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Bruce Konopka

American baseball player (1919-1996)

Correspondence, annotated notebooks and portrait silhouettes prepared for research
People and ideasInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionNov 14, 2025
Entity authorityQ4977802 ↗
Source-derived summary

Bruno Bruce Konopka (September 16, 1919 – September 27, 1996) was an American professional baseball player during the 1940s. A first baseman, his four-season (1942–1943; 1946–1947) professional career was interrupted by service in the United States Navy in the Pacific Theater of Operations during World War II. However, Konopka did appear in 45 Major League games for the Philadelphia Athletics during the 1942, 1943 and 1946 seasons.

Biography

He was born in Hammond, Indiana, but attended Manual High School in Denver, Colorado, and college at the University of Southern California.

Konopka batted and threw left-handed. He stood 6 feet 2 inches (1.88 m) tall and weighed 190 pounds (86 kg).

He made his Major League debut in his first pro season. In his first game, June 7 at Shibe Park, he relieved Dick Siebert at first base for the Athletics, but was held hitless in two at bats by Bob Muncrief of the St. Louis Browns. He registered his first MLB hit, a single, as a pinch hitter 16 days later. He spent most of the rest of that season with the Class B Wilmington Blue Rocks, but returned to the Athletics in September to go two-for-four against the Washington Senators on September 19.

Editorial summary

“Bruce Konopka” enters the record as american baseball player (1919-1996). Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Bruce, Konopka and American can confirm, complicate or overturn.

Editorial reviewStrongest as a route into the people, institutions and dated events that shaped the subject’s public record. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1919, 1996, 1942, 1943—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1919-09-16. Its strongest next move is a source search built around Bruce, Konopka and American.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

“Bruce Konopka” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Bruce, Konopka and American provides the most credible route into that argument.

Evidence profile

The entry’s evidential value lies in the named roles, institutions and publications that can be tested against primary documentation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Nov 14, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q4977802. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1919, 1996, 1942 and 1943.

Critical limits

Public reputation and documentary evidence do not always develop together; absence from a summary is not evidence of historical absence. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. 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 “Bruce Konopka”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Bruce Konopka primary sources, Bruce Konopka archive and Bruce 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 “Bruce Konopka”?
  2. Which claims depend on a single source or contested interpretation?
  3. How has the subject’s reputation changed across later accounts?
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Bruce Konopka” 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.