You may remember that in the past I have shown that one can make what looks like the record of one player by splicing together the careers of two different players, if you find two players who

            a) have exceptionally similar skills, and

            b) have good seasons at different ages, so that you get the best seasons of both players.

            While I was working on the Short Career Guys, I realized that Charlie Keller and Dolph Camilli make a really good spliced career, as follows:

            That’s Charlie Keller up to age 26, Dolph Camilli from age 27 on.   Both players scored 100 runs several times, but had career highs of 106.   Keller’s career highs were 33 homers, 122 RBI; Camilli’s were 34 and 120.   Keller hit .334 once but otherwise under .300; Camilli hit .339 once but usually under .300.   Both players walked 100+ times a season.   When you splice their careers together you get all of their good years except one.   Keller had a good year at age 29, which we lose because Camilli was better.   Also:

            1)  Both Keller and Camilli were left-handed hitters, and both are listed at 5-foot-10, 185 pounds.

            2)   I was very surprised to see the number of triples.    When you put them together you still have a fairly short career, but you have 136 triples.    I would bet that both of these guys ripped the ball into the right field corner pretty regularly. 

            3)  You know, if this was one career, this guy would have a career won-lost contribution of 339-105—and I would bet that he still wouldn’t be in the Hall of Fame.  His career is still short, his average is just .283, and he hit just 359 home runs.   With the .900 OPS modern fans would understand his value, but sportswriters from the era when these guys were really active wouldn’t have gotten it.

            Since I have you here, I’m going to add one more player to the Short Career file:  Pete Reiser.    Pete Reiser was the favorite player that Branch Rickey ever discovered, in his countless years of signing Hall of Fame baseball players.    Rickey saw Reiser playing as a 15- or 16-year-old on the sandlots of St. Louis, and was so impressed with his athleticism and style of play that he hired him to be his “driver” for the summer, until Reiser was old enough to sign a professional baseball contract.    Reiser spent the summer (I believe the summer of 1937) at Branch Rickey’s side, as Rickey travelled around supervising the Cardinal farm system, and then signed with the Cardinals.

            Reiser was “emancipated” by Commissioner Landis in 1939.    Rickey had developed a system of controlling large numbers of minor league players and minor league teams. . .a farm system.    Commissioner Landis didn’t like the concept of a farm system, which replaced or strongly modified the system which had been created in the 1915-1925, in which players worked their way up the minor league ladder by being sold from team to team, allowing minor league operators to profit by the development of young players.    Rickey replaced that with a top-down management system in which he signed and controlled the players from an early age by owning outright the minor league teams and owning rights to the players.

            Landis didn’t like the whole idea and was determined to stop it, and there was another problem, which was that Rickey controlled teams that competed with one another head-to-head in the minor leagues.   In one case there were six teams in a minor league, and Rickey controlled three of them.   Landis argued—correctly—that this undermined the integrity of the league, because it placed Rickey in a position to manipulate the outcome of the league’s pennant race.  Based on this objection (and as a pretext for the fact that Landis just didn’t like the farm system concept), Landis declared a bunch of the Cardinals’ minor league prospects to be free agents, able to sign with other teams.   People write now that Rickey was involved in “shenanigans” with his minor league signings, but that’s not exactly true; it is more that Landis just didn’t like what Rickey was doing.

            Anyway, Reiser was one of the players that Landis made a free agent.   Rickey was horrified at losing all of the minor league players—dozens—but the one that really hurt him was the loss of Reiser, who was not only the best prospect he had ever had, but also his personal pet.   Rickey, acting as Reiser’s “agent”, more or less, arranged for Reiser to sign with the Dodgers, but with the agreement that he was to be traded back to the Cardinals sometime later. 

            Once the Dodgers saw what they had in Reiser, however, they refused to trade him back to the Dodgers.   Reiser came to the Dodgers in mid-season, 1940, initially competing for the shortstop job with a player with a very similar name.   Pee Wee Reese.   Reiser was nowhere near the shortstop that Reese was, so they tried him at third base, that failed, and they moved him to the outfield.

            As an almost-rookie in 1941, Reiser had a fantastic season, hitting .343 with 39 doubles, 17 triples, 14 homers.   He was 22 years old.  Leo Durocher, who managed Reiser that summer and later Willie Mays, when Willie came to the majors, said that Reiser and Mays were by far the best young talents he ever had or ever saw.

            Early in the 1942 season, hitting .380, Pete Reiser ran full-speed into a concrete wall.    This ruined his 1942 season.  Reiser was in the Army 1943-1945, playing for service teams, and, once he got out of the Army, he began regularly to run into outfield walls.   Several times he ran into outfield walls so hard that he knocked himself cold, and was carried off the field.    Ultimately and mostly because of the wall-related injuries, he was unable to complete the brilliant career which he had begun.

            These are Reiser’s basic numbers:

            And this is how that shakes out as Win Shares and Loss Shares:

            Because Reiser was a spectacular player, people would remember later that he was the MVP in 1941, when the Dodgers won their first National League pennant in twenty-plus years.   In fact, he wasn’t the MVP; Camilli was.

            One of the peculiarities of award voting is that RBI men do extremely well in MVP voting, whereas they do poorly in Hall of Fame voting.   Camilli was the Dodger’s RBI man, and he won the MVP Award as RBI men often do, with Reiser second in the voting.    Camilli held a 19 to 2 edge in first-place votes—but was it right?

            Look, I love guys like Camilli; the good-fielding first baseman who hits .280 with 30 homers and 115 walks. ..that guy can play for me any day of the week.    But at this point, knowing what I now know, I am inclined to think that Reiser may have had the better season.  We have Reiser with a won-lost contribution of 28-0, Camilli at 26-3.   That’s not a big margin; that’s just maybe 7-10 runs, and we can easily be wrong by that amount.   But. . .what I know today, I’d vote for Reiser.

            Career, we’d rate him between Ray Chapman and Jim Ray Hart: