Every year in the low-angled light of autumn, September call-ups give players at every stage in the baseball life cycle their first taste of the majors. Each one aspires to make a name for himself. A select few—Stan Musial, Willie Stargell, Greg Maddux, Chipper Jones—use the call as a springboard to the Hall of Fame. Many more play out the string before fading back to obscurity, still chasing their next shot, uncertain if it will ever come.
But no call-up will have a debut as implausible as catcher Bert Edgar (B.E.) Chapman, who made a name for himself quite literally—and whose time in Boston in September 1920 not only marked the realization of a dream, but the culmination of a con.
