In the more than 150 year history of Major League Baseball, only one player has ever been murdered during a season. That player is Lyman “Wesley” Bostock Jr, a budding star for the Angels in the 70's, who was murdered by a man who whose court case would result in a stunning verdict. In an 8-part series, Tom Rinaldi explores Lyman's improbable life, his tragic death, and the miscarriage of justice that let his killer go free. Lyman Bostock is described by Hall Of Fame players like Rod Carew and George Brett as a future batting champ and potential Hall Of Famer himself. But he was so much more than a ballplayer, as Rinaldi learns from talking to his widow, Youvene, his teammates, friends, media members who covered him and lawyers involved in his murder trial. Wesley explores the mindset of man who donated a month's salary to charity rather than accept it while in a hitting slump, the motivations of a man who nearly skipped a career in baseball to pursue the fight for social justice in the late 60's, and the motives of the killer who took his life.
http://www.foxsports.com/
episode 1: S01 Episode 01: We Call Him Wesley
To his family, he was simply “Wesley.” But to all in Major League Baseball, Lyman Wesley Bostock Jr. was a master with a bat. A career .311 hitter, greats of the game like George Brett and Rod Carew believed Bostock had the potential for 3,000 hits, and a possible Hall Of Fame career.
Long before signing a massive contract with the Angels, Lyman was born the son of a Negro Leagues player. Father and son had little contact in the boy’s childhood. Bostock would later say, “My father helped teach Willie [Mays] but never taught me.”
A star high school player in Los Angeles, Bostock almost never played college baseball. He arrived on campus during the tumult of the late 1960s, a period similar to the early 2020s. For Bostock, the fight for equality and social justice, was more important than baseball. “The cause” almost cost him his career.
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