Slaughter and Vaughan Voted Into Hall of Fame

Outfielder Enos Slaughter, who turned hustle into a baseball art form, and shortstop Arky Vaughan, owner of the highest National League batting average of the last 50 years, were voted into the Hall of Fame Wednesday.

Both were elected by the Veterans Committee, which considers executives, umpires, managers and players whose eligibility in the annual baseball writers’ election has expired.

A .300 hitter for 19 major-league seasons, 13 of them with the St. Louis Cardinals, Slaughter is best remembered for his mad dash around the bases to score the winning run in the seventh game of the 1946 World Series against the Boston Red Sox.

Slaughter was on first base when Harry Walker singled.

“He ran right through the third-base coach’s stop sign,” said teammate Stan Musial, a Hall of Famer who serves on the Veterans Committee. “He took a chance and scored the winning run.”

Notified of his election at his home in Roxboro, N.C., where he operates a 150-acre tobacco farm, Slaughter said: “My life is complete. I always felt like this was a dark shadow. I wasn’t bitter, but this was something I always wanted to happen.”

Vaughan, who died in a boating accident in 1952 four years after retiring, hit .318 in 14 major-league seasons with Pittsburgh and the Brooklyn Dodgers. In 1935, 50 years ago, he won the National League batting championship with a .385 average. No National League player has hit for a higher percentage since.

Slaughter and Vaughan will be inducted along with base-stealing king Lou Brock and relief ace Hoyt Wilhelm, elected in January by the writers, in the annual Hall of Fame ceremonies July 28 at Cooperstown, N.Y.