As one might have guessed, the HOF exhibit featured a preponderance of Cincinnati Reds-related artifacts. In the display case seen above, the two most prominent items are the George Foster road jersey from his 1977 MVP season, at left, and the Joey Votto home jersey from his 2010 MVP season. A few brief comparative statistics:
In 1977 George "the Assassin" Foster batted .320/.382/.631 with 197 hits, 52 home runs and 149 RBI. Foster led the League that season in runs scored, home runs, RBI and slugging percentage. Foster's 52 homers in '77 was the only occurrence of a 50+ homer season in MLB between 1965, when Willie Mays blasted 52 home runs, and 1990 when Cecil Fielder hit 50. When Foster hit those 52 bombs in 1977, his total for that season then ranked 7th all-time (tied with Mickey Mantle ['56] and Willie Mays ['65])! Now - thanks to A. Bartlett "Bug" [sic] Selig and the so-called Steroid Era - Willie, Mickey and The Assassin are all tied for twenty-seventh! Ridiculous.
Fun fact; George Foster is the favorite ballplayer of loyal subscriber Kuertz.
In 2010 Joey "the Canadian Club" Votto batted .324/.424/.600 with 177 hits, 37 home runs and 113 RBI. That season, Votto led the world in on-base percentage and led the National League in slugging. That .424 OBP in 2010 does not even rank in the top 500 all-time single season on-base percentages (to be fair, Joey's .435 in 2013 ranks 382nd all-time and the .459 OBP he produced this season ranks 134th all-time. Among active players, only Bryce Harper [.460 in 2015] and Albert Pujols [.461 in 2008] have surpassed Votto's high-watermark in OBP).
Fun fact; Joey Votto is the least favorite ballplayer of loyal subscriber Kuertz.
As for me, I am blotto for Votto! Some of you saw that coming.
Back in the late 1970s and early 1980s the mighty Reds wore green uniforms for St Patrick's Day during spring training. These days, they wear only green caps. It's one of the few missteps of the Robert (he let's me call him "Bob") Castellini era. In the display case above you see a Johnny Bench St Patrick's Day jersey. I have a replica that I wear for special baseball occasions. One certain Cub-fan element in Boone, NC disapproves. To the left of the JB jersey was placed a facsimile HOF plaque for Bill McKechnie, manager of the Reds for their 1940 championship season. If you look closely, you will see that my own reflection has seemingly been superimposed onto the Hall of Fame plaque. I'd like to take credit for that bit of ingenuity but it was no more than a happy accident.
For Reds fans of a certain ancient demographic, Ernie Lombardi (whose game-used mitt from '38 you see above) was the greatest-ever Cincinnati catcher. Lombardi, known as "the Schnozz" for his prominent proboscis, won two National League batting titles - batting .342 in 1938 and .330 in 1942 - and was awarded the National League MVP in 1938. To give you some idea of his consistency as a hitter; in 1935 he batted .343, in 1936 .333, and .334 in 1937. In a 17-year career, Lombardi batted .290 or better 12 times. Missing that arbitrary cut-off were seasons of .283 in 1933, .287 in 1939 and .282 in 1947. That paesano could rake!
Ernie also had a Heavy Artillery-approved cannon for a throwing arm, seven times finishing among the top five NLers for caught stealing percentage, leading the senior circuit in 1938 with 60%.
Lombardi was known as much for his immobility (leading the League in passed balls nine times) and slowness afoot. His hulking 6 '3" frame carried 230 pounds early in his career and, by some estimates, approached 300 .lbs by the end of his Major League playing career. Period accounts assert that Lombardi could have hit .400 if only he could have legged out some ground balls. To the outfield.
Lombardi was not the first National League catcher to have won a batting title, not even the first Cincinnati Red catcher to have achieved such an honor. In 1926, Eugene Franklin "Bubbles" Hargrave became the first NL catcher to win a batting title when his robust .353 batting average set the pace. I should add to that description controversially set the pace. Awards standards then being different than they are today, that '26 season Bubbles had but 366 plate appearances, far short of the minimum standards we have today. Somewhat less robust was the physical stature of Bubbles, Baseball-Reference lists Bubbles as 5' 10" and 175 pounds. This in an era when catchers were fair game for being run over, flattened and/or blown up when blocking the plate. Routinely. Unlike today's weak-sister catchers like Buster Posey whom, if a runner even looks at him with both eyes, MLB will craft volumes of rules protecting Buster and his pathetic ilk from such threatening situations. And tell Buster's mommy, too.
The most informative thing you can read about the remarkable life, times, playing- and post-career of Ernie Lombardi is found in Bill James' New Historical Baseball Abstract. Read it today! You'll be, in turns, both stunned and amazed.
Among the multitude of MLB records that never will be broken, include Cincinnati Red Johnny Vander Meer's consecutive no-hitters thrown in 1938. To beat the record, a pitcher will have to toss three consecutive no-hitters. No chance. The baseball on display, above, was used in the first of Vandy's no-hit gems.
