Beckley, Jacob P.
Baseball
b. Aug. 4, 1867, Hannibal, MO
d. June 25, 1918
The 5-foot-10, 200-pound Beckley, who sported a splendid handlebar moustache, batted over .300 in 13 of his 22 major league seasons, played a record 2,368 games at first base, and had a record 23,696 putouts. A left-handed hitter and thrower, he was nicknamed "Eagle Eye" because of his hitting ability.
The NL's Pittsburgh Pirates paid his minor league team $4,000 for his contract early in the 1888 season, when he hit .343, just one point behind the league leader. After batting .301 in 1889, Beckley jumped to the Pittsburgh team in the new Players' League.
That league folded after just one season and Beckley rejoined the Pirates in 1891. He had his best season there in 1894, when he hit .345. The Pirates traded him to the New York Giants during the 1896 season and it seemed as if his career was over when the Giants released him early the following year.
But Beckley had another decade of baseball left. He joined Cincinnati for the rest of the 1897 season and ended with a .325 average. On September 26, he hit three home runs in a game. No other player did that until 1922.
After hitting .333 in 1899 and .343 in 1900, Beckley became a utility player with the Reds. He finished his major league career with St. Louis from 1904 through 1907.
A fine fielder who often pulled the hidden ball trick on runners, Beckley had a terrible throwing arm. He once threw the ball over the pitcher's head and into right field after a bunt. When Beckley retrieved the ball, the runner was nearly at third base. Rather than risk another throw, he raced the runner to home and just barely beat him to make the tag.
Beckley was a minor league player-manager for several years after leaving the majors. He hit .282 in 1911, his last season as a player, when he was forty-four.