Harlond Clift

Many baseball fans know little or nothing about the great St. Louis Brown third sacker of the mid-thirties to mid-forties. The Biographical Encyclopedia states the case bluntly: "Harlond Clift gets the nod from many baseball historians as the major leagues' most underrated third baseman.

It's hard to believe now, but in 1938 he became the first hot corner man to hit over 30 homers, with 34, breaking by five his own record, set the previous season. Seven times in his 11 year career he scored 100 or more runs, and six times he walked 100 or more times. His knack at working bases on balls raises his respectable .272 batting average to a hot .390 career on base percentage.

During the peak of his career, from 1934 until 1943, when a case of mumps began his rapid decline, he was as good a third baseman as there was in the game. He drove in 118 runs twice, while scoring 100 runs seven times. Although field average is a limited stat because it doesn't account for range, he nonetheless led the AL twice in fielding. A more telling record is that he was the first third sacker to initiate 50 double plays in a season. His career total of 309 double plays is the most by any pre-1950 third baseman.

After his bout with the mumps in '43, he was traded to the Senators. He fell from a horse in 1944 and injured his shoulder. He tried for a comeback in '45, but even in that final war year Clift could hit only .211 against war-depleted pitching in 375 at bats. The biggest irony of his career was that after nearly a decade with the feckless Browns, they won their only pennant in '44, the year after he was traded to Washington.

It is necessary to realize that the Browns from '34-42 (when they averaged 62-90 records) only drew more than 200,000 fans twice! From 1936-39, the Brown's ERA was over six. It's no wonder that being buried away on such a rotten team that Clift is largely forgotten today. Yet he was revolutionary in his way, being one of the first third baseman to carry a big stick at a time when the hot corner, like shortstop until the '90s, was mostly about defense. And he was a great defensive third baseman, with outstanding range. Even in his own era he was obscure, overshadowed by the Yanks' Red Rolfe and the Red Sox' Pinky Higgins.

Besides being the first third sacker to smash 30 homers, he demonstrated his speed and power with 10 straight seasons with 25 or more doubles, and twice had ten or more triples.