1894 by Edward Drobinski - HTML preview
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Page 57
bats some sites now utilize to “qualify” a yearly batting average leader in a recently identified “major” league.
From 1876 through 1920 the accepted standard for a player to qualify for the batting title was that a player had to appear in at least 60 percent of his team’s scheduled games. Tuck Turner met that standard in 1894. In that same season, however, Boston’s Hugh Duffy of that city’s National League team hit for the highest single season batting average in major league history, .440. This effectively gave Tuck Turner the first of his three major league records; the highest single season batting average not to win the league batting title.
In 2010 the Staten Island Sports Hall of Fame inducted Turner posthumously and installed a plaque honoring this native son. In considering the six inscriptions on that plaque, two of these career accomplishments deserve further note; “Turner hit .323,
.418, and .386 in his first three seasons with 1890s Philadelphia Phillies and had 11 straight multiple hit games, third best all time.”
Had there been a bigger plaque, two more inscriptions might have been included; one to give credit to his highest season average for a switch hitter and the other for Turner’s 12 consecutive