KIKI CUYLER

Hazen Shirley Cuyler came out of Harrisville, Michigan, in 1898, and the National League spent the next seventeen years trying to throw him out. They called him Kiki. Five feet ten, 180 pounds, right-handed everything, he broke in with Pittsburgh in September 1921 and did not quit until a Brooklyn September in 1938.

The numbers stack quiet and enormous: a .321 lifetime average, 2,299 hits, 394 doubles, 157 triples, 128 home runs, 1,065 runs batted in, 328 stolen bases, 1,305 runs scored across 1,879 games. On-base .386, slugging .474. A guy who hit and ran and drove them in, all in the same afternoon. He wore Pittsburgh, then the Chicago Cubs, then Cincinnati, then Brooklyn, and the triples tell you he could flat fly when the gap opened.

In 1925 the Pirates took the pennant and the World Series, and Kiki was in the middle of it — seven games, 26 at-bats, 7 hits, a home run, 6 runs batted in. That is the kind of October a card remembers. His Pittsburgh summers were loud; his Cub summers were longer; the bat never got quiet.

He died in 1950. The Veterans Committee opened the door to Cooperstown in 1968. Long wait for a fast man. But the record does not age, and the record on the card still says .321 — plus every gap triple he refused to turn into a double.