George Sisler Marquee Hall of Fame 1939

The 257 hits he collected in 1920 were more than anyone had gathered in a season, and the total held up for eighty-four years, until Ichiro Suzuki reached 262 in 2004. Sisler led the American League in hits twice, in stolen bases four times, in triples in both 1921 and 1922, and in runs with 134 in 1922.

Then he lost a year. An illness that left him seeing double kept him out of all of 1923, and he was thirty-one when he came back. He hit .345 in 1925 and collected 205 hits for Boston in 1929, at thirty-six, which was very good work and not the same thing at all.

He arrived in 1915 as a left-handed pitcher and went 4-4 with a 2.83 earned run average that first season, starting eight games and finishing six of them. Then he moved to first base, where he played 1,972 games. The Browns never finished higher than second while he was there. He ended with 2,812 hits and a .340 average, and Cooperstown elected him in 1939.