Babe Adams Marquee

He was a twenty-seven-year-old rookie with twelve wins when Pittsburgh started him in the first game of the 1909 World Series against Detroit. He won that one, the fifth and the seventh, the last a shutout, and the Pirates had their first title.

He walked 430 men in 2,995 innings, which is 1.29 per nine and among the lowest rates in the game's history. Nineteen seasons gave him 194 wins against 140 with a 2.76 earned run average, 206 complete games and 44 shutouts, eight of them in 1920 to lead the National League at thirty-eight.

He was released to the minor leagues at thirty-four and came back at thirty-six to pitch nine more seasons, winning a second World Series with Pittsburgh in 1925 at forty-three. Fifteen writers' ballots got him to 24 votes of 251 at the peak and eleven committees have looked at him since. He died in 1968, at eighty-six.