After passing up a potential professional football career, he played in Major League Baseball as a first baseman from 1954 to 1955 for the Boston Red Sox.

He signed a bonus baby contract, and after one season playing minor league baseball, he started at first base for the Red Sox.

Aristotle George Agganis (Greek: Αριστοτέλης Γεώργιος Αγγάνης[citation needed]) was born in Lynn, Massachusetts, United States, growing up with four brothers and two sisters.

[2] Agganis set another Boston University mark by passing for 1,402 yards (1,282 m) for the season and won the Bulger Lowe Award as New England's outstanding football player.

[4] At the time of his death, Agganis was spending his off-season at his alma mater as an assistant coach, tutoring Tom Gastall, another quarterback who decided to play professional baseball and died young.

He was diagnosed with a viral infection and flown back to Sancta Maria Hospital in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where a doctor partially blamed his playing too soon after the first illness.

[3][6] American League president Will Harridge said his office was "saddened and shocked", and Red Sox owner Tom Yawkey said he was "stunned", calling Agganis "a man of great character".

The Foundation was started in 1955 by the Boston Red Sox and owner Thomas A. Yawkey, the (Lynn) Daily Item newspaper and Harold O. Zimman, a mentor of Agganis for whom the football field at Tufts University is named.