During his 23-year major-league career (1966-1988), Sutton logged at least 200 innings in 20 of his first 21 seasons, a remarkable stretch interrupted only by the strike-shortened campaign of 1981; and struck out at least 100 batters in 21 straight seasons, a feat subsequently duplicated only by Nolan Ryan, Greg Maddux, and Roger Clemens. As of 2019 Sutton ranked tied for 14th in victories (324), 10th in shutouts (58), seventh in innings pitched (5,282⅓) and strikeouts (3,574), and third in games started (756) in major-league history; and given the trends in baseball, his positions seem permanently fixed.

Despite those gaudy “counting statistics” that deservedly secured his enshrinement in the Hall of Fame, Sutton wasn’t flashy or overpowering and was rarely mentioned among the best pitchers of his era. He received votes for the Cy Young Award in only five separate seasons, all of which came during a five-year period (1972-1976), when he finished in the top five in the NL; and he won 20 or more games in a season just once. Sutton never put together a career-defining season with eye-popping statistics, like his contemporaries, from Sandy Koufax, Tom Seaver, and Bob Gibson, to Jim Palmer, Gaylord Perry, and Ryan; and never authored a no-hitter.

More than anything, Sutton was a relentless, fierce, yet enigmatic competitor; to his detractors, he was a compiler and more concerned for himself than his team. “Baseball was a job for me,” said the hurler bluntly. “It was not an emotional experience. It was a job that I wanted to keep getting better and better at.”2

Donald Howard Sutton was born on April 2, 1945, in Clio, Alabama, a small rural farming community in Barbour County in the southeastern part of the state. His parents, Charlie Howard and Lillian (McKnight) Sutton, were just 18 and 15 years old respectively at the time of Don’s birth, and subsequently welcomed two more children into the world, Ron and Glenda.3 The elder Sutton was a sharecropper and eventually relocated his family around 1950 to Molino, in the Florida panhandle, about 25 miles north of Pensacola, where he also worked seasonally in construction. During his baseball career, Don often cited his parents as role models, and it’s easy to understand why. They instilled in him uncompromising determination, an unyielding work ethic, and a devout religious conviction, qualities that defined his professional baseball career, too. Despite his grade-school education, Howard Sutton was a self-made man, eventually received his high-school equivalency degree in his 40s, and became a concrete specialist. The Suttons were strict Evangelical Christians who expected their children to follow a righteous path but also pull their weight by holding down part-time jobs and earning money for their clothes and spending money.

“All I ever wanted to be was a pitcher growing up,” said Sutton. “If you asked me where I wanted to play, I’d have said in the middle of the diamond. Whose diamond, I don’t care.”4 Those words characterized Sutton’s approach to baseball from the time he started playing in pastures and local sandlots to Little League through 24 years of professional baseball. Pitching was always more important for Sutton than the team whose jersey he wore. Abandoning any pretense of playing other positions by the age of 11 to concentrate exclusively on pitching, Sutton fell under the tutelage of his sixth-grade teacher, Henry Roper, who had hurled in the New York Giants organization. Roper taught the pre-teen Sutton how to throw a curveball and tutored him in the basics of mechanics and delivery. “I learned to throw a curve by raising my index finger,” remembered Sutton, “and digging the tip into the ball.”5

Sutton played football, basketball, and baseball at Tate High School, but vacated the hardwood and gridiron after his sophomore year to focus on pitching. Growing up more than 700 miles from the nearest big-league city (St. Louis), Sutton was a self-described New York Yankees fan, who devoured games on his transistor radio. He idolized three pitchers, Dick Donovan for his intensity, Camilo Pascual for his knee-buckling curve, and Whitey Ford for his strategy.6 Modeling his game on his trio of heroes, the 6-foot-1, yet lanky and thin Sutton posted a 21-7 slate in his three varsity seasons at Tate.7 In his junior year (1962), he led the Aggies to the Class A state championship, tossing a 13-inning complete-game two-hitter with 11 strikeouts to defeat West Palm Beach Forest Hill in the finals.8

Disappointed that he received no professional offers despite his prep success, Sutton pursued his passion. Following graduation in 1963, he was a Connie Mack all-star, and then enrolled at Gulf Coast Community College in Panama City, Florida.9 That spring he posted a 5-4 slate while fanning 130 in 90 innings, earning an invitation to play for Sioux Falls in the highly competitive, amateur Basin League, which featured some of the best collegiate players in the country.10 Even more important than his 5-5 record and 118 punchouts in 90 frames was the national exposure Sutton achieved. His summer baseball season concluded with his participation with the Wyoming (Michigan) Colts in the National Baseball Congress Tournament in Wichita, Kansas. Sutton (3-1) was named to the all-tournament team, which also included Seaver, star of the champion Alaska Panhandlers.

By the end of the summer, Sutton had a major decision to make. His bona fides established, Sutton had attracted scouts from at least nine major-league teams. He was especially impressed with Los Angeles Dodger scouts Leon Hamilton, Monty Basgall, and Burt Wells, their honesty and humble attitudes, and the club’s long and distinguished tradition of grooming top-notch hurlers. They also informed Sutton that baseball’s inaugural amateur draft would take place the following year, and that he might be able to assert more control over the financial aspects of his signing if he returned to school for another year. In the end the choice was an easy one: Sutton eschewed higher offers and signed with the Dodgers for an estimated $15,000 bonus and stipends for college, in September 1964.11

Sutton reported to the Dodgers’ minor-league spring camp in Vero Beach, Florida, in spring 1965. Just 19 years old, he quickly emerged as the best prospect in the Dodgers system, eventually packing on some weight to 185. He debuted with Santa Barbara in the Class-A California League, retiring 19 of the first 20 batters he faced in his first game, en route to a complete-game five-hit victory.12 Two months later, he was the circuit’s top twirler (8-1, 1.50), and earned a bump to Albuquerque in the Double-A Texas League. Another auspicious debut, a complete-game, eight-inning three-hitter with 13 strikeouts in the first game of a doubleheader, led to a 15-6 record, culminating with the league championship. Sutton recalled that his first year in pro ball introduced him to two skippers who profoundly impacted his career: his first manager, former Dodgers catcher Norm Sherry, who helped him relax and enjoy the game; and Roy Hartsfield, a stern tactician and student of the game.

Sutton reported to skipper Walter Alston and his first spring training with the Dodgers in 1966. Coming off a dramatic World Series title in seven games over the Minnesota Twins, the club was without Koufax and Don Drysdale, both of whom were holding out. Sutton assumed he’d be demoted once the aces reported [which they did in mid-March] and got into game shape; however, he quickly proved he was big-league-ready. He tossed seven innings of seven-hit ball, yielding three runs, but just two earned and fanned seven in his debut, a 4-2 loss to the Houston Astros on April 14 in Los Angeles. Four days later, he avenged that loss, holding the Astros to three runs in eight frames to notch his first victory, 6-3, in the Astrodome. On May 11 he blanked the Philadelphia Phillies in Connie Mack Stadium to record his first shutout, drawing raves from Phillies star Johnny Callison, who called him the best rookie since Juan Marichal.13 Dodgers VP Fresco Thompson praised Sutton for his “great natural talent” and his calm demeanor, noting that the rookie was “completely composed, both on and off the diamond.”14

With the Dodgers in a tight three-team pennant race with the Pittsburgh Pirates and San Francisco Giants, “Little D” (as the LA press liked to call Sutton in a nod to Big D Drysdale) pulled a muscle in his right forearm on September 5, endangering the team’s pennant aspirations.15 Plagued by arm pain, Sutton made only four more starts, logging just 14⅓ innings, for the rest of the season, but the Dodgers picked up the slack, moved into first place on September 11 and secured the pennant on the last day of the season. The Dodgers were swept by the Baltimore Orioles in the World Series. Sutton did not play because of his injury, which also prevented him from joining the club on its subsequent goodwill junket and baseball trip to Japan.16 Despite the injury, the 21-year-old’s rookie season was a resounding success. He split his 24 decisions, posted a 2.99 ERA in 225⅔ innings, and fanned 209, seventh most in the NL; however, his excellent control, walking just 52, garnered the most praise from players and coaches.

Noted for his command, Sutton’s pitching arsenal consisted of five pitches. He initially relied early in his career on his fastball with good movement and a curve, one of baseball’s best benders, which he threw on any count. He eventually added a slider, screwball, and a changeup that improved as he matured. He threw all the pitches with the same delivery and motion, like a fastball, varying only the grip for each pitch, which he hid effectively behind his hip.17 “My pitching philosophy didn’t change from the time I was a kid,” quipped Sutton. “I believed in changing speeds, throwing strikes and throwing a curveball for a strike when behind in the count.”18

Never overpowering, despite striking out at least 200 batters in a season five times in his first eight campaigns, Sutton relied on technique, precision, strategy, and his pinpoint accuracy for his success. He challenged hitters up in the strike zone and was prone to the gopher ball, but kept batters guessing. “He emits an air of professionalism,” said Burt Hooton about his Dodgers teammate (1975-1980). “He is the same whether he getting his tail kicked or tearing up the joint.”19

Opponents routinely claimed Sutton doctored pitches, scuffing them, which led to umpires checking him for sandpaper or other defilers, though nothing was ever found. Like Gaylord Perry, noted for his occasional wet one, Sutton exploited the opponents’ charges of cheating, effectively creating a phantom pitch for them to worry about.

Sutton’s progress over the next four seasons (1967-1970) was sporadic as the Dodgers organization underwent changes, including Koufax’s retirement after the 1966 season, the end of GM Buzzie Bavasi’s era (1950-1968), and the beginning of Al Campanis’s tenure. The offensively challenged Dodgers dropped to 73-89 in 1967, their worst season since 1944, then 76-86 in 1968, marking the first time the club had posted consecutive losing seasons since 1933-1938. Like his team, Sutton slumped; his ERA spiked to 3.95 (fourth highest in the NL) in his sophomore season. The front office entertained ideas of trading the hurler for a much-needed bat in the offseason, which Sutton spent fulfilling military obligation in the US Army Reserve, serving as a private at Fort Gordon, Georgia.20 Discharged in mid-March, Sutton reported to camp late, struggled, and began the season with Triple-A Spokane (Pacific Coast League) to get in shape.

In the “Year of the Pitcher,” when the NL batted a collective .243 and teams scored just 3.43 runs per game, Sutton started off slowly and was ultimately demoted to the bullpen after a second consecutive sluggish start, on June 20. Perhaps feeling more empowered in his third season, Sutton was livid, and displayed the sharp tongue that would characterize his career, barking, “Because I’m owned by this team, I’ll have to do what I am told or I’m out of baseball.”21 Sutton was too good to rust in the pen, though, and after a five-week exile, returned to the rotation in late July and put together a strong stretch over the final two months of the season (7-7, 2.06 ERA in 109 innings) to finish with his second consecutive 11-15 record, and a 2.60 ERA.

Shortly after the conclusion of the 1968 season, Sutton married Patti, a local Southern Californian whom he had met the previous year.22 They had two sons, Daron, born in 1969, and Staci, four years later.

The Dodgers entered a new phase of prolonged success beginning in 1969 when major-league baseball expanded to 24 teams, finishing with an 85-77 slate and in fourth place in the newly formed NL West in the first season of realignment. On a staff featuring 20-game winners Claude Osteen and Bill Singer, Sutton was often overlooked. On May 1 he tossed the first of his five career one-hitters, yielding only a one-out eighth-inning double to Jim Davenport to beat the Giants at Candlestick Park, as part of his streak of 27⅓ consecutive scoreless innings, the second longest in the NL that season.23 Sutton compiled what proved to be his career highs in starts (41) and innings (293⅓), yet produced a losing record for the third straight season (17-18) and an ERA (3.47), when adjusted to consider ballpark factors, was higher than league average.24

In 1970 the Dodgers finished in a distant second place behind the Big Red Machine of Cincinnati, while Sutton fashioned another similar season, including a worse than league-average adjusted ERA. The highlight of his 15 victories was a stellar 10-inning, five-hit shutout with a career-best 12 punchouts (achieved six times) on July 17 at Dodger Stadium against the New York Mets and Seaver, who hurled nine scoreless on two days’ rest after having started and hurled three scoreless innings in the All-Star Game.

After five seasons in the majors, Sutton proved to be a dependable workhorse, logging more innings than any NL hurler except bluebloods Fergie Jenkins, Gibson, Marichal, Perry, and teammate Osteen, yet the Alabaman was far from a star. Sutton had a losing record (66-73) and his ERA (3.45) when adjusted was worse than league average.25 All of that changed beginning in 1971, when Sutton put together the first of seven consecutive stellar seasons, which coincided with the Dodgers’ re-emergence as one of the NL’s perennially top teams.

In 1971 the Dodgers engaged the Giants in an exciting pennant race that heated up in September, when Sutton emerged as an ace. However, he had started off the season poorly and fell to 1-5 (with a 4.60 ERA) on May 22, dropping his career record to 67-78. Dejected, suffering a crisis of confidence, and plagued by a sore elbow, he consulted an orthopedic doctor, but perhaps more importantly worked with pitching coach Red Adams to refine his mechanics. He switched to a more over-the-top delivery, rather from the three-quarters position, which put stress on his elbow.26

That change led to Sutton’s best season thus far (17-12 and the NL’s fifth-lowest ERA, 2.54), highlighted by going 5-1 in his seven starts in September, fanning 57 in 57 innings, walking just seven while posting a 1.74 ERA. With the Dodgers needing a victory and a Giants loss on the last day of the season to force a playoff, Sutton got the start and displayed his humor when he arrived at the park on September 30 with his hand wrapped in gauze, informing teammates and coaches that he had had an accident cooking.27 The 52,684 in Dodger Stadium sat quietly as Sutton tossed a six-hitter to beat the Astros, 2-1, emitting their loudest groan in the eighth when it was announced that Marichal and the Giants defeated the hapless San Diego Padres, 5-1.

The 27-year-old Sutton considered 1972 his “best” and “most consistent year,” helping the Dodgers to the NL’s best team ERA (2.78), but that couldn’t overcome a sluggish offense, resulting in a distant second-place finish to the Reds.28 Named Opening Day starter for the first of seven consecutive seasons, Sutton began his seventh big-league season by winning his first eight decisions, extending his winning streak to 11 games. Included was a stretch of 30⅔ consecutive scoreless innings, 10 of which resulted in a tough-luck no-decision against the Expos in Montreal despite yielding only one hit.

He was named to his first All-Star squad, tossing two scoreless frames and fanning two in the NL’s 4-3 win in 10 innings. He concluded the season with a sense of déjà vu, winning his last five decisions in September, highlighted by three consecutive shutouts as part of a career-best streak of 36 consecutive scoreless innings, the longest such streak in the NL that season. The second of those whitewashings, an 11-inning three-hitter with 11 punchouts against the Giants at Dodger Stadium on September 22, was the 100th victory of his career. Arguably the best game of his career, too, it was his longest career outing, subsequently matched twice, though both resulted in no-decisions.

Despite missing several starts due to the first player strike in baseball history, from April 1 to 13, canceling 86 games, Sutton finished with a 19-9 record, set career highs in complete games (18) and an NL-leading nine shutouts (which as of 2019 was still the Dodgers’ record for right-handers). He also led the NL in WHIP (0.913) for the first of four times in his career and fewest hits per nine innings (6.1) and finished tied with four others for fifth place in the Cy Young Award which the Phillies’ Steve Carlton (27 wins) won by garnering all 24 first-place votes.

Sutton posted similar numbers in 1973 (18-10, 2.42 ERA), but the Dodgers finished in second place for the fourth consecutive season. The tide turned in 1974, by which time a cadre of prospects from the club’s deep farm system, such as infielders Steve Garvey (who was named NL MVP in ’74), Davey Lopes, Bill Russell, and Ron Cey, had gained much-needed experience on the big-league level. Added to the mix were two offseason acquisitions, Jimmy Wynn (32 HRs, 108 RBIs) and rubber-armed, enigmatic reliever Mike Marshall (who set a big-league record by hurling in 106 games and won the Cy Young Award); as well as hard thrower Andy Messersmith (staff-best 20 wins), acquired from the California Angels two years earlier.

Sutton got off to a hot start, pitched a shutout on Opening Day and then added two consecutive blankings, including a one-hitter, to improve his record to 6-2 on May 14, before the bottom suddenly and completely unexpectedly fell out. Sutton fell into a deep slump, going more than two months without winning a start and posting a miserable 5.64 ERA in 14 starts from May 19 through July 20. Remarkably, the Dodgers maintained their first place standing. Critics claimed the 29-year-old was suddenly washed up, had lost his heater (which was never overwhelming to begin with, topping out at 88 or 89 MPH, according to Sutton29); or was tipping his pitches; or maybe hiding an injury.

Through it all, manager Alston stuck with his longtime hurler. In the era before teams employed mental skills coaches and psychologists, Sutton recognized that baseball was much more than a clash of talents. “[M]ost of us have similar abilities,” he said. “The differences are mental and emotional and the big thing is mental preparation. That’s where everything starts: the poise, the confidence, the concentration.”30 Sutton also believed his struggles resulted from his mental situation, and not from what his detractors charged.

Willing to try anything to end his slump, Sutton contacted L.A. hypnotist Arthur Ellen, who had helped former teammate Maury Wills, in late June. “I only saw him once,” said Sutton, who also revealed his initial skepticism because of his Christian Fundamentalist beliefs. “[B]ut after that I knew I could have a good time doing my job. … I credit Ellen for giving me back my ability to relax and pitch to my potential.”31

Sutton’s slump didn’t magically end after the first visit, but when it did, he transformed into one of baseball’s best hurlers, going 13-1 with a 2.17 ERA in his last 17 starts. The Dodgers withstood a serious challenge from the Reds in September and took their first NL West crown, in the 161st game of the season, on October 1 in Houston. Fittingly Sutton started the game and hurled five shutout innings before yielding to relievers, to pick up his 19th victory of the season in the NL-most 40th start and secure the Dodgers’ first postseason berth since his rookie campaign nine years earlier.

With the best record in baseball (102-60), the Dodgers were overwhelming favorites against the Pirates (88-74) in the NLCS. In Game One in the Steel City, Sutton shut out the Bucs on four hits, fanning six. Longtime L.A. sportswriter Jim Murray called it a “masterpiece,” adding that Sutton is the “most underrated pitcher in the league.”32 Four days later, in Tinsel Town, Sutton stamped the Dodgers’ ticket to the fall classic by a performance almost as good as his first, holding the Pirates to three hits in eight innings to pick up the win in a 12-1 laugher.

Widely predicted to capture their first title since 1965, the Dodgers met their match against the rough-and-tumble Oakland A’s, in search of their third straight World Series championship. Sutton yielded just five hits in eight strong innings to win Game Two, 3-2, in L.A., to even the Series, but that victory proved to be the Dodgers’ only one against their postseason-experienced adversaries. The A’s took the next three, including Game Five, which Sutton started. (He was removed for a pinch-hitter in the sixth, with the Dodgers trailing 2-0.)

The Dodgers’ hold on the NL West crown was short-lived as the Big Red Machine ran roughshod over the entire league in 1975 and 1976 to capture consecutive pennants and then became the first NL team to win consecutive World Series since the New York Giants in 1921-1922. Donning what became his signature man-permed, curly hair, Sutton produced a typical Sutton-esque season, going 16-13 in ’75, leading the NL in WHIP and strikeout-to-walk ratio for the first of three times in his career; he also hurled two scoreless innings in the All-Star Game. In 1976 he won 21 games (3.06 ERA), which included the most dominant stretch in his big-league career, going 14-1 with a 1.62 ERA from July 7 to September 27. He finished a distant third in voting for the Cy Young Award, behind winner Randy Jones (22-14, 2.74) of the Padres and the Mets’ Jerry Koosman (21-10, 2.69). With two games remaining in the ’76 season, 64-year-old Alston, feeling pressure from the front office, retired, ending his 23-year tenure as the Dodgers’ skipper.

Alston’s retirement marked a turning point in Sutton’s career, and especially with his relationship with the Dodgers. “Alston was the most secure, best man that I have ever met,” said Sutton, who appreciated how his skipper confronted problems behind closed doors instead of airing dirty laundry to the press.33 Furthermore, Alston’s quiet demeanor mirrored Sutton’s own introverted personality in some respects, and they formed a mutual trust, indeed respect, for one another.

Sutton was unimpressed when longtime Dodgers coach and scout Tommy Lasorda, who had served as interim skipper for the final two games of the ’76 season, was named permanent skipper in 1977. According to Ron Fimrite’s feature on Sutton in Sports Illustrated in 1982, Sutton mentioned to reporters that spring that he had wanted his former catcher Jeff Torborg as the club’s new manager, but knew it had been a foregone conclusion that Lasorda would land that job. The Dodgers’ senior member, Sutton was “not an ally” of the new manager, and disdained his “show-biz approach.”34

Lasorda’s rah-rah style clashed mightily with Sutton’s staid, conservative, introverted approach. The stage was set for some explosives in La-La Land, and Sutton was well beyond the point in his career that he would back down. Years after retiring, Sutton reflected on his relationship with Lasorda, and commented, “One regret I have is that Tommy and I never took a day, just the two of us, and sat down and explained our personalities to each other.”35

Sutton had a complex personality, to say the least. “Don’s the kind of guy you either like or you don’t,” quipped longtime Dodgers teammate Bill Russell.36 Reserved with his emotions, Sutton could be icy, blunt, and matter-of-fact with his criticism of teammates. “I am much more comfortable dealing internally with ideas than I am externally with people,” said Sutton, who gave the impression of being aloof, disinterested, stubborn, impatient, or cocky; some players objected to his religious convictions, leading to a standoffish attitude.37 “I don’t know that anybody here [with the Dodgers] was ever that close to Don,” said Ron Cey.38

Fimrite might have captured the intricacies and apparent contradictions of Sutton’s personality best, opining that the hurler “masks his seriousness about life and obsession with perfection with a blithe manner that the uninitiated might confuse with flippancy. He protects the vulnerable underside of his nature with the quickest wit in baseball.”39 On the other hand, Sutton never forgot his Alabama roots, poor upbringing, or religious grounding, referring to himself as “nothing more than a semipolished hick.”40 His brutal honesty and willingness to speak his mind led occasionally to combustible confrontations in a clubhouse filled with highly competitive, yet easily insulted athletes.

Lasorda led the Dodgers to consecutive NL pennants in 1977 and 1978, losing to the New York Yankees in the World Series each season. Sutton put up similar numbers in both campaigns, going 14-8 and 15-11 and logging about 240 innings; however, the tone of the seasons was drastically different. In the former, Sutton blazed through the first half of the season and was chosen to start his first All-Star Game. The 32-year-old tossed three scoreless innings and earned the victory in the NL’s 7-5 triumph at Yankee Stadium. It was his last of four All-Star appearances, during which he yielded just five hits and no runs in eight frames.

The Dodgers featured big bats with a quartet of sluggers with at least 30 home runs (Dusty Baker, Cey, Garvey, and Reggie Smith) and the majors’ best pitching staff, which led the baseball with a 3.22 team ERA, behind five starters who logged at least 212 innings (Sutton, Hooton, Tommy John, Rick Rhoden, and Doug Rau). After John, who led the staff with 20 wins, was hit hard in the opening-game loss to the Phillies in the NLCS, Sutton came to the rescue in Game Two, tossing a complete-game 7-1 victory.

Lasorda took no chances in the highly anticipated World Series with the Yankees, sending the club’s longtime stalwart to the mound in Game One in Yankee Stadium. Sutton fulfilled a lifelong dream of pitching in the “House that Ruth Built” in the fall classic but wasn’t overcome with emotions. “I approach play with more emotion than I do work,” he quipped. “I approach work analytically and logistically, not emotionally. It’s a day at the office.”41 Sutton went seven strong innings and was relieved in the top of the eighth after yielding the go-ahead run, 3-2. The Dodgers tied the game in the ninth before losing in the 12th.

Called on again in Game Five with the Bombers on the verge of their first title since 1962, Sutton calmly dispatched the Yankees, 10-4, tossing a complete game to win his fifth consecutive postseason decision. The next day, however, Reggie Jackson spanked home runs on three consecutive pitches, and Yankees were back on the top of the baseball world.

Lasorda wanted the Dodgers to project his cheerleader disposition and Hollywood feel-good family vibes, but Sutton never bled Dodger blue. “I never considered the Dodgers family,” he quipped in businesslike fashion. “I only have one family.”42 Behind the Dodgers’ façade, animosity was stirring, especially between the skipper and Sutton, who Lasorda apparently felt never was in his corner, but also between some of the players. And it wasn’t in Sutton’s DNA to placate his teammates.

The situation came to a head when Sutton was interviewed by sportswriter Thomas Boswell of the Washington Post. The hurler expressed his frustration that the baseball world seemed infatuated with “Steve Garvey, the All-American boy,” and bluntly called Smith the club’s best player the last two years, noting that he doesn’t get the attention because he doesn’t “smile all the time” and tells the truth, much like Sutton himself, which alienated people.43 Garvey confronted Sutton in front of his locker before a game at Shea Stadium in New York on August 20 and a brawl ensued. Sportswriter Milton Richman described it as “concentrated fury amounting to an almost homicidal desire to tear one another apart.”44 Players and coaches finally separated the two who emerged with scratches on their face and a red eye for Garvey, the result of a finger poke.45

That ugly episode aside, the Dodgers weren’t belting each other like the early 1970s A’s or even the champion Yankees. The Dodgers continued to roll, and once again led the NL in home runs and lowest team ERA in 1978. Their postseason results repeated the script from the previous year: They defeated the Phillies in four games in the NLCS and lost to the Yankees in six in the World Series. One major difference was Sutton, who was clobbered in all three of his postseason starts. Charged with the loss in each, he surrendered 17 runs (14 earned) and 24 hits in 17⅔ innings.

Over the next two seasons Sutton chipped away at Dodgers pitching records as the club slumped to a sub-.500-seaon in 1979 and then squandered a September lead to finish runner-up to the Houston Astros in 1980. En route to a 12-15 record in ’79, Sutton labored through eight innings, yielding nine hits and four runs (three earned) against the Reds at Riverfront Stadium on May 20 to record his 210th victory, thus breaking Drysdale’s cherished mark. The following season, the 35-year-old pitched his best and most consistent ball in five years, posting a 13-5 record, leading the majors in ERA (2.20) and WHIP (0.989), and ranking second in the NL by allowing just 6.9 hits per nine innings.

Granted free agency after the 1980 season, Sutton signed a four-year pact with the Astros. “It was kind of exciting,” he said about the challenge of a new team. “I think I reached a stage with the Dodgers where they really didn’t appreciate what I was delivering for them, and I didn’t appreciate how nice it was to play there.”46 Sutton left his mark on the Dodgers, setting team records for wins (233), starts (533), innings pitched (3,816⅓), strikeouts (2,696), and shutouts (52), all of which still stood as of 2019.

After 15 years of stability in Dodger blue, Sutton was often on the move in his last eight seasons (1981-1988), playing for four different teams, plus the Dodgers again, and was involved in two late-season trades to clubs needing an extra arm for a postseason push.

Sutton’s stint with the Astros lasted less than two full seasons, yet they were packed with drama — and not the positive kind. A strike by the players and their union led to the first work stoppage in baseball since 1972 and wiped out approximately one-third of the season. Teaming with another veteran, Nolan Ryan, Sutton (11-9) fortified baseball’s best staff, and led the NL once again in WHIP (1.015). With the Astros just a victory away from clinching the second-half championship (as part of a convoluted attempt to generate interest and extend the postseason), Sutton was hit on the right knee by a pitch from the Dodgers’ Jerry Reuss at Dodger Stadium on October 2.47 The result was a fracture and Sutton missed the Division Series, which the Astros lost to the Dodgers.

In the offseason, Sutton gave an interview to longtime Los Angeles Times sportswriter Ross Newhan that turned him into a persona non grata in Houston.48 Sutton recounted a conversation with Astros GM Al Rosen, expressing his desire to finish his career on the West Coast in order to be with his family, who remained in the L.A. area, and business interests, and had no desire to live in Texas, though he didn’t consider his signing to be a mistake. Once Houston papers picked up the story, Sutton and Rosen, who had prematurely ended his career to spend more time with his family, began verbally sparring, with Sutton apparently going so far as to suggest that he would return a signing bonus in order to be freed from his contract.49

Sutton was booed loudly by Astros fans in his first start of the season, but the catcalls about a spoiled millionaire soon morphed into cheers when Sutton rolled off seven straight victories after losing his season debut. Sutton (13-8, 3.00 ERA) was back in form, but the Astros struggled, playing under .500 ball. In a salary dump at the trading deadline, the Astros sent the 37-year-old to the Milwaukee Brewers on August 30 for Kevin Bass, Frank DiPino, and Mike Madden.

Landing in the middle of an exciting divisional race, the old graybeard immediately shored up the Brewers’ pitching corps, which had been led by Pete Vuckovich and Mike Caldwell, but was without reigning AL Cy Young Award and MVP winner Rollie Fingers, out with an arm injury. The Brewers were a raucous, home-run-smashing team, tabbed Harvey’s Wallbangers in honor of skipper Harvey Kuenn, and featured eventual AL 1982 MVP Robin Yount, Cecil Cooper, Gorman Thomas, Ben Oglivie, and Paul Molitor.

Sutton went the distance in his first start, losing 4-2 to the Cleveland Indians in the second game of a doubleheader on September 2 at County Stadium, then blanked the Detroit Tigers on seven hits for his first AL victory five days later. The outcome of the division crown rested on the last series of the season, with the second-place Orioles in Baltimore. The Brewers lost the first three games, outscored 26-7, creating a tie in the standings and setting up a winner-take-all finale on October 3. In the most important regular-season game of his life, Sutton was at his best, tossing eight strong innings, yielding just two runs, as the Wallbangers bashed their way to a 10-2 victory and the East Division crown.

The Brewers’ struggles returned in the ALCS against the California Angels, who took the first two games of the best-of-five series in the Southern California sun. In another win-or-go-home game, Sutton went 7⅔ innings, yielding all three of his runs in the eighth, but emerged victorious, 5-3, in a courageous outing. “We were shut down for seven innings by one of the cleverest pitchers of the last 15 years,” quipped Angels skipper Gene Mauch. “He’s capable of taking the [seams] straight out of the ball without defacing it. Our players didn’t say a word about it. They know what the man is capable of doing with finger dexterity.”50 Reggie Jackson, who faced Sutton in the 1977 and 1978 World Series, agreed. “I’ve never seen him better. He had control of four pitches. He beat me fair and square. I didn’t have one good swing.”51

The 1982 World Series featured a clash of styles: The Brewers’ long ball vs. the St. Louis Cardinals’ speed and small ball. In a back-and-forth Series, with plenty of unexpected twists, Sutton fared poorly in both of his starts, both of which took place in the Gateway City, yielding a combined 12 hits and 11 runs (9 earned) in just 10⅓ innings, picking up the loss in Game Six. The Redbirds won the final two contests of the Series to capture their first title since 1967.

In his two full seasons with the Brewers, Sutton went 22-25 while the Brewers finished in fifth and then the cellar of the AL East. Nonetheless Sutton had fond memories and experiences of Beer City, perhaps feeling at home in a gritty, battle-tested, and workmanlike town that reminded him of his own personality. “Milwaukee was the greatest place I ever played,” he cooed, praising the locals as sincere, genuine, and authentic. “It’s a blue-collar lifestyle and work ethic that is very simple. There’s no pretentiousness. I loved pitching in County Stadium.”52

In December 1984 Sutton was traded to the Oakland A’s in a multiplayer transaction. Just 20 victories shy of 300 to begin his 19th season, the 40-year-old proved to be the staff’s most effective hurler, notching 13 victories before the A’s sent him in a post-trade-deadline waiver deal to the Angels, who were battling the Kansas City Royals for the West crown. Sutton won his first two starts for the Angels, who eventually faded down the stretch, losing eight of their final 13 to finish runner-up to the Royals by one game.

In a quest for what he considered his “inevitable” 300th victory, Sutton began the 1986 campaign with the Angels so poorly that many skeptics wondered if he could win five more games.53 He lost his first three decisions and posted a staggering 9.12 ERA in his first five starts before winning a game. Number 299 came in dramatic fashion on June 9 when he faced 306-game winner Tom Seaver of the Chicago White Sox and emerged victorious, spinning a two-hitter at Comiskey Park to record what proved to be the final shutout of his career.

Nine days later, in front of more than 37,000 raucous fans at the Big A, Anaheim Stadium, the self-described “mechanic” and “unspectacular grinder” became the 19th pitcher in major-league history to win 300 games. Praising Sutton as a “working class hero,” L.A. sportswriter Mike Penner wrote that the right-hander “did it his way, shunning the bright lights and sticking to a nose-to-the-grindstone work ethic,” in a performance that mirrored the pitcher’s personality: a complete-game, three-hit, 5-1 win.

Yet another historic matchup occurred 10 days later in Anaheim, when Sutton faced a 304-game winner, knuckleballer Phil Niekro of the Indians. The matchup marked the first time 300-game winners had faced one another since Tim Keefe and Pud Galvin on July 21, 1892. Fittingly, Sutton and Niekro pitched to a draw, saddled with no-decisions, though the Alabaman won the statistics contest, going seven strong innings and yielding three runs, while a wild Niekro logged a wobbly 6⅓ innings, also surrendering three runs, but 10 hits and seven walks.

Sutton finished his fairy-tale-like season with a 15-11 record while the Angels cruised to the West title. In the ALCS against the highly favored Boston Red Sox, Sutton got the call in Game Four, dueling eventual 1986 Cy Young Award winner Roger Clemens to a draw, throwing four-hit, one-run ball over 6⅓ innings in an Angels victory in 11 innings in Anaheim. Sutton’s second appearance of the series was in Game Seven, in Boston, when he relieved John Candelaria in the fourth, trailing 7-0, tossing 3⅓ innings of mop-up duty, yielding one run.

After a rough season with the Angels in 1987 (11-11, 4.70 ERA) and missing the 200-inning mark for the first time in his career (191⅔) excluding the strike-shortened season, Sutton came full circle in 1988, signing with the Dodgers for his 23rd season. It was obvious that the 43-year-old had no more gas in the tank as he labored through 16 starts, landed on the disabled list with a sprained elbow, for the first and only time in his career, and was released on August 10.54 “It was a mistake,” admitted Sutton about his return. “It ended up being a depressing way to end my relationship with the Dodgers.”55

Sutton retired with a 324-256 record, plus six more victories in the postseason, and a 3.26 ERA; his adjusted ERA was 108, or 8% better than league average. He also threw 58 shutouts, 10th most in big-league history; among pitchers who began their career after 1920, only Warren Spahn, Ryan, Seaver, and Bert Blyleven tossed more. Sutton also tossed at least nine scoreless innings on seven other occasions for which he received a no-decision. Never a threat at the plate, Sutton batted a paltry .144 and did not hit a home run in 1,354 lifetime at-bats.

Not expected to be a first-ballot Hall of Famer, Sutton garnered 56.8% of the writers’ vote in his initial year of eligibility in 1994, with 75% was required for enshrinement. His totals steadily rose and in 1998 he was elected to the Hall of Fame with 81.6% of the votes, and was the only player elected by the baseball writers that year. Larry Doby, who integrated the American League in 1947 with the Cleveland Indians, was elected by the Veterans Committee.

The news came after an anxious period in Sutton’s life. In November 1996, his daughter with his second wife, Mary, was born four months premature, though gradually she became stronger and was discharged from Piedmont Hospital in Atlanta in March.56 Sutton’s Hall of Fame plaque depicts him with a Dodgers cap; the Dodgers retired his number 20 in 1998.

Sutton made a smooth transition into broadcasting immediately after retiring from baseball. He had begun laying the foundations for his career behind the microphone as early as 1969 when he served as a disc jockey at a radio station in Burbank in the offseason and had been a television sports commentator periodically in the next decade. After broadcasting Dodgers games in 1989, he began a long and distinguished career doing play-by-play and analysis with the Atlanta Braves in 1990 until 2006. He returned to the club in 2009, after a two-year stint with the Washington Nationals, and then called Braves games for another decade through 2019.

In 2015 the Braves inducted Sutton into their Hall of Fame. “Don has been an integral part of the Braves family for decades, and is most deserving of this honor,” said Braves President John Schuerholz. “Generations of Braves fans have been wowed by his knowledge and charmed by his ability to bring life to the broadcast. He is undoubtedly beloved throughout Braves Country.”57

He died at the age of 75 on January 18, 2021.

