ED DELAHANTY

They called him Big Ed, and the nickname fit the bat. Edward James Delahanty — Cleveland-born, Phillies-made — was a right-handed outfielder who treated the 1890s like a personal batting practice that never ended.

He joined the .400 club more than once: .405 in 1894, .404 in 1895, then a .410 avalanche in 1899 with two hundred thirty-eight hits and fifty-five doubles. In between he kept the meter hot — .397 in 1896 with seventeen triples — a gap-to-gap storm in plain flannel. Late career took him to Washington; the book still opens on those Phillies summers.

What stayed was a .346 lifetime clip, two thousand five hundred ninety-seven hits, and the memory of a cleanup threat who made polite parks suddenly feel small. The door closed in 1903. The ledger didn't.