Today on the blog we have all-time great George Sisler added to my
long-running 1971 "Minor League Days: Legends Edition" thread, in this
case a baseball legend who put time in the Minors at the end of his
career rather than the beginning:
Here we see Sisler during his year with the Rochester Red Wings in 1931, one year removed from his last Major League season.
In
that year at Rochester, Sisler just continued doing what he did best,
hit, to the tune of a .309 average with 186 hits over 613 at-bats at the
age of 38.
The man was a hitting machine, twice topping .400
and finishing up his 15-year career with a .340 average, with 2812 hits
in 8267 at-bats.
Somewhat forgotten was that the man also
possessed some speed on the base-paths, as evidenced by his 375 career
steals, leading the league four times with a high of 51 in 1922, the
year he took home league MVP honors when he collected 246 hits and a
batting titles, one of two, hitting an incredible .420 while scoring 134
runs and driving in 105.
Incredibly, at the height of his
career, he lost an entire season (1923) due to vision problems,
something that definitely kept him from reaching 3000 hits.
But
he did return in 1924 and kept on hitting, reaching 200+ hits three
more times, six such seasons total, and reaching .300+ six of his final
seven seasons.
About as easy a Hall of Fame pick as they came,
he was selected for the Hall in 1939, one of the all-time greatest
hitters the game has ever seen.
