Sunday, December 20, 2015

HALL OF FAME #39: JOE SEWELL: CLASS OF 1977

Up next in my Hall of Fame Inductee thread of players who entered the Hall during the 1970’s is the “man they couldn’t strike out”, Joe Sewell, who starred for the Cleveland Indians and New York Yankees:


Sewell was a hit machine during his 14-year career, collecting 2226 over 8333 at-bats, good for a very nice .312 career average, along with 436 doubles, 1141 runs scored and 1054 runs batted in.
Of course he will always be remembered as the guy who couldn’t whiff!
In those 8333 at-bats during his career, he struck out 114 times! Heck, Chris Carter or Chris Davis can do that in HALF a season these days!
In 1932 while in the Bronx, Sewell had 576 plate appearances, and whiffed a total of THREE times. Just incredible.
In his 13 full seasons of Major League play, Sewell topped  a .300 average nine times, with a high of .353 in 1923 while with Cleveland, and drove in over 100 runs in both 1923 and 1924, with only seven home runs hit combined.
Though he didn’t get voted in by the BBWA, he was finally given a spot in Cooperstown by the Veteran’s Committee in 1977, and this one was a good pick in my opinion, unlike so many of the others we’ve seen thus far.

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