Monday
This was Dave Concepción’s 76th birthday, which is a perfect time to consider this question posed on Twitter recently:
The tweet begins with an erroneous premise, namely that either Concepción or Omar Vizquel, and no one else, must be considered the best shortstop not in the Hall of Fame. I don’t know why the folks at “Stirrups Now!” have grasped onto this premise, but I presume they are fans of Venezuelan shortstops.
The reason this premise is erroneous is that, while both Concepción and Vizquel were great shortstops, there have been lots and lots of great shortstops who aren’t in the Hall of Fame. Here’s a truncated list, in alphabetical order:
Sam Bankhead: The starting shortstop for the Homestead Grays and Pittsburgh Crawfords during their glory years, he was a 9-time All-Star who led the league in steals four times and hits twice, while also leading the league in defensive WAR twice and playing for three World Series winners.
Dick Bartell: An excellent defensive player mostly for the Giants and Phillies, he led the league in defensive WAR twice, made two All-Star teams despite the game not being established until he was well into his career, batted .300 six times, led the league in being hit by pitches five times, in sacrifice hits twice, played for three pennant winners, and missed two years during World War II.
Bert Campaneris: A 6-time All-Star, 3-time World Series winner, and 6-time leader in steals who was brilliant defensively despite perpetually losing the Gold Glove to Luis Aparicio or Mark Belanger.
Bill Dahlen: Known as “Bad Bill,” he was one of the first great defensive shortstops, and is still tied for 11th all-time in Fielding Runs at the position. Twice led the league in defensive WAR while also being a three-time .300 hitter who led the league in RBI in 1904 and was the starting shortstop on the National League’s first World Series-winning team, the 1905 Giants. His 75.3 career WAR remains the highest career total for all shortstops who aren’t in the Hall of Fame.
Tony Fernandez: Five-time All-Star, four-time Gold Glove winner, hit .333 as Toronto won the 1993 World Series, batted .300 four times and compiled 45.3 career WAR.
Jim Fregosi: I wrote about him extensively here, so I won’t repeat all of that. But he was a 6-time All-Star, a Gold Glove winner, and compiled 48.7 career WAR mostly before the age of twenty-nine when surgery to remove a benign tumor in his foot derailed a great career.
Nomar Garciaparra: On a clear Hall of Fame track before injuries slowed him down, he still made six All-Star teams, won a Rookie of the Year Award and two batting titles, and had five top-10 finishes in MVP voting to go along with 44.3 career WAR.
Jack Glasscock: Has a similar case to Dahlen’s. A nineteenth century player who was a defensive wizard (8th all-time among shortstops in Fielding Runs) but could also hit (5-time .300 hitter, including the National League batting title in 1890). His 62.0 career WAR is the second-most for all shortstops outside the Hall of Fame.
Dick Lundy: A legendary Negro Leagues shortstop largely for the Atlantic City Bacharach Giants, he was a .331 career hitter, including a high of .381 to lead the league in 1932. He also twice led the league in defensive WAR and averaged 5.9 WAR per 162 games.
Dobie Moore: A remarkable player for the Kansas City Monarchs before being shot in the leg at the age of 30, a wound that ended his career. Before that he played seven years and never hit below .312. He was a career .350/.393/.524 hitter with a 148 OPS+ who averaged an incredible 8.7 WAR per 162 games, including twice leading the league in defensive WAR to go along with his excellent offense.
Jimmy Rollins: Covered in detail during my Hall of Fame ballot coverage. He was an MVP, a four-time Gold Glove winner, three-time All-Star, and World Series champion with 2,455 hits (most in Phillies history) and 47.6 career WAR.
I could have mentioned some others, like Maury Wills and Pythias Russ and Miguel Tejada and Art Fletcher and Vern Stephens, but you get the idea. And this doesn’t even contemplate Álex Rodríguez because he barely missed the threshold I set, which was to have played at least 50% of his career games at shortstop. The same goes for John Beckwith, a .349 career hitter in the Negro Leagues who played a few more games at third base than at shortstop.
So no, neither Dave Concepción nor Omar Vizquel is the best shortstop who is not in the Hall of Fame. That doesn’t mean they weren’t excellent shortstops because they were. They just have lots and lots of competition for the title and come up short. Personally, I’d vote for either Dahlen or Moore.
Tuesday
On June 18, 1975, Fred Lynn of the Red Sox hit three home runs, a triple, and a single and drove in 10 runs in a 15-1 beating of the Tigers in Detroit. Tuesday was the 49th anniversary of his big game. Lynn became just the second rookie to ever drive in at least 10 runs in one game (the first was Norm Zauchin in 1955), and the second-youngest player to ever do it, as he was 108 days older than Reggie Jackson when he turned the trick in 1969.
This anniversary fell just four days after I replied to Lynn’s tweet about his father just before Father’s Day, and he liked my response, something seven-year old me would have lost his mind over in 1975. In fact, I sort of lost my mind over it in 2024. Needless to say, I shall brook no slander of Fredric Michael Lynn on this site, and will happily mention the anniversary of his awesome ballgame in his historic rookie season whenever the opportunity arises.