Sources

In addition to the sources cited in the Notes, the author also accessed Retrosheet.org, Baseball-Reference.com, the SABR Minor Leagues Database, accessed online at Baseball-Reference.com, SABR.org, The Sporting News archive via Paper of Record, the player’s Hall of Fame file, the on-line archives via Newspaper.com, and Ancestry.com.

Notes

1 Robert S Weider, ‘Don Sutton: An Unsung Achiever among Mound Elite,” Baseball Digest, September 1985: 35.

2 Bill Ballew, “Sutton Eyes Hall after Successful Career,” Sports Collectors Digest, February 1, 1991: 102.

3 “Don and Patti Sutton Were Striking Out Till They Got Help — And Now They’re Safe at Home,” People, April 5, 1982: 90.

4 Ballew: 102.

5 Ron Fimrite, “‘God May Be a Football Fan’,” Sports Illustrated, July 12, 1982: 71.

6 Kevin Huard, “SCD Interviews 300-Game Winner Don Sutton,” Sports Collectors Digest, February 1, 1991: 105.

7 Ronnie Joyce, “Former Aggie, Sutton Sign Dodger Contract,” Pensacola News-Journal, September 13, 1964: 37.

8 Bill Kirby, “Northeast Wins Class AA Title,” Tampa Tribune, June 15, 1962: C1. Sutton faced Harry Dahl, who also went the distance, fanning 16. Dahl later signed with the Los Angeles Dodgers, on the recommendation of scout Leon Hamilton, in June 1964, presaging Sutton’s signing by about three months. See “Dahl Signs with Dodgers for ‘Substantial’ Bonus,” Palm Beach Post-Times, June 7, 1964: D1. He went 15-15 in two seasons in the minors.

9 “Connie Mack All-Star Team,” Pensacola News-Journal, July 31, 1963: 2.

10 All statistics from Sutton’s junior-college, Basin League, and NBC participation are from Ronnie Joyce.

11 Frank Finch, “Scouts’ Sales Talk Landed Don Sutton.” Los Angeles Times, July 7, 1966: III: 4.

12 Associated Press, “Santa Barbara Rookie Pitcher Impresses in Cal League Opener,” Reno News-Gazette, April 15, 1965: 13.

13 Ray Kelly, “Freshman Hurler Earned Starter’s Diploma,” Philadelphia Bulletin, May 12, 1965.

14 Bob Hunter, “L.A.’s New Big D Sutton Death to Foes,” The Sporting News, May 14, 1966: 3.

15 Frank Finch, “Sutton Hurt as Dodgers Whip Giants,” Los Angeles Times, September 6, 1966: III, 1.

16 “Don Sutton Skips Trip to Rest Arm,” Los Angeles Times, October 12, 1966: III, 1.

17 Weider: 32.

18 Huard: 104.

19 Fimrite: 68.

20 Wilt Browning, “Grenade Explodes Sutton’s Confidence,” Atlanta Constitution, December 6, 1967: 2-D.

21 George Lederer, “Sutton Saves Win, but Hates Work,” Independent Press-Telegram (Long Beach, California), June 23, 1968: S-2.

22 “Don and Patti Sutton Were Striking Out Till They Got Help — And Now They’re Safe At Home.”

23 Sutton streak of 27⅓ innings (April 23 to May 6) was second to the Chicago Cubs Ken Holtzman’s 33⅔ from May 6 to 24.

24 Sutton’s adjusted earned-run average (ERA+) in 1969 was 96; league average is 100.

25 His five-year adjusted ERA was 95.

26 Bob Hunter, “No. 20-Win Button in Sutton’s Goal,” The Sporting News, May 13, 1972: 3.

27 Ron Rapoport, “Dodgers Miss Despite Final Triumph,” Los Angeles Times, October 1, 1971: III, 7.

28 Ballew: 102.

29 Weider: 31.

30 “N.L. Flashes,” The Sporting News, June 22, 1974: 22.

31 Ross Newhan, “Sutton: 1974 Was Entrancing,” Los Angeles Times, January 16, 1975: III, 1.

32 Jim Murray, “Sutton’s Masterpiece Gets the Quiet Awe It Deserves,” Los Angeles Times, October 6, 1974: III, 1.

33 Ballew: 101.

34 Fimrite: 72.

35 Ross Newhan, “Little D’s Big Day,” Los Angeles Times, July 26, 1998.

36 Fimrite: 75.

37 Weider: 32.

38 Fimrite: 75.

39 Fimrite: 67.

40 Ibid.

41 United Press Internaional, “Win or Lose, Dodgers’ Sutton WILL Have Fun!” Valley News (Van Nuys, California), October 11, 1977: 12.

42 Fimrite: 73.

43 An excerpt of Thomas Boswell’s article from the Washington Post was reprinted in “Morning Briefings,” Los Angeles Times, August 18, 1978: III, 2.

44 “Morning Briefings,” Los Angeles Times, August 23, 1978: III, 2.

45 The entire episode and its aftermath were recounted by Scott Ostler, “Suddenly, the Hugging Turns to Punching,” Los Angeles Times, August 21, 1978: III, 2.

46 Ballew: 102.

47 Mark Heisler, “Astros Lose Sutton, Game,” Los Angeles Times, October 3, 1981: III, 1.

48 Ross Newhan, “Sutton Talks of Coming Home,” Los Angeles Times, February 18, 1982: III, 4.

49 Fimrite: 79

50 Ross Newhan, “Sutton Utilizes Twilight Zone to Stall Angels.” Los Angeles Times, October 9, 1982: III, 1

51 Ibid.

52 Ballew: 102.

53 Mike Penner, “Sutton Is on the Button — 300th Is a 3-Hitter,” Los Angeles Times, June 19, 1986: III, 1.

54 Sam McManis, “Dodgers Hand Sutton His Walking Papers,” Los Angeles Times, August 11, 1988: III, 1.

55 Balfour.

56 Jill Lieber, “Baby’s Struggle Preoccupies Suttons,” USA Today, January 5, 1998.

57 Phil W. Hudson, “Braves to Induct Legendary Broadcaster Don Sutton into Hall of Fame,” Atlanta Business Chronicle, April 20, 2015.

On August 26, 1995, Greg Maddux was at Wrigley Field in Chicago, formerly his home stadium. Now a member of the Atlanta Braves, Maddux was on the verge of tying a major-league record with his 16th consecutive road victory. With two out in the top of the third, Maddux singled to left, starting a five-run rally. He took the mound in the bottom of the inning with a 5-0 lead. In the press box, a writer muttered, “This is like giving a 15-0 lead to a regular human being.”1

The comment reflected the dominance Maddux had established in the 1990s and the awe and wonder in which he was held as he reached the peak of his career. Maddux got his win in this game — and another five before the season closed. He became the first pitcher to win four consecutive Cy Young Awards. In 1994 and 1995, Maddux posted an earned-run average that was minuscule in any circumstances, historic in relation to the league ERA each year.

Gregory Alan Maddux was born April 14, 1966, in San Angelo, Texas, where his dad was stationed at the time. Dave Maddux had graduated from high school in Decatur County, Indiana, in 1957 and joined the US Air Force, where he was involved in accounting and finance for 22 years. When his girlfriend, Linda, graduated a year later, the couple was married.2 A daughter, Terri Lynn, was born in 1959 while Dave was stationed at Elmendorf Air Force Base in Anchorage.

The family was at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton, Ohio, when son Mike was born in 1961. After two years in Taiwan, the Madduxes were stateside again when Greg was born. Soon after, with the Vietnam War going on, Dave had a one-year tour in Thailand. Linda took the kids back to Decatur County, where a number of family members lived.3

When Dave returned from Thailand, the transfers continued — to Minot, North Dakota, for a year; Riverside, California, for three years; and Spain for another three years. It was in Spain that the Maddux children were most active in sports. Terri was on the track team in high school and continued her love of running, including marathons, through her life. The boys participated in football. All three played basketball.

On the diamond, Terri, like most girls, was shunted away from baseball and into softball. Mike and Greg played in a sanctioned Little League. “Kids would come home from practice in the hot sun, and the first thing they would do is head outside into the yard to play more baseball in the hot sun,” Linda said. “Finally, I came to the realization that they were doing what they wanted to do. And they all survived.”

Dave Maddux got his final transfer in August 1976, to Nellis Air Force Base in Las Vegas. He eventually received orders to move back to Elmendorf Air Force Base. Linda recalled that once they would have embraced this assignment. “When we were kids we had decided we would want to go to Elmendorf to retire,” she said. “By this time, we had two kids in college, and we wouldn’t consider leaving them behind.”4 Instead, Dave retired from the military and became a poker dealer at various casinos in Las Vegas.

Terri was starting her junior year at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas (UNLV), at this time, and Mike was entering his first year at the University of Texas, El Paso. As for Greg, he found himself in a different school district from where his siblings had been, at Rancho High School, which had served those living at the military base. With Dave a civilian, the Madduxes moved to the southeast side of Las Vegas, and Greg attended Valley High School.

Greg played junior-varsity basketball, as Mike had done, but both brothers were discouraged from the sport by coaches, who wanted them to focus on their pitching potential in baseball. During Maddux’s junior year, Valley High School won the state baseball championship under coach Rodger Fairless.

Beyond what he learned from Fairless, Maddux had a tutor in Ralph Medar, a former scout, who oversaw workouts and organized pickup games on Sunday mornings in Las Vegas. “Ralph was the first pitching coach I ever had,” Maddux told John McMurray for an article in Baseball Digest. “He worked with me when I was 15 years old, and he taught me that movement was more important than velocity. He helped me make the ball move and sink as opposed to seeing how hard I could throw it. I think I was fortunate to learn that lesson at such a young age.”5

Maddux didn’t turn heads with out-of-this-world stuff, a blazing fastball or a 12-to-6 curveball. Never having had the luxury of such gifts, Maddux instead learned to pitch. Throughout his career, he was known for his control, late movement on his pitches, and knowing what he was doing. From an early age, Maddux established his reputation for being a cerebral pitcher, studying hitters and getting them out on pitches that hardly seemed imposing on their way to the plate — at least the first half of the way.

Maddux planned on attending the University of Arizona in Tucson and playing for Jerry Kindall, who had won two national championships as a coach and was on his way to a third. Linda remembers how impressed she was when meeting Kindall. “We had heard that Jerry took good care of his pitchers,” she said, adding that Kindall was known for being “not so intent on winning that he would burn out his pitchers.”6

However, Maddux was drafted in the second round by the Chicago Cubs in June 1984, and the bonus offered was enough that two weeks later he decided to skip college and sign a pro contract. He put the bonus money aside, in case baseball didn’t work out and he wanted to go back to college and lived off his minor-league salary in addition to money he had saved during summer jobs he worked at Sears and Wendy’s in Las Vegas.

Maddux progressed through the minors with the steady rhythm that defined his work on the mound: rookie league in 1984, Class A in 1985, and a three-level rise the following season, from Double-A to Triple-A to the majors as a September call-up.

Maddux made his major-league debut as a pinch-runner for the Cubs in the 17th inning of a game against Houston on September 3, a game that had started the day before and was suspended by darkness. He stayed in the game and pitched the 18th inning, giving up a run and taking the loss. Four days later, he was the starter against Cincinnati and went the distance in an 11-3 win, which stopped a seven-game Chicago losing streak.

Maddux made five starts for the Cubs in 1986, the last one at Philadelphia. The opposing starter was his brother Mike, who had also reached the majors that season. Greg prevailed in this game, winning 8-3.

Opponents in 1986, Greg and Mike became teammates for the first time after the 1987 season, playing winter ball in Maracaibo, Venezuela. The pitching coach was Dick Pole, who had worked with Greg in the minors and would again with the Cubs. Pole is often credited with teaching Maddux the value of a groundout. “Dick always told me. ‘You don’t have to strike him out, you just got to get him out,’” Maddux said.7

Pole was also discovering in Maddux a fearlessness on the mound, one that allowed him to throw any pitch in any situation. Pole said that when he was a pitching coach for other teams, he warned that Maddux would throw a changeup on a full count in the ninth. Invariably, however, batters would still get caught looking in these situations.8

Maddux had one more brief stint in the minors, in 1987, and then was up for good. He had a great start in 1988, earning a berth on the All-Star team, before cooling off. After a slow start in 1989, he picked it up. Combined, he had 37 wins and an ERA of 3.07 for the two years.

In 1992, Maddux had 10 wins by early July and was picked for the All-Star Game, in which he relieved starter Tom Glavine of Atlanta, who had a 13-3 record and seemed on his way to a second consecutive Cy Young Award. However, Maddux was outstanding over the remainder of the year, finishing the season with a 2.18 ERA, third in the majors, and leading major-league pitchers with 268 innings pitched. Although Wins Above Replacement (WAR) was not yet in wide use, later analyses showed that Maddux led all players in 1992 with a WAR of 9.4 (9.2 as a pitcher).9 Maddux got the Cy Young Award, and Glavine finished second.

Maddux was a free agent after the 1992 season and was the top player on the market. His agent, Scott Boras, was negotiating with Cubs general manager Larry Himes and, characteristically, was expecting top dollar. The Cubs were offering a five-year contract for $27.5 million (guaranteed with another $1.5 million in incentives). When Maddux didn’t sign right away, the Cubs signed free agent Jose Guzman and appeared to back off on their offer to Maddux. The New York Yankees topped all offers to Maddux at $34 million (reportedly increased to $37.5 million10), and Maddux seemed ready to go to the Bronx. A late entry by Atlanta at $28 million caught his attention, and Maddux signed with the Braves.

Maddux had a few reasons for signing for less money than what he could have gotten from the Yankees, including that he thought Atlanta would be a better place to raise a family than New York. Maddux had married Kathy Ronnow, whom he had known since high school, in 1988. By the end of 1993, they had a daughter, Amanda Paige (who goes by Paige). In 1997 they had a son, Chase.

A player departing a team as a free agent often leaves hard feelings with fans, and Maddux was back at Wrigley Field for the season opener in 1993. He wasn’t fazed by the booing he received as the Braves won the game, 1-0, with Maddux outdueling the Cubs’ Mike Morgan (who was also a graduate of Valley High School in Las Vegas).

Although he understood the fans’ reaction, Maddux was hurt by comments made by former teammates, such as Ryne Sandberg, about his signing with the Braves. The charges included that he had planned to sign with the Braves all along and used the Cubs (and then the Yankees) to get a larger offer. Maddux said he made repeated calls to the Cubs during the final stage of negotiations and if the team would have put its original offer back on the table, he would have considered it “heavily.”11 (Unbeknownst to Maddux at the time of his final call, the Cubs had just signed free-agent Randy Myers. The Cubs had also signed another pitcher, Dan Plesac. According to Himes, “We went over the numbers on those,” meaning there wasn’t money left for Maddux.)12

What didn’t work out for the Cubs became a boon to the Braves. Maddux was eventually called by Houston general manager Gerry Hunsicker, “The greatest free agent signing in baseball history.”

Atlanta pitching coach Leo Mazzone said, “When we signed Maddux, I didn’t realize at the time it was going to be the greatest free agent signing in the history of the game. But I knew I was going to get a lot smarter, real quick.”13

Maddux was joining a team that had won the last two National League pennants with a rotation that had Glavine, a former and future Cy Young recipient; John Smoltz, a future Cy Young recipient; and another top young pitcher, lefthander Steve Avery. Not surprisingly, the Braves staff allowed the fewest runs in the National League in 1993. With a strong lineup — including shortstop Jeff Blauser and outfielders David Justice and Ron Gant — the Braves were near the top in runs scored, as well. The one team in their division to rival them in both categories, the San Francisco Giants, battled the Braves to the end. Maddux was the winning pitcher in the Braves’ penultimate game, and the next day Glavine was the winner while the Giants were losing. Atlanta, with 104 wins, beat out the Giants by a game for the title in the National League West.

Steve Avery started the first game of the playoffs, which the Braves lost to the Philadelphia Phillies in 10 innings. Maddux, fully rested for Game 2, pitched seven strong innings as the Braves tied the series. The Phillies won two of the next three, and the Braves faced elimination in Game 6, with Maddux back on the mound. This time he didn’t make it through the sixth, giving up six runs (five earned), and the Phillies won to advance to the World Series.

During the regular season, Maddux led the league with 267 innings and an ERA of 2.36 and received the Cy Young Award again. What was coming, however, was even better.

The 1994 and 1995 seasons were truncated by a players’ strike, and Maddux pitched barely over 200 innings, although it was enough to lead the majors both years. His ERA in 1994 was 1.56. Two years before, when Maddux received his first Cy Young Award, National League teams averaged 3.9 runs per game, and the league ERA was 3.50. In 1994, the averages were 4.6 and 4.21, respectively.

Maddux’s 1994 ERA was only 37.1 percent of the league average, even better than what Bob Gibson had achieved with his 1.12 ERA in 1968, the Year of the Pitcher. Maddux in 1995 had a 1.63 ERA, 39 percent of the league average.

Writers, analysts, and others were touting Maddux as the best right-handed pitcher since Walter Johnson. A number of outstanding southpaws pitched in the period between Johnson and Maddux — Lefty Grove, Warren Spahn, and Sandy Koufax, and pundits generally conceded that Maddux was not on the same level as Koufax.

Pitchers can be compared in many ways, and the difference in innings pitched then and later is relevant to any discussion about the greatest. In terms of ERA relative to the league average, Maddux has few rivals, including Koufax. In addition, the ballpark factors show Dodger Stadium — Koufax’s home park in his prime — to be pitcher friendlier than Maddux’s home parks with the Braves, Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium and Turner Field.14  

Maddux finished this four-year run of greatness by pitching in his first World Series. With seven days’ rest, he started the first game of the 1995 World Series and was outstanding. The first batter he faced, Cleveland’s Kenny Lofton, reached base on an error and came around to score. The only other baserunners off Maddux were Jim Thome, with a fifth-inning single, and Lofton, who singled in the ninth and came around to score on an error. Atlanta won the game, 3-2. Maddux had the chance to finish off the Series five days later but wasn’t as sharp. He gave up two runs in the last of the first. After the Braves tied the game, he gave up two more runs and took the loss. The Braves still won the series, taking the next game 1-0 on a David Justice home run and a one-hitter by Glavine and Mark Wohlers.

Maddux pitched in two more World Series. In Game 2 of the 1996 Series he pitched eight scoreless innings, allowing six hits and no walks, as the Braves beat the New York Yankees, 4-0. He was the losing pitcher in the final game as the Yankees won the World Series, 4 games to 2. In 1999 the Yankees beat the Braves again, this one a sweep. Maddux pitched the opening game and carried a 1-0 lead into the eighth inning before giving up four runs. His performance in five World Series games was good — he had a 2.09 ERA in those games. Between 1989 and 2008 Maddux appeared in 35 postseason games and had a 3.27 ERA in 198 innings.

As for the regular season, Maddux continued in top form although he didn’t receive any more Cy Young Awards. Between 1996 and 2000, he was in the top 5 in the balloting four times. His 1997 season was of the caliber that it would have been the best in the league in a lot of years. However, this year Pedro Martinez of Montreal was beginning a string of Maddux-like seasons.

Martinez, with the Expos and Boston Red Sox, received the Cy Young Award three times in four years, with a second-place finish the other year. In 2000 Martinez had a 1.74 ERA when the league average was 4.91, a performance even better than what Maddux had produced in 1994.

Martinez’s fantastic seasons served to highlight the dominance of Maddux around the same period. The pair had produced three of the top five performances in terms of ERA+ (the pitcher’s ERA compared to the league ERA with adjustments made for the pitcher’s home ballpark). The others in the top five had occurred in the Deadball Era (Dutch Leonard in 1914) and the 19th century (Tim Keefe in 1880).

Although Martinez was gone as a Cy Young rival after 1997, the National League continued to have strong contenders for the award. Maddux’s teammates received it in 1996 (Smoltz) and 1998 (Glavine); Randy Johnson of Arizona then started a string of four Cy Young Awards.

Maddux continued as a top pitcher into the 21st century, even if he was no longer a perennial contender for the Cy Young Award. He pitched with the Braves through 2003 before signing as a free agent with the Cubs before the 2004 season. Over the next few years he pitched for the Los Angeles Dodgers and San Diego Padres. Maddux’s last game was in relief for the Dodgers in the final game of the 2008 National League Championship Series. He pitched two innings and gave up two unearned runs as Philadelphia beat Los Angeles for the pennant. A free agent at the end of the season, Maddux called it a career, announcing his retirement in December.

Between traditional statistics, such as wins, and ones more recently embraced, such as ERA+, Maddux was outstanding both in peak and career value. Much is made of him winning at least 15 games a year between 1988 and 2004. He finished with 355 career wins, the most of any pitcher other than Warren Spahn who had pitched after 1930.

Maddux struck out 3,371 batters in 5,008 1/3 innings, an average of about 6 per 9 innings. Although this may not raise eyebrows, a key to his success was his control — he walked just 999 batters, an average of 1.8 per 9 innings. In 2001 Maddux set a National League record with 72 1/3 straight innings without a walk, a streak that was broken with an intentional walk. During his Cy Young Award seasons, Maddux led the National League in Fielding Independent Pitching (FIP) all four years.15

Bob Nightengale of USA Today pointed out how Maddux had dominated the game for years without being a power pitcher: “Maddux, whose fastball is routinely clocked at only 88 mph, remarkably throws more fastballs than any established pitcher in the game. The difference is control and movement. He can throw the fastball with nearly pinpoint control, while the ball darts and spins as if he’s controlling it like a yo-yo.”16

“He can throw you a strike and still not give you anything good to hit,” said Braves pitching coach Leo Mazzone. “He’s a master at that. It’s the greatest command I’ve ever seen on a consistent basis.”17

Mazzone and others have told of Maddux’s penchant for telling his pitching coach, manager, and teammates about how he will get out of an inning, such as saying that he’ll get the batter to foul out to the third baseman on the second pitch to him.18

Jeff Torborg, who caught flamethrowers Sandy Koufax and Nolan Ryan, later observed and marveled at Maddux carving up batters in a completely different manner. Torborg commented on how Maddux could throw a pitch so that it appeared it would be a ball but then break over the plate after the batter had decided not to swing. Torborg said Maddux stood out because, unlike most pitchers, he could start the ball out on either side of the plate and have it break back for a strike.19

Maddux summed up his style in an interview with Bob Nightengale in 2001:

“The best pitch in baseball is a located fastball. That will always be the best pitch. You can set up everything you want off that.

“[Hall of Fame pitcher] Don Sutton used to always say to make sure all your pitches look the same when they’re 5 feet out of your hand. Then find ways to make the ball end up in different places and at different speeds. The more ways you can put it in more places at more speeds, the better.

“That’s pitching.”20

However the stats are sliced, Maddux stands out as one of the best pitchers ever, and he was easily elected to the Hall of Fame in 2014. He was inducted with his teammate, Tom Glavine, and his manager while with the Braves, Bobby Cox. His number 31 was retired by both the Braves and the Cubs (with the latter, the retirement of 31 is for both Maddux and Ferguson Jenkins).

The Madduxes made Las Vegas their permanent home, even as Greg moved around the majors as a pitcher and later in assorted duties with teams. He worked with the Cubs as an assistant to the general manager, focusing on working with pitchers from 2010 to 2012. He then worked with the Texas Rangers, where brother Mike was the pitching coach, and later as a special assistant with the Los Angeles Dodgers. In between he was the pitching coach for the United States in the 2013 World Baseball Classic.

His son, Chase, made it as a right-handed pitcher on the UNLV baseball team, and in 2016 Greg joined the Rebels as a volunteer assistant coach.21

In 1995, when Maddux was at his peak, Tom Verducci wrote in Sports Illustrated, “His career is a masterpiece, available for all to see every fifth day or so as he works atop the pitching mounds of National League ballparks.

“The rest of us, should we recognize our good fortune, could be eyewitnesses to genius. Did you see van Gogh paint? No, you could respond, but I saw Greg Maddux pitch.”22

Last revised: March 14, 2018

Acknowledgments

This biography was reviewed by Norman Macht and fact-checked by Alan Cohen.

Photo credits

Greg Maddux-Braves, courtesy of the Atlanta Braves.

Greg Maddux-Cubs, Trading Card Database.

Notes

1 Overheard by the author of this article, who was in the press box that Saturday afternoon.

2 The information on the Madduxes and the details of their children growing up came from a telephone interview between the author and Linda Maddux, May 16, 1995.

3 Dave was one of 10 children, three of them boys. Linda was one of three girls.

4 Telephone interview with Linda Maddux, May 16, 1995.

5 John McMurray, “Greg Maddux: Consistency, Hard Work, and Pitching Smarts Made Him a Winner,” Baseball Digest, September 2007: 40.

6 Telephone interview with Linda Maddux, May 16, 1995.

7 Carroll Rogers Walton, “More to Maddux Than Meets the Eye,” Atlanta Journal-Constitution, July 17, 2009, accessed February 23, 2018 from https://www.ajc.com/sports/baseball/more-maddux-than-meets-the-eye/BnbkvNMtw2oN4vErpjatCI/.

8 Carrie Muskat, “Like Clockwork: In-out, Up-down,” USA Today Baseball Weekly, November 21-25, 1995: 20.

9 baseball-reference.com is the source for WAR. Maddux probably received a little bump in his WAR for his fielding; he received the Gold Glove for the third time in 1992, and he got the award 18 times in his career.

10 Joey Reaves, “Maddux and Dawson Sign Off,” Chicago Tribune, December 10, 1992: 3, Section 4.

11 Alan Solomon, “Hurt, Maddux Answers Critics,” Chicago Tribune, December 13, 1992: 16, Section 3.

12 Alan Solomon, “Maddux Agent Tried Cubs Again,” Chicago Tribune, December 10, 1992: 3, Section 4.

13 Bob Nightengale, “Inside the Mind of Maddux,” USA Today Baseball Weekly, August 15-21, 2001: 14.

14 baseball-reference.com has Maddux with an ERA+ (the pitcher’s ERA relative to the league ERA, is adjusted to the pitcher’s home park) of 271 in 1994 and 260 in 1995. Koufax, Spahn, and Grove never approached those figures.

15 FIP focuses on elements of pitching — walks, hit batters, home runs, and strikeouts — that are independent of fielding.

16 Bob Nightengale, “Inside the Mind of Maddux,” USA Today Baseball Weekly, August 15-21, 2001: 14.

17 Carrie Muskat, “Like Clockwork: In-out, Up-down,” USA Today Baseball Weekly, November 21-25, 1995: 22.

18 These stories emerged during a player panel — moderated by Pete Van Wieren with panelists Phil Niekro, Mark Lemke, Bobby Cox, and Ron Gant — at the SABR convention in Atlanta, August 6, 2010.

19 Murray Chass, “Koufax and Maddux: Unequaled Mastery,” The New York Times, August 17, 1997: 24.

20 Bob Nightengale, “Inside the Mind of Maddux,” USA Today Baseball Weekly, August 15-21, 2001: 14.

21 “Baseball Hall of Famer Joins Rebel Staff,” UNLV Rebels press release, July 6, 2016, http://www.unlvrebels.com/sports/m-basebl/spec-rel/070616aaa.html.

22 Tom Verducci, “Once in a Lifetime,” Sports Illustrated, August 14, 1995: 24.

In spite of the abrupt end to Clemens’ evening and career, as he left the mound, it seemed a certainty that he would be inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York, as soon as he passed the five-year waiting period for eligibility. Few pitchers in the history of baseball could boast anything near to his accomplishments: a record seven Cy Young Awards, 354 victories, 4,672 strikeouts, seven-time ERA leader with a career 3.12 ERA, six-time 20-game winner, five-time strikeout leader, 46 shutouts in the era of relief specialists and closers, and two-time World Series champion. He was too much of a polarizing figure in his career to exceed Tom Seaver’s record of being named on 98.8 percent of the Hall of Fame ballots, but he seemed certain to be a first-ballot selectee.

On December 13, 2007, little more than two months after Clemens’ final Yankees start, doubt was cast over his future enshrinement among baseball’s immortals when he was mentioned repeatedly in the Mitchell Report on the use of performance-enhancing drugs in baseball. In the years following the report, Clemens spent almost as much time in courtrooms as he spent on pitcher’s mounds during his career. By the time his first year of eligibility for the Hall of Fame arrived in January 2013, he was named on only 37.6 percent of the ballots and, in his second year, that number declined to 35.4 percent while two of his contemporaries and fellow members of the 300-win club, Greg Maddux and Tom Glavine, were elected.

Clemens’ life is the tale of a fanatically driven man who worked hard to achieve his dream of stardom and attained the pinnacle of success. Jorge Posada, Clemens’ catcher with the Yankees, was complimentary when he said, “The only thing he wants to do is just win.”1 Cito Gaston, Clemens’ manager with the Toronto Blue Jays until he was fired toward the end of the 1997 season, intended no such praise when he commented, “It’s all about him, nobody else but him.”2 Clemens’ ambition gained him both fans and detractors, helped him to achieve massive success, and ultimately contributed to his fall from grace.

William Roger Clemens was born on August 4, 1962, in Dayton, Ohio, the fifth child of Bill and Bess Clemens. He was only 5 months old when his mother took her children and left his father, with whom he claims to have spoken only once in his life, when he was 10 years old. Less than two years later, Bess married Woody Booher, whom Roger looked up to as a real father. But he became fatherless again at the age of 8 when Booher died of a heart attack.

While his mother provided Roger with an example of the work ethic he would adopt by laboring at several jobs to support her children, he came under the tutelage of his older brother Randy, whom he idolized. In high school Randy was a shortstop on the baseball team, the star shooting guard for the basketball team, and the king of his senior prom, leading Clemens to admit, “While I was growing up, Randy was the star as far as I was concerned.”3 Though the two brothers have become estranged, Randy’s influence was immense as he “instill[ed] in his brother a simple philosophy: Either you’re a winner or you’re a failure.”4 It was a mantra that caused Clemens to question at times whether he was good enough to become the star athlete that both of them wanted him to be.

While Clemens’ baseball career dwarfs his brother Randy’s high-school athletic exploits, his initial attempts to emulate his elder sibling were less than encouraging. He played baseball, basketball, and football, but distinguished himself in none of these sports. In fact, the only notable event from his youth baseball exploits was that he split starts for his 1977 squad with Kelly Krzan, who was the first girl in Ohio to play on a boys’ Little League team.

By the time Clemens was 15 and a high-school sophomore, Randy had married and moved to Sugar Land, Texas, a suburb 20 miles southwest of downtown Houston. Randy had failed to achieve athletic stardom of his own largely due to the development of a substance-abuse problem, but he now wanted to guide his younger brother’s athletic career. After the two brothers received their mother’s permission, Ohio-born-and-raised Roger Clemens made the sojourn to Texas, the state with which he has become identified.

Clemens enjoyed initial success by amassing a 12-1 record and helping Sugar Land’s Dulles High School win a district title, but Randy was plotting a move to more competitive fields. After watching a tournament game between two of the Houston area’s premier high-school teams, Bellaire and Spring Woods, Clemens decided that he wanted to play for the latter team. Bess Clemens had moved to Houston now as well, and she made sure that her son’s wish was granted.

The time spent at Spring Woods High School was a mixed blessing: Clemens played for a coach, Charlie Maiorana, whom he credits for much of his knowledge about mechanics and conditioning, but he spent his junior year seeing little action on a team with two of the state’s best pitching prospects. His determination showed as he became known for his workout regimen, especially his running, and he had his turn as Spring Woods’ number one starting pitcher during his senior year. Still, at that point in his life, the player who came to sit at number three on the major-league strikeout list still threw too softly to draw any notice from either professional or college scouts.

As a favor to Clemens, Maiorana called a colleague, Wayne Graham, the new coach at San Jacinto Junior College, to ask if he could pull any strings to get Clemens to his desired destination, the University of Texas in Austin. Graham could not accomplish that feat, but he did offer Clemens a scholarship to San Jacinto, which is where Clemens’ fortunes were reversed. The failure to achieve high-school stardom resulted in the season that launched Clemens on the path to professional greatness.

The year 1981 was Wayne Graham’s first season to coach at any college level, but he has become a legend by guiding San Jacinto to five national junior-college championships in six years (1985-1990) – a feat that earned him Collegiate Baseball Magazine’s Junior College Coach of the Century Award – and leading Houston’s Rice University to the NCAA College World Series Championship in 2003. What Graham did with Clemens – turning a soft-tossing youth into a flamethrower – was an equally impressive accomplishment. He preached to Clemens that he needed to finish hard on his pitches or he would never have a chance to realize his dream of pitching in the major leagues, a message Clemens took to heart as he finished his sole season at San Jacinto with a 9-2 record while the college won the Texas Junior College Athletic Association championship. His coach’s assessment was that “Roger began the year as one of the guys, and he ended it as an ace.”5

Graham anticipated that Clemens would remain at San Jacinto for a second year, an expectation that was buoyed when Clemens turned down an offer from the New York Mets, who had selected him in the 12th round of the 1981 draft. Clemens went through the motions of throwing for Mets manager Joe Torre and pitching coach/legend Bob Gibson at Houston’s Astrodome, but he had other plans in mind. He had been contacted by University of Texas Longhorns coach Cliff Gustafson, who was now interested in the improved pitcher. The opportunity to play at Texas had been Clemens’ dream, and he pounced on it; however, he failed to contact Graham about his decision and alienated the man who had placed him on the road to stardom.

Clemens fulfilled expectations at Texas, although there were some hiccups along the way. The 1982 Longhorns began their season with a 33-game winning streak that was one win shy of tying the NCAA record. Clemens, who had begun the campaign 7-0, pitched in game number 34 but lost 4-3 to the University of Houston. It was later revealed that he had bursitis while pitching that game, and he missed the next two weeks of the season. He finished 12-2 with a 1.99 ERA, but Texas was eliminated from the College World Series by Wichita State.

The Longhorns suffered under the burden of high expectations in 1983 and plodded through an up-and down season. At one point, the driven Clemens became so frustrated by his personal mound setbacks that he was ready to quit the team, an example of the toll that the insecurity caused by Randy Clemens’ “winner or failure” mentality took on him. While he was not yet a polished pitcher, he still demonstrated great potential. Houston Astros scout Gordon Lakey reported that Clemens’ delivery was not compact enough, but he believed it could be helped and that Clemens would develop more leg drive and become a power pitcher.6 Chicago White Sox scout Larry Monroe’s report echoed that of Lakey as he wrote of Clemens: “Delivery is fluid but does not use body at all. Should be easily improved and no reason why he shouldn’t be in low 90’s. I’m surprised he doesn’t have shoulder problems from standing up and just throwing. Some bend in legs and drive to plate would help velocity, life, and location.”7 Both scouts projected Clemens as a likely second-round draft pick. Owing to rare encouragement from the usually gruff Gustafson, Clemens persevered – he went 13-5 with a 3.04 ERA – and the Longhorns survived their inconsistency to make a return trip to the College World Series.

Before Clemens took the mound for his start against Oklahoma State in the College World Series on June 6, the Boston Red Sox selected him as the 19th player chosen in the major-league draft, a circumstance about which he said, “I was completely surprised. As far as I was concerned, Boston was a foreign country.”8 Five days after defeating Oklahoma State, Clemens capped his Texas career with a complete-game 4-3 victory over Alabama in the College World Series Championship Game to put himself and his team on top of the collegiate baseball world before he departed Austin for Boston, having now been signed by Red Sox scout Danny Doyle. Of course, Clemens did not make it to the parent club straight out of college, but he did take the fast track through the Red Sox’ minor-league system where he already exhibited character traits that became hallmarks of his career.

His first stop was with the Winter Haven Red Sox of the Class-A Florida State League, for whom he went 3-1 with a 1.24 ERA in four starts and where he established his reputation for pitching inside to hitters. Two days before his final Winter Haven start, Clemens had taken umbrage at the Lakeland Tigers’ Ronald Davis taking out his Red Sox (and ex-University of Texas) teammate Mike Brumley at second base, a play on which Brumley was injured. Clemens pitched a 15-strikeout shutout against Lakeland in which he also retaliated for Brumley’s injury by hitting Davis in the head in his first at-bat. Clemens claimed – as most pitchers do – that he had only wanted to brush Davis back and that the pitch had gotten away from him; however, he also claimed that he was prepared to fight, something for which Davis was in no condition as he collapsed and was taken to a hospital.

