04/18/2026
“When I was first trying to figure out what I was going to do after baseball, I had a strong inclination toward religious archaeology.” —Brad Lidge, former Major League Baseball (MLB) player and Penn Museum Board of Advisors member
The beloved MLB player who threw the final pitch to win the Philadelphia Phillies the 2008 World Series, is now an archaeologist researching Etruscan civilization.
Lidge points to Penn Museum Egyptian curators Jennifer and Josef Wegner, whom he met in 2010, as the inspiration behind turning his personal passion for archaeology into a profession.
Today, he is focused on unearthing more clues about the language of ancient Etruscans, an Italian culture that persisted from 900 to 27 BC. Lidge is also a leading donor to the Penn Museum's excavation project in Abydos, Egypt as well as the Museum's Annual Fund.
Read more in Forbes: https://bit.ly/4tA3AlD