harada, a Japanese-American baseball connector, helped him find a home with the Tokyo Orions (later Lotte). And what a home it became.

Now, Japanese spring training was legendary. “Kamikaze training,” Altman called it — long, punishing, relentless. But he’d survived John McLendon in college. This? This he could do.

He did more than survive in Japan — he thrived. Over seven seasons, Altman racked up 193 home runs, 609 RBIs, and played in more than 800 games. Add in his Major League totals, and he finished with 306 professional home runs, and that’s not even counting his winter ball exploits.

He embraced the culture, learned the language, respected the customs. He laughed about the floating strike zone but mastered it. He became one of the earliest — and most successful — African-American players in Japan, decades before the NPB floodgates opened.

When George Altman retired at 42, he had lived three baseball lives.

George Altman mattered as a bridge between generations and geographies, a player who navigated segregation, Army service, the College of Coaches, Leo Durocher, Sandy Koufax, and the rigors of Japanese spring training. He learned from two of the game’s greatest teachers, Buck O’Neil and John McLendon, and made history simply by enduring long enough to play in so many vastly different baseball universes. He was also one of the game’s true gentlemen — thoughtful, humble, multilingual, curious, and committed.

Baseball didn’t give him the easy road.

So he walked a longer one.

And no one — no one — walked it farther.

Rest in peace, George Altman.