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Chris Counts... was Reb Russell. I was recently scanning through the pages of the baseball encyclopedia and I came across this guy. At the age of 33, Russell, an outfielder, came out of nowhere to post a truly remarkable (half?) season. In 1922, playing in just 60 games for the Pirates, he drove in an amazing 75 runs. That's 1.25 runs a game! To put this in perspective, in 1930, all-time rbi king Hack Wilson drove in just 1.23 runs a game. Russell also hit 12 home runs and batted .368. His home run % and batting average ranked second in the NL to the great Rogers Hornsby, who had arguably his best season.
Then, a year after one short glorious season as a part-time slugger, Russell was gone. He played one more season for the Bucs and drifted off into obscurity.
So what took him until the ripe age of 33 to start hitting? He was a pitcher and a quite successful one, it turns out. As a rookie in 1913, he won 21 games for the White Sox. His lifetime ERA (keep in mind, it was the dead ball era at the time) was 2.34. By the time he switched to the outfield, the live ball era was underway, so his timing was perfect. I guess you could call him a (very) poor man's Babe Ruth. Or perhaps like Smokey Joe Wood and Rube Bressler, he hurt his arm and picked up the bat to keep his career going.
Does anybody here have any cards of him to post? Was there a Cracker Jack of him?