Quote:
Originally Posted by Merkle923
If the threshold for Hall of Fame eligibility were five years rather than ten, Mack Jones would be a fringe candidate for Cooperstown. He had three seasons with a WAR of 3.7 or better, cleared an .800 OPS four times (ending his career at .790), and one year he fell exactly one homer shy of finishing in a three-way tie for his team's lead in homers (the two guys who beat him by one blast were named Aaron and Mathews).
But he was denigrated in his time because he was essentially a platoon bat against righties (today we'd call him a multi-millionaire) who didn't have an exceptional throwing arm and was almost literally an average outfielder. It was so bad that after one punchless season in Cincinnati during The Year of The Pitcher, the Reds made him available in the expansion draft just as he turned 30.
All of which is a long way of introducing the first good shot I've seen of Jones in a Reds' uniform. I believe there's a Brace image of him, and there's a nice but tiny and grainy shot on his Kahn's Hot Dogs 1968 card, but nothing to compare to this:
|
Thanks for this great photo (and all the others, by the way), of Mack, our Expos's Mayor of Jonesville (Jarry Park's left field).