Some might say Henderson played in the perfect era for his skill set, as he debuted in 1979, less than 20 years after speedsters like Maury Wills and Lou Brock helped bring the steal back. I wonder, though, how Henderson might have fared in an era before steals were valued, when he could have hit in the middle of the order. If he did this, he could have showed off a facet of his game that may have been underutilized in the lead-off spot: His power.

Era he might have thrived in: With the Boys of Summer Brooklyn Dodgers in the early 1950s.

Why: The Dodgers of those years were stacked, perennial contenders who had taken advantage of Major League Baseball’s slowness to integrate by pilfering the Negro Leagues in the late 1940s. Interestingly, though, despite scoring Jackie Robinson, Roy Campanella, Don Newcombe and others, Brooklyn never had a Willie Mays-type five tool superstar. Henderson might have been Brooklyn’s answer to the Say Hey Kid.

Running Henderson’s career numbers through the stat converter on Baseball-Reference.com, he finishes with 350 home runs and a .936 OPS if he’d played every season on a team like the 1953 Dodgers. The converter has him hitting above .350 six times and smacking at least 30 home runs twice, something he never did in a season. I think the power numbers are conservative, and I question if the converter can account for the difference Henderson would experience hitting in the middle of the lineup. Henderson was a master of the lead-off home run. Imagine what he could do on a team that hit well and put men on-base.

Those Dodgers hit .285 as a team, went 105-49, and lost to the Yankees in the World Series, as they did often in those years. Adding Henderson might well have been mutually beneficial. Despite having Carl Furillo in right field and Duke Snider in center, the Dodgers were perpetually getting new left fielders in those years. A regular reader pointed out to me that Robinson and Jim Gilliam even spent time at the position. With Henderson, there would be no more stopgaps and perhaps a few more championships.

My guess is that Henderson would hit 35-40 home runs regularly for Brooklyn and also be good for at least 30-40 steals and a .330 batting average every season. Since he’d be playing in a time where a man only needed 30 steals to lead the league, I think Henderson could probably still be a regular stolen base champ. Would he have supplanted Brock or Ty Cobb in the record books? Possibly not. But he might have a greater legacy today.

Any player/Any era is a Thursday feature that looks at how a player might have done in an era besides his own.

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In 1952, when Philadelphia A’s pitcher Bobby Shantz won the American League Most Valuable Player award, I was a nine-year-old kid growing up in Dodgerless Los Angeles and rooting for the Hollywood Stars.

I remember wondering how it was possible that Shantz, not much bigger than me at 5’6” and 135 pounds, could be mowing down Ted Williams and Yogi Berra in the big leagues when I was still throwing pop flies to myself in my backyard.

No one could deny that in 1952 Shantz hit his peak. Posting a 24-7 win-loss record for a fifth-place team, Shantz garnered the MVP award in a landslide by easily outdistancing New York Yankee stars Allie Reynolds, Mickey Mantle and Yogi Berra.

Shantz led the American League in wins, winning percentage (.774), fewest walks per game (2.03), finished second with 27 complete games, third with a 2.48 ERA and 152 strikeouts, tied for third with five shutouts, fourth with 255 innings pitched and fifth in fewest hits per game (7.39).

In his first major league appearance on May 1, 1949, Shantz pitched two-thirds of an inning of scoreless relief against the Washington Senators.

As inconspicuous as his debut was, Shantz showed what he was all about five days later. On May 6 Shantz notched his first big league win when at Briggs Stadium, Detroit, he entered the game in the fourth inning in relief of Carl Scheib. For the next ten innings, Shantz held the Tigers to two hits and one earned run while striking out seven.

A’s manager Connie Mack, a former catcher, kept Shantz from using his most effective pitch (the knucleball) and was predisposed to more physically intimidating hurlers like Joe Coleman, Lou Brissie and Dick Fowler. But when Mack retired after the 1950 season, new pilot Jimmy Dykes gave Shantz more rest and let him use off speed pitches. The result: in 1951, an 18-10 record for a 70-84 Athletics team.

In 1957 the Athletics, now located in Kansas City, traded Shantz along with Art Ditmar, Jack McMahan, Wayne Belardi and two players to be named later to the Yankees in exchange for Irv Noren, Milt Graff, Mickey McDermott, Tom Morgan, Rip Coleman, Billy Hunter and a player to be named later.

