Ryan Vogelsong and the 9 Unlikeliest All-Stars in San Francisco Giants History

San Francisco Giant pitcher Ryan Vogelsong is the feel-good story of the 2011 major league baseball season.

Vogelsong's selection as an NL All-Star is the latest chapter in his emergence from utter obscurity. He is one of five 2011 Giant All-Stars, the most the club has had since 1966. He joins Tim Lincecum, Matt Cain, Brian Wilson and Pablo Sandoval in Phoenix.

The Giants have been well represented throughout the All-Star Game's 78-year history.

Luminaries like Tim Lincecum, Barry Bonds (and father Bobby), Willie Mays, Juan Marichal, Willie McCovey, Orlando Cepeda, Carl Hubbell, Mel Ott and Johnny Mize have garnered multiple All-Star appearances (Mize was a Giant for several years between longer stints with the Cardinals and Yankees).

Mays played in 24 All-Star games over 20 seasons (two games a season were played several weeks apart from 1959 to 1962) Only Henry Aaron and Stan Musial appeared as often. 

The Giants have also had their share of obscure All-Stars. Here are nine—one for each decade since the event began—of the unlikeliest to represent the orange and black. 

Lefty O'Doul (OF/P, 1933)

Readers under a certain age associate Lefty O'Doul with the popular Union Square watering hole bearing his name, not the San Francisco native who had a 13-year career with five major league clubs.

O'Doul, whose pro carer began in 1919, appeared in only one All-Star game: the 1933 inaugural in Chicago. If not for his age (36 in 1933, one year from retirement), he would have played in many more.

A left-handed outfielder/pitcher, O'Doul was on the downhill side of a very solid career (.349 career batting average over 11 seasons) when named an All-Star as a Giant in '33. Four years earlier, for Philadelphia, he had batted .398 with 254 hits, 32 HRs and 122 RBI.

O'Doul returned to San Francisco and later managed the Seals of the Pacific Coast League. 

The bar/restaurant opened in 1958 and, like its namesake, remains a local institution.

Bill Voiselle (P, 1944)

Bill Voiselle was nicknamed "Big Bill"; at 6'4", 200 lbs, that reveals the profound lack of imagination among writers of his day.

Pitching for three clubs from 1942-50, Voiselle career numbers weren't exactly All-Star caliber: 74-84 W/L, 3.83 ERA, 1.42 WHIP.

But in 1944, for a Giants club that won only 67 games, Big Bill was anything but average: 21-16, 3.02 ERA in 312 innings over 41 starts.

Voiselle accounted for nearly a third of that sorry club's victories. That puts him in Steve Carlton territory (in 1972, Carlton won 27 games for the woeful 59-97 Phillies).

Bob Schmidt (C, 1958)

In their inaugural season in San Francisco, three Giants were named All-Stars. Two, Willie Mays and pitcher Johnny Antonelli, were established stars. Antonelli was making his fourth All-Star appearance, Mays his fifth.

The third was anything but well-known. Bob Schmidt's career, in a way, resembled Vogelsong's.

Schmidt had toiled for seven years in the minors before joining the Giants in 1958 as a 25-year old catcher.

As a rookie, Schmidt posted career numbers: 127 games, 14 HRs, 54 RBI. He also threw out 46 percent of would-be base stealers. He was rewarded with his lone All-Star appearance, in Baltimore.

In six subsequent seasons as a Giant, Red, Senator and Yankee, Schmidt added just 25 HRs and 96 RBI. He retired in 1965.

Stu Miller: (P, 1961)

In 1961, pitcher Stu Miller was a one-year All-Star wonder, destined to be forever connected to the wind-blown lore of Candlestick Park.

Like Ryan Vogelsong, Miller was 33 when named an All-Star, the oldest of five Giants on the '61 NL squad.

Like Vogelsong, Miller's career had a sudden, unexpected ascent in 1961. He set a career high for wins (14, equaled in 1965 with Baltimore), throwing 122 innings over 63 appearances. A former starter, Miller fully transformed himself that year into an effective, durable reliever. He would pitch seven more seasons before retiring in 1968.

Candlestick Park was host to one of the 1961 All-Star games (two were played each year from 1959 to 1962). Miller, the hometown hero, was pitching when a gust of wind supposedly blew him off the mound. The fable become part of baseball legend.

Only it turned out to be untrue. Miller recently told the Bay Area News Group's Jeff Faraudo that while it was gusty, he wasn't blown anywhere. 

As told to Faraudo, "...Miller went into the stretch for his first pitch when a fierce gust hit his shoulder. The result was more like a flinch than Miller being blown off the mound."

Miller's significance to All-Star history endures: he is another of the many Giant one-season wonders to earn an All-Star appearance.

John Montefusco (P, 1976)

The 1970s weren't terribly easy for the San Francisco Giants or their fans. 

After winning the NL West in 1971, the Giants wouldn't return to the playoffs for 16 seasons. Talent disappeared. Attendance at Candlestick declined, precipitously. In late 1975, the Stoneham family reached a deal to sell the club to a Toronto brewery. Last-second intervention kept them in San Francisco.

In late 1974, a brash rookie pitcher named John Montefusco showed up. For the next seven seasons in San Francisco, he provided hope and moments of pure joy to a beleaguered fan base.

NIcknamed The Count—a riff on the Count of Monte Cristo—Montefusco was loud, obnoxious and, sometimes, good at his craft.

