Baseball Black Ink indicates the boldface type for the statistical category that a player is leading the league in. This was first introduced in Bill James’ book The Politics of Glory according to Baseball Reference’s website. The Black Ink Test counts the number of bold a player has accumulated over his career. For batting, it is Babe Ruth leading the way, followed by Ty Cobb, Josh Gibson, and then Rogers Hornsby.
Looking at Hornsby stats, there is a lot of bold starting in 1917 and peaking between 1920 and 25. Almost his whole stat lines in those years are in bold. Some of his later years he still collected unbelievable stats all the way to 1931. I’m not a stat aficionado but when I do research some things really stick out.
For the modern baseball fan, the .400 batting average is mostly spoken about Ted Williams which accomplished the feat once in 1941 and the last to do so. Before that, the 400 club was dominated by the likes of Ed Delahanty, Ty Cobb, and Rogers Hornsby each surpassing the mark three times.
From what I have read Hornsby wasn’t easy to get along with but I find it interesting the accounts of such also state right after that Hornsby never played cards, he did gamble on horses. He did not drink or smoke and he never went to the movies for he thought it would hurt his eyesight. Being the third best hitter per batting average, I’d say he was right not to harm his batter’s eyes.
Frankie Frisch once said of Hornsby “He’s the only guy I know who could hit .350 in the dark.”
Hornsby was obsessive about baseball. Sports Illustrated once wrote about him “…who regarded as utterly worthless anything that did not involve throwing, catching or hitting a baseball.” Hornsby summed up his life with this quote, “I wore a big league uniform and I had the best equipment and I traveled in style and could play ball every day. What else is there?”
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