Used mostly as a spot starter with Whitey Ford, Don Larsen, Tom Sturdivant and Bob Turley, Shantz went 11-5 and led the major leagues in ERA with a 2.45 mark.

Lost in the annals of time is Shantz’s disappointing role for the Yankees in the famous 1960 World Series against the Pittsburgh Pirates.

Shantz pitched two-thirds of an inning (scoreless) in both the second and fourth games. In the second, he earned a save for Turley.

In the seventh game, the wheels came off. Shantz entered the game in the third inning and held the Pirates scoreless for four innings. But in the bottom of the eighth, Shantz gave up singles to Gino Cimoli, Bill Virdon and Dick Groat before coming out in favor of Jim Coates.

All three eventually scored and the earned runs were charged to Shantz. The Pirates tallied twice more before eventually winning the game, 10-9, and the series, 4-3.

Manager Casey Stengel decision to leave Shantz in may have cost him his job. During the regular season, Shantz never pitched more than four innings. Why Stengel left Shantz in for the fifth is a baseball mystery.

The following year Shantz landed with the Pirates and subsequently pitched for the Houston Colt .45s, St. Louis Cardinals, Chicago Cubs and Philadelphia Phillies.

Over his career Shantz, a three time All Star, sparkled in the 1952 contest when in the fifth inning he struck out Whitey Lockman, Jackie Robinson and Stan Musial. Had the game not been called because of rain, Shantz might have broken Carl Hubbell’s record of five in a row.

He also won eight Gold Gloves including the first four years (1957-1960) it was awarded.

In a baseball oddity, Shantz and his brother catcher Billy were teammates on the Philadelphia A’s (1954), Kansas City (1955) and the Yankees (1960).  However, they were only battery mates in Kansas City.

In 2010, the Philadelphia Sports Hall of Fame elected Shantz. The Pottstown native now lives in Ambler, PA.

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Joe Guzzardi belongs to the Society for American Baseball Research as well as the Internet Baseball Writers Association of America. Email him at guzzjoe@yahoo.com

Current Hall of Fame eligibility: Parker has made 14 appearances on the Cooperstown ballot for the Baseball Writers Association of America, consistently receiving about 10-20 percent of the vote each year. He has one more shot with the writers coming up in a few months and looks like a future Veterans Committee candidate.

Does he belong in the Hall of Fame? In May 2009, I included Parker on a list of the 10 best players not in the Hall of Fame. Sixteen months on, there are probably some players I would remove from that list. Parker is not one of them.

At the time I made my list, I wrote about Parker:

This guy’s a Veteran’s Committee pick waiting to happen. If Jim Rice and Orlando Cepeda can get into the Hall, Parker should too. He had better career numbers than those players for hits, doubles, runs batted in, runs scored, and stolen bases. However, just like Cepeda delayed his Cooperstown bid by going to prison for drug trafficking, Parker likely hurt his chances with well-publicized cocaine abuse.

Were it not for the onerous drug issues, which included being a central witness in a series of drug trials in Pittsburgh in the mid-1980s, Parker might have retired as one of the best players since Willie Mays or Hank Aaron. Early in his career, Parker had an all-around game comparable to either man, one of the few ballplayers in his generation who could hit for average and power, field and throw well, and steal bases.

Even with the marked decline in the second half of his career, when he went from regular All Star to serviceable role player, Parker still finished with 2,712 hits, 339 home runs and a .290 batting average. Baseball-Reference.com has four ranking benchmarks for Cooperstown. Parker meets two and falls just short on the other two.

Parker is perhaps a fringe candidate on statistical merit, and that’s where being a minority with a less-than-wholesome persona has likely hurt him with Hall of Fame voters. This kind of thing certainly didn’t help Dick Allen, Albert Belle, Dwight Gooden, or Maury Wills. For some reason, when white players like Dizzy Dean or Rube Waddell debauch, it adds to their lore, though others rarely get this consideration. If a black player isn’t lovable like Kirby Puckett, he’d better have ironclad lifetime stats like Eddie Murray.

Granted, there are plenty of white players with glowing reputations who haven’t been enshrined, such as Gil Hodges, Harvey Kuenn, and Dale Murphy.

