Phillies: Power ranking players in the Hall of Famers

Jim Bunning

While most Phillies fans alive today never witnessed the great Jim Bunning pitch, they know the place he holds not just in Phillies history, but in baseball lore.

Like Roy Halladay, Bunning established himself as one of the game’s great pitchers in the American League pitching for the Detroit Tigers. After two partial seasons with the Dodgers Bunning won a league-high 20 games and made his first All-Star team in 1957.

Bunning would be a perennial All-Star leading the league in multiple statistics, including twice in strikeouts.

In 1963 the Phillies acquired Bunning from the Tigers for Jack Hamilton, a 24-year-old pitcher who’d recently broken into the big leagues, and an established hitter in Don Demeter.

Bunning would go onto have one of the great careers for a Phillies pitcher, winning at least 17 games in each of his four seasons in Philadelphia. He’d earn two All-Star selections, MVP consideration, and in 1967 a second-place Cy Young finish.

In his inaugural Phillies season in 1964, Bunning would throw the first perfect game in Phillies history.

When Bunning retired, he was second on the all-time strikeouts list to Walter Johnson with 2,855. Bunning was also the second pitcher, behind Hall of Famer Cy Young, to win 100 games and collect 1,000 strikeouts in both circuits, according to the Baseball Hall of Fame.

Philadelphia retired Bunning’s number 14 in 2001, five years after the Veteran’s Committee elected him to the Hall of Fame.