Big Poison and Little Poison: The Waner Brothers

There are three types of nonpareil hitters in baseball: lofters, line drive hitters with power, and line drive hitters who, in Willie Keeler’s words, hit ‘em where they ain’t -- between the fielders.

Beyond a doubt, the greatest lofter was Babe Ruth. From his home runs to his pop flies, they flew higher than those of anybody before or since.

Jimmie Foxx and Lou Gehrig exemplified the line drive hitters with power. Their blasts that didn’t go over the fences, but often crashed against them. Later Stan Musial, George Brett, Hank Aaron and Barry Bonds fit that mold.

Line Driver Hitters

The pure line drive hitters who, for the most part, did not hit home runs, were more numerous, and in some ways more valuable, have become extinct. They were the ones who were most often on base for the RBI leaders to drive in.

As Ted Williams acknowledged, “Without Bobby Doerr, Doc Cramer and Jimmie Foxx batting ahead of me and Joe Cronin behind me in 1939, I would not have been the only rookie who ever led the American League in runs batted in.”

The list of line drive hitters who waved bats to all fields like an orchestra leader’s baton is longer. Some of them batted close to or over .400, a few more than once. Many of them averaged fewer than 5 home runs a year.

Just to name a few, among the early ones were Nap Lajoie, Honus Wagner, Ty Cobb and Eddie Collins. They were followed by the likes of George Sisler, Rogers Hornsby, Harry Heilmann, Rod Carew, Tony Gwynn, Wade Boggs and Roberto Alomar.

Richie Ashburn had 2,574 hits in 15 years. More than 80 percent of them were singles. He also averaged 100 walks a year. He gave the sluggers batting behind him plenty of RBI opportunities. In his last season he batted .419 as a pinch hitter. He also batted .600 in four All-Star Games.

The Waner Brothers

The most unlikely hitters to make the list were a pair of brothers, Paul and Lloyd Waner. Both left-handed batters, born four years apart, Paul was the older.

When they were dubbed Big Poison and Little Poison (not, incidentally, because they were deadly to other teams, but because that was a New Yorker’s pronunciation of “person”), it was Paul who was dubbed Big only because he was the older of the two.

In 19 years Paul had 3,152 hits, only 113 of them home runs, for a .333 batting average. Pressed into service during the war years, at the age of 40 in 1943 he batted .455 as a pinch hitter, and the next year hit .310.

The Waner brothers: Big Poison and Little Poison

Lloyd batted .316 over 18 years, the last two as a pinch hitter. Of his 2,459 hits, 27 were home runs. He was 38 when he hit .390 as a wartime pinch hitter.

They were from the same mold: short and skinny, about 5-foot-9 and 150 pounds. Paul was born in 1903 in Harrah, Oklahoma before it was a state, Lloyd four years later. They were raised on a ranch where a jug of corn liquor hung in the barn.

Paul took a liking to it and never stopped. “I never drank or smoke or dissipated in any way until I was eight years old,” he was quoted. Tales of his drinking were legendary.

Big Poison at 40

Rex Barney was a rookie pitcher with the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1943 when Waner was pinch hitting for the Dodgers. Barney told this story:

“One day I was watching batting practice. What I saw you won’t believe. I know I wouldn’t if I hadn’t seen it. This scrawny little guy staggered out to the batting cage, head drooping, looking as if he was about to fall over. Somebody said, ‘Your turn to hit, Paul.’

“A lefthand batter, he staggered up to the plate without a bat. ‘Gimme a bat,’ he mumbled.

“He hefted the bat a few times, choked up a few inches for one swing, then four inches for another, then gripped the end of the handle, and hit the damnedest line drives one after another I’ve ever seen.

“Then somebody said, ‘Paul, let’s play the game.’

“As soon as the pitcher released the ball, they’d yell, ‘center field’ or ‘right field’ or ‘left’ and he never missed. I mean, young pitchers throwing bullets out there, in on his fists, and if they yelled, ‘left field’ he hit it to left field. A human being is not supposed to be able to do that.

“Late in a game Leo Durocher might say, ‘Paul, get a bat.’ Paul would be snoozing down the end of the bench, in a stupor. Guys would have to shake him awake.

He’d pick up any bat, go up and hit a line drive. It might be caught, but a line shot. Most magnificent bat control I ever saw.”

The Outfielder

None of this is meant to suggest that Paul Waner was falling-down drunk every day of his life. You don’t play right field almost every day – some years every game -- for 17 years without being fit.

His fielding average was .975, in line with other Hall of Fame right fielders of his time. (Lloyd played center field. His FA was .982.) But Paul could – and did – take a few swigs before and after a game.

Toward the end of his career it sometimes affected his fielding capability. In 1943 at the age of 40 he started 54 games in right field –mostly day games after his usual nightcap of a six-pack of beer – and made 5 errors. 

One day in Pittsburgh Leo Durocher was short an outfielder and asked Paul to start in right field. The other players could see that Paul was in no shape to play.

“I don’t know if I can,”

“You gotta do it. We have nobody else,”

He played, had two hits, including a double, and walked once before a utility player rescued him in the seventh. Then he went into the clubhouse and was sick.

The Batting Instructor

Paul was in his 50s when he was a minor league roving batting instructor for the Milwaukee Braves. As a young business manager for one of those teams, I watched him performing his magic wand control the same as Rex Barney had watched it fifteen years earlier.

Teaching more by example than lecture, he summed up the secret of his snapping bat control to his young students as “a quick belly button.” 

That was Paul Waner, Big Poison, nobody’s role model except with a bat in his hands.