All-star baseball player Ransom ‘Randy’ Jackson, 93

Ransom Joseph “Randy” Jackson Jr, an all-star baseball player, died at home in Georgia yesterday after a brief illness.

The 93-year-old was a third baseman with the Chicago Cubs in the mid-1950s and the last player to hit a home run for the Brooklyn Dodgers, before the club moved to California and became the Los Angeles Dodgers.

Nicknamed “Handsome Ransom”, Jackson was the oldest living Los Angeles Dodger at the time of his death.

In a game against the Philadelphia Phillies, he hit his second home run of the season and the last by a Brooklyn Dodger player but he didn’t know its significance until some 30 years later when he became the topic of a trivia question on Good Morning America.

In his autobiography, Accidental Big League, he wrote: “They asked ‘Who was the last Brooklyn Dodger to hit a home run?’ Chuck (son) said ‘Dad, the answer was you’.”

Jackson was in the National League All-Star team in 1954 and 1955 but injuries limited him to 48 games in 1957 and he retired two years later.

He moved to Athens, Georgia, and went into life insurance on leaving the sport.

In 1972, he met and married his wife of 47 years, Terry Yeargan. Jackson is survived by Terry and their six children and spouses – Randy and Laurie, Chuck and Anna, Ann and Clay, Ginny and Bill, Meredith and Kenny, and Ransom and Lara – as well as 13 grandchildren and eight greatgrandchildren.