“Show me a hero and I’ll write you a tragedy.”–F. Scott Fitzgerald
He was short in stature and unfortunately, so was his career. Lewis Robert “Hack” Wilson remains one of the most famous–and tragic–players in Chicago Cubs (nay, baseball) history. In 1930, he batted in 191 runs (RBIs), a baseball record that will probably never be broken. His 56 home runs that pre-steroids year remained a National League record until Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa eclipsed it in 1998.
Wilson’s exploits off the field often garnered as much newspaper coverage as his baseball prowess. As one sportswriter put it: “He was built like a beer keg, and not entirely unfamiliar with its contents.” Manager Joe McCarthy did his best to handle the freewheeling Wilson, who usually spent every evening with his cronies in local taverns (though as he occasionally said, “I never played drunk. Hung over, yes, but never drunk”). n a perhaps apocryphal story, one day McCarthy wanted to teach Wilson the evils of alcohol. He placed two glasses on a table, one containing water and the other whiskey, and dropped a worm in each. The worm in the water swam around the glass, while the worm in the whiskey died.
McCarthy asked Wilson: “So, Hack, what does this teach you?”
Wilson’s reply: “If you drink whiskey, you won’t get worms.”
In a tumultuous chapter of his career, Hack Wilson, after a rough season with the Cubs in 1931, found himself traded to the St. Louis Cardinals. However, he was soon sent packing again to the Brooklyn Dodgers when he refused to accept a significant pay cut.
Wilson had a brief revival in Brooklyn during the 1932 season, where he managed to hit .297, pounding out 23 home runs and driving in 123 runs. Unfortunately, the following two years saw a significant decline in his performance as his struggles with heavy drinking worsened, leading to a weight gain that hindered his agility in the outfield. After a short stint with the Philadelphia Phillies in 1934, this legendary power hitter found himself out of Major League Baseball by the age of just 34.
Wilson’s life after baseball took a tragic turn as he struggled with severe alcoholism, leading to both financial disaster and personal turmoil. He found himself moving between minor league teams and taking on various odd jobs, which included managing a pool hall in West Virginia and working at a park in Baltimore.
Isolated from his family and without any money, Wilson suffered a severe fall and, unfortunately, succumbed to pneumonia in 1948 at the age of 48. For two days, his body remained unclaimed at the Baltimore morgue until the National League stepped in to ensure he received a proper burial, at Rosedale Cemetery in Martinsburg, West Virginia.
In recognition of his remarkable career, highlighted by an incredible single-season record of 191 RBIs in 1930, Wilson was posthumously inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame by the Veterans Committee in 1979. (Click on image to enlarge.)
At a memorial service ten months after passed away, a granite tombstone was unveiled, adorned with the words: “One of Baseball’s Immortals, Lewis R. (Hack) Wilson, Rests Here.”
Just a week before he died, Wilson was interviewed on CBS radio, and his remarks were published in several Chicago newspapers. Charlie Grimm posted an excerpt from that interview prominently in the Cubs’ clubhouse. It reads, in part: “Talent isn’t enough. You need common sense and good advice. If anyone tries to tell you different, tell them the story of Hack Wilson. . . . There are kids in and out of baseball who think because they have talent they have the world by the tail. It isn’t so. Kids, don’t be too big to accept advice. Don’t let what happened to me happen to you.” (Left to right, Charlie Grimm, unidentified man, and Joe McCarthy unveil Hack Wilson’s gravestone.)