Baseball history: Bob Boone, Ty Cobb/Shoeless Joe Jackson/Tris Speaker, Jim Rice and Tony Armas, Robin Yount

Wednesday 5/27/26

Bob Boone is (rightly) regarded as one of the best defensive catchers in baseball history. He didn't win his first Gold Glove until his age thirty season. His next came in his age thirty-four season. Then he didn't win another until his age thirty-eight season, after which he won three more in successive seasons taking him through his age forty-one season. The lesson here: Gold Gloves can be misleading. Carlton Fisk won one his rookie year, and then never again.

Ty Cobb hit .419 in 1911 and .409 in 1912 leading the league in each of these seasons but, remarkably, not leading it in on base percentage either year. Shoeless Joe Jackson led in OBP in 1911 and Tris Speaker in 1912. Jackson, a .356 career hitter, never won a batting title. Speaker, a .345 career hitter, won one. Because of Cobb.

In July 1912, Ty Cobb played in 30 games for the Detroit Tigers…and hit .528.

Jim Rice had a strange career. He only hit 30+ homers four times. Surprising, right? But three of those times he hit 39 homers, and the other time he hit 46, leading the league in homers three of those years. Then again, he was an all-around hitter. More of a line driver hitter, too, than people are wont to think.

Their run wasn’t long—basically the 1983 and 1984 seasons—but Jim Rice and Tony Armas had it going on there for a bit as co-big boppers with the Red Sox. Rice led the AL in homers and RBI in ‘83, then Armas did the same in ‘84. But how about this: in ‘83 they tied for the league lead in grounding into double plays with 31. 62 double plays between two guys!

Armas and Rice the duo were kind of a lesser, dry-run version of Manny Ramirez and David Ortiz, or, to shift to football, like Ben Coates and Drew Bledsoe were for Rob Gronkowski and Tom Brady. Those 1984 Red Sox had a lot of offensive firepower.

The first-ballot baseball Hall of Famer with the fewest All-Star selections (during the ASG era, obviously)? Robin Yount with three. Wasn’t selected during his second MVP-winning season of 1989. He wasn't all that deserving that year based on his first half. Yount really poured it on after the break.

People will say that Yount had stiff competition at shortstop, but maybe not so stiff. Alan Trammell's name is brought up, but he could be inconsistent from year to year and definitely wasn't viewed at the time as a huge star.

The truth is that Yount really wasn't a first-ballot Hall of Famer type of player. He was thought of as a huge star, without huge star numbers. Young's 1982 season was his campaign for the ages. I believe it's responsible for much of his reputation. Excepting that year and 1989, there wasn't a season when he was one of the best players in the league. In fact, those were the only two seasons in which he finished in the top ten in MVP voting.