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Cookie Lavagetto

American baseball player and coach (1912-1990)

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 revisionJul 27, 2026
Entity authorityQ5167082 ↗
Source-derived summary

Harry Arthur "Cookie" Lavagetto (December 1, 1912 – August 10, 1990) was an American professional baseball player, coach, and manager. He played in Major League Baseball (MLB) as a third baseman from 1934 to 1947.

Lavagetto started his major league career with the Pittsburgh Pirates in 1934. After the 1936 season, he was traded to the Brooklyn Dodgers and was a National League (NL) All-Star from 1938 to 1941. He then missed four full seasons due to World War II service in the United States Navy. He returned to the Dodgers and finished his MLB career with them in 1946 and 1947.

Lavagetto is best-known for his performance in game four of the 1947 World Series, when he drove home the winning run with a double while New York Yankees pitcher Bill Bevens was one out away from throwing what would have been the first no-hitter in World Series history.

After his playing career ended, Lavagetto became a coach. He was the last manager of the American League's first Washington Senators franchise, from 1957 through 1960, and the first manager of the Minnesota Twins when the Senators relocated there for the 1961 season.

Early playing career

Lavagetto, the son of a trash hauler, was born in Oakland, California, in 1912.

Editorial summary

Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Cookie Lavagetto” is american baseball player and coach (1912-1990). The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Cookie, Lavagetto and American, not as a finished interpretation.

Editorial reviewA useful biographical orientation record, particularly for establishing names, roles and a first chronology. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1912, 1990, 1934, 1947—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1912-12-01. For this dossier, Cookie, Lavagetto and American is the immediate research focus.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The phrase “american baseball player and coach (1912-1990)” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.

Evidence profile

Biographical claims are most persuasive when dates, appointments and relationships can be traced to records created close to the events described. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 27, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q5167082. VIAF identifies the subject as 2688154076028211860009. The Library of Congress control number is no2018138740. 2 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1912, 1990, 1934 and 1947.

Critical limits

Later biographies can compress uncertainty and repeat inherited reputations, so apparently settled claims may still require comparison. 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 “Cookie Lavagetto”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Cookie Lavagetto primary sources, Cookie Lavagetto archive and Cookie 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 “Cookie Lavagetto”?
  2. Which primary records establish identity, chronology and institutional ties?
  3. How has the subject’s reputation changed across later accounts?
Subject index

Search terms from this dossier

Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Cookie Lavagetto” 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.