01-27-2021, 02:27 AM
vision63 wrote:
[quote=hal]
yes, Ty Cobb is a hall of famer
In the first voting for Baseball's Hall of Fame, a singles hitter beats out the sport's greatest slugger. Ty Cobb, who had 4,191 hits, receives 222 of 226 votes from players and writers. Babe Ruth, who bashed 714 home runs, and Honus Wagner are tied for second in the balloting, with 215 votes each.
Also elected to the Hall in Cooperstown, N.Y., are Christy Mathewson (205) and Walter Johnson (189).
Walter Johnson once pitched an 18 inning shutout in 1918 during a pandemic.
This was my favorite part of the Ken Burns Baseball series - the reading of this quote:
Ty Cobb recalled the first time he saw Walter Johnson:
“On August 2, 1907, I encountered the most threatening sight I ever saw in the ball field. He was a rookie, and we licked our lips as we warmed up for the first game of a doubleheader in Washington. Evidently, manager Pongo Joe Cantillon of the Nats had picked a rube out of the cornfields of the deepest bushes to pitch against us. He was a tall, shambling galoot of about twenty, with arms so long they hung far out of his sleeves, and with a sidearm delivery that looked unimpressive at first glance. One of the Tigers imitated a cow mooing, and we hollered at Cantillon: ‘Get the pitchfork ready, Joe—your hayseed’s on his way back to the barn.’
“The first time I faced him, I watched him take that easy windup. And then something went past me that made me flinch. The thing just hissed with danger.”
“We couldn’t touch him … every one of us knew we’d met the most powerful arm ever turned loose in a ball park.”
How good was Johnson? Hard to imagine...