Frank's Place: Hack Wilson was Delco through and through

Hack Wilson's cruelest antagonists were the most literate.

Among the constant taunts the Cubs slugger absorbed was "Caliban," a reference to the monstrously misshapen son of a witch in Shakespeare's The Tempest.

If the barb was unusually erudite for baseball in the 1920s and 1930s, it also was well-aimed.

Wilson packed about 200 pounds on a squat, 5-foot-6 frame. He had a flat face, stumpy bowlegs, extraordinarily small feet, and a massive head supported by a size-18 neck.

Those traits are consistent with fetal alcohol syndrome, and many now believe Wilson, whose mother was not a witch but an alcoholic, may have been a victim.

One of the best ballplayers and saddest cases this region has produced, Wilson lived in Delaware County from age 5 to 21.

Delco, as its residents know best, is different. More than any of Philadelphia's satellite counties, it's got an identity of its own.

In many ways, it's more Philly than Philly. It's a hoagie-eating, hoops-loving, hard-working, hard-nosed, hard-headed place. It's no surprise that Wawa, the working man's Wegman's, was born there.

Lewis Robert Wilson was Delco down to his size-51/2 feet. Black-and-white photos of this troubled Hall of Famer confirm that. In most, he's wearing a pugnacious glower, the sort you might find on a Lou Turk's bouncer. It looks like a dare to any challengers.

In a life that unfortunately was as truncated as his frame, there were nothing but challenges.

Wilson's mother, an unwed Philadelphia teenager, died at 24, when her son was 7. His father, a ne'er-do-well, moved from Western Pennsylvania to Delaware County, where the boy ran wild.

Baseball saved him, for a time.

During a career as notable for controversy as astounding statistics, Wilson fought everyone - opponents, teammates, managers, sportswriters, even fans - perhaps making them all pay for what he'd been denied.

On June 22, 1928, at Wrigley Field, he triggered a near-riot by leaping into the stands to pummel a heckler. Fans poured onto the field and police had to restore order.

The following season, after a single, Wilson turned and dashed toward the Cincinnati dugout, where he belted pitcher Ray Kolp. That same night, at the train station, he and the Reds' Pete Donohue brawled.

Delco.

Wilson's problem was his otherness.

Unloved as a child, stubby, uncultured, and as short-tempered as he was short, he absorbed heavy verbal fire. Various creative allusions to his unflattering heritage or tree-climbing simians poured out of dugouts.

Nothing was off-limits for the era's vicious bench jockeys: ethnicity, religion, parentage - certainly not unusual looks. And given his life in and out of baseball, it appears Wilson came to believe the taunts.

All-Star Baseball introduced me to Wilson. Few discs in that board game had a home-run slot as large as his. His blunt nickname and Delco roots were appealing. And his 1930 stats were jaw-dropping - 56 home runs and 191 RBIs, the latter still a major-league record.

Sadly, the more I learned, the more his life's slide made sense. Promise stunted by substance abuse - more common these days by the epidemic of drug overdoses - is an ongoing Delaware County story.

Wilson drank excessively, divorced, and died young. His alcoholism was no secret, though he always claimed that he played hung over, never drunk.

If true, that makes one of his more notable lapses hard to explain.

When Boston Braves manager Casey Stengel made a pitching change one afternoon at Baker Bowl, the frustrated hurler turned and heaved a ball off that ballpark's short right-field wall. The sharp crack startled Wilson, who hustled to retrieve the ball, wheeled, and fired a strike to second.

"You never made a better throw in your life," Stengel told him once the laughter had subsided. "It was right on the money. Too bad it was a bank holiday."

Wilson had tremendous power. But he cared little for anything else. When the Philadelphia A's rallied from 8-0 to defeat his Cubs in Game 4 of the 1929 World Series, they were aided by the two flyballs he dropped.

He played just 12 years and it wasn't until 1979 when he made it to Cooperstown. Released by the Dodgers late in 1934, he was signed by the Phillies. Within a month, he was let go, the owner of one of baseball's most enduring records finished at 34.

The rest of his life was a series of moves and failures until, penniless, he died at 48.

His only son refused to claim the body. The National League paid for the funeral. He was buried in Martinsburg, Va., where he'd played minor-league ball, in a suit donated by an undertaker.

Years ago, Ridley Township, where he'd lived as a youngster, dedicated a ballpark in Wilson's honor. But the soil beneath the field was found to be contaminated and it was condemned. A plaque bearing his name disappeared.

Somehow, Babe Ruth, who shared many of his strengths and failings, escaped Wilson's fate.

Both were powerful hitters who came from severely dysfunctional families. Both had alcoholic mothers who died young and fathers who couldn't, or wouldn't, raise them. Both drank and womanized to excess. On the field, both swung the bat as hard as they were able, as if lashing out at a world that had stolen their childhoods.

Maybe Brother Mathias was the difference.

The young Ruth encountered Mathias at Baltimore's St. Mary's Orphanage. The Xaverian brother became a father figure, implanting an elementary sense of self-worth in the powerful prodigy.

Wilson never found that, never learned to value himself.

In Birdy, a wonderful novel by another huge Delco talent, William Wharton, the title character, who believes he can fly, speaks words that could have been written about Wilson.

"If nobody ever showed people they could swim, everybody'd drown if they were dropped into the water."

Hack Wilson swam swiftly, for a short while. Eventually, though, he went under. Even for a born fighter, the pull of self-loathing was too strong to fight.

ffitzpatrick@phillynews.com

@philafitz