|
|
 |
| |
|
Home > Baseball > MLB Hall of Famers > Wilbert Robinson
Wilbert Robinson
Baseball is an outdoor sport in which a pitcher pitches a hard, fist sized ball to the hitting area of a batter. The batter hits the hard ball with a tapered, smooth, cylindrical bat made up of wood or metal. The batsman scores by running counter-clockwise within the four markers called the bases arranged at the corners of a diamond. Baseball is sometimes called hardball to differentiate it from similar games such as softball.
Wilbert Robinson was born on 29th June 1863 in Bolton, Massachusetts and died on 8th August 1934. His height is five foot eight and half inches with weight 215 pounds. He was inducted with the Hall of Fame in 1945.
The jovial Robinson came from New England and played baseball for a living as soon as he could sign on in the New England League. He became the catcher of the storied Baltimore Orioles, where he joined forces, under manager Ned Hanlon, with Willie Keeler, Hughie Jennings, and John McGraw, the scrappy third baseman who was the dominant force of the team. Robinson was the cornerstone of the team, its catcher, directing the play of the others. He was one of Baltimore's better hitters, once making seven hits in a game, and he was durable enough to catch a rare triple header in 1896 and a double header the next day.
He won ball games, and twice won pennants in 1916 and 1920 with teams not given a pre-season chance. He remained through 1931, running his club far differently than the despotic McGraw ran the Giants. The Dodgers were known for their easy-going ways. Because Robinson gave his roster of cast-offs and characters freedom, the team was a constant source of oddities and anecdotes. He had a gift for cadging winning performances from discarded pitchers, preferring hard throwers over curveball pitchers.
Dazzy Vance, a fireballer who only achieved stardom after age thirty, was Robinson's ace during the 1920s after Robinson gave him more rest between starts than was the norm in those days. Robinson asked his pitchers to hold the other team in check until his own hitters could win the game. He looked to Babe Herman, Jake Daubert, Zach Wheat, Casey Stengel, Jack Fournier and other batters to get a key hit. This simple approach kept the team in contention for many years and made them always entertaining.
Back to MLB Hall of Famers
|
|
|
| |
|
|
|