So often we see bunches of the game's legends hang up the glove at the same time, as is the case here when in one fell swoop we lose four of the best to ever grace the field.
Walter Johnson
You always want to go out on your own terms, and few have been able to pull this off with Walter's aplomb. The WS win of course, and serendipity strikes as he leaves the game with exactly 500 wins.
I doubt this record will ever be broken. Only Satchel Paige strikes me as someone who'll even go close and I reckon 400 is a more realistic target for him.
What a career. In his honour, the award for best pitcher each year - which he himself won six times - will henceforth be named the Johnson-Waddell Medal.
Tris Speaker
The Grey Eagle leaves the game as its all-time WAR leader among position players with 155.6 (in fact, among all players as this is 3 more than Train, who leads all pitchers), and while this and doubles (721) are the only categories he heads, he's top 5 in many others including OBP (409, 4th), games played (3087, 3rd), AB (11268, 3rd), runs scored (1780, 3rd), hits (3623, 3rd), TB (5175, 2nd), triples (255, 3rd), RBI (1502, 4th), SB (541, 4th) and bases on balls (1620, 2nd). He won 6 Wagner-Lajoie Medals and 2 championships with that mighty Red Sox side of the mid-teens.
Shoeless Joe Jackson
One of the many "Black Sox" who have benefitted not from filthy lucre but rather the absence of it in this simulated universe, Joe may have never won a major award since his RoY all the way back in '09, and may have seen increasingly reduced action in his later years, but he stands among the pantheon in this league all the same. It is fitting that he gets to share the stage here - and, presumably, on his first ballot in 1935/6 - with Walter, with whom he shared so many great times and triumphs as members of a fantastic Senators club. He closes out his career with a lifetime 331 / 399 / 481 slash, an astonishing 162 OPS+, more than 2700 hits and 80 WAR.
Bullet Rogan
Only Cannonball Dick Redding remains from that first group of NeL pitching legends that broke the colour line in '09, with Bullet coming aboard a few years after that.
Two Johnson-Waddell Medals and 279 wins later, he retires as one of the game's true immortals with 2827 strikeouts and just shy of 100 WAR to his name.
Enjoy your free time lads, the game will be immeasurably poorer for your absence from it.