Wednesday
Wednesday marked fifty-two years since the Supreme Court rendered its decision in the case of Flood v. Kuhn, the attempt by Curt Flood to invalidate baseball’s infamous reserve clause after he was traded to the Phillies. Flood lost that case, as most expected he would, and his career was never the same. But his sacrifice was a necessary one to begin the process of stopping teams from perpetually owning the rights to a player, against their will, for the duration of their careers if they chose. It was one of the more un-American positions any business has ever taken, and when the reserve clause was finally struck down a few years later, players had Curt Flood to thank for being the first to seriously challenge it in the modern era.
I wrote about Curt Flood a few months ago, noting that while he’s been considered for the Hall of Fame based on the pioneering stance he took, it’s also good to remember what a great player he was before that. Had he simply continued his career, and had the normal decline we usually see from players, he’d have likely finished with numbers very similar to players like Willie Davis or Vada Pinson, and would be ranked on Jay Jaffe’s JAWS system somewhere among the best 20-25 center fielders ever.
That alone would have given him a serious Hall of Fame case. The stance he took against such an obviously unfair labor practice makes his case even more compelling, in my view.
Thursday
On Dickie Thon’s 66th birthday on Thursday, we should recall the excellent career he had ahead of him before he was hit in the eye by a pitch from Mike Torrez in April, 1984.
In his first season as an everyday player in 1982, Thon hit .276/.327/.397, led the league with 10 triples, stole 37 bases in 45 attempts, was second among National League shortstops with 15 Fielding Runs, and third among all defensive players with 2.4 defensive WAR. His 6.1 WAR total was in the league’s top-10, and he did this despite missing 26 games due to various minor injuries.
In his second season as a starter, 1983, he was arguably the best player in the National League. He hit .286/.341/.457, hit 20 homers, stole 34 bases, and got even better defensively. He led the league with Fielding Runs and assists, and led all shortstops in defensive WAR. Only Gary Carter among all defensive players had more defensive WAR than Thon, and no one had a higher overall WAR score than Thon’s 7.4. He made the All-Star team, won a Silver Slugger Award, and finished seventh in MVP voting.
Those are among the best back-to-back seasons for a shortstop at those ages in baseball history. Thon was 24 and 25 in those years. Among shortstops of those ages, his 13.5 combined WAR is the sixth-best total in baseball history.
When you’re on a list with five Hall of Famers, plus A-Rod, plus Nomar, you’re in pretty fast company, and I’m not sure if folks outside of Houston remember that this was the company Thon was keeping before his injury.
Friday
Finally, since we’ve recently seen a lot of discussion about whether it’s fair or proper for Major League Baseball to include Negro Leagues statistics in the official MLB record books, I wanted to talk briefly about the Players’ League.
It existed for just one year, 1890, and was the brain child of John Montgomery Ward, shortstop for the Giants and advocate for players’ rights. He disliked the fact that the National League implemented the reserve clause in their contracts in 1879. Yes, the same reserve clause that Curt Flood challenged nearly 100 years later. Ward was also unhappy that both the National League and the American Association had initiated salary caps in the 1880s, so he began trying to form a separate league with more fair compensation to the players.
The Players’ National League of Professional Base Ball Clubs, or just the Players’ League, was the result. Ward poached most of the best players from the National League and they played as a third major league in 1890. Greats like Old Hoss Radbourn, Roger Connor, Dan Brouthers, Jake Beckley, and Buck Ewing played in that league, which was won by the Boston Reds.
Friday was the anniversary of the only no-hitter thrown in that league, by Silver King of the Chicago White Stockings. He would go on to lead the league in ERA, starts, and shutouts, as well as an incredible WAR mark of 13.2 that he owed to his enormous workload of 461 innings pitched at the age of twenty-two.
The league disbanded after that season, a victim of poor funding. Not surprisingly, King never had another winning record after a workload like that, and doesn’t even get official credit for the no-hitter because he never pitched the ninth inning. He’d surrendered a run on errors earlier in the game and his team never scored, so he lost the game, 1-0, and only pitched eight innings, not enough to qualify as an official no-hitter anymore.
But all of his other stats for that season are part of the official major league record book, because that’s what happens when leagues are recognized as having equivalent talent and level of play as other leagues that are recognized as “major.” What happened last month with the Negro Leagues simply follows that well-established precedent.
This Week’s Editions
Monday: Playing My Dad Card
Tuesday: Decisions, Decisions: The Twins, Short Rest, and the 1965 World Series
Wednesday: Ballpark Review: Busch Stadium
Thursday: Baseball Remembers: Willie Mays
Those of us from Houston (especially those of us who where kid baseball obsessives at that time) knew that Thon was great and listening to him getting hit by Mike Torres was just awful. You write "I’m not sure if folks outside of Houston remember that this was the company Thon was keeping before his injury." Frankly, I'm not sure those of us inside Houston know that the company Thon was keeping was of that quality.
Re: the Reserve clause, if we compare it to actual U.S. history, rather than ‘Murican mythology, I think we’ll find it was a VERY American thing for the owners to do