The split opinion among baseball observers as to whether Clemens merely pitched inside or was a headhunter mirrors the split in opinion about his character in general. Few players thought poorly of Don Drysdale or Nolan Ryan for pitching close inside, but these two pitchers were held in high regard while Clemens was often considered arrogant. Clemens fanned the flames of this negative reputation by both his actions and his words, never more infamously so than after winning the 1986 American League MVP Award. When informed that no less a luminary than Hank Aaron had asserted that pitchers should not receive the MVP, he retorted, “I wish he was still playing. I’d probably crack his head open to show him how valuable I was.”9

After his debacle-marred gem, Clemens was promoted to the New Britain (Connecticut) Red Sox of the Double-A Eastern League and amassed a 4-1 record with a 1.38 ERA in seven starts, but he also continued to draw controversy. In the team’s first-round playoff series, Reading Phillies manager Bill Dancy protested that Clemens was using a glove that had writing all over it and claimed that it was distracting. The home-plate umpire ordered Clemens to use a different glove – an order the pitcher complied with – but he began to curse at Clemens due to the grief he was getting from New Britain’s bench. Clemens charged the umpire but stopped short of any physical contact. Instead, he calmed down, borrowed a teammate’s glove, and proceeded to dominate Reading. Charging umpires became another Clemens trait as his career progressed, but calming down did not. As he accumulated successes, his “winner or failure” mentality and its resultant insecurity morphed into hypercompetitive intensity on and off the mound.

New Britain dispatched the Phillies and faced the Lynn Sailors for the championship, which they won when Clemens pitched a 10-strikeout shutout in Game Four. After he had breezed through two levels of the minor leagues and won his second championship in three months, Clemens’ baseball future looked bright. His personal life became equally so when he began to date Debra Lynn Godfrey, whom he had known in passing at Spring Woods High School, in the offseason. Godfrey was a fellow fitness fanatic who twice auditioned for the Dallas Cowboys cheerleaders squad, and the two of them worked out together regularly. They became engaged in May 1984 and were married in November of that year.

Before his engagement to Godfrey, Clemens made one final stop on his way to Boston. He took part in spring training with the parent club in the familiar surroundings of Winter Haven, Florida, but ended up being assigned to Pawtucket of the Triple-A International League to begin the season after posting a 6.60 ERA in Grapefruit League games. Clemens did not allow his disappointment to keep him from excelling at yet another level as he posted a 1.93 ERA in 46⅔ innings for Pawtucket. Enough was enough and, on May 11, 1984, Roger Clemens was officially called up by the Boston Red Sox.

On Tuesday, May 15, 1984, Clemens made his major-league debut against the Indians before a mere 4,004 fans at chilly Cleveland Stadium and learned that minor-league success does not always carry over instantly to the majors. He received no decision after surrendering 11 hits, three walks, and five runs (four earned) in 5⅔ innings, but what was alarming was that Indians baserunners had swiped six bases against him because, in the words of his catcher, Gary Allenson, “(a)t that point, he had no real concept of keeping opposing runners in check.”10 In his next start, against the Minnesota Twins on May 20, he pitched seven strong innings to earn his first major-league victory.

The remainder of Clemens’ rookie season was not as memorable as the one put together by his National League counterpart, Dwight Gooden of the New York Mets, who finished with a 17-9 record and easily won the NL Rookie of the Year award. Clemens was up and down from start to start and later conceded that some people were beginning to question whether he might fall into the same category as David Clyde, the 1970s poster boy for young pitchers who had been rushed to the major leagues too quickly. That fear was put to rest by a 15-strikeout performance against the Kansas City Royals on August 21, but soon a new specter – that of injury – arrived to haunt the Red Sox and their fans. In his final start of the season, on August 31 against the Indians, Clemens registered seven of 11 outs by strikeout and then exited the game with a strained tendon in his right forearm. Though the injury was minor, Clemens was shut down for the year and finished a solid but unspectacular rookie campaign at 9-4 with a 4.32 ERA.

Clemens endured nagging injuries on his way to a 7-5/3.29 sophomore campaign in 1985. The low point of his season came on July 7 when he could not make his scheduled start against the California Angels due to what he described as “[. . .] an intensely sharp pain, as if someone stuck a knife in the back of my shoulder.”11 Clemens’ early-career insecurity came to the fore again as he engaged in a clubhouse meltdown in Anaheim that day, and his fear of failure caused him to break down in tears while repeatedly asking, “Why me?” The next day he was placed on the 15-day disabled list due to shoulder inflammation and, though he returned to the rotation, he never recovered fully that year. On August 30 surgeon James Andrews removed a small piece of cartilage from Clemens’ right shoulder in a 20-minute procedure. Clemens spent the offseason learning new exercises to strengthen his shoulder and waited for the 1986 season to come around.

The Red Sox started out slowly in 1986, but Clemens overcame his spring-training fears about his rehabilitated shoulder and charged out to a 3-0 record with a 1.85 ERA. His fourth start provided the harbinger of things to come as April 29, 1986, became the night on which Roger Clemens vaulted himself to stardom. Facing a free-swinging Seattle Mariners team that had struck out 166 times in 19 games, he turned in a record-setting performance by striking out 20 batters in a nine-inning, complete-game effort at Fenway Park. Clemens began the game in form by brushing back his former college teammate and role model Spike Owen with his second and third pitches of the night. Afterward, he denied throwing at Owen, but a conflicting account exists in which former Longhorns teammate Mike Capel dared him to plunk Owen on the day before the game.

Whatever the truth about Clemens’ intent, the tone for the game was set and the Mariners were baffled for all but one pitch. Gorman Thomas launched Clemens’ lone mistake for a solo home run and a 1-0 Mariners lead in the top of the seventh inning and, for a moment, it looked as though Clemens’ brilliance might be for naught. Fortunately for Clemens and the Red Sox, Dwight Evans hit a three-run homer in the bottom of the inning for the final 3-1 margin of victory. From that point on, Clemens struck out four more batters to reach the record-breaking total of 20. He became an instant superstar and fulfilled a dream he claimed to have had when he was 12 by making the cover of Sports Illustrated’s May 12, 1986 issue, which carried the headline “Lord of the K’s.”12

After an 11-strikeout victory at Baltimore on June 27, Clemens was only the fifth pitcher in major-league history to start a season 14-0. He suffered his first loss on July 2 against the Toronto Blue Jays, but his 15-2 first-half record led Kansas City manager Dick Howser to name him the American League’s starter in the All-Star Game, which would be held in his adopted hometown of Houston. The Red Sox, meanwhile, were in first place in the AL East with a 56-31 record and a seven-game lead at the break.

There was, however, a downside that accompanied all of this success, and it involved his relationship with the media and its burgeoning demands on his time. According to Clemens, “The attention I enjoyed and appreciated at first after breaking the strikeout record soon became stressful.” He claimed that the press did not realize “how I needed to stay on my program and work.”13 For their part, the reporters began to perceive Clemens as alternately aloof or difficult, depending upon whether or not they could get any worthwhile quotes from the new star. Clemens correctly conceded that this period was “the first time I experienced some problems with the media,”14 but it would not be the last.

The media crush of an All-Star Game that matched Clemens and fellow fireballer Dwight Gooden as the starters did not deter him from turning the event into yet another showcase for his talents. While Gooden surrendered two runs in three innings of work, Clemens retired all nine NL batters he faced, struck out two, and did not allow a single baserunner, a performance that earned him the game’s MVP award. His newfound stardom also birthed a new arrogance that surfaced in the second half of the 1986 season.

In his July 30 start against the Chicago White Sox at Comiskey Park, Clemens had a new manner of meltdown after first-base umpire Greg Kosc made a disputed call that went against him. With two outs in the fifth inning, Red Sox first baseman Bill Buckner had flipped a Harold Baines grounder to Clemens, who thought he had beaten the runner to the bag. Instead, Kosc ruled that Clemens had missed first base and called Baines safe, which allowed what ended up being the winning run to score for the White Sox. Clemens charged at Kosc to argue the call and made incidental contact with the umpire, which resulted in his automatic ejection. Now he came completely unglued – he claimed to have hyperventilated twice during his rampage – and eventually was carried off the field by teammates Jim Rice and Don Baylor. Clemens was suspended for two games and fined, but his outlook on his punishment was revealing: In his autobiography, he stated, “As it turned out, all I lost was a day’s pay – little more than $1,000 – and $250” [for paying his teammates’ (Bruce Hurst and Al Nipper) minor fines].15 A fine was no great consequence to Clemens and, from this point on, he often alternated feats with fits over the course of his career.

The 1986 Red Sox rolled into the playoffs, with Clemens winning his last seven decisions, but Clemens’ own postseason hopes seemed jeopardized when John Stefero’s line drive hit his pitching elbow in his final regular season start, against Baltimore on October 1. X-rays were negative and the swelling went down in time for Clemens to make his Game One start in the ALCS against the California Angels at Fenway. Clemens made three starts in Boston’s hard-fought seven-game series against the Angels: Game One was forgettable as he surrendered eight runs (seven earned) in 7⅓ innings and Game Four resulted in a no-decision in 8⅓ innings during Boston’s extra-inning loss, but in the clinching Game Seven he dominated the Angels and allowed only one run in seven innings to help send the Red Sox to the World Series for the first time since 1975.

World Series Game Two was a Clemens-versus-Gooden rematch, but neither pitcher lasted longer than five innings; a flu-ridden Clemens gave up four walks and three runs in 4⅓ innings of a game that Boston won 9-3. His second start came in Game Six, with the Red Sox holding a 3-2 edge in games, and he struck out eight while surrendering only two runs (one earned) in seven innings. The Red Sox had a 3-2 lead when Clemens was lifted from the game for a pinch-hitter in the eighth inning, but there was controversy over the timing of his exit. Clemens had torn open a blister and had begun bleeding, and manager John McNamara later claimed that Clemens had asked out of the game as a result, a contention that Clemens and several of his teammates denied. Game Six went down in Red Sox infamy as Calvin Schiraldi combined with Bob Stanley, Bill Buckner, and fate to lose to the Mets 6-5 in 10 innings. The Mets’ 8-5 victory in Game Seven kept Clemens from putting the ultimate jewel in the crown of his 1986 season, a campaign during which he went 24-4 with a league-leading 2.48 ERA and became the first player to win the Cy Young Award, American League MVP Award, and All-Star Game MVP Award in the same season.

In addition to all of his on-field success, Roger and Debbie Clemens welcomed their first son, Koby, into the world on December 4, 1986. In what became a theme, Clemens gave all four of his sons names that begin with the letter “K” – Kory, Kacy, and Kody followed Koby – since it is the baseball scoring abbreviation for a strikeout.

The relationship between Clemens and the Red Sox took a downturn when Clemens walked out in the middle of spring training over a contract dispute. Commissioner Peter Ueberroth eventually negotiated an agreement between the team and its star, but the incident did not bode well for the future. The Red Sox had a miserable 1987 season, finishing at 78-84, though Clemens won his second consecutive Cy Young Award with a 20-9 record, 2.97 ERA, and seven shutouts.

In 1988 Clemens created a minor stir by deciding to pitch against the Angels in Anaheim rather than return to Houston for the birth of his second son, Kory. He earned a complete-game victory in that May 30 game on his way to an 18-12, 2.93, eight-shutout season. The Red Sox rebounded to win the AL East in 1988 but were swept in the ALCS by the Oakland Athletics, though Clemens pitched adequately in his Game Two start.

The biggest firestorm Clemens ignited that year came on December 5 when he gave an interview to a Boston television station in which he attacked anyone and everyone associated with the Red Sox, from management to teammates to fans. His complaint, “Travel, road trips and carrying your own luggage around isn’t all that fun and glory,”16 propagated the stereotype of the spoiled, pampered athlete and cast him in a negative light to fans.

Clemens did play for the Red Sox through the 1996 season, winning his third Cy Young in 1991 and leading the AL in ERA from 1990 to 1992, but he continued to be antagonistic with the media and, in turn, both the media and fans emphasized his shortcomings – real and perceived – more than his accomplishments.

One highly scrutinized event was a tantrum in Game Four of the 1990 ALCS in which the Athletics again swept the Red Sox. Clemens had pitched six shutout innings in Game One, but Boston had lost, and things were not going well at the outset of Game Four. With Oakland leading 1-0 and two outs in the second inning, Clemens began cursing from the mound at home-plate umpire Terry Cooney over balls and strikes and was ejected from the game. When Clemens realized that he had been tossed, he charged Cooney and pushed right-field umpire Jim Evans aside, an offense for which he was fined $10,000 and suspended for the first five games of the 1991 season.

Rather than lie low after such an ignominious end to the season, Clemens gained additional notoriety off the field when he and older brother Randy were arrested at a Houston nightclub on January 18, 1991. Randy had become involved in an altercation, and Roger was arrested for hindering the security guard – an off-duty police officer – who was attempting to arrest his brother. He was found “not guilty” of the charge, but his fame was now increasing for the wrong reasons.

In 1992 Clemens further strained his relationship with the Red Sox when he reported eight days late for spring training; however, he still registered another stellar campaign on the mound, finishing 18-11. After he posted his first losing record in 1993 – 11-14 with a 4.46 ERA – speculation renewed about how much longer Clemens would last. He pitched well in strike-shortened 1994, but in 1995 he had a bloated 4.18 ERA and again came up short in the postseason, though he received no decision in the Red Sox’ ALDS Game One extra-inning loss to the Cleveland Indians.

While Clemens was in an up-and-down phase of his career on the mound and was in the process of alienating Boston fans and management, he was still popular enough with fans nationwide that he made several guest appearances as himself on different television shows. Clemens even showed a sense of humor by taking a role in the animated The Simpsons episode titled “Homer at the Bat.” In the course of the story, Clemens – as himself – is hypnotized into thinking that he is a chicken and spends much of the episode squawking and clucking. His acting exploits also included the big screen, for which his most notable role was as an unnamed flamethrower who pitches to Ty Cobb in the 1994 film Cobb, based on Al Stump’s biography of the Georgia Peach.

In 1996 Clemens posted his second losing record, 10-13, but had a more respectable 3.63 ERA and led the AL with 257 strikeouts. He momentarily turned back the clock 10 years by registering his second career 20-strikeout game, against Detroit at Tiger Stadium on September 18; it was also his 192nd victory, which tied him with Cy Young atop the Red Sox’ all-time list. Nonetheless, Red Sox general manager Dan Duquette considered his 40-39 record for the team from 1993 through 1996 and questioned whether Clemens might be in the “twilight” of his career; he apparently did not see him as a player around whom to rebuild the team into a perennial contender. Clemens spurned Boston’s contract offer and signed for three years and $24.75 million with the Toronto Blue Jays.

Toronto was far removed from its consecutive World Series victories of 1992-1993 and was not a contender during Clemens’ stint with the team, but “Rocket” was not finished yet after all. Quite the contrary, the brief Blue Jays era of 1997-1998 was Clemens at his dominant best as he went a combined 41-13 with a 2.33 ERA and 563 strikeouts, winning the pitching Triple Crown – wins, ERA, strikeouts – in both years as well as his fourth and fifth Cy Young Awards. He also exacted revenge against the Red Sox in his first start as a Blue Jay at Fenway Park on July 12, 1997, when he pitched eight innings of one-run ball and struck out 16 batters.

In time, a cloud of suspicion gathered over this mid-30s pitching renaissance for two reasons: 1) The prevalence of performance-enhancing drugs (PEDs) in baseball by this time, and 2) the hiring of Brian McNamee as Toronto’s strength and conditioning coach after the 1997 season. Baseball was in the midst of its PED era and – as was the case with most players – no public accusations were made against Clemens at the time; however, McNamee later claimed that he injected Clemens with the steroid Winstrol in 1998.

Clemens longed to pitch for a contender again and his trade request was granted on February 18, 1999, when Toronto traded him to the New York Yankees – an old adversary with whom he had engaged in numerous beanball wars – for starter David Wells, reliever Graeme Lloyd, and second baseman Homer Bush. As a Yankee, Clemens was back in the center of the baseball universe, but that was a mixed blessing as he turned in an inconsistent 14-10, 4.60 campaign.

The 1999 postseason began promisingly as Clemens pitched seven scoreless innings in the ALDS-clinching Game Three against the Texas Rangers, but the ALCS was another matter altogether as Clemens fizzled in his return to Fenway in a Game Three marquee matchup against Boston’s new ace, Pedro Martinez. While Martinez pitched seven shutout innings and struck out 12, Clemens suffered the Yankees’ only loss of the series and was battered for five runs in only two innings. As he left the mound in the bottom of the third, Boston fans taunted him by chanting “Where is Rog-er?” That game became a distant memory for Clemens after he won World Series Game Four against the Atlanta Braves with a 7⅔-inning, one-run performance that capped a Yankees sweep. The one prize, a World Series ring, that had eluded Clemens for his entire career was now his: “Tonight, I know what it’s like to be a Yankee. I am blessed,” he exulted.17

Prior to Game Two of the World Series at Atlanta’s Turner Field, Clemens had been named – along with 29 other players – as a member of the All-Century Team. The 100 nominees for the team had been chosen by a panel of experts and had been presented at that year’s All-Star Game, but it was the fans who had voted for the players. Clemens was the only active pitcher – and one of only four active players – voted onto the team, joining Cal Ripken Jr., Ken Griffey Jr., and Mark McGwire. This accolade and his first World Series championship appeared to validate Clemens’ tunnel-vision tenacity in pursuit of his goals.

On the heels of reaching the pinnacle of professional success, Clemens experienced one of the lowest points in his personal life. In May 2000 his ex-sister-in-law Kathy, who had been married to his brother Randy and had been like a mother to him when he had first moved to Texas, was murdered in a home-invasion robbery in Houston. Kathy’s son Marcus had adopted his father Randy’s drug habit, and the robbery was tied to money and drugs. Roger blamed Randy’s substance-abuse addiction for the couple’s divorce, his nephew’s drug addiction, and Kathy’s murder, and he became alienated from the brother who had exerted such tremendous influence on his life, his outlook on the world, and his early career.

On the mound in 2000, Clemens posted a pedestrian 13-8 record and lost his two starts against Oakland in the ALDS, but he experienced a reversal of fortune from the previous year’s ALCS in Boston in his Game Four start against the Seattle Mariners. In a game as dominant as any he had ever pitched, he set an ALCS record by striking out 15 batters in a one-hit shutout. It was an amazing performance for a 38-year old power pitcher that also served as an endorsement for Clemens’ now-legendary workout regimen – one that players half his age were unwilling to attempt – which again fell under the auspices of Brian McNamee, who had joined the Yankees as an assistant strength coach in 2000.

Clemens turned in another eight shutout innings in World Series Game Two against the crosstown Mets, a Series the Yankees won in five games. The focus of the game, though, was a bizarre incident that occurred in the top of the first inning. Mets catcher Mike Piazza, whom Clemens had hit in the head with a pitch in a regular-season game on July 8, shattered his bat hitting a soft liner that squibbed foul into the Yankees dugout. Clemens picked up the barrel piece of the bat and threw it in Piazza’s direction as he ran up the baseline. The shard almost hit Piazza, who was angered and exchanged words with Clemens as both benches emptied. Clemens was not ejected for his action and dominated the Mets with eight innings of shutout ball in which he allowed only two hits and no walks and struck out nine. After the game, Clemens offered the implausible excuse that he had thought he had the ball, rather than the barrel of Piazza’s bat, which still did not explain why he threw it toward Piazza rather than first baseman Tino Martinez. Nobody believed Clemens, and he was fined $50,000 for the incident.

In 2001, a season in which McNamee has claimed he injected Clemens with the steroids Sustanon 250 and Deca-Durabolin, Clemens raced out to a 12-1 record that garnered him his second career All-Star Game start. He took his record to 19-1 before his first attempt at win number 20 was placed on hold by the terrorist attacks against the United States on September 11, 2001. After America regrouped, and MLB resumed play on September 17 at the behest of President George W. Bush, Clemens finished the season 20-3 with a 3.51 ERA and earned his sixth Cy Young Award. The Yankees again made it to the World Series, and Clemens registered a 1.35 ERA over 13⅓ innings in two starts against the Arizona Diamondbacks. In Game Three, he scattered three hits in seven innings in a 2-1 win. He engaged in a Game Seven duel against Curt Schilling that the Yankees lost when Luis Gonzalez looped an RBI single off Mariano Rivera to win the game in the bottom of the ninth inning.

Clemens was solid, though no longer spectacular, with the Yankees in 2002-03. He did reach both the 300-win and 4,000-strikeout milestones in a 5-2 victory over the St. Louis Cardinals at Yankee Stadium on June 13, 2003, becoming the first pitcher to hit both landmarks in the same game. He had said repeatedly that he was retiring after the 2003 season, so when he walked off the mound of Miami’s Pro Player Stadium after pitching seven innings of three-run ball in World Series Game Four on October 22, 2003, everyone assumed it was his swan song. There was no fairytale ending to his story, though, as the Yankees fell to the Florida Marlins in six games.

Clemens’ retirement lasted little more than 2½ months. Shortly after Yankees free agent, friend, and fellow Houstonian Andy Pettitte signed to play for the Houston Astros, Clemens joined him and the pair set Houston abuzz with the hope that they could help franchise icons Jeff Bagwell and Craig Biggio reach the promised land of the World Series before they too reached retirement age.

Although 2004 was his first year in the National League, Clemens registered the same results he had through most of his career: He posted an 18-4 record, 2.98 ERA, and 218 strikeouts for which he won his record-extending seventh Cy Young Award, joining Gaylord Perry, Randy Johnson, and Pedro Martinez as the only pitchers to win the award in both leagues. He also started his third All-Star Game – this time for the NL – in his adopted hometown of Houston, where he had started his first All-Star Game for the AL 18 years earlier.

The Astros were the NL wild-card team in 2004, and Clemens started the franchise toward its first-ever postseason-series victory in 43 seasons of existence by winning NLDS Game One against the Atlanta Braves. Against the St. Louis Cardinals in the NLCS, he won Game Three but lost the decisive Game Seven; however, he received none of the criticism he had often endured in Boston and New York when he had fallen short in the postseason. He could do no wrong in his hometown and was becoming a Texas legend on a par with his boyhood idol Nolan Ryan.

Clemens returned to the Astros in 2005 and added to his increasingly larger-than-life exploits. At the age of 43, he led the majors with a 1.87 ERA and might have won an eighth Cy Young Award had he received more run support to improve his 13-8 record. On September 14, in a decision reminiscent of his choice to pitch on the day of his son Kory’s birth, Clemens defeated the Florida Marlins after his mother, Bess, died that morning. In response to those who questioned his decision, Clemens replied that his mother had made him promise to pitch and that the game was important to the Astros’ playoff hopes. It was clear that he was still as driven to win as he had always been.

The Astros were the NL wild-card entry again in 2005 and faced the Atlanta Braves once more. Clemens lost Game Two, but for Houston fans his status grew to mythological proportions three days later in Game Four. On October 9, after the Astros had exhausted their bullpen by the 15th inning of their marathon contest against the Braves, Clemens came to the rescue and pitched three scoreless innings. He earned the win when Chris Burke ended the game with a solo homer in the bottom of the 18th, and the Astros advanced to the NLCS. As if pitching on short rest were not enough, Clemens had also demonstrated a bit of batting acumen when he laid down a perfect sacrifice bunt in the bottom of the 15th.

In the NLCS, the Astros met another familiar opponent – the Cardinals – whom they defeated in six games to reach their first World Series, with Clemens contributing a victory in Game Three. The magic ran out in the World Series, though, as he exited Game One with a sore hamstring after allowing three runs in only two innings. The Chicago White Sox swept the Astros, and Clemens seemed likely to retire permanently.

Alas, he could not stay away from the game, and he lost much of the goodwill he had engendered in 2005 by appearing willing to sell himself to the highest bidder as he engaged in talks with numerous teams. The so-called “family-friendly” clause that had allowed Clemens to remain home for road trips during which he was not scheduled to pitch – and which he insisted upon to the end of his career – now had some people questioning whether his true motive was team success or money. In the end, he signed with the Astros on May 31 and still posted a 2.30 ERA in 113⅓ innings over 19 starts, but the team failed to make the playoffs.

Clemens played the same “Will he or won’t he pitch?” game at the start of the 2007 season before announcing his return to the New York Yankees from owner George Steinbrenner’s luxury box during the seventh-inning stretch of a Yankees-Mariners game on May 6. He posted a mediocre 6-6, 4.18 line over 99 innings before limping off the Yankee Stadium mound with yet another hamstring injury in the Yankees’ October 7 ALDS game against Cleveland.

Once his career was finally over, the countdown to Clemens’ Hall of Fame induction began. Whether media members and fans liked him or not – and there were plenty of people in both camps – his statistics pointed to him being one of the best pitchers ever to play the game. Even so, the voters who cast ballots for players to gain entry into the National Baseball Hall of Fame are told to take a player’s character into account, and all sorts of skeletons fell out of Clemens’ closet upon the release of the Mitchell Report.

First, there were Brian McNamee’s allegations of steroid use. Clemens vehemently denied McNamee’s accusations and, under the advice and guidance of his lawyer Rusty Hardin, went on the offensive. On January 6, 2008, Clemens filed a defamation suit against McNamee. Though Clemens eventually dropped his suit, McNamee filed his own defamation suit against Clemens in 2008, which dragged on for almost seven years before McNamee received an out-of-court settlement to be paid by Clemens’ insurer – not Clemens himself – in March 2015.

The same day that Clemens filed his lawsuit in Houston, CBS-TV’s investigative news show 60 Minutes aired a Mike Wallace interview of Clemens. In the interview Clemens claimed that McNamee had only injected him with vitamin B12 and the painkiller Lidocaine, an assertion that was dubious to many viewers and which made him the butt of countless pain-in-the-butt jokes.

The next day Clemens and Hardin held a press conference in Houston and played a recording of a recent phone conversation between Clemens and McNamee that was to prove Clemens’ innocence. The tape proved nothing as McNamee sounded both too desperate and too cautious to say anything that might incriminate him. Clemens fielded questions from the media, but grew increasingly aggravated and angry as the conference continued. When asked if he thought McNamee’s allegations would affect his chances at being elected to the Hall of Fame, his retort, “I don’t give a rat’s ass about the Hall of Fame,”18 was another statement no one believed, and he soon stormed out of his own press conference.

On February 13, 2008, Clemens was called to testify before a congressional committee in Washington, where he continued to profess his innocence. Some of his testimony contradicted a sworn statement made by Andy Pettitte, who claimed Clemens had told him that McNamee injected him with human growth hormone (HGH). Clemens responded that Pettitte had “misremembered” [sic] their conversation and that he had told Pettitte it was his wife, Debbie, whom McNamee had injected with HGH. There were enough inconsistencies in Clemens’ testimony that a drawn-out legal process resulted in an August 19, 2010, grand-jury indictment for making false statements to Congress. His first trial, in July 2011, quickly resulted in a mistrial, while his second trial ended with his acquittal on June 18, 2012.

Along with the steroid allegations and their attendant legal troubles, Clemens was also accused of having extramarital affairs with numerous women. The two most notable names were those of the late country singer Mindy McCready and pro golfer John Daly’s ex-wife Paulette. Clemens denied these accusations as well, but McCready and Paulette Daly neither confirmed nor denied them, which gave them implicit affirmation in many people’s minds.

All of this dirty laundry was aired in the media in the immediate aftermath of the Mitchell Report, but two books contributed further to the decline of Clemens’ reputation: Jeff Pearlman’s unauthorized biography The Rocket That Fell to Earth, and New York Daily News’ Sports Investigative Team’s American Icon: The Fall of Roger Clemens and the Rise of Steroids in America’s Pastime. Pearlman’s book portrays Clemens in such a consistently negative light that it is easy to dismiss it as one-sided, but the Daily News team’s research into McNamee’s claims casts serious doubt on Clemens’ assertion of innocence. The facts remain, however, that Roger Clemens never tested positive for PEDs and that he was acquitted of all charges of lying to Congress.

Nonetheless, the repercussions of the allegations have resulted in a lack of support for Clemens’ Hall of Fame candidacy. If he is ultimately enshrined, it is entirely possible that a Veterans Committee will have determined his fate after his initial 10-year period of eligibility has passed. His new road to baseball immortality involves rehabilitation of his former reputation as a hard-working star, which will be an arduous process since everything he does now is greeted with suspicion and cynicism, a circumstance that was in evidence when he pitched two games with the independent Atlantic League’s Sugar Land Skeeters in 2012.

Sugar Land, where Clemens lived when he first moved to Texas, received a national publicity boost during the Skeeters’ inaugural season when Clemens pitched in two games in August and September 2012. His motive for doing so was suspect, however, as he had just been acquitted of lying to Congress in June and needed positive publicity during his first time on the Hall of Fame ballot. Some media members believed that Clemens was attempting a late-season MLB comeback to push back his Hall of Fame eligibility by five years in the hope his legal troubles would blow over and that he would be a first-ballot selectee. Clemens denied such claims, but his comment – “I probably overextended myself a little bit. I wanted to see where I was at”19 – after his August 25 start for the Skeeters was interpreted to mean that he was gauging his comeback status.

By his second start, on September 7, the Skeeters had signed Clemens’ oldest son, Koby, a catcher, and father and son formed the battery against the Long Island Ducks. This time, the 50-year-old Clemens clearly left open the possibility of a major-league comeback attempt when he said, “I would have to get ready. It would be fun. There’s no reason why I couldn’t do it next year.”20 Though he had pitched well in both games – and no doubt enjoyed being the center of attention for his pitching rather than his court appearances – this was unaffiliated minor-league ball and his fastball had topped out at 88 MPH, which was hardly the dominant stuff he had once had in his prime.

In the end, Clemens chose to go out as a hometown hero and a winner after his appearances for the Skeeters rather than to risk going out as a failure in one last major-league stint. As of 2015, he and Debbie reside in Houston, where they work to benefit children through the Roger Clemens Foundation and where he also serves as a special assistant to the Astros’ general manager.

Clemens’ work with the Astros and his induction into the Red Sox Hall of Fame at Fenway Park on August 14, 2014, prior to Boston’s game against the Astros, show that there is still a place for him in baseball. The March 2015 settlement in the McNamee case may eventually allow Clemens to move past constant discussion of the steroid allegations against him, though the court of public opinion is unlikely to change its judgment. Clemens did not attend the McNamee settlement, saying, “I was not present, nor would have I participated in paying one dime. Everyone knows my stance on the subject.”21 The fact that he had been named on only 37.5 percent of the Hall of Fame ballots in January 2015 demonstrated that the Hall of Fame voters have not changed their stance in regard to Clemens either.

Last revised: November 16, 2015

A version of this biography is included in “Nuclear Powered Baseball: Articles Inspired by The Simpsons Episode Homer At the Bat” (SABR, 2016), edited by Emily Hawks and Bill Nowlin. For more information, click here.

Sources

Baseballhall.org

Baseball-Reference.com

Boston Globe

CBC Sports

Chicago Tribune

Clemens, Roger, with Peter Gammons. Rocket Man (Lexington, Massachusetts: The Stephen Greene Press, 1987).

ESPN.com

Hartford Courant

Houston.astros.mlb.com

Houston Chronicle

Lexington (Kentucky) Herald-Leader

New York Daily News

New York Times

Pearlman, Jeff. The Rocket That Fell to Earth (New York: Harper, 2009).

Riceowls.com

The Sporting News

Sports Illustrated

Sugarlandskeeters.com

Texassports.com

Thompson, Teri, et al. American Icon (New York: Knopf, 2009).

Yankeeography: Pinstripe Legends, “Roger Clemens,” (2011, A&E Home Video), DVD.

Notes

Yet Johnson added one more feat to his baseball immortality. The Arizona left-hander was sporting a 3-4 record heading into a May 18 matchup with the Atlanta Braves at Turner Field. In three of his losses, the Diamondbacks offense had done its own version of molting. But instead of shedding skin, it was runs, as they pushed only three across the dish while Johnson was on the hill in those defeats. The latest was a 1-0 loss to the New York Mets on May 12.

But on this evening, Johnson carried the team on his back, striking out 13 Braves on the way to pitching a perfect game. The Diamondbacks’ offense was by no means explosive, but its two runs proved to be more than enough. “It was like a surreal experience,” said Atlanta’s Chipper Jones. “When you wake up, you think, no, he couldn’t have thrown a perfect game against us. You think it had to be a dream.”1

“A game like this was pretty special,” said Johnson, who reached a three-ball count on only one batter. “It doesn’t come along very often. It didn’t faze me. Everything was locked in. Winning the game was the biggest, most important thing.”2 In the bottom of the ninth inning, Arizona second baseman Matt Kata threw out the first batter. Johnson struck out the next two batters. At the end, pinch-hitter Eddie Perez was overmatched when the last of Johnson’s 117 pitches was clocked at 98 MPH. “This is one of those nights where a superior athlete was on the top of his game,” said Arizona manager Bob Brenly. “There was a tremendous rhythm out there. His focus, his concentration, his stuff, everything was as good as it possibly could be. Everything he’s done to this point pales in comparison.”3

Brenly knew what he was talking about. As of 2014, Johnson was the oldest pitcher by over three years to reach perfection. It was the 17th perfect game in major-league history, and the first since David Cone in 1999.

Randall David Johnson was born on September 10, 1963, in Walnut Creek, California. He was one of six children (three boys and three girls) born to Rollen and Karen Johnson. Rollen Johnson, commonly known as Bud, worked as a police officer and security guard. As a youngster, Randy honed his craft by pitching against the garage door. He tried to emulate another left-handed pitcher, Oakland’s Vida Blue, one of Johnson’s boyhood idols. Even as a youngster, Johnson threw hard, often loosening the nails in the wood siding with one of his pitches. His father would hand him a hammer, “Pound them back in, son,” Bud would instruct him.4

Randy was a two-sport star at Livermore High School, excelling in basketball and baseball. He was drafted by the Atlanta Braves in the fourth round of the 1982 free-agent draft. However, Johnson put the major leagues on hold and accepted a scholarship to play basketball and baseball at the University of Southern California. After two years he left the hardwood behind to concentrate on baseball. Johnson was a teammate of Mark McGwire at USC and learned under the tutelage of the legendary coach Rod Dedeaux. His first appearance in a PAC-10 game, when he was a freshman, came in relief against Stanford, and resulted in an embarrassing moment. “A player on Stanford had just hit a grand slam when Coach Rod Dedeaux called me into the game. He said to me, ‘Do you know what you’re going to do?’ I said ‘Yeah, I’m pitching from the stretch.’ He said to me, ‘Why are you going to pitch from the stretch?’ And I said ‘Because there’s a man over there at first.’ I was looking at Stanford’s first base coach. Dedeaux just looked at me and walked back to the dugout.” 5

After three seasons for the Trojans, Johnson was again selected in the 1985 amateur draft. Montreal picked the 6-foot-10 left-hander in the second round and Johnson signed with the Expos. He ascended through the minor-league chain, making various stops from Jamestown (Rookie League) in 1985 to Triple-A Indianapolis. He had tremendous upside, as he threw a blistering fastball to go with his intimidating stature on the pitcher’s mound. However, he did have control issues (128 walks at Double-A Jacksonville in 1987) and was temperamental (he missed two months of the 1988 season with a hairline fracture in his right hand after punching a concrete wall). Johnson credited coaches Joe Kerrigan and Rick Williams for his development. “Kerrigan was my pitching coach at the Double-A and Triple-A levels of the Montreal Expos’ system and Williams was the roving pitching instructor in the minors. Both of these coaches helped me greatly because they made me grow up and become a better person. They helped me develop into a big-league pitcher. I owe a great deal to them.”6

Johnson made his major-league debut on September 15, 1988, with a win in a start against the Pittsburgh Pirates at Stade Olympique in Montreal. But the Expos were expecting big things in 1989 and traded their prized hurler to the Seattle Mariners for a proven left-handed pitcher, Mark Langston, on July 31, 1989, in a five-player swap. Before leaving the Expos Johnson acquired his famous nickname. During batting practice in 1988, Johnson collided head-on with outfielder Tim Raines. The 5-foot-8 Raines looked up at Johnson and exclaimed, “You’re a big unit.” The nickname stuck.

