The Headhunters

Now a restauranteur in Branson, Missouri, Jack Hamilton is considered to this day a hate object because of the beaning of Boston Red Sox star Tony Conigliaro August 18, 1967. The tragedy ruined Conigliaro's career and may — may — have contributed long-term to his premature death. (He suffered a combined heart attack and stroke in 1982, leaving him mostly an invalid for eight years until his death.)

It certainly hung Hamilton with a reputation as a careless headhunter. And it's a reputation Hamilton isn't even close to deserving.

You could begin with Jim Bouton:

One of the dumb things I do sometimes is form judgments about people I don't really know. Case history: Jack Hamilton, pitcher, Cleveland Indians. He was with the Angel organisation last year and played with me in Seattle [minor leagues], which is where I got to know him. Before that I played against him in the minors and considered him stupid, a hard-throwing guy who didn't care whether or not he hit the batter. In the majors I figured him for a troublemaker because he used to get into fights with Phil Linz. Nobody fights with Phil Linz.


Then, when Hamilton hit Tony Conigliaro in the eye a couple of years ago and put him out for the season, I thought, boy, this guy is some kind of super rat. But when I played with him in Seattle I found he was just a guy like everybody else, honestly sorry he'd hit Conigliaro, a good team player, a friendly fellow who liked to come out early to the park and pitch batting practise to his kids. All of which made me feel like an ass.

— From Ball Four

And, you could continue with Jack Hamilton himself, who spoke to a reporter or two in the days approaching the 40th anniversary of the tragedy: "I couldn't take a baseball and throw it at somebody's head on purpose. I don't have the guts. I really don't care what the public thinks about me. Accidents happen. If I thought about it all the time, it would bother me. I know in my heart, I didn't mean to throw it."

The Red Sox commemorated the Conigliaro beaning Saturday night, before playing the team for whom Hamilton pitched when Tony C. went down for the count, the team known then as the California Angels. It's easy enough to understand the grief that still envelops Red Sox fans (I happen to be one) when they remember.

But analysts (actual or alleged) analyse. And if it gets me drummed out of Red Sox Nation, so be it. But Hamilton wasn't within 20 nautical miles of the worst headhunter baseball's ever seen. All you have to do is check the numbers. Those pesky numbers that keep pushing facts in the way of a pleasant or at least a comforting myth. They'll suggest strongly that beaning Conigliaro was every inch an out-of-character accident.

A man who hits only 13 men in eight major league seasons and averages — count them — three per 162 games is not a man who ought to be on any lineup's 10 least wanted list, no matter how hard inside he pitches, no matter how deeply a fan base still loves the guy he felled so notoriously.

There are men who should have struck far worse fear into the hearts of hitters and fans alike when they took the mound. And there are men who did strike such fear but may not actually have been as dangerous as they've been held to be.

It only begins with Carl Mays. You know him. He's the man whose submarine spitter coned and killed Ray Chapman in 1920, inspiring a few rules changes (clean balls in play at all times, the beginning of the end of the spitball's legality) and one harrowing book, Mike Sowell's The Pitch That Killed. Well, now. In 15 major league seasons, Mays averaged six hit batsmen per 162 games (that was how many fewer than Hamilton had?) and totaled 89 for his career.

Early Wynn was famous for having said, actually or allegedly, that he'd knock his grandmother down if she dug in against him. She might have been safer digging in against her grandson than crossing the street in midtown Chicago. Wynn averaged three hit batsmen per 162 games, exactly what Hamilton averaged, and in a 23-season career Wynn hit 64 batters. He probably got the worst of his reputation in 1959, when he was helping lead the Go-Go White Sox to the pennant, and plunked nine, the most in any season of his career. That's four less than Hamilton's lifetime total and four more than Hamilton hit in any single season.

Don Drysdale was actually a case of the inside-pitching pupil definitely outshining the teacher. And just wait until you see the teacher's name: Sal Maglie, with whom Drysdale got to spend one season (1956) as a Brooklyn Dodger. Sal the Barber (hint: he didn't get his nickname because he was a dark Italian who looked like the old guy giving you your monthly haircut) averaged half the hit batsmen per 162 games (five) that Drysdale ended up averaging (10). He also retired with 44 lifetime hit batsmen in 10 major league seasons.

Bob Gibson took no quarter from any batter and he has the stats to prove it, even if Drysdale he ain't in the marksmanship department. He retired with 102 lifetime drills and an average of six per 162 games, his top trophy seasons being 13 in 1963, 11 in 1965, and 10 each in 1962 and 1969.

