Rogers Hornsby
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| Rogers Hornsby | ||
|---|---|---|
| Second Baseman | ||
| Born: April 27 1896 | ||
| Died: January 5 1963 (aged 66) | Batted: Right | Threw: Right |
| MLB debut | ||
| September 10, 1915 for the St. Louis Cardinals | ||
| Final game | ||
| July 10, 1937 for the St. Louis Browns | ||
| Career statistics | ||
| AVG | .358 | |
| Hits | 2930 | |
| Home runs | 301 | |
| Teams | ||
|
As Player
As Manager | ||
| Career highlights and awards | ||
| ||
| Member of the National | ||
| Image:Empty Star.svg Baseball Hall of Fame Image:Empty Star.svg | ||
| Elected | 1942 | |
| Vote | 78.1% (first ballot) | |
Rogers Hornsby (April 27, 1896 in Winters, Texas - January 5, 1963 in Chicago, Illinois), nicknamed "The Rajah", was a Major League Baseball second baseman and manager. Hornsby's first name, Rogers, was his mother's maiden name. He spent most of his career with the St. Louis Browns and the St. Louis Cardinals. In addition, he had short stints for the Chicago Cubs, the Boston Braves, and the New York Giants.
Hornsby ranks second on the list for highest career batting average. His career average of .358 is the highest for any right-handed hitter or National League player and 9 points behind Ty Cobb's career average of .367. The Baseball Hall of Fame elected Hornsby in 1942. He has also been given a star on the St. Louis Walk of Fame.
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[edit] Baseball career
Hornsby holds the modern record for highest batting average in a season, .424 in 1924, and he won the Triple Crown in 1922 and again in 1925. He won the NL's MVP Award twice, in 1925 and 1929. At his peak, from 1920 to 1925, Hornsby led his league in batting average all six years, in RBIs four years, and in home runs twice. Over five seasons (1921 through 1925), Hornsby averaged an astonishing .402, a feat unlikely to be equalled. Besides his major league record of 6 consecutive batting titles (based on current research), he won a 7th batting title for the Boston Braves in 1928 (.387). He hit 301 home runs, not all of them as a second baseman. He is among the top four in home runs by a second baseman, as of the start of the 2005 season.
Hornsby was a remarkably consistent hitter who hit equally well when playing at home or on the road. His lifetime home batting average was .359, and his lifetime away batting average was .358. He had five seasons where he averaged over .400 at home, and four seasons where he averaged over .400 on the road. Hornsby began his career with the St. Louis Cardinals at the tail end of the 1915 season. He was a full-time player from 1916 through 1931, except for 1930 when he was sidelined most of the season due to an ankle fracture. At the end of his career as a full-time player Hornsby's lifetime batting average was .361. After 1931 Hornsby primarily focused his career on managing, however he would make occasional pinch-hitting and other appearances. His last appearance as a player was in 1937 while managing the St. Louis Browns.
During Hornsby's 15 seasons as a full-time player he finished in the top 4 in batting average 12 times, winning seven batting crowns, while finishing as runner-up three times. Hornsby led the league in slugging average 9 times, and was runner-up twice. He also led the league in on-base percentage 10 times. Baseball sabermetricians have developed a statistic to measure a player's overall production as a hitter. This statistic, called OPS+ (slugging average plus on base percentage adjusted for home park and normalized to league average), is considered by many to be the most elegant measure of a hitter's batting prowess. It has been found that in Hornsby's 15 seasons as a full-time player, he had the highest OPS+ in the league in 12 of those seasons, and on one other occasion he had the second highest OPS+ in the league. During that period Hornsby led the National league in various offensive categories 69 times.
Hornsby holds a major league record of 13 consecutive games with two or more base hits, accomplished July 5th through July 18th 1923.
