Tuesday, May 29, 2012

Cubs 365, May 29

On this day in 1966, former Cubs pitcher Hippo Vaughn passed away at the age of 78.

Vaughn is not in the Hall of Fame, but he is without a doubt, the greatest left-handed pitcher in Cubs history. He won 151 games as a Cub, including several seasons with 20+ wins, and would have won a lot more if he wasn't involved in a personality/contract dispute with Cubs management. The Cubs said he had a sore arm when they released him in 1921.

If he did, it's hard to explain why he won 223 more games in the minors. That sore arm pitched until 1937, when Hippo was 49 years old.

If you include his wins from the minor leagues to his totals, Hippo Vaughn won more than 400 games in his baseball career. The only pitchers to have done that in the century and a half of professional baseball are Cy Young and Walter Johnson (both of whom got all those wins in the majors), and Joe McGinnity, Grover Cleveland Alexander, Warren Spahn, and Kid Nichols (who got some of theirs in the minors as well). That puts Vaughn in pretty select company.

And yet he never received a single Hall of Fame vote.