Mel batted .328, smashed 42 Home Runs, had 151 RBI, while scoring 138 runs... all with an OPS (On Base Pct + Slugging) of 1.084! He also led the league with 113 Bases on Balls!
All good enough for eleventh place in the Most Valuable Player voting! Eleventh?! My first thought, it had to be one of Rogers Hornsby's monster seasons, and sure enough it was... Hornsby won the N.L. Most Valuable Player award that season, but it was the player who would be runner-up that would catch my eye.
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| Lefty O'Doul dominated from 1929-1932. |
Bringing up the curious case of Lefty O'Doul. Who was Lefty O'Doul? I've heard the name, but wasn't too familiar with him, so I had to look at his career numbers, this is one of many reasons I love baseball, there was so many characters and players that have played the game that somehow would go almost forgotten for the sake of it's long history, and when you do fall upon a Lefty O'Doul, and find out the story behind the player, it's like finding rare momentarily gold.
Lefty O'Doul was actually a relief pitcher that developed a sore arm, he would disappear from the league after pitching for New York Yankees and Boston Red Sox from 1919-1923. He would come back in a platoon role as an outfielder for the New York Giants in 1928, in which he batted .318 with 8 HR & 46 RBI in 354 at-bats (plus an on-base percentage of .372, which was pretty impressive to me for a former pitcher).
So the last thing you would expect from a former pitcher at age 32, just traded to the Philadelphia Phillies prior to 1929 (teaming him up with Chuck Klein), is to put together one of the best seasons in MLB history, going on a dominating stretch from 1929-1932.
He would win the N.L. Batting title with a .398 batting average, 32 HRs & 122 RBI. He also led the league with 254 hits, .465 On-Base Percentage & 732 plate appearances. His 254 hits broke Hornsby's record of 250 (set in 1922), and would later be tied by Bill Terry of the Giants in 1930.
After batting .383 with 22 HR & 97 RBI in 1930, O'Doul was traded to the Brooklyn Robins. He would have a pretty good 31' season, but would go on to win his second batting title in 1932 with a .368 batting average, 21 HR & 90 RBI, after seeing his power dip to 7 HRs in 1931. After a slow start in 1933 in which he was only batting .252 through 43 games, O'Doul was again traded, this time back to his former team, the N.Y. Giants. He would bat .306 for the remainder of the season, and would only play one more full season until fading to oblivion after 1934.
O'Doul would have success as a manager for the Pacific Coast League, as a manager for the San Francisco Seals from 1937 to 1951, in which he was responsible of developing a future Hall of Famer in Joe DiMaggio. O'Doul would be modest and say he had nothing to do with DiMaggio's success, by saying "I was just smart enough to leave him alone."
He would also be monumental as a goodwill ambassador for the game of baseball by spreading the wonderful game of baseball to the country of Japan before and after World War II.
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