Fouled Away

The Baseball Tragedy of Hack Wilson

Edición de la obra Fouled Away

Written By Bernie Weisz/Historian March 12, 2010 Pembroke pines, Florida e mail address: [email protected] title of review:"A size 6 Shoe, Size 18 neck, Blacksmith Arms: A "Sawed-Off babe Ruth" who Extinguished himself With his Own Talent. Tiny Feet, an 18" collar and size 6 shoes juxtaposed with a barrel-chest, blacksmith arms and tree truck thighs and short legs. At 5'6" and weighing 195 pounds, he was a physical oddity that prompted Baseball Hall of Fame historian Lee Allen to view Lewis Robert Wilson, the subject of Clifton B. Parker's biography "Fouled Away" as follows: "There was something comic about Hack Wilson. He looked like a sawed-off Babe Ruth. He took a lot of ribbing from opposing bench jockeys, and writers called him the "Pudgy One", but there was no denying his talent and fans took to him immediately". Parker's book is filled with tragedy, showing how Hack Wilson, a man of alcoholic extremes and described by sportswriter Thomas Holmes as: "perhaps the most malicious mauler known to baseball science, the most incorrigible exponent of brute strength verses a pitched ball" could hit rock bottom nearly one year after winning Major League Baseball's Most Valuable Player Award. There are photos interlaced within this tragedy that can make the strongest of hearted cry. Wilson's only son and sole carrier of his bloodline, Robert Wilson, is shown with Hack throughout the book, the victim of a bitter divorce between Hack and his first wife, Virginia Riddleburger. The reader can see the love and pride Hack had in these photos for his only son and love of his life. When Hack died on November 23, 1948 in a Baltimore, MD. hospital with what the death certificate read as "internal hemorrhaging, pulmonary edema and cirrhosis of the liver", his body laid unclaimed for three days. When Robert was contacted about his father's death, his only response was "Am not responsible". Like picking up a book about Lou Gehrig, the reader knows automatically that this story could only have a tragic ending. However, unlike the former, how many baseball fans have heard of Hack Wilson? And how did this man, a product of the roaring twenties, with Prohibition, Al Capone and the eventual Stock Market crash get the moniker "Hack"? Clifton Parker points out that it was either Wilson's resemblance to former Cub Lawrence H. "Hack" Miller or from an old time wrestler named George Hackenschmidt. Regardless, the nickname stuck. Parker tells of how Hack's father, also named Robert Wilson went to Ellwood City, Pennsylvania as a laborer in 1898 to look for work in the steel mills. One night at the bars, Wilson met 15 year old Jennie Kaughn, and a relationship started, culminating in her pregnancy of Lewis Robert Wilson on April 26, 1900. However, tragedy was an undercurrent in Hack's life, and when he was 7, his mother died of a burst appendix. Eventually, Hack realized this strengths were not academic and quit school in the sixth grade and searched for jobs to provide for himself. After he had been working for awhile, he moved at age 17 into his own apartment and held different jobs such as a printer's apprentice, an ironworker in a locomotive factory, and then in a shipyard, amongst others. Hack's father found a new wife and they maintained a bond throughout adulthood. At age 21, Hack finally found his forte was baseball and joined the Blue Sox, a minor league professional team in Martinsburg, West Virginia. Unfortunately for Hack, in his first professional appearance as a catcher he broke his leg at a close play at the plate, and this caused Wilson to later resume his career as a center fielder. It was during this time while he was mending that he met Virginia Riddleburger, a friend of a nurse who he would later marry. In his first season, Hack played in only 30 games because of his injury. However, he hit .356 with 5 home runs and quickly jumped to 30 home runs in 84 games in 1922, his second year of professional ball. This earned Wilson a promotion to Portsmouth of the Virginia League and won the triple crown there, batting .388 with 18 home runs and 101 RBI's in 115 games. The New York Giants brought him up for the last three games of the season and he would stay a Giant until the Chicago Cubs got Hack in the 1925 postseason draft. It was supposedly a clerical error, where the Giants failed to exercise the option on Hack, and for the nominal fee of $5,000, Wilson became a Cub. In Chicago, Wilson, the cleanup hitter, came into his own. Starting in 1926, Wilson won three straight home run titles, hitting 21 home runs, batting .321 with 109 RBI's. In 1927 his numbers were 30 home runs, .318 batting average and 129 RBI's and 1928 with 31 round trippers, .313 batting average and 120 RBI's. In 1929, his statistics were an incredi

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