Scott Hatteberg

Hatteberg was born in Salem, Oregon. He played Little League in his native Salem, Oregon and Canby, Oregon, and Pony League and American Legion baseball in Yakima, Washington. Hatteberg graduated from Eisenhower High School in Yakima in 1988. He was MVP of the baseball team and also lettered in football. He was team captain his senior year and hit .570 with seven home runs.

He was a member of the United States national baseball team at the 1990 Goodwill Games. He hit a home run in a game against the Mexican national baseball team. He hit .292/.346/.417 for Team USA in the 1990 Baseball World Cup.

He attended Washington State University from 1989 through 1991 for the Washington State Cougars baseball team in the Pacific-10 Conference. The Cougars won the Pac-10 North all three years. He was captain and MVP in 1991 and as a catcher he formed a battery with future major league pitcher Aaron Sele. Hatteberg played collegiate summer baseball in the Alaska Baseball League in 1989 and 1990. At Washington State, he was a member of the Alpha Gamma Rho fraternity.

He was the third player selected by the Boston Red Sox in the 1991 June draft, a sandwich pick between the first and second rounds as compensation from Kansas City Royals for the signing of Type A free agent Mike Boddicker.

Hatteberg debuted with the Red Sox in 1995. In parts of seven seasons from 1995 through 2001, he hit 34 home runs and batted .267. On August 6, 2001, against the Texas Rangers, he became the only player in MLB history to hit into a triple play and hit a grand slam in his next at-bat. The bat he used for that game is now in the National Baseball Hall of Fame.

A career highlight for Hatteberg was as a member of the Oakland A's on September 4, 2002. The A's had won 19 straight games to tie the American League record. With their next game, against the Kansas City Royals, tied at 11 after the A's had blown an 11-0 lead, Hatteberg pinch-hit with one out and the bases empty in the bottom of the ninth inning. He drove a 1-0 pitch well over the right center field wall off Jason Grimsley for a walk-off home run to give the A's a 12-11 win and a then-American League record 20-game winning streak, which has since been broken by the 2017 Cleveland Indians who won 22 straight games (the overall Major League record; the 1916 New York Giants had won 26 straight games with an interspersed tie for a record 27-game unbeaten streak). This moment is depicted in the Moneyball film.

As an everyday player Hatteberg helped the Athletics reach the playoffs twice, in 2002 and 2003. He hit 49 home runs and batted .269 from 2002 through 2005. He drove in 263 runs and had an on base percentage of .355. His best year was 2004 when he hit .287, scored 87 runs, hit 15 home runs, drove in 82 runs, and had an on-base percentage of .367.

On February 12, 2006, the Cincinnati Reds signed Hatteberg to a one-year, $750,000 contract. He was originally expected to give them flexibility at first base, backing up Adam Dunn. When the Reds traded Wily Mo Peña to the Red Sox, Dunn moved back to the outfield and Hatteberg was to play at first base, improving the Reds' defense.

On August 8, 2006, he recorded his 1,000th career hit against Jason Marquis of the St. Louis Cardinals at Great American Ball Park in Cincinnati. He went 3-for-5 in this game, increasing his batting average to .323.

During the first weeks of the 2008 season, he was relegated to pinch-hitting while rookie Joey Votto replaced him at first base. Pinch-hitting was relatively new to Hatteberg, who admitted that it was a role he was not particularly comfortable in even though he had hit his historic September 4, 2002 20-game winning-streak clinching walk-off homer for Oakland as a pinch-hitter. On May 27, 2008, he was designated for assignment by the Reds to make room on the roster for top prospect Jay Bruce and officially released by the club on June 4.

Hatteberg's conversion from catcher to first baseman by the Athletics is the subject of a chapter in the Michael Lewis book Moneyball. In that chapter, Oakland General Manager Billy Beane openly admitted how the team had pursued Hatteberg because of his high on-base percentage, which Athletics' management had determined was most often correlated with runs scored. According to Beane, it was one of the most affordable skills at that time for small-market clubs like the A's. Infield coach Ron Washington worked with Hatteberg to teach him the new position. A fictionalized version of Hatteberg (played by Chris Pratt) is a key character in the 2011 film Moneyball.

Hatteberg serves as a Special Assistant to Baseball Operations for the Oakland Athletics. In the 2012 and 2013 seasons, Hatteberg substituted for Ray Fosse as the Oakland A's color commentator on TV broadcasts for a number of games.