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-   -   Tuesday Trivia: Earliest Top 10 HOF Ballot No-Go (http://www.net54baseball.com/showthread.php?t=348688)

cgjackson222 04-23-2024 01:23 AM

Tuesday Trivia: Earliest Top 10 HOF Ballot No-Go
 
Every player that appeared in the top 10 in voting on the first 15 HOF ballots is now in the HOF. But on the 16th ballot, a player appeared in the top 10 that has never been elected. Name the first player to appear in the top 10 on a HOF ballot to not be elected. (Please do not look up the answer)

Mark17 04-23-2024 03:44 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by cgjackson222 (Post 2428765)
Every player that appeared in the top 10 in voting on the first 15 HOF ballots is now in the HOF. But on the 16th ballot, a player appeared in the top 10 that has never been elected. Name the first player to appear in the top 10 on a HOF ballot to not be elected. (Please do not look up the answer)

I don't believe Hal Chase was ever officially banned from baseball so I'll guess him. Also, Landis was no longer commissioner, 16 years after the first HOF ballots (I assume 1936.) The Judge might have nixed Prince Hal being on the ballot.

cgjackson222 04-23-2024 04:47 AM

Hal Chase is an excellent guess, but he never cracked the top 10. He is the highest person on the first ballot in 1936 not to be in the HOF at number 25. and was 22 on the list the following year, but was dropped from the ballot thereafter.

G1911 04-23-2024 09:27 AM

Hank Gowdy? I’m not sure if he was top 10 but he got awfully high in the 50’s votes and was a popular candidate at about the right time.

cgjackson222 04-23-2024 10:39 AM

1 Attachment(s)
Quote:

Originally Posted by G1911 (Post 2428808)
Hank Gowdy? I’m not sure if he was top 10 but he got awfully high in the 50’s votes and was a popular candidate at about the right time.

Correct! Hank Gowdy came in 10th place on the 1955 BBWAA (35.9%) ballot and 10th the following year (25.4%).

Gowdy is known for a few things:

1) He was a star in the Boston Braves' "miracle" 1914 season. The Braves had won only 69 games in 1913 and won just 3 of their first 20 games in 1914, but managed to win 94 games and force a World Series with the heavily favored and defending Champion Athletics. As recounted by SABR, Gowdy went 3-for-3 with a single, a double, and a triple, and he and first-baseman Butch Schmidt, the two slowest men on the team, executed a successful double steal to help win Game 1. In Game 3, Gowdy led off the tenth inning with a blast into the center-field bleachers for the Series' only HR, igniting a rally that tied the score. In the 12th Gowdy got his third hit and second double of the game, a bullet to left field. Running for him, Les Mann scored the winning run on a wild throw. In the Game 4 finale, Gowdy went 3-for-4, giving him a .545 average for the Series. Perhaps as a result of his stellar postseason performance at the plate, the new nickname of “Hammering Hank” appeared in the press the following season, becoming the first MLB player to have the moniker, of course followed by Hank Greenberg and Hank Aaron.

2) Gowdy was the first MLB player to enlist in WW1. Again from SABR The United States entered World War I in April, and on June 1 (during a rain delay) "Gowdy became the first active major leaguer to enlist, joining the Ohio National Guard. (Eddie Grant had enlisted in April, but he had retired as a player.) The big catcher reported for duty six weeks later and was overseas by early 1918. Gowdy served with distinction in the famed Rainbow Division, so-named by General Pershing because it had the uncanny luck of being surrounded by rainbows during the heavy combat it faced. Arriving in the Lorraine region of France in March, Gowdy endured trench warfare in its most brutal sense as the Germans made their fierce last effort to overrun the Allies on the Western Front. He carried the colors for the Fighting 42nd and returned to the United States a genuine hero, as popular in Boston as the mayor himself."

3) Gowdy was the goat (in a bad way) of the 1924 World Series at Griffith Stadium vs. Washington. In the 12th inning of Game Seven, with one out and no one on, Washington’s Muddy Ruel popped up a routine fall ball, but after Gowdy tore off his mask and tossed it to the ground, he promptly stepped in it (literally and figuratively). “I thought my foot was being held in a bear trap,” he later recalled. Gowdy staggered around and couldn’t reach the ball. Given new life, Ruel doubled and later scored the winning run of the Series. Sportswriters, calculating the winning team’s share, called Gowdy’s misfortune “a $50,000 muff.”

After retirement, Gowdy went on to coach for the Giants and the Cincinnati Reds during the 1930s, then joined the army as a major in World War II, becoming the chief athletic officer at Fort Benning, Georgia, where the baseball diamond is now called Hank Gowdy Field.

Peter_Spaeth 04-23-2024 11:01 AM

738 career hits. WTF.

G1911 04-23-2024 08:39 PM

He doesn't belong and shouldn't have got that support, but I imagine many of the votes were for being a war hero, popular guy, and long-time coach. Really interesting life, I like picking up his cards.


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