Among the highlights of Hornsby's career was the 1922 season, when he became the only player in baseball history to hit over 40 home runs and bat over .400 in the same season. Hornsby won the first of his triple crowns in 1922, and led the league in almost every batting category including batting average (.401), home runs (42), runs batted in (152), slugging average (.722), on base percentage (.459), doubles (46), base hits (250), runs scored (141), total bases (450). His 42 home runs was a National league record (broken 7 years later by Chuck Klein). His 250 base hits was also a National League record (broken 8 years later by Bill Terry). His 450 total bases was the highest single season total of any National league player during the 20th century. Hornsby also produced in the field, leading the league in putouts, double plays, and fielding percentage.
Hornsby's record .424 batting average in 1924 was 143 points higher than the batting average of the rest of the league. Hornsby's on base percentage in 1924 was .507, which was the highest on base percentage achieved by any National League player during the 20th century, a record which was only seriously challenged by Hornsby himself in 1928 when he recorded a .498 on base percentage which was the second highest mark of the century in the NL. In 1925 Hornsby again won the triple crown, coming within one home run of duplicating his unparalleled feat of hitting 40 home runs and batting .400 in the same season. The .756 slugging percentage that Hornsby compiled in 1925 is the highest single season slugging average of any National League player during the 20th century. The 156 runs scored by Hornsby in 1929 were the most runs scored in a single season by a right-handed batter in the National League during the 20th century. Hornsby hit more home runs and drove in more runs than any other National League player during the 1920's. Hornsby also had the highest batting average of any National League player during that decade, which makes him the only player in baseball history (based on current research) to in effect win the triple crown for an entire decade.
Ted Williams in his autobiography, "My Turn at Bat" (at page 118), stated that Hornsby was the greatest hitter for average and power in the history of baseball. One of the more remarkable aspects of Hornsby as a hitter is the fact that he accomplished his batting feats as a right- handed hitter. Throughout baseball history approximately 70% of the pitchers have been right- handed, thereby placing a right-handed hitter at a statistical disadvantage approximately 70% of the time. Most of Hornsby's serious rivals for the laurel of greatest hitter ever have been left-handed hitters (i.e Ruth, Cobb, Bonds, Williams, Gehrig).
In 1916 Hornsby played primarily at third base and shortstop. In 1917 he played shortstop full time and led the league in double plays. In 1918, a reporter for the Washington Post described Hornsby as the outstanding fielding shortstop in the western circuit of the National League and perhaps the finest fielding shortstop in the entire league. 1920 was Hornsby's first full season as a second baseman, and he led the league in putouts, assists, and double plays. In an August 26, 1925 article in the Los Angeles Times, Hall of Fame manager Hughie Jennings described Hornsby as one of the best-fielding second basemen in the game. Hornsby's average of 3.31 assists per game is the 7th highest of any second baseman in baseball history.
Hornsby was also renowned for his speed. In a January 8, 1963 article in the Chicago American, Hall of Fame player and manager, Al Lopez, said of Hornsby that, "he was one of the speediest men we ever had in baseball." His speed was often later compared to that of the young Mickey Mantle. Hall of Famer Pie Traynor who saw both Hornsby and Mickey Mantle play insisted that Hornsby would have beaten Mantle to first base from the right hand batter's box. Christy Mathewson once stated that he believed that Hornsby was faster than Maurice Archdeacon, a player who in the 1920's was believed to have been the fastest player to have played major league baseball. During the 1922 season, Hornsby won a 100-yard dash against Pro Football Hall of Fame running back Bo McMillin at Sportsman's Park in St. Louis. Hornsby did not try to steal very often, however he used his great speed to take extra bases. Between 1916 and 1927 Hornsby had 30 inside-the-park home runs, and led the league with 17 triples in 1917 and 18 triples in 1921; he had 20 triples in 1920.
