Paul Waner and Lloyd Waner- "Big Poison and Little Poison"

Paul Waner was nicknamed "Big Poison", while his brother Lloyd was called "Little Poison". Until the arrival of the fabulous Roberto Clemente in Pittsburgh, no outfielder for the Pirates had a stronger arm than Paul Waner. But Paul Waner was a great hitter as well as a superb fielder, and it is his batting that he is best remembered for. That and his drinking. Casey Stengel once said of Paul Waner, "He had to be a very graceful player because he could slide without breaking the bottle on his hip".

The Waner brothers hailed from Harrah, Oklahoma, and Paul, the older of the two, joined the Pacific Coast League rather than become a teacher, as his father had wanted. After tearing up the PCL, Paul Waner had his contract purchased by the Pirates for $40,000 and at the age of 23 he found himself in the Pittsburgh outfield in 1926. The Pirates were a pretty good outfit back then, and they got a whole lot better when they added Paul Waner to patrol right field at Forbes Field. Batting .336 in his rookie year, Paul Waner proved to be an extra-base hit machine. A line drive hitter with occasional power, Paul Waner would have the first of his many superlative seasons the next year, in 1927. Paul Waner, in only his second full season in the majors, was named the National League MVP after he won the batting title with a .380 average and led the league for the second straight year in triples. Paul Waner also had 130 runs batted in and scored 114 runs, the first of a dozen years in a row that he would tally at least 88 runs in a season.

The Pirates had added Paul Waner's little brother Lloyd in 1927 to the outfield, and the pair combined for 460 hits! The speedy Lloyd batted .355 and scored over 130 runs, while playing centerfield. He was the faster of the two, but Paul Waner had more power than Lloyd. The Pirates won the pennant in 1927, but that was the year the Yankees demolished baseball with their all-time team led by Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig. The Pirates were swept by New York in the World Series, but the Waner brothers went 11 for 30 in the four games.

A picture of consistency at the plate, Paul Waner continued to bang out base hits. Six times he went over the 200 hit mark in a campaign, and Paul Waner did not bat less than .309 until 1938, his 13th year in the National League. Paul Waner set a still standing NL record with an extra-base hit in 14 straight games, and along with his brother, the Waners terrorized opposing pitchers. In Brooklyn, where Paul Waner and his sibling were especially tough on the Dodgers, a distraught fan was heard one day, in his borough's famous accent, talking about the brothers. "Them Waners", he sighed. "It's always the little poison on thoid and the big poison on foist!" Person became poison and from then on Paul and Lloyd Waner were "Big Poison and Little Poison".

National League hurlers had to pick their poison, and it usually didn't turn out well when facing this duo. Paul Waner and his brother would go on to amass more than 5,500 hits between them; more than the three Alou brothers and three DiMaggio brothers were able to garner as a unit. Paul, who was a very good golfer and loved hunting and fishing, also could party with the best of them. He once declared he was giving up drinking, but when his average dipped to .250 that year, his own manager coaxed him to the nearest bar and he began to hit again. When a teammate once stopped over his home one morning, Paul Waner's wife explained that he had gone out for a loaf of bread, the night before!

The Pirates finally released Paul Waner in 1940, and he played with the Dodgers and Braves over the next four years as World War II began. On Friday, June 19th, 1942, Paul Waner was with the Braves, playing the Pirates of all teams. Earlier in the series, Paul Waner, who was seeking hit number 3,000, had hit a line drive that the shortstop knocked down, but the infielder could not manage to throw him out at first. As he crossed the bag, Paul Waner signaled to the official scorer that he did not want a "tainted" hit to be the milestone. The scorer charged the shortstop with an error, and the next night Paul Waner smashed a clean single to center off of Rip Sewell to become just the third National Leaguer at the time to have 3,000 hits. The other two were Cap Anson and Honus Wagner.

When Paul Waner retired after playing one April game with the Yankees in 1945, he had a total of 3,152 hits, a lifetime .333 average, over 1,600 runs scored and 1,309 RBI. He had won three NL batting titles and his MVP, plus his cannon like arm had accounted for 241 outfield assists. Brother Lloyd had 2,459 hits of his own, and was a .316 hitter over 18 seasons when he hung his spikes up the same year. Paul Waner was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1952; Lloyd joined him in Cooperstown in 1967. Paul Waner passed away in 1965 at the age of 62, while Lloyd died in 1982 at 76. Another Hall of Fame member, Burleigh Grimes, a pitcher who faced Paul Waner many times, once paid him perhaps the highest compliment a hurler can bestow on a batter. "I may have gotten Paul Waner out, but I never fooled him".