Author: Graham Womack

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Any player/Any era: Fritz Maisel

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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Does he belong in the Hall of Fame? Pete Browning

Claim to fame: Browning was one of the first great stars of the game with his career that spanned 1882 to 1894. Among his numerous accomplishments, Browning won three batting titles, hit .402 in 1887, and finished with a career batting average of .341. That lifetime clip is 13th best all-time, and his career OPS+ of 162 is 12th best. Browning even inspired the name for the Louisville Slugger.

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.

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Remembering a good brawl

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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

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How the Hall of Fame could honor players who also managed

There are many paths in baseball to the Hall of Fame. A man can be enshrined as a player, a manager, or an owner, among other things. Interestingly, though, candidates who both played and managed don’t have these achievements judged together. Were rules different, a few more men might have plaques.

Currently, a backlog exists of baseball figures who both played and managed well, but perhaps didn’t achieve enough in either arena to earn a plaque. My idea is a hybrid wing of the Hall of Fame, where men could be inducted on the strength of both their playing and managerial careers. It seems reasonable that a man be considered for the sum of his contributions to baseball. This could also help the Hall of Fame honor more managers, since just 25 have been enshrined.

Here are eight men who could be inducted this way:

Charlie Grimm: One of those names I once figured was already in Cooperstown– as a player or a manager. Grimm compiled 2,229 hits and a .290 lifetime batting average in 20 seasons and was a longtime first baseman for the Cubs. He became a player-manager for them near the end of his playing career and ultimately posted a managerial record of 1287-1067 with three National League pennants.

Steve O’Neill: O’Neill had a 17-year career as a catcher and then did his best work as a manager. In 14 years with four clubs, O’Neill was 1040-821 and led the Tigers to the 1945 World Series championship. An ad on O’Neill’s Baseball-Reference.com page says he and Joe McCarthy are the only two managers to never post a losing record.

Jimmy Dykes: Dykes went 1406-1541 managing six clubs and prior to this was a longtime player with 2,256 hits, a .280 lifetime batting average, and two All Star appearances, a memorable baseball character in either capacity.

Gil Hodges: Of the men listed here, the iconic Dodgers first baseman might come closest on playing merit alone, hitting 374 home runs, making eight All Star teams, and being one of the greatest defensive players at his position all-time. I’m including Hodges because when his Hall of Fame case is brought up, people tend to invariably mention him managing the 1969 World Series champion Mets. It’s what inspired this post.

Al Dark: Like Hodges, Dark won a World Series as both a player and a manager, hitting .293 with 20 home runs for the champion Giants in 1954 and leading the A’s to a title 20 years later. In all, Dark had 2,089 hits, a .289 lifetime average, and three All Star appearances as a player, and he went 994-954 as a manager.

Dusty Baker: Baker hit 242 home runs in 19 seasons and has followed with a 17-year managerial career, winning at least 88 games eight times and compiling a 1386-1266 record. He comes nowhere close to the Hall of Fame as a player, and I suspect when he is considered as a manager, two things will doom him: 1) He hasn’t won a World Series; 2) He supposedly wrecked some young pitchers. All of this is unfortunate, because it’s time Cooperstown celebrated a modern black manager.

Felipe Alou: Similar to Baker, Alou had a long, if essentially unspectacular playing career, finishing with 2,101 hits, 206 home runs, and a .286 batting average. Nearly two decades after he retired, Alou resurfaced as the sagacious manager of the Montreal Expos and spent 14 years as a skipper in the majors, going 1033-1021.

Jim Fregosi: Early in his career, Fregosi was among the best shortstops in baseball, making six All Star teams and winning a Gold Glove. His career went downhill after he was traded for Nolan Ryan in December 1971. Fregosi served mostly as a bench player his final seven seasons before retiring in 1978, finishing with 1,726 hits and a .265 career batting average. He later was 1028-1095 as a manager, with one World Series appearance.

Related: A compilation of Cooperstown posts

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Any player/Any era: Harmon Killebrew

What he did: Killebrew won six American League home run titles in an eleven-year stretch, on his way to smacking 573 lifetime bombs. He’s been supplanted on the career leader board in recent years by a variety of suspected and admitted steroid users, though Killebrew still at least rates as perhaps the greatest American League slugger of his generation, a perennial home run and RBI champ. With an ability to also hit for average, Killebrew might have been a Triple Crown winner.

Killbrew’s .256 lifetime batting average may be part of what relegates him to second-tier status in discussing all-time great hitters. It’s why Ted Williams kept Killebrew out of his list of the top 20 hitters all-time. Thing is, there are generations where Killbrew’s career batting average could have been much higher.

