Hoyt Wilhelm Marquee Hall of Fame 1985

He was twenty-nine when he reached the majors in 1952, and he won fifteen games out of the bullpen in his first season. Across twenty-one years he pitched 1,070 games and started only fifty-two of them, went 143-122 with 227 saves and 1,610 strikeouts, and allowed 2.52 earned runs per nine innings.

Baltimore tried him in the rotation and got a no-hitter against the Yankees on September 20, 1958, a 1-0 win, and twenty-seven starts with thirteen complete games the year after. Everything else was relief work, and the knuckleball held up: his earned run average was 1.31 in 1967 and 1.73 in 1968, his sixteenth and seventeenth seasons.

On July 24, 1968 his 907th game passed Cy Young for the most pitching appearances in major-league history. He finished with 1,070 and threw his last pitch on July 10, 1972, sixteen days short of his fiftieth birthday. The writers elected him in 1985 with 331 of 395 votes, the first man in the Hall whose work was almost all in relief.