During Hornsby's first nine years as a player in the National League, the Most Valuable Player Award was not yet in existence, so he had no opportunity to be declared MVP for some of his greatest seasons. In 1924 the Most Valuable Player award was given in the National League for the first time. Hornsby ended up finishing second in the balloting to pitcher Dazzy Vance when a sportwriter who worked for a newspaper in a rival National League city, completely omitted Hornsby's name from his ballot. A public outcry ensued, and many prominent persons throughout the league, including Branch Rickey and John McGraw, publicly stated their opinion that Hornsby had been the MVP, and should have received the award. Hornsby himself was more charitable telling the newspapers, "More power to Vance. He's a great pitcher." As a result of the public outcry, the sportwriter who had omitted Hornsby's name altogether from his ballot was removed as a voter for future MVP awards. The following season, 1925, Hornsby was voted the Most Valuable Player by an overwhelming margin. Hornsby repeated as winner of the National League MVP award in 1929.
In addition to his success on the field, he was one of baseball's more successful player-managers, guiding his Cardinals to a World Series victory over Babe Ruth's New York Yankees in 1926. He himself tagged out Ruth trying to steal, thus ending that Series.
Hornsby was one of the more controversial characters in baseball history. Although he did not drink or smoke, he was a compulsive gambler. As with Ty Cobb, his photogenic smile belied a dark side. One writer characterized him as "a liturgy of hatred," and according to legendary baseball writer Fred Lieb, Hornsby confessed to being a member of the Ku Klux Klan. His chief interest was in winning, and he could be as sarcastic and uncompromising with club owners as he was with his teammates. When Hornsby was traded from the St. Louis Cardinals to the New York Giants after the 1926 season, the deal was held up because Hornsby, as part of his contract as the manager of the Cardinals (he was a player-manager at the time), owned several shares of stock in the Cardinals. Cardinals owner Sam Breadon offered Hornsby a sum for the stock considerably lower than what Hornsby demanded for it, and neither would budge. Eventually, the other owners of the National League made up the difference, and the trade went through.
Commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis, who had banned the Black Sox for life, was not sympathetic to the notion of ballplayers gambling at horse races anymore than at the ballpark. He called Hornsby into his office to reproach him for playing the horses--which was Hornsby's only real recreation outside of baseball (even after he retired). Landis did not intimidate Rogers; Hornsby recriminated Landis by pointing out that the commissioner was playing the stock market with funds from his office and this would cause a scandal if Hornsby exposed it. Naturally, Landis relented about Hornsby's horseplaying. (Source: The Great Baseball Mystery by Victor Luhrs)
As with some other star athletes, as a manager he had trouble relating to players who shared neither his talent nor his zeal for winning. As his playing skills waned, he tended to be shuffled from team to team, wearing out his welcome quickly among his charges. Having won the World Series as a player-manager with the Cardinals, he was traded to the Giants for the 1927 season, then to the Boston Braves for 1928, and finally moved on to the Chicago Cubs in 1929, where he became their player-manager (and remained for three seasons thereafter), thus playing for four different teams in four years.
As Bill Veeck related in his autobiography, Veeck as in Wreck, his father Bill Sr., who was President and General Manager of the Chicago Cubs, had hired Hornsby, and soon disposed of him when the usual problems surfaced. Some years later, when the junior Veeck hired Hornsby to manage his St. Louis Browns for a time, his widowed mother wrote him a letter asking, "What makes you think you're any smarter than your Daddy was?" After a near-mutiny by the players, Veeck let Hornsby go, and his mother wrote back, "Told ya so!" Veeck, alert as ever to an opportunity for publicity, arranged a stunt in which he was awarded a trophy by the players for freeing them from Hornsby's control.