Era he might have thrived in: 1930s, Cleveland Indians

Why: One of my regular readers suggested teaming Killebrew on these Indians with Earl Averill and Hal Trosky, so I went to the stat converter on Baseball-Reference.

First, here are Killebrew’s actual numbers that he put up in his career with the Senators, Twins, and Royals from 1954-1975:

R H 2B 3B HR RBI AVG OBP SLG OPS
1283 2086 290 24 573 1584 .256 .376 .509 .884

And here are how Killebrew’s numbers would look if he played every year of his career on a team like the 1936 Cleveland Indians:

R H 2B 3B HR RBI AVG OBP SLG OPS
1707 2499 348 25 687 2111 .300 .429 .595 1.024

Translation: In his own era, Killebrew was a great slugger and not much else. In the 1930s, he’d have been Cleveland’s version of Hank Greenberg. The only stat Killebrew’s numbers don’t see a dramatic jump with is triples (can’t win ’em all) and he’d rank third all-time for runs batted in, fourth in home runs and seventh in OPS. Killebrew would hit at least 50 home runs seven times and peak at 59 home runs, 182 RBI, and a .327 clip for his converted 1969 season. If his career begins early enough, say 1926, he might not even lose playing time to World War II.

It’s hard to explain why Killebrew’s numbers could vary so much between different eras, though some factors can be ruled out. Killebrew didn’t always lack for support, as he played five years with a young Rod Carew and a healthy Tony Oliva, two great hitting champs. We also can’t blame his ballpark. Killebrew’s park in Minnesota may have favored hitters more than his would-be homes in Cleveland in 1936, League Park and Cleveland Stadium. But I’m guessing the major factor here is that Killebrew played in an age for pitchers, and the 1930s was essentially opposite.

In fact, many ’60s players might have thrived in the 1930s golden era for hitters. Playing his entire career on a team like the ’36 Indians, Frank Howard would have 469 home runs, a .325 career batting average, and a 1.003 OPS. Jimmie Wynn would hit .315, a full 65 points higher than his actual lifetime batting average since he played so often in the Astrodome, which is only just smaller than Delaware. Even Ray Oyler gets in on it, the .175 career hitter (.175!) jumping to a semi-not-terrible .215. Really, it’s almost a wonder these Cleveland clubs didn’t send more players to the Hall of Fame.

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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Does he belong in the Hall of Fame? Al Oliver

Claim to fame: Quietly, Oliver may have been one of the best hitters of the 1970s and ’80s, amassing 2,743 hits and a .303 lifetime batting average, hitting above .300 eleven of his 18 seasons. Oliver had perhaps his best year in 1982 when he led the National League in hits, doubles, runs batted in, and batting average, was an All Star, and finished third in Most Valuable Player voting. Mostly, though, he was a solid supporting player.

Current Hall of Fame eligibility: Oliver received 4.3 percent of the vote in 1991, his only year on the writers ballot for Cooperstown. Having last played in 1985, Oliver can be enshrined by the Veterans Committee.

Does he belong in the Hall of Fame? This was originally going to be a column about Harvey Kuenn, Bill Madlock, Tony Oliva, or Mickey Vernon, other great hitters yet to be inducted. When I began examining their stats, I noticed Kuenn and Madlock each have more than 2,000 hits and a career batting average above .300. I decided to find all the players who achieved this.

Not counting active, recently-retired players, and Pete Rose– who is ineligible for Cooperstown– there are 20 men with at least 2,000 hits and a lifetime batting average of .300 or better. A chart alphabetized by first name follows, with leading stats among the group in bold:

Player R H 2B 3B HR RBI AVG OBP SLG OPS
Al Oliver 1189 2743 529 77 219 1326 .303 .344 .451 .795
Bill Madlock 920 2008 348 34 163 860 .305 .365 .442 .807
Bobby Veach 953 2063 393 147 64 1166 .310 .370 .442 .812
Buddy Myer 1174 2131 353 130 38 850 .303 .389 .406 .795
Deacon White 1140 2067 270 98 24 988 .312 .346 .393 .740
Dixie Walker 1037 2064 376 96 105 1023 .306 .383 .437 .820
Don Mattingly 1007 2153 442 20 222 1099 .307 .358 .471 .830
Ed McKean 1227 2084 272 158 67 1124 .302 .365 .417 .781
Edgar Martinez 1219 2247 514 15 309 1261 .312 .418 .515 .933
George Burns 901 2018 444 72 72 951 .307 .354 .429 .783
Harvey Kuenn 951 2092 356 56 87 671 .303 .357 .408 .765
Jake Daubert 1117 2326 250 165 56 722 .303 .360 .401 .760
Jimmy Ryan 1643 2513 451 157 118 1093 .308 .375 .444 .820
Mark Grace 1179 2445 511 45 173 1146 .303 .383 .442 .825
Patsy Donovan 1321 2256 208 75 16 738 .301 .348 .355 .702
Paul Hines 1217 2133 399 93 57 855 .302 .340 .409 .749
Roberto Alomar 1508 2724 504 80 210 1134 .300 .371 .443 .814
Stan Hack 1239 2193 363 81 57 642 .301 .394 .397 .791
Stuffy McInnis 872 2405 312 101 20 1062 .307 .343 .381 .723
Will Clark 1186 2176 440 47 284 1205 .303 .384 .497 .880


