Joe Kelley Marquee Hall of Fame 1971

Baltimore finished twelfth the year he got there. Two seasons later the Orioles won the first of three consecutive pennants, and Kelley was the left fielder for all of it, driving in more than 100 runs five years running and stealing 87 bases in 1896 to lead the National League.

When Ned Hanlon moved to Brooklyn in 1899, under the arrangement that let one ownership group stock two clubs at once, Kelley went with him and Brooklyn won the next two pennants. He finished with 2,220 hits, a .317 average, 1,421 runs and 443 stolen bases. Cincinnati later hired him to manage while he was still playing.

Those Orioles are remembered as a team rather than man by man, for their bunting and their sign-stealing and their handling of umpires. Kelley never drew more than one vote from the writers. The Veterans Committee elected him in 1971, twenty-eight years after his death, and he is still the one from that outfield nobody names first.