On the blog today, my "19th Century Base Ball Champions" card for
the great Willie Keeler, fellow Brooklynite and one of the greatest
hitters for average the game has ever seen:
"Wee
Willie" was one of those players whose career jumped out at me when I
was a 10-year-old with my first Macmillan Baseball Encyclopedia, seeing
his stats for the first time, being blown away.
First off, his
eight straight seasons of 200+ hits was unsurpassed until a man by the
name of Ichiro came along, with Keeler collecting as many as 239 hits in
1897 and hitting as high as .424 that very same year.
Between
1892 and 1906 he never hit below .300, taking home two batting titles
while scoring 100+ runs a year eight straight seasons, with a high of
165 in 1894 with the Baltimore Orioles.
By the time he hung up
the spikes after the 1910 season, he finished with a .341 average, with
2932 hits, 1719 runs scored and 495 stolen bases, incredibly striking
out only 136 times over 9619 plate appearances!
That is an AVERAGE of only seven strikeouts per season over his career!
Just
an amazing career that led to him being one of the first players
selected for the Hall of Fame, which happened in 1939 when he was named
on 207 of 274 ballots cast.
One of baseball's early historical figures, he passed away on New Years, 1923, only 50 years of age.
"Hit 'em where they ain't"!