Newest HOVG Inductees

[JameisLoseston]

I thought for sure Feathers broke his shoulder a couple weeks before, kept playing and took the bench immediately after getting the 1000th yard, but I'm not positive. Maybe I'm thinking of him playing hurt in the title game. Not sure how 1000 would have been received back then.

[TanksAndSpartans]

Feathers got hurt in Game 11 against the Cardinals. It was the first half. He had 3 carries for 22 yards. Interestingly, the Chicago Tribune printed the day before the game that he needed 36 yards to get to 1,000 so the 22 would have left him short. Sadly, he didn't play in the Bears' final two games nor the title game.

One last note I found interesting was the paper mentioning that the Bears would use Grange as a defensive substitution in key situations. But given the rules of the time, I think that would mean Feathers would have to sit the rest of the quarter.

[JameisLoseston]

Now that you bring him up, Feathers vs. Grange is a really interesting comparison. Why do we revere Grange, who was similarly ruined by injury as Feathers, and don't even consider Feathers HOVG worthy, when the latter seemed to be the better player in the few healthy moments we got to see of him? Grange definitely managed much better post-injury whereas Feathers was just a shell of himself, but we also never saw him reach the kind of peak Feathers did. Grange's career stats don't scream HOF to me like, say, Friedman or Johnny Blood. I'm probably missing something obvious, but it seems like a double standard.

[JeffreyMiller]

I like Latone and voted for him. Not all of my selections made the cut, of course. Hey, I'm still waiting for Swede youngsttom to get his due recognition from the HOF ....

[TanksAndSpartans]

Jeff, thanks for opening the door on Latone again. I actually wrote an article on him that recently came out and updated my first post here: http://www.profootballresearchers.com/f ... ron#p32147. I didn't try for CC because I wanted to throw some opinion in, but I went back to primary sources as much as I could - I didn't want to include myth (or at least too much myth ). One area I got into which I don't think has been done before is his pre-1925 athletic career. We all know he didn't go to college, so to me these were what I would call pro teams and what others would call semi-pro teams. I have him playing both football and baseball all the way back to 1914 - kind of a Nesser brother thing to start competing with men as a teenager. (He also served in WWI, but the war was short in terms of missing athletic seasons and he was still young and came back healthy)

Let me know if anyone is strong in minor league baseball history (1910s). It really puzzled me that he got as many baseball accolades as he did, yet unlike Frank Nesser doesn't appear as a player in Pro baseball reference. I guess I'm not undressing the levels of baseball that well, but would love if anyone knows of a site that compiles statistics on minor league baseball. Latone was actually a left handed pitcher and outfielder. Some sportswriters in the coal region had him going to the show.

[Rupert Patrick]

Jeff, thanks for opening the door on Latone again. I actually wrote an article on him that recently came out and updated my first post here: http://www.profootballresearchers.com/f ... ron#p32147. I didn't try for CC because I wanted to throw some opinion in, but I went back to primary sources as much as I could - I didn't want to include myth (or at least too much myth ). One area I got into which I don't think has been done before is his pre-1925 athletic career. We all know he didn't go to college, so to me these were what I would call pro teams and what others would call semi-pro teams. I have him playing both football and baseball all the way back to 1914 - kind of a Nesser brother thing to start competing with men as a teenager. (He was also served in WWI, but the war was short in terms of missing athletic seasons and he was still young and came back healthy)

Let me know if anyone is strong in minor league baseball history (1910s). It really puzzled me that he got as many baseball accolades as he did, yet unlike Frank Nesser doesn't appear as a player in Pro baseball reference. I guess I'm not undressing the levels of baseball that well, but would love if anyone knows of a site that compiles statistics on minor league baseball. Latone was actually a left handed pitcher and outfielder. Some sportswriters in the coal region had him going to the show.

I checked SABR.org, (Society of American Baseball Researchers) and found an article that mentions Tony Latone:

https://sabr.org/bioproj/person/81b87e6a

And found two referencing Frank Nesser:

https://sabr.org/search/node/frank%20nesser

[TanksAndSpartans]

Thanks Rupert - I actually stumbled on Nesser's 31 min game article before. Latone seems to only show up as a football player in French's bio - thanks for trying.

Its on my ToDo list to record the names of the baseball teams he actually played for - I have a couple other things a little higher on the list - I'll get there eventually

[Rupert Patrick]

Thanks Rupert - I actually stumbled on Nesser's 31 min game article before. Latone seems to only show up as a football player in French's bio - thanks for trying.

Its on my ToDo list to record the names of the baseball teams he actually played for - I have a couple other things a little higher on the list - I'll get there eventually

You could try to contact Mr. French to get more info on Latone. I'm not a SABR member but I'm sure there are other SABR members in the forum and SABR makes available to it's members a master list of contacts with email addresses and contact info (phone numbers etc) on it's members who wish to make it available, which I wish PFRA did, hint hint.

Or you could just google search his name with SABR and EMAIL and an email address would probably come up.

[TanksAndSpartans]

Thanks Rupert - I actually did the same with the Nesser article and the guy got back to me. In this case though, I can tell from the sources that the author doesn't have anything beyond what I have. I'm not even looking to take a deep dive, just the basic statistics like hits, rbi, etc. Here's an example of what I know from around '19:

Latone outfielder for the Lucerne Club of the Wyoming League, left…for… Reading to join the international league club.

I would guess the Wyoming League may be pretty low low level, but Reading in the International league sounds like a team that would have player records...

This is a nice summary for Frank although i think the site is having issues right now:

https://www.baseball-reference.com/regi ... sser001fra