Today in sports history -- Frankie Frisch

On this date 35 years ago, Hall of Fame second baseman Frankie Frisch died in Wilmington, Delaware, succumbing to injuries suffered in a car accident a month earlier. He was 74.

Frisch played for the New York Giants from 1919 to 1926, then was traded to the Cardinals with Jimmy Ring for the great Rogers Hornsby. He spent 11 years in St. Louis, where he was a key player in the great "Gashouse Gang" teams of the 1930s. Frisch won four World Series with John McGraw's Giants, and four more with the Redbirds. For the last of those, in 1934, he was a player-manager. Frisch ended with 2,880 career hits, and was reportedly a wizard with the leather. It took him until his fifth ballot, in 1947, to get enough votes for Cooperstown enshrinement, but he's a legitimate Hall of Famer.

He is, however, personally responsible for the enshrinement of several illegitimate Hall of Famers. Frisch became a member of the Hall of Fame veterans committee in the 1960s, and used the position to get large numbers of his former teammates elected. Dave Bancroft, Chick Hafey, Jesse Haines, George Kelly, Rube Marquard and Ross Youngs were all fine players, but they have no business being on busts in Cooperstown. All put up numbers that were inferior to those of dozens of players who have not been inducted, all played with Frisch in New York or St. Louis, and all were elected by the Veterans Committee when Frisch was a member.

But hey, the man's been dead for 35 years. Let's remember his great career more than we remember his urinating all over the standards of the Baseball Hall of Fame.