Lyman Bostock’s Much Too Short Life

Lyman Bostock was one of baseball’s best young hitters by September of 1978, when he was struck down by a deadly shotgun blast that wasn’t even meant for him. A career .311 hitter, the same mark that the great Jackie Robinson retired with, Lyman Bostock was a caring individual who, when he started off poorly in 1978 at the plate, actually tried to return his salary to the Angels! The six-foot-one, one hundred and eighty pound Lyman Bostock was a left-handed hitter with a sweet swing and a sweeter personality, making his senseless death that much more terrible. What Lyman Bostock may have achieved in baseball and in life we will never know, but the sky seemed to be the limit for him.

Born in Birmingham, Alabama in 1950, the Afro-American Lyman Bostock was the son of a former Negro League player, Lyman Bostock, Sr. The son was able to do what society prevented the father from accomplishing; to play in a Major League Baseball game. Lyman Bostock started out with the Twins, where he hit .282 in almost one hundred games in 1975. The following year, Lyman Bostock burst into the spotlight with a .323 average in 474 at-bats, good enough for fourth best in the American League. 1977 was even better, as Lyman Bostock batted .336, coming in second in the batting title chase to teammate Rod Carew’s ridiculously high .388 average. That winter, Lyman Bostock tested the free agent market.

Lyman Bostock signed with the California Angels late in 1977, as Angels’ owner Gene Autry dipped into the free agent well often and put together a contender. One of the first things Lyman Bostock did was donate ten thousand dollars of his new found wealth to a Birmingham church, so that it could rebuild its Sunday school which had been destroyed by fire. As if this wasn’t enough to set Lyman Bostock apart from the public’s perception of rich athletes as spoiled and selfish, when Lyman Bostock got off to a horrendous start in 1978 he didn’t want to accept his salary for the month of April. After hitting just .150 for the month, Lyman Bostock went to Gene Autry and tried to give back his salary. “If I can’t play to my capabilities, I don’t want to get paid for it”, Lyman Bostock stated. The stunned Autry refused to accept it, so Lyman Bostock announced that he would donate it to charity. He painstakingly reviewed all his options before deciding on which one would benefit from his generosity.

As the year wore on, Lyman Bostock’s average began to rise. By late in the season he had gotten it up to .296. On September 23rd, the Angels were in Chicago, where they lost to the White Sox 5-4. Lyman Bostock collected a pair of hits, including a line drive base hit in what would be the final at-bat of his life. When he was in Chicago, Lyman Bostock always stayed with his uncle, Thomas Turner, who lived in close-by Gary, Indiana. While traveling in Turner’s vehicle with his uncle’s goddaughter, Barbara Smith, fate dealt Lyman Bostock a pitch he could not handle. Smith’s estranged husband pulled up alongside the car Lyman Bostock was in at a stop sign and got out. He had a .410 shotgun with him, and he fired one shot into the backseat where Lyman Bostock was sitting. The blast struck Lyman Bostock in the temple, causing his death a couple of hours later. Lyman Bostock was only 27 years old at the time of his death. The shooter, Leonard Smith, had been trying to kill his wife; incredibly, a jury would find him not guilty of murder by reason of insanity. Leonard Smith would be judged no longer a danger in 1980. He spent a total of twenty-one months incarcerated for killing Lyman Bostock, who knew Barbara Smith for all of twenty minutes.

The Angels were horribly shaken by the awful loss of such a fine player and person. Lyman Bostock’s career average was .311, and had he lived it is likely he would have been a .300 hitter for the next ten years. But that loss is secondary to the loss of Lyman Bostock, the human being. A man who accepted his responsibility as a role model seriously, Lyman Bostock left behind a wife and a son. All you need to know about Lyman Bostock can be gleaned from the following. After what would be the last game he played at Anaheim Stadium for the Angels, Lyman Bostock came out of the park to go to his car. Fans would wait there in that area for autographs, and Lyman Bostock almost always signed humbly and graciously. On this night, a pair of teenage boys asked him for his signature, which he gave them. Then, instead of just hopping in his vehicle and leaving, Lyman Bostock, worrying that it was quite late and these two kids were out alone, asked them where their parents were. He then escorted them across the street to a restaurant and stayed with the youths until one of their fathers arrived to bring them home. Two days later Lyman Bostock was dead, as baseball lost a rising star and the human race was robbed of a man who embodied all that a professional athlete should aspire to be.