Monday
It should be amazing to everyone who knows anything about the Negro Leagues that it took until 2006 before Jud “Boojum” Wilson was elected to the Hall of Fame. Monday was the anniversary of his death in 1963, nearly a decade before the first players from the Negro Leagues were finally elected to Cooperstown. He was not in that first wave of nine players inducted in the 1970s, which is pretty appalling. Here are his known career numbers next to Judy Johnson’s, who was elected in 1975:
The folks who were making those selections were doing so with a tacit agreement to put a “team” into the Hall, one player from each position. They needed a third baseman, and Johnson fit the bill. But that wasn’t their official charter, and they strayed from it a bit by squeezing Martín Dihigo into the slot for second base despite the fact that he didn’t play a single season in which his primary position was second base. So they could have chosen Wilson, a guy who actually played third base for about half of his career, for the slot Johnson took. They just didn’t.
Was that because Wilson was a mean cuss and they didn’t want to do him any favors? Maybe.
Was it because Wilson was dead, and they were under some pressure to elect living players who could make appearances at the Hall and promote the memory of the Negro Leagues? Yes, to an extent.
Or was it because Judy Johnson sat on the committee that was making these decisions? That gets my vote as the primary reason.
Regardless of whether he was part of that first nine, it’s pretty strange that he had to wait nearly another thirty years after that group to get elected. Tell me, who was more worthy of induction in 1987 when the Veterans Committee chose third baseman Ray Dandridge?
The Veterans Committee selected Red Schoendienst in 1989 even though Wilson was better. They picked Tony Lazzeri in 1991 despite the fact that Wilson was better. They selected Phil Rizzuto in 1994 despite the fact that Wilson was better. The elected Nellie Fox in 1997 even though Wilson was better.
There were no rules in place during these years that limited their ability to elect Negro Leagues players. In fact, from 1995 to 2001, they had a mandate to elect “at least” one Negro Leagues player each year. And they did…exactly one per year, and no more. The players they selected in those years were outstanding. Willie Wells, Turkey Stearnes, Bullet Rogan and the others were all very worthy, and were all long overdue for election.
But that left Jud Wilson on the outside looking in for 43 years after his death. A guy with a .350 career batting average. A guy who batted .422 one year and has two other .400 seasons that might become official in the near future if SABR’s recommendations about the 1930 Baltimore Black Sox and 1931 Homestead Grays are accepted. He won two batting titles, and played for two World Series winners, and averaged 126 RBI per full season. These are first-ballot accomplishments for any player who wasn’t toiling in the Negro Leagues.
If you want to know the extent of the damage done to the reputations of Negro Leagues players who were not only forced to play in separate leagues but then were ignored for baseball’s highest honor for decades, look no further that Boojum Wilson.
Tuesday
Pick your favorite Kurt Russell movie. Was it Backdraft? Maybe Overboard? How about Tango & Cash, or Tequila Sunrise? Or are you big fans of Snake Plisskin in the Escape From New York and Escape From L.A. films? Whatever your favorite role of his was, recognize that it might not have happened if not for a shoulder injury he suffered while playing minor league baseball.
Tuesday was the anniversary of Russell’s first game in the Class-A Northwest League in 1971. A switch-hitting second baseman for the Bend Rainbows, he batted .285 with a .385 on-base percentage and made the Northwest League All-Star team that season. The following year, while working around his filming schedule, he made the All-Star team again by hitting .325/.389/.377 for Walla Walla, and was good enough that the Angels promoted him to the Double-A El Paso Sun Kings to start the 1973 season.
That was a pretty good squad, at least offensively, featuring a lineup packed with future big leaguers like Bruce Bochte, Paul Dade, Dave Chalk, and Ron Jackson. They led the league in scoring that season. And their starting second baseman when the season began was none other than Kurt Russell, who was wrecking the league’s pitching to the tune of a .563/.588/.938 batting line until something went pop in his shoulder when a runner slid into him as he tried to turn a double play. His teammate, future 240-game winner Frank Tanana, told him it sounded like a rotator cuff injury when he described it.
That proved to be right. During a visit to famed sports medicine physician, Dr. Frank Jobe, Russell got the sad diagnosis. "The doctor ran some tests, looked at me and he said, 'Aren't you also an actor?' I said, 'Yeah,' and he said, 'Well, you're an actor all the time now.' I sat there about 10 minutes, not knowing what to do. I was just devastated."
He played again, but not very well, and really only as a bit of a publicity stunt for his father, Bing Russell, who owned the independent Portland Mavericks. There’s a fabulous documentary about that team, The Battered Bastards of Baseball, that I highly recommend, and Russell makes an appearance in it, but he’d have preferred to have made his name in baseball on the field instead of on camera.
