Bob Johnson Marquee

He reached the majors at twenty-seven and hit from the first week. Thirteen seasons gave him 2,051 hits, 288 home runs, 1,283 runs batted in, 1,239 runs scored and a .296 average, with 1,075 walks. From 1935 through 1941 he drove in at least a hundred runs every year, and he did it once more in 1944, by then in Boston.

The seven-year run was for the Athletics, who finished last in the American League in 1935, 1936, 1938, 1940, 1941 and 1942, and seventh in the two years between. Connie Mack had broken up his championship club before Johnson arrived and went on selling. Twice the team lost a hundred games while its best hitter was having a season most clubs would have built around.

He was chosen for eight All-Star teams. In thirteen years not one of his clubs won a pennant, which is the ordinary fate of a very good player on a bad team and the reason the counting statistics are the whole of the case for him. The writers gave him five Hall of Fame ballots between 1948 and 2007 and he never came near.