Mel Hall
American baseball player

Melvin Hall Jr. (born September 16, 1960) is an American former professional baseball player who played in Major League Baseball (MLB) from 1981 to 1992 with the Chicago Cubs, Cleveland Indians, and New York Yankees, and in 1996 with the San Francisco Giants. He also played in Nippon Professional Baseball (NPB) from 1993 to 1995 with the Chiba Lotte Marines and Chunichi Dragons. Hall primarily played as an outfielder. In 2009, he was sentenced to 45 years in prison after being found guilty of two counts of sexual assault against minors.
Playing career
Hall made his MLB debut in 1981 with the Chicago Cubs. In his first full major league season in 1983, Hall hit 17 home runs in 112 games. In 1987, he had the best fielding percentage and range factor of all MLB left-fielders.
On June 13, 1984, the Cubs traded Hall along with Joe Carter, Don Schulze, and Darryl Banks to the Cleveland Indians for Rick Sutcliffe, Ron Hassey, and George Frazier. On March 19, 1989, Cleveland traded Hall to the New York Yankees for Turner Ward and Joel Skinner.
The public source identifies “Mel Hall” as american baseball player. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Hall, American and baseball.
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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 Aug 26, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q373505. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1960, 1981, 1992 and 1996.
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This entry incorporates text from “Mel Hall” 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.