Stephen Ralph Arlin was born on September 25, 1946, in Seattle, Washington, to Ralph Wampler and Darlene (Mahns) Arlin. His grandfather, Harold Wampler Arlin, was the world’s first salaried baseball broadcaster, for KDKA in Pittsburgh, where he made history by announcing the game on August 5, 1921, between the Philadelphia Phillies and Pirates at Forbes Field, as well as the first football game about two months later. By the time Steve started elementary school, the Arlins had relocated from the Pacific Northwest to Lima, Ohio, located about 170 miles west of Cleveland, where his father worked as an electrical engineer. Steve starred on the hardwood and diamond at Shawnee High School in Lima, and also played American Legion ball in the summers.

Arlin attended Ohio State on a baseball scholarship and became one of the most dominant pitchers in college baseball history. A two-time All-American, Arlin led the Buckeyes to the College World Series as a sophomore in 1965 (freshmen were not eligible for varsity athletics at the time). He emerged as the hurling star of the double-elimination tournament, setting a series record by fanning 20 in a complete-game 15-inning, 1-0 shutout of Washington State.2 The Buckeyes ultimately lost to the Sal Bando– and Rick Monday-led Arizona State Sun Devils in the championship; however, Arlin was named to the all-tournament team. He paced the NCAA with 165 strikeouts (including 31 in the CWS) in 141 innings and victories (13), tied with ASU’s Jim Merrick, and was named the National College Pitcher of the Year.3 Despite Arlin’s well-publicized intentions to return to OSU for his junior year, the Detroit Tigers hoped to change his mind by offering him a reported $80,000 bonus after selecting him in the 23rd round of the inaugural amateur draft in June. Arlin did not take the bait and was back in Columbus in the fall. Described as the “greatest one-man show ever seen in the College World Series,” Arlin led the Buckeyes to their first (and as of 2016) only CWS baseball title, in 1966.4 He pitched in five of his team’s six games, twice defeated the number-one-ranked University of Southern California, finished the tournament with 28 strikeouts in 20⅔ innings while yielding just two runs and five hits, and was named the tournament’s most outstanding player. In his two-year varsity career, he set Buckeye records for victories (24-3) and strikeouts (294), both since broken. He was subsequently inducted to the OSU Athletic Hall of Fame (1976), the College Baseball Hall of Fame (2008), and the Omaha College World Series Hall of Fame (2014).5 In 2004 Arlin became the first baseball player in OSU history to have his number (22) retired.

Arlin was primed for the next stage of his career, which began when the Philadelphia Phillies selected him with the 13th pick of the first round of the amateur draft (secondary phase) in June. Enticed by a reported $105,000 bonus, believed to be the Phillies’ largest-ever at the time, Arlin signed on June 22, 1966, at a ceremony at his parents’ house in Lima.6 Scout Tony Lucadello, who had followed Arlin since his prep days, was credited with the signing. Arlin picked up an additional bonus that December when he married Susan Lynn Bazler from Upper Arlington, outside Columbus, Ohio. Together they had two sons.

Arlin’s three-year stint in the Phillies’ farm system was anything but smooth. After raising eyebrows with the Bakersfield Bears in the Class-A California League (116 strikeouts in 110 innings) in 1966, he earned a look-see at the Phillies spring training in 1967, but by the end of March the young hurler was back in Columbus enrolled in dental school at OSU. Consequently, he missed most of spring training and reported to Reading in the Double-A Eastern League in mid-June. This arrangement ruffled feathers in the Phillies organization, especially among coaches who questioned the hurler’s commitment to baseball. Among Arlin’s few highlights was a seven-inning no-hitter for Reading, but that came with the caveat of 10 walks.

Arlin possessed a heater in the low 90s and a knee-buckling curve, but struggled with control, and failed to live up to the Phillies expectations. His obligation to dental school limited him to a dismal 5-15 record and just 161 innings with 100 walks in 1967-1968, while he worked his way up to Triple-A San Diego (Pacific Coast League).

While Phillies brass blamed the time Arlin missed in spring training and the early season for his failure to develop into a bona-fide starter, Arlin had a different perspective. “Philadelphia mishandled me in the minor leagues,” he told sportswriter Bill Ballew.7 Arlin explained how pitching coaches, especially Al Widmar, changed his pitching mechanics so that he could throw even harder, but the results were catastrophic. “They turned my whole motion around,” he said. “They made me turn my butt toward the plate more. When I finished the motion, I’d fall off to first base instead of always finishing in good defensive position. So I actually did everything in the major leagues without the good curveball.”8

