Shoeless Joe

... and the idol of schoolboys all over the Midwest, Joseph Jefferson Jackson.

  He was called Shoeless Joe because it was said he was once spotted in the minors playing in his stocking feet when new shoes proved too tight. .....

  Jackson could neither read nor write, a fact not lost on opposing fans:  Once, when he tired of hearing a drunk shouting "Hey, Jackson.  Can you spell 'cat'?" again and again, Jackson finally answered, "Hey mister, can you spell 'shit'?"  ....

 But Jackson could hit -- .408 in 1911, his first year in the starting nine, .356 lifetime, the third highest average in history.  His home runs were called "Saturday Specials," because most of the textile workers' games in which he had got his start had played on Saturdays. ..... 

  Ty Cobb himself thought Joe Jackson "the greatest natural hitter I ever saw," and Babe Ruth would later say he'd modeled his own swing after Jackson's.  "Blindhold me," another player remembered half a century later, "and I could tell you when Joe Jackson hit the ball.  It had a special crack.

シューレス・ジョーのバッティングは良かったようだ。

 

 

 

Joe DiMaggio

  A fisherman's son from San Francisco, DiMaggio was distant, quiet, serious-minded, understandably wary of the press.  He was so reticent, Hank Greenberg said, that "if he said hello to you, that was a long conversation," and so protective of his privacy, a team-mate remebered, that he led the league in room service.

  In many ways, he was the mirror opposite of Babe Ruth, whom he had replaced as the Yankees' greatest hitter.  But he shared Ruth's determination to excel.  A friend once asked him, when he was aging and often in pain, why he continued to play so hard, "Because," he said, "there might be somebody out there who's never seen me play before."

  One of his nicknames was Joltin' Joe, but in fact he made everything look effortless, moving under fly balls so smoothly he seemed to be in slow motion, gliding from first to second, never seeming to strain even when knocking the ball into the stands.  "DiMaggio even looks good striking out," Ted Williams said.  He didn't do that often: during the 1941 season, DiMaggio would strike out just 13 times, during his whole career he would strike out only 369 times while hitting 361 home runs.

これだね。

Ted Williams

... As the season's end approached, Williams led the league in hitting.  Going into the final two games, a doubleheader in Philadelphia, Williams's average was .39955, which rounded off to .400.

  Joe Cronin, now the Red Sox manager, suggested that he sit out the games rather than risk damaging that record.  Williams would not hear of it.  "If I couldn't hit .400 all the way," he said later, "I didn't deserve it ... I walked all over Philadelphia［the night before the game］, talking about what I had to do, worried about whether I could do it ... and talking over the pitchers I was going to have to face the next day."

  The next day was cold, damp, and gray, the kind of day a California like Ted Williams most disliked.

I got ready to hit［that afternoon］and ［A's catcher Frankie］Hayes, just as he's kneeling down to give the signs, ... said, "So just before the pitcher was ready to throw the first pitch, Bill McGowan, he -- like all umpires, they turn their rear end towars center field［to ］bush off the plate -- and he said, "In order to hit .400 you gotta be loose."

  Williams was anything but loose.  His hands shook with nervousness, he remembered, but he banged a single down the first-base line.  The next time up he hit a home run.  Two more singles followed, then a grould ball which was fumbled by  the second baseman for an error.

  That was the first game: He was 4 for 5 and safely above the .400 mark.  Again, he could have decided to sit out the next game.  Instead, he went right on playing, hitting a signle in the first and a double in the fourth, which may have been the hardest-hit ball of his career and would surely have been another home run had it not caromed back onto the field after smashing a loudspeaker atop the wall.  He popped up his next time at bat, and then the game was called because of darkness.

  He had produced six hits in eight times at bat that afternoon and his average had acutually increased to .406.  No one since has ever approaced that mark.

その後、４割打者は出現していない。

長すぎる。もっと短いやつを探そう。

Walter Johnson

The Washington Senators were one of the least impressive teams in baseball, the source of a gag that season after season never seemed out of date:  "Washington: First in war, first in peace, and last in the American League."

  In 1907, the Senators' manager, Joe Cantillon, received a report about a nineteen-year-old pitcher said to be tearing up the Idaho State League:  "This boy throws so fast you can't see 'em," the scout said, "and he knows where he is throwing, because if he didn't there would be dead bodies all over Idaho."

  Walter Johnson was a modest country boy from Humboldt, Kansas, with broad shoulders, long arms, and a slingshot motion that delivered the ball faster than any other pitcher had before him -- and perhaps than any has since.  Still, he was cautious: before signing up, he asked for a return ticket home, just in case things didn't work out back east.

  Things worked out.  Johnson hurled the ball so fast one batter is said to have left the box after two swings.  The umpire told him he had a third swing coming.  "I know," he said, "and you can have the next one.  It won't do me any good."

タイムマシンで、ジョンソンを見たいものだ。

Willie Mays

  Mays got two hits the next day, and was off and running.  He seemed able to do everything: hit, run, field -- "If he could cook," Durocher said, "I'd marry him."