Hal Chase Marquee

He hit .339 in 1916 with 184 hits, both the best in the National League, and he had led the Federal League with 17 home runs in 1915. Fifteen seasons gave him 2,158 hits, 322 doubles, 363 stolen bases and a .291 average. Contemporaries who saw him play first base — and they said this for forty years afterward — thought nobody ever played the position better.

He was also, by the accounts of the men who managed him, throwing games. George Stallings accused him in 1910. Christy Mathewson suspended him in 1918 for offering money to teammates to lose; the National League president heard the case and cleared him. The Giants took him in 1919, found him at it again, and John McGraw quietly let him go.

He was never formally banned by name in the Black Sox settlement, but no club would sign him after 1919 and he was implicated in the fix of the 1919 World Series as a bettor. He drifted through California semipro ball, drank, and died broke in a Colusa hospital in 1947, at sixty-four. Two ballots in the 1930s gave him 11 votes and then 18.