Willie Jones        Elected 1995, Veterans Committee

Third Baseman
St. Louis Maroons (LA, BRO, LOU, CLE, CHI)
1951-1965

Three-time UL champion and five-time Gold Glove third baseman, Willie "Puddin Head" Jones was the best player at at the hot corner in the United League's first 15 years—maybe more. A member of three All-UL Teams from 1952 to 1956, he was a key player on the St. Louis Maroons, who won a title and three straight second place finishes in the circuit's first four years. He was named to the league's first All-Decade Team in 1961 alongside teammate Stan Musial and later made World Series cameos with Brooklyn in 1963 and Chicago in 1965.

The son of a master mechanic, Willie Edward Jones was born in Dillon, South Carolina in 1925 and grow up in the mill community of Laurel Hill. Jones was given his nickname "Puddin' Head" at a young age from a popular 1930s song, "Woodenhead, Puddin' Head Jones" and served in the U.S. Navy in World War II. He started his career with the old Philadelphia Phillies in the defunct National League before being drafted in the 16th round (123rd overall) in the Inaugural Draft by the St. Louis Maroons.

Though he was the youngest regular on a Maroons roster loaded with proven veterans—Stan Musial, Roy Campanella, Sam Jethroe, Johnny Pesky, and Eddie Joost—Jones started 76 games and was arguably their best hitter. He batted .330 with a .400 OBP and a .911 OPS that was just a sliver less then Musial's. The Maroons outpaced Detroit by three games, winning the first UL championship and earning Jones a ring at the age of 25.

For the next 13 years, Puddin Head would be a fixture in starting lineups, mostly with St. Louis, where he played for all but three of his first 14 years. In those years (1952-64), he was a model consistency, batting over .300 six times and over .290 three more times. He OPS'ed over .800 ten times. He won Gold Gloves and was named to the All-UL Team in 1952 and 1953, while helping the Maroons to three straight second place finishes in 1952-54.

In 1955, Puddin Head was traded with teammate Roy Campanella to the expansion Los Angeles Outlaws, in one of the most notorious trades in St. Louis history, though the Maroons continued to have success and made the World Series in 1957. Jones found his power swing in California, hitting 25 HR and 107 RBI in his first year as an Outlaw, while grabbing his third Gold Glove. His power numbers declined the next two years, but he returned to the All-UL Team for a third time in 1956 while putting up some of the best OBP numbers (.371 and .363) of his career. Jones was a big fish in a small pond in L.A. The Outlaws started as a .500 team but declined by 1957, when they let him go.

St. Louis took the 31-year-old Jones in the first round of the 1958 Reentry Draft, and after three years on the West Coast, Puddin' Head was again a Maroon, reunited with future Hall of Famers Musial and Billy Pierce. During his five-year second stint with St. Louis, Jones never batted below .290 and never OBP'ed under .360. And while his home run numbers tailed off, he cracked 35 doubles in 1960 and 30 more the following year, while adding two more Gold Gloves in 1958 and 1960, bringing his total to five.

Traded to Louisville in 1962, Jones played in the first UL All-Star Game as a Colonel in 1963, then joined Brooklyn at the trade deadline and was part of the historic '63 Superbas team that won a league-record 115 games. Though Jones played a bit part on that storied club that featured several Hall of Famers—Mickey Mantle, Granny Hamner, Felix Mantilla, Lew Burdette, Gene Conley, and Whitey Ford—his contribution was significant. In 33 games, Jones hit .385 with the highest OPS on the team: 1.011. In 1964 he returned to St. Louis for his swan song, hitting 20 HR and driving in 74 at the age of 36, before short stints in Cleveland, Chicago, and L.A. to round out his career.

His short run with the Colts in 1965 coincided with that team's first championship run. As with Brooklyn two years before, he joined the Colts midseason and rode with them to the title. Though his contributions were less than with the Screaming Bats, he hit .273 and homered in the World Series win over Cleveland.

Legacy
So where does Willie Jones stand in the history of UL third basemen? Willie Jones was the league's greatest third baseman until being surpassed by Eddie Mathews in the '60 and Sal Bando in the '70s. But whereas those mashing third-sackers earned their way to Beachville on the strength of their bats alone, Puddin' Head was a complete ballplayer on both sides of the ball. In 1960, he became the first five-time Gold Glove winner, a distinction he would hold alone until Roger Maris joined him in 1969.

In the history of the league, only six infielders have won five Gold Gloves. Of those, only two surpass Willie Jones in hits, total bases, OPS, and All-UL nominations (Alan Trammell and Ryne Sandberg), and they started their careers in 1979 and 1983. Put another way, there is a case to be made that Willie "Puddin' Head" Jones was the best all-around infielder in the first 30 years of the league.

So What Happened?
So why was he not elected and dropped to the Veterans Committee for consideration three decades after playing his last game?

We start with the short history of third basemen in Hall of Fame voting. Before 1995, only TWO primary third basemen had been inducted into Beachville: Eddie Mathews in 1979 and Sal Bando a decade later. So before we start we are already facing stacked odds.

Jones' Hall of Fame journey parallels those of his VetCom cohorts Carl Erskine and Stu Miller. All three were dominant players whose peak years were in the 1950s. Hall of Fame voting did not commence until 1965, and for the first five years only one player was selected per year. Jones was on the 1968 and 1969 ballots, won by Campanella and Johnny Antonelli. From 1970-73, Willie was on the normal ballot, under the current voting rules, but never garnered more than 48 percent and was dropped from the ballot in 1973. Why did were votes totals so low? A glance at the list of inductees in those four years helps tell the story: Whitey Ford, Gene Conley, Granny Hamner, Willie Mays, Ernie Banks, and Lew Burdette.

In short, just like Erskine and Miller, Puddin' Head suffered by comparison and was a victim of poor timing. Had Hall of Fame voting started five years earlier, Jones likely would have been inducted in the late '60s. Maybe...

Thanks to the Veterans Committee, however, Jones will finally join his 1950s teammates Stan Musial, Roy Campanella, and Billy Pierce. He is the sixth Maroon overall in Beachville—making St. Louis the third-most represented club—and joins Mathews and Bando in the tiny club of Hall of Fame third basemen. (TJS)