Second Baseman—Nap Lajoie
(with Cleveland from 1902-1914)
74.9 fWAR, 80.0 bWAR
.339/.389/.452, 1614 G, 6695 PA, 155 OPS+ (with Cleveland)
Lajoie was the first superstar of the upstart American League in the early years of the 20th century. He had his most famous season the year before joining Cleveland when he led the brand new American League in almost every hitting category, including batting average, on-base percentage, slugging percentage, runs, hits, doubles, homers, and RBI.
He played that season with the Philadelphia Athletics, the team he had jumped to from the crosstown Phillies after believing the Phillies had shorted him on his pay. Phillies owner John Rogers sued for the return of his “property” and the case he filed made its way to the Pennsylvania Supreme Court. It was ultimately decided in Rogers’ favor and the ruling prevented Lajoie from playing baseball in the state of Pennsylvania for any team other than the Phillies. With this restriction in place, Lajoie was sent to Cleveland in 1902.
The batting titles kept coming for Lajoie over the next three seasons. He also led the league in on-base percentage twice and slugging percentage three times. As good as he was personally, his team did not fair well, finishing fifth, third, and fourth in an eight team league. After the 2004 season, Lajoie added field manager to his resume.
The Cleveland roster looked good enough to be contenders, but could only manage one second place finish in the five years Lajoie managed them. His time at the helm of the team seemed to affect his hitting also. A career .338/.380/.466 hitter, Lajoi hit just .319/.368/.417 in this five-year stretch as a player-manager. The year after he was relieved of his duties, his batting average shot right back up to .384.
That .384 batting average in the 1910 season was the subject of much controversy at the time. This was the famous batting race between the aging 36-year-old Napoleon Lajoie, who had won four straight batting titles earlier in his career, and the 23-year-old Ty Cobb, who had won three straight titles leading up to this season. Batting average was king in those days and the batting race was prominent in sports section of newspapers across the country. This batting race had the added element of the winner being awarded a Chalmers Detroit Model 30 automobile. In a time when few people owned cars, getting a Chalmers Detroit Model 30 was a significant incentive.
Heading into the final day of the season, Cobb had a substantial lead, but Lajoie was playing a double-header, so he would get many chances to rack up hits. And he did. Unofficially, Lajoie was 8-for-8 that day but as the Washington Post wrote, “Never before in the history of baseball has the integrity of the game been questioned as it was by the 8,000 fans this afternoon.”
During the two games, Lajoie had one hit that dropped in centerfield that should have been caught. He also had six bunt singles because the opposing team’s third baseman was playing in short left field. It was a mockery and a sham. For his part, one could argue that Lajoie showed a lack of integrity by taking advantage of the free hits so he could win the batting title and the car.
When word got around the country about what had happened, there was an outrage. The president of the American League, Ban Johnson, axed three members of the St., Louis Browns, including their manager, Jack O’Connor. All three disappeared from baseball. Along with the firings, Johnson announced that Ty Cobb had won the batting title with a .3849 batting average to Lajoie’s .3840. To appease the two hitters, the Chalmers Motor Company handed out two cars. Everything seemed to be taken care of.
Except, Johnson’s decision was as illegitimate as Lajoie’s hits. In order to put Cobb ahead of Lajoie in the batting race, Johnson “found” a 2-for-3 game by Cobb. In actuality, one of Cobb’s games in which he was 2-for-3 was counted twice. Many decades later, researcher Pete Palmer fastidiously checked through the box scores for each player and found evidence of Cobb’s two extra hits. He told the commissioner at the time, Bowie Kuhn, about the discrepancy but Kuhn chose to do nothing about it.
The end result of all these shenanigans is that Ty Cobb actually had 4,189 hits and a career batting average of .366 and not 4,191 hits and a batting average of .367, which are still his “official” totals according to Major League Baseball. So when Pete Rose broke the all-time hits record at home in Cincinnati on September 11, 1985, the reality was that he had already broken the record three days before, at Wrigley Field.
After that batting title fiasco, Lajoie played four more seasons in Cleveland and continued to hit well for the first three of those seasons with batting averages of .365, .368, and .335. Then, after hitting .258 as a 39-year-old in 1914, Cleveland let him go. He signed with the Philadelphia Athletics and played two more seasons in the big leagues, hitting .280 and .246.