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Today, we welcome back Mark Kolier with an interesting essay on a great hitter with a .349 lifetime average who has been overlooked for the Hall of Fame, Lefty O’Doul. Lefty was also one of baseball’s greatest ambassadors and played a vital role in establishing baseball in Japan. We’re glad to shine our baseball spotlight today on Lefty O’Doul! -GL
Tribute to Lefty O’Doul:
What His Career Could Have Been
More than 40 years ago while I was a college student at USC in Los Angeles, there was an annual ‘weekender’ football game in the Bay area vs. either Stanford or U Cal Berkeley. My recollection is that the 400-mile trip was made on the cheap since none of us had any money to spare. One year we tried to save on hotel rooms by renting an RV (who would rent an RV to 20-year-olds?) and parking it down by Fisherman’s Wharf.
Always on the hunt for cheap beer we invariably ended up at Lefty O’Doul’s. Being a baseball fan, I somehow knew of Lefty O’Doul being a baseball player and that there was a connection to the New York Giants. I did not have much more of an idea beyond that. ‘Former baseball player opens Irish bar in San Francisco’. There did not seem to be a reason to know more. Boy was I wrong.
Lefty O’Doul came up with the New York Yankees in 1919 at the age of 19. He was a left-handed (naturally) pitcher and occasional batter in 1919 and 1920 but only played in a total of 32 games over those two seasons. in 1920 the Yankees acquired another left-handed pitcher that was a better hitter than he was a pitcher. The same turned out to be true for Lefty O’Doul but it took longer.
In 1921 O’Doul won 25 games as a pitcher for the Pacific Coast League San Francisco Seals. The team for which Joe DiMaggio and his brothers Dom and Vince would later play. O’Doul ended up later managing Joe D. and said the smartest thing he did was leave the future Yankee Clipper alone.
The following year in 1922 O’Doul was back with the Yankees but only appeared in six games as a pitcher finishing games and appeared in two other games as a batter. The Yankees subsequently traded him to the Red Sox. He pitched in 23 games for the BoSox starting one game and batted .143 in 39 plate appearances. It seemed like his Major League days were in trouble.
Coming Back From Obscurity
After 1923, O’Doul disappeared from the Major League for five years. The New York Giants signed him and sent him back to the Pacific Coast League to work on his hitting. He played two years for Salt Lake City, another for Hollywood, CA, and a final season at age 30 again for the Seals. O’Doul mostly played outfield, but also caught 32 games for Salt Lake in 1925. From 1924-27 O’Doul batted .392, .375, .338, and .378 smashing a total of 88 homers over those four seasons. This earned him a promotion to the New York Giants for the 1928 season. O’Doul was a different hitter now and batted .319 in 114 games with an OBA of .372.
What did the Giants do after displaying all that patience? They shipped him off to the Philadelphia Phillies. And then, in today’s vernacular, O’Doul started raking. From 1929-1933 in which he played two seasons for the Phillies and 2 ½ seasons with the Brooklyn Robins (Dodgers), Lefty hit .398, .383, .336, .368, and finally hitting a combined .284 in that final split season between the Giants and Robins. In 1922 while a member of the Giants O’Doul did not get to play in the World Series (won by New York). In the 1933 Giants World Series victory over the Washington Senators, Lefty was on the roster and had one at-bat, singling in two runs and later coming around to score. A perfect 1.000 batting average and on-base plus slugging average of 2.000 for that one at-bat!
O’Doul played in 83 games in his final season for the Giants in 1934, at age 37. He batted .316 with an OBA of .383 and slugged .525. An 11-year major league career played out over 16 years had finally come to an end.
Highest Career Batting Average Not In The Hall of Fame
Lefty O’Doul is not in the Hall of Fame despite having a .349 career batting average. This happens to be the highest career average for a player who isn’t in the Hall of Fame.
