George Davis

George Stacey Davis played 20 major league seasons as a switch-hitting shortstop, collected 2,665 hits, batted over .300 for nine consecutive years, stole 619 bases, led his league in fielding percentage four times, managed the New York Giants, stole home in the 1906 World Series, and then vanished so completely from public memory that the Hall of Fame didn't learn he was dead until 28 years after he died. "Gorgeous George," as his contemporaries called him, was one of the finest shortstops of the nineteenth century and one of the most forgotten players of the twentieth. The Veterans Committee elected him to the Hall of Fame in 1998, nearly six decades after his death.

Cohoes

Davis was born on August 23, 1870, in Cohoes, New York, a mill town on the Hudson River north of Albany. He was a natural athlete who could play multiple positions, bat from both sides of the plate, and run the bases with an intelligence and speed that set him apart from the beginning. He broke into the majors with the Cleveland Spiders in 1890 at 19, playing the outfield and third base before settling at shortstop. He hit .264 as a rookie and showed enough range in the field that the position fit. After the 1892 season, Cleveland traded him to the New York Giants for Buck Ewing.

The New York Giants picked Davis up in 1893, and he became a star immediately. He batted .355 with 27 triples that season and put together a 33-game hitting streak, which stood as a major league record at the time. He hit .352 in 1894 and .340 in 1895.

From 1893 through 1901, Davis batted over .300 every season, with a career-high .353 and a league-leading 135 RBI in 1897. He managed the Giants in 1895 and again from 1900 to 1901, compiling a 107-139 record as a player-manager while still performing at a high level in the field.

Davis was a switch-hitter who could drive the ball from both sides, a rarity at any position in his era and almost unheard of for a shortstop. He threw right-handed, stood 5-foot-9, weighed 180 pounds, and played with a controlled aggression on the bases that produced 619 career stolen bases, the third-highest total for any shortstop in history. He led the league in double plays four times and fielding percentage four times, combining offensive production with defensive range in a way that few players at the position could match.

The Contract War

Davis jumped from the Giants to the Chicago White Sox in 1902, part of the wave of players who crossed from the National League to Ban Johnson's new American League. He batted .299 and helped Chicago compete for the pennant. But before the 1903 season, Davis tried to return to the Giants. White Sox owner Charles Comiskey obtained a court injunction in Illinois preventing Davis from playing for anyone but Chicago, then won a second injunction from the U.S. Court of Appeals barring Davis from playing for any team anywhere except the White Sox. Davis appeared in four games for the Giants in 1903 before the courts and the National League resolved the dispute in Chicago's favor. The contract war made Davis a symbol of the chaotic labor relations that defined professional baseball before the reserve clause was fully tested in court.

Davis spent most of his remaining career with the White Sox. In 1906, the team known as the "Hitless Wonders" upset the heavily favored crosstown Cubs in the World Series. Davis, 36 years old, batted .308 with six RBI in the Series and stole home in Game 5, one of the defining moments of a championship won by pitching, defense, and nerve. He played his last game on August 15, 1909, at 38.

Forgotten

Davis managed the Des Moines Boosters in 1910, then managed a bowling alley in Manhattan from 1911 to 1913. He coached baseball at Amherst College from 1913 to 1918 and sold cars in St. Louis afterward. Then the trail went cold. In 1934, suffering from what was later identified as tertiary syphilis, Davis was admitted to a Philadelphia mental institution. He died there on October 17, 1940, at 70. Nobody from baseball came to the funeral.

Hall of Fame historian Lee Allen, researching forgotten players in the 1960s, discovered that Davis was dead. The baseball world had lost track of him entirely. Allen's research helped revive Davis's candidacy, and historians spent the next three decades building a case for his election. The Veterans Committee finally voted him in during 1998, alongside Larry Doby, Lee MacPhail, Don Sutton, and Bullet Rogan.

Davis finished with 2,665 hits, a .295 career batting average, 453 doubles, 163 triples, 73 home runs, 1,440 RBI, and 619 stolen bases across 2,372 games. He was long considered the first switch-hitter to reach 2,000 hits, though 2017 research established that Roger Connor, also a switch-hitter, reached the milestone earlier. His career total in triples ranks among the highest in baseball history. For nine consecutive seasons, he was one of the best hitters in the National League, and for two decades, he was one of the best defensive shortstops anyone had seen. Then the game forgot him.