Baseball; the Last Great American Pastime by Edward Drobinski - HTML preview

Baseball; the Last Great American Pastime

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#20- Overlooked by Baseball’s Hall of Fame

In addition to the many Negro League stars previously noted

in the “The Negro Leagues” chapter, as well as those somehow

forgotten by the annals of baseball, here is a succinct list of

white MLB players who seem to have been short changed in

posterity.

Lefty O’Doul

O’Doul began his professional baseball career as a left-

handed pitcher with the minor-league San Francisco Seals of

the Triple-A Pacific Coast League. Later this same team would be

noted as the one which spawned Joe DiMaggio. He had little major

league success as a relief pitcher. In fact he got the

distinction of setting the record, since equaled but never

exceeded, of having once given up sixteen runs over three

innings of relief, with fourteen of those runs coming in the

sixth inning alone. Following that season, O'Doul developed a

sore arm, which forced him to give up his pitching vocation.

After the 1923 season, the New York Giants returned O'Doul

to the Pacific Coast League, where he was converted to a power-

hitting outfielder. In 1927 he became one of what are today four

Pacific Coast League hitters to have had a 30 home run, 30

stolen base seasons. O'Doul returned to the majors in 1928,

where he batted .319 in part time play. In 1929, he was traded

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to the Philadelphia Phillies and, teaming up with Chuck Klein,

had one of the best offensive years in baseball history, leading

the league in batting at .398 with 254 hits, 32 home runs,

122 runs batted in, and 152 runs scored. His hit total broke the

previous National League record of 250 by Rogers Hornsby of

the 1922 St. Louis Cardinals and still stands. After batting

.383 with 22 homers during the 1930 season, O'Doul was traded to

the Brooklyn Robins. In 1932, he batted .368 for Brooklyn to win

another league batting title. After a slow start in 1933, when

he batted just .252 through 43 games, O'Doul was again traded,

this time back to the Giants. He rallied to hit .306 the rest of

the way that season, but played just one more year before ending

his career in 1934.

Lefty seems to have been the beneficiary of having played

for owners and general managers who did not make the brightest

of decisions. His lifetime .349 batting average is fourth on the

all-time list, behind only Ty Cobb, Rogers Hornsby and Shoeless

Joe Jackson. Christ, how much better is one required to be?

O'Doul returned to the Pacific Coast League as manager of

the San Francisco Seals from 1935 to 1951, later managing

several other teams in the circuit and becoming the most

successful manager in PCL history. One of his outstanding

accomplishments while managing the Seals was developing the

young Joe DiMaggio, who went on to a Hall of Fame career with

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the New York Yankees. O'Doul refused to take credit for

DiMaggio's success, saying "I was just smart enough to leave him

alone." How many other managers are that smart?

Lefty was instrumental in spreading baseball's popularity

in Japan, serving as the sport's goodwill ambassador before and

after World War II. The Tokyo Giants, sometimes considered

"Japan's Baseball Team", were named by him in 1935 in honor of

his longtime association with the New York Giants; the logo and

uniform of the Giants in Japan strongly resemble their North

American counterparts.

O'Doul was inducted into the San Francisco Bay Area Sports

Hall of Fame in 1981 and the Japanese Baseball Hall of Fame in

2002. It is about time that the official US Baseball Hall of

Fame shows as much good judgment.

Gavvy Cravath

Clifford Carlton "Gavvy" Cravath played primarily for

the Philadelphia Phillies. He was the sport's most prolific

power hitter of the dead ball era. In the seven years from 1913

to 1920 he led the National League in home runs six times,

in runs batted in, total bases and slugging average twice each,

and in hits, runs and walks once each. He led the NL in several

offensive categories in 1915 as the Phillies won the first

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pennant in the team's 33 year history. However, he played his

home games at Baker Bowl, a park that was notoriously favorable

to batting statistics.

The Phillies had a short right field porch 272 feet from

home plate at the Baker Bowl. It should be fairly noted that the

right field fence in “the house that Ruth Built” was 297 feet

from home, and served as no detriment to Ruth, Gehrig, Berra,

and Mantle’s induction into the Hall. If anything Cravath was at

a relative disadvantage to them as he batted right handed.

In 1913 he enjoyed a career season, leading the NL in hits

(179), home runs (19), RBI (128), total bases (298), and

slugging (.568); he also placed second in batting with a career-

high mark of .341. He placed second in the voting for

the Chalmers MVP Award behind Jake Daubert. He repeated as home

run champion in 1914, while again sharing the league lead in

assists indicative of his superb outfield abilities, and

finishing second in RBI and slugging.

1915 saw his best season as he hit 24 home runs, leading

the Phillies to their first pennant. He had a three run home run

in the pennant-clinching game on September 29. He also led the

league in runs (89), RBI (115, leading the NL by 28), total

bases (266), walks (86), on-base percentage (.393), and slugging

(.510, leading the NL by 53 points), and led the NL in assists

for the third time. His 24 home runs were the most in the major

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leagues since Buck Freeman hit 25 for the 1899 Washington

Senators.

Cravath had a career .287 batting average with 119 home

runs, then the fourth most in history, and 719 RBI in 1220

games.

In a June 27, 2004 interview with the seven time Jeopardy

champion Tom Walsh, who set the record for wins on the program

in January 2004, Walsh said, "I feel like 'Cactus Gavvy'

Cravath. Do you know who that is? Right. Nobody does. He's the

guy who had the home run record before Babe Ruth came along."

It would get ugly to drag up the names of some less

qualified who are in the Hall.

Bob Meusel

Ignoring Bob Meusel is an out and out travesty of justice.

Meusel’s stats are better than many Hall members. One can only

suppose that his nonchalant, laconic attitude may not have

endeared him to the sportswriters, but this is not supposed to

be a popularity contest.

He played for the Yankees during the Ruth “Murderer’s Row”

times and once in 1925 led the league in home runs. Typical of

his attitude, once when asked about some particularly hard

throwing pitcher he was soon to face, he said; “I don’t care if

he shoots it out of a cannon. The only question is how fast I

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have to start my bat.” Had we not been graced with Ruthian

wallops some of us might be speaking of Meuselian nonchalant

whacks.

He played 11 seasons from 1920-30, all but the last for the

Yankees. It was a time when not many other than Ruth were

hitting them out. He hit 156 while batting .309.

Simply, his credentials include;

1) Hitting home runs when few did.

2) Being a significant member of a winning team.

3) Having a lifetime batting average above .300.

He and his brother may well be the only .300 hitters not in

the Hall. This has to be some sort of joke. The perversely funny

one is that Bob wouldn’t have cared in the least.

Emil “Irish” Meusel

Three years older than Bob, “Irish” spent ten years in the

National League from 1918-27. His lifetime average was .310 with

106 home runs. He played in four World Series with the New York

Giants, and seems to be even more forgotten than Bob. This is

totally absurd.