Still, I have to wonder.

Does he belong in the Hall of Fame? is a Tuesday feature here.

A lot of ballplayers aren’t very good starting out, like Dale Murphy who once said in a book for children, “I’m glad my appetite for trying wasn’t quenched after my first season in Little League when I struck out most of the time. I loved the game and I had fun playing it. I didn’t really realize that I had had a bad season.”

In sixth grade, I had a bad season. My teacher assigned an average of two hours of homework a night to prepare my class for middle school, and while I later aced seventh grade, my passion for playing baseball died. Twice a week in the spring of sixth grade, I sat three out of every six innings on the bench for my team, and it began to seem like a waste of time I needed for homework. I never played another season.

So it was with some excitement and trepidation that I greeted an invitation to join an adult softball team this year. I wondered if I’d be a different player with the strength of a grown man, or if this would merely be a continuance of my crappy childhood career. It turned out to be a little of both.

I still sat the bench about half the time, partly because we were a co-ed team who needed to keep a certain amount of female players on-field, and we had more male players than we knew what to do with. I also still wasn’t a very good hitter, at least early in the season when I struck out swinging a few times, which is embarrassing in a slow-pitch league. For a time this year, it was like I was 11 all over again, and I sometimes resented giving half my Sundays to games or practices. Even as I’m in my 20s and relatively unencumbered, my life is busy.

I’m glad I didn’t quit the softball team. I improved as the season progressed, up to my final at-bat. We were in our tournament elimination game on Sunday, and I came to the plate in the last inning with two outs, our team down 12-9, and the bases loaded. I smacked a two-run single and represented the winning run, though I got stranded at second base, and we lost.

Regardless, it’s the kind of experience that will keep a player coming out. I look forward to next year.

I occasionally write personal entries. Here are a few similar posts:

Baseball cards

Thoughts on George Brett and the glove he inspired

My first baseball game

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On Memorial Day, 1962 the transplanted Dodgers playing in Los Angeles returned to New York for the first time since the team left Brooklyn in 1957 to play a three game series against the woebegone New York Mets.

In an effort to fill up the disintegrating Polo Grounds with new fans, the Mets had loaded the roster with ex-Brooklyn heroes including Don Zimmer, Clem Labine, Charlie Neal, Joe Pignatano and Gil Hodges.

The effort to lure fans succeeded. The Mets drew nearly one million rabid rooters, many of whom soon crowed about the new franchise: “I’ve been a Mets fan all my life.”

For the May 30 double dip 55,704 Metropolitans’ rooters jammed the Polo Grounds to watch their beloved team take on their cross country rivals.

On paper, it didn’t figure to be much of a contest. The Mets, eventual losers of 120 games, are considered by most to be the worst team in modern baseball history. The Dodgers won 101 games and finished one game behind the National League pennant winning San Francisco Giants.

The match up pitted Sandy Koufax (14-7) and Johnny Podres (15-13) for the Dodgers, against Jay Hook (8-19) and Bob L. Miller (1-12).

Unsurprisingly, since we are talking about the Mets, there’s a story behind the two New York starting pitchers. The Mets were the only team in baseball to ever have two players with identical names, Bob Miller. Naturally that led to considerable confusion.

To complicate matters even further, the Millers roomed together. Their teammates decided simply to call them “Lefty” Bob Miller and “Righty” Bob Miller. Manager Casey Stengel, for reasons known only to him, called “Righty” Bob Miller “Nelson”

In any event, “Righty” Bob, who faced the Dodgers that afternoon, lost his first 12 starts until on the next to the last day of the season, he notched a win against the Chicago Cubs.

As for Hook, since he earned a mechanical engineering degree from Northwestern University but notched only had a 12-34 record during his three Mets’ seasons, Stengel joked: “Hook can explain a curve ball but he can’t throw one.”

In the first game, Koufax was fortunate that the Dodgers spotted him a 10-0 lead through the top of the fourth. The 1962 Koufax hadn’t yet hit his Hall of Fame stride. Although Koufax struck out 10, the Mets battered him for 13 hits and six earned runs before succumbing 13-6.

To the immense delight of the crowd, one of the runs came off the bat of Brooklyn favorite Hodges when he homered in the fourth.

