- Series: Diamond Heads '15
- City: Detroit
- Team: Tigers
- League: American League
- Hall: National Baseball Hall of Fame
Harry Edwin Heilmann (1894-1951) won the AL batting title four times. Had he scratched out a handful of singles in 1921 and ‘25, he would have been the only player to hit .400 four times. Teammate Ty Cobb considered him second only to Hornsby among right-handers. He was the last right-hander to hit .400 (1923). Harry came out of the PCL to sign with Detroit in 1914 as an outfielder, vying for playing time amongst stalwarts Ty Cobb, Sam Crawford and Bobby Veach. Following a stint in the wartime Navy, Harry returned in 1919 as a first baseman (he would move back to the outfield in 1921) and launched an extraordinary run as one of the most dominant hitters of any era. “Slug” (being slow afoot) was indeed a slugger, but of the line-drive variety, compiling a career average of .342, twelfth best in baseball. Yet, his induction to Cooperstown was delayed until the year after he died based on a bias against 20’s hitters who were seen as feasting on the “live-ball.” Heilmann’s lifelong friend Cobb lied to him on his deathbed that he had made it into the Hall, a fib that became truth the following year.
- Arthritis took a toll in his later years. Heilmann was traded to the Reds in 1930 where he still hit .333 that year
- Elected to Hall of Fame: 1952
- Series: Diamond Heads '15
- City: Philadelphia
- Team: Phillies
- League: National League
Clifford Carlton Cravath (1881-1963) was the “home-run king of baseball” before being deposed by the Babe. His nickname derived from the seagull (gaviota in Spanish) he supposedly killed in flight during a PCL game for the Angels. Cravath labored in the obscurity of West Coast ball for 5 years before getting the call to Boston in 1908. His lack of speed offset his batting strength and he was sold to the White Sox that season and bounced back into the minors until he caught on at age 31 with the Phillies, becoming the leading power hitter of the Deadball Era. Led the Phils to their first pennant in 1915 and led the NL in HRs six times.
- Ruth broke Cravath’s career HR record in 1921
- In the ’15 Series, his manager inexplicably gave him the bunt sign with the bases loaded and no outs, leading to a double-play grounder to the pitcher
- Said to have caused a rule change by intercepting the ball in a rundown, hurling it into the stands, and scoring. Baseball decided to stop allowing that
- Series: Diamond Heads '15
- City: Detroit
- Team: Tigers
- League: American League
- Hall: National Baseball Hall of Fame
Tyrus Raymond Cobb (1886-1961) swept over the baseball landscape like a tidal wave. He lived by a fierce code that drove him to greatness and others to distraction. At the end, his own words could be his epitaph: “But I beat the bastards and left them in the ditch.”
- Cobb never won a World Series and performed with mediocrity in his only three tries
- No one of his era came close to the impact, for good or ill, made by this snarling Tiger
- Elected to Hall of Fame: 1936
- Series: Diamond Heads '15
- City: Pittsburgh
- Team: Pirates
- League: National League
- Hall: National Baseball Hall of Fame
Max George Carey (1890-1976) was “harder to stop than a run in a silk stocking” per Joe Williams. A superb center fielder with a fine lifetime BA of .285, it was on the base paths that he made his mark with the Pirates and Robins. Saving his best for (nearly) the last, Carey led Pittsburgh to the pennant with a .343 BA, and to the title with a .458 Series average in 1925.
- In 1922 was successful in steals 51 of 53 attempts and led the NL ten times
- Stole home 33 times, second only to Ty Cobb’s 50
- Elected to Hall of Fame: 1961
- Series: Diamond Heads '15
- City: Washington, D.C.
- Team: Senators
- League: American League
- Hall: Cuban Baseball Hall of Fame
Baldomero Pedro Acosta Fernandez (1896-1963) began playing winter ball in his native Cuba in 1913 and debuted the same year with the Washington Senators as one of the first of his countrymen to play in MLB. As a sixteen-year-old that spring, The Sporting Life had heralded the young Cuban as “a second Ty Cobb.” That lofty promise went unfilled in American ball, as Merito played part time in the outfield, only making 200+ plate appearances twice with Washington. He finished his major league career in 1918 with the Philadelphia Athletics where he logged his best year at bat, hitting .302. Acosta was part of two remarkable feats in his career: in 1915 he and Chick Gandil walked, were sacrificed along and Gandil scored on a sac fly to record a rare run without an official at-bat in the inning. In 1919 with Havana, the fleet-footed center fielder accomplished an unassisted triple-play, racing to second after the catch to tag the bag and the runner coming from first. Acosta found a new home with the Louisville Colonels of the minor league American Association from 1919-28.
- In 1922/23 Acosta was named manager of a new Cuban franchise in Marianao and led them to the championship
- Elected to Cuban Baseball Hall of Fame: 1955
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