Sports' Forgotten Heroes

Dolf Luque won 194 games over the course of his 20-year Major League career. In 1923, he put together one of the greatest seasons ever for the Cincinnati Reds going 27-8. Luque, however, never again won 20-games in a season, but remained extraordinarily consistent. In fact, in 1925 he went 16-18 and finished in the top-15 (13th) in MVP voting and in 1933, at the age of 42, he went 8-2 for the New York Giants and finished 25th in MVP voting. In that year’s World Series, pitching in relief, Luque became the first pitcher from a Latin American country to win a World Series game. But like so many, the career of Luque is long forgotten, despite the fact that he is the 5th winningest pitcher in the rich history of the Cincinnati Reds. Even more surprising is the fact that he isn’t even mentioned is one of the most treasured pictorial histories of the Reds. How is this possible? Baseball historian Peter Gordon, a member of the Society for American Baseball Research (SABR) who has also written and researched about a