The nightcap was closer. The Mets shelled Podres, knocking him out in the seventh inning after he gave up five earned runs. The Mets outhit the Dodgers 9-5 including two more home runs by Hodges. Nevertheless, the Mets lost, 6-5.

For the season, the Mets went 2-16 against the Dodgers and fared only slightly better against the San Francisco Giants, 4-14. The Mets did however manage to break even against the Chicago Cubs, 9-9. The Cubs lost 103 games to finish in ninth place, ahead of only the Mets.

Although other professional sports teams have had more barren seasons, the Mets remain the benchmark for failure.

In 1976, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers went 0-14; the Detroit Lions posted a 2008 0-16 mark.

Yet the Mets remain synonymous with futility probably because they had players like Miller, Hook and of course Marvelous Marv Throneberry who, by the way, tapped a weak grounder to shortstop in his pinch hit and lone plate appearance that afternoon.

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Joe Guzzardi belongs to the Society for American Baseball Research, as well as the Internet Baseball Writers Association of America. Email him at guzzjoe@yahoo.com

To be clear, I’m not suggesting each player here is the best at his position who’s not in the Hall of Fame. This is strictly about creating the best possible team. I invite anyone to offer their own lineup.

Here’s my roster card:

1. SS – Maury Wills: He’s far from the best shortstop not in the Hall of Fame, but if we’re putting together a one-shot, winner-takes-all lineup, I could use Wills leading off. He’s a threat to steal every time on base and a Gold Glove fielder to boot.

2. 2B – Roberto Alomar: In his prime, Alomar regularly hit above .300, accumulated more than 200 hits, and was a stellar defensive second baseman. Had he not fallen off dramatically near the end of his career, he’d have been a first ballot Hall of Famer.

3. LF – Shoeless Joe Jackson: On sheer talent, Shoeless Joe may be the best baseball player not in the Hall of Fame. Because of his involvement in fixing the 1919 World Series, Jackson may never receive a plaque, though I’m happy to offer a lineup spot.

4. DH – Albert Belle: The only player boasting 50-home-run power on this team, Belle’s .933 career OPS is third-highest out of eligible players not in the Hall of Fame. The two players in front of Belle are Lefty O’Doul, who has less power and Mark McGwire, who recently admitted to using steroids.

5. RF – Dave Parker: A superb player whose Cooperstown candidacy suffered for well-documented drug problems, Parker is on my list of the 10 best players not in the Hall of Fame.

6. 1B – Don Mattingly: Were more power needed, I might go with Gil Hodges, and I was also tempted to tap my childhood hero, Will Clark, but I chose Donnie Baseball who offers the best combination of average, power, and defense.

7. C – Thurman Munson: I originally chose Joe Torre but saw he was the starting backstop for Seamheads, and I switched to Munson. The career of the iconic Yankees captain ended when he died in a plane crash at 32 in August 1979, though prior to that, he was one of the best catchers of the 1970s.

8. 3B – Pete Rose: The all-time hits leader could probably occupy most any spot in the batting order or field for this club and he’d be a valuable clubhouse presence as well. I should add that I believe Rose belongs in the Hall of Fame, Jackson too.

9. CF – Spottswood Poles: I’ve written before about Poles, described elsewhere as “the black Ty Cobb.” Most recently, I included Poles among a group of old-timers who deserve mass induction.

P – Jack Morris: He probably isn’t the best pitcher currently outside of the Hall of Fame (see: Bert Blyleven) but Morris owned Game 7 of the 1991 World Series. I give him the game ball hoping there’s another 10-inning, championship-winning masterpiece in him, if necessary.

RP – Sparky Lyle: I interviewed former ballplayer Ken Henderson in July, and he said Lyle and Steve Carlton were two of the toughest pitchers he faced. Lyle was a pioneering reliever, the second to win a Cy Young award. In 16 seasons from 1967-1982, he went 99-76 with a 2.88 ERA and 238 saves.

Manager – Billy Martin: What non-inducted manager could better handle this team’s star power than the Bronx Zoo skipper?

Related: The 10 Most Overrated Hall of Famers and The zero Hall of Fame votes dream line-up

What he did: Here’s another interesting player I doubt many modern baseball fans have heard of. Maisel played in the big leagues from 1913 through 1918 and retired with largely unremarkable stats: a .242 lifetime batting average, 510 hits, and a career slugging percentage of .299. Supposedly, the New York Yankees turned down a chance to trade Maisel straight up for Joe Jackson. That had to sting.