Wednesday
Monte Irvin’s number 20 was retired by the Giants on this date in 2010. The first Black player in Giants’ history, Irvin played less than 700 games for them and was already thirty when he first suited up for them in 1949, but he played a critical role for that team as they moved into the era of integrated baseball and embraced the signing of Black players.
He had been a candidate to be the first Black player to break the color barrier, but he had just left the Army after serving as a combat engineer in Europe during World War II and didn’t think he was in baseball shape when approached by the Dodgers. Instead he returned to the Newark Eagles for three more years, won his third batting title, helped them win the 1946 World Series, and then signed with the Giants. There he batted .300 three times, led the league in RBI once, and mentored a young Willie Mays when the phenom arrived in 1951.
The Giants won two pennants and a World Series while Irvin was there, and he later had a long career in the offices of Major League Baseball and played a key role in the elections of the first Negro Leagues players into the Hall of Fame. Playing only 653 games for a team usually isn’t enough to get your number retired, but in Monte Irvin’s case, it was long overdue when he finally received the honor at the age of 91.
Thursday
Happy Birthday to Jim Edmonds, who turned 54 on Thursday. He was a really good player, whose career doesn’t get the recognition it deserves for being pretty rare.
Here is the full list of players who did all of the following: Played at least 1,500 games in center field; Hit at least 300 homers; Had a career OPS+ mark of at least 120; Won at least one Gold Glove.
Willie Mays
Mickey Mantle
Ken Griffey, Jr.
Jim Edmonds
Fred Lynn
Now, this is a list that’s very clearly divided into two parts. The top three guys on the list are in one category of greatness, while Edmonds and Lynn are in their own separate, clearly less-distinguished, bucket. But I did this to illustrate exactly how rare it is to do have that sort of a career. If I removed the Gold Glove requirement, since it wasn’t around before 1957, only two names would be added to the list: Joe DiMaggio and Duke Snider. Still pretty good company to be keeping, and the differences between Edmonds and Hall of Famer Snider are probably not as large as you think.
Sure, it’s a clean sweep for Snider in every category that existed when he played, but the margins in each are simply not that large. They’re certainly not large enough to explain Snider being elected to the Hall of Fame by the writers (albeit taking eleven tries to do so), while Edmonds got a measly eleven votes out of 440 cast in 2016 and fell off the ballot after just one year. The rarity of his career deserved more consideration than that.
Friday
Finally, Friday marked the date one of the most unbreakable all-time major league records was set, even though it’s rarely discussed. On June 28, 1925, Tris Speaker of the Indians hit his 658th career double, breaking the mark previously held by Nap Lajoie. Over the next three-and-a-half seasons he would hit 134 more, finishing with the remarkable total of 792 doubles.
That record has stood for 96 years, and no one has come remotely close to breaking it.
Playing at the same time as Speaker, Ty Cobb finished 1925 with 647 doubles, hit another 77 in the final three years of his career, and ended with 724. It was nearly 70 doubles short of Speaker yet remained the second-most ever for thirty-five years until Stan Musial hit his 725th and final double in 1963. In 1984, Pete Rose his his 726th double to claim second place, and added 20 more before retiring, but that still put him 46 doubles away from Speaker’s record.
And there isn’t anyone on the horizon who is going to do anything about that anytime soon.
The current active leader in doubles in Freddie Freeman with 495. He’ll be thirty-five when the season ends and will still likely be about 275 doubles short of Speaker. He would need to continue his current 36 doubles-per-season rate for seven-and-half more years to come close to Speaker, putting him somewhere in the 2032 season at the age of nearly forty-three if he hopes to set the record.
No one else appears to be a likely candidate. Jose Altuve is nearly the same age as Freeman but he’s almost 80 doubles behind him. Mookie Betts is still thirty-one, but he has just 363 doubles and we don’t know when he’ll play again. The player under the age of thirty who has the most is Rafael Devers, but he is currently 555 doubles short of Speaker and would have to hit 35 doubles per year for nearly 16 more years to come close to him. Anyone starting their career now would have to average 39.6 doubles a year for 20 years to get into Speaker’s neighborhood.
That record isn’t going to be broken in my lifetime, folks, and probably not in any of yours either.
This Week’s Editions
Monday: First Gloves: Reggie Jackson
Tuesday: Educating Twitter: The Jack Morris of Hitters
Wednesday: Late Bloomers: Bill Byrd
Thursday: Decisions, Decisions: Riding Bobby Shantz
Really enjoyed the Shantz piece yesterday. His appearance on the "Lost Ballparks" podcast earlier this year was a great intro/refresher. Really enjoyed the deep dive into his usage in 1952.