Johnson made 22 starts for Seattle in 1989, posting a 7-9 record. The next season he served notice of his arrival, when on June 2, 1990, he tossed the Mariners’ first no-hit game. Johnson blanked Detroit at the Kingdome, 2-0. He fanned eight Tigers but also walked six batters. “I’ll never forget this moment,” said Johnson. “When I struck out Mike Heath for the last out, I didn’t know how to react. I just stood there.”7 Johnson had the Tigers off balance for much of the game. “He was throwing completely backwards,” said Detroit second baseman Tony Phillips. “He was throwing fastballs when he should have been throwing breaking balls.”8

But Johnson’s control was still an issue. He led the American League in walks for three straight years (1990-1992). He looked to a highly-placed source for some sound advice. Future Hall of Famer Nolan Ryan, then pitching for the Texas Rangers, told Johnson he needed to cut down on his walks as well as develop a secondary pitch to go with his blazing fastball. “I told Randy he could be the most dominating pitcher in baseball if he just worked on his game,” recalled Ryan. “He was a lot like me when I was younger. He was just pitching and not doing a lot of thinking.”9

Johnson also found resolve and courage from another source. Bud Johnson had been suffering with an ailing heart, and he died on Christmas Day of 1992. Randy, who was en route to see his father, missed the opportunity to say goodbye. “From that day on I got a lot more strength and determination to be the best player I could be,” said Johnson, “and not to get sidetracked and not to look at things (in games) as pressure, but challenges. What my dad went through was pressure. That was life and death. This is a game.”10

From 1992 through 1995 the switch was flipped and the Big Unit led the American League in strikeouts four straight years. He joined an elite club in accomplishing that feat during four (or more) consecutive seasons.11 In 1993 he struck out 308 batters, and it was the first of six seasons in his career that he would top 300 strikeouts in a season. He won his first Cy Young Award in 1995 with a record of 18-2, a league-leading 2.48 ERA, and 294 strikeouts. “I got an individual award, but this is a team award,” said Johnson. “Without the success of my teammates, this wouldn’t have happened.”12

The 1995 American League West Division ended in a tie between Seattle and the California Angels. A one-game playoff was played on October 2 at the Kingdome. With Johnson on the hill, the M’s cruised to an easy 9-1 victory and faced the New York Yankees in the Divisional Series. After dropping the first two games in New York, the Mariners evened the series at two wins apiece. Johnson, who had won Game Three, came back to pitch three innings of relief as the Mariners won Game Five, 6-5 in 11 innings. Seattle’s magical season ended in the American League Championship Series, as they lost to the Cleveland Indians in six games. In the clincher, Johnson lost to Dennis Martinez, 4-0.

Johnson had major back surgery in 1996 and started only eight games. He made a full comeback in 1997, posting a 20-4 record and a 2.28 ERA with 291 strikeouts. Twice he struck out 19 batters in a game, against the Oakland Athletics on June 24, a 4-1 defeat, against the Chicago White Sox on August 8, a 5-0 victory. In that game he struck out Frank Thomas and Albert Belle three times each. “Basically, with him I just look for one pitch – his fastball,” said Chicago second baseman Ray Durham. “If he’s getting his slider over, I’m out anyway.”13

Johnson started the All-Star Game in Cleveland on July 8, 1997. In the second inning he uncorked a throw over the head of the Colorado Rockies’ Larry Walker. Walker, a left-handed batter and a former teammate of Johnson’s in Montreal, turned his batting helmet around and hit right-handed to the amusement of all. On the next pitch he returned to the left side of the plate. Walker’s Colorado teammate Dante Bichette said of Johnson, “He’s the most dominating pitcher right now. When he came up, he had that fastball and the strikeouts. But he didn’t have that look in his eye. Now he’s got that possessed look in his eye. If you just look at him you could get intimidated.”14 The Rockies faced Johnson on June 13, 1997, and could manage only two hits and one run against him in eight innings.

The Mariners won the American League West Division by six games over the Anaheim Angels in 1997. Their postseason was short-lived; they were eliminated in four games by Baltimore in the ALDS. Johnson lost both of his starts to Mike Mussina in the series.

Johnson entered the last year of his Mariners contract in 1998. Seattle had committed to long-term deals with Alex Rodriguez and Junior Griffey, so Johnson expected a big payday too. But Seattle management had its doubts about his durability. The 34-year-old ace was a power pitcher who had pitched more than 200 innings in six of the last eight season and had had back surgery. The Mariners looked to trade Johnson even though an estimated 9,000 more fans pushed their way through the turnstiles at the Kingdome every time Johnson toed the rubber.15

Johnson did not take to the constant trade talk well, and his record on the mound (9-10, 4.33 ERA) may have reflected his feelings. At the trading deadline on July 31, Johnson was dealt to Houston for pitchers Freddy Garcia and John Halama and infielder Carlos Guillen. The Astros were atop the National League Central Division by 3½ games over the Chicago Cubs at the time. Adding Johnson instantly made Houston the favorite to take the NL flag. Chipper Jones of Atlanta summed up the feeling of the senior circuit: “I think those were gulps you heard around midnight Friday from Atlanta, San Diego and Chicago. Picking up Johnson has to make Houston the favorite. In a (seven-game) series, you are going to have to face Randy at least twice, which means you may have to win four games against pitchers like (Mike) Hampton and (Shane) Reynolds. Those guys could be Number 1 starters on a lot of other teams.”16

When the news hit of the trade broke, the Astros were in Pittsburgh. First baseman Jeff Bagwell was in a bar across from Three Rivers Stadium with some teammates and club officials. When the word came of the trade, Bagwell bought drinks for everyone in the house. In Johnson’s first start, two days later, he struck out 12 Pirates to get the win. It was the most strikeouts by an Astros left-hander in 29 years. Johnson was as solid as advertised. He went 10-1 with a 1.28 ERA. The Astros won their division by a comfortable 12½ games.

But the euphoria was tempered quickly when San Diego toppled Houston in four games in the Division Series. Johnson lost Game One, a tight 2-1 contest in which Padres starter Kevin Brown rang up 16 strikeouts. Johnson also lost Game Four, surrendering just one earned run in six innings of a 6-1 loss.

The Arizona Diamondbacks, after their inaugural season, wanted to make a splash in the free-agent market. They signed Johnson to a four year, $52 million pact. The return on their investment was substantial. Johnson won the Cy Young Award each season from 1999 through 2002. He joined Pedro Martinez and Gaylord Perry as the only pitchers to win the award in both leagues (Roy Halladay and Roger Clemens followed), and he tied Greg Maddux for the most consecutive years winning the award. On September 10, 2000, Johnson struck out Mike Lowell of the Florida Marlins for his 3,000th career strikeout. On May 8, 2001, he struck out 20 Cincinnati batters. In each of the four years Johnson won the Cy Young Award, he struck out more than 300, topping out at 372 in 2001. He won at least 20 games twice, and won the ERA crown three times. In 2002 Johnson won the “Triple Crown” for pitchers, leading the league in wins (24), ERA (2.32), and strikeouts (334).

But for all of his accomplishments, Johnson always maintained that individual awards meant nothing if the team didn’t win. “The outcome of the game takes precedence over anyone’s accomplishments,” he said in commenting on a loss in 2000. “You can get all the strikeouts you want, but I made a mistake (on a throwing error in the game in which he notched his 3,000 strikeout, a 4-3 loss).”17

Johnson was joined in Arizona by veteran right-hander Curt Schilling via trade during the 2000 season. They were polar opposites: Johnson was a surly, introverted type, Schilling had an extroverted, funny personality. Where Johnson was all business on the mound, Schilling was a bit more relaxed, easy-going. Johnson was quiet, Schilling talked nonstop. They fed off each other to form a fearsome one-two punch in the Diamondbacks rotation. Randy welcomed Curt’s arrival. “What helped most with Curt was that he’s one of the few pitchers who knows the expectations put upon that ace in a rotation of five pitchers,” said Johnson. “So I can share experiences and feelings with him that I couldn’t share with anybody.” 18 Said Arizona first baseman Mark Grace, “Randy is a pussycat, a very, very nice man. He just doesn’t enjoy the spotlight as much as Schilling.”19

Arizona catcher Damian Miller also shared a different viewpoint of Johnson. “Randy puts a lot of faith in me,” said Miller. “He wants me to do whatever I can to get him through seven or eight innings. If I have to yell at him, I yell at him. One thing about Randy: He’s got the three Cy Youngs, but if I’ve got something to say, he looks me right in the eye and listens to it. He doesn’t feel like he’s above his catcher. He wants his catcher to get in his face.” 20

But the Big Unit saved his best for the baseball’s biggest stage, the World Series, in 2001. The Diamondbacks rode Johnson and Schilling (both 20-game winners) to a division crown and a berth in the World Series against the New York Yankees. With the Diamondbacks trailing three games to two, Johnson won his second game, hurling seven strong innings during a 15-2 pasting of the Yankees. Game Seven was much closer, as the Yankees took a 2-1 lead in the eighth inning. Johnson, as he did in 1995, came on in relief and retired all four batters he faced. He was the pitcher of record when the Diamondbacks scored two runs off Mariano Rivera in the bottom of the ninth inning to capture their first world championship. Johnson and Schilling were named co-MVPs of the Series. When Arizona manager Bob Brenly asked Johnson how he felt after Game Six, and whether he would be able to come out of the bullpen for Game Seven, Johnson answered, “This is the World Series, I’ll be ready.”

Johnson signed a new two-year deal with Arizona in 2003, reported at $33 million. The deal made Johnson the highest-paid pitcher in major-league history. But arthroscopic surgery on his right knee curtailed his season (6-8, 4.26 ERA in 2003). He rebounded in 2004 to lead the league in starts (35) and strikeouts (290) while winning 16 games.

Johnson authored a book with Jim Rosenthal titled Randy Johnson’s Power Pitching: The Big Unit’s Secret to Domination, Intimidation and Winning (Three Rivers Press, 2003). The book was written to guide youngsters on how to be complete pitchers. Pitching coaches Tom House and Mark Connor contributed to the manuscript.

After the 2004 season the Diamondbacks sought to cut some salary and knew that it might be a problem keeping Johnson. Johnson was sold to the New York Yankees on January 11, 2005, for pitchers Javier Vazquez and Brad Halsey, catching prospect Dioner Navarro, and $9 million. Johnson won 17 games in 2005 and 2006 for the Yankees, although his ERA ballooned to 5.00 in 2006. Both years the Yankees won the American League East Division. However, they were bounced from the division playoff round both years, with Johnson failing to register a win. “When Randy came here, he didn’t have the same stuff he used to have,” said Yankee closer Mariano Rivera. “Randy only pitched here as a visitor and maybe he wasn’t comfortable. He’s the only one who really knows. But he worked, worked hard. We didn’t win as much as we wanted to, but I know every time out there, he pitched as hard as he could.”21

After the 2006 season, Johnson had lower-back surgery and was sold back to the Diamondbacks for four players on January 9, 2007. But more back surgery limited Johnson to 10 starts in 2007.

After an 11-10 season in 2008, Johnson signed a one-year deal with the San Francisco Giants. He got his 300th win as a Giant, against the Washington Nationals on June 4, 2009. It was a game that was unlike others earlier in his career; he pitched six innings and struck out only two. His 13-year-old son, Tanner, served as batboy. “I’m just happy that my family and friends were able to come,” said Johnson. “My son being batboy – those are kind of moments that I relish the most. My family’s been with me the whole time. They’ve seen what I’ve done.” 22 Johnson, who was now 45 years old, quipped that all he needed was 211 more victories to catch Cy Young.

Johnson retired after the 2009 season. In 22 major-league seasons, his record was 303-166 with a 3.29 ERA. He struck out 4,875, second to Nolan Ryan (5,714). He threw 37 shutouts and pitched 100 complete games. He was nominated to the All-Star Game 10 times.

In retirement Johnson surrendered his time to his other two passions: his family, wife Lisa and their four children (Johnson also had a daughter from a previous relationship), and photojournalism. He enjoyed doing the things he missed while playing and enjoyed seeing his children grow up from their teen years. It may seem odd to some that for someone who shunned the camera lens as a player, Johnson embraced it so much as a hobby. But he took classes at USC and applied his skills at various concerts and NASCAR events. He made numerous trips to visit the troops in Afghanistan. Johnson aided many charities, mostly cystic fibrosis where his fundraising efforts have raised more than a million dollars. Occasionally he scheduled appearances at sports memorabilia/card shows.

In 2006 Johnson perhaps took a departure from his rather withdrawn demeanor and appeared in an episode of The Simpsons. The animated show debuted on March 19, 2006, in the 17th season of the series. Johnson played himself in the role.

In 2015, Johnson was elected to the National Baseball Hall of Fame in his first year of eligibility. He was named on 534 of 549 ballots by the Baseball Writers’ Association of America.

  An updated version of this biography appears in SABR’s No-Hitters book (2017), edited by Bill Nowlin.   Sources Ancestry.com baseball-reference.com/ retrosheet.org/ Johnson’s file at the Baseball Hall of Fame   Notes

A far-from-giant Giant, pitcher Mickey Welch formed a cornerstone of the celebrated National League franchise founded in New York. Generously listed in baseball reference works as 5-feet-8 and 160 pounds, the undersized right-hander pitched and won the Giants’ [then Gothams’] inaugural NL game in 1883. Two years later, he compiled 17 consecutive pitching victories on the way to posting a 44-win season, still the all-time franchise record. By the time he departed the major league scene in early 1892, Welch had become only the third pitcher in big-league history to record 300 wins. He spent the remainder of his long life at the margins of the game, serving as a ballpark attendant at the Polo Grounds and Yankee Stadium, and regularly regaling New York sportswriters with tales from baseball’s early years. Some three decades after his passing in 1941 – and more than 80 years after he had appeared in his final major-league game – the memory of Mickey Welch was forever preserved by his induction into the National Baseball Hall of Fame.

Mickey Welch was born Michael Francis Walsh in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn on July 4, 1859. He was the oldest of the three siblings surviving childhood born to horseshoer John Joseph Walsh (1835-1900) and his wife, Bridget (née Guinan, c.1833-1887).1 The elder Walshes were Irish-Catholic immigrants from Tipperary about whom little else is known, except that by the time of the 1865 New York State Census, they had adopted, again for reasons unknown, the surname Welch.2 Upon entering public life, Mickey would use that as his last name, rather than Walsh, whenever dealing with baseball club owners, sportswriters, and fans, as well with as government and local officials.3

Small but athletic, Mickey spent much of his youth on the sandlots of Brooklyn, a hotbed of the pioneer-era game and home of the champion Atlantic, Excelsior, and Eckford clubs. At age 18, he journeyed upstate to accept his first professional engagement, earning $45 per month as an outfielder-pitcher for the Volunteers club of Poughkeepsie, an independent professional nine. In the box, he reportedly went 16-6 in 23 games.4

Welch began the following season with a pro club in Auburn, New York, but departed early to join the Holyoke (Massachusetts) Shamrocks in faster competition.5 He returned in 1879 to a Holyoke team upgraded by the acquisition of future Hall of Famer Roger Connor, and later major-league stalwarts Larry Corcoran, Fergy Malone, Jerry Dorgan, and Pete Gillespie. Appearing primarily as a pitcher, Welch used no windup for the mandated underhand delivery of a serviceable fastball and an effective array of breaking pitches and fashioned a 23-14 record.6 A highlight of the campaign was a 10-inning, 1-0 victory against Springfield, posted over opposing manager Bob Ferguson’s protest that Welch’s pitching motion was illegal. A competent batsman used as a backup outfielder, Mickey also hit .266 in 184 at-bats for the Shamrocks. A more enduring Welch highlight occurred off the diamond. On November 16, 1879, 20-year-old Mickey and his 18-year-old sweetheart, Mary Whelihan, were joined in marriage at St. Jerome Church in Holyoke. Their union would last 56 years and produce nine children.7

Suspect pitching motion notwithstanding, Welch had made a favorable impression on Bob Ferguson, and when the crusty veteran was appointed manager of the National League Troy Trojans in early 1880, he immediately acquired Mickey for his pitching staff. Welch was joining a middle-of-the pack club, but one loaded with young talent. No fewer than five Trojans (Buck Ewing, Tim Keefe, a hastily-released Dan Brouthers, Connor, and Welch) were destined for Cooperstown. But the club would have to endure its roster’s growing pains. Welch’s major league debut could not have gone much worse: a 13-1 loss to Worcester on May 1. Four days later, he broke into the win column, besting Worcester 3-1, and he soon justified Ferguson’s faith in him. Appearing in 65 games total, Mickey logged a 34-30 record in a yeoman 574 innings pitched for the fourth-place (41-42) Trojans. Hitting from the right side, he also batted a solid .287 in 251 at-bats, third highest on the club. But standing in the pitcher’s box a mere 45 feet from enemy batsman, Welch was shaky in the field, with a .841 fielding average.

Beginning in August, Welch occasionally was spelled in the box by a fellow rookie right-hander named Tim Keefe. Keefe went only 6-6 for Troy in 1880, but he and Welch had begun a decade-long collaboration as baseball’s most dominant pitching duo. But first, the two would have to take some lumps. Troy headed for a (39-45) fifth-place finish in 1881. That season, Keefe assumed the number-one starter role that he would maintain for most of the partnership with Welch, getting the ball in 45 games (compared to Welch’s 40 starts), but suffering an 18-27 record in 403 innings pitched. Mickey had more success, going 21-18 in 368 frames. The 2.67 Welch ERA was also better than Keefe’s 3.24. The pattern continued in 1882. Keefe drew the starting assignment more often than Welch (42 times to 33), but posted the poorer record (Keefe: 17-26; Welch 14-16). But that season the win-loss records were misleading; Keefe (367 hits surrendered in 376 innings pitched) was far more difficult to hit than Welch (334 hits given up in only 281 innings pitched). But the disparity in their win-loss records was apparently dispositive to a future employer and produced immediate consequences for Tim Keefe and Mickey Welch. And for major-league baseball in New York.

Since the expulsion of their clubs after the 1876 season, New York and Philadelphia, the nation’s two largest cities, had been without a National League team. But in 1882, the death of NL commandant William Hulbert and the emergence of the American Association, a rival major league, prompted reconsideration of the circuit’s structure. In short order, the NL liquidated the small-market franchises in Troy and Worcester, creating the needed vacancies for league reentry into New York and Philadelphia. Thereafter, both the NL and the AA began courting John B. Day, the well-heeled cigar manufacturer who controlled the New York Metropolitans, an independent, professional nine that had proved highly competitive in exhibition game play against NL and AA clubs. In time, the NL and AA each offered Day a place in their organization. Audaciously, Day accepted both offers, assigning the already-established Mets to the Association. His National League club was constructed from scratch but built around player material acquired via the fire sale of the Troy Trojans. Day plainly intended his NL team, originally called the Gothams or simply the New-Yorks, to be the favored one, and stocked it with most of Troy’s best ex-players: Buck Ewing, Roger Connor, Mickey Welch, and Pete Gillespie – but not Tim Keefe, who, in a painful misjudgment, was consigned to the Mets.

Keefe pitched brilliantly in 1883, going 41-27, with a 2.41 ERA and a league-leading 359 strikeouts in a staggering 619 innings pitched. And under the direction of wily manager Jim Mutrie, the Mets posted a more-than-respectable 54-42 record. Meanwhile, the Gothams got off to an auspicious start. With the Polo Grounds packed with 12,000 fans (including former president Ulysses S. Grant) for Opening Day, Mickey Welch pitched the home side to a 7-5 victory over Boston. But much to Day’s chagrin, his pet club underperformed, posting a sixth-place (46-50) finish in NL standings. The individual matchup between Keefe and Welch came out much the same, with Mickey’s stats, 25-23, with a 2.73 ERA and 144 strikeouts in 426 innings pitched, no way comparable to those of his old Troy comrade. The next season was more of the same – at least as far as the co-owned New York clubs went. With Keefe (37-17) and Jack Lynch (37-15) splitting hurling duties evenly, the 75-32 Mets captured the AA pennant handily. Meanwhile, the Gothams’ improved 62-50 log was good for no better than fourth place in the senior circuit. But the imbalance in Mets-Gothams fortunes could no longer be attributed to Mickey Welch. Like Tim Keefe, he was entering the prime of his major-league career. For the 1884 season, he arguably outperformed Keefe, going 39-21, with a 2.50 ERA and 345 strikeouts in 557 1/3 innings pitched. In the process, he set a long-overlooked NL record that stood for nearly a century. On August 28, Welch began a game against Cleveland by striking out the first nine batters who faced him.8 But Welch’s standout individual performance did not lessen John B. Day’s unhappiness about the Gothams mediocre standing in the NL, and drastic measures were about to be taken.

During the off-season, Day reassigned Mets manager Mutrie to the Gothams. Then, via some artful rule-bending, Tim Keefe and star third baseman Dude Esterbrook were transferred to the Gothams, as well.9 With Cooperstown-bound John Montgomery Ward and Jim O’Rourke also in the New York lineup, the club was now the powerhouse Day desired.

The 1885 campaign found Mickey Welch at the zenith of his career. Sharing pitching duties with Keefe, Mickey went a franchise record-setting 44-11, with a 1.66 ERA and 258 strikeouts in 492 innings pitched, a performance punctuated by a 17-consecutive-game winning streak. Nor was Keefe a slouch that season, going 32-13, with a 1.58 ERA and 227 strikeouts in 400 innings. Both hurlers had successfully adapted to the rule changes of the mid-1880s (regarding balls and strikes; the lengthening of the pitching distance; the sanction of overhand pitching; etc.) by throwing from varying arm angles and adding put-away pitches to their repertoires: for Welch, the in-shoot (screwball), and for Keefe, the changeup. The two were also dead-earnest workers in the box, with a distinct aversion to losing.

But away from the field, Welch and Keefe were polar opposites. Keefe was a quiet, serious man, reserved, almost aloof in manner, and he sported the handlebar mustache near-ubiquitous among the ballplayers of the 1880s. In contrast, the clean-shaven Welch was a fun-lover. Although he reputedly refrained from tobacco, swearing, and hard liquor, Mickey was a fabled beer drinker, given to composing impromptu ditties about his favorite beverage.10 He also frequently entertained teammates, companions, and other bar-goers with a fine Irish tenor singing voice. Notwithstanding their divergent personalities (and later differences over the Players League), Mickey Welch and Tim Keefe were good teammates and maintained a lifelong friendship.

For the 1885 campaign, the New York team performed up to expectations. But an exceptional 85-27 record was good for only second place that season, as the Chicago White Stockings, with Cap Anson, King Kelly, and John Clarkson at their playing peak, came in two games better in final NL standings. During the season, the New York team acquired the nickname that would accompany the club to later baseball glory: “Giants.”11 Star pitcher Welch also received an enduring sobriquet: “Smiling Mickey,” a tribute to his even-temperedness in the pitching box – he never argued a call and was said to be the favorite pitcher of NL umpires – and the bemused grin that seemed plastered on his face.12

With an ever-growing family to support, Welch held out briefly during the offseason of 1885-1886, but club owner Day refused to yield to his “exorbitant” demands.13 Welch later signed quietly, probably for about $3,000. He pitched well during the 1886 and 1887 seasons, but a nagging back and occasional arm miseries reduced his numbers: 33-22 in 500 innings pitched (1886), and 22-15 in 346 innings (1887). Meanwhile, Tim Keefe had gone a combined 75-39 in over 1,000 innings pitched and had assumed the mantle of staff ace.

Following two also-ran finishes, the 84-47 Giants surged to the 1888 NL pennant, a full nine games ahead of second-place Chicago. Welch (26-19) ably seconded Keefe (35-12) during the season, and again assumed a support role when the Giants faced the AA champion St. Louis Browns in the post-season precursor of the modern World Series. With Keefe (4-0) going undefeated and Welch and right-hander Cannonball Crane splitting their four decisions, the Giants prevailed in the 10-game series, 6-4, and took home their first baseball championship.

The 1889 season was a virtual repeat. New York (83-43) nipped the Boston Beaneaters (83-45) at the wire for the NL crown and then bested the AA Brooklyn Bridegrooms in the postseason. Although troubled by back problems, a thumb injury, and illness in the family, Welch pitched capably for the champions, going 27-12 in 375 innings pitched. But he was ineffective during the Series, being shelled by the Bridegrooms in his only outing. Keefe also went winless, being hit hard in his two post-season starts. Only unexpected pitching heroics by Crane (4-1) and Hank O’Day (2-0) allowed New York to prevail, 6-3.

While 1889 had seen the Giants successfully defend their world champions’ crown, the season had been conducted amidst rising owner-player tension, with long-standing player resentment of the reserve clause in the standard major-league contract exacerbated by newly-adopted limitations on player salaries. Notwithstanding the fact that John B. Day was well-liked by his players, the New York Giants were the springboard of the coming insurrection, with union visionary John Montgomery Ward busily organizing a new, player-controlled major-league circuit for the 1890 season.

Although Welch had been a member of the Brotherhood of Professional Base Ball Players since its founding in 1885,14 he did not join the exodus of Giants headed for the new league. Club owner Day, intent on holding onto at least a few members of his championship nine, tendered Welch a guaranteed, three-year contract at $4,000 per season, a pact which the Players League declined to match. Welch explained his decision to reject a lesser offer from the PL bluntly: “I am in the business for dollars and cents, and as the offer made by the old League was the better one, I accepted it.”15 Days later, he resigned from the Brotherhood.

In the end, only Welch and outfielder Mike Tiernan remained with the NL (Real) Giants. The rest joined Buck Ewing and the PL (Big) Giants. Fortified by an infusion of playing talent purchased from the defunct Indianapolis Hoosiers – Amos Rusie, Jack Glasscock, Jerry Denny, and others – the Real Giants fared better than expected on the field. The club’s pitching mainstay was the 19-year-old Rusie, who went 29-34, with 341 strikeouts (and 289 walks) in 548 2/3 innings pitched. In more limited action, Welch chipped in a respectable 17-14 record, which included a 1-0 shutout of Pittsburgh on August 29. It was Welch’s 300th major league win. In keeping with the times, the accomplishment went unnoted in the press.16

All things considered, the club’s 63-68 final record was a relative triumph. But with the Big Giants playing their games next door to the Polo Grounds in newly erected Brotherhood Park, the competition for fans had been cutthroat, and both teams hemorrhaged red ink. Shortly after the financially ruinous season ended, the NL and PL Giants merged, heralding the demise of the Players League. Tim Keefe, Buck Ewing, Roger Connor, and Jim O’Rourke returned to the Giants fold for the 1891 season, but were now on the downside of storied careers.

So, too, was Mickey Welch. He appeared in only 22 games in 1891, going 5-9 with an inflated 4.28 ERA in 160 innings pitched, for a 71-61 Giants club.17 In the final year of the guaranteed contract that he had signed in 1890, Welch returned to the club for the 1892 season. But his stay was short. Inactive for the first five weeks of the campaign, Mickey was handed the ball on May 17 for a game against the Baltimore Orioles. He lasted five innings and was removed after surrendering nine runs. Shortly thereafter, the Giants released the 32-year-old Welch, bringing his major league career to an end.

In 13 seasons, Smiling Mickey Welch posted a 307-210 (.594) record, with a 2.71 career ERA. He pitched 4,802 innings, completing 525 of his 549 starts, while hurling 41 shutouts. In 4,802 innings pitched, he yielded 4,588 hits (.246 OBA), but his strikeouts (1,850) to walks (1,297) ratio was subpar. To counterbalance that, he had often helped himself with the bat. A modest .224 batting average included some pop: 121 extra-base hits, including 12 homers. Welch scored 268 runs, and drove in 202 more. He had also been an occasional position player, making 59 appearances in the outfield (albeit with a dismal .740 FA).

In all, Mickey Welch had been a ballplayer of the first rank. And he wanted to continue. Following his release by New York, Welch returned to familiar terrain, signing with the Troy Trojans, now a member of the Eastern League. In 31 EL games, he posted a 16-14 record, with a scintillating 0.87 ERA in 267 2/3 innings pitched. But with his family growing ever larger, Mickey desired to play closer to his home, in Holyoke. For 1893, he joined a local semipro club and, with hard feelings over the Players League forgotten, arranged a preseason exhibition game with the John Montgomery Ward-led New York Giants. Pitching for the first time from the newly established 60’-6” pitching distance, Welch was hammered, surrendering 11 runs before he could get out of the first inning. He then retreated to right field for the remainder of the 23-8 laugher.18 That summer, Mickey toed the slab a few more times for the Holyoke club, before hanging his spikes up for good at season’s end.19

His playing days now behind him, Welch gave his full attention to the Holyoke businesses, a hotel-saloon and a cigar shop that he had long owned an interest in. Later, he went into the milk production business with his sons.20 In time, Welch found more reliable employment as steward of the Elks Lodge in Holyoke. Always trim and in good shape, he spent off-days hiking local hills. Or swapping yarns with Dirty Jack Doyle, a 17-year major-league veteran and long-time resident of Holyoke.21 But his favorite leisure activity was taking in Boston and New York ball games, his enjoyment always enhanced on those occasions when he was seated with his old friend, Tim Keefe. One such trip, in 1912, resulted in a meeting with Giants manager John McGraw, and a new job as a night watchman at the Polo Grounds.22 For the next 20 summers, Mickey and wife Mary would be summertime residents of Manhattan.

When Yankee Stadium was put into service in 1923, Welch doubled his ballpark duties, serving as a gatekeeper and press box attendant there. The latter position was a perfect fit for a storyteller like Mickey. On slow sports news days, reporters often filled column space with Welch reminiscences about a bygone baseball era, or his unshakeable opinion that the players of his day were the equal of, if not better than, the moderns, whose bashing offensive style of play Welch disdained. Late in his life, a delightfully eccentric Mickey Welch all-time team – Jack Doyle (not Lou Gehrig or Jimmie Foxx) at first; Ed Williamson over Honus Wagner at short; and an outfield with Hugh Duffy and Willie Keeler, but no Babe Ruth – was published in the New York press.23 New York Times sportswriter John Kiernan, who often waxed nostalgic in print, described the now-elderly Welch as “hale and hearty and lively as a cricket.”24

The passage of time may have been kind to Welch, but it was less so to his contemporaries. In April 1933, Mickey was saddened by the passing of Tim Keefe. He served as a pallbearer at the Keefe funeral. But the real blow came in October 1935 when his wife, Mary Welch, died unexpectedly at their new residence in Corona (Queens), New York. With his children long out of the house, Mickey was living on his own for the first time in decades. And when Dasher Troy – whose five errors at shortstop had nearly cost Welch the 1883 season opener – died in 1938, Mickey became the final survivor of the original New York Gothams/Giants.

By now, Welch’s own days were numbered. Suffering from heart disease, he relocated to the home of grandson Bill Welch, Jr., in Nashua, New Hampshire. In late-spring 1941, Mickey was removed to New Hampshire State Hospital in Concord, where doctors discovered that his left foot had become gangrenous.25 He died there of congestive heart failure on July 30, 1941. Smiling Mickey Welch was 82. Returned to his Brooklyn birthplace for funeral services, the deceased reverted to being Michael Walsh, the name placed on his funeral card and inscribed on his gravestone. He was interred in the Walsh family plot at Calvary Cemetery in Woodside (Queens), New York.26

While Buck Ewing (1939) and Jim O’Rourke (1945) were early Hall of Fame inductees, the other early New York greats remained neglected until the mid-1960s. John Montgomery Ward and Tim Keefe received their due in 1964. And finally, in 1973, the call to Cooperstown was sounded for Mickey Welch.27 At the enshrinement ceremony, his 84-year-old daughter Julia Welch Weiss acknowledged the plaque on behalf of the family. Long after his death, and more than 80 years after his final major-league game, Smiling Mickey Welch had become a baseball immortal.

Sources

Sources for the biographical detail contained herein include the Mickey Welch file maintained at the Giamatti Research Center, National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum, Cooperstown, New York; US and New York State Census data, family tree information accessed via Ancestry.com, and certain of the newspaper articles cited below. Unless otherwise noted, statistics have been taken from Baseball-Reference and Retrosheet.

Notes

1 The 1865 New York State Census lists Bridget Welch as the mother of seven children, with Michael (age 6), Mary (4), and infant Julia residing in Brooklyn with their parents.

2 See the 1865 New York State Census. A century later, Mickey’s daughter advised the Hall of Fame that her father’s correct surname was Walsh, and that the family had never legally changed it to Welch. See May 24, 1973 letter of Julia Welch Weiss to Cliff Kachline in the Mickey Welch file at the National Baseball Hall of Fame.

3 According to a respected baseball historian, “he was Michael Walsh off the field for the rest of his life. His friends called him Mike.” See David L. Fleitz, The Irish in Baseball: An Early History (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Co., Inc., 2009), 29. When he erected a cemetery monument in his late parents’ honor, Mickey commemorated them and other family members under the name Walsh, and he himself was later interred there as Smiling Mickey Walsh. See the posting with photo for Michael “Smiling Mickey” Welch on the Find-a-Grave website.

4 As per Baseball’s First Stars, Frederick Ivor-Campbell, Robert L. Tiemann, and Mark Rucker, eds. (Cleveland: SABR, 1996), 170. See also Rich Westcott, Winningest Pitchers: Baseball’s 300 Game Winners (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2002), 20.

5 The departure of Michael Welch from the Auburn club was noted in the New York Tribune, May 9, 1878. See also, the Biographical Dictionary of American Sports: Q-Z, David L. Porter, ed. (Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1990), 1646, which maintains that Welch “began his pro career with Auburn in 1878,” and an undated circa 1881 New York Clipper profile of Welch putting him with the Auburn club contained in the Hall of Fame’s Welch file.

Baseball-Reference places Welch with the Pittsburg Alleghenys of the International League in 1878, with no stats provided. The only arguable Welch connection to that club found by the writer appeared in the Boston Daily Advertiser, May 6, 1878: “Welch, a young amateur belonging to the Lynn [Massachusetts] Emmets, pitched very well for the Alleghenys in place of Lafferty who is laid up with rheumatism.” Whether this Welch was our subject or someone else, he lost to the Live Oak club, 10-1, although only three of the runs surrendered were earned. That our Mickey Welch spent the latter part of the 1878 season playing for Holyoke was reported by the Cleveland Leader, August 2, 1878, and confirmed by various published Holyoke box scores. See e.g., the Worcester Daily Spy, August 12, 1878.

6 As per Baseball’s First Stars, 170. Baseball-Reference provides no won-loss record for Welch in 1879.

7 The Welch children were John (born c. 1880), Nora (1882), Mary (1885), William (1887), Julia (1889), Helen (1892), Lydia (c. 1893), Margaret Theresa (1895), and Mabel (c. 1897), as per the May 1973 letter of Julia Welch Weiss to Cliff Kachline, and various US Census reports.

8 Perhaps because the ninth Cleveland strikeout victim reached first base on a passed ball, the Welch record went unrecognized until after Mickey’s death in 1941. See “An Overlooked Feat,” an unidentified October 23, 1941 news item in the Mickey Welch file at the Hall of Fame. In the August 28, 1884 game, Welch struck out 14 Cleveland batters in all.

9 For more detail on the maneuvers that secured Mutrie, Keefe, and Esterbrook, see the SABR BioProject profile of John B. Day. The loss of the three gutted the pennant-winning Mets. In 1885, the club fell to seventh place in AA standings. The Mets were then sold to Staten Island entrepreneur Erasmus Wiman. Two unsuccessful seasons later, the New York Metropolitans were disbanded.

10 The most remembered of these went: “Pure elixir of malt and hops, Beats all the drugs and all the drops.”

11 Popularly attributed to Mutrie, the nickname “Giants” may actually have been coined by New York Evening World reporter P.J. Donahue. For more, see the SABR BioProject profile of James Mutrie.

12 The “Smiling Mickey” nickname is usually attributed to R.V. Munkittrick, a writer-cartoonist for the satirical magazine Puck and the New York Evening Journal.

13 As per Sporting Life, April 21, 1886. Welch had signed an improvident three-year deal in 1883, and had made only half of Tim Keefe’s $3,000 salary for the 1885 season.

14 Noel Hynd, The Giants of the Polo Grounds: The Glorious Baseball Days of the New York Giants (New York: Doubleday, 1988), 26.

15 New York Times, January 14, 1890.

16 Welch was the third major-league pitcher to record 300 wins, preceded by Pud Galvin (in late 1888) and Tim Keefe (earlier in 1890).

17 Tim Keefe went 2-5 for the 1891 Giants before being released in July. He then signed with the Philadelphia Phillies. He retired after being cut loose by the Phillies in August 1893. Keefe’s lifetime major-league record was 342-225.

18 New York Times, April 7, 1893.

19 David L. Fleitz, More Ghosts in the Gallery: Another Sixteen Little-Known Greats at Cooperstown (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Co., Inc., 2007), 148.