Perhaps the one thing Maisel did remarkably well was steal bases, which may have helped earn him the nickname Flash. Maisel stole 194 bases in his career, averaged over 30 steals per season, and led the majors with 74 swiped bags in 1914. He was only caught stealing 17 times, which the blog Cybermetrics recently noted was far better than the league average that year. Maisel’s big season came one year before Ty Cobb stole 96 bases and set a big league record that stood for 47 years.

Thing is, in a different era, Maisel might have topped this.

Era he might have thrived in: With the Murderers Row Yankees of the late 1920s and early ’30s

Why: I’ve written before about players who excelled at stealing bases during times it wasn’t trendy to do so. In June, I devoted one of these columns to Washington Senators outfielder George Case, who liked to say he could have stolen 100 bases in a different era. In my research on Case, I noted that Ben Chapman stole 61 bases for the 1931 Yankees. I decided to see how Maisel would have fared on those clubs.

The stat converter on Baseball-Reference has Maisel stealing 97 bases on the 1930 Yankees, a team that hit .309, scored 1,062 runs and had Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig turning in career-defining seasons. It’s a little astonishing that New York finished a distant third in the American League that year. Maisel’s presence wouldn’t have made the difference in the standings, though it could have helped his legacy.

If Maisel had played for those Yankees, he may have set a record to last until Maury Wills stole 104 bases in 1962. The record would have almost outlived Maisel, who followed his playing career with work as a minor league manager and fire chief and died in 1967 at 77. Like Maisel, Wills was an infielder mostly known for stealing bases and playing generally good defense. Considering Wills received as much as 40 percent of the Hall of Fame vote, went the full 15 years on the writers ballot, and may still have a shot with the Veterans Committee, I suspect Maisel’s achievement would have gotten him at least some consideration, too.

Granted, many players probably could have compiled gaudy stolen base totals on the 1930 Yankees, if the stat converter is to be believed. Wills’ 1962 season converts to 126 stolen bases, Cobb would have 115 steals for his converted 1915 effort, and Rickey Henderson circa 1982 would have stolen 167 bases for the 1930 Yankees. Heck, I might have even set the stolen base record that year.

Any player/Any era is a Thursday feature that looks at how a player might have done in an era besides his own.

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You may not believe it (I know I didn’t) but on April 22, 1959, the Chicago White Sox on its way to a 20-6 triumph scored 11 runs on one hit against the Kansas City Athletics at the old Municipal Stadium.  A sparse crowd of 7,446 witnessed history.

During its American League pennant year, the Go Go Sox needed all the offensive help it could get.

But the gift from the Athletics was more than manager Al Lopez could have hoped for in his wildest dreams.

For the season, the White Sox had a .250 over all team average, scored only 669 runs, had 620 RBIs and 1,325 base hits. Those totals ranked Chicago sixth in offensive output in an eight team league. The total base count of 1,928 was seventh; home runs, dead last with 97. The White Sox were the only team in the major leagues to hit fewer than 100 homers.

To make up for its weak hitting, the Go Go Sox counted on speed and plate discipline as it led the league in stolen bases with 113 (56 for leader Luis Aparicio), triples with 46, batters hit by a pitch, 49 and tied with Detroit for most times reaching base via a walk, 580. The White Sox were tough to strike out, too, whiffing a league low of 634 times.

The Sox, however, relied on the proverbial strength up the middle.

Anchored by the double play combination of the incomparable Nellie Fox, the American League’s Most Valuable Player and Aparicio, the Sox were also solid in center field where Jim Landis’ clutch hitting, glove and throwing arm contributed to many key wins.

Behind the plate, Sherm Lollar equaled his more famous New York Yankee rival and former teammate, Yogi Berra. Lollar appeared in seven All Star Games and won three Gold Glove Awards.

Solid pitching rounded out the White Sox. Starters Early Wynn (22-10), the 1959 Cy Young Award winner, Bob Shaw (18-6) and relief specialists Turk Lown and Gerry Staley were solid all year.

The White Sox were unlikely pennant winners.

