Curt Walker: The Greatest Reds Player You’ve Never Heard of
From Cincinnati.com on September 4, 2011, with quotes from SABR member Greg Rhodes:
Who was Curt Walker?
He was The Greatest Red You Never Heard Of.
He took a long time getting “discovered” down in the tiny Gulf Coast town of Beeville, Tex., probably because he was coming of age about the time World War I was, and he wasn’t an impressive physical specimen (5-foot-9, 170 pounds).
<snip>
By the time Walker got to Cincinnati in 1924, the Reds were five years removed from their World Championship season, the great hitter Edd Roush was beginning to slip ever so slightly, and Heinie Groh was gone.
Maybe if Walker had insisted that his nickname of “Honey” (hometown Beeville, get it?) be his real name (the way Emil Frederick had become “Irish”), or maybe if he’d been temperamental and a perennial holdout (like Roush) or maybe if he hadn’t jumped back to the minors for a $7,500 bonus in 1931 when he still could have been a productive major leaguer (he was only 34, and was coming off an excellent season), maybe he’d still be remembered.
Read the full article here: http://news.cincinnati.com/article/20110904/SPT04/309040051/-Greatest-Red-You-Never-Heard
Originally published: September 7, 2011. Last Updated: September 7, 2011.