This appears to be the Year of the Hitter. It’s early, of course, six weeks into the season, but scoring and home runs are up-also slugging percentage, which may be the best barometer. Already, records have been set, in both leagues, for most runs batted in for the month of April.
Toronto’s Joe Carter had 31 April RBIs, Colorado’s Andres Galarraga 30. Their production has caused concern among the ancients: Is Hack Wilson’s heroic one-season record of 190 RBIs in peril? Wilson set the mark in 1930, the same season he hit 56 home runs, still the NL record.
Babe Ruth’s once-sacred home run records have been broken. Ty Cobb’s supposedly unassailable record 4,191 career hits was shattered by Pete Rose. And Cobb’s 1915 mark of 96 stolen bases, also seemingly unapproachable, has been surpassed nine times, four times by Rickey Henderson.
But the view here is Wilson’s RBI mark is safe and likely to stand forevermore.
Carter, through Tuesday, had 33 RBIs. If he can maintain this pace, he’d finish with 191. He almost doubled Wilson’s April production, but the numbers are not comparable. The season now begins much earlier. The Jays played 24 games in the first month to 16 for the 1930 Cubs. Wilson, in those first 16 games, drove in only 11 runs.
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He averaged 1.3 RBIs per game thereafter-179 in 138 games. His best month was August (53), believed to be the most ever in one month. He drove in 34 more runs in September. So for the last two months alone, he had 87 RBIs; today, that would be a respectable total for a full season.
Then, perhaps as now, it was a hitter’s year. The combined National League batting average was .303. Six of the eight teams batted .303 or higher. Just in the NL, there were 71 .300-hitters. Can you imagine a .374 hitter being sent back to the minors? Yet, that’s what happened to St. Louis Cardinals outfielder George “Showboat” Fisher, who was demoted for his erratic defense.
Babe Herman hit .393 and didn’t lead the league. Bill Terry batted .401. The Cub outfield of Wilson, Riggs Stephenson and Kiki Cuyler, combined, hit .358-Stephenson .367, Wilson .356 and Cuyler .355.
The hitters’ honeymoon lasted only one season. The league batting average dropped to .277 in ’31. Wilson had a poor year; his average fell 95 points. Like Samson, he lost his power: from 56 home runs to 13, from 190 RBIs to 61.
Nonetheless, only Lou Gehrig and Hank Greenberg have approached his RBI record. Gehrig had 184 in ’31, Greenberg 183 six years later; 31 full seasons have come and gone without a 150-RBI man. Tommy Davis was the last to reach 150: He had 153 with the 1962 Los Angeles Dodgers.
Wilson was built like a beer keg: 5 feet 6 inches, 230 pounds, with an 18-inch neck. He had delicate hands and incredibly small feet-size 4 1/2. His strength came from his shoulders and an enormous upper torso.
Booze was his weakness. He was among baseball’s legendary drinkers. Joe McCarthy, who was among Wilson’s Cub managers, tried to reform him.
McCarthy took two glasses and filled one with water, the other with gin. Then he dropped a worm in the glass of water. The worm jiggled without harm.
“Now,” McCarthy said, “I’m going to take another worm and put it in the glass of gin.”
The worm fell to the bottom, dead.
“Does that mean anything to you?” McCarthy asked.
“Sure does,” Wilson replied. “It proves that if you drink gin, you’ll never have worms.”
Wilson was below average defensively and was the goat in the 1929 World Series between the Cubs and Philadelphia Athletics. With the Cubs ahead 8-0, he lost a seventh-inning, bases-loaded flyball in the sun, a blunder that triggered a game-winning, 10-run Philadelphia rally.
Traded to Brooklyn in 1933, Wilson played only three more big-league seasons. One day, in Philadelphia’s Baker Bowl, a bandbox with a tin outfield fence, he took a breather in the shade as manager Casey Stengel went to the mound to make a pitching change.
Stengel was yanking Boom Beck, so named because opposing batters were constantly rattling the fence against his serves. Angry that he was being taken out, Beck threw the ball against the right-field fence.
“I heard this terrible noise from that tin fence again,” Wilson recalled, years later. “Off I go chasing the ball. I run it down, wheel and make a beautiful throw to second base. The crowd was in an uproar. I’m asking myself, `What’s going on?’ And then I saw what happened.
“Later, Stengel said, `Wilson, you never made a better throw in your life. It was right on the money.’ “
Wilson drifted, played some semipro ball and died, penniless, in 1948 at age 48. Ford Frick, then the National League president, sent $350 to cover burial expenses. Wilson was eligible for the Hall of Fame in 1940 but was repeatedly rejected. He was finally elected in 1979.