HARRY HEILMANN

Harry Heilmann came out of San Francisco with a right-handed stroke that made polite parks feel suddenly unfair, six-foot-one of quiet thunder they called Slug when the wires needed a short name. Detroit gave him the outfield and he kept the middle of the order warm for a decade and a half.

The batting titles stacked like dishes after a Sunday dinner. In 1921 he hit .394 with two hundred thirty-seven hits and one hundred thirty-nine ribbies. In 1923 he pushed it to .403. In 1927 he was still at .398 with fifty doubles — gap power that refused to age out. Even 1924, the off year among the stars, still threw forty-five doubles and a .346 clip.

He finished at .342 with two thousand six hundred sixty hits, five hundred forty-two doubles, one hundred eighty-three home runs, and one thousand five hundred thirty-nine runs batted in. Harry Heilmann died in 1951. The Cooperstown vote came the next year. The averages stayed.