Blair deserves kudos for his outstanding defense of Harry Hooper's record. As I paged through
Deadball Stars of the American League and
Deadball Stars of the National League I became increasingly impressed by the baseball ability of many who played during the T206 era, who contributed mightily to their teams and who, sadly, have been largely forgotten or overlooked due to the differences in strategy, the style of play and even the baseballs used.
Well done, Blair. What applies to Harry Hooper (in various ways) applies to a goodly number of other Deadball Era stars including Sherry Magee, Stuffy McInnis, Jake Daubert and others.
As others have said, Harry Hooper IS a Hall of Famer and deserves to be one - as does Jim Bunning.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Bosox Blair
It seems this will keep being thrown out there, and I'll keep defending Hooper as a legitimate and completely deserving HOFer. I'll copy an updated version what I wrote several times before:
A few points about Hooper:
- He was a lead-off man with more pop than most,
- His job was to score runs - he scored 1429 of them (#82 all time), averaging 100 per full season over his entire career,
- Ranked #106 all time in career base hits,
- Ranked #40 all time in triples, which means, in that era, both speed and power,
- Drew over 1000 walks, averaging 80 per full season, good for #71 all-time,
- Glove? Not even a question. One of the greatest ever. Key component of what many regard as the best outfield of all time,
- World Series? Unreal with both glove and bat. Won 4 World Series titles with Red Sox between 1912-1918. The key player who was a constant in all 4 Red Sox championship years. Hooper is the only HOFer to play in all 4 years of the Red Sox dynasty of the 1910s. And Speaker only played 2 of the 4. Can you imagine the uproar in New York if a team from that city won 4 World Series titles in 7 years and only sent one guy from those teams to the HOF? Unthinkable.
- First player ever to hit 2 home runs in a single WS game in 1915,
- Also stole 375 bases, good for #90 all-time,
- The first and longest part of his career was played in the dead ball era with Boston. He hit .272 over this period. He went to Chicago roughly when the lively ball came into play and after that - in the seasons forming the twilight of his career - he hit .302...pretty good evidence of the effect of the lively ball on the stats of some players.
So I strongly disagree with the widely-held idea that Hooper does not belong. To me he is an obvious HOFer.
Cheers,
Blair
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