The book closed on Arlin in Philadelphia on October 14, 1968, when the San Diego Padres selected him with the 57th pick in the expansion draft. “There’s no telling how good Arlin might be if he gets a full spring training behind him,” said Padres GM Eddie Leishman.9 Like the Phillies, the Padres would have to wait to find out. Skipper Preston Gomez seemed to lose interest in the 23-year-old hurler when he chose dental school over spring training. When Arlin finally reported to the big-league club in mid-June of 1969 for his first competitive baseball of the season, Gomez was unimpressed. “[Arlin] doesn’t look like a ball player,” Gomez said of the sandy-haired youngster with glasses. “I thought he was some kid Eddie (Leishman) had sent down to pitch batting practice.”10 Arlin’s debut on June 17 in the second game of a doubleheader against the Los Angeles Dodgers probably didn’t change Gomez’s mind. Arlin yielded an RBI single, a wild pitch, a walk, and a three-run homer to the first three batters he faced. Two weeks later Arlin (11 earned runs and nine walks in 10⅔ innings) was back in Columbus, but this time it was a demotion to the Jets, the Pittsburgh Pirates’ affiliate in the Triple-A International League (the Padres launched a Triple-A team the next season). Arlin’s 2-5 slate with 4.73 ERA did not warrant a September call-up.

Graduating from dental school in June 1970, Dr. Arlin reported to the Salt Lake City Bees in the PCL. Predictably, he struggled as he worked himself into shape, posting a 5-7 record with a dismal 6.10 ERA in 87 innings. With the Padres en route to their second straight last-place finish in the NL West, Arlin was recalled on September 4. Bombed in his first outing (11 baserunners and four runs in a 3⅔-inning no-decision), Arlin shocked the Padres with a masterful seven-hit shutout with just one walk against the Atlanta Braves on September 23 for his first big-league victory. “He has a major-league arm,” cooed pitching coach Roger Craig. “There’s no reason why he can’t be a big winner.”11

In late February of 1971 Arlin reported to Yuma, Arizona, to participate in his first complete spring training as a professional. He admitted that missing spring training every season affected his development. “I’d come in pretty far behind everybody,” he said. “I never really did get into shape.”12 However, Arlin had no apologies for his decision to attend dental school. “I never thought about doing it differently,” he told sportswriter Ron Rapoport, “All the people want is production. I understand that. I wanted school behind me.”13

Widely expected to join the starting rotation, the 25-year-old Arlin impressed Gomez with his poise, demeanor, and approach to the game. “He’s the kind of pitcher who learns from his mistakes,” said the Cuban-born skipper. “He hasn’t pitched that much in pro ball, but he has the maturity that some of our others pitchers lack.”14 Hurling for the major leagues’ worst offense (3.02 runs per game) and the NL’s second most porous defense proved more challenging than expected for the cerebral Arlin. He lost 11 of his first 13 decisions. (Both victories were shutouts.) Then he suddenly hit a groove over a 14-start stretch from June 30 to September 3, going 7-5 and posting a 2.43 ERA in 107⅓ innings.

Arlin’s future looked bright, and never did it shine brighter than on July 25 in the second game of a doubleheader against the future World Series champion Pittsburgh Pirates at San Diego Stadium. Nursing a 2-0 lead with two outs in the ninth and a runner on, Arlin induced the eventual major-league home-run leader, Willie Stargell to foul off seven successive pitches on a 3-and-2 count before walking him. Unfazed, he ended the game by whiffing the next batter, pinch-hitter Roberto Clemente, to complete a three-hit shutout. The Padres finished with the NL’s worst record (61-100) for the third straight season, but their young pitching staff emerged with the NL’s third-best team ERA (3.22), which produced a “note of optimism about the future,” suggested Padres beat writer Paul Cour.15 While 23-year-old Clay Kirby (15-13, 2.83 ERA, 231 strikeouts) and Dave Roberts (14-17, 2.10 ERA) garnered most of the attention Arlin posted nine wins (all by complete game), a team-best four shutouts, and a respectable 3.48 ERA in 227⅔ innings. He was also a tough-luck loser, leading the NL with 19 defeats; in 13 of those the Padres scored two runs or less; in four more, they scored three runs.

