Rogers Hornsby
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| Rogers Hornsby | ||
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| Second Baseman | ||
| Born: April 27, 1896 Winters, Texas |
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| Died: January 5, 1963 (aged 66) Chicago, Illinois |
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| Batted: Right | Threw: Right | |
| MLB debut | ||
| September 10, 1915 for the St. Louis Cardinals |
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| Final game | ||
| July 10, 1937 for the St. Louis Browns |
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| Career statistics | ||
| AVG | .358 | |
| Hits | 2930 | |
| Home runs | 301 | |
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As Player
As Manager |
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| Career highlights and awards | ||
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| Member of the National | ||
 Baseball Hall of Fame |
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| 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 the majority of his playing career with the St. Louis Cardinals, though he also had short stints with the Chicago Cubs, the Boston Braves, and the New York Giants, and he ended his career as the player-manager of the St. Louis Browns.
Hornsby is among the greatest hitters in baseball history. He is the greatest hitter who regularly played a position other than outfield or first base, and he is arguably history's best right-handed hitter. Until Barry Bonds reached the peak of his career in 2001, Hornsby was without a serious rival as the best hitter in the history of the National League. He is the only player to win the National League Triple Crown twice. His career batting average of .358 is the highest in National League history, and also the highest in major league history for any right-handed hitter. His batting average for the 1924 season was .424, a mark that no player since has matched. 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] Playing career
The 19 year-old Hornsby joined the St. Louis Cardinals at the tail end of the 1915 season, and he was a regular in the Cardinal lineup starting in 1916. Though he spent the majority of the season at third base, Hornsby played at least one game at each infield position. Hornsby immediately established himself as one of the league's leading hitters, finishing the 1916 season fourth in the batting race with a .313 average, and smacking 15 triples, one short of the league's lead. Hornsby played the entire 1917 season at shortstop, and the new stability in his defensive assignment translated into even better hitting numbers: his .327 batting average was second in the league, and he led the league in triples (17), total bases (253), and slugging percentage (.484). Hornsby's batting average dipped to .281 during the war-shortened 1918 season, though he was still among the league leaders in triples and slugging percentage. His performance rebounded in 1919, a year that again saw him playing the majority of games at third base rather than shortstop. Hornsby's 1919 batting average of .318 was second highest in the league, and he also finished second in total bases and runs batted in.
In 1920, Hornsby became a full-time second baseman, and he remained at that position for the remainder of his career. Once again, the stability in his defensive assignment translated into new hitting productivity, as Hornsby won the first of his seven batting titles with a .370 average, and he also led the league in on-base percentage (.431), slugging percentage (.559), hits (218), total bases (329), doubles (44), and RBI (94). However, all eyes in the baseball world that year were on Babe Ruth of the New York Yankees in the American League, whose 54 home runs marked an end to the Dead Ball Era, and ushered in a new style of play with an emphasis on power hitting.
The new "Live Ball" era reached the National League in 1921, and Hornsby led the charge, embarking upon a five-year hitting tear that is rivaled in baseball history only by Ruth's own performances during the periods 1920-1924 and 1926-1930, and by the hitting record of Barry Bonds during 2000-2004. Hornsby hit .397 in 1921, and his 21 home runs were second in the league, and more than twice his total in any previous season. He also led the league in on base percentage (.458), slugging percentage (.639), runs (131), RBI (126), doubles (44), and triples (18).
Perhaps the highlight of Hornsby's career was his 1922 season, when he became the only player in history to hit over 40 home runs and bat over .400 in the same season. Hornsby won the first of his triple crowns that year, leading the league in almost every batting category including batting average (.401), home runs (42, a National League record at the time), RBI (152), slugging average (.722, another record at the time), on base percentage (.459), doubles (46), hits (250, again the highest in National League history to that point), and runs scored (141). His 450 total bases was the highest mark for 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 average dipped to "only" .384 during 1923, which was still good enough to win the National League batting title; he also repeated as the leader in on-base percentage (.459) and slugging percentage (.627). Hornsby then raised his average to an astonishing .424 in 1924, which remains the modern record for batting average in a single season. He also led the league with 89 walks, producing a .507 on-base percentage that was the highest in the National League during the 20th century. His slugging percentage of .696 again led the league, as did his 121 runs scored, 227 hits, and 43 doubles.
Hornsby's second triple crown came in 1925, when he combined a .403 batting average with 39 home runs and 143 RBI. He was named the National League's Most Valuable Player, having barely missed the award in 1924. His .756 slugging percentage that year is the highest in the National League during the 20th century.
For the period 1921-1925, Hornsby's batting average was .402, a record for a five-year period that almost certainly will never be equaled. He led the league in batting average, slugging percentage, and on base percentage during each of those five years, having also led the league in those categories in 1920.
Early in the 1925 season, Hornsby was named player-manager of the Cardinals, replacing Branch Rickey, whose professorial style of managing had gone over the heads of most of his players. Immediately after taking over, Hornsby told his fellow players, "Let's cut this baloney and just play ball." They went 64-51 the rest of the way.
1926 was an off-year for Hornsby offensively, as he hit only .317 with 11 home runs. Nonetheless, St. Louis won its first-ever National League pennant--its first pennant of any kind since they won the American Association pennant in 1882 (they had joined the National League in 1890). The Cardinals defeated the New York Yankees in a seven-game World Series, with Hornsby tagging out Babe Ruth on an attempted stolen base to end the Series.
