21 thoughts on “Half-Baked Hall: 1962”

1. One day to get all your Richie Ashburn opinions out before I create the poll

2. Measured by rWAR, Richie Ashburn is the third-greatest position player, and fifth greatest player, born in Nebraska.

   1. I'm convinced

      1. Meh, I'm a Small Nebraska Hall voter

         1. Same here, if you aren't at least the 3rd greatest player born in Nebraska, don't even talk to me.

   2. You can't just say something like that and not let us know who the other 4 are!

      1. Here they are:

         Player	rWAR	Birthplace
         Pete “Old Pete” Alexander	118.9	Elba
         Wade “Chicken Man” Boggs	91.4	Omaha
         Bob “Hoot” Gibson	89.1	Omaha
         “Wahoo” Sam Crawford	75.3	Wahoo
         Richie “Put Put” Ashburn	63.9	Tilden

         Pretty good company. Mel Harder (44.3, Beemer) and Alex Gordon (36.4, Lincoln) are next on the list.

         1. But neither Harder nor Gordon has a cool nickname.

         2. I refuse to call "Pete" Alexander anything but "Grover Cleveland Alexander," like his momma named him.

            In my One Hundred Greatest Sports Heroes, he was Grover Cleveland Alexander, damnit.

            1. I'm with you there. In my baseball dice game I had as a kid he was Grover Cleveland

               1. I always knew him as “Grover Cleveland,” too, but I had assumed that he chose to go by “Pete.” Now I’m not so sure. His SABR bio lists him as “Pete,” but makes no mention of where it came from. (It does say his family called him “Dode.”) The Repository explains the origin of his nickname, but it’s still not clear what name he actually preferred.

                  1. here

                     1. Thanks for that. And a great reminder of how shitty pay was for most players in those days.

3. Led the league in OBP four times! Defensive metrics love him! Retired relatively early rather than playing out the string.

   If you're planning to vote for Mauer when we get to 2018, you're going to have some explaining to do if you aren't too into Ashburn.

   1. See "Nebraska" above.

   2. Richie Ashburn: 63.9 rWAR
      Joe Mauer: 55.0 rWAR

      1. I’d have to think there’s a little bit more confidence in the accuracy of Mauer’s defensive numbers than Ashburn’s. That said, Ashburn is on the 100 Rbat/75 Rfield list.

   3. I'm leaning "yes". He has the 10th highest 7-year peak of any CF (ahead of Beltran, Lofton and Dawson).

   4. Richie Ashburn never no-hit my VFW team in the state tournament.

      Well played, Mauer.

4. From Ashburn’s SABR bio:

   The term “speed” would always be associated with Ashburn. His high-school basketball teammate Jim Kelly said that Ashburn could dribble down the court faster than the other players could run down it. In his 1948 major-league rookie year, one sportswriter said of the 21-year-old, “He’s no .300 hitter, he hits .100 and runs .200.” And even after his playing days ended, Ashburn challenged a young Dick Allen in a foot race and beat him.

   Assuming this race happened after Ashburn returned to the Phillies to become their color man, that would mean it the earliest it happened was 1963. But Allen only had a cup of coffee in ‘63, so it seems more likely this happened in 1964 (perhaps in Spring Training?), when Ashburn was 37 and Allen 22. A man in his late thirties beating a young man in his early twenties in a sprint is pretty impressive.

   1. Edwin Moses won a bronze medal in the 400m hurdles at age 33 with a time of 47.56. I am going to go out on a limb and say he could probably have smoked most MLB rookies when he was 40.

      But then, he was Edwin Moses.

      Carl Lewis was 35 when he won his last Olympic gold (long jump) and created a media frenzy over whether he would run a leg in the 4X100.

      But then, he was Carl Lewis.

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