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Bill Oster

American baseball player (1933-2020)

Correspondence, annotated notebooks and portrait silhouettes prepared for research
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Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionJul 27, 2026
Entity authorityQ4910402
Source-derived summary

William Charles Oster (January 2, 1933 – June 6, 2020) was an American professional baseball pitcher, a left-hander who appeared in eight games in Major League Baseball for the Philadelphia Athletics during the 1954 season. Born in New York City, Oster was listed as 6 feet 3 inches (1.91 m) tall and 198 pounds (90 kg). He attended New York University.

Oster was signed by the Athletics as an amateur free agent on August 20, 1954, and made his MLB debut three days later. His only decision came a little over a month later in his final MLB game when the Athletics were defeated by the New York Yankees, 10–2. The game, Oster's only big-league starting pitcher assignment, was played at Yankee Stadium in Oster's home city. He allowed one earned run, three hits and five bases on balls in three innings of work before exiting for a pinch hitter, trailing 4–1.

In his eight career MLB appearances, he worked in 152⁄3 innings and allowed 19 hits, 12 bases in balls, and 15 runs, 11 of them earned. He struck out five.

Oster's professional career continued in the minor leagues into the 1957 campaign.

Editorial summary

This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Bill Oster” as american baseball player (1933-2020). Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.

Editorial reviewA productive starting point for separating a subject’s documented career from later reputation and commemoration. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1933, 2020, 1954, 1957—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1933-01-02. The account is most persuasive where Bill, Oster and American can be independently traced.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The subject matters to the people & ideas register because the source frames it as american baseball player (1933-2020). Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.

Evidence profile

Chronology provides the most reliable spine for this subject; interpretation should follow only after identities and dates are secure. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 27, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q4910402. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1933, 2020, 1954 and 1957.

Critical limits

Public reputation and documentary evidence do not always develop together; absence from a summary is not evidence of historical absence. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Read biographical claims against dates, named institutions and the cited references. Distinguish a subject’s later reputation from evidence produced during their lifetime.

Best used for
  • Establishing names and roles
  • Building a first chronology
  • Locating cited institutions
Verify next

Personal papers, civil or court records, institutional files and the scholarship cited by the source.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Bill Oster”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Bill Oster primary sources, Bill Oster archive and Bill research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Bill Oster”?
  2. Which claims depend on a single source or contested interpretation?
  3. Which primary records establish identity, chronology and institutional ties?
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from Bill Oster” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.