In a deal that shocked the baseball world, the Cardinals traded Hornsby on December 20th, 1926, to the New York Giants for Frankie Frisch and Jimmy Ring. Hornsby's offensive numbers rebounded in 1927, as he hit .361 and led the league in runs scored (133), walks (86), and an on-base percentage (.448). In the off-season he was again traded, this time to the Boston Braves. Undaunted by the second change in affiliation in less than two years, Hornsby was again the league's most productive hitter, winning his seventh batting title in 1928 with a .387 average, and also leading the league in on-base percentage (.498, a figure that only Hornsby himself topped among National Leaguers in the 20th century), slugging percentage (.632), and walks (107). At the end of the season, the Braves sent Hornsby to the Chicago Cubs for five players and $200,000. Hornsby duly had another career year, hitting .380 in 1929 while recording 39 home runs and and leading the league with a .679 slugging percentage. The 156 runs scored by Hornsby in 1929 were the most by a right-handed batter in the National League during the 20th century. Hornsby collected his second Most Valuable Player award that year, and for the second time he won a National League pennant. However, the season ended in disappointment, as the Cubs lost the World Series to the Philadelphia Athletics in five games.
An ankle fracture kept Hornsby on the bench for most of the 1930 season. He turned in his last great performance as a player in 1931, when he managed to hit 90 RBI and 37 doubles in only 100 games, while batting for an average of .331. He led the league in on-base percentage (.421), for the ninth and last time in his career.
For his remaining six years as a player, Hornsby only made occasional appearances, primarily as a pinch hitter. The Cubs released Hornbsy on August 2nd, 1932, and he was without a team for the last two months of the season. The Cardinals signed Hornsby for the 1933 season, and again he was released mid-year, but this time he was immediately picked up by the St. Louis Browns. He remained with the Browns until his playing career ended in 1937.
[edit] Legacy as a Player
Hornsby's lifetime batting average of .358 is second all-time, behind only Ty Cobb's career mark of .367. His six consecutive batting titles (based on current research) is a major league record. He won seven National League batting titles in total, a feat equaled only by Stan Musial and exceeded only by Honus Wagner and Tony Gwynn, who each won eight. Hornsby led the National League in slugging percentage nine times, a record that still stands (Barry Bonds is second with seven).
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 win a "decade" triple crown.
He also hit a career total of 301 home runs, an unusually high mark for a player who spent most of his career as a second baseman.
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.
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 accurate measure of a hitter's overall prowess. Hornsby had the highest OPS+ in his league twelve times, a mark exceeded only by Babe Ruth, who led thirteen times. Hornsby's career OPS+ mark of 175 is fifth on the all-time list, and first among right-handed hitters.
Hornsby also holds a major league record of 13 consecutive games with two or more base hits, accomplished July 5th through July 18th 1923.
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 (e.g., Ruth, Cobb, Musial, Bonds, Williams, Gehrig).
In addition to his hitting accomplishments, Hornsby was well respected as a fielder. 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. In 1920, Hornsby 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.
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)
[edit] Hornsby as a Manager and Scout
The Cardinals made Hornsby their player-manager in 1925, and he piloted the team to a World Series victory in 1926. Hornsby was his own manager for each of the remaining years of his playing career, except for 1927 with the Giants (though he served as acting manager for a few games that year), and 1929, when Hornsby and his fellow Chicago Cubs were led to a pennant by Joe McCarthy. As a manager, Hornsby had trouble relating to his players, who did not always share his zeal for winning. It was for this reason that Hornsby changed teams so frequently during the second half of his career. 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, in 1952, when the junior Veeck hired Hornsby to manage his St. Louis Browns (Hornsby's second term as the Browns' field boss), 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.
Hornsby returned to manage the Cincinnati Reds during 1952 and 1953. During each season, his team finished in the bottom half of the league.
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 attributed 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.
[edit] Trivia
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 is mentioned in the poem "Lineup for Yesterday" by Ogden Nash:
| Lineup for Yesterday | |
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| H is for Hornsby; When pitching to Rog, The pitcher would pitch, Then the pitcher would dodge. |
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| — Ogden Nash, Sport magazine (January 1949)[1] | |
Hornsby 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.
- In addition to not drinking or smoking, Hornsby refused to watch movies or read, in an effort to retain his batting eye.[2]
- In the movie, A League of their Own, starring Tom Hanks, Hanks’ character Jimmy Duggan refers to Hornsby during his famous “There’s no crying in baseball” tirade. He goes on to say, while berating his right fielder, Evelyn Gardner, played by Bitty Schram, for making an error and crying after being yelled at; “Rogers Hornsby was my manager, and he called me a talking pile of pig shit, and that was when my parents drove all the way down from Michigan to see me play the game, and did I cry? No! No, and you know why? Because there’s no crying in baseball, there's no crying in baseball, no crying.”
[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] 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
- List of Major League Baseball triples champions
- Major League Baseball hitters with three home runs in one game
- Major League Baseball titles leaders
[edit] References
- ^ Baseball Almanac. Retrieved on 2008-01-23.
- ^ 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
- Major league career managerial statistics from Baseball-Reference
- baseballhalloffame.org – Hall of Fame biography page
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