In his later years, Hornsby's disdain for younger players only increased. According to the book Can't Anybody Here Play This Game?, Hornsby was hired by the fledgling New York Mets to scout all the major league players. His report was not especially useful, as the best compliment he could come up with for anyone was "Looks like a major league ballplayer"—his assessment of Mickey Mantle. In another anecdote, Hornsby was reviewing a group of major league players with his customary none-too-complimentary remarks. Among the group were Chicago Cubs' third baseman Ron Santo and outfielder Billy Williams. Hornsby had just gotten through dismissing one player with the comment, "You'd better go back to shining shoes because you can't hit," when Santo whispered to Williams, "If he says that to me, I'm going to cry." When Hornsby came to Santo, he said, "You can hit in the big leagues right now," then turned to Williams and said, "So can you." Another version of this anecdote has Hornsby declaring that Williams and Santo will "make it" after observing them in a Cubs rookie camp in 1959, when both players were 20-year-old minor leaguers. Both Santo and Williams would go on to become star players for several years.
In another quote attibuted to him while coaching for the 1962 Mets, Hornsby was asked how well he thought he could hit the current crop of pitchers if he were playing today, to which he replied "I guess I'd hit about .280 or .290". When asked why he'd hit for such a low average, Hornsby replied "Well, I'm 66 years old, what do you expect."
In contrast with his usual contempt for young players, he could be generous to those who had the "right stuff". When Hornsby was managing the Cincinnati Reds, players recalled him giving impromptu batting tips to the opposition, unable to help himself. Biographers of Ted Williams cite the story that the young Williams spoke with the aging Hornsby about hitting. Hornsby's secret was simply this: "Wait for a good pitch to hit." That became Williams' creed and the creed of many who followed.
During one at bat, a rookie pitcher became flustered when the umpire called three consecutive balls that he argued were strikes. The umpire responded, "Son, when you throw a strike, Mr. Hornsby will let you know."
As Pete Rose said to a reporter in 1978 while he was pursuing a 44-game hitting streak and had just tied Hornsby's personal best at 33, "Ol' Rogers was quite a hitter, wasn't he?"
Hornsby was the great-grandson of early Texas pioneer Reuben Hornsby and a distant relative of musician Bruce Hornsby, who sometimes performs with a bust of Rogers on his piano.
Hornsby was immortalized in the poem "Lineup for Yesterday, by Ogden Nash, thus:
H is for Hornsby.
When pitching to Rog,
The pitcher would pitch,
Then the pitcher would dodge.
He died in 1963 of a heart attack after cataract surgery. He was buried in the Hornsby Bend cemetery east of Austin, Texas.
In 1999, he ranked number 9 on The Sporting News list of Baseball's Greatest Players, the highest-ranking second baseman. Later that year, he was elected to the Major League Baseball All-Century Team.
[edit] Career statistics
See:Career Statistics for a complete explanation.
| G | AB | H | 2B | 3B | HR | R | RBI | BB | SO | AVG | OBP | SLG |
| 2,259 | 8,173 | 2,930 | 541 | 169 | 301 | 1,579 | 1,584 | 1,038 | 679 | .358 | .434 | .577 |
[edit] Trivia
- In addition to not drinking or smoking, Hornsby refused to watch movies or read, in an effort to retain his batting eye.[1]
[edit] See also
- Top 500 home run hitters of all time
- List of Major League Baseball Hit Records
- List of Major League Baseball doubles records
- List of major league players with 2,000 hits
- List of Major League Baseball players with 400 doubles
- List of Major League Baseball players with 100 triples
- List of Major League Baseball players with 1000 runs
- List of Major League Baseball players with 1000 RBI
- Triple Crown
- List of Major League Baseball RBI champions
- List of Major League Baseball batting champions
- List of Major League Baseball home run champions
- List of Major League Baseball runs scored champions
- List of Major League Baseball doubles champions
- Major League Baseball hitters with three home runs in one game
- Major League Baseball titles leaders
[edit] References
- ^ Suerhsdorf, A. D.. The Ballplayers - Rogers Hornsby. BaseballLibrary.com. Retrieved on 2007-05-25.
- Baseball America, Donald Honig.