This chart could double as a list of fringe candidates for Cooperstown. The majority of the players could have — and many have had — impassioned cases made for their enshrinement. Depending how one looks at it, Oliver might be most deserving.

Martinez is the group leader for home runs, on-base percentage, and slugging percentage, and he obliterates the others on the chart with his .933 OPS, fourth-highest among non-inducted players who have been eligible for Cooperstown. With any defensive ability, Martinez would have been a first-ballot inductee, instead of receiving 36.2 percent of the vote in 2009. As it stands, Martinez redefined the value of an excellent designated hitter and should be enshrined eventually.

Oliver has the most hits, doubles, and runs batted in of the group, and in many respects, he’s the antithesis to Martinez. Where Martinez wasn’t an everyday player until he was 27 and assaulted the offensive leader boards like a man making up for lost time, Oliver was a starter at 22 and remained consistent for the better part of two decades. He was perhaps never a star and rarely the best player on his team but generally a solid teammate, good for about 170 hits, 80-100 RBI and a .300 batting average. I suspect he made a lot of guys better.

Oliver’s Web site features testimonials from Andre Dawson, George Foster, Bob Gibson, and Willie Stargell suggesting he should be in Cooperstown. There’s also a quote from baseball researcher Bill James which ends, “It’s an injustice for him to be off the ballot. He shouldn’t be put in that category. It surprises me that he received so little support.” I don’t know if I’m surprised, but I’ll say this: The stated task of the Veterans Committee is to find players overlooked by the writers. To this end, Oliver seems an ideal candidate for them. I’d vote for him if I could.

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

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Looking for a good baseball researcher

I recently got an email from a regular reader worth sharing here. He wrote:

Do you know if anyone has done any research into the effects of the strength of schedule in evaluating teams and how good or how not so good they may be and the effect it has on individual player statistics?

Think of it this way. Teams that play a lot of good clubs should have fewer wins than comparable teams playing teams with losing records. There should be a way of measuring and evaluating this, don’t you think? And to take it even further, it should be possible to rate each hitter and each pitcher vs one another to see who may have their stats either artificially inflated or deflated by the competition level they face. One guys .285/350/450 line may be significatly better than the guy who’s 320/380/535, or the pitcher who’s 12-11 may be better than the guy who went 17-8.

What got me thinking about it is that the key to winning is to play .500 ball against teams with winning records and beat up on the bad teams. With all the strange schedules and uneven matchups, it seems these should, or could be taken into account and measured, say in the same way the pythagorian formula creates simulated win/loss totals.

Look at how the scheduling this year has especially blessed the Reds and the Rangers who’ve feasted on an abundance of rotten teams and been manhandled whenever they’ve played teams with winning records or from competitive divisions. It’s probably part of the reason that Hamilton and Votto have even been mentioned as possible triple crown winners and may even be measurable as to how much it’s added to their counting numbers.

Thoughts? Worthwhile looking into?

I definitely think it merits checking out. I already believe the strength of a player’s team affects his performance. Just a few weeks ago, I ran Nate Colbert’s numbers through the stat converter on Baseball-Reference and noted the large jump he could have experienced playing on a powerhouse from an earlier era than the one he played in. It would logically follow that strength of schedule impacts individual stats, as well. I’m guessing there probably is a way to quantify this, though I’m not sure if I want to be the guy to do it.

Thus, I’m posting something here in hopes a baseball researcher may be up to the challenge. I will happily give full credit here once the results are in. Of course, please let me know if something like this already exists.

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10 great baseball movies that haven’t been made

Game of Shadows: With Moneyball in production, one has to wonder what great baseball book may next become a film. My vote is the best work on the Steroid Era which documented the rises and falls of Barry Bonds, Jason Giambi, and Marion Jones, while introducing characters like showboating steroid dealer Victor Conte and dumpster-diving IRS agent Jeff Nowitzky. It’s got many elements for a great movie including suspense, tragedy, and a little dark humor. Some may argue steroids in baseball are so five years ago but this movie would be no more dated than one touting Billy Beane as a genius.