From 1955 to 1958, the Yankees won 4 straight American League crowns and 9 of the last ten years including 7 World Series titles.

Prognosticators liked the Cleveland Indians chances in 1959 too. Like the White Sox, the Indians had speed, good pitching but also had power, namely Rocky Colavito.

But the Yankees’ pitching faltered. Whitey Ford had an off year (for him), Bob Turley, the 1958 Cy Young Award winner, went 8-11 and Mickey Mantle, although he hit 31 home runs, drove in a mere 75. The Yankees finished in third place, 15 games behind the White Sox.

The Indians challenged but, losers of 15 of 22 head-to-head games against the Sox, came up in second place, five games shy.

When the White Sox sewed up its first pennant in forty years, fire Commissioner Robert J. Quinn ordered a celebratory five-minute sounding of the city’s air-raid sirens that set many Chicago residents rushing out into the streets to look for a possible Soviet Union bomb attack. But Quinn’s alarm was just one delirious fan’s way to celebrate. Unfortunately for Quinn and other White Sox devotees, the magic wore off in the World Series when the South Siders lost to the Los Angeles Dodgers, 4-2.

Now let’s go back to that incredible seventh inning when the White Sox tallied 11 times on only a single by Johnny Callison. Three Kansas City pitchers (Tom Gorman, Mark Freeman and George Brunet) issued ten walks, Brunet hit Callison, while Athletics’ defenders Joe DeMaestri, Hal Smith and Roger Maris committed three errors.

Over the course of 9 innings, the Go Go Sox amassed 16 hits including six for extra bases.  Fox had three singles, a double, two walks and drove in five.

Unfortunately, White Sox starter Wynn could not stick around to enjoy the Athletics’ largess. In Wynn’s worst outing of the year, Kansas City knocked him out in the second after he gave up 6 earned runs. The victory went to Shaw who pitched 7.1 innings of scoreless relief. Bud Daley, ironically not part of the catastrophic seventh, absorbed Athletics’ loss.

Hank Bauer, who managed the Athletics from 1961-1962 and the Oakland A’s (1969), said that of the tens of thousands of baseball games he watched, no two were ever alike.

No game proves Bauer’s point more than the April White Sox-Kansas City game.

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Joe Guzzardi belongs to the Society for American Baseball Research, as well as the Internet Baseball Writers Association of America. Email him at guzzjoe@yahoo.com

Current Hall of Fame eligibility: Browning never appeared on the Cooperstown ballot for the Baseball Writers Association of America and can be inducted through a section of the Veterans Committee that considers players whose careers began before 1943.

Does he belong in the Hall of Fame? If this column has shown anything in the months since its June 1 debut, it’s that there are many outstanding baseball players not in the Hall of Fame. Pete Browning is one who should have been in 60 years ago.

A few weeks ago, I asked if it was time for the Hall of Fame to have another mass induction of old timers. In the early days of Cooperstown, the backlog of old stars was so apparent that an Old Timers Committee was created that enshrined 30 greats between 1939 and 1949, men who played primarily in the early 1900s. It’s hard to say if the committee members deliberately passed on Browning, a notorious hard drinker whose career was relatively short, though they declined to honor a number of 19th century standouts.

It could be argued that the skill level in baseball was sufficiently lower prior to the modern era that few players from those days deserve enshrinement. But 60 years on, there are things now understood in baseball research that I doubt entered the Hall of Fame conversation in the 1930s or ’40s.

Take Browning’s OPS+ ranking of 162, which is his OPS (on-base plus slugging percentage) with his park and league factored in. The stat helps show how vastly superior Browning was to most of his contemporaries, at least offensively. Granted, his non-adjusted career OPS of .869 is nothing to write home about, but it’s not terrible either. In fact, it’s better than many Hall of Famers, including Honus Wagner, Roy Campanella, and George Brett.

OPS+ has been developed and embraced in the last 25 or so years, through John Thorn, Pete Palmer, and other members of the Bill James statistical revolution, and I admit I’m only just starting to grasp its importance. It’s one of many metrics today that make it far easier to rank and compare long-dead baseball greats. Were statistical analysis better understood when the Old Timers Committee was at work, I suspect Browning would be enshrined, though I also think his batting achievements should have been enough for a plaque.

