Jake Beckley Marquee Hall of Fame 1971

He came out of Hannibal, Missouri, to Pittsburgh in 1888, jumped to the Players' League in 1890 and led it in triples with 22, then returned when that league collapsed. Cincinnati kept him seven years and St. Louis four. He batted .308 over twenty seasons and drove in 1,581 runs with 87 home runs.

His 244 triples are fourth on the career list and the most by any first baseman. He played 2,383 games at the position and was still hitting .325 for St. Louis at thirty-six. He was called Eagle Eye, batted and threw left-handed, and never hit more than ten home runs in a season.

He left the majors in 1907 and died in 1918, at fifty. On the writers' ballot in 1942 he received one vote out of 233 cast. The Veterans Committee elected him in 1971, sixty-four years after his last game and fifty-three years after his death, by which point his career survived only in the record books.