Husman: J. Lee Richmond’s remarkable 1879 season
From SABR member John Thorn at Our Game on May 13, 2015:
Completing our three-post week dedicated to the late lamented Worcester National League club, here is a fine article by John Richmond Husman, a friend ever since he published this article 30 years ago in The National Pastime, which I had created for SABR three years earlier and for which I was still, at that time, its editor. John R. Husman is author of the 2003 book, Baseball in Toledo, and co-author of Mud Hens Memories. For the journal Base Ball he wrote, in 2008, “Ohio’s First Baseball Game: Played by Confederates and Taught to Yankees.” He is Historian for the Toledo Mud Hens and has been a member of SABR for 33 years, as well as a former chair of its 19th Century Baseball Research Committee. John resides in Sylvania, Ohio. This article is reprinted with the kind permission of the Society for American Baseball Research.
J. Lee Richmond played four full seasons and parts of two others in baseball’s major leagues. Not a long career. Today, more than 100 years later, a check of his statistical record reveals little that would seem to be worthy of recognition. The record does not, however, tell of the spirit he brought to the game and how he changed it. Nor does this record show that he was the first to accomplish the rarest of all single game pitching feats: a perfect game.
Read the full article here: http://ourgame.mlblogs.com/2015/05/13/j-lee-richmonds-remarkable-1879-season/
Originally published: May 13, 2015. Last Updated: May 13, 2015.