Count Sensenderfer
Encyclopedia
John Phillips Jenkins "Count" Sensenderfer (December 28, 1847 – May 3, 1903) was a professional baseball
Baseball
Baseball is a bat-and-ball sport played between two teams of nine players each. The aim is to score runs by hitting a thrown ball with a bat and touching a series of four bases arranged at the corners of a ninety-foot diamond...

 player who played for the Philadelphia Athletics from 1866 to 1874.

Career

Sensenderfer joined the Athletic club at the age of eighteen in 1866, and "The Count" (he got the nickname from his moustache
Moustache
A moustache is facial hair grown on the outer surface of the upper lip. It may or may not be accompanied by a type of beard, a facial hair style grown and cropped to cover most of the lower half of the face.-Etymology:...

 and aristocratic air) quickly became of the top players in the country. Originally playing second base before moving to center field, Count was one of the first players to score two hundred runs in a season, for the championship Philadelphia team of 1868. The following year, Athletic turned professional; in 1871 the club helped form the National Association of Professional Base Ball Players
National Association of Professional Base Ball Players
The National Association of Professional Base Ball Players , or simply the National Association , was founded in 1871 and continued through the 1875 season...

, baseball's first all-professional league.

It was in 1871 that Sensenderfer (still a solid hitter with a .323 average) began to be plagued by a series of injuries; he was unable to play in the championship contest played October 30 in Brooklyn
Brooklyn
Brooklyn is the most populous of New York City's five boroughs, with nearly 2.6 million residents, and the second-largest in area. Since 1896, Brooklyn has had the same boundaries as Kings County, which is now the most populous county in New York State and the second-most densely populated...

. (Right fielder George Bechtel took Count's place in center, while Nate Berkenstock
Nate Berkenstock
Nathan "Nate" Berkenstock was the earliest-born professional baseball player, nearly four years older than the next-"oldest" player, Harry Wright, who born in 1835 and is a member of the Baseball Hall of Fame. Berkenstock played in just one pro league game: the game that decided the first...

, a 40-year-old amateur retired from Athletic for five years, played right; it was his only big-league appearance.) Athletic defeated Chicago, 4-1, clinching the title.

Sensenderfer's injuries kept him out of all but one game in 1872; he returned as the club's regular center fielder in 1873 but his average slipped to .279. He played five more games for Athletic in 1874 before retiring.

After baseball

After his baseball career, Sensenderfer was involved in politics, serving two terms as Philadelphia County Commissioner. He was also an active member of the Democratic Committee of Philadelphia as well as the Pennsylvania Democratic State Committee.

Count Sensendefer died in Philadelphia in 1903, at the age of 55.

External links

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