Candy Cummings Marquee Hall of Fame 1939

The record itself is small and mostly uncounted. Four seasons in the National Association from 1872 gave him 124 wins against 72 in 199 games, roughly 1,778 innings, and the archive does not count them, because Major League Baseball has never counted that league. What it does count is 1876 and 1877: 21 wins, 22 losses, 372 innings.

He was small even for the time, and the pitching was underhand from forty-five feet. The curveball story is his own, told long afterward, and other men claimed it too. Nobody can settle it now, which has not stopped the Hall of Fame citing it as the reason he is there.

He was elected in 1939 by the Old Timers Committee as a pioneer, fifteen years after he died. His case rests on a thing that cannot be checked rather than on the two counted seasons, and this is one of the entries people point at when they argue about who belongs.