20 Ibid., 149.

21 Welch and Doyle enjoyed hoodwinking local reporters with an apocryphal tale about how the younger Doyle had caught Mickey’s final major-league victory in 1892. See e.g., “Doyle Caught Welch in Mickey’s Last Victory,” Holyoke (Massachusetts) Daily Transcript, August 5, 1941. In fact, Mickey’s last win was posted during the 1891 season, and he and Doyle were never members of the New York Giants at the same time.

22 McGraw had a soft spot for baseball old-timers, finding ballpark sinecures for Amos Rusie and Dan Brouthers as well.

23 Jimmy Powers, “Welch Omits Ruth in All-Time Team,” New York Sunday News, April 2, 1939.

24 New York Times, January 25, 1938.

25 As per the death certificate in the Mickey Welch file at the Giamatti Research Center.

26 A color photo of the Calvary Cemetery headstone taken by SABR’s Stew Thornley is posted on the Find-A-Grave website. Note should be taken, however, of second, erroneous Find-A-Grave posting that places the Walsh/Welch grave site in Lake Forest, California. Unhappily, this bogus California gravesite is the one listed by the Baseball-Reference entry for Mickey Welch.

27 Teammate Roger Connor had to wait until 1976 for his posthumous Hall of Fame induction.

Timothy John Keefe was born on January 1, 1857, to Irish immigrants Patrick and Mary (Leary) Keefe, who at the time of his birth resided in Cambridge, Massachusetts.2 However, Tim was actually born in neighboring Somerville, probably at the home of a maternal relative.3 One of seven children, he had one older brother (Daniel) and five younger sisters (Katherine, Mary, Margaret, Ellen, and Anne). Tim’s father worked as a carpenter to support the family. By 1870 his father moved the family from Cambridge to Somerville, to the Inman Square neighborhood that straddles the town line between Cambridge, the location of prestigious Harvard University, and working-class Somerville.4

Where Keefe received his early education is unclear. By age 13 he and his older brother were listed as students in the 1870 federal census, presumably attending the Somerville public schools. Keefe likely attended Somerville High School in the footsteps of his older brother.5 Whether or not Keefe graduated from high school is unknown.

After his schooling, Keefe, like his father, worked as a carpenter.6 According to Keefe family legend, Tim’s father encouraged his son to learn mathematics and science, to be more of an engineer than just a simple carpenter, and disliked his forays into baseball.7 But Keefe kept at baseball, playing for local amateur teams and steadily working his way up the ranks. In 1877 he devoted more time to baseball than to carpentry when he played for the Our Boys team, based in Boston, which played a schedule during the week, not just on Saturdays, that ranged from college and independent professional teams to the Boston team in the National League.

An incident in the fall of 1877 helped to shape Keefe’s attitude about professional baseball in relation to making a living as a carpenter, while also establishing his strong feelings about labor-management relations. Keefe had worked 11 days between October 26 and November 8 to build a house on a lot of land on Springfield Street in Somerville, for which he had a verbal agreement to be paid $22 for labor and materials. When the property owner, who lived in Cambridge, took advantage of the Somerville carpenter and refused to pay him, Keefe sued him and filed a mechanic’s lien on the property.8 Keefe decided that if it took these lengths to collect wages as a carpenter, he would be just as well off as a professional baseball player. It was also one of the last times that Keefe acknowledged himself as “Timothy J. Keefe of Somerville,” as indicated in the land-lien recording. He moved out of his family’s house in Somerville, became an iterant ballplayer, and aspired to be a landowner in the more respected town of Cambridge.

In 1878 Keefe became a full-time professional ballplayer with the team based in the town of Westboro, about 25 miles west of Boston, where he played third base and outfield and occasionally pitched.9 When the team relocated to the town of Clinton midway through the 1878 season to use its new ballfield, Keefe stayed on. He played in the inaugural games staged at the site of today’s Fuller Field in Clinton, which Guinness World Records recognizes as the oldest baseball diamond in continuous use.10

Keefe played for four teams during the 1879 season. He began with Clinton, but when the team relocated to Natick in June 1879, Keefe left the team. He wasn’t out of work long. Keefe caught on with the Utica, New York, team in the National Association, an East Coast league with teams that spanned geographically from Massachusetts to Washington, D.C. In mid-June Utica was on a road trip through Massachusetts and was seeking a new pitcher to reverse its losing ways. After Keefe pitched Utica to victory in an exhibition game in Boston against Harvard University, Keefe became the team’s new pitcher.11 When the Utica team disbanded in mid-July, Keefe joined the New Bedford, Massachusetts, team in the same circuit, which was managed by Jim Mutrie. After debuting in the pitcher’s box on July 22 with a victory over Brockton, Keefe became New Bedford’s regular pitcher. However, by mid-September, New Bedford was one of just four remaining teams in the National Association, in which the Albany, New York, team had edged the Washington Nationals for first place. Keefe left the New Bedford team to join the Albany team and pitched two games at the tail-end of its 1879 season.

Keefe was Albany’s chief pitcher in 1880 in the three-team National Association, where he compiled a 7-9 league record, and pitched in numerous exhibition games against major-league teams, before Albany disbanded in early July. He made his major-league debut as an umpire in Boston on July 21. Once again, Keefe wasn’t unemployed for long, as the Troy team in the National League, just ten miles upriver from Albany, signed him. Keefe was victorious in his major-league debut on August 6, 1880. In this era of one-man pitching staffs, Keefe spelled pitcher Mickey Welch for a dozen games the rest of the 1880 season, compiling a 6-6 record with a delivery the Troy Daily Times called “very deceptive, hard to hit, and full of curves.”12

Because Keefe had experienced unlimited mobility in his first three years of full-time professional baseball, he expected to parlay his brief time with Troy into a better deal with another major-league team. However, the National League ballclub owners had agreed to implement the reserve clause for the 1880 season. It allowed each club to protect five players each season from jumping to another team. Keefe was one of the five players on Troy’s reserve list for the 1881 season.13 Because he was reserved, Keefe was compelled to accept Troy’s salary offer of $1,500 for the 1881 season and couldn’t negotiate to play for other teams.14 When Troy reserved Keefe again for the 1882 season, he tried to hold out for more money, but had to settle for the same $1,500 salary. “I was considered a robber because I held out for $2,100,” Keefe recalled later in life about being one of the earliest holdouts in baseball history.15 With his 1877 mechanic’s-lien experience fresh in his mind, Keefe embarked on a decade-long quest for increased fairness to players in baseball contracts, which culminated in his involvement with the Brotherhood of Professional Base Ball Players in 1885 and the formation of the Players League in 1890.

For the 1881 and 1882 seasons, Keefe and Welch split Troy’s pitching duties, which then still required an underhand delivery; Buck Ewing and Bill Holbert alternated at catcher. Keefe had more opportunities to pitch in 1881, since a rule change that year moved the pitcher 50 feet from home plate, from 45 feet, which encouraged managers to use a two-man pitching staff. Keefe had an undistinguished pitching record with the mediocre Troy team, 18-27 in 1881 and 17-26 in 1882, over an 84-game schedule.

As one of the smallest cities by population in the National League, Troy was forced out of the National League after the 1882 season to make room for a team in the far more populous New York City. In September 1882, viewing the probable disbanding of the Troy franchise, various ballclubs from the American Association and the National League made offers to the better Troy players, such as Keefe and Ewing, for the 1883 season, which the Troy Daily Times regularly reported to readers. When it became public that the National League owners, at their league meeting on September 22, had voted to expel Troy, the imminent demise of the Troy franchise set off a flurry of rumors. Ewing was the prize, as he was considered the best catcher in the league. He enticed a $2,800 salary offer from the Detroit ballclub and eventually signed for $3,100 with owner John Day of the New York ballclub in the National League that was in essence replacing Troy.16

With Day outbidding other owners for the services of Ewing, Keefe was able to negotiate a hefty salary increase for himself by deftly playing Day against both the Troy management and other bidders. As the New York Herald reported in mid-October, “The [Troy] players have been coquetting, however, to a considerable extent, holding off from signing with the various managers, and thereby increasing the bidding by saying that they intended remaining in Troy, while at the same time they declined signing with that club.”17 Keefe no doubt relished his final interaction with the Troy club at an October 10 meeting at which management agreed to his salary demand, but he then refused to sign a contract to that effect and left the meeting.18 Three days later the Troy Daily Times reported that several Troy players had signed with the New York City team.19 Keefe signed with Day for a $2,800 salary, nearly double his Troy salary, which was good for both the 1883 and 1884 seasons.

Day wound up obtaining New York City ballclubs in both the National League and American Association, so he had Jim Mutrie split up the signed players between the two teams. Day already had John Ward as the primary pitcher for the National League team, so Mutrie made Mickey Welch the change pitcher there while Keefe was assigned to the Metropolitans team that Mutrie would manage in the American Association. Welch later said that the decision to allocate pitchers was based on the fact that Welch pitched better to catcher Ewing, the key Troy player, while Keefe was best with Holbert.20 Keefe may have volunteered to play for the Metropolitans, to reunite with Mutrie from their days at New Bedford and to pitch to batters who had never seen his delivery before. Also, in the fall of 1882, the American Association and National League didn’t recognize each other’s reserve clause, so in theory Keefe had greater flexibility for future salary negotiations with the Metropolitans (although that changed in February 1883, partially as a result of Day’s signing of Ewing and Keefe). By early November, Keefe was firmly affixed to the Metropolitans roster in the American Association.21

Mutrie paired Keefe with Jack Lynch as the Metropolitans’ two-man pitching rotation in 1883, for the lengthened 98-game schedule, and in 1884, when the schedule was expanded again, to 112 games. Keefe, who had been a mediocre pitcher with Troy, blossomed with the Metropolitans. He racked up impressive pitching records of 41-27 and 37-17 during his two years with the Metropolitans, including a league-leading 359 strikeouts in 1883. In 1884 Keefe led the Metropolitans to the American Association pennant, before they faced the National League champion Providence Grays in a best-of-three-games World Series. Keefe lost both of the first two games, then umpired the third, inconsequential game.

With his $2,800 salary with the Metropolitans, Keefe earned far more than he’d ever make as a carpenter. He began to wear tailored suits, to emulate a well-heeled Cambridge citizen, which distanced himself from the blue-collar background of his father, a carpenter, and his brother, a plumber. He taught himself subjects to compensate for his lack of a college education, studying accounting to understand business and shorthand to take good notes of meetings. In New York he was exposed to the theater and other social activities of wealthy people that he could never experience in ethnically stratified Boston, which provided few such opportunities for those of Irish ancestry.

Keefe’s performance with the Metropolitans led Day to hatch a plan to reunite Keefe with his former Troy teammate Mickey Welch as the pitchers for the 1885 season on his National League team, to be managed by Mutrie. Day orchestrated a ruse to transfer Keefe and teammate Dude Esterbrook from Day’s American Association team to his National League team by having Mutrie take them both on a boat trip to Bermuda. On the ship Mutrie gave both players their ten-day release from their contracts with the Metropolitans, and then 11 days later signed them to National League contracts.22 Day and Mutrie had to hide the two players from the other major-league teams because at the time the ten-day release worked like today’s waiver wire, so any team could acquire the player’s contract during that ten-day period before the player was freed from the reserve clause and could negotiate with other teams.

In signing with Day’s National League team, Keefe seems to have negotiated a three-year contract, since he received the same $3,000 salary for each of the 1885, 1886, and 1887 seasons. Given his performance in 1885 and 1886, he almost certainly would have desired to dicker with Day about an increased salary, but there is no public record of such activity as there would be in his salary-negotiation attempts just a few years later. Keefe also likely received a sizeable salary advance in 1885 from his future earnings, since he began to invest in real estate at this time. Keefe cautiously dipped his toe into the real-estate market by investing $2,000 into a mortgage on a property in his hometown of Somerville, whose owner was required to repay the $2,000 plus interest within one year or the property would revert to Keefe.23

Keefe made his New York City debut in the National League on April 24, 1885, with the team now known informally as the Giants, which had six future Hall of Fame players (Keefe, Welch, Buck Ewing, Roger Connor, John Ward, and Jim O’Rourke). Behind Keefe’s 32-13 pitching mark, the New York Giants made a run at the National League pennant but finished in second place behind the champion Chicago team, led by John Clarkson, a Cambridge native.

Transferring to the New York Giants changed Keefe’s life in many ways, most notably situating him as a teammate of John Ward, who had recently graduated with a law degree from Columbia College. Ward led the players’ revolt against the National League owners, which began with the establishment of the Brotherhood of Professional Base Ball Players in October 1885; at the group’s first meeting in November 1886, Ward was named president and Keefe was selected to be secretary-treasurer.24 Ward often characterized the negotiation plight of the professional baseball player as no better than that of livestock or slaves. Given Keefe’s early experiences in Troy with baseball negotiations, he completely agreed with that assessment. Although he was now well paid, Keefe still fought for the rights of the average ballplayer.

Keefe had his finest National League season in 1886, when he led the league with 42 wins, 62 complete games, and 535 innings pitched, as the league expanded its schedule to 126 games. The key to his pitching success was his brain, not his brawn. Throughout the 1880s, Keefe successfully adapted to continual rule changes that modified how and from where pitchers could throw the ball, lowered the number of balls a batter needed for a walk, and elongated season schedules.

“Keefe is said to be one of the most scientific pitchers in the country – that is, he uses his head as well as his hands while in the box,” the Boston Globe commented in 1885, adding that Keefe had the lowest ratio of hits per nine-inning game in the league.25 Keefe had similar speed and the curveball of other pitchers, but deception set him apart from the other top pitchers of the era. “His strength, however, was in deceiving the batsman,” the New York Tribune explained. “His real effectiveness lay in his change of pace. He could pitch a speedy ball with the same preliminary movements as he used with a slow cut-curve; consequently the batsman never knew just what kind of a ball to expect when he was pitching.”26

“Change of pace for pitchers was important in those days,” Keefe said decades later. “It was then, as now, largely a case of outguessing the batter.”27 In this regard, he gave a lot of credit to his catcher, Buck Ewing. “People who followed the game say that I was a pretty good pitcher myself. Well, anybody could pitch if Ewing was catching them,” Keefe believed. “He knew how to steady a pitcher, knew all the points of the batsmen in the league and used those points to great advantage. He was always constantly up to the many tricks of the game and never forgot a weakness of his opponents.”28

Besides pitching at different speeds, Keefe threw with different arm motions, often side-arm and underhand (submarine style, in today’s parlance) even though the overhand delivery had been legalized in 1884. He also made liberal use of the entire pitcher’s box, throwing from different angles (not simply straight on to the batter) and taking multiple steps before releasing the ball, not always pitching from a set position. Keefe was a master of the multistep hop, skip, and jump delivery, which he described in 1888 as combining “plenty of speed and strength and a series of gymnastics to terrify the batter,” in which “the pitcher had the batter completely at his mercy.”29 As Keefe recalled later in life, “We were pitching from a 50-foot distance then, and honestly, I sometimes used to wonder how they even hit us, with those advantages which we had.”30

Midway through the 1886 season, Keefe purchased a piece of land in Cambridge that totaled 29,950 square feet (about three-quarters of an acre) on the northerly side of Cambridge Street, between Irving Street and Trowbridge Street.31 Keefe paid $2,000 cash and financed the remainder of the $5,614.50 purchase price with a mortgage taken back by the seller, Mary Brown, wife of Frank Brown of Baltimore. The land, about one-quarter mile from Harvard and across the street from the estate of Frederick Rindge, seemed to Keefe to be ripe for development.32

After he purchased this land in Cambridge, newspaper accounts almost always referred to Keefe or his family as being from Cambridge, not from his real home in Somerville at 54 Springfield Street. For example, in the summer of 1887, the New York Times reported that “Keefe, of the New-Yorks, has gone to Cambridge, Mass., where his father died yesterday.”33 Patrick Keefe actually died in Somerville and had lived in Somerville for nearly 20 years.34 Keefe, who was born in Somerville and had resided there since he was a boy, likely perpetuated the myth that his home was in Cambridge, since this highbrow address was far more prestigious than working-class Somerville. This myth helped to support his persona as the gentlemanly “Sir Timothy,” the nickname he acquired around 1888 based on his unflappable demeanor and desire for fairness. The “from Cambridge” line also made for good association with another great 19th-century pitcher, John Clarkson, who truly hailed from Cambridge.

In 1887 a rule change required Keefe to abandon the “hop, skip, and jump” delivery by pitching from a fixed position, with the “pitcher compelled to keep both feet on the ground and face the batter before delivering the ball,” and keep his right foot on the back line of the pitcher’s box and allowed to take only one step forward.35 Other rule changes were instituted that year to reduce the advantage of the pitcher, such as needing four strikes for a strikeout (up from three) and five balls for a walk (down from six), and allowing a hit batsman to take first base. Batters also were credited with a base hit for a walk that year. While the new rules stifled the success of many pitchers that year, Keefe adapted by focusing more on his scientific approach to deceiving the batter.

Keefe followed up his fantastic 1886 season with a solid 35-19 record in 1887, which included one tie game that generated some everlasting fame. On August 20 Keefe held a 5-3 New York lead in the top of the ninth inning when Philadelphia loaded the bases with no outs. Pitcher Dan Casey, the next hitter, “then raised the crowd to its feet by hitting safely to right, bringing in McGuire and Irwin” to tie the game.36 When the Giants failed to score in the bottom of the ninth, the game ended 5-5. Thus began the inspiration for baseball’s most famous poem, contend Jim Moore and Natalie Vermilyea, authors of the book Ernest Thayer’s “Casey at the Bat”: Background and Characters of Baseball’s Most Famous Poem. Moore and Vermilyea postulate that Thayer, then living in San Francisco, read about Casey’s exploits in The Sporting News, which included the phrase “Casey was at the bat,” and modeled the pitching character in his poem after Keefe.37

Keefe and many of the Giants (including John Ward, who had married actress Helen Dauvray during the 1887 season) participated in a postseason baseball tour in the fall of 1887, which began in New Orleans and culminated in San Francisco, where Thayer did interview the Giants and cover several of their games for the San Francisco Examiner. One game in particular seemed to draw Thayer’s attention, the November 26 game against Stockton, which the Giants won, 26-0. Men named Billy Cooney and Dan Flynn played for Stockton that day. Cooney and Flynn were the exact names of two characters in Thayer’s poem, published in June 1888.38

During the winter of 1888, a New York writer wrote about Keefe’s dissatisfaction with the reserve clause that held him captive to the Giants: “It is true that Keefe has been made uneasy by the unbusinesslike and you may say dishonest policy of other club officials. He has said to Mutrie: ‘Jim, I think it is not right to compel me to stay in New York and play ball for the money I get from the New York Club, when I have been offered one and one-half times more salary to pitch in another League city as soon as I get my release.’ That is all Tim will say, but it is enough. He has been approached by some one in whom he has faith and whom he knows talks with authority. The sum he has been offered is at least $7,500 a season. It is not at all strange, therefore, that Keefe grows restless and talks about the slavery of pitching seven months for $3,000.”39

Keefe was in no hurry to rejoin the Giants for the 1888 season, as he held out for a higher salary in his contract negotiations with Giants owner John Day. That spring Keefe made his first appearance as a college baseball coach, at Amherst College.40 In the late 19th century, professional baseball players were college baseball coaches only in the sense that they trained players before the season. The student who was captain of the college team was effectively the coach, since he negotiated the team’s schedule and made the playing decisions.

Keefe wanted $4,500 to play for the Giants in 1888, a 50 percent increase over his $3,000 salary each of the previous three years; Day offered him a $4,000 salary.41 The New York Herald reported that “Keefe went to his home in Cambridge, Mass., yesterday” to contemplate Day’s $4,000 offer.42 It was during this holdout that Keefe once let it slip that he didn’t live in Cambridge, as the Herald wrote, when he told a Boston writer that he had “found a telegram from Mr. Day, which had been received at my home in Somerville.”43 Keefe seemed determined to sit out the season if he didn’t get what he thought was a fair price for his services: “I might have to wait a long time. They might not send for me this season. I am not trying to play any bluff. When I get my business affairs fixed up and the weather is warmer we will fix it up if they want me, and I will jump in.”44 Keefe held out until May 1 when he finally agreed to Day’s $4,000 offer.45

Despite the late start, Keefe led the National League with 35 wins and 335 strikeouts during the 1888 season. One reason for his success was that the league expanded to a 140-game schedule that year. This forced Mutrie to use a three-man pitching rotation, which provided Keefe with more rest between starts. A second reason was that Keefe had started to court Clara Helm, a wealthy socialite and the sister of Ward’s wife, whom he had met on the train trip from California to the East Coast in February 1888. During his holdout in April, newspapers had falsely reported that the two were to soon wed; Keefe blushingly contradicted the marriage rumor.46 Clara was a frequent spectator at the Polo Grounds during the 1888 season, often observed “gazing intently” at her boyfriend’s effort on the baseball diamond.47

The highlight of the 1888 season for Keefe was a 19-game winning streak from June 23 to August 10. This win streak remains the major-league record (through the 2019 season), now shared by Keefe with Giants pitcher Rube Marquard, who tied the record in 1912. On August 14, Keefe was defeated by Chicago in his quest for a 20th consecutive win. Later that evening Keefe and many of the Giants attended a theater show where DeWolf Hopper recited publicly for the first time Thayer’s poem “Casey at the Bat.”48

In the midst of his record winning streak, Keefe defeated Philadelphia on July 28, when for the first time the Giants wore all-black uniforms with white lettering on the shirts.49 Although later derided as “funeral clothes,” the new togs were then called “Nadjy uniforms,” based on a popular comic opera then playing in New York City in which one actress wore a “black bat” dress that had splashes of white on an all-black background. Keefe is often said to have sold the uniforms to the Giants, which can’t be documented, but he may have pitched the idea for them to the Giants. The Nadjy uniforms were certainly a spark for the new sporting goods firm of Keefe & Becannon, which Keefe started in January 1889 with former Metropolitans teammate Buck Becannon.50

The Giants won the 1888 National League pennant and played the St. Louis Browns of the American Association in a postseason World Series that fall. Keefe won four games (the first, third, fifth, and eighth games) to propel New York to victory in the best-of-ten-games match. After winning the series, Ward participated in Chicago owner Albert Spalding’s world tour that winter along with a number of other ballplayers. However, after Ward’s ship had left San Francisco for Hawaii, the National League owners announced a fixed salary-classification structure (maximum $2,500) that they proposed to implement without input from the Brotherhood, which would depress salaries and eliminate contract negotiations. Keefe, who was still in New York City opening up his sporting goods store, was thrust into being the Brotherhood spokesperson while Ward was overseas.

After again coaching the Amherst College nine during March 1889, Keefe conducted his second holdout in as many years prior to the 1889 season. This time, though, he presented a better case that he had viable alternatives to pitching for the Giants. Newspapers noted that he was busy getting the Keefe & Becannon sporting goods business off the ground. He also leaked details of his real-estate investment, some of which the newspapers exaggerated. “Another cause for this independence, it is said, is the sudden increase in value of some property owned by Tim at Cambridge, Mass.,” the New York World reported. “Recently the town officials decided to erect a public library and selected as a site for it the ground owned by Tim … [who] when offered a fair price for the property refused the offer. He had refused several others since, the last being $30,000. Tim, it is said, holds off for $50,000 and is confident of obtaining that sum.”51

By 1889 the library in Cambridge was already under construction across the street from Keefe’s property on Cambridge Street, on land donated by Frederick Rindge; what could possibly inflate the $5,614 purchase price of Keefe’s land were two new high-school buildings that were to be built partially on other Rindge land, but which needed further land acquisitions.52 Cambridge English High School and the Manual Training School were both built in 1892 but, unfortunately for Keefe, the town planners decided not to expand north of Cambridge Street to acquire land for the new public high schools.

Keefe wanted a $5,000 salary to play for the Giants during the 1889 season, but Day offered him only $4,000, the same level as the previous season. “Yes, it is true that I have asked for an increase,” Keefe told newspaper reporters. “I have played good ball for the New York Club, the organization has made money, and I do not think that my demands are unjust. … If my terms are not agreed to I will attend to my sporting goods business and give up the diamond until matters are arranged to my satisfaction.”53 Day responded, “Keefe is a nice gentleman and a clever ball player, but I don’t think that his services or those of any other baseball player are worth more than my [$4,000] figure.”54

Two weeks into the 1889 season, Keefe and Day were still at loggerheads in their salary negotiation. On May 9 newspapers reported that Keefe said he’d accept $4,500, but not Day’s offer of $4,000.55 That day, with all four Giants pitchers either injured or sick, Buck Ewing pitched in the game against Boston. New York won, but clearly Keefe’s services were needed. Day caved in and offered Keefe the proposed $4,500 compromise.56 Keefe accepted and pitched his first game on May 10.

Keefe produced only 28 wins in 1889, as he missed a seventh straight 30-win season during a year of many distractions. His Brotherhood activities sapped some energy, including the meeting on July 14 at which the Brotherhood quashed an earlier plan to stage a strike and instead hatched a new plan to form a competing Players League for the 1890 season. Keefe also shed his bachelor days when he married Clara Helm on August 19, 1889, in Worcester, Massachusetts.57

Despite the many distractions during the 1889 season, the Giants won a second straight National League pennant and met Brooklyn of the American Association in the World Series that fall. Mutrie had overused Keefe down the stretch in order to edge Boston in the neck-and-neck battle for the pennant, with Keefe nailing a victory on the last day of the season to clinch the title. However, a tired Keefe was ineffective in the opening game of the 1889 World Series, and only pitched briefly in relief in one other appearance, as Ed Crane started five (and won four) of the eight meaningful games in the Series to lead the Giants to victory over Brooklyn.

In November 1889 the Brotherhood announced the formation of the Players League to compete with the National League. Keefe and most of the Giants players joined the New York team in the Players League, which was financed by Edward Talcott, Cornelius Van Cott, and Edwin McAlpin. Keefe and Ewing were the player representatives on the club’s board of directors.58 Keefe’s sporting goods firm, Keefe & Becannon, was awarded a three-year contract to supply the official Players League baseball, which became known as The Keefe Official Ball.59 Keefe & Becannon also supplied uniforms and equipment to many of the Players League teams. Keefe’s firm made a huge bet that the league would succeed, calling the firm in its advertisements “Outfitters to the Players’ National (Brotherhood) League and Manufacturer of The Keefe Official Ball.”60

While Keefe was intellectually committed to the Players League movement, he wasn’t entirely committed financially. In mid-December 1889, Keefe transferred ownership of his real-estate property in Cambridge to his mother.61 This move ensured that creditors couldn’t reach this asset for legal judgments against him (or his firm Keefe & Becannon, which was a partnership, not a corporation) if the Players League failed. Six days after Keefe transferred his real-estate property to his mother, the New York Giants served papers on Ward as they pursued a legal injunction to stop Ward (and by implication Keefe and the other confederates) from jumping to the Players League and thus enforce the reserve-clause aspect of his National League contract.

Among a lot of nasty name-calling and legal action, the Players League fought for spectators with its National League counterparts. Keefe had an uninspiring season with the Players League Giants. He secured his 300th career victory on June 4, although to no fanfare at the time. His season ended prematurely when he broke the index finger on his pitching hand on August 19. He tried to pitch on September 8, but lasted only one inning.

Almost all teams in both leagues lost money. The competition in New York City financially crippled Day of the Giants, as he lost tens of thousands of dollars and was nearly bankrupt. While the Giants of the Players League came close to breaking even, Talcott and the financial backers took advantage of Day’s precarious financial situation and quickly negotiated a deal after the season ended. They agree to merge the two teams with the resulting team to play in the National League and the Talcott faction, not Day, in charge. With the flagship New York team abandoning the Players League, the league itself soon imploded and ceased to exist by January 1891.

Keefe was in serious financial difficulties after the collapse of the Players League. Since Keefe & Becannon was a partnership, Keefe was responsible for his share of the firm’s unpaid debts. The firm had lost money on the first year of the contract to supply baseballs to the Players League, but expected to make it up in the next two years. The firm was also owed money by the teams that had bought uniforms and equipment. Creditors soon sued the firm and its two partners for unpaid bills. After the firm of Keefe & Becannon was officially dissolved in July 1891, a receiver paid off its obligations at cents on the dollar.62

During the winter of 1891, Keefe re-signed with his old team, the New York Giants of the National League, for the 1891 season. Ever the negotiator, Keefe held out for his $4,500 salary paid in 1890, but settled for a reduction to $3,500 for the season.63 However, the Giants used Keefe sparingly during the first half of the 1891 season and he was released in July; he then signed with the Philadelphia team.

In the winter of 1892, Keefe returned to college coaching and began a stretch of six straight winters coaching the Harvard baseball team to help its pitchers prepare for the coming season.64 Harvard was just a quarter-mile from his property in Cambridge, and about a mile from his parents’ home in Somerville where he stayed when not in New York City.

Keefe pitched his last major-league game on August 15, 1893, and was released by Philadelphia the next day. The lengthening of the pitching distance to 60 feet 6 inches reduced the effectiveness of the 36-year-old pitcher. He obviously left on good terms, since he umpired Philadelphia’s game on August 17. Upon his retirement as a ballplayer, Keefe was the career leader in strikeouts with 2,564 (a record broken by Cy Young in 1908) and had the second-most career victories with 342, just behind Pud Galvin.

By 1894 Keefe continued to suffer financial strain following the Players League debacle, which was compounded by the nation’s severe economic depression. To raise money, Keefe sold off the majority of his still-undeveloped Cambridge property (albeit in his mother’s name) and retained just a small corner lot on the Trowbridge Street side of Cambridge Street.65 Reluctantly, Keefe returned to baseball to work as an umpire, a move he regretted. “I did not like umpiring,” he later acknowledged. “Did you ever see a man who did?”66

Keefe served as a National League umpire from August 3, 1894, to July 6, 1896. He hoped that he could add value to baseball through his integrity and vast knowledge of the game. Instead the ballplayers gave him little respect on the diamond, arguing and complaining about any call that didn’t go their way. The fans at the ballpark weren’t much better, as Joe Vila of the New York Sun recounted in a tale of abuse that Keefe once had to endure when he umpired at the Polo Grounds: “In a grilling battle between the Giants and the Bostons, however, Keefe, absolutely honest, made several close decisions against the New Yorks. Before the game ended Keefe was the target for a volley of abuse. He was hooted and hissed and finally a mob tried to handle him roughly as he made his way to the dressing room. Believe me, boys, Keefe actually broke down and wept. The admirers of former days had turned against him in less than two hours.”67

After an incident in St. Louis in July 1896, Keefe telegraphed his resignation to the league president, saying: “My sole reason for leaving the field yesterday and for then and there determining to sever my connection with the national game forever is that base ball has reached a stage where it is absolutely disgraceful. … The continual senseless and puerile kicking [by the ballplayers] at every decision has been infinitely trying to me and I have been considering for some time whether I had not better resign.”68

Keefe found more respect as an umpire in the Eastern League, where the players were more intent on advancing to the National League than showing up an umpire. He served as a minor-league umpire from August 1896 to September 1897.

The last straw for Keefe with baseball was a snub by Harvard, when the school did not renew its baseball coaching relationship with him for the 1898 season. Harvard instead opted to use the services of Boston Nationals pitcher Ted Lewis, a Williams College graduate. As Boston Herald writer Jake Morse reported in his column in Sporting Life, “It was a radical change on the part of the Harvard Athletic Committee to appoint a young pitcher like Ted Lewis in place of Tim Keefe, who has been coach at Harvard for so many seasons.”69

Keefe became a recluse following his snubbing by Harvard. During the summer of 1899 one writer noted, “One rarely hears the name of Tim Keefe mentioned now. The former great pitcher seems to have dropped entirely out of sight and sound.”70 Indeed, over the next quarter-century until his death, Keefe stayed out of the public eye with only rare exceptions.

Keefe chose family over baseball. In 1898 his brother Daniel, a member of the Massachusetts militia, was involved in the Spanish-American War; with a wife and three young children, Keefe’s brother could no longer look after their widowed mother. Keefe built two multifamily houses on the remaining piece of land he owned on Cambridge Street in Cambridge, one house at 1653 Cambridge Street and the other at 89 Trowbridge Street.71 His mother (who technically still owned the property) and his two older sisters, Kate and Mary, moved from Somerville to live in one of the apartments in the house at 1653 Cambridge Street.72 Keefe, who divided his time between New York City and Cambridge, earned an income from renting apartments in the multifamily buildings. After his mother died in 1909, Keefe moved into the house on Cambridge Street with his sisters, who both never married. By 1910 Keefe was also single, having divorced his wife, Clara.73 He and his wife did not have any children.

While Keefe remained out of public view, his name carried on in corrupted versions of the poem “Casey at the Bat” that began appearing in about 1900 in a number of anthologies of humorous verse. These versions of Thayer’s poem substituted the line “He signaled the pitcher” with “He signaled to Sir Timothy,” and more specifically indicated Keefe through the change of the term “the writhing pitcher” to “the New York pitcher.”74

In February 1906, Keefe consented to an interview to discuss former teammate Buck Ewing, who was critically ill at the time and would die later that year. According to Keefe, Ewing was “the greatest all around ballplayer, I would say without hesitation, that the game has ever produced.”75 Beyond his extensive remarks about Ewing as a ballplayer and leader (he credited Ewing as the reason why Giants won the pennant in 1888 and 1889), Keefe said: “Well, I try to keep up with baseball fairly well. I run in to Boston occasionally to see a game on the American League grounds … but I can’t see really, for the life of me, that the players of today excel those of the period just before the Brotherhood broke up. It seems to me that was the most prosperous time that the game has ever known. Certainly there are no better batters today than there were then.”76

In July 1912 New York Giants pitcher Rube Marquard tied Keefe’s record for 19 consecutive victories. However, as Marquard approached the 19-win threshold, there was no mention of Keefe’s name, since most baseball observers believed Marquard was chasing a record of 20 wins set by Pat Luby in 1890. After the fact, Luby’s streak was found to be only 17 wins, and only then was Keefe’s name thrust into the spotlight as the rightful record holder.77 If Keefe had an opinion about Marquard tying his record, he did not share it with any baseball writer for publication.

In 1928, Boston Globe sportswriter Ford Sawyer ran across Keefe at a Red Sox game at Fenway Park, where “the 70-year-old real estate owner is unknown to the vast majority of the thousands who are urging on their Boston favorites.”78 Keefe, who now regularly attended ballgames once a week, told Sawyer that baseball was “fundamentally the same old game” as back in the 1880s, and that he particularly liked to watch Ty Cobb.

Tim Keefe died on April 23, 1933, in Cambridge and is buried in Cambridge City Cemetery.

In 1936, at the time of the first BBWAA election for the Baseball Hall of Fame, Keefe’s pitching exploits for the New York Giants in the 1880s were largely forgotten, as he received just one vote on the 78 ballots cast for the 19th-century stars component of the initial Hall of Fame class.

Keefe was more famous in the 1930s as the mythical pitcher in “Casey at the Bat,” since Dan Casey did promotions to further his titular fame from the poem’s title. At a “Casey Night” in May 1938, the 76-year-old Casey took swings at a minor-league game in Baltimore. He missed the first two serves from Rogers Hornsby, the former major-league star who was Casey’s foil as the pitcher, but on the third pitch he stroked a hit to left field, rather than strike out as his namesake had done in Thayer’s poem. As for his success, Casey said, “Hornsby didn’t have as much on the ball as Tim Keefe did” back in that inspirational August 1887 game.79

In 1964 Keefe was enshrined in the Baseball Hall of Fame by the Veterans Committee. Since he had no children, several nieces and nephews, the children of his younger sister Ellen, represented him at the induction ceremony.80

A sign honoring Keefe today adorns Tim Keefe Square in Cambridge, at the corner of Cambridge and Trowbridge Streets, in front of the house at 1653 Cambridge Street where Keefe had lived for the last two decades of his life.

This biography is included in “20-Game Losers” (SABR, 2017), edited by Bill Nowlin and Emmet R. Nowlin.

Sources

Books

Bryan Di Salvatore, A Clever Base-Ballist: The Life and Times of John Montgomery Ward (New York: Pantheon Books, 1999).

Roy Kerr, Buck Ewing: A Baseball Biography (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland, 2012).

William McNeil, The Evolution of Pitching in Major League Baseball (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland, 2006).

Jim Moore and Natalie Vermilyea, Ernest Thayer’s “Casey at the Bat”: Background and Characters of Baseball’s Most Famous Poem (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland, 1994).

