Phillies All-Star One and Dones: The 1930s

In honor of the Philadelphia Phillies playing host to the 2026 Major League Baseball All-Star Game at Citizens Bank Park, we here at The Good Phight are launching a yearlong series that focuses on the history

of the Phillies and the All-Star Game. Check back regularly for posts about the Phillies participation in (or lack thereof) in the Midsummer Classic over its history.

Being named to the All-Star team is one of the highest honors in baseball. It means that you were good enough to be chosen to represent your team in a showcase of some of the best players in the sport. But for some, they were only good enough once to get that honor. The Phillies have 36 such one and dones in their history, meaning players who made one All-Star team in their career and did it with the Phillies, excluding active players. In order to make reading this close to palatable, we’re going to break them down by decades in a series of articles. First up, the 1930s.

Arthur “Pinky” Whitney, 1936

There wasn’t much good baseball in Philadelphia in 1936, as both the Phillies and the Athletics lost 100 games and finished in dead last in their respective leagues. But Arthur “Pinky” Whitney of the Phillies nevertheless was named the starting third baseman for the National League. Whitney’s numbers were pedestrian, as he was hitting .280 with 16 extra-base hits including five home runs in the 66 games before the All-Star game. The 31-year-old San Antonio native started his career with the Phillies in 1928 before being traded to the Boston Braves in the middle of 1933.

But Whitney found his way back to Philadelphia after ten games of the 1936 season, where he garnered the most votes of any Phillies player and was named to the All-Star team because the fan vote had failed to assure that every team had a representative. Whitney displaced Bill Brubaker of the Pirates despite the latter receiving the fifth most votes of any infielder. Ironically enough, the other Philadelphia 100 loss team also sent a third baseman nicknamed “Pinky” who had to be named to the team due to the representative rule, as Mike Higgins of the Athletics replaced the White Sox player/manager Jimmy Dykes on the roster.

The Phillies’ Pinky directly contributed to the NL’s 4-3 win over the AL, its first since the game began in 1933, with a sacrifice fly in the second off of future Hall of Famer Lefty Grove that put the NL up 2-0. However, Whitney would not finish the game, as he suffered an injury in the eighth inning when fielding a groundout from future Phillies manager and eternal source of shame Ben Chapman grounded out. Whitney finished the top of the eighth but was pinch hit for by the Reds Lew Riggs in the bottom half of the inning. His cross-town counterpart “Pinky” Higgins didn’t have the same impact as the Phillies Pinky did, as Higgins went 0-2 with two strikeouts and was subbed out after six innings. The Philadelphia Pinkys reunited on the train ride out of Boston back to Philadelphia after the game. Whitney went on to play three more seasons in his career with the Phillies before leaving baseball, while Higgins played nine more years in the Majors, interrupted in 1945 after being drafted into the Army, and made one more All-Star team in 1944.

Hersh Martin, 1938

Center fielder Hersh Martin was only in his second year in the Majors when he was named to the 1938 All-Star game to represent the Phillies. Martin was in the midst of a strong first half of the season, hitting .336 with 30 extra-base hits and two home runs in the season’s first 64 games. Unfortunately, his efforts were going to waste on the Phillies, as they were on their way to yet another 100+ loss season and last place finish.

Luckily for Martin, he was chosen to be the Phillies representative at the All-Star game that season to take place at Crosley Field in Cincinnati. Unluckily for the Birmingham, Alabama native, he was not chosen to start in the game and never even got to appear. His luck didn’t much improve after he went back to the Phillies, as Martin suffered an ankle injury before a game on September 10th. Martin was demonstrating the proper way to slide into a base for a movie recording arranged by his manager Jimmie Wilson when he caught his spikes in the dirt and suffered the injury, Martin was taken from the field to the hospital and did not appear in another game that season.

