Spider Jorgensen, the third man on the All-Halloween Team roster, got his nickname as a high school athlete in Folsom, California. The Society of American Baseball Research notes that
“…sportswriter Phil Elderkin wrote that the nickname came from a pair of black shorts with an orange stripe down the side that Jorgensen wore playing basketball. ‘The weekend before, a teacher had been cleaning out a woodshed and had to kill a black widow spider,’ Jorgensen related. ‘When he saw me, he told everyone I reminded him of the spider.'”
Jorgensen began his professional baseball career with the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1947, though his debut on April 15, 1947 was overshadowed by the debut of another rookie; Jackie Robinson famously broke baseball’s color barrier at Ebbets Field that day, becoming the first African-American player in the modern era.
Meanwhile, Jorgensen played major league ball until mid-1951, then played in the minor leagues for a couple of years. After his playing days, he remained in and around baseball, coaching and managing both minor league and amateur teams. Jorgensen eventually served as a scout for the Kansas City Royals, Philadelphia Phillies, and Chicago Cubs. He was still scouting locally for the Cubs in his home state of California when he passed away in 2003 at the age of 83.
About Spiders: Spider Jorgensen naturally earns a spot on the Halloween Team roster because of spiders’ traditional association with the holiday. People fear spiders for many reasons:
–human evolution (people evolved to beware small creepy-crawly, potentially venomous, creatures capable of biting),
–societal cues (if you grew up watching your family and friends freak out over spiders, you may be inclined to do the same),
–their appearance (they are pretty weird looking), and
–cultural portrayals of spiders as frightening enemies (films like Earth vs. The Spider, Arachnophobia, Kingdom of the Spiders, Harry Potter and The Chamber of Secrets, and the gloriously named Big Ass Spider!)
Somewhere between Australopithecus and Big Ass Spider!, folklore started suggesting that spiders might be witches’ familiars, or even be human witches in temporary arachnid form.
Considering all that, it makes perfect sense that spiders became symbols of Halloween.
For the record, I am firmly pro-spider; I will tell anyone who will listen that spiders are our friends. Only a very small percentage of spiders are venomous. And spiders provide a valuable service by eating household pests like mosquitoes, flies and moths!
Some other notes on this card:
I realized as I started sketching that Spider Jorgensen’s career had overlapped, however briefly, with the start of legendary Dodgers announcer Vin Scully, and a split second after that, the “Vin Skull-y” joke occurred to me.
I should make something clear:
Skulls can be a little scary.
Vin Scully was not at all scary.
He was grandfatherly, elegant, erudite, and adored by everyone who ever heard him or knew him.
Sportswriter and media personality Dan Le Batard once quipped, accurately, that “Vin Scully looks like the one real human in a Disney movie filled with animated talking animals.”
And just to prove the point, here’s a picture of Vin Scully with a koala, taken during the Dodgers’ trip to Australia in 2014:
“8-Tool Player” (not to be confused with an 8-track player): this is literally an inside baseball reference. In baseball, a 5-tool player is a player who excels at all 5 of the most important facets of the game: hitting for average, hitting for power, running, fielding, and throwing.
I just added 3 extra tools to match the number of legs on a spider.
Just don’t ask me what those tools might be.
Look for more members of the All-Halloween Team, posted here every day between now and Saturday, October 31, 2026!
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