Lyman Bostock

Lyman Bostock — Lyman Wesley Bostock Jr. — American outfielder whose .311 lifetime average and line-drive grace made him one of baseball's rising stars, was shot to death in Gary, Indiana, on September 23, 1978. He was twenty-seven. Born November 22, 1950, in Birmingham, Alabama, and raised partly in Los Angeles, he starred at California State University, Northridge, reached the majors with the Minnesota Twins in 1975, and signed a large free-agent contract with the California Angels before the 1978 season. Twins fans remembered contact hitting and outfield range; Angels teammates remembered a quiet professional still shaking off an early-season slump when tragedy cut the year short. On a visit to Gary after a game in Chicago, he was riding in a car when a gunman fired into the vehicle in a domestic dispute aimed at another passenger. Bostock was not the intended target. Baseball paused; the Angels wore mourning bands; writers argued about promise unfinished. Gary became the last American city on his map — a stop between ballparks, not a home. The statistics he left are brief by Hall of Fame clocks and luminous by any other: four seasons, a batting title chase, and a career average still cited whenever young hitters are measured. He died in Gary on September 23, 1978. Box scores from 1975–1978 still look like the opening chapters of a longer book. Bostock's gift was pure contact — seeing the ball early and spraying it with calm hands. Notice Nearby keeps the death date so September 23 remembers the Birmingham-born outfielder whose career ended in a car that was never meant to be his last dugout.