Jake Beckley

Jacob Peter "Eagle Eye" Jake Beckley (1867–1918) was the durable first baseman of the deadball precursor years, a left-handed hitter and thrower whose twenty-season career stretched from 1888 through 1907 across Pittsburgh, the Players' League's Pittsburgh Burghers, the New York Giants, Cincinnati, and finally St. Louis. He retired with 2,938 hits, the all-time triples mark for first basemen, and the highest career total of putouts at his position until Eddie Murray finally passed him eighty years later. The T206 White Border Jake Beckley card was issued during the 1909–11 American Tobacco run several years after his playing career ended; he was working as a minor-league player-manager and umpire by then, and the card draws on an earlier studio photograph. Born August 4, 1867 in Hannibal, Missouri, he died June 25, 1918 in Kansas City and is buried at Riverside Cemetery in Hannibal. The Veterans Committee elected him to the Hall of Fame in 1971.