BOB ELLIOT

By Paul Wysard

Stats from www.baseball-reference.com

Robert Irving Elliott was one of a superb group of California athletes born during the years of World War I who began great playing careers before World War II and who were stars after that and into the 1950s. The others in that lineage were Ted Williams and Bobby Doerr,  the incomparable Joe DiMaggio, his brother and fellow center fielder Dominic, durable shortstop Eddie Joost, and slugging second baseman Joe Gordon.

All played in the World Series, with Elliott being the last of the seven to reach that special goal.  From 1940 through 1946 he was an anchor on a mediocre Pittsburgh club which usually finished in the middle of the National League standings.  In old and spacious Forbes Field, he was a frequent .300 hitter, but without the numbers of homeruns which were to come later.

In 1947, after dipping to .265 and reaching age 31, he was traded to the then-Boston Braves.  In a smaller park, and behind the great pitching of legends Warren Spahn and Johnny Sain, Elliott provided new and welcomed punch, batting .317 with 22 homers and 113 RBIs.  A combination outfielder and third baseman, Elliott settled in adequately and permanently at the third sack, the Braves jumped up into third place and contention, and Elliott was elected the league's MVP.

By the latter stages of 1948, he had become one of the most feared run producers in the game.  He walked 131 times, the most in the Majors, but still hit it out 23 times and sent across 100 runs to lead the offense as the Braves earned a Series berth for the first time since 1914.  In that one and only championship appearance, he hit .333 and two homers, with the loss in six games to the Indians not diminishing his crucial role in the team's two-year surge.

He drove in 100 or more runs five times in the decade of the 1940s, matched only by Hall-of-Famers Doerr and Johnny Mize, and exceeded only by Williams, with six.  A sixth, and final, 100-RBI season for Elliott followed in 1950.

The native of San Francisco also rapped 1,563 hits during the '40s, the most of any National Leaguer.  Only one man in the Majors had more during that period: Lou Boudreau, another Hall member, who stroked 1,578 for the Indians.  It has been conceded that both men benefited from three less-competitive "War Years," but most of Elliott's impact came during the other seven, when the Big Leagues were at full strength.

During the three seasons after the 1948 pennant, the franchise slipped back to fourth place, each time, but Elliott plugged away through 417 more games, with 56 homers and 253 RBIs.  By 1952 a young power hitter named Eddie Mathews was clearly the third baseman of the future, and so Elliott drifted off to part-time work with the Giants, Browns, White Sox, and in the Pacific Coast League before retiring in his late-30s.  Plagued by ill health thereafter, he died several months before his 50th birthday in 1966.

Bob Elliott falls within a sizeable, but nevertheless distinctive, group of players who amassed  more than 2,000 hits, had six to eight important seasons in run production, but have not been considered Hall-of-Fame caliber.  That is probably a fair assessment, but this player was very good for a very long time.