Remembering George Sisler
How many St. Louis Browns fans do we have in “The House”? The beleaguered franchise has been in the baseball news of late, at least in a sense, as one of their greatest players will most likely see his long standing single season hit record fall. Hall Of Famer George Sisler set a record with 257 base hits 84 years ago while playing every inning of every game as the Browns first baseman.
While it is nice to hear Sisler’s name mentioned now and then on SportsCenter and in the papers, I will be a bit disappointed if his record is broken. There is something comforting in those standards that have been set and withstood the test of time. When something has been a “truth” for 84 years, you just believe it will always be the “truth”. But as the saying goes, “records are made to be broken”. So while the chance is here and Sisler’s name is being spoken again, let’s look briefly at the man who set the standard when it comes to base hits in a season.
George Sisler’s career as a player is really a tale of two careers. He played in the major leagues from 1915 to 1930. He suffered a serious sinus ailment after the 1922 season, so serious that it caused him to have double vision for a period of time and he missed the entire 1923 season. He had almost exactly the same number of at-bats before and after the ailment.
From his rookie year of 1915 through 1922, playing mostly in the dead ball era, a healthy Sisler hit .360. He wasn’t just a singles hitter either, reaching double figures in triples and homers during the same year three times during that span. His best overall season was the year he set the hit record, 1920. The ball was juiced by then of course. Among George’s 257 hits that year were 49 doubles, 18 triples and 19 homers, the latter second in the league to Babe Ruth’s incredible 54. He could run too, stealing as many as 51 bases in one season (1922).
The sinus and vision troubles subsided and Sisler returned for the 1924 season. With his skills compromised by the layoff and his vision not quite as good as before, his career took a rather steep turn downward. Between 1924 and 1930 he hit .319, his best season being 1925 when he hit .345. While he wasn’t the same player as he was before the sinus and vision problems, he was still productive and certainly better than average. Over his career he topped 100 runs scored and 100 RBI in a season four times each, and stole 375 bases. His .340 lifetime batting average is tied with Lou Gehrig for number one among modern-era first baseman. He finished with 2,812 hits, second all-time to Eddie Murray among the modern-era first basemen.
While he left us some nice numbers, especially at the peak of his career, Sisler’s legacy has taken a few “hits” of it’s own over the years. Noted baseball statistical analysis guru Bill James calls Sisler “perhaps the most over-rated player in baseball history”. He goes on to say that despite Sisler’s .340 career mark, batting average really isn’t all that important. Modern thought is that on-base percentage and slugging percentage are much more important than batting average in terms of a hitter’s value. It’s true that Sisler did not walk a lot, reaching a career high of 49 free passes in 1922. Still he had four seasons with on base percentages of over .400, reaching a high of .467. He also slugged as high as .632.
Defensively he was considered a standout first baseman, one of the best of his era. James takes issue with this as well, contending that Sisler’s reputation as a great defensive first baseman is not reflected in his “Win Shares” system. Still Sisler led his league’s first baseman in assists seven times in his career. I do not do all the algorithms and calculations that James does to assess a player’s value, but it certainly appears that Sisler was getting to balls and making plays that other first baseman were not.
To say Sisler is over-rated seems an injustice. James rates Sisler at number 24 on his list all-time list of first sackers. All but three of the twenty-three men ahead of him played either most or all of careers after Sisler had retired. Contemporaries certainly thought Sisler was one of the best of his time. He was elected to baseball’s Hall Of Fame in 1939, one of the first 15 men enshrined. I do not think Sisler is over-rated at all. The truth is that Sisler was indeed one of the greatest first baseman of the first 50 years of major league baseball history, and possibly the greatest in the era of 1901-1925. But over the last 80 years or so as first base has evolved into an “offensive” position, one could argue that as many as 20 players have passed him up.
Perhaps one of the best insights into Sisler’s life style is told by Bob Broeg in his book “Superstars Of Baseball”. Broeg talks about how Sisler was the favorite player of the great comedian W.C. Fields. One time Fields invited Sisler backstage at one of his shows and offered George a drink of prohibition whiskey. Sisler told Fields “thanks but no thanks”, saying he didn’t drink. The disappointed Fields apparently said “Not even the perfect ballplayer can have everything”.
He wasn’t perfect, nor is he over-rated. Simply stated, the man could flat out play.
Mike Roberts
