Harold P. "Pete" Reiser. "Pistol Pete". Outfielder for the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1940-1942 and 1946-1948 and for the Cleveland Indians in 1952. 786 hits and 58 home runs in 10 MLB seasons.
Reiser was a phenomenal talent cut down by injuries resulting from reckless play, including MLB-record 11 times taken off the field on a stretcher. 3-time All-Star. 1963 World Series champion. 1941 NL Batting champion. 2-time NL stolen base leader. His best season was 1941 for the Brooklyn Dodgers as he posted a .406 OBP with 117 runs scored in 601 plate appearances.
Excerpt from Reiser's SABR biography: As good as Pete Reiser had been in 1941, he was even better in 1942. Few who saw him in the season’s first half questioned whether he would repeat as batting champ. Some—including Reiser himself—thought he could follow up Ted Williams’s .406 campaign in 1941 with a .400 season of his own. Reese was having a fine year, too. Sportswriters were calling Pete and Pee Wee the Gold Dust Twins.
On July 18, 1942 the Dodgers had an eight game lead over the Cardinals when they went to St. Louis for a four game series. Reiser, batting .356, was riding an eleven-game hit streak. In the eleventh inning of a 6–6 tie on the July 19, Enos Slaughter belted a long drive off Johnny Allen. Reiser raced toward the center-field wall, narrowly avoiding the flagpole that rose from the playing field, and caught Slaughter’s hit in full stride—and then hit the concrete wall an instant later. The ball fell from his glove and, although dazed, he threw the ball to the cutoff man, Reese. By the time Reese fired the ball home, Slaughter had circled the bases to win the game.
All attention turned to number 27, who lay on the field motionless, facing the sky, his shoulder separated and blood trickling from his ears. When Durocher reached him, the manager started to cry. Pete was carried off on a stretcher and woke up the next morning in the hospital with a fractured skull and a brain injury. The Cardinals’ team doctor examined him and recommended that he not return to the field that season. In the era before the effects of a concussion were fully understood, Reiser did what gamers do—he returned to the diamond as soon as he could walk. He was dizzy, had a hard time focusing, and felt weak, but there was no keeping him out of the lineup.
He would never be the same player again.
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