Pre-War Players Who Were Incredible Athletes - Non-HOFers
 

I've been re-reading Glory of Their Times and came back to Rube Bressler's chapter. It's one of my favorite chapters because Bressler is one of the least heralded players in the book but was clearly such an incredible athlete.

Bressler was a pitcher by trade, but by 1920 he was a 25 year old wash out with a dead arm. He wasn't going to let that send him home though. He decided he'd start hitting instead. And despite being a 215 lifetime hitter while he was pitching, in 1921 he appeared in 109 games and hit 307. He would go on to play 12 full seasons as an everyday hitter and ended his career with a lifetime average of 301.

Joe Wood is another one, and so is Lefty O'Doul. Who else is out there in the pantheon of incredible athletes who may have washed out otherwise?

A card for the thread:

https://live.staticflickr.com/4460/3...5681d7afc4.jpg

Jim Thorpe comes to mind immediately as an incredible athlete who played major league baseball but did not reach Cooperstown.

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The only person in both the baseball and basketball Halls of Fame.

It's hard to know how good of a player Posey was, as he cut his playing short to take over the Homestead Grays at a fairly young age. He led his college basketball team in scoring (Holy Ghost College (Duquesne)) and played professional basketball several years. Well enough to make the HOF. He was also the captain of the Holy Ghost golf team. Cumberland Posey is an incredibly interesting man.

Edited to add: I just realized the thread was looking for non-HOFers (whoops)

Greasy Neale is another guy that doesn't get mentioned a lot. From 1917 to 1919 he managed to play in the majors for the Reds and in the professional football league in Ohio in the same season. One of which was spent on the 1917 Canton Bulldogs coached by Jim Thorpe.

He was a member of the 1919 World Series Reds team that beat the Black Sox and eventually wound up in the College and Professional Football Halls of Fame.

Another obscure guy I learned about is Jim Riley. He only played 6 major league games, 4 for the 1921 Browns and 2 more for the Senators in 1923. But I believe Jim Riley has the distinction of being the only major league baseball player to also win a Stanley Cup, which he did in 1917 as a member of the Seattle Metropolitans who defeated the Montreal Canadiens.

Van Lingle Mungo was supposedly an incredibly fast runner. So was Hans Lobert.

George Halas, Billy Sunday. Sunday was supposedly the fastest man in the NL when he played.

Cy seymour who was one of the best hitters and pitchers of the deadball era

Edmund Minahan - Pitched two games for the Cincinnati Reds in 1907, losing both. Originally a track athlete at Georgetown. He finished 4th in the 60m dash at the 1900 Olympics in Paris. He also ran in the heats of the 100m but did not advance to the finals - 4th in heat 2 of 3. He later played baseball at Manhattan College. Played minor league ball for Birmingham in the SA, Toledo in the AA, independent league in Vermont. He and Thorpe are the only two Olympians who played in the major leagues prior to baseball becoming a medal sport.

This wasn't due to Thorpe's lack of baseball skills at all, but rather due to John McGraw's stubborn determination to keep Thorpe on the bench because he wasn't one to cower in Mugsy's presence. Talk about two alpha males!

Cool Papa Bell was clocked at ten seconds flat while running the bases from home plate all the way around to home plate again. Of Bell's speed, Satchel Paige famously said, "That man was so fast, he could turn out the lights and be in his bed before the room got dark!"

Speaking of speed, when the Mick first attended spring training with the Yankees in 1951, it was stated that "Mantle was the fastest thing on cleats that anyone could remember seeing". The first time Stengel saw Mantle running windsprints with other players at his rookie camp, he couldn't believe his eyes. He had them run again, and then put Mantle against everyone in camp. "My God," Stengel said. "The boy runs faster than Cobb."

Stengel also stated, "This kid ain't logical, he's too good. It's very confusing."




Taken from an online article.

I call BS since that is over 3 seconds faster than the stated record.

Basically you're saying that Bell could run 360 feet from a standing start around corners in the same time Usain Bolt could run 328 feet out of blocks in a straight line.

Paddy Driscoll played a few games with the Cubs and is also in the PFHOF.

In The Glory of Their Times Hans Lobert claims he was asked to race a horse around the bases and led the entire way until the rider got into his path and he had to slow down or else be run over.

