Joe Cronin Marquee Hall of Fame 1956

Washington made its shortstop the manager for 1933, when he was twenty-six, and the club won the American League pennant. After the next season Clark Griffith, whose niece Cronin had just married, sold him to Boston. He was Boston's player-manager for the rest of his playing career.

He drove in 1,424 runs, hit 170 home runs and 515 doubles, and batted .301 with 2,285 hits over twenty seasons, eight of them with 100 runs batted in or more. He led the American League in doubles with 45 in 1933 and 51 in 1938, and in triples with 18 in 1932. He played 1,843 games at shortstop.

He was on the first All-Star team in 1933 and six more after that. He stopped playing in 1945, managed Boston to a pennant in 1946, and then became the club's general manager. The writers elected him to the Hall of Fame in 1956, and he was later made president of the American League, the first former major league player in the job.