Al Lopez Marquee Hall of Fame 1977

Nineteen seasons in Brooklyn, Boston, Pittsburgh and Cleveland brought him 1,547 hits and a .261 average. The number that mattered was 1,918: games caught, a major-league record when he finished in 1947, and one that stood forty years, until Bob Boone passed it in 1987.

Then he managed, and twice he took a pennant the Yankees had come to treat as theirs. New York won every American League pennant from 1949 through 1964 but two: Cleveland won in 1954 and the White Sox in 1959, and Lopez had both of those clubs. Both lost the World Series that followed.

The writers put him on their ballot in some years as a player and in others as a manager, and he came nowhere near election either way; his best showing was 114 votes of 292. The Veterans Committee elected him in 1977, as a manager. He died in 2005, at ninety-seven.