Hack Wilson Marquee Hall of Fame 1979

He led the National League in home runs in 1926, 1927, 1928 and 1930, and in walks twice. The 1930 season stands by itself: 56 home runs, which no National Leaguer beat until 1998, and 191 runs batted in, the highest single-season figure in the archive. That total was carried as 190 for most of a century before it was corrected.

He was 5-foot-6 and 190 pounds, and he drank hard enough that the Cubs eventually stopped waiting for him. In 1931 he hit 13 home runs and drove in 61. Chicago sold him to Brooklyn, and by August 1934 he was finished — released by the Phillies at 34, twelve seasons in.

The short career shows in the totals: 244 home runs and 1,063 runs batted in, but only 1,461 hits. He died in Baltimore in November 1948, at 48, and money had to be raised to bury him. The veterans committee elected him in 1979, thirty-one years later.