1955 Dell Baseball Awards -- Top Hitters and Fielders
The Ten Best Hitters
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- Bobby Avila
- Ted Williams
- Larry Doby
- Stan Musial
- Orestes Minoso
- TED KLUSZEWSKI
- Don Mueller
- Duke Snider
- Dusty Rhodes
- Willie Mays
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Talent for hitting a baseball for great talent for hitting a baseball great distances and with reasonable frequency is not derived from size and strength. It's all a matter of finesse and timing, or so the fans have been told. Look at Paul Waner, a member of the Hall of Fame, known as "Big Poison," always a menace to the pitchers, and never over 140 pounds.
If you believe all that, you'll find a few hundred thousand dissenting voices among the good burghers of Cincinnati. They know it's done entirely by brawn and muscle and they point to Ted Kluszewski as the living, breathing, swatting example of same. He's 6-2 and weighs 225. He wears short-sleeved shirts on the coldest day so that his bulging biceps are plainly visible. And in 1954 the first baseman of the Redlegs led both major leagues in home runs with 49, and in runs batted in with 141.
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Only three National Leaguers ever have hit more homers in one season, Hack Wilson, Ralph Kiner and Johnny Mize. The American League likewise lists three whose totals have soared beyond 50, celebrated sluggers Babe Ruth, Hank Greenberg and Jimmy Foxx. "He isn't human," declares Leo Durocher, and opposing pitchers are inclined to agree, for big Kloo has deposited the ball over the fences against left- and right-handed hurlers, and the league's best, Johnny Antonelli, Warren Spahnn, Sal Maglie, Robin Roberts and Ruben Gomez, were among the 32 pitchers who delivered one or more home-run balls to the former Indiana football player.
Springtime miseries used to be part of the Kluszewski pattern, but late last April, Ted switched from a 37-ounce bat to a 34-ounce bludgeon and in a stretch of ten games thumped seven four-baggers, topped off by three in a double-header against the Cardinals on May 9, a bitter cold afternoon. As 13,300 spectators huddled under blankets, Kloo kept warm by swinging his blacksmith's arms, unfettered by sleeves. That performance was matched by his activities in a twin bill against Pittsburgh September 12, when he walloped homers No. 47 and 48, then added three singles to drive in a total of nine runs.
Cincinnati records tumbled steadily under Kloo's crushing power. He was the first Redleg to lead the league in homers since Fred Odwell, with nine, in 1905. He erased Cincinnati marks like his own for homers (40); Frank McCormick's RBI mark (128); Harry Heilmann's slugging percentage (.577) with .642; and Babe Herman's extra-base hits (73) with 80. His overall .326 average landed him in fifth place in the league.
They call him a "manufactured" ball player in everything except hitting, but he learned his lessons well, for he led the league's first basemen in fielding for the fourth consecutive year. This is the same fielder of whom it was said when he played in the Southern Association in 1947, "He couldn't catch a bear in a telephone booth." (Goldberg, 13) |
The Ten Best Infielders
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- ROY MCMILLAN
- Harvey Kuenn
- Chico Carrasquel
- Nelson Fox
- Pee Wee Reese
- Alvin Dark
- Johnny Logan
- Hanry Thompson
- Gil Hodges
- Red Schoendienst
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Late in the 1951 season Rogers Hornsby, then managing Cincinnati, signaled Roy McMillan to start a ball game at shortstop. McMillan had been with the club since spring training, but had been in and out of the lineup through the summer months, and it wasn't until there were only eleven remaining games that he was installed at a post which he hasn't relinquished for one ball game since then.
McMillan's 474 consecutive games represent the longest stretch for all National League players except Stan Musial and Richie Ashburn, and they play the outfield where there's no constant danger from the flashing spikes of sliding base runners. It isn't his durability that makes McMillan an outstanding performer, but rather his consummate skill in fielding his position, a talent which Hornsby, before he retired from the Redlegs, called the equal of any shortstop he had seen. That covers a 40-year period in the big leagues and celebrated defensive operatives like Marty Marion, Frank Crosetti, Dave Bancroft and Leo Durocher.
Hornsby's appraisal came as no surprise to the fans of Tulsa, Okla., where the rangy Texan played before he moved up to Cincinnati. Watching him through 1950 they called the shortstop who constantly robbed hitters "The Phantom," the "Boy/Bandit," "Radar," and "Scoop."
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As a high school boy in Bonham; Tex. McMillan was able to palm a basketball and run 100 yards in 10.2 seconds. Those ham-like hands have enabled him to field and throw a ball with a single, rhythmic motion, and the natural speed gives him an amazing range across the infield. He's one of the few shortstops who can go into the hole between his normal station and third base and throw out the runner, not by a narrow margin, as happens on the rare occasions when the runner is retired, but by several feet.
Roy's fielding instincts make possible anticipation of the play, and Pie Traynor, Hall of Fame third baseman, now a radio announcer in Pittsburgh, points out that he "makes his own bounces" by taking the ball on a half-hop. In both 1953 and 1954, McMillan led National League shortstops in double plays, and last season he also tied Johnny Logan for the leadership in total chances, 839. Thos chances, rather than the average, are the hallmark of a good infielder, for he can't be charged with an error on a ground ball he fails to reach, and McMillan always gets there.
His .250 b.a. is adequate for the power-laden Redlegs, and isn't too bad considering that as a softball player in his home town, he never saw a curve ball until he was induced to present himself for a tryout with the Tyler, Tex. Club, a Cincinnati farm, in 1947. The scouts signed him the moment they saw him glide around the infield, and they has no regrets, for it will take a derrick to get him out of the Redleg lineup. A constantly swollen ankle, the result of a chipped bone, and a spine that was damaged in softball, haven't been enough to remove him (Goldberg, 30).
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Stats and Stories Taken From Dell Baseball Stars (1955)
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