The Pecan Park Eagle

Dave Hoskins with Dallas Eagles Manager Dutch Meyer, 1952.

Five years after Jackie Robinson broke the major league color line in 1947, Dave Hoskins did the honors for his race in the Texas League as a pitcher for the Dallas Eagles.  Those 1952 Eagles were a great club, finishing in first place under Manager Dutch Meyer with a record of 92-69 before losing to Oklahoma City in a six-game first round playoff series. Hoskins was the prime force for the ’52 Eagles, leading the league with 22 wins and an overall record of 22-10 and an ERA of 2.12.

Those of us in Houston during that era were two years away from the 1954 date that Bob Boyd would step on the field as the first black player to play for the Houston Buffs, but that didn’t stop a handful of us Houston whites and all of the segregated-stand seated Houston blacks from cheering for Hoskins during his first and every appearance at Buff Stadium. The guy threw the ball with such pop and poise. It didn’t take long for Dave Hoskins to establish that he already was too good for the Texas League at age 30.

Dave Hoskins was born in Greenwood, Mississippi on August 3, 1922, but his family moved to Flint, Michigan in 1936 when he was 14. His dad worked in the automobile assembly industry and Hoskins grew up playing baseball in the Flint City League. His averages of .438, .395, .350, and .412 over four seasons drew hard attention from scouts in the Negro League. His first stops in professional baseball landed him with the Ethiopian Clowns, the Homestead Grays, and the Cincinnati Clowns. During his three seasons with the Homestead grays (1944-46), Hoskins batted .345, .351, and .317. He also served as the club’s best pitcher in 1945.

In April 1945, Dave Hoskins, Sam Jethroe, and Jackie Robinson were chosen as Negro Leaguers to be given a joint tryout in a camp sponsored by the Boston Red Sox and Braves. Hoskins ended up missing the tryout due to a game injury.

By 1947, Dave had returned home to star as an outfielder in the Flint City League. As an all-star from that group, Hoskins proceeded to rack up three hits in a game that Flint’s Best played against the Detroit Tigers.

Dave Hoskins: Greatness That Might Have Been.

Dave Hoskins finally rode the wings of some good words by Satchel Paige and signed with the Cleveland Indians as a hard-hitting outfielder. After he signed, however, Hoskins decided to change from hitting to pitching. “I was tired of pitchers throwing at me and made up my mind to throw at other guys,” Hoskins explained. After unspectacular years (1949-51) as a pitcher for Grand Rapids, Dayton, and Wilkes-Barre, Hoskins joined the Dallas Eagles in 1952 for his banner breakout season in organized baseball.

Hoskins made an auspicious start for Cleveland in his first major league appearance in early 1953. Coming into the game early in relief of Bob Feller and trailing 3-0, Hoskins gave up no runs while crashing a double and homer for four RBI that gave him and the Indians the victory. He went on to post a 9-3 record for the Indians in 1953 with an ERA of 3.99 in 26 games.

An unfunny thing happened to Dave Hoskins with the Indians in 1954. Because of the talent-glutted pitching staff among Indian starters that year (Lemon, Garcia, Wynn, Feller, and Houtteman), Dave only hit the mound on 14 occasions in 1954, posting a 0-1 record and a harvest of disappointment.  David Hoskins would continue playing minor league baseball, including a brief stint with the 1959 Houston Buffs, through 1960, but he would not see the major leagues again after the ’54 heartbreaker. He would finish his minor league life with 78 wins, 69 losses, and an ERA of 3.79

After baseball, Dave Hoskins returned to Flint and a second career as an automobile plant worker. He married and raised three daughters before passing away of a heart attack on the job at age 47 on April 2, 1970.

In 1987, Dave Hoskins was inducted into the Greater Flint  Afro-American Hall of Fame. In 2004, Dave Hoskins also found quick, ready, and appropriate induction into the newly created Texas League Hall of Fame.

Dave Hoskins was a great one, but like a lot of Negro Leaguers from that period, his chance came around a little bit on the late side to be of much value to a long career in major league baseball. Dave’s 1952 Texas League record and his 1953 brief run with Cleveland merely hint at those saddest of all words, what might have been.

“You Can’t Hit the Ball with the Bat on Your Shoulder.” – Bobby Bragan.

Fellow writer and friend Al Doyle of Oshkosh, Wisconsin and I have been collecting names of some very special ball players over the past seven years. By some fairly loose, but clearly defining standards, Al and I are in perpetual pursuit of those players who have managed to survive for several seasons in the big leagues without rising above a measurable level of mediocrity as performers.  The idea behind this seemingly idle-time research is to establish a data bank of players who will be eligible for a new hall of honor – The National Baseball Hall of Mediocrity.

Ideally, we are looking for hitters who manage to survive for ten seasons in the big leagues without hitting more than .210. The closer these candidates get to the .200 Mendoza Line or less, the better their chances will be for subsequent induction.

Pitching candidates are those who fail to achieve double-digit wins in a single season, but consistently reach that mark on the loss side with earned run averages exceeding 7.00 per season. Twenty loss seasons are a big plus on this yardstick of deservedness too.

