Name: A-. Missing any reference to "Pete" or "Ol' Pete," nicknames that have been used as frequently as his full name.
Teams: C. No mention of the years he played for each of his three teams, but at least the Phillies, Cubs and Cardinals are all named in the text.
Text: A-. No sight of his National League record-tying 373 wins, but our focus is on the last line. It's true that Alexander struck out future Hall of Famer Tony Lazzeri with the bases loaded in Game 7 of the 1926 World Series. However, that was not the moment that won St. Louis the Series, as this plaque would appear to indicate. Alexander emerged from the bullpen in the seventh inning to relieve future Hall of Famer Jesse Haines, and promptly struck out Lazzeri to preserve the Cardinals lead. He would pitch two more scoreless innings to finally clinch the Series.
Alexander's plaque mentioning Tony Lazzeri was the first (and so far only) instance of a plaque listing the name (albeit only his surname) of an active player in Lazzeri, who played until 1939. It is also the first occurrence of a future Hall of Famer appearing on someone else's plaque. Tommy McCarthy's 1946 plaque mentions Frank Selee, who would have to wait several decades, like Lazzeri, to officially make the Hall after being on a plaque for all those years.
Image: N/A. Well, this one is complicated. It can be argued that almost every single section of Alexander Cartwright's plaque is misleading or flat-out wrong, with the lone exception being his full name.
According to the Cartwright family, the image this plaque is based on comes from this widely-published group shot of six well-dressed men, presumably in the 1850s, who apparently were members of the Knickerbocker Base Ball Club of New York. Others possibly in the photo are William Wheaton, Duncan Curry and Doc Adams, all of whom, as it turns out, had a much-better claim of the nickname bestowed upon Cartwright posthumously on this plaque. Research by SABR on multiple occasions has spread doubt as to the identification of the men in this photo, leading to the possibility that Alexander Cartwright isn't even the man on Alexander Cartwright's plaque. This really isn't the Hall's fault, as they were just going by what his family had given them. Certianlty a dangerous precedence, however.
In retrospect, perhaps this uncontroversial photo of Cartwright should have been used. If we're going to redo his plaque, however, it might be better to remove it from the gallery entirely.
Name: A. As I've already mentioned, this is the only thing this plaque gets completely right.
Teams: N/A. I suppose that it could have included the year's he was associated with the Knickerbockers, but as we'll see in a moment, it is the least of this plaque's problems.
Text: F. This is what happens when you blindly accept information from a source without actually doing any real, long-term research. It's the same reason the Baseball Hall of Fame is in Cooperstown in the first place, despite it having no real claim to being the birthplace of baseball. A story told by an elderly man and wife-murderer Abner Graves is what convinced the Mills Commission in 1908 that Abner Doubleday had invented baseball in Cooperstown. A few decades later, despite the Hall already being built in the village, the Hall proceeded to elect someone for whom there was actual evidence that they were associated with baseball: Alexander Cartwright. Cartwright was indeed a member of the Knickerbockers, but his role has been largely exaggerated, thanks at least partially to the work of his grandson, Bruce, who led the charge for his grandfather's election based mostly misinformation and the forging of Alexander's diary to include fake baseball material.
Work by most notably Major League Baseball's official historian John Thorn over the last few decades has revealed that while Cartwright was an important member of the Knickerbockers, he can not be credited with any of the innovations listed on his plaque. Thorn wrights in his Baseball in the Garden of Eden:
"Like Doubleday, Cartwright did not know he had invented baseball when he died in 1892, one year before his unwitting rival. The muscle massed behind the Doubleday story after the commission report of 1908 prompted grandson Bruce Cartwright Jr. to launch an equally propagandist plot that yielded for the Knickerbocker Cartwright a plaque in the Baseball Hall of Fame on which every word of substance is false. (Alex Cartwright did not set the base paths at ninety feet, the sides at nine men, or the game at nine innings.)
Cartwright's contemporaries Wheaton, Adams, Curry, Louis F. Wadsworth and William H. Tucker all have better arguments to warrant Hall of Fame election, as most of them were the true innovators of Cartwright's supposed creations. They had no supporters by the 1930s, however, no descendants to brag about their accomplishments.
Even the plaque's closing line of Cartwright spreading baseball a-la manifest destiny across the United States to Hawaii can't be backed up by any real facts
Image: A. Moving away from the controversial, Chadwick's plaque is pretty straightforward. The first bearded Hall of Famer is also the only person elected due to their service as a baseball writer. This is a fine image of Chadwick. Only a few images of him exist, so his likeness here is probably mirrored from this photo.
Name: A. Hard to mess this one up, but if I want to reach for something here, it could have mentioned his well-known nickname of "Father" Chadwick.
Teams: N/A. The first, and so far only, Hall of Famer to never be associated with a team or league, as he was never a player, manager, umpire, front office executive, or league official.
Text: A. Chadwick's bio tells you that he was one of the driving forces behind the spread of professional baseball, which is certainly true. I have no real issues with his plaque.
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