Lyman Bostock

Lyman Wesley Bostock Jr. (November 22, 1950 – September 24, 1978) was an American professional baseball player. He played Major League Baseball for four seasons, as an outfielder for the Minnesota Twins (1975–77) and California Angels (1978), with a lifetime average of .311. He batted left-handed and threw right-handed.

Bostock was shot and mortally wounded while riding as a passenger in a vehicle in his hometown of Gary, Indiana, on September 23, 1978, hours after playing against the Chicago White Sox earlier in the day. He died at 1:30 a.m. the next day.

His shooter was sentenced to a psychiatric hospital and released after seven months. After the shooter's release, Indiana legislators introduced the guilty but mentally ill verdict so that mentally ill people would serve prison time after being released from inpatient mental health treatment.

Born in Birmingham, Alabama, Bostock was the son of Annie Pearl Bostock and Lyman Bostock Sr. (1918–2005), a Negro leagues professional baseball star from 1938 to 1954 as a first baseman. Pearl and Bostock Sr. split when Bostock Jr. was a young child, with Pearl relocating with her son first to Gary, Indiana, in 1954. In 1958, the two again relocated, this time to Los Angeles. The younger Bostock remained estranged from his father for the remainder of his life, feeling that his father had abandoned him.

At one point during his youth, Bostock's baseball glove was stolen. With his mother unable to afford to purchase another, he had to use a glove given to him by a friend of the family. However, the donated glove was for left-handed fielders. Bostock's discomfort in catching fly balls with the hand he was unaccustomed to using led him to begin making basket catches at that time. The habit stayed with him and he frequently made basket catches of fly balls for the remainder of his life. "When I was 8 years old, my mother bought me my first glove," Bostock had recalled. "But someone stole it the next day. My mother wasn't about to buy me another one. But a friend of hers at work gave her a replacement. Unfortunately, it was a left-hander's model and I'm right-handed. Since it was the only glove I had, I had to use it. It was the only way I could catch the ball. It became a habit, and I still have it."

Bostock played baseball at Manual Arts High School in Los Angeles, then attended San Fernando Valley State College (now California State University, Northridge (CSUN)). It was there that he met Yuovene Brooks, who would become his wife. Bostock did not play baseball during his first two years of college, choosing instead to become involved in student activism. Nonetheless, he was selected in the 1970 amateur draft by the St. Louis Cardinals.

"What you saw is what you got from Lyman," said Bob Hiegert, Bostock's college coach at Cal State Northridge. "There was nothing hidden about Lyman. He wore his heart on his sleeve."

Bostock chose not to sign, stayed in college, and began playing baseball for Coach Hiegert and the Matadors. He was an all-conference player in the California Collegiate Athletic Association in both of his seasons at San Fernando Valley, hitting .344 as a junior and .296 as a senior, leading the Matadors to a second-place finish at the Division II College World Series in 1972. He was selected by the Twins in the 26th round (596th overall) of the 1972 amateur draft and decided to turn professional, just 15 credits short of finishing his bachelor's degree.