Newspapers

Lee Allen, “Cooperstown Corner,” The Sporting News, April 4, 1964.

Harold Kaese, “Keefe Fanned Mighty Casey,” Boston Globe, February 9, 1964.

T.J. Keefe, “Curves or Liners: The Vexed Question in Base Ball Circles, Boston Globe, October 21, 1888.

Ford Sawyer, “He Pitched 19 Straight Wins,” Boston Globe, May 27, 1928.

Philip Shirley, “A Chat with Keefe,” Sporting Life, February 24, 1906.

“A Declining Baseball Star: Timothy J. Keefe, Once the First Pitcher Among Baseball Players,” New York Tribune, October 4, 1891.

“Tim Keefe, Noted Pitcher, Is Dead,” Boston Globe, April 24, 1933.

Boston Globe, 1877-1897.

Harvard Crimson, 1892-1897.

New York Herald, 1888-1891.

New York Times, 1883-1893.

New York World, 1888-1891.

Sporting Life, 1885-1897.

Troy Daily Times, 1880-1882.

Websites

Ancestry.com, Cambridge Directory and Somerville Directory.

Baseball-Reference.com, Tim Keefe playing record.

Archives

Massachusetts State Archives, Boston, Massachusetts, birth, death, and marriage records prior to 1910.

Middlesex South Registry of Deeds, Cambridge, Massachusetts, land records from 1870 to 1920.

U.S. Census Bureau, federal census records for decennial years from 1860 to 1930.

Notes

Charles Augustus Nichols was born into a large family on September 14, 1869 in Madison, Wisconsin.  His father was a butcher there for many years and briefly served as an alderman.  For a few years before Charles was born, his half-brothers James and John were regulars for Madison’s Capital Citys club, which was connected to the National Association of Base Ball Players.1  After Charles arrived, the names of his brothers Will and George would also occasionally show up in newspaper articles about local baseball games, such as one during 1877 in which Will, about nineteen years old, was the winning pitcher.2

Around 1881, Charles and most of his siblings moved with their parents to Kansas City, Missouri.  By 1885 he was playing on the amateur Blue Avenue club with Will, George, and a future brother-in-law.  They were crowned as champions at least once with Charles in the pitcher’s box.3  He also spent time with at least one other amateur club, Beaton’s nine of nearby Armourdale, Kansas, and it was with them in 1887 when he reportedly came to the attention of the Kansas City Cowboys in the Western League as summer approached.4 

June 14, 1887 was the date of his first pro game.  Nichols ended up as the winning pitcher in a 7-6 outcome at Lincoln, Nebraska.  It has been widely reported that Charles Nichols received the nickname “Kid” upon joining the club, when the older players either mistook him for a batboy or at least thought he looked more like one than he did a professional player.  His weight at the time was estimated to be no more than 135 pounds. 

Nichols made 29 more starts and finished the season with 18 wins.  Oddly, the local management appeared to have little interest in resigning him, so he began the 1888 season in the Southern League with the Memphis Grays.  He had a record of 11-8 when the league disbanded in June, and in July he started pitching for one of two minor league teams in Kansas City that year, the Western Association’s Blues.  He sparkled with a record of 16-2 and a league-leading ERA of 1.14.

Ownership in St. Joseph, Missouri, bought the Blues franchise but Nichols held out, insisting that he was free to sign elsewhere.5  He prevailed, and in 1889 eventually joined the Omaha team led by Frank Selee.  The Kid’s record that season was 39-8.

Selee was hired to manage the NL’s Boston Beaneaters for 1890 and wanted to take Nichols with him, but the Cincinnati Reds also claimed him, after Nichols reportedly rejected other offers from Chicago and St. Louis.6  In the midst of this offseason confusion, on January 29, 1890, he married to Jane Florence Curtin (who often went by Jennie).  They honeymooned in Omaha and stopped in Madison on their way to the East Coast.

On April 23, Nichols made his major league debut at home against Brooklyn.  Nichols was the winning pitcher, but he didn’t make too much of an impression until facing Amos Rusie in New York on May 12 as a Players’ League game was taking place in an adjacent field.  The two pitchers gave up almost nothing for the first nine frames, and as the game proceeded through extra innings, many fans watching the adjacent game supposedly were instead trying to watch the drama unfolding in the NL’s Polo Grounds.  The game ended in the thirteenth inning on a towering homer by slugger Mike Tiernan of the Giants off Nichols.  This pitching duel was immediately put on a pedestal by journalists, and remains one of the most-discussed battles of the National League’s early decades.

Nichols finished his rookie season with 27 wins against 19 losses.  Kid and Jennie Nichols wintered in Boston, and on December 8 they celebrated the birth of their only child, Alice.  Nichols won 30 games for the first time in 1891, and would reach that total in six of the next seven seasons.  His seven 30-win seasons remains a major league record.

In the process, he would help his team to three consecutive NL pennants, from 1891 to 1893.  Baltimore then ran off their own streak of three pennants, and in 1897 the Beaneaters battled them down to the wire as the rough-and-tumble Orioles tried for a fourth straight title. 

On September 21, Nichols suffered the worst inning of his major league career, yielding twelve runs to Brooklyn in the first inning of a 22-5 loss.  Three days later, with a razor-thin lead of half a game, Boston began a three-game series in Baltimore with only three more games left in the season afterwards.  Nichols shook off his recent humiliation and was the winning pitcher in a 6-4 contest to open the series. Baltimore rebounded the next day with a 6-3 win, and Selee again turned to Nichols for the third game.  The Beaneaters broke open a tie game with a three-run fourth to give Nichols a lead of 8-5.  Boston exploded for nine more in the seventh, and Nichols then cruised to a final score of 19-10. Though this game clearly wasn’t anything like the many low-hit gems Nichols pitched throughout the season, half of Baltimore’s runs came after the game was out of reach, and box scores indicated that only four or five of the ten runs were earned. 

Though Boston had three more games to play, in Brooklyn, and Baltimore hosted Washington for four to end the season, many newspapers declared the pennant to have been won, for all practical purposes.  They were right.  For the season’s remaining days and for quite awhile thereafter, Nichols seemed to have the most praise heaped upon him of any single Beaneater.

In 1898, Boston added a fifth pennant in Nichols’ first eight years as a major leaguer, to strengthen their case as the decade’s top team.  For the New Bill James Historical Baseball Abstract, the author developed a formula for determining the effect that a player had on individual pennant races throughout his career.  He wasn’t surprised by the first and second rankings.  “There were six pennant races that clearly would have ended differently if Babe Ruth had been merely a good player, and Mickey Mantle also had a decisive impact on six,” James wrote. “However, while you might have guessed the numbers one and two men on the list, the number three man was a pitcher who had a decisive impact on the pennant races of 1891, 1892, 1892, 1897, and 1898, Kid Nichols.  Nichols won [at least] 30 games in all of those seasons—for teams that won pennants by relatively thin margins.”8

At first glance, Nichols record of 21-19 in 1899 stands out like a sore thumb compared to all of his previous seasons with Boston. On the other hand, his ERA of 2.99 was better than in three of his previous years, including the pennant-winning season of 1893 when he won 34 games. Boston’s daily newspapers tended to write off his low winning percentages as simple misfortune.

In 1900, Nichols was hampered significantly for the first time in his career by an injury, suffered in late April,9 and he ended up with his first losing season as a pro, at 13-16.  Still, his ERA of 3.07 was better than his 3.52 mark of the 1893 championship year and the next two seasons after that.  The most notable difference in his performance was that his strikeouts dropped considerably from the previous season.  Nichols rebounded somewhat in 1901, his final year with Boston, and finished with a record of 19-16. 

Near the turn of the century Nichols spent the closing weeks of successive preseasons coaching collegiate players along the East Coast, at Amherst (1899), Yale (1900), and Brown (1901).  He received an offer from Brown again for 1902, but in mid-December of 1901 a shakeup in the Western League provided Nichols an opportunity to co-own and manage that circuit’s Kansas City club, which were known as the Blue Stockings under Nichols—while the Blues name shifted to a rival franchise across town in the newly formed American Association.

Nichols’ squad fared better in its league’s standings, but the AA club brought in opposing teams from much more populous cities and was apparently considered to offer fans higher quality play.  Therefore, even though his club won the Western League pennant while the AA franchise barely had a winning season, the latter won the bitter battle of the box office by far.

Nevertheless, Nichols could derive considerable satisfaction not only as a manager but also as pitcher, proving that he wasn’t washed up by winning 26 games on the mound and losing only 7 with an ERA of 1.82.  His top rival for the league’s pitching honors was Mordecai Brown, who had one more win than Nick but also had 15 losses to go with an ERA of 2.22. 

Nichols continued as player-manager in 1903, and with a week left in the season his Blue Stockings were in third place with had a record of 66-58.  He wasn’t pitching quite as well as in 1902 but remained a considerable asset with a record of 21-12 and an ERA of 2.51.  However, as meager attendance continued in the Western League its season was abruptly cancelled because its franchises generally couldn’t afford to play their final few games.10

In the end, the Western League surrendered Kansas City to the much more successful American Association, but Nichols ended up in a better situation for 1904 when a year-old rumor became reality, and he was named to manage the St. Louis Cardinals.

Kid Nichols took over a team that had finished dead last under Patsy Donovan in 1903, with a record of 43-94.  After he pitched the Cards to victory on June 4 in his return to Boston, where fans greeted him warmly, his new team left town with a record of 18-18.  Toward the end of the season Nichols had steered the Cardinals to a record of 75-73, but they lost their final games to finish 75-79, still a considerable improvement in one year.  He fared even better as a pitcher, with a record of 21-13 and a career-best ERA of 2.02.

Though Nichols was widely held in high regard by teammates, opponents, and fans in other cities, and he didn’t share most other players’ fondness for alcohol,11 he had experienced periodic contract disputes with Boston’s owners and actually held out a few times.  This strong will was apparently the cause of trouble for him early in the 1905 season.  He got along well with only one of the Cardinals’ co-owners, Frank Robison, but as Robison’s health declined in 1905 his brother Stanley exercised more control as the other co-owner.12 

After accumulating a record of 5-9, on May 3rd Stanley Robison relieved Kid Nichols of his managerial duties, though he was retained as a pitcher.  About two months later, after compiling a record of 1-5 with an ERA of 5.40, Nichols was unconditionally released.  In short order he was signed by a former Boston teammate, Hugh Duffy, who had become manager of the Phillies.  The change of teams worked wonders for the second half of the season, and he rewarded Duffy’s faith in him with an ERA of 2.27 to go with a record of 10-6.  Nichols returned to the Phillies in 1906 but was suffering from pleurisy, a debilitating inflammation of the rib cage, and after four poor performances he retired.13

Kid Nichols won 361 games, lost only 208, and saved 17.  He finished 95% of his career starts and was the youngest pitcher to reach 300 career victories.

By 1907, Nichols turned his attention to an activity that he had become very fond of more than a decade earlier, bowling.  More often than not he would own or manage an alley or two for the rest of his life.  Though he had no formal connection to professional baseball in 1907, at his bowling “academy” back in Kansas City he started presenting games on an electric scoreboard that used lights to depict action occurring elsewhere in the country (during an era before radio).  On August 6 he even filed a federal patent application for his unique method of showing baserunners in motion.

Partway through the 1908 season, Nichols returned to professional baseball, in the state of his birth.  In July he took over as manager of the woeful Oshkosh Indians in the Wisconsin-Illinois League.  About a month into this stint his team played a 23-inning game in nearby Fond du Lac, which Oshkosh won, 4-2.  Nichols guided Oshkosh to more wins than losses, 34 to 31.  He put himself in 35 games during that half-season, but not many as a pitcher.  His 3-1 record on the slab gave him career totals as a professional pitcher of 495 victories against 258 losses.

In 1909, Kid Nichols started playing semipro ball in Kansas City with Johnny Kling, among others.  Kling was holding out after helping the Cubs to consecutive World Series crowns.  To taunt Chicago’s ownership, the popular catcher took Nichols and the rest of “Johnny Kling’s All-Stars” to play semipro teams in the Windy City that summer.  They did very well in Chicago, but not in their last game, on September 11.  They faced the famous African-American team known as the Leland Giants, formerly the Chicago Union Giants.  The most prominent player in the Leland lineup was future Hall of Famer John Preston “Pete” Hill.  Kling’s team scratched out only six hits, two by Nichols, who batted eighth ahead of pitcher Chick Fraser.  Nick scored the only run for his club in a 6-1 loss.14

Early in 1910, Nichols he had a conversation with a teenager across the street from where he lived, Charles (eventually “Casey”) Stengel.  Stengel would go on to become a major league player but gained far more fame leading the Yankees to seven World Series titles in twelve years.  He would consistently credit Nichols as one of his most important early influences.15 

In 1911, Nichols led a baseball team in a game of some historical significance.  A club from Keio University in Japan had spent three weeks playing collegiate teams in the U.S., and on May 12 they faced Nick’s semipro team in Kansas City, augmented with players from other local squads, including one from Kling’s.  The Kansas City club, with Nick pitching, had the game in hand until Keio rallied for four runs in the eighth inning, on their way to a 7-6 victory.16 

Kid Nichols reconnected with the major leagues that summer when he was hired by the Detroit Tigers to scout in the Texas League for a few months. 

1913 was an eventful year for Nichols in several regards.  On March 22 he and famous Cub Joe Tinker opened a movie and vaudeville house in Kansas City called the Diamond Theater.17  (It’s unclear how long they both maintained an ownership stake in it.)  On August 5, the federal government awarded Nick a patent for his “Amusement Apparatus,” almost six years to the day of when he had applied for it.  Also, his daughter Alice and her husband made him a grandfather.

In 1915 and 1916, Kid Nichols managed the Missouri Valley College baseball team.  Otherwise, for the better part of a decade his only regular association with baseball resulted from announcements about the electronic scoreboard.

That changed late in the summer of 1922 when he was invited to Boston for an old-timers’ game.  He pitched the first two innings for one squad and Cy Young did so for the other.  Sadly, Nick was bashed for seven runs in the first frame, though he managed to escape the second inning unscathed. 

A decade later, Kid Nichols received recognition as a key figure helping to launch an expanded Ban Johnson League in the area, for amateur ballplayers under the age of 21.18  Nichols was drafted to train and coach the Franklin Ice Cream club in 1932.  The enlarged league would produce many notable major leaguers, most prominently Mickey Mantle.

The next year, at the age of 63, Kid Nichols won the Kansas City bowling championship.  Not much later, his beloved wife Jennie passed away.

Early in 1936, the inaugural class of the National Baseball Hall of Fame was announced, but Nichols suffered through years of barely registering in the voting.  The New Bill James Historical Baseball Abstract explained the circumstances that contributed to this outcome.  “Kid Nichols has been excluded from discussions about the greatest pitchers of all time, as much as anything, because of an accident of the calendar,” James wrote.  “Baseball exploded in popularity between 1905 and 1910, just as Nichols was leaving the game.  Other things happened.  Sports coverage by newspapers increased exponentially, and the wire services began to cover and report every game to a national audience.  Nichols missed all that; his memory was pushed into baseball’s medieval past almost before he got the clay out of his spikes.”19 

In 1939, shortly before turning 70, Kid Nichols had a chance to redeem himself in a second old-timers’ game, again in Boston, a day after attending the All-Star game in New York.  In a steady rain Nick pitched to five batters and finished his inning without allowing a run.  A few years later, the first of his great grandchildren was born.

Sportswriters would periodically advocate for Nichols’ election to the Hall of Fame, such as Grantland Rice,20 and Nichols’ contemporaries such as Cy Young were reportedly in his corner, but the biggest single boost to his consideration may have come in April of 1948 when a legend who was in many ways his exact opposite, Ty Cobb, loudly and repeatedly clamored for Nichols to join him at Cooperstown.21 

Nichols and the late Mordecai Brown were approved for membership early in 1949, and that June he was inducted into the Hall.  For four years he was able to bask in that glow, until his death on April 11, 1953, at the age of 83.

Notes

1 Sam Smith, “Nichols: ‘We Stayed In and Pitched,” Baseball Digest, June 1951, page 76.  See also the Record Book on the Games of the Capital Baseball Club, 1866-1869, in the archives of the Wisconsin Historical Society. 

2 “Stoughton Scooped,” Wisconsin State Journal (Madison), June 30, 1877: 4.

3 Nichols’ descendants still possess a commemorative bat with engraved gold and silver plates for an amateur championship won by the “Blue Avenue Base Ball Club.”

4 Ernest Mehl, “Sporting Comment,” Kansas City Star, September 14, 1950.

5 “’Kid’ Nichols an Old Timer,” St. Louis Republic, May 17, 1903, Part IV, page 1.

6 “Diamond Stories,” Philadelphia Inquirer, December 3, 1899: 13.

7 For a detailed account of this race, see Bill Felber, A Game of Brawl: The Orioles, the Beaneaters and the Battle for the 1897 Pennant (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2007).

8 Bill James, The New Bill James Historical Baseball Abstract (New York: Free Press, 2001): 978.

9 W. S. Barnes, Jr., “Boston’s Worst Defeat,” Boston Sunday Journal, April 29, 1900, section 2, page 1.

10 A primary source for information about Nichols’ stint leading the Kansas City Blue Stockings was Dennis Pajot, Baseball’s Heartland War, 1902-1903: The Western League and American Association Vie for Turf, Players and Profits (Jefferson, NC:  McFarland & Co., Inc., 2011).

11 “Will Urge Players to Stand Together,” St. Louis Republic, December 19, 1901: 7.

12 Dick Farrington, “Kid Nichols, Holder of Two ‘Hidden’ Major Hill Marks, Still Making His Way Via 15 Hours a Day at Age of 73,” Sporting News, December 31, 1942: 11.

13 Nichols explained this around 1949 in a handwritten autobiographical document that is in possession of the National Baseball Hall of Fame.

14 “Klings Lost the Last One,” Kansas City Star, September 12, 1909: 12.

15 For example, see Casey Stengel, as told to Harry T. Paxton, Casey at the Bat: The Story of My Life in Baseball (New York: Random House, 1962): 58-59.

16 See these articles in the Kansas City Star:  “’Japs’ Play Here Tomorrow,” May 11, 1911: 11; “Kansas Beat Keio 10 to 8,” May 12, 1911: 10; “Japs Use their ‘Noodles,’” May 13, 1911: 13.

17 Advertisement, Kansas City Star, March 22, 1913: 4.

18 For example, see “Founders of Ban Johnson League See Idea Spreading over Nation,” Syracuse Herald (New York), March 8, 1932: 15.

19 James, The New Bill James Historical Baseball Abstract: 852.

20 For example, see Grantland Rice, “Sportlight,” Ellensburg Capital (Washington), January 23, 1948: 2.

21 For example, see Robert Moore, “Ty Cobb Plugs Pitcher Nichols For Baseball’s Hall Of Fame,” Florence Times (Alabama), April 2, 1948: 9.

Galvin’s longevity and durability also set him apart, as no other pitcher of his era matched his 6,003 1/3  innings pitched, 705 pitching appearances, 646 complete games, 365 wins, and 310 losses.2 An early practitioner of a highly effective pickoff move that baffled baserunners and left opposing captains and managers contesting its legality, Galvin was also arguably the best defender at the position.

Galvin was a star and a fan favorite for his combination of athletic prowess and kind temperament. He was admired for being consistently “cool, collected,” and “self-reliant” on the field,3 as well as humorous and quick to smile. His three frequently-used nicknames reflect these characteristics. He may have been called Pud because of his ability to turn batters into pudding, or from, his pudgy physique.4 He was presumably called “The Little Steam Engine” because he was small but powerful, and he was called “Gentle James” or “Gentle Jeems” for his kind demeanor.

Despite his historic statistics and traits, as well as numerous exceptional single-game performances, Galvin was largely forgotten after his death in 1902. He spent his best years in Buffalo and his salad days in Pittsburg,5 small markets with poor teams. Unlike several other prominent players, Galvin did not win championships in the major leagues or play in big markets like New York, Boston, and Chicago, so his achievements were not as well remembered as those of his peers. One of Galvin’s best seasons came in the lesser-known International Association, and his other two strongest showings, in 1883 and 1884, fell under the long shadow of Charles “Old Hoss” Radbourn’s dominant two-year run of pitching, the best of the century. Perhaps the greatest consequence of Galvin’s relative obscurity was an unduly late induction into the Baseball Hall of Fame. While a few of his equals and many worthy but less accomplished players were elected to the Hall soon after its establishment in 1936, Gentle Jeems was not inducted until 1965.

James Francis Galvin was born on Christmas Day in 1855 or 1856 in St. Louis, Missouri. He was born to Irish immigrants who lived in the Kerry Patch, a section of the city so named because many of its initial settlers hailed from County Kerry in southwestern Ireland, an area devastated by the Great Irish Famine of 1845-1849. Galvin’s parents were likely part of this large emigration. Inhabitants of the Kerry Patch, located in the northern part of St. Louis, settled the area as squatters since they did not have rights to the land. The district was essentially a concentration of shacks, and was known for particularly tough living conditions and frequent violence. Its inhabitants consisted primarily of laborers, and young James, in preparation for a blue-collar life, received training as a steamfitter. However, his life went in a different direction as a result of his ability to play baseball.

By the time of his first known appearance in baseball, in 1874, the right-handed James would have grown into his short, stocky, and strong body. Standing approximately 5-feet-8, weighing in at about 190 pounds in his prime, and wearing size 9 shoes, he had a compact and solid frame, broad shoulders, and strong core and lower body that befitted the power pitcher he would become. He gained weight as he aged, apparently weighing as much as 250 pounds by 1894. Contemporary accounts were unkind about his appearance: he was often described as “short” and “fat.” Some reports also pointed out his broad shoulders and small neck. Sam Crane, the player-manager of the Buffalo Bisons in 1880, recalled that “Jimmy’s bull neck sunk into his wide spread of shoulders like the head of a mud-turtle into its shell.”6 Galvin kept his dark hair short and sported a full mustache.

In contrast to his substantial body, Pud had small hands, which did not allow him to throw a curveball. Instead, he featured a speedy fastball, the occasional offspeed pitch, and pinpoint control. During a gathering with friends in 1890, attended by a sports reporter, a member of the group showed his hands, damaged playing baseball as a young man. Galvin responded: “Why, if I was worth $10,000 to-day, and could spare it, I would give that amount for your hands if an exchange were possible. From the time I went into base ball I have always been handicapped by my hands, which are too small. I never saw the day yet when I was able to span an ordinary base ball. My fingers are too short to enable me to get grip enough on the ball to pitch a deep curve, so that I have been compelled to depend more on drops, straight balls and the different artifices known to pitchers to deceive the batter.”7

Galvin’s inability to throw a curveball may have been a blessing in disguise, as he perfected a simple approach to pitching that yielded consistent results. Watching Tony Mullane struggle while throwing breaking pitches one day in 1886, Galvin remarked, “Just watch them slug Tony with his ups and downs, while I keep right on winning with my little old straight-ball delivery.”8 Additionally, Galvin’s limited repertoire may have been a factor in his longevity during an era in which pitchers had very short careers, because his arm did not sustain the stress of throwing hard breaking pitches.

Galvin also relied on good defense and a devastating pickoff move. He was one of the premier fielding pitchers of the era, consistently recognized for his fielding prowess in the press. His pickoff move was extraordinarily effective and incontrovertibly the most successful of the 19th century. Incorporating a shift of weight and a deceptive movement of the head and shoulders, Galvin had almost complete control over a baserunner’s fate. His move was described as “a jumping-jack movement” in which “he always looks as if he were just ready to deliver the ball. He starts with a half-drop of his legs and forward movement of his body without removing one foot from the box. The runner takes a good lead off first. Then, with a smile that is childlike and blank, the veteran shoots the ball over to first and catches his man.”9 Another account noted that Galvin’s pickoff move “consists of bringing his arm to the rear as if about to pitch and bending his head as though ready to deliver the ball; then, instead of giving the ball an inshoot over the plate, he fires it to first, apparently without looking.”10 This deceptive body movement was followed by an accurate throw to the base. Sam Barkley, first baseman and Galvin’s teammate in Pittsburg in 1886 and 1887, said that Galvin never threw a ball “out of my reach on either side, too low to scoop or any higher than my knee.”11

The success of the move prompted frequent arguments from the opposing teams. Some players complained that the move was a balk, most prominently John Montgomery Ward and Cap Anson. The latter, a sometime victim of the move, was particularly vocal on several occasions, taking particular issue with Galvin’s shoulder movements. During the summer of 1888, Anson said that Galvin’s “delivery is plainly illegal under the existing rules.” Galvin’s manager that season, Horace Phillips, responded that his star pitcher “always has his shoulders squarely planted and the ball in sight. It’s the peculiarity of the movement that deceives you. Why nearly every prominent pitcher in the country has tried to copy that little nod of his before he throws the ball.”12 Buck Ewing concurred: “You notice that funny, false motion of his that can’t really be called a balk. He fooled me so badly one day that I never even attempted to get back to first base.”13 Galvin’s pickoff move was only seldom called a balk by umpires, with the exception of the 1890 Players League season, when Frank Brunell, the league’s secretary-treasurer, apparently instructed umpires to outlaw his move and others like it.

Galvin was so good at catching runners napping on the basepaths that he picked off three Brooklyn players in one inning on September 23, 1886. In the third, he walked Bill McClellan, Jim McTamany, and George Smith to load the bases. He proceeded to pick off Smith at first base, followed by McClellan at third, who was caught “with his trousers at half mast.” Finally, he picked off McTammany at second to end the inning. Thanks to his pickoff move, Galvin got himself out of a tough inning and led his team to an 8-2 victory.14

In another instance, the highly skilled Galvin seemed able to successfully pick off a runner at will. While jawing with Cap Anson in a game against Chicago in late August 1887, Galvin apparently asked Anson, “Do you want to see me catch a man?” Anson dared him to do it, so Galvin strutted to the pitcher’s box and walked Jimmy Ryan on purpose. After Ryan arrived at first base, Galvin picked him off almost immediately. Anson was furious, while “Galvin almost split his side laughing” after his successful demonstration.15

Pickoffs were not quantified then as they are now, so a precise count of Galvin’s successes is impossible to recover. His reputation and the surviving accounts, however, indicate that he had no equal when it came to holding and picking off runners. Galvin’s move was the envy of the league. Pitchers tried in vain to duplicate it, and every catcher desired this skill in his pitcher. Buck Ewing said, “If I had Galvin to catch, no one would ever steal a base on me. That fellow keeps them glued to the bag.”16

Galvin’s playing career was characterized by a steady rise in achievement that peaked in 1883 and 1884, followed by an unusually long, very gradual decline. His period of decline was longer than that of most 19th-century careers. His career included many notable moments, colorful stories, and dominant seasons. Galvin was first recorded playing baseball in 1874 at the age of 17 as a member of the Turner Club of St. Louis. He also appeared as a member of other clubs in St. Louis, including the Empire Club in 1875 and the Niagara club in 1874 and 1875. Galvin made his major-league debut for the St. Louis Brown Stockings of the National Association on May 22, 1875, to fill in for primary starting pitcher George Bradley, who hadn’t pitched since May 8, possibly due to illness. After Galvin pitched three games and won two between May 22 and May 27, Bradley regained his health and returned to the pitcher’s box on May 29. Galvin made only four more starts during the year and one relief appearance. Altogether he played in 13 games, pitched in eight games (seven starts, all complete games), and played all three outfield positions when not pitching.

The Brown Stockings joined the new National League for the 1876 season, but Galvin did not stay with the team. Instead, he spent the year with the St. Louis Red Stockings (Reds), a club that was in the National Association in 1875, but unaffiliated in 1876. Its 1876 roster had several holdovers from 1875, including Frank Sylvester “Silver” Flint, who would go on to become one of the 19th century’s prominent catchers. While the complete record of Galvin’s play that season is hard to recover, he turned in three exceptional performances. The first was a no-hitter against the National League’s Philadelphia club on July 4 in an exhibition game. The other two happened on the same day, August 17, 1876, during a tournament held in Ionia, Michigan. Galvin threw the first recorded perfect game in baseball history, against the Cass Club of Detroit in an 11-0 victory. This feat was accomplished before the term “perfect game” was in the baseball lexicon, but the Ionia Sentinel clearly spelled out the performance, leaving no doubt about the achievement: “The Cass boys did not make a base hit or reach first base during the game. Each man of the club batted three times and each was put out three times.”17 Galvin’s feat was all the more impressive because he threw a no-hitter earlier that day against the Mutuals of Jackson, Michigan, in which the defense behind him committed three errors. Galvin’s accomplishments should not be taken lightly because they were not recorded in the major leagues, as the Cass Club and the Mutuals of Jackson were competitive and talented professional teams.

In 1877, Galvin joined the Allegheny Club of Pittsburg in the new International Association. Not considered a major league by baseball historians, the International Association is sometimes seen as the first minor league in baseball history, but the idea of a minor league is a later conceit. At the time it was simply a second professional league in cities not represented by teams in the National League. In 1877 teams were based in Guelph, Ontario; London, Ontario; Pittsburg; Rochester; Manchester, New Hampshire; Columbus; and Lynn, Massachusetts. Candy Cummings was the president of the league, and many other notables played in the league during its brief history (1877 until 1880), including Mike “King” Kelly, John Montgomery Ward, Mickey Welch, and Ned Hanlon. On April 30 Galvin recorded the league’s first shutout, against Columbus. He threw another shutout in an exhibition victory against the Boston Red Stockings on May 2 in Pittsburg. He gave up one hit and hit a home run, possibly the first ball hit out of Pittsburg’s Union Park, to score the game’s only run.18 By all accounts, Galvin’s 1877 season was a success, but his statistics are difficult to recover.

Galvin’s 1878 season, the first full year of his career for which a nearly complete record is readily available, proved to be historic. Now pitching for the Buffalo Bisons, a new team in the International Association, he dominated the league, winning an astounding 72 games. After a subpar season as members of the League Alliance in 1877, the Bisons fielded an entirely different roster, cutting ties with John Montgomery Ward, Larry Corcoran, Jack Glasscock, Doc Bushong, and others. In 1878, the Bisons played 116 games, and went 81-32 with three ties. Galvin pitched in 101 games, completing 96 of them and compiling a 72-25 record with three ties. He threw 17 shutouts, and went 10-5 against National League teams. He pitched every inning of the team’s first 23 games and went the distance in 22 consecutive contests between September 2 and October 4. The last three games of this stretch included a 12-inning victory over the Boston Red Stockings on October 2, and a 13-inning victory over Providence of the National League the next day. It is estimated that Galvin threw at least 895 innings. Although never a consistent hitter, he did have some power throughout his career, hitting one of the team’s two home runs in 1878. Aside from Galvin’s superior pitching, he and four teammates, Davy Force, Joe Hornung, Steve Libby, and Bill McGunnigle, were awarded medals by the New York Clipper for the best fielding averages in the league. The 1878 Bisons were the International Association champions, finishing one game ahead of the Syracuse Stars.

Galvin’s trickery and excellent pickoff move were already well-developed in 1878. On July 27 he and Libby executed the hidden-ball trick to perfection to fool Candy Cummings of the Cleveland Forest Citys in a 3-0 victory. In the third inning, Cummings was on base after hitting a single when his teammate Salisbury hit a popup to Libby at first. After Libby caught the ball, he faked a throw back to Galvin and kept the ball. Galvin then got in the box and readied himself to pitch. When Cummings started his lead, Libby tagged him for the third out of the inning. On August 19, behind Galvin, the Bisons defeated the Chicago White Stockings 4-2 in 13 innings. Galvin picked off five runners. Galvin’s historic 1878 season demonstrated that he was an ace capable of pitching almost every day.

After its championship season in the International Association, Buffalo joined the National League for the 1879 season, Galvin found himself back in the “major leagues” for the first time since 1875. He picked up where he left off in 1878, continuing his workhorse ways by pitching in 66 of the team’s 78 games, amassing 593 innings and winning 37 games with six shutouts. Despite this strong effort, the team finished in third place.

In October 1879, after the season was over, Galvin joined a “picked nine” consisting primarily of players from the Cincinnati Red Stockings, including King Kelly, on a tour to California that also included John Clapp, Cal McVey, Davy Force, Pete Hotaling, and Jack Rowe. The team toured California with the Chicago White Stockings and played against California clubs as well as each other. The San Francisco Chronicle reported that both the picked nine and the White Stockings beat the California clubs with ease, with fans being most interested in seeing the two visiting teams play each other. The teams toured California for 12 weeks, with the players arriving on October 5 and leaving on December 19. By the end of the tour, King Kelly was a member of the Chicago White Stockings and Pud Galvin’s future was uncertain.

Galvin likely remained in California after his fellow players left in order to try to negotiate a raise with the Bisons by threatening to play the 1880 season in California. When the Bisons called his bluff, Pud signed with the Athletic Club of San Francisco, of the California League (formerly called the Pacific Coast League), in which each team was set to play 30 League Games. In February, the California League adopted its constitution, which included clauses to make players honor their team commitments. In the words of the San Francisco Bulletin, “the player is bound by such iron-bound and copper-fastened rules as will make it exceedingly difficult for him to break his contract.”19 Galvin’s teammates with the Athletics included future major leaguers Cliff Carroll and Jerry Denny, and the team was captained by former major leaguer Tom Carey. Galvin began the season with the team, but after the Buffalo club got off to a poor start behind pitchers Tom Poorman and Bill McGunnigle, it reached out to Galvin in the second week of May and he accepted it contract offer to come back to Buffalo, along with an advance of $300.

Galvin left San Francisco, apparently under an assumed name, to head for Cincinnati to meet up with the Buffalo club. He did not get very far before he was apprehended because the Athletic Club made it known that he was breaking his contract after receiving his next month’s pay. The Athletic Club’s owners requested that Galvin be brought back to San Francisco. However, according to reports issued on May 15, Gentle Jeems had escaped without a trace—the San Francisco papers suggested that he used some of the money from his two paychecks to bribe the authorities. Galvin made it to Cincinnati successfully and was the winning pitcher for the Bisons on May 22. It was Buffalo’s fourth win against seven losses. By July the California League officially expelled Galvin from the League, a purely symbolic gesture.

Charley Foley (likely Curry Foley, future Galvin teammate and the first player on record to hit for the cycle) shared an exciting and certainly overblown version of Galvin’s departure from San Francisco with the New York Clipper: “The directors [of the Buffalo Club] induced Galvin’s wife to use her influence toward bringing him back. Galvin was telegraphed for, but the manager of the San Francisco team would not let him go, and they even threatened to have him arrested should he attempt to leave San Francisco. Galvin asked for his release, and, when refused it, he left for the East. He took a train out of the city some little distance and then left it and walked about twenty-three miles, which brought him into the State of Nevada. In walking across the desert Galvin’s shoes were nearly burned off his feet. He joined the Buffalo Club in Cincinnati where he related to his old comrades his thrilling adventures.”20 After Galvin returned to the Bisons, the Buffalo Express celebrated his return with a poem:

Could we let our pitcher stay

In the Golden City?

Could our boys without him play?

No, ’twould be a pity.

So we pressed our rightful claims

And we won back our Gentle

James21

Unfortunately, there was not much to celebrate after Galvin’s return. He went 20-35, primarily because of his team’s lack of offense. The team finished in seventh place, going 24-58. They lost consistently; their longest winning streak reached only three games. One notable low point in Galvin’s season came on June 17, when he was on the losing end of John Montgomery Ward’s perfect game for the Providence Grays. Galvin also made the last out in the game. Another disappointment for the team came in the form of the struggles of a young position player who performed so poorly that he was released after appearing in only six games that season—Charles Radbourn. One can only imagine how the team’s fortunes would have changed if it had retained Radbourn and seen him develop into the pitcher that he became. In the days of two-man pitching staffs, the Galvin-Radbourn combination would have been a dominant force.

One highlight came on July 16, 1880, when Galvin beat the Providence Grays and pitcher John Montgomery Ward 1-0 in 14 innings. In completing the shutout, Galvin stranded a runner on third base to end the game. Later in the season, Galvin threw the first major-league no-hitter by a road pitcher on August 20 against Worcester. This was the sixth no-hitter in major-league history. The Buffalos won 1-0 on a very rainy day in front of only 91 spectators. The rainy conditions made the game ball—one ball was used for the entire game—mushy and difficult to hit hard. One record of the game stated that the ball became “a leather bag filled with jelly.”22 This was certainly a factor in the Worcester batters’ failure to hit Galvin’s pitches with any authority. While some may feel that the foul weather detracts from Galvin’s feat, this point of view ignores the difficulties of pitching and fielding a mushy, possibly lopsided ball in difficult weather. Not only was Galvin able to throw a no-hitter, but he did not allow any runs despite his team’s six errors. He was also able to maintain his usual good control, not giving up a single base on balls.

