They were two peas in a pod. One was the Cubs' best hitter. The other was their best pitcher. And they were best friends. Hack Wilson (photo left) still holds the Major League record for RBI in a season (191 in 1930). Pat Malone (photo right) was a two-time 20-game winner (in a hitter's era) and won 115 games for the Cubs.

Unfortunately the thing that bound these two baseball giants together was not baseball. It was something that was against the law at the time: drinking.

When they weren't playing baseball, they were either drinking or brawling. The stories are legendary.

*In his first season with the Cubs (1926), Hack Wilson was arrested and charged with drinking beer in violation of the Prohibition Act. 4 cops arrived at his friend's house, and he tried to escape out the side door. While he was attempting to escape, his friend (a woman named Lottie Frain) threw a bookend at the cops. Wilson was caught and arrested.

*In Malone's first season with the Cubs his roommate was Percy Jones. They didn't get along. Jones insisted on getting a new roommate after Malone trapped some pigeons on a hotel ledge and put them in Jones' bed as he slept.

*One night Malone and Wilson got into a huge fist fight in a hotel. They were walking down the hallway of their hotel, and Wilson laughed. Someone in a hotel room mimicked his laugh. Wilson and Malone broke into the room and beat the hell out of four men, until all of them were out cold. One of the men was still standing and Malone kept punching. Wilson pointed out that he was already knocked out. "Move the lamp and he'll fall." Malone moved the lamp, and the man fell to the ground.

*In 1928, Wilson charged into the stands to fight a milkman who had been heckling him throughout the game. 5000 fans stormed the field and it took awhile for order to be restored. Gabby Hartnett and Joe Kelly had to physically pull Wilson off the milkman. He was fined $100 for that.

*In 1929, Wilson got into two fistfights with players on the Reds, and was suspended for three games. In the first fight, he charged into the Red's dugout to punch Red's pitcher Ray Kolp...after he had just gotten a single. He was tagged out in the dugout. The second fight happened that same night at the train station with Red's pitcher Pete Donohue—who was trying to stop Wilson from attacking Kolp again. He punched Donohue in the face twice.

*Joe McCarthy knew how to handle Hack Wilson and keep him functioning. He once took a worm and dropped it in a glass of whiskey. The worm quickly died. "Now what does that prove?" asked Joe. Wilson thought about it for a while and replied, "It proves that if you drink whiskey, you won't get worms!"

*After McCarthy was fired (the season after Hack's record setting year), Hack dropped to .261 with 13 home runs and 61 RBI. That year, with Rogers Hornsby as the manager, he got into quite a few arguments. In June he was suspended for violating midnight curfew. In August he was kicked out of the game for arguing balls and strikes, but refused to leave the field. He went back out to his position until his teammates dragged him off. After that game, Hornsby benched Wilson for the rest of the season. In one game, a few days later, Hornsby even started a pitcher in the outfield rather than playing Wilson.

*On September 6th, 1931, after a drinking binge with Hack, Pat Malone trapped two Chicago sportswriters (Harold Johnson and Wayne Otto) between two Pullmans and punched them both in the face because of what they wrote. Wilson was suspended for the rest of the year for encouraging Malone to do that.

*Near the end of his Wilson's life he appeared on a network radio show where he spoke about the effects of "Demon Rum." This was just a few months before his death from an internal hemorrhage on November 23, 1948. He was only 48. His body was unclaimed for three days before National League president Ford Frick paid for the funeral.

*Malone didn't even last as long as Hack. He was only 40 years old when he died in 1943.