chillin' with McQuillan

One of my favorite moments of the Great Home Run Race (or, if you prefer, Chase) of ten years ago was seeing Roger Maris’ name thrust into baseball’s forefront.  Here’s guessing that had the soft-spoken slugger been alive when both Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa surpassed the 61 homeruns he hit in 1961, he would have shied away from the attention just as he so desperately tried to when he and his (much) more celebrated teammate Mickey Mantle put on their own dual assault of what was at the time the most hallowed record in all of sports.

And so it was last season when Barry Bonds inched closer to 756 homeruns that we got another chance to know Hank Aaron and how he, like Maris, overcame- pardon the expression- Ruthian odds to etch his name in the record books.  I was seven years old the night Hammerin’ Hank drove an Al Downing fastball into that Atlanta air, and I watched as two young white fans joined the new home run king around the base paths, without a single clue of just how significant that moment was, considering the amount of race-fueled hate-mail that Aaron- truly the bravest Brave of them all- had received throughout his long, lonely “ordeal”.

Maris and Aaron, two reluctant heroes who dared not only to challenge baseball’s version of Goliath, but who had the audacity to defeat him.  And yet they remained in Ruth’s shadow, even though Maris held the single-season record for more seasons than it took to break it (reward for his efforts came in the form of a shiny asterisk), and Aaron’s career mark lasted nearly as long as the Babe’s.  It wasn’t until their own gaudy totals were being threatened that we were reminded just how special their accomplishments- and how they achieved them- were.

Which brings us to George McQuillan. I am supremely disappointed and somewhat saddened that there was barely a word uttered for the man who broke into baseball in stirring fashion some one-hundred and one years ago.  Not that there was a whole lot of write-up either for Brad Ziegler, the man who unseated McQuillan as the pitcher with the most consecutive scoreless innings to start a career.  But hey, let’s handle one injustice at a time, shall we?

Speaking of time, I can’t really go into detail just how many pitchers have positioned themselves atop a major league mound between McQuillan and Ziegler, but I assure you it’s a boatload.  A very big boatload.  And some of those guys- Feller, Koufax, Clemens, Gibson, Ryan, just to name a few- were pretty damn lethal at their craft.  And yet none of them were able to do what McQuillan did- spanning over a century of baseball- until this Ziegler guy showed up.  Consider what the world was like in 1907, when young George tossed twenty-five consecutive zeroes for the Phillies.  Babe Ruth was twelve years old.  Ty Cobb had yet to be kicked out of a ball game (he received the first of fifteen career ejections one year later). And the Chicago Cubs were on the verge of their first of two consecutive World Series titles.

The word on McQuillan is that he was the “Doc Gooden of the Dead Ball era”.  And all that it implies.  As impressive as he was in those six games in 1907, he was ridiculously good in his first full season, posting a 23-17 record with a 1.53 ERA in over 350 innings of work.  As quickly as he rose to stardom, the man who once measured favorably to Christy Mathewson saw his career- and life- spiral out of control just as suddenly; alcohol, sexual exploits, and financial woes playing deciding roles in his demise.  But though his career in baseball was brief, his record start was anything but. 

And so when something happens every century or so, it is best to stand up and acknowledge it, as I was fortunate enough to do last Sunday.  But while we applaud Ziegler’s efforts, and ponder what the next 101 years will be like, let’s not forget about George McQuillan.

Then again it’s hard to remember someone you never knew to begin with.  He may have lived on the edge like the Babe, but his accomplishments went the way of Aaron and Maris.