Career Overview
Clarkson compiled a career 328-178 record, placing him twelfth on the MLB list of all-time wins. Clarkson pitched over 600 innings in a season twice and won a career-high 53 games in 1885. In MLB history, only Charles Radbourn has won more games in a single season (59 in 1884). In just five seasons from 1885 to 1889, Clarkson won 209 games.
Clarkson had a wide variety of curve balls and was considered to be a calculating, scientific pitcher who carefully analyzed every hitter's weaknesses. Hall of Fame hitter Sam Thompson said of Clarkson: “I faced him in scores of games and I can truthfully say that never in all that time did I get a pitch that came where I expected it or in the way in which I guessed it was coming.”
At the time Clarkson retired from the game, he was the winningest pitcher in National League history.
Aside from being a great pitcher, Clarkson was also a fair hitter. His 24 career home runs (in the deadball era) ranks 7th on the List of Major League Baseball all-time leaders in home runs by pitchers. He also had 232 career RBIs and 254 runs scored.
Total Baseball ranked Clarkson as the fourth best pitcher of all time behind Hall of Famers Cy Young, Christy Mathewson and Lefty Grove, though Bill James ranks him much lower, at No. 42, in his The New Bill James Historical Baseball Abstract.
Clarkson's election to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1963 was by the Veterans Committee.
Read more about this topic: John Clarkson
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