And, come to think of it, Hoot, the Barber, the Submariner, and Grandma's Little Headhunter weren't even close to the worst of the group. Of all the pitchers mentioned by name thus far, only Drysdale turns up among the top 20 marksmen of all-time. Remember all those clips of Big D knocking or drilling Henry Aaron and Frank Robinson, two men who were at least as notorious for crowding the plate as Tony C. actually was?

Jack Hamilton retired with only three more hit batsmen lifetime than Don Drysdale averaged per 162 games. Drysdale also retired with 141 more plunks for a career lasting six more seasons than Hamilton's lasted. And here's another shock: there are 12 ahead of and seven behind Drysdale on the all-time drill call.

Here come the top 20, with their lifetime plunks, and if you line up the lengths of their careers you may see some weren't quite as deadly as their numbers suggest while some might have been even deadlier. Their plunks per 162 games are in parentheses. I guarantee that there's one name on the list whom you might have expected to place in the top 10 at minimum, but didn't (though he still has the rest of this season at least to move into a tie at least for number ten). And there are two names that may give you a heart attack and stroke at once when you see them on the list at all ... at first:

Walter Johnson: 203 (9).
Eddie Plunk ... er, Plank: 196 (11).
Randy Johnson: 182 (11).
Joe McGinnity: 182 (14).
Chick Fraser: 177 (14).
Charlie Hough (Charlie Hough?!?): 174 (9).
Cy Young: 163 (6).
Jim Bunning: 160 (9).
Nolan Ryan: 158 (6).
Vic Willis: 157 (10).
Roger Clemens: 156 (7).
Bert Blyleven: 155 (7).
Don Drysdale: 154 (10).
Tim Wakefield (see Charlie Hough): 150 (11).
Kevin Brown: 139 (5).
Howard Ehmke: 137 (12).
Kid Nichols: 133 (7).
Ed Doheny: 132 (25).
George Mullin: 131 (9).
Greg Maddux: 130 (6).

Read the foregoing very carefully. Then tell me how a man who pitched eight major league seasons and hit only 13 in his career becomes the most evil human being who ever stepped onto a major league mound, while a man nearly forgotten, but who hit 132 men in nine major league seasons and averaged 25 victims per 162 games gets a comparative pass.

I submit further that based on the numbers two knuckleball pitchers who averaged nine and 11 plunks, respectively, per 162 games could be considered more dangerous than the man who drilled Tony C. (Never mind for now that the knuckleball by its very nature might tend to sail in a bit and kiss a hitter softly depending on the atmospheric conditions.)

Just in case your curiosity has the better of you, Bob Gibson didn't even make the top 50. He's tied (with Chief Bender and Clark Griffith) for number 58. Carl Mays, that murderer, sits alone at number 87. Early Wynn and Sal Maglie didn't even crack the top 150. Wynn is tied at number 187 — with Red Ames, Ray Caldwell, Tom Glavine, Danny MacFayden, Jeff Nelson, and Ron Villone.

And whence the Demon Barber of Coogan's Bluff? Sal Maglie's tied at number 448 — with Bill (Won't You Come Home?) Bailey, Ewell (The Whip) Blackwell, Shawn Boskie, David Bush, Reggie Cleveland, Dock Ellis, Bill Hill, Willis Hudlin, Rick Reed, Allen Russell, Ray Scarborough, Mel Stottlemyre, Bill Travers, George Winter, and Rick Wise.

Baseball-Reference.com's list of the career cone leaders shows no further down than men with 27 lifetime lances. But you might care to note that among the men who finished with a mere 27 were Dizzy Dean, Bill (Spaceman) Lee, Jeff Reardon, Schoolboy Rowe, Johan Santana (pending his next start, anyway), Ernie Shore (the man from whom a rule change stole a perfect game he consummated when he relieved Babe Ruth with none out and a man on first in the opening frame, after Ruth got tossed for arguing), Tim Worrell, and Al Worthington.

But because he threw one that ran in and caught a matinee idol on the cranium in the heat of a pennant race, never mind that said matinee idol was leaning over the plate as was his own habit, having gotten himself drilled five times a seaon over his first four major league seasons up to and including August 18, 1967, Jack Hamilton is considered to have been close enough to Carl Mays's successor as a baseball murderer.

It's time to put that to rest once and for all time. The resting could begin with Billy Conigliaro, who's held for years without a shred of evidence that Hamilton was out to bag his brother. What happened to Tony Conigliaro was a sickening tragedy and an unintended, accidental one at that. It does Tony C.'s memory and Red Sox Nation no good to suggest or to believe otherwise.

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