Willie Horton

William Wattison Horton, born October 18, 1942, and nicknamed "Willie the Wonder," was an American baseball left fielder and designated hitter who played in Major League Baseball from 1963 to 1980, primarily for the Detroit Tigers. The youngest of fourteen children of James and Lillian Horton, he was born in Arno, Virginia, a small community within the corporate limits of Appalachia, Virginia. At sixteen he hit a home run at Tiger Stadium during an all-city high school game, and after winning a city championship with Detroit Northwestern High School in 1959, he signed with the Tigers in 1961, beginning his professional career with the farm-team Duluth Dukes.

Over an eighteen-year career that spanned six American League teams, Horton was a four-time All-Star and won a World Championship with the 1968 Tigers. He hit twenty or more home runs seven times, and his 325 career home runs ranked sixth among American League right-handed hitters at the time of his retirement. His finest season came in 1968, when he finished second in the American League with 36 home runs, a .543 slugging average, and 278 total bases. In the later years of his career, serving primarily as a designated hitter, he was twice named the American League's top designated hitter.