All this being said, it’s not too late to honor a man who died in 1905. Browning is a darling of the baseball research community and was named the Overlooked 19th Century Baseball Legend for 2009 by the Society for American Baseball Research. I think it’s time Browning received broader recognition.

Does he belong in the Hall of Fame? is a Tuesday feature here.

Bob Usher is 85 and hasn’t played professional baseball in more than 50 years, but he hasn’t forgotten an infamous moment in Pacific Coast League history. On August 2, 1953, while with the Los Angeles Angels, Usher participated in a legendary brawl.

I met Usher at the 16th annual Pacific Coast League reunion, held Saturday in San Leandro, California. Usher, who lives nearby in San Jose, was one of several PCL veterans in attendance. These men experienced the glory days of the league before the Giants and Dodgers moved to California in 1958, and the PCL became more of a feeder to the majors, rather than a West Coast alternative. Many of the former players still fraternize, though their ranks are thinning.

Usher collected 259 hits over parts of six big league seasons between 1946 and 1957 and spent five years in the PCL in the middle. He told me he played for the Angels in the PCL from 1952-1955, and my mind flashed on Joe Guzzardi’s post about the 1953 brawl. Usher said it was a long story and suggested we sit down. He began:

I’ve been asked to recount the brawl between the Los Angeles Angels and the Hollywood Stars August 2, 1953. It all started earlier than that. Normally when we’d go to a series, we used to play a seven-game series starting on a Tuesday. But since the Angels were playing the Stars, we started on Monday, and the tension grew each game as we proceeded through the series.

Our first brawl was on Friday night. I can’t recall the exact details of how this occurred, but Gene Handley, a third baseman for the Stars and Fred Richards, a first baseman for the Angels got mixed up somehow, and I don’t recall the exact circumstances.

Frank Kelleher, who was an outfielder for the Stars hurt us all week, particularly Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. On Sunday, he hit a triple, and he scored on a squeeze bunt. That was the fourth inning. In the sixth inning, Kelleher came up again, and Joe Hatten, our left-handed pitcher who used to play with the Brooklyn Dodgers, threw two fastballs inside and finally hit him with a curve ball. Frank walked to the mound, normally they charge today but he walked to the mound and started beating up on Joe Hatten and that emptied the bases.

Both Joe and Frank were ejected, and Ted Beard ran for Kelleher, and I don’t recall how he got to second, he might have stolen second base, but on the next play, Ted with his spikes high came into our third baseman Moe Franklin and hit him in the chest. The umpire Joe Iacovetti called him out at first, but Moe dropped the ball, and he was then called safe. But by that time, both benches had emptied, and for the next hour, there was such a melee on the field that the police captain of Hollywood broke out 50 uniformed policemen to help restore order.

It took over a half hour to do that… We had several people facing off each other in individual fisticuffs. No one was seriously hurt, but I remember coming in from right field, Mel Queen was beating up on our shortstop Bud Hardin who suffered a lower left and was injured that way.

Once the order was restored, the chief of police ordered all the players with the exception of those playing that game into the clubhouse, off of the bench. There’s pictures showing that there are three policemen and a couple ballplayers on the bench, and I’m not sure which bench it was Hollywood or Los Angeles.

The Angels lost 4-1 in the first game. The second game, the Angels won 5-3…. And that’s pretty much about the scenario. I’m not happy to be a part of it, but I was, as part of the melee, and I remember that just like it was yesterday. If anyone is interested in looking up the writeup on the brawl, you can go to www.sportshollywood.com/starsangelsbrawl.html

I asked Usher if he fought anyone, and he replied, “I don’t remember who, but I remember hurting my hand. I must have hit somebody.”

Interestingly, this wasn’t Usher’s most memorable moment as a ballplayer. Here’s a possible winner. In 1948, while at spring training with the Reds, Usher met a terminally ill Babe Ruth. “He had a gravel voice, he came to spring training with a long camel-haired coat on with a matching tan hat, and he signed a ball to me personally, and he passed away that August in ‘48,” Usher said. “I got to talk with him, shake his hand. That was one of the biggest thrills I had. I still have his baseball at home.”

Three related posts:

A color photo of Babe Ruth

Memories from a ballplayer who went to spring training with Jackie Robinson in 1947

The unusual estate sale for a past owner of the Sacramento Solons