Rico Carty Marquee

He hit .366 in 1970 with 25 home runs, forty points clear of the next man in the National League, and was voted onto the All-Star team as a write-in candidate, the only time that has happened. Tuberculosis had cost him the whole of 1968 and a shoulder separation most of 1967.

He hit .330 as a rookie in 1964 and finished second in the Rookie of the Year voting to Dick Allen. Then a knee he wrecked in winter ball cost him 1971 entirely. Fifteen seasons gave him 1,677 hits, 204 home runs, 890 runs batted in and a .299 average.

He was Dominican, from San Pedro de Macorís, had boxed for his country as an amateur, and signed with nine clubs at once as a teenager without understanding the paperwork, which the commissioner sorted out in Milwaukee's favor. Cleveland made him a designated hitter at thirty-four and he hit .303 there. He died in 2024, at eighty-five.