GEORGE SISLER

They called the bat sweet and the glove cleaner — George Harold Sisler of Manchester, Ohio — and for more than a decade he made first base look like a private office. Left-handed through and through, Michigan-trained, he sprayed singles until the ledger quit arguing: two thousand eight hundred twelve hits and a .340 lifetime clip that still sits in the air like a dare.

St. Louis got him and kept him. Nineteen twenty's .407 avalanche with two hundred fifty-seven hits still echoes, then nineteen twenty-two answered with a .420 clip, two hundred forty-six hits, and fifty-one steals when SkillScore peaked at one hundred forty-six point three three. Sinus trouble stole a season; the swing never forgot how to count.

What stayed was three hundred seventy-five steals, a gentleman's first-base lease, and the memory of a Brown who treated .400 like rented property and paid on time.