Leon Allen Goslin

Background

Goslin was born on October 16, 1900, in Salem, New Jersey. His parents, James Goslin and Rachel Baker, had a dairy and vegetable farm, and Leon helped with the chores.

Education

Goslin attended Mannington Township School. The young man often rode his bicycle into the town of Salem to play baseball. Goslin also made his own bat and wooden ball from the wood of a fallen tree with a circular saw and a penknife. His schooling was interrupted after the sixth grade by his father's illness. Back in school in 1917 after his father sold the farm and moved into Salem, the teenage Goslin played semiprofessionally with the Salem team.

Career

When Goslin went to work in 1918 at the Du Pont munitions factory, he played in an industrial league for $3 per game. Umpire Bill McGowan, who was then working in the International League, recognized the quality of Goslin's play and recommended the right-hander to the Columbia, South Carolina, team in the South Atlantic League in 1920. By the next year, 1921, Goslin was a full-time outfielder, having been converted from a pitcher by manager Zinn Beck. Goslin used his left-handed batting skills and his speed to lead the league in four offensive categories. At the end of 1921, after he batted . 390 in the Sally League, Goslin's contract was purchased for $7, 000 by the American League's Washington Senators. Goslin was not the best fielder, and his errors each year were in the double digits, but he had a high number of assists. In 1922 Goslin fractured a wrist but still managed to hit . 324 in more than one hundred games; the next year Goslin came to bat six hundred times and hit for a . 300 average. In 1924, Goslin won the runs batted in (RBI) championship with 129 and led the Senators to their first pennant. And in their first World Series that year, Goslin had eleven hits, including a double and three home runs. He batted . 344 during the Series and made six consecutive hits, including four in one game, to aid the Senators' winning effort. In 1925, the Senators were again champions of the American League, with Goslin leading the league in triples, but went on to lose to the Pirates in the World Series. Goslin continued his . 300 seasons in both 1926 and 1927, and then, in 1928, he won the batting championship on the last day of the season by making three hits in four plate appearances. Equally remarkable, he struck out but nineteen times during the entire season. Ironically, he had begun the season by injuring his arm so severely he had wondered if he would ever play again. Goslin's average fell below the . 300 level for the first time in 1929, and the next year he was traded to the Browns of St. Louis on June 14. Goslin was under contract to the Browns, with whom he averaged 104 RBI, until he was traded back to the Senators on December 14, 1932. The next year he hit . 297, and again the Senators played in the World Series. The American League team lost the series, four games to one, to the powerful New York Giants. Traded a year after he returned to the Senators, Goslin had the distinction of playing in every World Series game in which the Senators ever participated. The 1934 season found him with the Detroit Tigers. Goslin was then thirty-three years old, an age at which a player's most productive years are over. But he provided manager Mickey Cochrane with 106 runs scored and another 100 runs driven in. Additionally, he came to bat more times than he ever had in his career and batted . 305. He also marked 1934 with two interesting batting feats: he grounded into four consecutive doubleplays on April 28, and he hit safely ten consecutive times. The next year, Goslin forever endeared himself to Tiger fans when, against pitcher Larry French of the Cubs, he drove in Mickey Cochrane with the run that won the World Series at the Tigers' home park, Navin Field. That was to be his last World Series. When he retired, he had hit more home runs in World Series than any other player before. In the eighteen years Goslin played baseball, the Yankees won the pennant ten times, the Philadelphia Athletics won three times - those two teams being the powerhouses of the American League - and the other five pennants went to teams on which Goslin played. Goslin had one more productive year, 1936, during which he had 180 hits and 125 RBI. But in 1937, assigned to play in but seventy-nine games, Goose hit almost 80 points below the . 315 he had hit in the previous year. Released by the Tigers in May 1938, he was brought back to the Senators and Griffith Stadium. He played in only thirty-eight games with the Senators, his last stop in the majors. During that time, he hit his fifth career home run as a pinch hitter, a record at the time. For two years he was with the Trenton team in the Inter-State League as player and manager. His last year in professional baseball was as a nonplaying manager in 1941. For many years he ran a boat rental business in Bayside, New Jersey. He loved to talk about hitting fastball pitchers and was especially fond of recounting his home run off a young Bob Feller. He spoke very warmly as well of his friendship with Babe Ruth. In his career, Goslin assisted in 47 double plays from the outfield, averaged 194 hits per year, averaged 114 RBI per year, and scored more than 100 runs on average each season. He knocked in at least 100 runs and also hit . 300 or higher for eleven seasons. Goslin died in Bridgeton, New Jersey, in a hospital near his home, on May 15, 1971.

Achievements

• Goslin was known for his powerful left-handed swing and dependable clutch hitting. He played 18 seasons with the Washington Senators, St. Louis Browns, and Detroit Tigers, from 1921 until 1938.

Connections

Goslin married Marian Wallace, a social worker, in December 1940. She died in 1959.

Father:

James Goslin

Mother:

Rachel Baker

Spouse:

Marian Wallace

Friend:

George Herman "Babe" Ruth Jr.

He was an American professional baseball player whose career in Major League Baseball (MLB) spanned 22 seasons, from 1914 through 1935.

References

• Incredible Baseball Stories: Amazing Tales from the Diamond
• The New Baseball Bible: Notes, Nuggets, Lists, and Legends from Our National Pastime
• The Glory of Their Times: The Story of the Early Days of Baseball Told by the Men Who Played It (Harper Perennial Modern Classics)
• The New Bill James Historical Baseball Abstract