- Ted Williams: An American Hero, Leigh Montville
- Hitter: Life and Turmoils of Ted Williams, Ed Linn
- Baseball As I Have Known It, Fred Lieb. Tempo, 1970.
[edit] External links
- Career statistics and player information from Baseball-Reference
- Baseball-reference.com – Major league career managerial statistics
- baseballhalloffame.org – Hall of Fame biography page
| Accomplishments (as player) | ||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
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| Managerial jobs | ||||||||||||||||||
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St. Louis Cardinals managers |
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| Tebeau • Heilbroner • Donovan • Nichols • Burke • Robison • McCloskey • Bresnahan • Huggins • Hendricks • Rickey • Hornsby • O'Farrell • McKechnie • Southworth • Street • Frisch • Gonzalez • Blades • Dyer • Marion • Stanky • Walker • Hutchinson • Hack • Hemus • Keane • Schoendienst • Rapp • Krol • Boyer • Herzog • Torre • Jorgensen • La Russa |
Atlanta Braves managers |
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Boston Red Stockings (1871-1882) Boston Beaneaters (1883-1906) Boston Doves (1907-1910) Boston Rustlers (1911) Boston Braves (1912-1935) Boston Bees (1936-1940) Boston Braves (1941-1952) Milwaukee Braves (1953-1965) Atlanta Braves (1966–present) |
Chicago Cubs managers |
|---|
Chicago White Stockings (1870-1889) Chicago Colts (1890-1897) Chicago Orphans (1898-1901) Chicago Cubs (1902-present) |
Baltimore Orioles managers |
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Milwaukee Brewers (1901) St. Louis Browns (1902–1953) Baltimore Orioles (1954–present) |
Cincinnati Reds managers |
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| Schmelz • Loftus • Comiskey • Ewing • Allen • McPhee • Bancroft • Kelley • Hanlon • Ganzel • Griffith • O'Day • Tinker • Herzog • Wingo • Mathewson • Groh • Moran • Hendricks • Howley • Bush • O'Farrell • Shotton • Dressen • Wallace • McKechnie • Gowdy • Neun • Walters • Sewell • Hornsby • Tebbetts • Dykes • Smith • Hutchinson • Sisler • Heffner • Bristol • Anderson • McNamara • Nixon • Rapp • Rose • Helms • Piniella • Pérez • Johnson • Knight • McKeon • Boone • Miley • Narron • Mackanin • Baker |
Major League Baseball | MLB All-Time Team |
|---|
| Lou Gehrig • Rogers Hornsby • Honus Wagner • Mike Schmidt (Infielders) • Johnny Bench (Catcher) • Paul Molitor (Designated hitter) Ted Williams • Willie Mays • Babe Ruth (Outfielders) • Walter Johnson • Sandy Koufax • Dennis Eckersley (Pitchers) • Casey Stengel (Manager) |
St. Louis Cardinals 1926 World Series roster |
|---|
| Grover Cleveland Alexander | Hi Bell | Les Bell | Jim Bottomley | Taylor Douthit | Jake Flowers | Chick Hafey | Jesse Haines | Bill Hallahan | Wattie Holm | Rogers Hornsby | Vic Keen | Bob O'Farrell | Art Reinhart | Flint Rhem | Bill Sherdel | Billy Southworth | Tommy Thevenow | Specs Toporczer Manager: Rogers Hornsby |
es:Rogers Hornsby fr:Rogers Hornsby ja:ロジャース・ホーンスビー
Categories: Major league players from Texas | 1896 births | 1963 deaths | Baseball Hall of Fame | Baseball managers | Baseball player-managers | Boston Braves players | Boston Braves managers | Chicago Cubs players | Chicago Cubs managers | Cincinnati Reds managers | Major league second basemen | New York Giants baseball players | People from Texas | St. Louis Browns managers | St. Louis Browns players | St. Louis Cardinals managers | St. Louis Cardinals players | National League batting champions | National League home run champions | National League RBI champions | National League Triple Crown winners
