Ever wonder who the ugliest baseball player of all time was? (This sounds like every after-the-fourth-beer sports-bar conversation we've ever had.) A deeply entertaining discussion is going on about this at Athletics Nation and, by all accounts, the ugliest player in baseball history had to have been Don Mossi, a former A's pitcher and the man bearded geek god Bill James said looked "like Gary Gaetti escaping from Devil's Island."
In fact, one poster delivers James' full description of Mossi's homeliness, and we're going to print it here, mainly because as much as everyone considers James some sort of computer-addled number-cruncher, he was/is, to our view, an extremely talented and funny writer. His look at Mossi is a prime example.
Dom Mossi had two careers, one as a reliever an one as a starter, and he was pretty darned good at both. No one who saw him play remembers that, because Mossi's ears looked as if they had been borrowed from a much larger species, and reattached without proper supervision. His nose was crooked, his eyes were in the wrong place... he looked like Gary Gaetti escaping from Devil's Island.
One of the problems with choosing the ugliest and handsomest players is that a player who looks short of grotesque in one pose or one photograph will look fine in another. Susie, [James' wife], showed me a picture of Hoyt Wilhelm in which he looked positively handsome. I assured her it was just a bad shot.
You never had this problem with Don Mossi. Don Mossi was the complete five-tool ugly player. He could run ugly, hit ugly, throw ugly, field ugly, and ugly for power. He was ugly to all fields. He could ugly behind the runner as well as anybody, and you talk about pressure... man, you never saw a player who was uglier the in clutch.
Blech! [Athletics Nation]