Wilson’s Standards Endure Since 1930

It happened before expansion teams. Before minor-league pitchers were throwing in the majors. Before the squeezed strike zone.

Before all that, there was Hack Wilson and his splendid season.

In 1930, the Chicago Cubs slugger drove in 190 runs, still the major league record, and hit 56 homers, still the National League high.

This season, Mark McGwire of the St. Louis Cardinals and Juan Gonzalez of the Texas Rangers are both on a pace to hit more than 200 RBIs. McGwire and the Cubs’ Sammy Sosa are challenging Wilson’s NL homer mark.

At the same time, questions are being raised about whether Wilson’s page in the record books should be rewritten. A sports historian and a former catcher who played against Wilson say he should be credited with another homer and two more RBIs that spectacular season.

The former catcher, Clyde Sukeforth, played for the Reds during a 1930 game with the Cubs in Cincinnati. He says a ball Wilson knocked out of the park hit a girder and bounced back onto the field, where an umpire called it a double.

“A few players in the bullpen saw the ball ricochet out onto the field. They were unanimous that Hack had lost a home run,” Sukeforth, now 96, said from his home in Maine. The story surfaced in a 1978 biography, “Hack.”

In Wilson’s day, box scores and players statistics’ in newspapers didn’t list RBIs, which became an official statistic in 1920.

Last winter, Chicago sports historian Eddie Gold and a colleague went through miles of microfilm of play-by-play reports of all 1930 Cubs’ game, documenting each of Wilson’s RBIs. Gold says they counted 191 -- even without the disputed homer. Gold notified Major League Baseball but got no reply.

Major League Baseball referred questions to Seymour Siwoff, president of Elias Sports Bureau, the game’s official record keeper.

“Records were kept very casually back then,” said Siwoff. “There are a lot of records from that period that have come into question. There is no way to redo all these records. And, we have no authority to do it.”

In 1930, Babe Ruth was in his prime. The baseball season was packed with offense, blamed on a juiced ball. Wilson’s amazing summer--he also had a .356 batting average and a .723 slugging percentage--earned him a place in the Hall of Fame in 1979.

Another Hall of Famer, Billy Williams, doesn’t think Wilson’s RBI total will ever be matched.

“So many things have to happen. Guys have to get on base and you have to drive them in. It’s just impossibly hard to get 190,” said Williams, now a Cubs coach.

As the years passed, Wilson’s mark has become harder to reach. Lou Gehrig’s 184 for the Yankees in 1931 is still the second-highest season RBI total. The last player to come close to Wilson was Tommy Davis of the Los Angeles Dodgers with 153 in 1962. Ralph Kiner came closest to the NL homer run mark, with 54 in 1949 for Pittsburgh.

Wilson was quite a sight--195 pounds on a 5-foot-6 frame. He had an 18-inch collar, size 6 shoes and swung a 40-ounce bat he called “Big Bertha.”

“He was a very powerful man,” said former Cubs player and manager Phil Cavarretta, who used to sneak into Wrigley Field to watch the team when Wilson played.

Wilson batted cleanup, loved high fastballs and was a capable center fielder. A right-hander, he seldom pulled the ball; his power was to right and right center.

Off the field, Wilson was known as a brawler and boozer. Former Chicago White Sox owner Bill Veeck, who started in baseball working for his father, Cubs president William Veeck, told of finding Wilson in the clubhouse before a game, sitting in a tub of water beside a huge block of ice while the trainer tried to sober him up.

He was born Lewis Robert Wilson on April 26, 1900, and there are two stories about how he came to be called Hack. Some say it was because he resembled Cubs player Hack Miller. Others point to a wrestler of the day named Hackenschmidt, whom he also resembled.

Wilson’s career took off after an inauspicious beginning with the New York Giants. Demoted to Toledo, he was picked up by the Cubs for $5,000 in a 1926 minor-league draft. It was a bargain. He hit over .300 with at least 21 home runs for the next four seasons. The 1930 Cubs had a team batting average of .309, with five starters hitting .335 or better.

“They had a great club, and they’d get on base for him,” said Cavarretta, now 81, from his Atlanta-area home.

By June 5 of that summer, Wilson had 17 homers and 52 RBIs. His RBI total climbed to 74 on July 1, 106 on Aug. 1 and 158 on Sept. 1. He hit his 50th homer on Sept. 15.

The Cubs were in and out of first place much of the season, but they finished second to the St. Louis Cardinals. On Sept. 28, the last day of season, Wilson hit his 56th homer and drove in four runs.

His production fell sharply after 1930, and his major league career lasted only a few more seasons. After retiring in 1935 he played on some barnstorming teams, drank a lot, divorced, remarried and held a variety of jobs.

Wilson quit his heavy drinking late in life, but his health was ruined. He died at age 48 on Nov. 23, 1948, in Baltimore, three months after Ruth died. His body lay unclaimed for three days, but the National League office wired $350 to pay for the funeral, according to Gerald Grunska, co-author of “Hack.”

In one of his last interviews, Wilson said his drinking problems began during that epic 1930 season.

“I received a salary of $40,000. I started to drink heavily,” he said. “I had a lot of natural talent ... but I sure lacked a lot of other things, like humility and common sense.”