In general, any player who experiences a career year that leads him to individual honors as a hitter, fielder, or pitcher is disqualified for membership in the BHOM (Baseball Hall of Mediocrity). We also generally frown upon considering those statistically qualified souls who have been members of a World Series championship club, but, as I said earlier, our standards are appropriately loose and subject to the same kind of mediocre flexibility we expect of our honorees.

A former shortstop named Ray Oyler is the poster boy for all BHOM candidates. Oyler only played for parts of six major league seasons with the Detroit Tigers (1965-68), the Seattle Pilots (1969), and the California Angels (1970), but he managed to achieve just about everything one might expect from a mediocre major leaguer over that extended course of time. In 542 total games, the equivalent of about 3.5 full seasons, Oyler collected only 221 hots in 1,265 official times at bat for a career batting average of .175. His On Base Percentage (OBP) was a mere .258 and his Slugging Average (SA) was only .251. Of his total hits, only 29 were doubles, 6 were triple, nd 15 were home runs. He also struck out 359 times relative to the 135 times he walked. Other than the shortfall on his time in the majors, the only other blight on Ray Oyler’s record is the fact that he played for the 1968 World Series Champion Detroit Tigers. Also, it may be fairly obvious by now, but it was Ray’s defense that kept him big league afloat for as long as he managed to last. He was still done and out of the fun in 1970 at the age of 32.

Eddie Joost’s .185 in 1943 is the worst ever for a full-time player in one season.

Several seasons earlier than Ray Oyler, fellow shortstop Eddie Joost set the record for the worst single season batting average by a full-time big league player when he clocked in at .185 for the 1943 Boston Bees. He also punked out a .299 OBP and a .252 SA on the ’43 season.

Sadly, Joost wasn’t able maintain this level of ineptitude over his entire 17-season (1936-55) career. He managed to finish with an elevated .239 BA, a .361 OBP, and a .366 SA with multiple major league clubs to pull himself up from the direst strains of pure mediocrity.

Why should we honor mediocrity? Here’s the best reason in the world: If it weren’t for the supremely mediocre players, the bad players would never look good, the good players would never look great, the great players would never seem deserving of the Hall of Fame, and the Babe Ruths and Hank Aarons wouldn’t have ten books a year published on each of them by different houses and authors. Plus, we probably never would have heard of Bob Costas or Peter Gammons as commentators on greatness without all those mediocre players out there making everybody else look so much better.

If you have a favorite candidate for the future BHOM, Al Doyle and I would love to hear from all of you. Just drop me an e-mail or, better yet, leave a comment below as part of this article. If your candidate is selected, we will be very happy to give you credit as the nominating party when the day comes to get this special hall of honor up and running in reality.

In the Baseball Hall of Mediocrity, all new inductees will get in on the ground floor and just stay there. Without that flooring, the stars of the game would have no place to walk. We want to make sure that every deserving plank, knotholes and all, is remembered for its particular contribution to the backdrop of the game. Once that  purpose is clearly understood, the BHOM will become what it needs to be: a place where we remember baseball’s individually forgettable players, managers, general managers, administrators, owners. broadcasters, writers, pundits, coaches, and commissioners.

Also, send us your ideas on the best potential site for the Baseball Hall of Mediocrity. We are looking for a town and community that will help the BHOM live up to its name.

Frank Shofner Hit .241 for the '51 Buffs.

Every field of human endeavour has them. Most of us are them. We are the minions of the masses that make every clock of human effort tic. Without us, there would be no night sky in place for all the stars to shine. There would be no cars fixed by the side of the road when really important people are late for meetings in the halls of power. There would be no torch bearers streaming through the darkness when it was time to storm Dr. Frankenstein’s castle. There would be no  Rosencrantz or Guildenstern lending quiet body and soul to the telling of Hamlet.

Frank Shofner of the 1951 Houston Buffs was such a character in baseball. We may talk and write of Ruth and Aaron all we want, but we simply could not play the game without the multitudes of mediocre performances supplied much more frequently by ordinary guys like Frank Shofner of the minor leagues and Ray Oyler of the majors (See Ray’s stats for Detroit, 1968, or just check out his general career.)

Frank Shofner hit .241 with 6 homers as a back up to rising star Eddie Kazak as third baseman for the ’51 Houston Buffs, He delivered a few key pinch hits along the way and he battled every opportunity that came his way as though it were the chance of a lifetime. At 6’1″ and 185 pounds, Shofner had a stockier appearance and not much speed, but he had quick hands and a frog-and-the-June-bug relationship with balls dribbled or bunted down the third base line.

From the stands, you could often hear him barking support, laughing, kidding encouragement to his mates, doing whatever he could to help everybody keep their heads in the game. As a torch bearer, he lit his own and tried hard to ignite the lights of all the other Buffs. Put that personality and temperament into the same guy who batted .241 and you sure would prefer to have Frank Shofner on your bench than some guy who batted .300, but only cared in a dead pan way about his own stats and credit.

In his nine season career (1944-1952) as a minor leaguer, Frank Shofner batted .278 with 49 home runs. He was 2 for 13 (.154) with a single and a triple in his only major league action for the 1947 Boston Red Sox, but that’s OK. The rule of the minions still applies: Without the Frank Shofners of this world, there would be no stage for the Ted William’s and Stan Musials of the hardball game.

Shofner and Oyler shall live on through the ages as Rosencrantz and Guildenstern characters in Baseball’s Hamlet.