Anything about the Negro Leagues: Correct me if I’m wrong, but it seems there has never been a major studio release about black baseball, which is unfortunate because it offer a wealth of poetic, sometimes heartbreaking stories. There’s Rube Foster, who helped launch a league but died broken, Josh Gibson, perhaps the greatest star of black baseball who died in 1947 at 35, disillusioned because he wouldn’t get to break the color barrier in the majors, and many others like them.

The Boys of Summer, Ball Four, Veeck as in Wreck, The Catcher Was a Spy: Ball Four was incendiary in its time, a playing diary of the 1969 season that revealed players as drunks, louts, and racists. There’s more than enough great anecdotes in the more than 400 pages for a screenplay, and with a 40th anniversary edition just released, it would be timely. The Boys of Summer is another personal favorite, glorifying the Brooklyn Dodgers. I haven’t read Veeck as in Wreck or The Catcher Was a Spy, but each illuminates a memorable baseball figure: innovative owner Bill Veeck and sometimes catcher/possible World War II spy Moe Berg.

Something on Pete Rose: The life story of the all-time hits king, barred from baseball for gambling seems like a movie waiting to happen. One possibility is Field of Dreams II, where Rose convinces an Iowa farmer to plow under his corn to build a baseball field so he can come back and play ball. And bet on those games.

The Oakland Athletics of the early 1970s: If ESPN can produce The Bronx is Burning about the New York Yankees of the late 1970s, why doesn’t someone make something on a squad with more World Series titles, a wackier owner, and a more highly-evolved level of dysfunction? Sports Illustrated provided a film treatment, of sorts, with this outstanding article in 1999.

Something by the Frat Pack: When I think of Jack Black, Will Ferrell, Ben Stiller and company, I picture a movie about early 20th century baseball, when drunk, rowdy, and profane players scarcely ranked above second-class citizens. I could also see these actors in a project about another raucous club, the 1993 Philadelphia Phillies, since Black seems a clone for John Kruk, Stiller could play talented but neurotic Mitch Williams, and Ferrell, with some suspension of disbelief, could play Darren Daulton.

The Eddie Gaedel Story: This would be a short. Oh, I’m bad.

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Any player/Any era: Johnny Frederick

What he did: Reading the name Johnny Frederick might make one think of a Revolutionary War hero or a punk rocker. Only baseball historians may know of the Johnny Frederick who played six solid seasons with the Brooklyn Dodgers from 1929 through 1934 and then vanished from the big leagues, never to return.

Frederick is part of a small, but intriguing class of ballplayers: those men with at least 200 hits in a season, but fewer than 1,000 in their career. I know of 22 players who did this. Nearly all of them played in the 1920s and ’30s, and no one appears to have accomplished the feat since 1950. I’m interested why this is, as well as what may have driven men like Frederick from the majors and what could have inspired them to stay.

Era he might have thrived in: 1970s to current

Why: About a month ago, a loyal reader emailed me names of a few players with at least 200 hits in a season but less than 1,000 in a career. It seemed a little quirky, and I initially didn’t pay it much attention, but on Tuesday, while researching players with lifetime batting averages above .300 for an upcoming post, I stumbled onto a few more of these men. Wednesday, I got systematic. Using Baseball-Reference, I scoured the list of players with at least 200 hits in a season.

Here’s an alphabetized list of inactive players who’ve had at least 200 hits at least one season but less than 1,000 in their careers:

Player Years Active 200 Hit Seasons Career Hits
Dale Alexander 1929-1933 215 (1929) 811
Beau Bell 1935-1941 212 (1936), 218 (1937) 806
Eddie Brown 1920-1928 201 (1926) 878
Dick Burrus 1919-1928 200 (1925) 513
Bob Dillinger 1946-1951 207 (1948) 888
Johnny Frederick 1929-1934 1929 (206), 1930 (206) 954
Chick Fullis 1928-1936 200 (1933) 548
Johnny Hodapp 1925-1933 225 (1930) 880
Charlie Hollocher 1918-1924 201 (1922) 894
Woody Jensen 1931-1939 203 (1935) 774
Benny Kauff 1912-1920 211 (1914) 961
Bill Lamar 1917-1927 202 (1925) 633
Hank Leiber 1933-1942 203 (1935) 808
Austin McHenry 1918-1922 201 (1921) 592
Ed Morgan 1928-1934 204 (1930) 879
Lance Richbourg 1921-1932 206 (1928) 806
Moose Solters 1934-1943 201 (1935) 990
Jigger Statz 1919-1928 209 (1923) 737
Snuffy Stirnweiss 1943-1952 205 (1944) 989
George Stone 1903-1910 208 (1906) 984
Fresco Thompson 1925-1934 202 (1929) 762
Dick Wakefield 1941-1952 200 (1943) 625

A few have come close to this feat in recent years. Lyman Bostock fell one hit shy of 200 in 1977 and then died at the end of the following year at 27, finishing with 624 career hits. Doug Glanvillle and Randy Velarde each had 200-hit seasons and fewer than 1,200 career hits. But the overall trend seems nothing like it was 80 years ago.

