Carl Mays Marquee

On August 16, 1920 he hit Ray Chapman in the head with a pitch at the Polo Grounds. Chapman died the next morning, the only man killed by a pitch in a major-league game. Mays threw underhand, almost scraping the mound, and the ball that day was brown with use in the late afternoon; he finished the season 26-11 and was booed for the rest of his life.

Fifteen seasons gave him 207 wins against 126 — a .622 winning percentage — with a 2.92 earned run average, 3,021 innings, 231 complete games and 29 shutouts. He won 27 games in 1921 for the Yankees and led the league in wins, innings and saves in the same year.

He won five World Series games and lost seven, pitching for Boston and New York in six Octobers. Twenty committees have considered him since 1958 and none has elected him, which is generally attributed to the pitch, to a reputation for throwing at hitters that preceded it, and to a personality that nobody defended. He died in 1971, at seventy-nine.