6 Phillies Hall of Famers who made their names elsewhere

It's that time of year again, as voting for the Baseball Hall of Fame is wrapping up, ahead of the official announcement on Jan. 23 for the Class of 2024. The Philadelphia Phillies are well-represented, with former players Chase Utley, Jimmy Rollins, Bobby Abreu, Billy Wagner, and José Bautista (yes, he counts) all up for enshrinement.

Wagner stands the best chance of election among the group this year, Utley and Rollins are hopefully building cases for down the road, and Abreu figures to hang on for a while even if he doesn't end up ultimately making the cut. But it's guys like Bautista, although he doesn't have much of a shot at ever being elected, who illustrate what we're discussing here. Sometimes, the Phillies have just been a stop along the way or a cup of coffee for players during their Hall of Fame careers.

All told, 39 different players who have appeared in a game for the Phillies in their history have ultimately landed in Cooperstown. Some — Mike Schmidt, Steve Carlton, Richie Ashburn, et al — are Phillies through and through. A few, like Scott Rolen, amassed at least a sizable amount of their Hall credentials in Philly. But others, not so much. Old-timer Dave Bancroft is the kind of guy who leaps to mind here, but I've covered him before in detail and won't talk about him specifically.

Let's now take the time to recall six Hall of Famers whose times with the Phillies have been mostly or completely forgotten. All of these players were Phillies for a time, but you never really hear them talked about as such because they have much stronger ties to another franchise, sometimes even multiple ones. And this can be amplified even more if said Hall of Famer played so long ago that they are just a footnote of baseball history at this point. These are their stories.

Jim Kaat

The year before Scott Rolen got his call to the Hall, pitcher Jim Kaat was voted in by the Golden Days Era Committee, 39 years after his last MLB appearance. Kaat made five stops during his career, most notably 15 years with the Minnesota Twins, where he won 190 games and amassed over 1,800 strikeouts.

Following his Minnesota tenure, Kaat had a successful stint with the Chicago White Sox. He then spent parts of four years with the Phillies from 1976 through 1979, playing on some very good teams in his last few years as a starting pitcher before transitioning into the relief role that would define the last few years of his career.

All told, Kaat would make 102 appearances (87 starts) for the Phils, putting up a record of 27-30 over 536 2/3 innings pitched. He made one postseason start for the Phillies, taking the loss in a 1976 NLCS contest despite posting a quality start.

He did manage to win a pair of Gold Gloves during his time in Philadelphia, the final two of the impressive 16 that he would amass during his career. At the time, it tied him with Brooks Robinson for the most Gold Gloves in MLB history, but Greg Maddux would pick up 18 such awards during his career to relegate Kaat to second place among pitchers and tied for second overall.

Kaat found himself as a spare part on the 1979 Phillies club, and his contract was purchased by the New York Yankees. He went to the St. Louis Cardinals a few years later, putting an exclamation point on his career as a member of the 1982 World Series champions.

Johnny Evers

Evers fulfills the criteria of being both barely a Phillie and barely a Hall of Famer, and so he makes perfect fodder for this kind of list. Best known as part of the famed “Tinker to Evers to Chance” double play triumvirate that patrolled the Cubs’ infield for many years, Evers won a pair of World Series in Chicago before moving on to the Boston Braves and adding another to his resume.

The Braves waived him during the 1917 season, which is when he was claimed by the Phillies. He would appear in 56 games for the team, putting up a .224 mark over 183 at-bats. That was essentially the end of his playing career, unless you really want to count the one game he played in 1922 for the White Sox or the lone inning he played in the field in the final game of the 1929 season for the Braves at age 48.

It’s hard to qualify how good of a player Evers was. In a time before things like All-Star selections and Gold Glove Awards, he wasn’t able to accumulate any individual accolades that modern observers can point to. He did seem to be an above-average second baseman, but his mediocre .270 career batting average and 1,659 hits don’t really leap off the page. Nor do the 12 career home runs that he cranked.

He would ultimately enter Cooperstown in 1947 courtesy of the so-called “Old Timers Committee,” who also installed his old teammates Frank Chance and Joe Tinker at the same time. Johnny Evers died four months before the ceremony.

Ferguson Jenkins

Canadian-born hurler Fergie Jenkins was truly one who got away.

Signed by the Phillies as an amateur free agent in 1962, Jenkins worked his way up through the system and made a good impression when he was called up for the first time in September of 1965. He made one appearance for the Phillies early in the 1966 season in relief, and then he was summarily traded to the Cubs along with two other players for established pitchers Bob Buhl and Larry Jackson.

Buhl stuck around for a season in Philadelphia before calling it quits at age 38, while Jackson was a useful starter for three years until he retired after the 1968 season. Jenkins, however, took off like a rocket. He would rattle off six straight 20-win seasons for the Cubs, highlighted by his NL Cy Young win in 1971. From there, Jenkins had two separate stints with the Texas Rangers sandwiched around two years with the Red Sox, and he then wrapped up his career with two more years with the Cubs.

All told, Jenkins won 284 games and struck out 3,192 hitters while posting a 3.34 career ERA in a shade over 4,500 innings pitched before landing in the Hall of Fame in 1991. And the Phillies didn't reap any of the rewards of his arm.

I suppose we should also give a passing mention to Ryne Sandberg here, although he now retains a Voldemort-like reputation among Phillies fans thanks to his abject failure as a manager. It was eerie how, 16 years after it happened with Ferguson Jenkins, the Phillies sent another young player to the Cubs only to see them end up with a statue at Wrigley Field and a plaque in Cooperstown. Let's be glad this trend seems to have ended.

Eppa Rixey

One of the most anonymous Phillies Hall of Famers, Eppa Rixey actually had a really good run with the Phillies that most people are completely unaware of.

Rixey pitched for the Phils from 1912 through 1920, except for missing the entire 1918 campaign due to military service. He put up an impressive 2.83 ERA over 252 games pitched (197 starts) in Philadelphia; however, he pitched for a number of lousy teams, which left his Phillies record at an uninspiring 87-103. He even led the National League in losses in 1920 (22) and all of baseball in defeats in 1917 (21). Rixey did get to pitch in the Phillies’ first-ever World Series, taking the loss in the final game of the Phils’ 5-game defeat to the Red Sox in the 1915 Fall Classic.

His career seemed stuck in neutral for the Phillies, but a trade to Cincinnati after the 1920 season jumpstarted things for Rixey and sent him down his Hall of Fame path. As a mainstay in the Reds’ rotation for a decade, he’d win 179 games for them to boost his career total to 266 victories to go along with a 3.15 career ERA. Rixey would gain entry into the Hall of Fame in 1963, 30 years after his last game. Sadly, he died between the time of his election and the induction ceremony.

Curiously, when the Phillies traded Rixey to the Reds, one of the two players that they received in return ended up becoming a Hall of Famer as well, just not in baseball. The man in question? That would be Alfred Earle “Greasy” Neale, the man who would go on to coach the Philadelphia Eagles to back-to-back NFL championships in 1948 and 1949.

Good luck to the former Phillies currently on the ballot as the franchise looks to add to its all-time total of Hall of Famers.

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