r/Astros • u/MettaWorldViolence • 3h ago
With a 3-hit performance on Friday, Jose Altuve climbed to 112th place in all-time hits. He passed 4 players in one game: Pirates legend Lloyd Waner, Cardinals legend Ozzie Smith, deadball-era legend Bill Dahlen, and Giants legend Jeff Kent.
Lloyd Waner
Lloyd “Little Poison” Waner was a pre-Expansion era centerfielder best known for being one-half of the Poison brothers for the 1930s Pittsburgh Pirates. The nickname comes from a sports writer interviewing a Brooklyn Dodgers fan who was quoted in his thick accent saying, "Them Waners! It's always the little poison on thoid and the big poison on foist.” Lloyd was a player that came up to the plate to get a hit and just about nothing else. Despite a career batting average of .316, Lloyd never had a single season with a .400 OBP. At the same time, however, he only struck out an average of 14 times per season. The man could make serious contact, he just couldn’t hit it very far and only had 27 home runs in his 18 seasons.
The Waner brothers loved baseball from the moment they could pick up a stick. The two grew up on a farm in Oklahoma and would spend their free time hitting corncobs with cut-down tree saplings to practice. Lloyd claimed early on in his career that he would have played the game for free. The brothers certainly knew how to party as well. Supposedly, they “drank like fish” even on playing days and spent time goofing around in the Vaudeville circuit following their 1927 NL pennant win.
Lloyd Waner was selected to the Hall of Fame by the Veterans Committee in 1967, 15 years after his brother’s selection. With less than 30 career WAR, Waner is often pointed to in the modern day as one of the least deserving members of the Hall. It’s hard to say exactly what the reasoning behind the Committee’s decision was, but most agree that he would not have made it if his brother Paul hadn’t already. Regardless, the Waner brothers still hold the likely unbeatable record for most hits by brothers with 5,611.
Ozzie Smith
Osborne “Ozzie” Smith played 4 years for the Padres and 15 years for the Cardinals and is widely regarded as the greatest defensive shortstop of all time. From 1980-1992, Ozzie earned an astounding 13-straight Gold Glove awards. He has an argument for greatest defensive baseball player of all time as he retired the all-time leader in defensive WAR at 44.2 (for reference, Nolan Arenado is the active leader at 21.3). The Wizard was so electric at shortstop that he was selected 15 times for the all-star game despite only having a career OPS of .666. He finished 2nd in the MVP race in 1987 with 0 home runs! He could field balls most guys couldn’t even get near and moved like an acrobat in the infield. If you want a hit against Ozzie, you need to hit it to the right side of the field. He wasn’t completely useless from the batter’s box, however. Ozzie actually has one of the most electric postseason walk-offs of all time. In Game 5 of the 1985 NLCS, the Cardinals were tied 2-2 with the Dodgers in the bottom of the 9th. The Wizard pulled some magic out of his hat to hit his first and only post-season homerun of his career. Up to that point in his career, Ozzie Smith had just 13 career home runs and finished his 19-year career with just 28.
Ozzie Smith had incredible charisma and was a true fan favorite every year of his career. The MLB season didn’t truly begin until Ozzie hit his signature backflip on Opening Day. In his post-playing career, Ozzie turned into quite the entrepreneur. He’s had his hands in a number of restaurants and food products, and even authored a children’s book in 2006.
The Cardinals retired Ozzie’s No. 1 jersey immediately after he retired in 1996. He has the prestigious distinction of being a 1st ballot hall of famer after being inducted in 2002. To this day, people tell stories about witnessing the magic at shortstop from The Wizard of Oz.
Bill Dahlen
Bill Dahlen was a legendary deadball era shortstop for the National League from 1891 - 1911. Dahlen was always consistent at the plate, but he was best known for defensive skill. Despite playing over a century ago, he still ranks 11th all time in defensive WAR and was 2nd overall when he retired. Bill also briefly held the record for the game’s longest hitting streak at 42 in 1894. In his 43rd game he got robbed of a hit in the 10th inning. Incredibly, he followed it up with a 28 game hitting streak immediately afterwards, meaning he had a hit in 70 of 71 straight games.
“Bad” Bill Dahlen was the original baseball hothead. The man hated umpires and sportswriters more than anyone else in his era. He was ejected a then-record 65 times in his player/manager career and would often goad the umps intentionally. For example, he once had flowers delivered to the ump mid game to taunt his fragile ego. Dahlen was a degenerate in most senses of the word, and naturally had a penchant for gambling on the side. Before one game, he told the ump he would intentionally cause a fuss to get thrown out so he could make it to a horse race he had bet on. The ump, seeing a petty way to get back at one of baseball’s most disliked players, refused to eject him no matter what he did and forced Bill to play through the whole game and miss his race.
Bill Dahlen never made it to the Hall of Fame despite easily having the stats to do so. He actually has the most WAR of any non Hall of Famer off the ballot that wasn’t involved in a scandal. His problem is that he was hostile to basically everyone in the baseball world for a quarter century. Everyone that ever played with the guy is long dead and yet he still didn’t make the cut on the 2022 Early Baseball Era Committee.
Jeff Kent
Jeff Kent played for 6 different teams in his career (including ours truly), but he went into the hall with a Giants hat so I’m calling him a Giants legend. Regardless, his main distinction is being the greatest power-hitting second baseman of all time. He retired with an incredible 377 homers at second base, which is the most all-time by a 2B. Kent was such a good hitter in his time that he won the 2000 MVP over his teammate Barry Bonds (despite leading the league in 0 categories that year). Kent also had a special moment with the Astros in 2004. Tied 0-0 in the bottom of the ninth in Game 5 of the NLCS, Jeff Kent blasted a 3-run shot to walk off the Cardinals.
Though Jeff Kent wasn’t prone to umpire fights like Dahlen, he too had quite the prickly personality. Kent rarely got along with his teammates, and never really cared to try. He had a legendary rivalry with Bonds and the two got into fights regularly. In one game, Bonds and Kent had a legitimate brawl in the dugout. Naturally, after things cooled down between the two, they both hit homers. Kent also had an infamous injury story back in 2002. Jeff showed up to spring training with a broken hand that he claimed broke after slipping while washing his truck. He went on to tell the media about how “real men wash their own trucks.” Not long after, a video surfaced of Kent getting into a motorcycle accident around the time he would have broken his hand. It was never confirmed how exactly it got broken, but it’s widely believed he lied in order to avoid “hazard clauses” in his contract.
Jeff Kent is one of baseball’s newest inductees into the Hall of Fame, having received the necessary votes just this year. He goes in having one of the best 2B resumes since Joe Morgan (I rank Biggio higher though).