Before the 1881 season, the Buffalo ownership significantly improved the team with the addition of Dan Brouthers, Jim O’Rourke, and Deacon White. However, it was still only able to finish in third place, a disappointment for the star-studded roster. Galvin went 28-24, throwing five shutouts and completing 48 of his 53 starts, continuing to be a workhorse for his team. After the regular season ended, the Bisons played exhibition games, including a three-game series against the Philadelphia Athletics in Philadelphia. Galvin no-hit the Athletics in the final game of the exhibition series, on October 11, giving up two walks and having two men reach base on errors.

Buffalo cranks saw their club finish in third place again in 1882. Continuing as the team’s primary starter, Galvin went 28-23, starting 51 games and throwing three shutouts, both lows for him as a Bison up to that point. He accomplished a notable feat on July 4, when he won two games in one day for the second time in his career. During the season, Galvin agreed to what Harold Seymour and Dorothy Seymour Mills called an “optional” contract with the Pittsburg Alleghenys of the American Association that seemingly secured his services for the 1883 season. Charlie Bennett and Ned Williamson agreed to similar contracts with the Alleghenys, and all three men ended up deciding to remain in the National League. The Alleghenys took Bennett to court to try to force him to play for them in 1883, but the court ruled in favor of Bennett, determining that such “optional” contracts were only preliminary agreements. Thus, Galvin was allowed to stay with Buffalo in 1883.23 By December, Galvin had been banned from the American Association, his second blacklisting since 1880.

The Bisons were fortunate that Galvin did not go to Pittsburg, for he began his two-year peak in 1883. He started 75 games, completing 72 of them and pitching 656 1/3 innings. He won 46 games and had an ERA of 2.72. These four statistics were all career highs, or tied with career highs. Despite this Herculean effort, the team finished in fifth place, in part because their change pitcher, George Derby, started 13 games and lost 10 of them. In 1883 Galvin faced three other Hall of Fame pitchers, and went 3-3 against Mickey Welch, 1-1 against John Montgomery Ward, and 3-2 against Hoss Radbourn, including a defeat of the Providence pitcher in the final game of the season. At the plate, Galvin hit his first major-league home run in 1883.

Galvin had the best season of his career in 1884, but the year did not have an auspicious beginning. He started 1-4, and then injured himself on May 10 in Providence after losing a game to Radbourn on May 9. Galvin hurt himself picking up his suitcase at Providence’s Narragansett Hotel, possibly the result of pitching in the cold without his sweatshirt the day before. The strain or muscle pull jeopardized his season. He returned to Buffalo and missed the next eight games, hoping that the rest would allow him to start the home opener in Buffalo on May 21.

Galvin returned to top form after the time off. All in all, he ended up starting 72 games, completing 71 of them. He went 46-22 with three ties, and threw 12 shutouts, with a 1.99 ERA. He topped 600 innings for the second consecutive year. He started the team’s home opener, and the Bisons defeated the visiting Detroit Wolverines, 12-3. Galvin was especially tough on the Wolverines during an August series in Detroit August 2 to 8. On August 2 Galvin pitched a shutout, allowing one hit (a single), with seven strikeouts and no walks. On the 4th he no-hit the Wolverines while striking out nine and not surrendering any bases on balls. After two days of rainouts, Galvin pitched another shutout on August 7, giving up only three hits. The following day the teams played a doubleheader, with Galvin getting the start in the second game. He proved more hittable in this game, giving up eight hits. However, he pitched 12 innings without surrendering an earned run and striking out 16 Wolverines without any walks. Detroit scored an unearned run in the 12th inning to win the game. In the series Galvin pitched in four games, throwing 39 innings without giving up an earned run. He surrendered 12 hits and struck out 36 without any walks. After this historic run, the Detroit Free Press called Galvin the “ ‘Maud S’ of the diamond,” after the record-setting racehorse who was the first to run a mile in under 2 minutes, 10 seconds, on August 2, 1884.24

September 9, 1884, saw Galvin turn in another significant performance, when he ended Radbourn’s personal 18-game winning streak, and Providence’s 20-game streak. Galvin led his team to a 2-0 victory that ended with an exciting double play in the bottom of the ninth inning. Jim Lillie, Buffalo’s right fielder, caught a difficult fly ball hit by Radbourn and threw the ball to second base to double off Cliff Carroll, who thought the ball would drop. One newspaper later wrote that “the whole country had been looking … to accomplish the defeat of Radbourn and the Grays,”25 and it was Galvin who finally accomplished this feat. “Base ball enthusiasts are indebted to James Galvin,” wrote another paper after he ended the winning streak, which some had grown tired of.26 At season’s end, Providence won the championship and Buffalo finished in third place.

Galvin’s magnificent seasons in 1883 and 1884 were two of the best seasons of the 19th century, but they were overshadowed by the accomplishments of Radbourn, who won 48 and 59 games in 1883 and 1884, respectively, for the Providence Grays. In 1884, Radbourn also led the Grays to the National League championship and the unofficial championship of professional baseball after a postseason series victory over the American Association champion New York Metropolitans. In 1884, Radbourn’s ERA was a minuscule 1.38, and his 18-game winning streak was an extraordinary feat. Thus, Galvin had the bad luck of peaking at the same time as Radbourn, who played on a better team than the Buffalo Bisons.

Galvin’s 1883 and 1884 seasons took their physical toll. He would never pitch more than 450 innings or win more than 29 games for the rest of his career. His career began its long, steady decline in 1885, when he turned in a subpar season. His decline is remarkable because it lasted eight seasons, indicating that he remained a competitive pitcher and valuable player. In 1885, Galvin injured himself in a collision with Cap Anson on June 19. During a stretch of 24 games, he briefly managed the team, but the team went 7-17. By the middle of July, with his pitching record 13-19, he was sold to the Pittsburgh Alleghenys of the American Association. One of Buffalo’s directors said, “The public demanded a change. Both the press and the audiences were growing irritable. We couldn’t lose any more games if a pitcher were taken from the grand stand.”27 This was quite an insult to Galvin, who had pitched very well for the team since 1878 and had two of the best pitching seasons of the century in 1883 and 1884. The notion of cutting a star pitcher at the first sign of decline reflects the 19th-century reality of the unsustainable workloads given to ace pitchers as well as the inclination to part ways with star players at the first sign of trouble in order to make money from their sale.

Although different amounts were cited, it seems that Pittsburgh paid $1,500 or $2,000 for “The Little Steam Engine.” His replacements in Buffalo pitched poorly, and fans stopped coming to the park. On September 17 team Josiah Jewett sold the Bisons franchise to the Detroit Wolverines for $7,000. Detroit wanted only Brouthers, Richardson, White, and Rowe, but Jewett insisted that they take the entire franchise. The Bisons finished the season with amateurs and players that Detroit didn’t want to keep on its roster. Thus ended the presence of the Bisons in the National League. Buffalo would be a major-league city for only one more season, when it hosted the 1890 Buffalo Bisons in the ill-fated Players League.

Pittsburg hoped that Galvin would lead them to the American Association championship, although St. Louis had a considerable lead over them at the time. The Alleghenys surely disappointed by Galvin’s performance. He appeared in only 11 games, going 3-7 before an arm injury ended his season in the second inning of a game against Louisville on August 26. He told a sportswriter that he thought his career was over and went to Buffalo to be treated by his doctor. Galvin made one more appearance that year, on September 18, and lost to New York in a terrible outing in which he could not complete four innings. The Alleghenys finished in third place.

Galvin returned from the injury and remained with Pittsburg in 1886 and stayed with the club after it joined the National League in 1887. His career in Pittsburg was unspectacular from 1885 to 1889, except that he continued to pitch while most of the pitchers he came up with in the 1870s had retired or switched positions long ago. In 1887, on a very bad team, he won 28 games, just over half of the team’s 55 victories, which was a rare feat after teams began playing more than 120 games each year. In 1889 he logged over 300 innings for the final time and had an ERA above 4.00 for the first time in his career. The statistics indicate that this was Galvin’s worst season, but he played the role of spoiler on the last day of the season when he beat Boston to deprive the Beaneaters of a first-place finish and preventing John Clarkson from winning his 50th game of the season.

Galvin joined the new Players League for the 1890 season, thus aligning himself with the large contingent of players unhappy with the treatment they received from National League and American Association magnates. He was not the most fervent supporter of the Brotherhood of Professional Ball Players, noting to reporters that he had never felt particularly ill-treated by ownership during his career. However, he showed his solidarity to the new league when he refused lucrative offers to jump back to the National League. At the end of his career, he did not have much to lose by siding with the Brotherhood. He played for the Pittsburg Burghers under player-manager Ned Hanlon and turned in another unspectacular season in 1890, going 12-13 in 217 innings pitched with a 4.35 ERA. He played relatively sparingly and not particularly well in 1890, his second-worst year by the numbers.

Galvin spent the 1891 season back in the National League with the Pittsburg club, pitching effectively in 246 2/3 innings with a 2.88 ERA. At 35, he began the 1892 season in Pittsburg, but was sold to the St. Louis Browns after appearing in 12 games. He was headed back to the city of his birth. Shortly after his sale, he pitched a home game against Pittsburg and won. According to a report from Pittsburg, the local fans following the game from Pittsburg rooted for him even though he was pitching on the other team:

“Pittsburgers are intensely loyal to the home club and want to see them win every game if possible, but on this occasion, no sooner was it announced that Galvin was pitching than the people, with scarcely an exception, began to ‘pull’ for him,” a reporter wrote. “Our representatives were not in such a position that they could well afford to lose games, but that seemed to concern the crowd little as long as Galvin won the games. The incident is really unique. It shows how much more popular the man is than the club, and what a vast mistake it was to release him.”28

Galvin appeared in 12 games for St. Louis before the season ended. He had a respectable season, with a 2.92 ERA., but logged only 188 innings. It was his final season as a player, with the exception of brief comeback attempts.

Midway through the 1892 season, fans and members of the media offered assessments of Galvin’s career, properly guessing that it would be his final season. Galvin’s longevity, practically unheard of in the era of two-man pitching staffs, impressed followers of the game. Sporting Life summarized a letter from a fan from Louisville:

“A Louisville crank … figures that the veteran pitcher, Galvin, has pleased and displeased 800,000 people in his 17 years pitching, has traveled 112,000 miles or about four and a half times the circumference of the earth, has taken part in about 500 games in which on average 35 men went to the bat per game, and that four balls were pitched to each. That will make a total of 70,000 throws and balls pitched by Galvin. But during a large part of Galvin’s career seven balls instead of four sent a man to first base. That runs the total up to, perhaps an even 100,000, and these balls have traveled 2000 miles, and in pitching these 100,000 balls Galvin expended sufficient strength to carry them 30,000,000 feet, or about 6000 miles.”29

After the 1892 season Galvin attempted to extend his career. Potential comebacks were mentioned in newspapers as late as 1899, the last earnest attempt apparently came in 1894, when he played for the Buffalo Bisons of the Eastern League. At this point, Galvin was quite out of shape, weighing around 250 pounds. He pitched poorly in three games for the Bisons and was released. In his final at-bat he hit a home run, an appropriate way to cap off an extraordinary career. There were rumblings of later attempts to come back to the game, but whether he actually played in any more games is not known.

Before his brief stint in the Eastern League, on the evening of January 2, 1894, and into the early hours of January 3, Galvin and two friends encountered unexpected trouble with the law in Cleveland, where they were visiting a sick friend. After seeing their friend, they went to a bar, where a tailor named H.W. Hubbard introduced himself to the group. Shortly after leaving Hubbard’s company, the group was arrested for stealing a $250 diamond pin and $125 gold watch from the tailor. Galvin and friends were jailed overnight, where they shared cells with miscreants and pestilent insects. The men went before a judge the next day expecting to have to plead their case, but the judge dropped the charges because there was no evidence against them. The angry group sought out Hubbard to demand an explanation for his false accusation, but Hubbard’s friends and police protected him. Galvin and his friends vowed to sue Hubbard, but it is unclear if they ever pursued litigation.

Galvin filled his post-playing days with a variety of jobs. He was a National League umpire for the 1895 season, received mixed reviews, and did not enjoy the job. His experience resembled that of most other umpires in the 19th century—it was unpleasant and thankless work. Galvin, like most umpires, did not last very long, and did not return the next season. He is also recorded as a pipe-layer, contractor, and saloon owner in Pittsburg after his playing days ended. His saloon was unsuccessful because he did not have great business acumen. One anecdote says he had the largest bar in the Pittsburg and employed nine bartenders at one point. Subsequently, each of the nine bartenders opened his own business, while Galvin’s saloon failed. His status as a saloon owner allowed him to pitch in an exhibition game between bartenders on October 1, 1896. By that time his skills had diminished so much that he pitched poorly, giving up 20 hits.

By the turn of the century, Galvin and his family were living in poverty. He had married Bridget Griffin in 1878 and had 11 children. Newspapers joked that he had enough children to field his own baseball team. His health declined sharply beginning in late 1901, and on March 7, 1902, at the age of 45, Galvin died in Pittsburgh of “catarrh of the stomach,” also known as chronic stomach inflammation or chronic gastritis. His wife and six of his children survived him. Because of the family’s limited finances, an event, including boxing and music, was held to raise money for his wife and children. A 1908 article quoted Dave F. Kerr, who claimed an instrumental role in Galvin’s sale to Pittsburg in 1885, as bemoaning Galvin’s inability to save money: “Pity the old man wouldn’t heed. He drew a big salary and was one of the most popular players of his age, but his fame finally fled. You can talk about your pitchers, but to me Galvin looked one of the best men of his period. Change of pace, etc., made him a corker. The Little Steam Engine made a fortune for the ball clubs, but his bit frittered away despite the efforts of his good wife, who tried hard to induce her good-natured husband to lay up some cash for stormy times.”30 Galvin’s family neither saw long-term financial support from his baseball career nor did they see him play the game very often. His daughter Marie said, “We had nine boys and two girls in the family, and there was so much to be done at home that we didn’t get very many chances to see my father pitch.”31

Galvin’s death at a young age, tragic in its own right, was also a factor in his relatively quick fade from the consciousness of baseball fans and historians. Another factor was the greater star power of other pitchers in his era due to impressive single-season achievements, play on winning teams, or play in bigger cities. Galvin was outshined in his era by pitchers who were more dominant for short stretches of time, like Hoss Radbourn, or who played on winning teams or in bigger cities, like John Clarkson and Tim Keefe. After his death Galvin was increasingly forgotten as Americans became enamored with pitchers in the Deadball Era like Cy Young, Christy Mathewson, and Walter Johnson. However, at least one fan, M.G. Nowak of Milwaukee, who lived during Galvin’s era, reminded the readers of Sporting Life about Galvin’s accomplishments. In January 1906, while the country was captivated by Christy Mathewson’s three shutouts in the 1905 World Series, Nowak pointed out that Galvin was able to reach similarly legendary heights during that historic series against Detroit in August 1884.32

As the 20th century progressed, Galvin continued to fade from the consciousness of baseball fans and historians. After the establishment of the Baseball Hall of Fame, the Old-Timers Committee, which was formed in 1939 to elect 19th- and early 20th-century baseball figures into the Hall of Fame, ignored Galvin. In 1939 five players were elected by the committee, but not Galvin. In 1945 ten players were elected, but Galvin was not one of them. Eleven players were elected in 1946, including many with achievements far less impressive than Galvin’s, while Gentle James was ignored. The Old-Timers Committee voted sporadically until its name was changed to the Committee on Baseball Veterans in 1953. The new name produced the same results: It continued to ignore Galvin for more than a decade.

A cause for optimism appeared in the late 1940s in the form of Joseph M. Overfield, a Buffalo baseball historian who took a special interest in Galvin. A title researcher and later vice president at the Monroe Abstract Corporation (later Monroe Abstract and Title), he discovered his passion for baseball history in the late 1940s when he discovered a financial report about the 1878 Buffalo Bisons while conducting records research. This began a lifetime of research, writing, and service related to Buffalo baseball and its biggest star in the 19th century, Pud Galvin. Overfield wrote several articles beginning in 1953, as well as a small book of records and statistics called Buffalo Bison Sketch Book, also published that year. He was an early member of SABR, joining in 1972, and was recognized with a “SABR Salute” in 1986. He published his magnum opus, The 100 Years of Buffalo Baseball, in 1985 and continued working with SABR and the Buffalo Baseball Hall of Fame until his death in 2000.

Overfield recognized the significance of Galvin as he discovered documents and images of early Buffalo baseball clubs and read 19th-century newspapers. He contacted Galvin’s descendants and started a campaign to get him inducted into the Hall of Fame, which was successful in 1965. Overfield took great pride in leading the successful effort, and Galvin’s two living children, Walter and Marie, were grateful to see their father recognized. Three generations of relatives attended the ceremony. Walter, 78 years old at the time of the induction ceremony, spoke at the event and said, “I thank you for remembering him. You waited a long time to catch up with the old gent.”33

With the publication of Roger I. Abrams’ The Dark Side of the Diamond: Gambling, Violence, Drugs and Alcoholism in the National Pastime, in 2007, Galvin became 21st-century news. He was given the title of baseball’s first user of performance-enhancing drugs. Abrams found an article in the Washington Post from August 14, 1889, that said:

“Galvin was one of the subjects at a test of the Brown-Séquard elixir at a medical college in Pittsburgh on Monday. If there still be doubting Thomases who concede no virtue in the elixir, they are respectfully referred to Galvin’s record in yesterday’s Boston-Pittsburg game. It is the best proof yet furnished of the value of the discovery.”34

In that game Galvin pitched a two-hit shutout and was uncharacteristically successful at the plate. Abrams takes the article at face value, connecting Galvin’s participation in the trial with his success in the following game, in the process defying the long-held and correct notion that correlation does not imply causation.

The Brown-Séquard elixir was invented in 1889 by Charles Brown-Séquard, a French-American doctor. The elixir, which was injected, was based around extracts from guinea-pig and dog testicles and was apparently the first known modern treatment that contained testosterone. Abrams thus relates the elixir to the anabolic steroids that we know of today and ties Galvin to cheating and performance-enhancing drugs.

Abrams, however, fails to take into account the primitive nature of the Brown-Séquard elixir, which made it biologically ineffective according to scientific research published in 2002. The only possible benefit for Galvin, therefore, would have been a placebo effect. Moreover, the instance cited by Abrams appears to have been isolated. Abrams’ association of Galvin’s one-time use of the Brown-Séquard elixir in 1889 with modern-day steroid use is further undermined because the elixir was not banned by professional baseball. It is anachronistic to look back at Galvin’s one-time use of this elixir and consider it performance enhancement, cheating, or unethical behavior. Still, national news outlets and websites publicized and excerpted Abrams’ work, thus helping to slightly tarnish Galvin’s reputation and legacy.

James “Pud” Galvin was one of the most important pitchers in the history of early baseball, performing significant single-game feats and recording major career milestones. His longevity in an era of two-man pitching staffs is remarkable, and his 1878, 1883, and 1884 seasons are among the most dominant seasons in 19th-century pitching. His career is also defined by his status as a fan favorite in Buffalo and Pittsburg. His posthumous reputation has taken several turns: He was initially forgotten, then recognized with induction into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1965, and most recently associated with performance-enhancing drugs in 2007. Galvin led an eventful and historic career, and he continues to be significant figure more than a century years after his death. The continuing expansion of the baseball research community and increasing access to unmined 19th-century newspapers should continue to sharpen the perception of Galvin and will bring to light untold dimensions and chapters of his baseball legacy that will eventually fill a dictionary-length biography of one of the 19th century’s greatest pitchers.

An updated version of this biography appears in “20-Game Losers” (SABR, 2017), edited by Bill Nowlin and Emmet R. Nowlin.

Acknowledgements

Special thanks to James Overfield, Freddy Berowski, Howard Henry, and Tim Wiles.

Sources

Periodicals

Pud Galvin player file, Baseball Hall of Fame.

Pud Galvin scrapbook, Baseball Hall of Fame.

Baltimore Morning Herald

Baltimore Sunday Herald

The Bee [Washington, DC]

Buffalo News

Binghamton Press

Boston Evening Transcript

Brooklyn Eagle

Chicago Tribune 

Cincinnati Enquirer

Cleveland Herald

Daily Inter Ocean [Chicago]

Daily Mail and Empire [Toronto]

Daily True American [Trenton, New Jersey]

Dubuque Sunday Herald

Ionia (Michigan) Sentinel

Jackson (Michigan) Citizen Patriot

Ludington (Michigan) Daily News

Mansfield (Ohio) Daily Shield

New York Clipper

New York Times 

New York World

Philadelphia Inquirer

Pittsburg Dispatch

Pittsburg Gazette

Pittsburg Press

Providence Evening Press

Providence Evening Telegraph

Providence Morning Star

Sporting Life

The Sporting News

Toronto Daily Mail

Washington Post

Books

Roger I. Abrams, The Dark Side of the Diamond: Gambling, Violence, Drugs and Alcoholism in the National Pastime (Burlington, Massachusetts: Rounder Books, 2007)

Edward Achorn, Fifty-Nine in ’84: Old Hoss Radbourn, Barehanded Baseball, and the Greatest Season a Pitcher Ever Had (New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 2010).

Marty Appel, Slide, Kelly, Slide: The Wild Life and Times of Mike “King” Kelly, Baseball’s First Superstar (Lanham, Maryland: Scarecrow Press, Inc., 1996).

Jon David Cash, Before They Were Cardinals: Major League Baseball in Nineteenth-Century St. Louis (Columbia, Missouri: University of Missouri Press, 2002).

Jerrold Casway, Ed Delahanty in the Emerald Age of Baseball. (Notre Dame, Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press, 2004).

William A. Cook, The Louisville Grays Scandal of 1877: The Taint of Gambling at the Dawn of the National League (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Co., 2005).

Andrea J., Cussons, Chotoo I. Bhagat, Stephen J. Fletcher, and John P. Walsh “Brown-Séquard Revisited: A Lesson from History on the Placebo Effect of Androgen Treatment.” In The Medical Journal of Australia Vol. 177, No. 11 (2002).

Joseph Dacus and James William Buel. A Tour of St. Louis: Or, The Inside Life of a Great City (St. Louis: Western Publishing Company, 1878).

Paul Dickson, The Dickson Baseball Dictionary. 3rd ed. (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2009).

David L. Fleitz, Cap Anson: The Grand Old Man of Baseball (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Co., 2005).

David L. Fleitz, The Irish in Baseball: An Early History (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Co., 2009).

Richard Hershberger, “The Evolution of the ‘Perfect Game,’ ” in Base Ball: A Journal of the Early Game Vol. 4, No. 2 (Fall 2010).

J. Thomas Hetrick, Chris Von der Ahe and the St. Louis Browns (Lanham, Maryland: Scarecrow Press, Inc., 1999).

Frederick Ivor-Campbell, Robert L. Tiemann, and Mark Rucker, eds., Baseball’s First Stars (Cleveland: Society for American Baseball Research, 1996).

Ed Koszarek, The Players League (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Co., 2006).

William F. McNeil, The Evolution of Pitching in Major League Baseball (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Co., 2006).

Peter Morris, Baseball Fever: Early Baseball in Michigan (Ann Arbor, Michigan: University of Michigan Press, 2003).

Peter Morris, A Game of Inches: The Story Behind the Innovations That Shaped Baseball (Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 2010).

Michael C. O’Laughlin, Missouri Irish: Kansas City, St. Louis & Trails West (Kansas City, Missouri: Irish Genealogical Foundation, 2007).

Joseph M. Overfield, “A Memorable Year – 1884, A Memorable Performer – Jim Galvin,” in Baseball Research Journal: Eleventh Annual Historical and Statistical Review of the Society For American Baseball Research (Cooperstown, New York: Society for American Baseball Research, 1982).

Joseph M. Overfield, Buffalo Bison Sketch Book – Containing the Records of Buffalo Baseball Teams 1878 to Date (Buffalo: Kelly Letter Service, 1953).

Joseph M. Overfield, The 100 Seasons of Buffalo Baseball (Kenmore, New York: Partners’ Press, 1985).

Joseph M. Overfield, “The 1878 Buffalo Bisons: Was It The Greatest Minor League Team Of The Game’s Early Years?” In The Empire State of Baseball (Albany, New York: Northeastern Chapter of the Society for American Baseball Research, 1989).

Max Putzel, The Man in the Mirror: William Marion Reedy and His Magazine (Columbia, Missouri: University of Missouri Press, 1998).

Mike Roer, Orator O’Rourke: The Life of a Baseball Radical (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Co., 2005).

Harold Seymour and Dorothy Seymour Mills, Baseball: The Early Years (New York: Oxford University Press, 1960).

John Montgomery Ward, Base Ball: How to Become a Player Reprint. (Cleveland: Society for American Baseball Research, 1993).

Websites

Ancestry.com

Baseball-reference.com

Retrosheet.org

St. Louis Irish History – The Kerry Patch. http://home.earthlink.net/~lilirish/KerryPatch.htm

This Game of Games. http://thisgameofgames.blogspot.com

Notes

During Perry’s career, the rules governing the enforcement of the spitball were changed twice, and the umpires were given explicit directives concerning the pitch several other times, and all this was primarily because of Gaylord Perry. When it was his day to pitch, he was the story. Where did he get his grease? Why don’t the umpires stop him? Did you see what that pitch just did? Perry just kept grinning. The only time the ruckus quieted down, he reasoned, was when he was pitching poorly. The louder it got, the better he was doing. Sure, there were many other accused practitioners of the spitter during the 1960s and 1970s — good pitchers like Phil Regan, Bill Singer, Jim Maloney — but no one threw it as well, and for as long, as Gaylord Perry.

Through the years, Perry’s denials became a familiar and humorous part of the show. During a playoff game in 1971, a television reporter briefly sat down with the Perry family during a game Gaylord was pitching. After a few polite questions, Allison, Perry’s five-year-old daughter was asked, “Does your daddy throw a grease ball?” Not missing a beat, she responded, “It’s a hard slider.”

Gaylord Jackson Perry was born September 15, 1938, to tenant farmers Evan and Ruby. Gaylord’s older brother James also had a long major league pitching career, and younger sister Carolyn completed the family. Evan Perry was a great athlete who played both baseball and football, and reportedly turned down a minor league contract because his family could not afford to have him leave their farm. Evan and Ruby had a 25-acre parcel of land, where they grew tobacco, corn and peanuts for money (sharing half with the landowners), and raised animals and additional vegetables to feed their own family.

Gaylord and Jim began plowing the fields with a mule at the age of seven, and Gaylord’s earliest childhood memories were of working on the farm and wanting to be a cowboy. The Perry boys were luckier than most-their father loved baseball and gave them as much free time as practical so that they could pursue the game. Jim and Gaylord both began playing ball with their father during their lunch break, and later all three played on the same local semi-pro team.

Gaylord attended Williamston High School, and starred in football, basketball and baseball. On the gridiron, he was All-State as an offensive and defensive end as a sophomore and junior, before giving up the sport because he did not want an injury to affect his baseball career. On the hardwood, Gaylord teamed with his brother Jim (both Perrys were already 6-foot-3) to reach the state finals in Gaylord’s freshman year. Jim, two years older, moved on to Campbell Junior College after his own junior year. In four years of basketball, Gaylord averaged nearly 30 points and 20 rebounds per game, and led his team to a 94-8 record. He turned down dozens of college scholarship offers.

But baseball remained his favorite pastime. Gaylord began his high school years as a third baseman, affording him a great view of brother Jim’s talents on the mound. Near the end of Gaylord’s freshman year, the coach began swapping the Perrys to give Jim’s arm a rest. Williamston High won the state tournament, with the Perry brothers tossing back-to-back shutouts to sweep the best-of-three finals.

After three more outstanding seasons, winning 33 of 38 decisions, Gaylord was ready to turn professional. Accordingly, local officials arranged an exhibition game against ex-big-leaguer Tommy Byrne and assorted local semi-pros, a contest designed to showcase Perry for major league scouts. He won the game, 5-1, at one point striking out 17 consecutive batters. Perry was hoping to sign with the Indians, through whose system his brother Jim was climbing, but Cleveland dropped out of the bidding early. Instead, he signed with the San Francisco Giants, and scout Tim Murchison, for a $60,000 bonus and three-year contract. Gaylord gave half the bonus money to his father, getting his parents out of debt for the first time in their lives, and put the rest in the bank.

(The signing bonus later put Gaylord in hot water with the Internal Revenue Service. Since he and Evan had split the bonus, the two men each paid taxes on $30,000. In 1961 the IRS went after Perry for the remainder of the full share of the tax bill, plus penalties, a debt that Perry, earning a minor league salary, was in no position to pay. He borrowed the money from the Giants, and paid them back when he won a settlement from the government several years later.)

Perry was nearly 20 years old when he graduated from high school in 1958 and signed his big contract, and he was anxious to get started. He was assigned to the St. Cloud (Minnesota) team in the Class-C Northern League. His first professional teammates included Matty Alou and Bob Bolin, and the club was strong enough to capture the league pennant, although they lost in the playoffs. Perry finished 9-5 with a 2.29 ERA, second in the circuit to Aberdeen’s Bo Belinsky. Now fully grown at six-feet-four and 210 pounds, Gaylord spent his second minor league campaign with the Corpus Christi Giants of the Double-A Texas League. This season was a bit disappointing, as he posted a 10-11 record and a 4.05 ERA.

Early in his high school years, Gaylord took an interest in a girl named Blanche Manning, the star of the girls’ basketball team. The two teams played doubleheaders and traveled to out-of-town games on the same bus, giving Perry ample courting time. Blanche was also an outstanding student, and went off to Duke University while Perry was a senior in high school. The couple married on December 26, 1959.

In 1960 Perry returned to the Texas League, although the Giants had moved their affiliate to Harlingen and named the squad the Rio Grande Valley Giants. The Giants won the pennant, but Perry himself was snake-bitten. He led the circuit with a 2.83 ERA, but somehow managed to finish just 9-13.

For the 1961 season the Giants assigned Perry to Tacoma of the Pacific Coast League, one step away from the majors. He began the season with two five-hit shutouts, and had another excellent season, finishing 16-10 with a 2.55 ERA. His win total tied him for the league lead with teammate Ron Herbel, and his ERA was third best. At the end of the season, he was placed on the major league 40-man roster for the first time.

A strong showing in the spring of 1962 landed Perry a role as the 10th man on the Giants’ staff, as a spot starter and reliever. His first assignment was a start in the Giants fifth game, but he left in the third with the game tied at four. He picked up his first victory in his next start, on April 25, hurling five innings of a 5-2 victory against the Pirates, then four-hit Pittsburgh on the 30th. This early success proved fleeting, and his ensuing struggles led to sporadic use for two months. Sporting a 6.25 ERA, Perry was sent back to Tacoma on June 11.

Gaylord had another strong half-year in the PCL, finishing 10-7 with a league-leading 2.48 ERA. This second hitch in Tacoma garnered him the endorsement of Carl Hubbell, the Giants’ farm director: “He’s gotten around to throwing that good fast ball of his more frequently, which makes his other pitches more effective. He’s acquiring the stuff which will enable him to win consistently with the big club.” His manager, Red Davis, was equally positive: “When Gaylord goes back, he’ll stick and he’ll win big.”

When the 1962 PCL season ended, Perry was called back up to San Francisco, right in the middle of an historic pennant race. Gaylord pitched sparingly the last few weeks of the season, finishing (counting his early season trial) with a 3-1 record and a 5.23 ERA in 13 games. Nonetheless, he was summoned in the bottom of the ninth inning of the second game of a best-of-three playoff series with the Dodgers to decide the NL pennant. It was a 7-7 tie with two on and nobody out, and manager Alvin Dark told Perry to expect a bunt from the next hitter, Daryl Spencer, and to throw to third to force Maury Wills. Perry got the bunt right back to him, but decided that Wills would beat the throw and instead threw to first for the safe out. Dark was incensed, complaining to reporters after the game about the brain lock that his rookie pitcher supposedly endured. Wills scored the winning run two batters later, though the Giants gained the pennant by winning the third game the next day. Gaylord was not eligible to pitch in the ensuing World Series, which the Giants lost to the Yankees in seven games. With his half-share of the Series money, he put a down payment on a farm near his family’s place.

The 1963 season was a disappointment. Perry spent most of it in the Giants bullpen, used erratically and seldom, appearing in 76 innings and posting a 1-6 record with a 4.03 ERA. He was sent back down to Tacoma in August, but pitched just one game (a three-hit victory against Salt Lake City) before getting recalled to San Francisco when Jim Duffalo split a finger. Perry’s lost season was salvaged somewhat with a fine winter playing in the Dominican Republic, joining teammates Juan Marichal and all three Alou brothers – Felipe, Matty, and Jesus. After a rocky start, he ended up leading the league in strikeouts.

That winter, the Giants pulled off a big trade with the Milwaukee Braves, dealing outfielder Felipe Alou, catcher Ed Bailey, pitcher Billy Hoeft, and infielder Ernie Bowman for catcher Del Crandall and pitchers Bob Shaw and Bob Hendley. As Perry was hanging on at the bottom of the Giant pitching staff, he was obviously not anxious to see the team acquiring more hurlers. The deal turned out to be fortuitous nonetheless. Bob Shaw, it seems, threw a heck of a spitball.

Although the “spitball” had been formally outlawed in 1920, allowing a few practitioners to continue to throw it until they retired, countless hurlers were rumored to have applied saliva or otherwise doctored the ball in every succeeding season. Hitters complained, managers protested, but for the most part pitchers could do just about anything to the ball, providing that no one could prove they did it. In fact, hurlers could lick their fingers while standing on the mound, as long as they wiped them off, or at least pretended to. Throwing an effective spitball, one that approached the plate like a fastball but suddenly sank like a stone in water, took skill and practice. But getting away with doing so was pretty easy.

The spitter was a hot topic in the 1960s, more so than at any time since its abolition. Ford Frick, baseball’s Commissioner, pushed for its legalization, and he had the backing of Cal Hubbard, the supervisor of umpires, AL president Joe Cronin, and countless other dignitaries. The Sporting News, still baseball’s bible, favored its legalization repeatedly in its pages. The umpires and bureaucrats wanted to change the rule because they were not capable of enforcing it, and it had become an embarrassment.

Burleigh Grimes, the last legal spitballer, said that there were more spitters being thrown in the 1960s than back when it was legal. Estimates for the number of pitchers who threw a “wet one” in the big leagues ran as high as 50. Every time a pitcher went on a hot streak, whether it be Don Drysdale or Juan Marichal, he was accused of throwing illegal pitches. Bob Shaw, the new Giant, was one of the more nefarious practitioners. Upset at Shaw’s offerings one 1964 day, Milwaukee manager Bobby Bragan ordered his pitchers to throw nothing but spitballs for the last six innings of a game to show that umpires didn’t care about enforcing the rule. In another Shaw outing, Philadelphia manager Gene Mauch coached third base to get a better look, and asked the umpires to inspect the ball every time he saw something suspicious.

Gaylord came to camp in 1964 determined to make the starting rotation, and worked with pitching coach Larry Jansen on a new slider, to augment his fastball, curveball, and change of pace. Secretly, he also learned to throw the spitball under the tutelage of Shaw. Perry began using it in batting practice, and in a few spring training games.

In relating the story of Gaylord Perry, it is important to keep in mind that he spent most of his career denying that he did anything illegal. When he finally came clean in a 1974 book, he also claimed that he had put his evil ways behind him, and that his confessions related only to sins of the past. Although the accusations against him slowed down not a whit after his revelations, he continued his denials for the rest of his career and beyond. In fact, he has occasionally indicated that the book itself was just part of his grand deception, that perhaps he never threw anything illegal in his life. There were easily 100 contemporaries of Perry who were accused of doctoring the baseball at some point. But no one compared to Perry, either in the quantity and intensity of the accusations, or in the skills he brought with him to the mound.

