Billy Pierce Marquee

Eighteen seasons gave him 211 wins against 169, a 3.27 earned run average over 3,306 innings, 193 complete games and 38 shutouts. He led the American League in strikeouts in 1953 and in wins in 1957, and The Sporting News named him its pitcher of the year in both 1956 and 1957. He was chosen for seven All-Star teams.

He came up with Detroit at eighteen in 1945, went to Chicago in 1949 and stayed thirteen years, and finished with three seasons in San Francisco. He was the best pitcher the White Sox had for a decade, on clubs that were usually good and rarely quite good enough. They took the pennant in 1959, the year he went 14-15.

The writers gave him five votes in 1970, never more than seven in any year, and he was off the ballot in five. Committees have considered him five times since 2003, most recently in 2022. He died in 2015 at eighty-eight, which is long enough to have watched most of that happen.