He homered in his first major league at bat, against the Dodgers. Then he talked crap about it, and them, endearing him forever to Giants fans.

Montefusco deserved an All-Star bid in 1975, a year he went 15-9, was voted Rookie of the Year and finished fourth in NL Cy Young balloting. But his abrasiveness rubbed many folks the wrong way, likely influencing some voters to snub him.

The next season, the New Jersey native took matters out of voters' hands. Montefusco went 16-14 with a 2.84 ERA, 11 complete games, six shutouts and 1.17 WHIP for a lousy, aging club that went 74-84.

The capper was a no-hitter in late September against Atlanta, the last Giant no-no until 2009, when Jonathan Sanchez tossed one against the Padres.

Befitting Montefusco, he threw two shutout innings against the AL All-Stars. The man loved a stage. And Giant fans loved him—and love him still.

Chris Brown (IF, 1986)

For the Giants, the 1980s were the Yin to the 1970s' Yang.

The '70s began with a division title, followed by years of mediocrity. The 80's were generally awful before Will Clark, Robby Thompson and other young reinforcements arrived. That decade culminated in two NL West titles and a league pennant—the club's first in 27 years.

One of the young guns was Chris Brown, a second round draftee of the Giants in 1979.

The kid showed right away that he could hit. A September 1984 call-up, he was a mainstay for the '85 Giants, a club that lost 100 games. His .271 batting average led regulars. He was one of their top run producers, with 16 HRs and 61 RBI. Brown finished fourth in the Rookie of the Year balloting.

Like Montefusco a decade earlier, Brown's rookie performance carried over into his sophomore ('86) season, when he made his lone All-Star appearance. 

After a lackluster start in 1987, Brown was traded to the Padres, who dealt him to Detroit two seasons later. His career ended after Tigers manager Sparky Anderson released him over frustration with Brown's constant and, some believed, non-existent ailments. The most infamous of those might be Brown's begging out of the lineup in 1989 after saying he'd "slept wrong" on his eye.

Brown's baseball career ended prematurely, as he was only 27. His life after baseball also ended too soon. He died in 2006 at age 45 in what authorities called a "mysterious" house fire.

Shawn Estes (P, 1997)

Why is Shawn Estes, a pitcher who won over 100 major league games, part of a list of "unlikely" Giant All-Stars?

It's basically a matter of unmet expectations. After making the NL All-Star squad in 1997 in his first full season as a starter, Estes never again lived up to his promise. 

And did he ever have promise. Estes, at 24, was brilliant for the 1997 Giants. He led the staff in wins (19), ERA (3.18), starts (32), innings (202), complete games (3) and shutouts (2). 

Estes' appearance in the 1997 All-Star game at Jacobs Field in Cleveland symbolized his star-crossed career. He surrendered a seventh-inning two-run homer to the Cleveland Indians' Sandy Alomar Jr., and absorbed the loss in a 3-1 AL win.

The lefthander remained in San Francisco through 2001, and retired in 2008 after shorter stints with the Mets, Reds, Cubs, Rockies, Diamondbacks and Padres. He had three subsequent double-digit win seasons, including a 15-8 record for Colorado in 2004. 

Curious to know why he wasn't an All-Star that year?

Perhaps it was his ERA (5.84), WHIP (1.64) or runs allowed (131, tops in the NL). Estes had the good fortune that year to pitch for the '04 Rockies—the original Blake Street Bombers—a club that scored 833 runs. The 2011 Giants, in contrast, are on pace to score 582 runs this year. 

Moises Alou (OF, 2005)

It was so perfect. Another Alou, from a family deserving of the label "baseball royalty," wearing orange and black. Even better: the younger Alou would play for his father, who had come home to his ancestral team as its manager a year earlier.

Fifteen years into a distinguished career, Moises Alou did come to San Francisco in 2005 to play for his dad, Felipe. 

The relationship lasted two years, 2005 and '06. Moises Alou was out of baseball two seasons later, retiring after two injury-plagued seasons with the Mets.

For the 2005 Giants, 38-year-old Moises did his family proud. He batted .321 with 19 HRs and 63 RBIs. For his effort, Alou was named a National League All-Star for the sixth and last time.

Alou's contributions to the Giants were somewhat overshadowed—perhaps "suffocated" is more apt—by the Barry Bonds home run record chase and everything associated with it. But Alou's service in San Francisco, however brief, deserves more attention than it received.

Ryan Vogelsong (P, 2011)

The Ryan Vogelsong story has been told so often, in so much detail, we'll provide just these three tidbits:

1) Entering 2011, Vogelsong had a career record of 10-22 over six seasons with the Giants and Pirates. This season, he's added six wins and an ERA nearly four runs—yes, four—lower than his career average.

2) In 2007, Vogelsong went to Japan to resurrect his career. He spent three seasons there, returning in 2010. After brief stops in Philadelphia and Anaheim, he signed a non-guaranteed contract with the Giants.  

3) Vogelsong has been the most consistently effective starter on a staff featuring four World Series vets, one of whom is a two-time Cy Young winner. Without him, the Giants likely would have entered the break somewhere other than first place.

Will Vogelsong be another Chris Brown? Or, can he sustain his amazing career resurrection into 2012 and beyond?

Time will tell. For now, it's enough to celebrate his unlikely ascent to All-Star status.