Jim Piersall Marquee

In 1952, at twenty-two, he was hospitalized with what was then called a nervous breakdown, given electroshock treatment and told he might not play again. He came back in 1953, wrote Fear Strikes Out with a sportswriter in 1955, and spoke about mental illness in public when almost no athlete did.

Seventeen seasons gave him 1,604 hits, 256 doubles, 104 home runs and a .272 average, with two Gold Gloves and two All-Star selections. He led the American League with 40 doubles in 1956 and hit .293 that year, and was regarded as one of the best defensive center fielders of the 1950s.

He ran the bases backwards after his hundredth home run, in 1963, which got him released. He broadcast White Sox games afterward and was fired for candor there too. He died in 2017, at eighty-seven. No Hall of Fame ballot listed him.