Eleven games into the 1972 season, Preston Gomez was fired for what beat writer Phil Collier described as the “defeatist complex” permeating the clubhouse.16 Into the void stepped Padres coach and first-time skipper Don Zimmer, who vowed to make his club better prepared mentally. If anything, the Padres took a step back. The Padres were once again the lowest-scoring team in the NL (3.19 runs per game), while their promising pitching corps finished with the second-worst team ERA in the league. That toxic mix produced another last-place finish in the NL West. Arlin gave Zimmer his first of 885 wins as a manager by outdueling red-hot Steve Carlton on April 29 in San Diego. He tossed a stellar five-hitter to beat the Phillies, 4-0, and exact a measure of revenge against the organization that gave up on him. He spun another shutout (a four-hitter against the New York Mets’ Jerry Koosman at Shea Stadium) in his next start, part of a career-long 19⅓-scoreless-inning streak. Sports pages had a field day with Arlin’s dentist title. “Dr. Arlin Pastes Pirates in the Teeth,” and “Padres Pitching Dentist Numbs Bucs,” following his masterful two-hit blanking of the Pirates on June 18, were typical of the kinds of headlines about the hurler’s accomplishments.17 That victory inaugurated an eight-start stretch during which Arlin did his best Nolan Ryan impression. He yielded just 33 safeties in 71 innings, tossed three two-hitters and a one-hitter, and surrendered just one hit in a career-long 10-inning outing in an eventual 14-inning Padres victory over the Mets. Bad luck sometimes followed Arlin even when he won a game. One strike from a no-hitter against the Phillies on July 18, Arlin yielded what sportswriter Bruce Keidan of the Philadelphia Inquirer described as a “bad hop” single to Danny Doyle.18 “I beeped it up for him,” said Zimmer, who had mysteriously ordered third baseman Dave Roberts to play shallow to guard against a bunt.19 Noticeably aggravated and shocked, Arlin balked facing the next batter, Tom Hutton, whose subsequent RBI single ruined the shutout, though Arlin still won the game. Sporting an impressive 2.80 ERA despite an 8-11 record, Arlin was widely expected to be named to the NL All-Star squad, but was snubbed. “I can’t believe there are nine pitchers in the league better than Steve,” said Roger Craig incredulously.20 After the All-Star break, Arlin was plagued by the same shoulder pain that bothered him the previous season. At one point he had lost 14 of 15 decisions, including 10 in a row, and ultimately finished the season with 10 wins and a major-league-most 21 defeats (as well as an NL-most 122 walks and 15 wild pitches). He lost seven one-run games; in 19 of the losses, the Padres scored three runs or less (31 total runs).

Given his 20-41 career record after the ’72 campaign, it’s no surprise that the competitive Arlin expressed his frustration publicly. “[I find this] very difficult to live with,” he replied when asked about losing 21 games. “I felt at the time of the All-Star break, I was one of the better pitchers in baseball.”21 Arlin’s career highs in innings (250), starts (37), complete games (12), and strikeouts (159) could not soothe his disappointment. “I’m in a profession in which the object is to win, and all I do is lose.”22

Arlin might have wished that offseason rumors about his trade to the Boston Red Sox in a multiplayer transaction involving Red Sox Reggie Smith and Rico Petrocelli had proved to be true. When the Padres got off to a horrible start in 1973, players were “close to rebellion” against skipper Zimmer, the coaching staff, and the front office.23 Arlin, pounded in his first five starts (5.40 ERA), was shunted to the bullpen for six weeks, during which time he and his teammates were jolted by a statement from the Padres’ majority owner, entrepreneur-banker C. Arnholt Smith. With his bank on the verge of failure,24 Smith agreed to sell the club to a consortium led by Joseph Danzansky, a Washington, DC, grocery-store magnate who intended to relocate the club to the nation’s capital. “All of us were in a state of shock,” said Arlin, “and depressed the rest of the season.”25 With the staff in shambles, ultimately finishing 11th in the NL in team ERA (4.16), Arlin rejoined the rotation and enjoyed some unexpected success. After tossing a three-hit shutout against the Houston Astros in the Astrodome on June 30, Arlin blanked the Dodgers on two hits five days later in Los Angeles to complete a surprising sweep on the division leaders. While Zimmer further alienated his player by calling the sweep a “1000-to-1 shot,” Arlin took aim at everyone but the players in a postgame tirade.26 “I want to make a splash for this team,” he said. “We play in a town where no one recognizes us. You never see our pictures hanging in a bar. … All that’s written about is the move to Washington.”27 Arlin tossed his third shutout in four starts, beating the Chicago Cubs, 1-0, at Wrigley Field on July 17, but struggled thereafter for the lowest-scoring and worst defensive team in the majors. Despite his finishing with a team-high 11 victories (and 14 losses), Arlin’s 5.10 ERA (in 180 innings) was the highest among qualified starters in the NL as the Padres lost 102 games and once again finished last in the West Division. Just days before the season concluded, Arlin cast doubts about his future. “I know my attitude has been brutal,” he admitted. “I don’t think I ever want to play another season like this. For the first time in my life, my favorite sport has not been fun for me.”28

On December 11, 1973, all 11 NL club owners approved Smith’s sale of the Padres to Danzansky. The club was slated to play its home opener on April 4, 1974, at RFK Stadium.29 Topps Baseball Card Co. even printed cards showing Padres players with “Washington Nat’l Lea.” as the team affiliation. But the dream of baseball in Washington was fleeting as legal battles soon halted the sale. Smith, under investigation for embezzlement and being sued for breaking the San Diego Stadium lease, changed course and sold the club to Ray Kroc, billionaire founder of McDonald’s, who promised to keep the team in San Diego.