The presence of some men on the list above can be explained. McHenry died a few months after his last game in 1922, Kauff was barred from the majors at 30 because of his alleged participation in a stolen car ring, and Stirnweiss played his best ball in a talent-depleted American League during World War II. A few players listed here also had their time in the majors cut short by that war. And my reader pointed out that Alexander was unjustly labeled a poor fielder, and no team would sign him after his batting average dipped below .300.

Alexander and most of the men here went onto good stints in the minors after leaving the majors. Some opted for the Pacific Coast League, where the travel was shorter, the season longer, and the weather warmer than the majors, which did not exist west of St. Louis prior to 1958. And in the days before free agency and players like Glanville or Velarde commanding a few million dollars, a non-star could earn more playing in a place like the PCL than the majors. Some of these men also rose to great heights in lesser circuits, like Statz who Lawrence Ritter called the Pete Rose of the PCL.

Frederick hit .363 with my hometown Sacramento Solons in 1935, his first year in the PCL after the majors and followed with five more seasons for rival Portland, hitting over .300 every year. He retired with nearly three times as many hits in the PCL than the majors, and between the two, he had over 3,000. If Frederick played in the majors today, I could envision him like Paul Molitor, a regular batting title threat earning millions, a spot in the 3,000-hit club, and his place in Cooperstown.

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

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Does he belong in the Hall of Fame? Rocky Colavito

Claim to fame: Colavito had a 14-year career from 1955 to 1968, and for about ten of those years, he was one of the best players in the American League. From 1956 through 1966, Colavito smacked 358 home runs, made six All Star teams, and finished among the top five in Most Valuable Player award voting three times. The right fielder went into rapid decline after 1966, bouncing between four teams his final two seasons, though as noted here recently, Colavito had a moment in the sun his last year in the majors, 1968, when he pitched and won a game for the Yankees.

Current Hall of Fame eligibility: Colavito appeared on the Cooperstown ballot for the Baseball Writers Association of America twice, receiving two votes in 1974 and one in 1975. He can be enshrined by the Veterans Committee.

Does he belong in the Hall of Fame? My knee jerk reaction from looking at Colavito’s career numbers is: No, he doesn’t merit a Hall of Fame plaque.

A lifetime batting average of .266, 374 career home runs and 1,730 hits don’t seem sufficient for Cooperstown, and several of the players Colavito charts most closely to offensively fall into the good-but-not-great category: Boog Powell, Norm Cash, Frank Howard. All were solid members of their teams in their day, but if every man like this were to be honored, the Hall of Fame would mushroom in size and become watered down to the point I’d be devoting columns here to whether or not Reggie Sanders deserved induction.

To me, Colavito falls into a class of players who might have been Hall of Famers had they kept up the pace from the first half of their careers, rather than falling almost completely off the map around 30. Ted Kluszewski is another player like this from Colavito’s era. Dwight Gooden and Nomar Garciaparra are more recent examples. In their primes, each may have seemed like a shoe-in for future enshrinement, but it’s a push to lobby for any of them now (though I included Gooden among the 10 best players not in the Hall of Fame.)

All this being said, it was a little surprising to me when I learned Colavito was not in Cooperstown. With his name and the great years he had, I’d have thought he received a plaque years ago (Kluszewski as well, come to think of it.) Colavito’s anemic vote totals with the BBWAA are more surprising still. Heck, the Cleveland Indians were supposedly afflicted for years with something called the Curse of Rocky Colavito following their ill-fated trade of him for Harvey Kuenn just before the start of the 1960 season. Legends usually inspire curses.

A place on the Internet devoted to Colavito’s candidacy, Rocky Colavito Fan Site notes, “Many avid baseball fans assume that Rocky is already in the Hall of Fame and are shocked when they learn that this is not the case.” The site carries a Hall of Fame petition in Colavito’s name, with a goal of making the slugger eligible this year with the Veterans Committee for enshrinement next summer. I would encourage anyone interested to check it out.

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