New Britain herald., 1916-03-04
HONUS 0R LARRY
 TAKE YOUR PICK
Grand Old Men of Baseball Who
 Have Set Some Records a

One of the most noted statisticians in the baseball world recently figured otu that "Honus" Wagner of the Pi- rates was the only man in baseball who had batted for 300 or better in seventeen seasons. But in looking over the records and figures there appeares one more player who has achieved this notable record. ...
 He is Napoleon Lajoie and if Hans WagncrS gets any super-normsl amount of advertising out of the faet that he is forty-two years of age and has hit 300 on seventeen different oc- casions, the good citizens of Woon- socket, R. l., are going to begin writ ing letters to the editor.
 The Grand old Man of the Amer jean league was born in Woonsocket in fact, he may have inherited that awful swatting tendency from the penult and antepenult of that fair hamlet, which is beyond the mark, and neither here nor there, as it were.
 Couple of Blanks.
 Laioie too has hit 300 during sev- enteen different seasons. To be more accurate, he hit 300 on fifteen differ ent years and above 400 twice ! Tk |, balls, or the glass arms in the Amer ican league there were a couple of | blank cartridges inadvertently secret ed in the cylinders of Mir. Lajoie's l letha1 weapon, for during the seasons of 1907 and 1908 he fell all the way down to .299 and .289. respectively. ! Otherwise Larruping Larry would 1 hold the record which is at present in the archives of the Carnegie Mu- scum in Pittsburgh and credited Nto 1 the said MT. Wagner. . -.... ;. The Frenchman was so embarrassed l over that 1907-'0S debac1e that he 1 promptly came back and hit .324 in 1909 and then boosted 1t to a mere 1884 in 1910. Everywhere, that year they were dragging the rivers 1 for the bodies of those experts who 1 predicted that after .2S9 in 1908 that Lajoie was indeed going back, never again to be the slugger of the good 1 old days. .er
 Some Great .3Oo's.
 That there were few good old 1 days left in the old boy who came l out of the tertiary period, of baseball i was indicated by the fact that from ! 1910 on he hit 1885, .36S and .335-in ! succession. The following year. or Y, in 1914, Larry's legs were going back ! on him. The old eye and the swing 1 were there, but the venerable gentle man could have been carried to first I base in a jinrikisha faster than he got there afoot. That season he hit
 only ,25S, but he couldn't make the
 pitchers believe he was going to hit
 that, especially in pinch. and they l continued to pass him intentiona1Iy
 in a crisis. There always existed the l danger that Larruping Larry would | take a notion to hit the ball over the | state boundary line.
 I Then he was traded to the Phila- l delphia Athletic last year. and he hit 1 .2So on those hits which he ran out 1 The same batting would have given a 1925 average to a faster runner In his twenty-one years of sluggfng 1 Lajoie has a grand batting average of .343. as against S32 for Wagner. He twice hit over 400 and the Fly 1 ing Dutchman never did that Inasmuch as the square-shouIdered 1 Frenchman is only forty years of age and will not be forty-one Entil next September he probably has great future ahead of him. and by the time he is as old as the esteemed
 
 l moro brilliant Another Good One. Although it has been five years l since Wee Willie" Keeler was shorn of his major league uniform, the l five feet-siX batting star of the Ori- l oles, Superbas and Yankees is not | forgotten. The dopesters have lately l been collecting statistics in an at- 1 tempt to prove that Keeler was great l CT than Cobb, and there appears to be | some basis for the claim. Keeler was | born in Brooklyn forty-four years ago, come tomorrow, and in 1894 1 joined the Baltimore Orioles, then in the National League. He returned to Brooklyn in 1899, and went over to the American League with New York in 1903. For fourteen years thia little super-Cobb batted over the .3O0 mark, and one season swatted .43a. exceeding Cobb's best record. Cobb's batting average of .366 for the eleven years he has been in the majors com. pares with Willie's average of .37s for his first eleven years in the LSie show. In every department except base running Keeler seems to have the shade on Tyrus.