The mood at the Padres’ spring training in Yuma was noticeably more optimistic in 1974. John McNamara had replaced Zimmer as pilot, and Bill Posedel, former pitching coach/guru of the Oakland A’s, was coaxed out of retirement. Kroc’s deep pockets also helped as the king of burgers signed aging slugger Willie McCovey and former All-Star second sacker Glen Beckett. Arlin, however, was not a happy camper. His personal nemesis, Buzzie Bavasi, was still the general manager, and their relationship was toxic. “He spent more time belittling his players than building them up,” said Arlin scornfully.30 Throughout the offseason, Arlin had demanded a trade, and then ridiculed Bavasi in the press for not honoring his wish. “I couldn’t take it anymore,” said Arlin about the losing.31 Compounding the problem was Arlin’s sore shoulder, ultimately diagnosed as a torn rotator cuff. “I should have been on the disabled list the rest of the season,” said Arlin after he retired.32 He finally got his wish on June 15, when the Padres sold him to the Cleveland Indians in a waiver transaction for two players to be named later. (Cleveland sent pitchers Brent Strom and Terry Ley six days later to complete the trade.) The Indians harbored few expectations for the beleaguered hurler, whose 1-7 record and 5.91 ERA had earned him a demotion to the Padres bullpen. Arlin made only 10 starts for the Tribe, notched just two victories, and posted a whopping 6.60 ERA in 43⅔ innings before his ailing rotator cuff made it impossible to throw.

“I felt like in 1975 I’d win 15 games,” said Arlin candidly years after his playing days were over.33 His shoulder felt fine after six months of rest in the offseason, but Arlin chose to retire instead. “I don’t need any more hassles,” he said when asked why he had not reported to the Indians’ spring-training facility in Sarasota.34 With a 34-67 career record, including 11 shutouts, and a 4.33 ERA in 788⅔ innings, Arlin quit baseball at the age of 29. (He batted .139 with 32 hits.) He enjoyed great success against Willie Stargell (.185, 5-for-27), Joe Torre (.167, 3-for-18) and Dave Concepcion (.095, 3-for-21); but was lit up by Bob Watson (.464, 13-for-28), Ralph Garr (.459, 17-for-37), and Garry Maddox (.423, 11-for-26).

Unlike many athletes, Arlin did not worry about transitioning to life away from sports. Baseball’s most famous dentist established a private practice in San Diego, where had practiced for more than 25 years and retired in 2004.

Arlin died on August 17, 2016, at the age of 70. He was survived by his wife, Robin, and his sons, Scott and Steve, from his first marriage.

“He had a great arm, great stuff,” remembered former Padres teammate and 1976 Cy Young Award winner Randy Jones. “Probably wasn’t the best command in the world, but on the days he had good command he was lights out. He just loved to compete. He did things the right way and he had an edge on him. It was a lot of fun to watch him compete and I learned a lot from him.”35

Last updated: September 23, 2020 (ghw)

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

Sources

In addition to the sources noted in this biography, the author also accessed Arlin’s player file and player questionnaire from the National Baseball Hall of Fame, the Encyclopedia of Minor League Baseball, Retrosheet.org, Baseball-Reference.com, the SABR Minor Leagues Database, accessed online at Baseball-Reference.com, and The Sporting News archive via Paper of Record.

Notes

1 Bill Ballew, “Steve Arlin: Ohio State Star May Have Been Best Ever in College Ranks,” Sports Collectors Digest, September 23, 1994: 141.

2 Associated Press, “Ohio State Whiz Hurls Big Shutout,” Tallahassee (Florida) Democrat, June 11, 1965: 12.

3 United Press International, “Sports Greats Trek to Columbus For TD Club Banquet,” Daily Times (New Philadelphia, Ohio), January 20, 1966: 14.

4 Bob Williams, “Buckeyes Bag Bunting as No. 1 College Team,” The Sporting News, July 2, 1966: 2.

5 See “Baseball: Steve Arlin Elected to Hall of Fame,” OhioStatebuckeyes.com,  ohiostatebuckeyes.com/sports/m-basebl/spec-rel/030508aaa.html; National College Baseball Hall of Fame, collegebaseballhall.org/hall_of_famers.jsp?year=2008; and the Omaha College Baseball Hall of Fame, collegehomerunderby.com/omahahof.

6 Allen Lewis, “Arlin Given Reported $105,000 by Phillies,” The Sporting News, July 9, 1966: 15.

7 Ballew: 140.

8 Ibid.

9 Paul Cour, “Padres Join List of Big Bidders for Phils’ Allen,” The Sporting News, December 7, 1968: 44.

10 Paul Cour, “Dental Student Arlin Curing Padre Bullpen Pain,” The Sporting News, July 12, 1969: 18.

11 Paul Cour, “Dentist Arlin Could Fill Padres’ Mound Cavity,” The Sporting News, November 28, 1970: 48.

12 Ron Rapoport, “Getting Arlin on Ball Field Tougher Than Pulling Teeth,” Los Angeles Times, March 24, 1971: III, 3.

13 Ibid.

14 Paul Cour, “Dentist Arlin Wins Padres’ Mound Berth,” The Sporting News, April 10, 1971: 37.

15 Paul Cour, “Sharp Pitching Pierces Padres’ Gloom,” The Sporting News, August 14, 1971: 11.

16 Phil Collier, “New Boss Cracks Downs on Bumbling Padres,” The Sporting News, May 13, 1972: 17.

17 Charley Feeny, ‘Dr. Arlin Pastes Pirates in the Teeth,” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, June 19, 1972: 12; Bob Smizek, “Padres Pitching Dentist Numbs Bucs,” Pittsburgh Press, June 19, 1972: 24.

