Report: Oldest ex-major leaguer dies

• Tweet

CHARLOTTE, N.C., Jan. 23 (UPI) -- Bill Werber, the oldest living former major league baseball player, has died of natural causes at the age of 100, the Charlotte Observer reported Friday.

Werber played third base alongside Babe Ruth during part of his 11-year baseball career, and won a World Series in 1940 with the Cincinnati Reds.

The report said Werber had lived in North Carolina's Queen City since 1998 at a retirement community to be near daughter, Pat Bryant, who closely supervised his day-to-day care.

In 1930, Werber, a superb athlete, was the first All-American basketball player as a guard at Duke University.

Bryant told the Observer that in his late 90s her father would stay up past his normal 9 p.m. bedtime to watch Duke basketball games on television, wore a Duke golf shirt, and usually kept a Duke blanket wrapped around his legs.

"For the past few weeks, daddy said he was too tired to watch the Duke games," Bryant told the newspaper Thursday. "That's when we knew it was time."