Rogers Hornsby (1896-1963) was the greatest right-handed hitter in baseball history. With a single-minded dedication to baseball, Hornsby was the National League's answer to Babe Ruth in the 1920s. A tough, hard-bitten competitor who excelled at hitting, he achieved the highest single-season batting average in modern National League history (.424) and is second only to Ty Cobb in career batting average (.358).

During the first half of the 1920s, while playing for the St. Louis Cardinals, Hornsby reached an unmatched peak of batting excellence, hitting over .400 for a five-year stretch and compiling several of the greatest offensive seasons in baseball history. To Hornsby, who went on to play and manage for several other major league and minor league clubs, baseball was everything, and the rest of life had little meaning. He wouldn't go to movies or read books for fear of ruining his batting eye. "People ask me what I...