Remembering Bill Terry and Elmer Flick

The Hall of Fame has three new members today. On this day in history, two other members of the Hall of Fame passed away, Bill Terry in 1989 and Elmer Flick in 1971. So much has been written in recent days about the best players not in the Hall of Fame and the worst players in the Hall of Fame that it’s worth remembering two men who were neither.

Terry and Flick finished with 56-57 WAR in a little more than a decade of play. Judging by today’s standards, that seemed like fine work, if hardly extraordinary. The writers of their day mostly agreed. They finally allowed Bill Terry to enter the hall in 1954, in his 14th year on the ballot. The Veterans Committee finally decided in 1963 in order to induct Flick, whose last season was 1910, 26 years before the first Hall of Fame class.

Terry and Flick represent a number of things mostly missing from our annual Hall of Fame debate. First, the fact that hope springs eternal: no matter how long a player has waited, the Hall may call. It’s undoubtedly true that recent Veterans Committees have shown very little interest in electing players, unlike Veterans Committees of the past, but trends in Veterans Committees tend to run in cycles.

Second, putting borderline players into the Hall doesn’t harm the Hall. It doesn’t particularly lower standards, it doesn’t poison the well, and it doesn’t hurt anybody either outside or inside.

Anyway, you’ve probably heard of Bill Terry: he’s the last National Leaguer to hit over .400, having done so in 1930, and he’s one of 11 players whose numbers have been retired by the Giants (not including Jackie Robinson). You may not have heard of Flick, who played for the Phillies around the turn of the century, then went to Nap Lajoie’s Cleveland Naps, retiring five years before they changed their name to the “Indians.”*

* Traditionally, the Indians have claimed that they renamed themselves in honor of Louis Sockalexis, an American Indian who played for the team in the late 1890’s. Many others, including Joe Posnanski, have suggested that story is “complete bullcrap,” and that the Indians were merely trying on a name that sounded like that of the 1914 Miracle Braves, who were themselves named after the mascot of New York’s Tammany Hall political machine, which was itself named after a chief named Tamanend.

Terry was a career New York Giant, playing for the team from 1923 to 1936 and managing them from 1932 to 1941. He took over first base from High Pockets Kelly and took over managing from John McGraw, both Hall of Famers. Winning a World Series in 1933 and losing four more in 1923-24 and 1936-37, Terry was part of the last Giants dynasty until Buster Posey joined the team, and both he and Kelly were elected in the rosy afterglow of the memory of the superb Giants teams helmed by McGraw, the Little Napoleon, and by Terry himself. (Kelly was elected by the 1973 Veterans Committee and is assuredly one of the worst players in the Hall of Fame, but I promised I wouldn’t wade into that discussion.)

Flick never played in a World Series, though he played with stars like Big Ed Delahanty and Lajoie. Instead, his career was partly overshadowed by the massive interleague battles that took place between the National League and the just-established American League. As ThisGreatGame.com retells, Connie Mack’s Philadelphia Athletics raided the Phillies by ignoring the reserve clause and signing away Flick and a teammate, just a year after the A’s had signed away Lajoie from the same team.

The Phillies sought relief in the Pennsylvania courts, and the Pennsylvania Supreme Court agreed with them, ordering the players back to the Phillies. So the American League itself intervened, keeping the players in their new league by shifting them to a new team outside the state of Philadelphia Pennsylvania: Cleveland, whose team was formerly called the Bronchos and would become known as the Naps after their new stars.

Despite losing these players, Mack’s 1902 A’s finished first, an achievement none of Flick’s teams ever matched. (Flick only played 11 games for the 1902 A’s.) But due to the all-out war between leagues, there was no official postseason that year. Only in 1903, after “the NL legally cried uncle and sued the AL for peace,” would the first official World Series take place.

Elmer Flick was a speedy outfielder who led his league in triples three times and steals twice. His career was only ten full seasons long. As SABR writes, his last three seasons were plagued by gastrointestinal illness so bad that “he lost weight, his power and speed declined, and the pain was so severe there were times when he thought that he would die.”

But it’s probably better to remember him as something like an early version of Shin-Soo Choo, an all-around outfielder who took walks, had pretty good power, and was a fine baserunner. Or, to quote the beginning of his SABR bio, “as the player who Cleveland would not trade for the young Ty Cobb or as the man who won the American League batting title with the lowest average prior to 1968.”

Terry was equally valuable but in a very different way: less speed, less defense, more batting average, more power. He was a first baseman who had a career batting average of .341 with a lot of doubles and a few more homers. And of course he was a player-manager who won a World Series, which holds weight with voters even though it isn’t reflected in WAR. Flick played before the All-Star Game and MVP, but Terry went to three All-Star games and finished top-three in the MVP three times, and it’s likely that Flick would have done the same.

Terry and Flick were two pretty good players from the first half-century of the modern era. They were great in their time, and though by modern standards they wouldn’t be considered all-time greats, they are well worth remembering. Thankfully, their enshrinement will forever provide a chance to do so.