Quote:
Originally Posted by darkhorse
Professional baseball's first great player, Ross Barnes.
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Tiny career from a player whose effectiveness pretty much evaporated when baseball eliminated the "fair-foul hit", which was where you'd strike the ball in such a way it bounced on fair territory and then spun foul. Nowadays, of course, that's just a foul ball, but back in Barnes' day it wasn't and he got a *lot* of play off of that. Contemporary writers were of the opinion that he got a lot of cheap hits.
He's kind of interesting to OOTPers in that he's the kind of guy you see in leagues you start yourself with good half-careers because they're already 28 or so when the league begins. I know I don't generally put those guys into my Hall unless they actually accumulate HOF-worthy stats.