Winslow Beaver
by Martín Abresch
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A brilliant defensive second baseman who played his entire career for the Cincinnati Packers, Winslow Beaver set the single-season batting record by hitting .416 in 1939. Despite missing three seasons due to World War II military service, he collected over 2,800 hits and 500 doubles.
Located about 15 miles south of Altoona, the small town of Claysburg, Pennsylvania had two things going for it: it sat along one of the spurs of the Pennsylvania Railroad, and in 1914 it became the home to a brand new silica brick factory. The factory brought an influx of new residents. Immigrants from Italy, Croatia, and Poland came to work there, as did African-Americans escaping the Jim Crow South.
One of the new employees was Winston Beaver. He brought with him his new bride, Viola, and in 1915 the couple was blessed with a son, Winslow. While there was a lively mix of people in Claysburg, there was also little for the young Winslow to do aside from throw rocks at trains and play baseball with the other kids. “The train cars had a keystone emblem with a P and two R’s inside,” recalled Winslow, “I’d aim my rocks at the eye of the P, like it were a bullseye but moving. Once I hit my targets with 20 stones straight.”
Beaver’s childhood was cut short by the Great Depression. When demand for silica bricks plummeted, Winston lost his job. The family moved to Pittsburgh in search of work, and the teenage Winslow had to grow up quickly. He joined his dad in search of employment at the steel mills.
“I hated them mills,” Beaver later recalled, “I needed space to run and air to breathe.” Luckily for him, his prowess with the bat gave him a chance for a different life. In 1933, he signed up with the Northeastern League’s Erie Sailors. The teenage Beaver played shortstop there for two seasons, batting .327 and .382. The Cincinnati Packers came calling.
Beaver was still a teenager when he debuted in the majors late in 1935. Center fielder Fred Higgins injured his back in August. With the team out of contention, management thought they had nothing to lose and threw Beaver to the wolves. It was obvious that the youngster was pressing: he walked just once, and none of his three stolen base attempts were successful. But he hit .263 and acquitted himself well in the outfield.
Management liked what they saw, and they proved it by trading second baseman Jim Payne to division-rival St. Louis. Payne, 29, had led the league with 21 home runs in 1934; in 1935, he hit .314 and led the league with 52 doubles. For Cincinnati fans, it was a case of déjà vu. Three years prior, the Packers had traded their team’s best hitter and second baseman, Al Bruning, to division-rival Chicago. Initially labeled a disaster, the trade looked better for Cincinnati three years on as Bruning battled injuries while Payne flourished.
Under the weight of expectations, Beaver had a strong rookie campaign, hitting .299 while turning two faster than any second baseman in the league. Fans really began to warm to him when, in mid-June, he went 6-for-6 against Boston. In 1937, he hit .322 with 50 doubles, and in 1938 he hit .344 while leading the league with 216 hits and 126 runs scored. Still only 22 years old, Beaver was already one of the league’s most exciting hitters.
Then, in 1939, Winslow Beaver had a season for the ages. Going into the season, only one batter in history had hit .400 over the course of the season, and that one .400 season was regarded as something of a fluke. The mark was achieved in the notorious 1894 season, the high-point of league offense, when the league as a whole hit over .300. The batter who accomplished the .400 season was a relative unknown, Miles Vickers, and while he qualified for the batting title, he played in just 112 games, missing over a month of the season to a thumb injury. Nevertheless, Vickers and his .409 average stood alone at the top of the records. A few batters had come close to hitting .400 in the past 15 seasons. Doc Moore hit .395 and .394 in back-to-back seasons in the mid-twenties; Al Bruning hit .392 for Cincinnati in 1930. In 1938, Philadelphia’s Art Cook came the closest yet when he hit .397—just two hits shy of the mark.
Beaver not only hit .400, he went 234-for-563 to hit .416. He smacked 39 doubles and 21 triples. He drew 85 walks and reached base at a .492 clip. He was named the league’s Most Valuable Player.
Unfortunately, the Cincinnati Packers squandered Beaver’s stellar season. They finished 70-88, in fifth place, a full 41 games behind Pittsburgh. The 1939 season closed the book on the 1930s, the first decade in which Cincinnati did not win a division title. Not only did the Packers fail to win, they failed to compete: they finished in fifth position eight times, never finished higher than fourth, and had only one winning season.
Beaver’s star-power kept the fans coming to the ballpark, but as he chased the .400 mark, some in the press began to see him as a player who was more concerned with personal statistics than with the success of the team. While others pointed out that the losses might have something to do with Packers pitching, which in 1939 allowed over six runs per game, the reputation of being a me-first player dogged him for the rest of his career. This reputation was crystallized in a headline summarizing Cincinnati’s 1940 season: Winslow & Low Wins. He would never play on a division-winning team, and he would never have a playoff at-bat. Only two players in history had more regular season at-bats than Beaver without having a single playoff at-bat: Bill McGonagil and Fennimore McCaffree.
Beaver won a second batting title in 1940, hitting .366 and setting personal bests with 10 home runs and 96 RBIs. He added a third batting title in 1942, hitting .340.
Like many players, Beaver left baseball to serve his country during World War II. He enlisted in the army. Like most of baseball’s stars, he was kept well away from the front. (The Army did not want to risk a P.R. disaster by allowing the Axis powers to kill or capture a player of Beaver’s fame.) Beaver played on his unit’s baseball team and never experienced combat.
Beaver missed three seasons due to the war. When he returned in 1946, he promptly won his fourth and final batting title. The Packers finished in last place.
While he remained a productive hitter until the end of his career, by 1947 it was clear that balls weren’t exploding off of Beaver’s bat as often as they once did. On the other hand, it was also clear that Cincinnati management had finally figured out how to build a team. Players like Bert Carter and the two Joes, Seidel and Rigoli, added oomph to the lineup. Jimmy Herrman won 20 games, the first Packer to do so since Chadbourne Collins in 1931. Cincinnati won 90 games and finished four games behind Chicago. They followed that up by winning 94 games in 1948, only to finish 21 games behind the 115-win Chicago Traders.
Injuries began to take their toll on Beaver, and he missed most of the 1950 season. He came back in 1951 to hit .321 and lead the league with 43 doubles. In 1952, it was clear that the 36 year old had lost his step, and he was moved to first base. In 1954, his final season, he batted .299 with a .383 on-base percentage. Perhaps to confound the critics who accused him of putting personal statistics first, Beaver retired when he was just 133 hits shy of 3,000.
Winslow Beaver set the single-season record by batting .416 in 1939. He won four batting titles (1939-40, 1942, 1946) and led the league in hits (1938-40), doubles (1941, 1951), total bases (1940), runs scored (1938, 1940), on-base percentage (1939), and slugging percentage (1939). He hit .323 for his career. Upon his retirement, he had turned more double plays (1,355) than any middle infielder in history, and he ranked fourth all-time in doubles (549), eighth all-time in hits (2,867), and 12th all-time in runs scored (1,468). He won Rookie of the Month once, Player of the Week five times, and Batter of the Month once. He was selected to eight All-Star teams (1937-42, 1947, 1949), and he won a Most Valuable Player Award (1939).
In 1954, the Cincinnati Packers retired No. 22 in Winslow Beaver’s honor. In 1960, he was unanimously elected to the Hall of Fame.