18 Bruce Keidan, “Doyle Ruins Arlin’s No-Hitter in 9th,” Philadelphia Inquirer, July 19, 1972: 25.

19 Ibid.

20 Phil Collier, “Low-Hit Gems Are Arlin’s Specialty,” The Sporting News, August 5, 1971: 17.

21 Furman Bisher “A Dentist in the House?”  The Sporting News, October 14, 1972:10.

22 Ibid.

23 Phil Collier, “Buzzie, Players, Discuss Mutiny Report,” The Sporting News, May 19, 1973: 13.

24 Smith was majority owner of United States National Bank in San Diego. When the bank collapsed in 1973, it was the largest bank failure in US history.

25 Phil Collier, “Padres Preach New Gospel With Kroc’s Blessing,” The Sporting News, April 6, 1974: 3.

26 Ross Newhan, “Dodgers’ Skid at Six, 3-0, on Arlin’s 2-Hitter,” Los Angeles Times, July 6, 1973: III, 1.

27 Ibid.

28 UPI, “Padres No Longer Located,” Times Standard (Eureka, Californian), October 1, 1973: 10.

29 Jake Russell, “San Diego Padres Were Once So Close to Moving to DC, They Had Uniforms Made,” Washington Post, June 16, 2016.30 Bob Nold, “Arlin Determined to Show Bavasi,” Akron (Ohio) Beacon-Journal, July 4, 1974: C5.

31 Ballew, 141.

32 Ibid.

33 Ibid.

34 Tom Callahan, “Trying Spring for Dr. Allen,” Cincinnati Enquirer, March 9, 1975: 4C.

35 Jeff Sanders, “Former Padres RHP Steve Arlin Dies at 70,” San Diego Union-Tribune, August 22, 2016.

William Franklin Bailey was born in Fort Smith, Arkansas. His parents were William Fuller Bailey of Walker County, Georgia, and the former Leeky Elvira Corn of North Carolina. His mother moved to Walker County before marrying her husband, and the couple came to Fort Smith just prior to Bill Bailey’s birth on April 12, 1888. The elder William F. Bailey died in 1897 and Mrs. Bailey married John U. McLean, a county court clerk, in 1898. The family seems to have moved between Arkansas and Texas a couple of times during Bailey’s childhood. Leeky McLean (who was listed as L.E. McClane on her 1951 death certificate) long outlived her son and was a widow at the time of her death.1

Bailey lived in Houston at the time he entered professional baseball as an 18-year-old with the Beaumont Oilers in 1906.2 Bailey finished the South Texas League season with an 11-9 record, splitting the year between Beaumont and the Austin Senators. For the first couple of years of Bailey’s statistics, there is no indication that the slender left-handed pitcher (5-feet-11 and 165 pounds, according to Baseball-Reference.com) might become known for his hard luck in both the major and minor leagues.

In fact, Bailey was actually a 20-game winner in 1907, finishing 22-11 with Austin before signing with the St. Louis Browns. A typed document in Bailey’s file at the Baseball Hall of Fame indicates that he received what seems like a modest increase in pay upon his promotion; he had been earning $100 per month with Austin and he pulled in $150 per month as a rookie major leaguer. At 19, he was the youngest major-league player that season, and he finished 4-1 with five starts in six games.

After Bailey lost a close game for the Browns against Washington, sportswriter J. Ed Grillo of the Washington Post wrote, “Bill Bailey is a very deliberate young man. He is not in any hurry about delivering the ball to the plate and acts as though he might make a good pitcher though he still lacks considerable experience.”3

The 1908 Browns finished 83-69, but despite an ERA of 3.04, Bailey ended up with only a 3-5 record in 22 games, including 12 starts. Bailey was scheduled to start the 1909 season with the Pueblo Indians. An April 2 column in the Wichita Eagle said that with his acquisition, the Pueblo team was one solid player away from being a contender. However, a separate column in the same issue of the paper announced that the Browns were recalling Bailey to the major leagues.4

By July 1909, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch suggested that Bailey had been pitching to hold on to his job before throwing well in a tough 10-inning loss on July 16.5 Bailey finished the year 9-10 in 32 games despite a 2.44 ERA. The 1909 Browns slid to a 61-89 record and they finished below .500 almost every year until the early 1920s, long after Bailey’s association with the team had ended.

