Quote:
Originally Posted by Rad_Hazard
I firmly believe that Kid Nichols early success and what paved the way to him becoming the greatest pitcher of the 19th Century was the battery with Bennett during the 1890-1893 seasons.
In Kid's own words:
“When it comes to catchers my preference is, and always has been, Charlie Bennett. Charlie was always consistent and knew what his brain was given to him for. He was also an accurate, quick thrower".
I also found this great article regarding Bennett as well and have taken a couple of paragraphs from it to post here:
https://www.blessyouboys.com/2018/3/...tt-our-catcher
Statistically, it’s a very difficult proposition to judge players from the 1880’s because the rules were in constant flux. But after poring over newspaper accounts of the old Wolverines and taking into account what others said and wrote about Charlie, there is little doubt, that had the baseball Hall of Fame been opened in 1910, Charlie Bennett would have been a founding member.
Charlie was known as an outstanding defensive catcher with a very strong, accurate arm, and an above average hitter with extra-base power. He was also known for his handling of the pitching staff. "I used to feel so sorry for a young pitcher who was being hit hard in a game." said Bennett. I often believe it hurt me fully as much as it did him." Newspaper accounts of the time rated Bennett, along with Hall-of-Famer Buck Ewing as the preeminent catchers of the era, and many rated Charlie the best overall. According to a 1913 Free Press article, "Even to this day where the question arises as to who is, or was the greatest catcher the game ever had, seven out of ten will answer Charlie Bennett." |
Jeremy,
Great thread and poll. I voted he should be in by the way.
And I especially found that one comment you posted about how if the HOF had opened in 1910 that he would have likely been a founding member, very interesting, and extremely relevant. It goes to show the modern-day bias element that can, and most definitely still does, exist in many things, and across different eras. The 19th century players have likely been subjected to modern-day bias since they originally announced and first opened the HOF. When you look at the original 1936 HOF class, Wagner is the only player to have even played at least a single MLB game in the 1800s (1897 start to his 21 year career to be exact) yet MLB is considered going back as far as 1869, right? So, no one who primarily played in that first 31 years or so of MLB deserved induction, or is this more because the people voting back then didn't know as much about the older players so they just voted mostly for the newer, more modern (to them) players that they did know? And if so, that is the classic definition of a then, modern-day bias. Remember, back then there was no radio or TV for everyone to have seen these 19th players playing, there was no internet or SABR site where you could just look up player records and stats online, or have easy access to newspaper and other information archives across the country. It wasn't until the fourth HOF induction class was elected, after Landis specifically put together an Old-Timer's Committee in 1939 to look at 19th century players, that they finally recognized and elected a HOF player that actually played the bulk of their career in the 1800s, with the election of both Anson and Ewing that year. I wonder if MLB and the HOF maybe started getting some questions and flak from people about how come they only kept electing the newer players and seemed to completely ignore the 19th century players up till then?
And for those that seem to just love their statistics and can't get enough quoting them over and over, if my math and counting are correct, there have been 25 individuals to date that spent more than half their MLB careers playing in the 1800s that are currently inducted into the baseball HOF as players, not pioneers, executives, managers, or so on, as actual players. And the HOF itself has, last I looked, a total of 268 players inducted into the HOF. So in the entire current 153 years MLB has been in existence, with the 31 years from 1869 to 1899 representing approximately 20.26% of that time, how come only about 9.3% of the current HOFs are from the 1800s?
Today's disparity (2022): 20.26% - 9.3% = 10.96%
Another statistical way to look at this and show the era bias against 19th century players is to just look at the gross number of players in the HOF versus how many years baseball has been around.
268 HOF players / 153 years of baseball existence = 1.75 HOFers per year
Now look at just the 19th century players:
25 19th Century HOF players / 31 years of 19th century play = 0.80 HOFers per year
And maybe even better yet, remove the 19th century players from the formular entirely, and just look at the HOFers from 1900 and on.
243 HOF players / 122 years of baseball existence = 1.99 HOFers per year
Anyone else beginning to see a maybe unfair bias that has been directed at 19th century ballplayers forever it seems? MLB has gone back and tried to correct the bias and so on directed at the Negro Legue players. But still no love for the 19th century guys apparently, huh? Or is that maybe because MLB and the HOF figure that 99+% of today's baseball fans wouldn't know who a 19th century baseball player was, or anything about them and their career, unless maybe their lives depended on it? Instead of this ongoing, veteran's committee type BS where they'll maybe elect another 19th century HOFer every so many years, these guys from the 1800's were done playing well over 100 years ago and none of their numbers or history is ever changing. They should cut the BS, decide what the parameters of a 19th century HOFer are/were, based SOLELY on the context of the era and how the game was played and looked at back then, not with anything at all to do with how the game is even remotely played today, and just put the rest of the deserving players in the HOF.........NOW!
A perfect time to have done this would have been when they finally recognized and put in all the deserving Negro League players as well.