Who knows.

When I wrote a biography about Dots Miller, I saw a lot of local praise calling him a superstar soccer player. He owned a bowling alley and was consistently the best one there (better than my great-grandfather according to the scores!). He won plenty of tournaments during the baseball off-season. He also won a fishing tournament if that helps his case. The Pirates played some basketball during the very early parts of one Spring Training and he was singled out for his play. That was besides being called the best utility player by multiple sources for his ability to play anywhere and excel in all aspects of the game.

Funny you say that, because I have a track and field buddy who said the exact same thing. But I don't doubt the account at all. For example, Jorge Mateo of the Baltimore Orioles has been clocked in his career at over 33 feet per second. So all Cool Papa Bell had to do was be about 10% faster than Mateo, or at about 36 feet per second. Because the diamond is 360 feet around its perimeter, a 36 feet per second rate would bring him all the way home in ten seconds.

33 feet per second in a straight line. you seen to ignore how much a 90 degree turn slows you down. Also a 10% difference over that short a difference is monumental.

10% in the 100m at the olympics would be a full second faster than the competition in a race that's often decided by tenths or even hundredths of a second. In short, listen to your friend.

Horse can't corner those 90 degree corners. If you had to stay in the base paths I could probably beat a formula one car, that doesn't make me faster.

Also your statement makes no sense, if he was in the lead how could the rider get into his path???

This man was an incredible athlete and underappreciated in the US
Played baseball for the Toronto team that won the International league in 1926
Played football for the Toronto Argonauts and won the Grey Cup
He won two Stanley Cups in the NHL playing for the Blackhawks and Montreal Maroons
He won wrestling ,boxing, and lacrosse championships
Member of the NHL Hockey Hall of fame, Canadian football HOF, and Canadian lacrosse HOF

It's a good point, but if it happened, it happened. I believe both accounts - both those of Hans Lobart and the guy who timed Cool Papa Bell at 10 seconds flat. Cornering is a skill.

I think the problem here is that Bell claimed he did 12 seconds flat, not ten. Ten is impossible for a human rounding the bases. His fastest time that was actually timed/recorded was 13.60 seconds.

As for the lights story, that is actually true, but it came with an asterisk. He was at a hotel that had a three-second delay on the light, so he was literally able to get in bed before the room got dark. Bell told that story in his later years, saying that Satchel Paige wasn't lying.

Hell, 10 is impossible for a human in a straight line.

It's funny in this group you have people who want to argue that the old guys were super-human and others who want to argue that Babe Ruth wouldn't crack a lineup today and Walter Johnson threw 80 MPH. It's amazing.

Globetrotter "Goose" Tatum was a Hall of Fame basketball player and a Negro League baseball player ...
Monte Ward was a hitter-pitcher manager labor leading lawyer and a great golfer... (we could probably argue about whether golfers are great athletes)

Every thread needs another card.

I relayed a story from Hans Lobert, not my own story. If you're running and a horse is next to you and wants your space, aren't you going to slow down and let them take the lead? The alternative is being run over.

If the horse is next to you, you're not in the lead.

Lobert's version of the story is that he was in the lead rounding second base and the horse cut the base inside the bag and went into his path briefly, then passed him about five feet before the finish line to win by a nose. So it seems true that he was winning and the horse interfered (at second base), then they were tied at third base, before the horse won the race from third-home.

if the horse was within the base paths, just inside of Lobert rounding second, and therefore not cheating, then logically the horse was in the lead at that point.

Logically speaking a horse cannot get into the path of someone who is in front of him.

Maybe Lobert managed to pass the horse back again on the way to third and around the bag, but the account simply doesn't make a ton of sense.

Lobert touched second base and rounded the bag normally. The rider steered the horse to the home plate side of the bag instead, not touching the bag, but going into Lobert’s path as the rider then started cutting towards third base. It makes a lot of sense if someone behind you in a race doesn’t take the same path that they could interfere with you when you are in the lead. I’m just passing along a detailed account of what happened because I wanted to know after seeing the back and forth. Everything he says is plausible, including the horse out-sprinting him from third to home. Lobert said afterwards that it was too dangerous to try again