A December 1909 article in the Cincinnati Enquirer expressed mild concern about Bailey’s frailty, but it said that if he kept in shape over the winter, he would likely be a star among American League pitchers. “His fast ball has a jump on it possessed by mighty few lefthanders; his curve ball is a thing of beauty, and last year he developed a move holding the base runners to the sacks, which would play a prominent part in his work,” the article said.6

Reality wasn’t as kind to Bailey. With the hapless Browns in 1910, Bailey had a 3.32 ERA, but opposing teams scored almost as many unearned runs as earned runs against him, and he ended up with only three wins to go with 18 losses. After the season, Bailey’s name was included in some trade talks between St. Louis and Detroit. Ultimately, the teams could not agree to a deal, so Bailey remained on the Browns.7

When Bailey struggled in a few games for the 1911 Browns, the team traded him to the Montgomery Billikens of the Southern Association in exchange for Del Pratt. The deal worked out well for St. Louis; Pratt became the team’s everyday second baseman from 1912 to 1917.

Bailey also did well at Montgomery, finishing 17-6 with a 1.50 ERA and tying a single-game league record in early September by striking out 14 batters.8 The Montgomery squad was previously known as the Climbers, but Bailey was one of five players named Bill, and the Billiken doll was popular in the United States at the time, so the name stuck, at least for that season.9

In 1912, Bailey spent most of the season with the Providence Grays of the International League, going 14-18, and he was hit hard in three major-league appearances with the Browns. He stayed with Providence all year in 1913, improving his won-lost record to 19-15 and lowering his ERA significantly to 3.46.

In 1914, Bailey was with the Grays for most of the season. Earning an 11-8 record by August, Bailey was said to have met with several team executives from the Federal League during a road trip to Buffalo, New York. The Federal League was attempting to compete with the established major leagues by enticing players under contract to “jump” to the new league. Bailey signed with the league’s Baltimore Terrapins.10

It must have been exciting to watch Bailey pitch for Baltimore in 1914. He had a much higher walk rate (4.8 per nine innings) and strikeout rate (9.2 per nine innings) than anyone else in the Baltimore rotation. He had an average ERA (3.08) and finished 7-9 despite pitching 10 complete games in 18 starts. The 1914 Terrapins finished in third place with an 84-70 record.

Bailey’s defection indirectly led to the demotion of young Boston Red Sox pitcher Babe Ruth, the only time in Ruth’s major-league career that he was sent to the minor leagues. Ruth was a promising prospect, but there was not much room on the Boston pitching staff. Red Sox owner Joseph Lannin also owned the Grays, who, unlike the Red Sox, were still in their pennant race. After Bailey jumped to the Federal League and Providence pitcher Red Oldham went to the major leagues, Grays fans were becoming restless. In response, Lannin sent Ruth, the highly publicized rookie, to Providence.11

Bailey returned to the Terrapins for the 1915 season. He didn’t pitch as well as he had the year before, finishing with a 4.63 ERA, but his 6-19 record would have almost certainly been better with another franchise. The Terrapins finished 47-107, scoring almost 100 fewer runs than they had the year before. Bailey was not alone in his pitching misfortune. The previous season’s ace, Jack Quinn, finished with a 9-22 record this time around despite a 3.45 ERA. George Suggs, a 24-game winner the year before, had an 11-17 record with a 4.14 ERA. Even future Hall of Famer Chief Bender, who jumped to the Terrapins for 1915, was 4-16 despite a 3.99 ERA.

Late in the season, Bailey was sent to the Chicago Federals in exchange for Dave Black.12 He had much better luck there, finishing with a 3-1 record and three shutouts in five games. The single loss with Chicago placed Bailey in the 20-loss category for the first time in his professional career. After the Federal League folded in 1915, the Chicago Whales were merged with the Chicago Cubs, but Bailey was released by the Cubs before he appeared with them.13

Bailey ended up pitching for Toledo of the American Association in 1916 and part of 1917, and he appeared rather uneventfully with New Orleans of the Southern Association in late 1917 and early 1918. When the Detroit Tigers called on Bailey in June 1918, he gave up 10 runs in a one-inning relief appearance.14 The Tigers still gave Bailey a few chances as a starting pitcher that year, but combined as a starter or reliever he gave up nearly six earned runs per game, ending his run with Detroit.

In 1919, Bailey was pitching for the Beaumont Oilers when he walked 185 batters, setting a Texas League record.15 He threw 50 games that year. Though his complete-game total is not available, we know that Bailey earned 45 decisions, finishing with a 24-21 won-lost record. He spent the 1920 season with Beaumont again; the team’s nickname changed from the Oilers to the Exporters. He had another strong season, turning in an 18-16 record with a 2.58 ERA.

With the Exporters in 1921, Bailey compiled a 7-10 record with a 2.69 ERA. This was enough to pique the interest of several major-league clubs, and the St. Louis Cardinals obtained him in a June trade for Jakie May (who went on to a long big-league career), a player named George Scott, and cash. The Cardinals also acquired Brooklyn pitcher Jeff Pfeffer around the same time. For much of the year, the Cardinals had relied on heavy offense, so they made the trades to stabilize their pitching staff.16

In Bailey’s debut for the Cardinals, he pitched a 10-inning complete game, but he lost the game on his own throwing error.17 He saw action in 19 games for the 1921 Cardinals, but only six of them were starts. He gave up nearly 12 hits per nine innings, and he finished with a 2-5 won-lost record and a 4.26 ERA.