According to Perry’s book, the first time he ever threw an important illegal pitch was on May 31, 1964 against the Mets in Shea Stadium. It was the second game of a doubleheader, a game that went 23 innings and lasted a record 7 hours and 23 minutes. Perry, the classic mop-up reliever, took over for the Giants in the bottom of the 13th of the 6-6 game. He had tossed an occasional spitball in meaningless situations, but on this day he and catcher Tom Haller decided it was time to try it out with the game on the line. Perry responded with 10 shutout innings to earn a victory, and to finally earn the confidence of manager Dark. With his two new pitches, the slider and the spitter, Perry turned in his first good season, finishing 12-11 with a 2.75 ERA throwing in a variety of roles.

With expectations high for 1965, Perry next took a step backwards. Beginning the year in the starting rotation for the first time, he soon lost his job and struggled to finish 8-12 with a grisly 4.19 ERA. He also began to draw attention to himself with his poor attitude: he argued with umpires, complained about errors made behind him in the field, and called up to the press box to try to get an opponents’ hit changed to an error on one of his teammates. Although Perry was apologetic after being called out by his new manager, Herman Franks, he continued to draw the ire of his teammates throughout his career. Gaylord did not tolerate fielding mistakes.

Perry came to spring training in 1966 as a 27-year-old with 24 major league victories, and no definite role on the Giants’ pitching staff. Accordingly, he reported three weeks early and had a great exhibition season, leading the Cactus League with a 5-0 record. Perry was always a tireless worker, running and throwing regularly between starts, but this spring he worked as he never had before. He also began his practice of playing pepper before his own games, believing that he pitched better once he had worked up a sweat.

He pitched once in relief on April 19 before getting a start on April 23 in the Giants’ 11th game. It was a great beginning-he bested the Astros 2-1 with a four-hitter, and was soon taking a regular turn in the Giants’ rotation. Perry credited pitching coach Larry Jansen for teaching him the hard slider, and for getting him to throw straight over the top rather than with a three-quarters motion. His pitching repertoire now included two sliders, a fastball, a change of pace, a curveball, and a spitter, and he threw them all with accuracy.

And he began winning. Although sidelined for 15 days after jamming his foot on a slide in early June, by the All-Star break Perry had compiled a 12-1 record with a 2.51 ERA and was an easy selection for the game, held in St. Louis’ newly opened Busch Stadium. To top it off, he earned the victory by pitching two scoreless frames and watching when Maury Wills singled home the winning run in the bottom of the tenth inning.

After a loss on July 14, Perry ran off eight more victories to bring his record to 20-2 on August 20. His best game was likely on July 22, when he two-hit the Phillies and struck out 15, one shy of the franchise record set by Christy Mathewson in 1903. Perry went through a rough patch after winning his 20th game, dropping his next six decisions and finishing at 21-8 2.99. He did pitch a few good games during this stretch, but his struggles contributed to the Giants’ losing the pennant by one-and-a-half games to the Los Angeles Dodgers.

Despite the late fade, 1966 was the breakthrough people had long predicted for Gaylord. His win total trailed only Sandy Koufax and Juan Marichal, and he finished second to Koufax in voting for The Sporting News Pitcher of the Year award. Another sign of Perry’s newfound success is that, for the first time, he began to be accused of moistening the baseball. The first documented complaint came in July when Milwaukee manager Bobby Bragan, backed up by outfielder Henry Aaron, complained about Perry’s offerings.

By the mid-1960s, support for legalizing the spitball had waned because offense was in such decline, reaching its lowest levels since the 1910s. Many of the writers who thought the pitch harmless just a few years earlier were beginning to write that the spitball was one of the primary causes of the dearth of run scoring. There were more and more calls instead to tighten up on the enforcement of the rules, to tip the balance more in the direction of the hitter.

Over the next couple of seasons, Perry continued to pitch great baseball but had less success winning games. In 1967 he posted a 15-17 record despite finishing among the league leaders with a 2.61 ERA, 293 innings pitched, 230 strikeouts, and 18 complete games. (As a point of contrast, teammate Mike McCormick pitched fewer innings and had a higher ERA, yet finished 22-10 and won the Cy Young Award.) Perry lost five times by the score of 2-1. He had particularly bad luck against the team the Giants needed to beat, losing all 5 starts to the Cardinals while recording a 2.33 ERA. On September 1st he tossed 16 shutout innings against the Reds, but received no decision. Perry was distraught: “There is just no way at all for us to go 16 innings and not score one little ol’ run. Or is there?” Apparently there was-the Giants finally pulled out the game, 1-0, when Dick Groat drew a bases loaded walk in the bottom of the 21st inning.

Following the season, the rules committee finally outlawed the practice of a pitcher putting his hand to his mouth anywhere on the pitcher’s mound, instructing the umpire to call a ball upon each infraction. According to Perry’s later confession, spitballers had to learn to use foreign substances like Vaseline or hair tonic, rather than saliva. In Perry’s words, “That rule virtually eliminated the pure spitball in baseball. I had the whole winter and spring to work out an adjustment. It wasn’t easy.” Prior to the rule change, Perry would touch his cap and mouth, and fake a wipe of his fingers. Now he had to get his moisture somewhere else on his person, and also learn a new series of elaborate decoy moves. He spent the winter practicing in front of the mirror. After a rocky spring training, he managed just fine.

By mid-summer it was obvious that the new rule had not decreased the illegal pitches at all, but merely added the new mystery of where the pitcher was hiding the lubricant. Perry was first searched in late June when Phillies’ manager Bob Skinner demanded that Gaylord’s ears be searched. A month later, Leo Durocher asked that Perry’s hair and cap be examined. On another night, first base umpire Al Barlick sneaked up behind Perry and yanked his hat off his head. This action was always particularly shocking because Perry was already nearly bald by this point.

In 1968 Perry’s ERA dropped to 2.45 while his record only inched up to 16-15. (Teammate Juan Marichal posted a nearly identical ERA, 2.43, while finishing 26-9.) This season was the low water mark for baseball’s offensive depression, as the National League’s ERA dropped to 2.98. During the month of July Perry posted a 2-5 record despite a 1.59 ERA. The highlight of his season was a no-hitter he threw against the Cardinals on September 17. The opposing pitcher was Bob Gibson, who pitched a four-hitter himself, but lost 1-0 on Ron Hunt‘s first inning home run, one of two round-trippers Hunt hit the entire season. The classic contest took just 1 hour and 40 minutes to complete. Amazingly, the Cards’ Ray Washburn no-hit the Giants the very next day, the first time back-to-back no hitters were pitched in a series. It was, indeed, the year of the pitcher.

In June of 1969, National League president Warren Giles instructed umpires to immediately remove any pitcher from the game if convinced the hurler was putting any lubricant on the ball. Two days later, with Perry on the mound against the Mets, Doug Harvey threw out several balls, checked Perry’s uniform and cap, and found nothing. A few weeks later, Ed Sudol made Perry pull his pants legs up over his knees to be checked. Soon thereafter, umpire Chris Pelekoudas wiped Perry’s face and neck with a towel. Eventually Giant general manager Chub Feeney complained to the league office about the harassment, and the protests slowed down.

The major leagues also reduced the strike zone and lowered the pitching mound in 1969, but Perry did not seem to be affected. His ERA stayed steady at 2.49, and he managed a 19-14 record, including 26 complete games and a league-leading 323 innings pitched. He also slugged his first ever big-league homer on July 20 off Claude Osteen. An oft-told story claims that Alvin Dark had once suggested that man would walk on the moon before Gaylord hit a home run; in fact, Neil Armstrong did step on the moon just prior to Perry’s grand hit. Interestingly, Perry hit five more home runs in his career, and his hitting record was not particularly unusual for a pitcher of his era.

The next season Gaylord’s ERA rose to 3.20, but he received enough offensive support this time to manage a record of 23-13. He finished strong, tossing four straight shutouts in September. Perry’s 23 wins led the league, as did his 41 starts and 328⅔ innings, and he finished second to Bob Gibson for the league’s Cy Young Award. His brother Jim won 24 games for the Twins that season, making the Perrys the first brothers to win 20 in the same season.

Gaylord followed up his big season with a 16-12 record and 2.76 ERA in 1971. He was involved in a bit of history on April 27 when he gave up Henry Aaron’s 600th home run, only the second time Aaron had homered off him. Aaron victimized Perry two more times, once in the 1972 All-Star game, and again in 1975 for Aaron’s first American League home run, the 734th of his career. In October Perry pitched in the post-season for the first and only time in his career, beating the Pirates in the first game of the playoffs before losing the clincher in Game 4 of the best-of-five series.

After the 1971 season Perry was traded to the Cleveland Indians, with infielder Frank Duffy, for pitcher Sam McDowell. McDowell was a talented, though frustrating, left-handed hurler, and four years younger than Perry. Most observers felt that that the Giants had made a great deal. They were seen as an aging team, and would soon part ways with Willie Mays, Willie McCovey and Juan Marichal.

Joining the American League, Perry traded one set of protagonists for another, and if anything, the circus atmosphere surrounding his starts rose to a new level. In an early season game against the Athletics, Mike Epstein waved his bat at Perry and threatened to head for the mound. Perry was strip searched after a protest by A’s manager Dick Williams, and ordered to change shirts. Billy Martin brought a bloodhound to a game to sniff baseballs. In late August, Indians general manager Gabe Paul protested the treatment of Perry to league president Joe Cronin, who asked the umps to back off.

Through it all, Perry’s pitching was sensational in 1972. Pitching for a fifth-place Indians club that scored just 3.0 runs per game, Perry’s 1.92 ERA led him to a 24-16 record. He was a workhorse, tossing 342⅔ innings over 41 games, completing 29 of his starts. Eight times he pitched into extra innings for his poor-hitting teammates. Historian Bill James believes this was the best season by an American League pitcher since Lefty Grove in 1931. He was rewarded with the Cy Young Award even though one writer said publicly that he would not vote for Perry because of his illegal pitch. In any event, Gaylord edged Wilbur Wood 64-58 in the balloting.

In June of 1973, literally taking matters into his own hands, Yankee manager Ralph Houk charged the mound, pulled the cap from Perry’s head, tossed it on the ground and kicked it. After the game, in which third base coach Dick Howser was ejected during another greaseball allegation, Yankee outfielder Bobby Murcer lamented, “If the league president or commissioner had any guts, they’d ban the pitch.” Murcer was fined for his comments, but did not back off.

On June 29 ABC-TV filmed a Perry outing, and the next day, on Wild World of Sports, Bobby Bragan provided expert commentary to Howard Cosell while reviewing the film. Bragan, an old adversary of Perry’s from the National League, claimed he saw several greaseballs, further showing the world that Perry was getting the stuff from his armpit. Perry was livid, claiming that Bragan had privately told him he had seen nothing suspicious. After another game, the league chemically analyzed a batch of balls that Perry had used and pronounced him clean.

Did he or didn’t he? Perry relished the controversy, and did everything he could to make the hitter think he was throwing it on nearly every pitch. According his book, he could go entire games, or a series of games, without using the spitter. If his sinker, or later his forkball, was working, he didn’t need any help. He also perfected the application enough so that he only needed a bit of natural sweat. He continued to go through his elaborate series of feints with his hand, rubbing his neck, his cap, his belt, his glove, whether or not he had any intention of wetting the ball. “I don’t even have to throw it anymore,” he said, “because the batters are set up to believe it’s there, waiting for ’em.”

Not everyone was concerned. AL umpire Bill Haller said, “I watched Gaylord like a hawk. He never goes to his mouth. I never see him get any foreign substance. When we umpire, we check balls as well as the catcher’s glove. I’ve never found anything. I’ll tell you what he’s got: a good curve, a fine fastball, a good change, and a fine sinker. His sinker is the suspicious one. It’s excellent. But no better than Mel Stottlemyre‘s and they don’t complain about his. I’ll tell you what Perry is: he’s one helluva pitcher, a fantastic competitor.”

Perry struggled a bit more often in 1973, finishing 19-19 (winning his final four starts) for the last-place Indians, with a 3.38 ERA. After he shut out the Tigers on August 30, manager Billy Martin told the writers that he had ordered his pitchers to throw spitballs the last two innings: “The umpires are making a mockery of the game by not stopping Perry. Everyone knows he does it, but nobody does anything about it. We’re going to keep on doing it every time he pitches against us.” To emphasize his point, Martin called Joe Cronin and Bowie Kuhn, “gutless.” Cronin suspended Martin for three days, but before the suspension was up the Tigers fired him. A week later, Martin was managing the Texas Rangers.

After the 1973 season, the Indians and Red Sox worked out a deal for Perry in which the Indians would receive pitchers Marty Pattin, John Curtis and Craig Skok. Both general managers agreed to the swap, and the Red Sox had scheduled a press conference to announce it, but the Indians’ board of directors overruled the trade. The Red Sox subsequently pulled off a big deal with the Cardinals, angering the Indians, who believed the deal could be resurrected.

In the spring of 1974, Perry and Bob Sudyk released their book, Me and the Spitter, An Autobiographical Confession. Perry told the story of how he learned the pitch, and numerous tales of particular confrontations with angry batters. “I reckon I tried everything on the old apple, but salt and pepper and chocolate sauce topping.” But he also said he was through with all such illegalities, writing, “Of course, I’m reformed now. I’m a pure law-abiding citizen.”

In related news, that winter the rules committee gave the umpires the authority to rule a pitch illegal if he thought the pitch behaved like a spitball. The first violation would be a “ball”; the second would result in an ejection. The first time the rule was enforced was on Opening Day, when Marty Springstead called a ball against Gaylord. Properly concerned, in early May the Indians set up a meeting with umpires in the bullpen at Fenway Park so that Perry could demonstrate his forkball to them. The umpires were impressed, and AL president Lee MacPhail sent a note to all league umps saying that Perry’s forkball did, indeed, behave just like a spitter.

After his opening loss, Perry embarked on the greatest pitching stretch of his career, winning his next 15 decisions spread over 17 starts, running his record to 15-1 with a 1.31 ERA by July 3. All 15 wins were complete games, as was the game he finally lost, 4-3 to Oakland in 10 innings. In the game against the A’s he was trying to tie the league record for consecutive victories, but gave up a run in the ninth to knot the score before losing in the next frame. Perry returned to earth in the second half, finishing 21-13 with a 2.51 ERA for the fourth-place club.

Perry’s great season was also spiced with regular complaints about his team’s defense, especially that of young center fielder George Hendrick. At one point Perry told manager Ken Aspromonte that he didn’t want Hendrick playing behind him again, and Aspromonte actually obliged a few times. On one occasion when both Perry and Hendrick were in the listed starting lineup, Hendrick refused to play and left the ballpark.

On September 12 the Indians made headlines by sending two players and cash to the California Angels for 38-year-old slugger Frank Robinson. Although Robinson had hit 20 home runs as the Angels’ designated hitter that season, his days as a star player were over. Rumors began to swirl that Robinson was actually acquired to become the team’s new manager. Before such a thing could happen, Perry was more interested in Robinson’s $173,500 contract, and told reporters that for his next deal he would demand “one dollar more than Robinson is getting.” His new teammate didn’t appreciate the comment, and the two had to be separated to avoid a fistfight. Perry later said that he wanted to be traded if Robinson was named the manager, which Robinson was at the conclusion of the season.

Robinson’s appointment was a huge story, as he was the first African-American skipper in major league history. Unfortunately, he began his managerial career in an uncomfortable feud with his only star player, a feud that was not destined to end. Although the two brokered a public peace during the off-season, the trade rumors soon took over the club. The Red Sox in particular spent the winter and the early part of the 1975 season trying to acquire the star pitcher.

In spring training Perry and Robinson argued over the manager’s enforced training regimen, and specifically that Perry would not be allowed to do his own routine. Perry wanted to run sprints, rather than the long foul-line-to-foul-line runs that Robinson imposed. Gaylord was used to special privileges, however: “I’m not training for a marathon race, and I’m not about to let some superstar who never pitched a game in his life tell me how to get ready to pitch.” Things continued along these lines well into the season. Perry’s departure became a foregone conclusion, and the story took some of the luster away from Robinson’s historic managerial debut.

Perry struggled for the Tribe in early 1975, attaining a record of 6-9 with a 3.55 ERA into mid-June. On June 13, he was finally dealt to Texas for pitchers Jim Bibby, Jackie Brown, Rick Waits, and $150,000. His new manager, ironically, was Billy Martin, who had been miraculously transformed: “I realize how wrong I was. I’d like to get on the record immediately as saying Gaylord does nothing illegal.” On the other hand, when Perry faced his old Indians team on June 15, Frank Robinson told reporters that, alas, Perry did throw a greaseball on occasion and that Robinson was prepared to protest if he saw any such pitches. Perry’s regular team-swapping in the latter half of his career led to several such changes of heart on the part of his new and old managers.

Perry was hit hard in his first few starts, but settled down to finish 12-8, 3.03 for Texas. He was the Rangers’ best pitcher, and still a workhorse, hurling over 300 innings combined for his two employers. By the end of the season, Martin had been fired by the Rangers and then hired by the Yankees, where he was free to resume his crusade against Perry’s dastardly pitch.

The next season Gaylord posted a 15-14 record with a 3.24 ERA. Though he was now 38 years old, after the 1976 season Texas surprised many observers by protecting Perry in the expansion draft. Owner Brad Corbett reasoned, “Gaylord’s value to this team is much more than just as a pitcher.” In 1977 the Rangers finished a surprising second, and Perry (15-12, 3.37) was a big contributor to their success. Texas had put together a solid group of starters around Perry, including Bert Blyleven, Doyle Alexander, and Dock Ellis.

By this point in his career, Perry was spending his off-seasons near his boyhood home. Earlier in his baseball years, Perry sold insurance during the off-season. By the late 1960s, he and Blanche and their four children (three daughters and a son) lived in the Bay Area, and Gaylord sold cars for an auto dealership. By the middle 1970s, the Perrys had moved back to North Carolina for good, and Perry spent his off-seasons living and working on his farm.

In February 1978, the 39-year-old Perry was dealt to the Padres for Dave Tomlin and $125,000. Like the Indians three years earlier, the Rangers needed the money, including the savings from Perry’s $200,000 contract, and wanted to get younger players. The Padres, on the other hand, felt they needed a veteran pitcher to stabilize their young pitching staff. Gaylord delivered, posting a record of 21-6 with a 2.73 ERA, as the Padres finished 84-78, the best record of their 10-year existence. Perry became the third hurler to win 20 games for three different teams, following Carl Mays and Pete Alexander. He also won his second Cy Young Award, becoming the first hurler to capture the award in each league. As a small concession to age, Perry showed a willingness to leave the game to the bullpen, and completed just five games.

Back in San Diego for the 1979 season, Perry had another solid campaign, managing a 12-11 record with his 3.06 ERA. Unfortunately, he became disillusioned with the direction of the team, and at different times publicly criticized manager Roger Craig and general manager Bob Fontaine. Early in the season he called out Craig for playing Gene Richards in center field, causing the skipper to complain that Perry put a lot of pressure on the team by constantly criticizing their defense. After a couple of mistakes cost Perry a game in May, the veteran pitcher fumed, “Fielders are supposed to make plays in the big leagues. We’re giving games away.”

In August, Texas owner Brad Corbett was quoted saying that trading Perry was the biggest mistake he made in baseball, and said that he had promised Perry a front office position at the end of his career. Likely crossing the line to tampering with the Padres player, Corbett also indicated that he wanted to reacquire Perry. In late August, Perry informed the Padres that he wanted to be traded, preferably back to Texas. On September 4, he took it a step further by quitting the team, saying he would retire unless a deal could be worked. The Padres were justifiably upset, since Perry had recently extended his contract through 1980. After spending a few months trying to get their star to reconsider, they reluctantly dealt Perry back to the Rangers in February 1980.

Texas did not prove to be the cure-all for Perry’s ills. In June manager Pat Corrales warned Gaylord to stop criticizing his teammates, and later chastised his pitcher for storming off the mound when being taken out of the game. Perry had the best ERA on the staff, 3.43, but only managed a 6-9 record in 24 starts. On August 24 he was dealt to the Yankees for pitcher Ken Clay, putting Perry in his first pennant race since 1971. He finished the season 4-4 for the division-winning Yankees, but did not pitch in the team’s three-game playoff loss to the Royals. After the season the Yankees set the 42-year-old Perry free.

Eleven victories shy of 300, Perry signed with the Braves in January 1981, and finished the season with an 8-9 record. He likely missed out on winning his 300th game with Atlanta because of the player strike that shut down the game for seven weeks in mid-summer. After the Braves let him go, he spent most of the winter without a job before finally signing in March 1982 with the Seattle Mariners. His career victory total then stood at 297.

Perry began the 1982 season with two complete-game losses, then won two straight decisions to get to 299 wins. On May 6, 1982 he hurled a complete game 7-3 victory over the Yankees for the historic #300, becoming the first 300-game-winner since Early Wynn in 1963. Pitching regularly for a mediocre Mariner team, Perry finished 10-12 with a 4.40 ERA over 32 starts and 216⅔ innings.

Other than his 300th win, Perry made his biggest headlines with with his controversial pitch. On August 23, Perry was first warned, then ejected, by plate umpire Dave Phillips for throwing two allegedly illegal pitches. It was the first and only time Perry, a 21-year veteran approaching his 44th birthday, had been kicked out of a ballgame for his famous pitch. Perry threatened legal action before eventually backing down.

Perry finally wound down in 1983, going 3-10 with the Mariners, drawing his release, and then finishing 4-4 with the Kansas City Royals. In keeping with his career-long reputation for skirting the law, Perry had a supporting role in one of the big stories of the 1983 baseball season. On August 18, 1983, teammate George Brett hit a home run at Yankee Stadium that was disallowed because he had too much pine tar on his bat. During the ensuing melee, Gaylord ran out and confiscated the bat, before being chased down by stadium security and promptly kicked out of the game.

At the end of the 1983 season, Perry retired from baseball. His 314 wins were good for 11th on the all-time list at the time, and his 3534 strikeouts placed him third. It took Perry three tries before gaining election into baseball’s Hall of Fame, likely due to the controversy surrounding his pitching repertoire.

His post-career life has had its share of disappointments. Perry’s 400-acre farm failed in 1986, causing him to take a job as a regional representative for Fiesta Foods, a company that made chips and tacos. The following season he signed a four-year contract to create a baseball program at Limestone College in Gaffney, South Carolina.

Tragically, in September 1987, Gaylord’s beloved wife Blanche was killed in a two-vehicle car accident. She was just 46 years old. A few years later Gaylord married Carol Caggiano, a board member at Limestone College. Perry remains close to his four grown children.

In the ensuing years, Gaylord Perry has been able to make a fair living just being Gaylord Perry, touring the country, signing autographs, appearing at ballgames. He was making a comfortable living, and his $100,000 annual major league pension kicked in when he turned 65 in 2003.

Wherever he travels, whether a minor-league game or a baseball card convention, he is repeatedly asked the same questions: “What did you put on the ball?” “Where did you hide the stuff?” “How often did you throw it?” The familiar grin is always accompanied by the same coy denial. Gaylord Perry is still playing with us.

Postscript

Perry died of natural causes on December 1, 2022 at the age of 84.

Sources

In preparing this biography, I relied heavily on hundreds of issues of The Sporting News, available via the Paper of Record web site (www.paperofrecord.com). During the prime of Perry’s career he was mentioned in TSN nearly every week, often more than once. I read every reference to Perry from 1958 to the present. I also relied on Perry’s thick file at the National Baseball Hall of Fame Library. In addition, I used the following, especially including his wonderful autobiography.

Golenbock, Peter. Wild, High and Tight, The Life and Death of Billy Martin. St. Martins Press, 1994.

Perry, Gaylord and Bob Sudyk. Me and The Spitter. Dutton, 1974.

Schneider, Russ. Frank Robinson, The Making of a Manager. Coward, McCann & Gheogegan, 1976.

Photo Credits

SABR-Rucker Archive

The Topps Company

The oldest of six children of Minerva (Capwell) and Gilbert Mathewson, a Civil War veteran who became a post-office worker and farmer, Christopher Mathewson was born on August 12, 1880, in Factoryville, Pennsylvania, a small town in the northeastern part of the state, not far from the New York border. His forebears, original followers of Roger Williams in Rhode Island, had settled in the region as the nation began to expand westward after the Revolutionary War. The blond-haired, blue-eyed Christy was always big for his age—he eventually grew to 6-feet-1 1/2 and 195 pounds—and his playmates called him “Husk.” At age 14 he pitched for the Factoryville town team. Christy continued pitching for semipro teams in the area while attending Keystone Academy, a Factoryville prep school founded by his grandmother. The summer after his graduation from Keystone, Christy was pitching for the team from Honesdale, Pennsylvania, when a left-handed teammate named Dave Williams, who later pitched three games for the Boston Americans in 1902, taught him the fadeaway.

In September 1898 Mathewson enrolled at Bucknell University in Lewisburg, 75 miles west of Factoryville. He pitched for the baseball team and played center on the basketball team, but football was his chief claim to fame at Bucknell, which played a rugged schedule that included powerhouses such as Penn State, Army, and Navy. For three years Christy was the varsity’s first-string fullback, punter, and drop kicker; no less an authority than Walter Camp, the originator of the All-America team, called him “the greatest drop-kicker in intercollegiate competition.”2 Majoring in forestry, Mathewson also was a top-flight student who excelled in extracurricular activities, serving as class president and joining the band, glee club, two literary societies, and two fraternities. It was also at Bucknell that he met his future bride, Jane Stoughton.

During the summer after his freshman year, Mathewson signed his first professional contract with Taunton, Massachusetts, of the New England League. He pitched in 17 games and went 2-13. To make a bad season worse, Taunton folded and the players had to arrange a Labor Day exhibition just to raise funds for their transportation home. Before the start of the Bucknell-Penn football game that fall (in which Matty kicked two long-range field goals, then worth five points apiece, the same as touchdowns), an old major-league pitcher named Phenomenal Smith signed him to a contract with Norfolk of the Virginia League for the following summer. Reporting right after final exams, Mathewson became an immediate sensation in the Virginia League, amassing a 20-2 record by mid-July. After the last of those victories, Smith took Matty aside in the clubhouse and offered him a choice between being sold to Philadelphia or New York of the National League. Christy chose New York, thinking the Giants needed pitching more than the Phillies, and made his major-league debut on July 17, 1900, one month shy of his 20th birthday.

Mathewson did little more than pitch batting practice for the Giants, becoming so frustrated that he wrote a friend, “I don’t give a rap whether they sign me or not.”3 Towards the end of the season he received two starting assignments and lost both, ending the year winless in three decisions with a 5.08 ERA. The Giants returned him to Norfolk. That offseason the Cincinnati Reds drafted him for $100, then promptly traded him back to the Giants for a washed-up Amos Rusie. It was part of a collusive master plan to save $900; the Giants would have had to pay $1,000 to Norfolk if they’d kept Mathewson after the season, and Reds owner John T. Brush was negotiating to purchase the Giants from Andrew Freedman. In 1901, his first full season in the majors, Mathewson pitched a no-hitter against the St. Louis Cardinals on July 15 and went 20-17 with a 2.41 ERA for the seventh-place Giants. New York fans started calling their ace “The Big Six.” Matty thought it was because of his height, but the nickname probably originated when sportswriter Sam Crane compared him to New York City’s Big Six Fire Company, the fastest to put out the fire.4

The Giants floundered again at the start of 1902, prompting new manager Horace Fogel to play Mathewson in three games at first base and four in the outfield in addition to his pitching duties. Many have implied that this was a sign of Fogel’s ineptitude, but years later Matty defended Fogel, explaining that the manager knew he was a good hitter and fielder and was willing to try anything to turn around his team. The experiment ended, however, when John McGraw took over as manager on July 19. To that point Mathewson had won only one game, but over the rest of the season he won 13, eight of them shutouts, winding up at 14-17 with a 2.12 ERA as the Giants finished last. That winter Matty married Jane Stoughton while McGraw rebuilt his team through trades and free-agent acquisitions. The Mathewsons honeymooned in Savannah, where the Giants held spring training. Blanche McGraw took the young pitcher’s wife under her wing, while the McGraws treated Christy like the son they never had.

Christy Mathewson enjoyed a breakout year in 1903, the first of three consecutive 30-win seasons. That year he went 30-13 with a 2.26 ERA and a career-high 267 strikeouts, which stood as the NL record until Sandy Koufax struck out 269 in 1961. Matty was just as good in 1904, leading the Giants to the NL pennant with a 33-12 record and 2.03 ERA, but the following year he was even better. Mathewson was 31-9 with a miniscule 1.28 ERA, capping off his banner 1905 season with the best World Series any pitcher ever had. Opposing him in the opener on October 9 was Philadelphia’s Eddie Plank, a fellow Pennsylvanian who’d pitched against him several times while attending Gettysburg College. Mathewson got the victory, as he had in each of their college match-ups, shutting out the Athletics on four hits. After Chief Bender shut out the Giants in Game Two, Matty was ready to pitch again in Game Three but received an extra day’s rest when the game was rained out. On October 12 he shut out the Athletics, 9-0, on another four-hitter. The next day Joe McGinnity defeated Plank, 1-0, and Mathewson returned on just one day’s rest to clinch the Series with a 2-0 victory over Bender. Within a span of six days, he’d pitched 27 innings, allowing 14 hits, one walk, and no runs while striking out 18. The next week Matty and his catcher Frank Bowerman went hunting in Bowerman’s hometown of Romeo, Michigan. Coaxed to pitch for Romeo in its final game of the season against archrival Lake Orion, Christy lost, 5-0, to an obscure group of semipros.

Mathewson was the toast of New York. Endorsement offers poured in, with Matty “pitching” Arrow shirt collars, leg garters (for socks), undergarments, sweaters, athletic equipment, and numerous other products. He received an offer to put his name on a pool hall/saloon but turned it down when his mother asked, “Do you really want your name associated with a place like that?”5 But in a pattern that haunted him for the rest of his life, disappointment and tragedy followed his greatest triumph. In 1906 Matty caught a dose of diphtheria and nearly died, struggling to a 22-12 record and an uncharacteristic 2.97 ERA. Late that season the Giants called up his brother Henry, who was only 19 years old. In his first start Henry walked 14 Chicago Cubs. Disappointing though the ’06 season was, Matty experienced his greatest joy on October 6 when Jane gave birth to the couple’s first and only child, a son they named Christopher Jr.

Mathewson’s biggest year came in 1908, when he set career highs in wins (37), games (56), innings (390 2/3), and shutouts (11). His control was never better, averaging less than one walk per nine innings. Matty’s season ended in disappointment, however, when he took a no-decision in the “Merkle Game” and lost to Mordecai Brown, 4-2, in the one-game playoff. By his own admission he had “nothing on the ball” in that contest, and he also felt responsible that four people had lost their lives in falling accidents at the Polo Grounds that day (according to Christy’s second cousin, Harold “Alvie” Reynolds, if Mathewson had only said the word, the Giants would’ve refused to play and those tragedies would’ve been averted).6 Compounding his guilt, on the afternoon of January 14, 1909 Christy’s youngest brother, Nicholas, shot himself at their parents’ home in Pennsylvania. Christy, in New York at the time, was summoned to Pennsylvania and arrived in time to be at his brother’s bedside when Nicholas, who never regained consciousness, was pronounced dead at 7:10 AM on January 15. Two years earlier, Detroit Tigers manager Hughie Jennings had wanted to sign the 17-year-old Nicholas and bring him directly to the majors, but Christy had advised against it.7

Mathewson nonetheless bounced back to go 25-6 with a career-best 1.14 ERA in 1909. He helped the Giants win three consecutive NL pennants from 1911 to 1913, leading the NL in ERA in both 1911 (1.99) and 1913 (2.06). In 1914, however, the 34-year-old Mathewson started experiencing a constant pain in his left side towards the end of the season. Doctors found nothing wrong and told him he was just getting old. It affected his performance, however; his ERA increased to 3.00 in 1914 even though he still managed to win 24 games, and the following year he was just 8-14 with a 3.58 ERA. By the midpoint of the 1916 season Matty had won just three games. Knowing that his days as an effective pitcher were behind him, he decided that he wanted to manage. On July 20 McGraw came through for his friend, trading him for Cincinnati Reds player-manager Buck Herzog on condition that he replace Herzog as manager.

Mathewson was a good manager who might have become a great one, but he could do little with Herzog’s leftovers and finished tied for last in 1916. At least he added some interest to an otherwise dismal season, pitching one last game against his old rival on “Mordecai Brown Day” in Chicago. In the only major-league game he ever pitched in a uniform other than New York’s, the 36-year-old Matty yielded 15 hits but defeated a nearly 40-year-old Brown, 10-8, giving him the 373rd and final victory of his 17-year career. In 1917 Mathewson guided Cincinnati to a 78-76 record, its first winning season since 1909, but tragedy struck on July 1 when his brother Henry died of tuberculosis at age 30, leaving behind four young daughters. Matty’s Reds continued their improvement in 1918, but on August 9 he suspended his notorious first baseman, Hal Chase, after confronting him about some suspicious-looking misplays and a $50 payment to pitcher Jimmy Ring. Cincinnati went on to finish third but by that point Mathewson was in France, having been commissioned a captain in the Army’s Chemical Warfare Division. While Mathewson was overseas, Chase’s case came before the National Commission; without the star witness against him, Chase was exonerated.

While in France Mathewson endured a bad bout of influenza and was exposed to mustard gas during a training exercise. He was hospitalized and apparently had recovered by the time he returned to the United States in the spring. On his arrival, however, he discovered that Pat Moran was managing the Reds. When owner Garry Herrmann didn’t hear from Mathewson that he’d be back in time for spring training (both had written to each other but neither had received the other’s message), he did what he felt he needed to and hired a new manager. Mathewson resigned from the Reds and accepted a position from McGraw as assistant manager of the Giants. In 1919 New York finished second to the Matty-built Reds, and Mathewson covered the World Series for the New York Times. Before the first game he saw several Chicago White Sox conversing with Chase in the lobby of Cincinnati’s Hotel Sinton. It has been rumored that, doubting the legitimacy of the Series before a single pitch was thrown, Mathewson discussed the possibility of a fix with sportswriter Hugh Fullerton and agreed to circle suspicious-looking plays on his scorecard.8 Angry at what he witnessed, believing that “his” team would have won the Series on its own merit, Matty forwarded his findings to the National Commission and walked away from the Black Sox Scandal.

Returning to the Giants in 1920-21, Mathewson was unable to shake the cough that had plagued him since joining the club in 1919, and the pain in his left side was back and worse than ever. The physicians who examined him in 1921 immediately diagnosed the condition as tuberculosis. It’s possible that he’d contracted the disease from his brother Henry and had it since 1914, but the physicians who’d examined him then were looking for muscle strain, not lesions irritating his lung and rubbing the inside of his ribs. Along with his wife, Jane, Christy set off for the tuberculosis sanitarium in Saranac Lake, New York, where he initially received a prognosis of six weeks to live. For the next two years he fought as hard as he ever had on the diamond to recover from the deadly disease. By the winter of 1922-23 Matty thought he was strong enough to return to baseball.

That winter McGraw urged Judge Emil Fuchs of New York to purchase the Boston Braves. “And if you buy them,” McGraw said, “I’ve got the man who can run the club for you.”9 On February 11, 1923, Fuchs announced that he’d bought the Braves and Christy Mathewson would run the club as president. His physicians warned him that he couldn’t undertake too much, but Matty nonetheless threw himself into the task of rebuilding the pitiful Braves. Some reports say that his cough returned in 1925 after he was soaked in a spring-training rain shower. Whether it was stress, the rain, or a disease that wouldn’t give in, Mathewson’s body began to fail and he was forced to return to Saranac Lake where he died on October 7, 1925. On that day McGraw was in Pittsburgh, covering the World Series for a newspaper syndicate. When he received the news, he immediately left for New York to meet his wife, Blanche. Together they went to Saranac Lake to be with Jane Mathewson and Christy Jr.

Three days later, with his manager, wife, and son standing graveside, Christy Mathewson was laid to rest in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania, in view of the Bucknell campus. Today there is a memorial gate at the entrance to the campus, built in 1927 with donations from every big-league team, and in 1989 the Bison football stadium was renovated and re-dedicated as Christy Mathewson Memorial Stadium.

Last revised: April 17, 2021 (zp)

An earlier version of this biography appeared in SABR’s “Deadball Stars of the National League” (Brassey’s Inc., 2004), edited by Tom Simon. It also appeared in “From Spring Training to Screen Test: Baseball Players Turned Actors“ (SABR, 2018), edited by Rob Edelman and Bill Nowlin.

Sources

For this biography, the author used a number of contemporary sources, especially those found in the subject’s file at the National Baseball Hall of Fame Library.

Notes