For his career, O’Doul posted an OBA of .413, slugging percentage of .532, and a career OPS+ of 143 which means he was 43% better than his peers! Gary Sheffield, Barry Bonds, Alex Rodriguez, Manny Ramirez, and Shoeless Joe Jackson are the only players producing a 140 OPS+ and bWAR of 60 or higher. The reasons they are not in Cooperstown are well documented.
Lefty O’Doul had a career bWAR of 25.7 in part because WAR is a cumulative statistic, and he only played in 970 career games. FanGraphs Jay Jaffe uses JAWS – his own measurement taking the best seven years of a player’s career. O’Doul had five great years and a sixth very good one.
Lefty Helps Establish Baseball in Japan
After his playing days were over O’Doul was instrumental in spreading baseball’s popularity in Japan, serving as the sport’s goodwill ambassador before and after World War II. The Tokyo Giants, sometimes considered “Japan’s Baseball Team,” were named by him in 1935 in honor of his longtime association with the New York Giants; the logo and uniform of the Giants in Japan strongly resemble the one we know today.
O’Doul also began managing the San Francisco Seals in 1935 after he retired and managed them for 17 seasons. He wasn’t quite done yet and in ‘53 continued to manage in the Pacific Coast League until 1957 teams other than the Seals, when he finally walked off the field at age 60.
Founding the eponymous establishment Lefty O’Doul’s Restaurant and Cocktail Lounge on Geary Street in 1958, Lefty was a fixture there until his passing away in 1969. A landlord-tenant dispute forced the restaurant to close in early 2017.
I wish I’d thought to go there when I visited San Francisco 10 years ago. I can still see the shamrock cutouts all over the wall. Nothing fancy. But just right. As for Lefty O’Doul’s career, oh what it could have been!
Mark Kolier
About the Author: Mark Kolier along with his son Gordon co-hosts a baseball podcast called ‘Almost Cooperstown’. He also has written baseball-related articles that can be accessed on Medium.com and Substack.com.
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Surely something can be done to grt Lefty into Cooperstown. They are enshrining players who never played MLB because of prejudice. He gave over 40 years to baseball and had tremendous seasons. The HOF committee needs to take a more focused look at his stats. There are players in the HOF whose batting stats are miniscule in comparison.
Excellent article, Mr. Kolier. IMHO, the annual HOF voting process is; by far, one of the most subjective and bias-opinionated decisions ever imaginable. The over-sight of Lefty O’Doul bears evidence of that. In 2013, we went to San Francisco to watch the World Baseball Classic semi-finals and championship game @ Oracle Park. While there, we went to “Lefty’s” a coupla times {our hotel was with-in walking distance}. I was pleased to find out that it was a really cool “old-school” establishment {the corned-beef & cabbage was to die for !}. So unfortunate; that a disagreement over $$, led to it’s permanent closure. Well done, Mr. “K”. Thnx for sharing, Gary. “PLAY BALL” !!
I think the obvious answer is lack of plate appearances. O’ Doul had only 4 seasons where he had more than 500 plate appearances. He only had 3,264 lifetime at bats.
He had a 25.7 WAR, which is not HOF territory. (Even Harold Baines had a 38.8 WAR).
There are many players who were very good players over a longer stretch who are not in the Hall. Good hitters with long careers with BA over .300 who have been bypassed: Will Clark, Mark Grace, Don Mattingly, Moises Alou, Al Oliver and many more. Take a look at Joe Torre’s numbers some day. He made it in as a manager, but his playing day numbers are actually more deserving.
We all get sentimental over the players we saw or read about that were on the edge and never got recognized.
Lefty O’Doul as a player falls short IMHO.
Hey Mark,
Anyone who uses the combination “eponymous establishment” can’t be all bad!
Yes, O’Doul had those lofty years and the .349 lifetime average is more than impressive. Paul Doyle’s points are well taken. But you can certainly make a case. Bill Maz made it on the strength of one huge homerun. (Yup, you can justify Donny Baseball and Joe Torre-on the strength of his playing days alone).
The other thing that jumps out for me is that O’Doul’s startling numbers came during a stretch where everyone was clubbing the ball in the National League.
And the five-year hiatus didn’t help.