Bailey’s last major-league season was 1922. He pitched 12 games for the Cardinals, and for the first time in his major-league career, he did not start any games. His 0-2 record gave him a 38-76 major-league record. His career ERA ended up at 3.57. His last season in the big leagues made him the first pitcher with losing records in 10 consecutive seasons. No pitcher had that many consecutive losing seasons until Ron Kline in the 1960s.18

The 1923 season was a rough one for Bailey. He had stints with two teams in separate leagues and he gave up more than five earned runs per nine innings during his time with each team. He was 9-18 for the Houston Buffaloes. Sixteen of Bailey’s losses with Houston were consecutive, tying a consecutive-loss record for Texas League pitchers.19

In August of that year, Bailey was traded to the Omaha Buffaloes of the Western League in exchange for Tex McDonald, a veteran infielder whose last shot at the major leagues had ended with the shutdown of the Federal League eight years earlier.20 Though Bailey’s ERA was still high for Omaha, his luck seems to have improved, as he had an 8-5 record for the team. Still, the five losses with Omaha took him well over the 20-loss threshold for the season.

Bailey pitched for Omaha again in 1924 and 1925. He continued to earn large numbers of decisions, finishing 23-15 and 17-19, respectively. Between Bailey and left-handed pitcher Harvey Harris, Charles Brill of the Daily Oklahoman described Omaha as heading into the 1926 season with the best pitching staff in the Western League.21 However, Bailey was out of baseball before the regular season started because of multiple episodes of intestinal bleeding.22

Bailey had become ill for the first time while Omaha’s team was training in Orange, Texas.23 He was admitted to Baptist Hospital in Houston. Wink Goff, a player on the Houston Buffaloes, donated blood for a lifesaving transfusion.24 On March 30, 1926, one day after Bailey was admitted to the hospital, newspaper reports said that he was near death but that there was still some hope for improvement.25

At least one benefit game was held for Bailey in the Western League.26 His health rallied for several months, but he returned to the hospital that fall and he died on November 2, 1926, just before he was to receive another blood transfusion.27 He was buried at Forest Park Lawndale Cemetery in Houston.

Little is known about Bill Bailey’s personal life. Genealogical research indicates that he married Texas native Elise Villiepique (sometimes listed as Sunshine Elise Villiepique) on January 8, 1924, and that they had a son, Thomas Street Bailey, in 1912. No divorce records could be located, but Villiepique’s 1954 death certificate, which lists Thomas S. Bailey as the informant, indicates that she had lived in Dallas for more than 40 years.28 Villiepique was widowed by Daniel Ruggles, an editor for the Dallas Morning News.29 Thomas Bailey died in 2000.

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

Sources

In addition to the sources cited in the Notes, the author made extensive use of the major-league and minor-league statistics at Baseball-Reference.com. Unless otherwise noted, the statistics came from this source.

Notes

1 Certificate of Death: L.E. McClane, Texas Bureau of Vital Statistics. We were unable to determine the occupation of William Fuller Bailey.

2 “Beaumont Here Today,” Houston Post, May 10, 1906: 3.

3 J. Ed Grillo, “Rally Just in Time,” Washington Post, September 26, 1907: 8.

4 “Pueblo Won’t Get Pitcher Bailey,” Wichita Eagle, April 2, 1909: 7.

5 James Crusinberry, “Bailey Wins New Life in Major League,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, July 17, 1909: 6.

6 “Don’t Quit if First Act Is Poor,” Cincinnati Enquirer, December 26, 1909: 2.

7 “Baseball Flashes From Meetings in New York,” New Castle (Pennsylvania) News, December 15, 1910: 11.

8 “Bill Bailey, Billiken, Equals Strikeout Mark,” Times-Democrat (New Orleans), September 4, 1911: 7.

9 Richard Worth, Baseball Team Names: A Worldwide Dictionary, 1869-2011 (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland, 2013), 192.

10 “Bill Bailey Hurdles From Providence Grays to Terrapins,” Rochester Democrat and Chronicle, August 9, 1914: 25.

11 Robert W. Creamer, Babe: The Legend Comes to Life (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1992), 91, 92.

12 “Bill Bailey Is Traded Off,” Washington Herald, September 18, 1915: 9.

13 “Pitcher Bill Bailey Is Released by Cubs,” St. Louis Star and Times, April 10, 1916: 10.

14 “Tigers Take Bad Beating From Fohls,” Detroit Free Press, June 30, 1918: 17.

15 Individual Records, Texas League, milb.com/content/page.jsp?sid=l109&ymd=20100316&content_id=8811502&vkey=history.

16 “Pfeffer and Bill Bailey Bolster Card Hurling Staff,” Houston Post, July 5, 1921: 11.