Boy, you're thinking, that '38 Reds club must have been pretty good! In 1938 the Redlegs finished the season 6 games out... and in fourth place. But in '39 the Reds were NL Champs, losing in the World Series to the Joe DiMaggio-led, Lou Gehrig-inspired New York Yankees. Therein also lies but one of the fascinating tales from the astonishing life of Ernie Lombardi. You'll have to read Bill James to find out why. In 1940, the Cincinnati Reds were World Champions. In 1938 the team was just stating to get on a roll.
Going further back into the dusty annals of baseball, here (above) is a baseball used during the Cincinnati Red Stockings historic, undefeated season of 1869. The ball, undoubtedly, has been "preserved" down through the centuries with varying layers of paint, shellac, varnish, tobacco juice, gum, etc so that it certainly bares an appearance today that it did not in 1869. Still, how cool is that artifact?
Some think my knowledge of Reds history is encyclopedic. Yet there are things that I learn every year. This is one of them. Never before I had seen a ballcap which had a pair of sunglasses screwed through the bill of the cap. This cap, circa 1931, was worn by Reds center fielder Edd Roush. Many, including me, consider Edd to be the greatest Red of the first half of the twentieth century. Playing 12 seasons for the Reds, from 1916-1926 and again in 1931, Roush batted .331, leading the NL in batting average in 1917 and 1919 (.341 and .321, respectively) while NOT leading the league with batting averages of .339, .352, .352 again, .351, .348 and .339 again. That native of the Hoosier state could rake!
Touring the Reds Hall of Fame two months later, I saw a similarly adorned cap from another Red of the same era. Evidently this was something ballplayers did then but the practice completely escaped me until this summer.
The Hall of Fame exhibit wasn't all Cincinnati Reds. Here you see the bat with which Ted Williams hit his 521st -and final - home run. An historic home run and legendary thanks in part to an essay about the event written by author John Updike and titled "Hub Fans Bid Kid Adieu." Both Updike and his essay are famous. But not well-known to all, as I discovered. While gazing reverentially upon this sacred artifact, my reverie was broken by an MLB-credentialed photographer who, weighed down with cameras and lenses, sidled up along side me to comment about the bat. I described to him what he hadn't yet read on the accompanying display card and then casually and perhaps a tad bit snobbishly mentioned the Updike essay. Mr Photog looked upon me as if suddenly I was speaking an alien language. Who? he asked for clarification. Way to go, mister practitioner of the arts. Score one for the blue collar working stiffs of the world.
The bat is so important in the history of baseball, it's worth another look:
A certain Anglophile well-known to my loyal subscribers thinks Zack Cozart is a better hitter than George Herman "Babe" Ruth. The Hall of Fame put on display in the exhibit a bat from the Bambino:
There wasn't a single Zack Cozart item on display. Funny, that.
The bat you see above was used by The Sultan of Swat to hit the 57th and 58th home runs in his then-record setting 1921 season when The Maharaja of Mash blasted 59 homers. Not only has it taken Zack Cozart his whole career to date to hit as many as 42 home runs, he doesn't even have a single silly-but-awesome nickname. Ruth had one, seemingly, for every day of the season!
This is a home jersey worn by Cleveland's Hall of Fame second baseman Nap Lajoie, circa 1910. I like the half-button look, it's very different than anything we've been familiar with over the past half century or so. The full-collar baseball jersey is not a style I'd like to see return - save that look for my golf/polo shirts - yet the contrasting color is, I think, the only way to make the full-collar jersey fashionable. I'm curious to hear what my fellow uniform enthusiast, Johnny Dubs aka "the Principle" [sic], thinks about this jersey.
Above is a similarly-styled jersey of the same era worn by New York Giant Christy Mathewson. Notable about this relic is what the viewer learned by reading the accompanying display card:
Why?
Lastly, this item (below) which illustrates the superiority of the early twentieth century ballplayer as compared with the coddled Buster Posey variants of our modern baseball diamond dandies:
One might think upon initial observance of this glove, Wow! Imagine having to field with that small apparatus. Then, that same individual may recall that into the 1890s ballplayers wore no gloves at all. Cincinnati Red second baseman Bid McPhee being the last Major Leaguer to play without a glove, to toughen his hands, reportedly, he'd soak them in saltwater. [This is a vastly different approach from that of former Chicago Cub Moises Alou. Don't ask, you don't really want to know.] But then, upon closer inspection of the information card adjacent to the glove, a more full impact of the excellence and durability of the old ballplayers is realized. Worn by Philadelphia Athletics Hall of Fame pitcher Rube Waddell for a July 4, 1905 pitching duel against Boston's Hall of Fame pitcher Cy Young, both starting pitchers went the distance in a titanic 20-inning struggle. Today, it takes modern pitchers 4 or 5 starts to equal that many innings. Or maybe that's just modern Cincinnati Reds pitchers?
Roll the credits!
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