Keith Ginter

Keith Michael Ginter was born in 1976 in Norwalk, California. After high school, he attended Cypress College for two years and then transferred to Texas Tech, where he was a two-time All-American. Ginter was selected in the 10^th round of the 1998 MLB Amateur Draft by the Houston Astros.

The right-handed batting infielder made his major league debut in September 2000 and got his first big-league hit and home run off Jimmy Haynes of the Brewers. Over three seasons, Ginter only had 14 at-bats with Houston before being traded to the Brewers in September 2002. Ginter started 21 games at third base for the Brewers in September because Mark Loretta, the regular third sacker, went to Houston in exchange for Ginter.

Ginter split time between second and third in the infield for Milwaukee the next two years, playing in 240 games for the Brewers in 2003 and 2004. Just before Christmas 2004, Ginter was traded to the Oakland Athletics. Ginter had a three-year batting line for Milwaukee of .257/.344/.448 across 261 games and 820 ABs. He also hit 34 homers and drove in 112 runs.

The California native played 51 games for Oakland in 2005 but never made another major league appearance after that. He spent the next four years playing in the minors for Oakland, Cleveland, Boston, and the Chicago White Sox. In 2010, Ginter played for Orange County (California) in the independent Golden Baseball League, along with former MLB stars Byung-Hyun Kim and Mark Prior.

Ginter played six years in the bigs, finishing with a slash line of .243/.329/.422 across 971 at-bats, including 38 home runs.

• Hit 28 home runs in his high school career
• Was All-Orange County in both baseball and football his senior year
• Ginter--along with five other players--was a victim of a robbery during 2000 spring training