It wasn’t the first time Martin suffered a freak injury on the field and had to be hospitalized in 1938 either. In a May 10th game against the Reds, Martin was attempting to steal second after a single when the throw from Reds catcher Willard Hershberger hit him in the left temple, knocking Martin out immediately. However, his feet remained on second base while he was unconscious and being attended to by trainers. Martin was then carried off the field by four teammates and came to in the clubhouse where he complained of a headache and nausea. He then spent the night in the hospital where an x-ray confirmed he did not have a fracture and then returned to the Phillies lineup six days later.

Martin would go on to play two more years for the Phillies before heading to Double-A for three and a half seasons. He finally got the call to the Majors again in 1944 with the Yankees but only played in New York for two seasons before once again finding himself in the minors. Martin would continue to play professional ball consistently until 1953, but never again appeared in the Majors.

Morrie Arnovich, 1939

Five-foot-ten, 168-pound Morrie Arnovich may have not been much to look at, but he was once a promising centerfielder for the Phillies in the late thirties. The son of Orthodox Jewish parents, Arnovich went against his parents’ wishes to become a rabbi and instead pursued a baseball career, starting out playing for his hometown of Superior, Wisconsin in the Northern League. After two seasons where Arnovich hit a combined .354, the Phillies signed him to a deal in 1935 and sent him to Class-A Hazelton. His always-hustling nature caught eyes, and the 25-year-old Arnovich earned a call to the Majors in 1936.

The little centerfielder had a solid first two and a half seasons with the Phillies before breaking out in 1939. By the time of the All-Star game, Arnovich was hitting a staggering .383 with 21 extra-base hits including four home runs in 68 games. But of course, the Phillies as a team were terrible, sitting at 21-46 and in dead last in the National League so Arnovich was originally left off of the All-Star roster despite leading the Majors in hitting. He had to be added later to fulfill the requirement for every team to have one player. Arnovich was one of three Jewish players at the 1939 All-Star Game, joining Detroit’s Hank Greenburg and the Giants’ Harry Denning. Unfortunately for Arnovich and Denning, neither appeared in the actual game. Greenburg meanwhile started and went 1-3 with a walk to help his American League win 4-1 at Yankee Stadium.

Arnovich was beloved in his hometown of Superior, and the local media and fans joined the rest of the Phillies in demanding to know why NL manager Gabby Hartnett from the Chicago Cubs decided not to use Arnovich despite his leading the league in hitting. Hartnett’s given reason was that he wanted to use left-handed hitters against the AL’s pitchers Red Ruffing, Tommy Brudges, and Bob Feller, all of whom were right-handed. But that explanation wasn’t good enough for writer Bill Stewart in the local Evening Telegram in Superior, who noted that Hartnett still used right-hander Joe Medwick from the Cardinals in the outfield, with Hartnett’s reasoning being that Medwick is “more dangerous.” But as Stewart so eloquently put it, Hartnett “failed to denote what he meant by dangerous” and that “it must be that the St. Louis outfielder beats his grandmother to earn that ‘dangerous’ rating, because he didn’t cause American League pitching an iota of grief” in his 0-4 performance.

Superior’s favorite son returned to the Phillies and couldn’t keep up his torrid pace, as Arnovich hit .257 in the second half and ultimately finished with a .324 BA, good for 13th in the Majors and six places behind Medwick who finished hitting .332. It was a recurring theme in Arnovich’s career, as he usually started the season strong but faded as the summer wore on. He hit .308 for his career in the first half but only to hit .268 in the second half.

1939 turned out to be Arnovich’s last full season with the Phillies, as he was traded to the Reds in June of 1940. He was hitting just .199 at the time of the trade to Cincinnati and ended the year with a career-low .250 BA. However, Arnovich was a part of a Reds team that won the World Series in 1940, even if he only appeared in one game during the series. 1941 brought some controversy, as Arnovich’s draft status was a topic of debate after it was revealed that he obtained a deferment due to having dental plates after losing many teeth playing basketball. Nevertheless, he eventually enlisted in the Army in 1942 where he played and managed for the Fort Lewis team located in Tacoma, Washington as well as serving as a poster clerk in New Guinea. Arnovich’s military service cost him four years of his baseball career, and he would only play in one more MLB game in 1946 with the New York Giants despite playing in the minor leagues until 1948.