John Clarkson Marquee Hall of Fame 1963

He won 328 games and lost 178 in twelve seasons, struck out 1,978, completed 485 of 518 starts and worked 4,536 innings. He led the National League in wins three times and in strikeouts three times, and took the pitching Triple Crown in 1889 with 49 wins and 284 strikeouts. He passed 300 wins in his tenth season.

The 1885 season ran to 623 innings and ten shutouts with a 1.85 earned run average, for a Chicago team that finished 87-25. Four years later at Boston he did nearly the same thing: 49 wins, 620 innings, 68 complete games, 284 strikeouts. Chicago won pennants in 1885 and 1886, Boston in 1891 and 1892.

The pitching distance moved back ten and a half feet in 1893, by which time he had thrown more than 4,000 innings. He went 16-17 that season and 8-10 the next, and was out of the majors at thirty-three. He died in 1909 at forty-seven, and the Hall of Fame elected him in 1963, fifty-four years after his death.