Earle Combs Marquee Hall of Fame 1970

His job was to be on base when Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig came up, and he did it well enough to score 1,186 runs in 1,455 games. In 1927 he led the American League in hits with 231 and in triples with 23, and scored 137. He led in triples again in 1928 and 1930, and finished with 154.

He had taught school in eastern Kentucky before he signed, and sportswriters called him the Kentucky Colonel. Twelve seasons, all of them for New York, produced 1,866 hits and only 278 strikeouts. He played on three World Series winners, in 1927, 1928, and 1932, the last of them the year he scored 143 runs.

In 1934 in St. Louis he ran into the concrete outfield wall chasing a fly ball. He played 63 games that season and 89 the next, then stopped at thirty-six. The writers put him on fourteen ballots and never gave him more than 43 votes; the Veterans Committee elected him in 1970, six years before he died.