17 “Chicago Next Stop of Bucs,” Pittsburgh Press, June 25, 1921.

18 Donald Dewey and Nicholas Acocella, The New Biographical History of Baseball (Chicago: Triumph Books, 2002), 16.

19 Individual Records, Texas League.

20 “Omaha Gets Bill Bailey,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, August 2, 1923: 25.

21 Charles Brill, “Rates Omaha to Finish One, Two or Three in Race,” Des Moines Register, April 7, 1926: 12.

22 Ibid.

23 “Bill Bailey Dies at Houston Tuesday,” Dallas Morning News, November 3, 1926.

24 “Bailey Won’t Play Anymore,” Mount Carmel News, April 17, 1926.

25 “Bill Bailey, Veteran Major Southpaw, Near Death,” Minneapolis Morning Tribune, March 30, 1926: 14.

26 “Catcher Lowry to Join Demons,” Des Moines Register, June 2, 1926: 9.

27 “Bill Bailey, Colorful Baseball Character, Dies,” Alexandria (Louisiana) Daily Town Talk, November 4, 1926: 4.

28 Certificate of Death: Elise Ruggles, Texas Bureau of Vital Statistics.

29 “Daniel G. Ruggles, 66, Former Editor, Dies,” Dallas Morning News, September 21, 1953.

This biography is included in 20-Game Losers (SABR, 2017), edited by Bill Nowlin, Emmet R. Nowlin. To get your free e-book copy or 50% off the paperback edition, click here.

He also had considerable talent. His manager compared his fastball to Walter Johnson‘s and one writer said his curve “broke like a streak of lightning.”1 In his debut in April of that year, Baumgardner bested the Chicago White Sox and future Hall of Famer Ed Walsh 4-1, striking out seven and allowing only three hits. He was even better in his next outing, also against the White Sox, when he shut them out for 15 innings and struck out 10 in a game that ended in a 0-0 tie. Sportswriters across the country, including Grantland Rice, began predicting he would become one of the premier pitchers in the game.

However, whatever talent Baumgardner had, he was also what one writer called “the high nut” of baseball, someone who liked to jump onto and off moving trains, spontaneously hop on stage, uninvited, to sing in movie theaters and perform magic on street corners, and preferred his salary in $1 bills since it made him feel richer.2

For a few years, as long as Baumgardner seemed to possess promise, those stories were, for the most part, humorous asides to a career that seemed on the verge of greatness. In the end, however, his eccentricity got in the way of his ability and he became the butt of public jokes and cautionary tales. After a solid 1914 season in which he posted the only winning record of his career, 16-14, and helped the Browns to a respectable (for them) fifth-place finish, he came to camp for 1915 out of shape. The team sent him to Louisville in the American Association before the season was even a month old – or at least tried to, since he refused to report, choosing to go home to West Virginia rather than face the embarrassment of demotion to the minor leagues. He came back for 1916 but after eight innings over four games the Browns let him go. Baumgardner’s major-league career ended with a lifetime record of 38-49, his chief claim to fame being his inclusion in the ignoble club of pitchers who lost 20 games in a season when he went 10-20 in 1913.

George Washington Baumgardner was born on July 22, 1891, in Barboursville, West Virginia, then a village of around 400 people near the Ohio border, roughly 15 miles from Huntington. He was the second youngest of 10 children of Charles Baumgardner, a carpenter, and his wife, Frances, a laundress.3

If one is to judge by the newspaper accounts from Baumgardner’s time in baseball, he was generally perceived as a naïve country boy; his formal education ended after the seventh grade at Barboursville PS #2.4 One story described him as “not versed in the finer points of the world’s ways” and reported that he was so unschooled that he was never ever able to actually sign his name to his contracts but could only mark them with an “X.”5 (Although this last detail gives us insight into the way in which the press viewed Baumgardner, it is apocryphal as the Baseball Hall of Fame archives hold two contracts bearing his signature.6) Another story made much of the fact that Baumgardner never left his home state until he joined the Browns.7 Another reported that he perfected his pitching by throwing stones at squirrels, trying to kill them.8 Yet another mocked him for not knowing that the American League was one of two major leagues since, when a reporter asked his opinion of his opponent for his debut, Ed Walsh, he reportedly replied, “What I want to know … if this Walsh is such a great pitcher, why ain’t he drafted by the National League?”9 Still other stories made much of the fact that Baumgardner did not know he should eat the spears and not the stalks on a piece of asparagus and that when he bought a rubber raincoat in New York he was so fascinated by the novelty of it that he wore it even on sunny days.10

Despite his naїveté, Baumgardner was, by many accounts, a natural talent on the diamond.

While the records of his life in baseball before he joined the Browns are scarce, it appears that Baumgardner’s first professional experience was with the Huntington Blue Sox of the six-team, Class-D Virginia Valley League in 1910, playing under a manager named Cy Young. (Although many sources today report that the Hall of Fame pitcher helmed Huntington that year, at least one newspaper account from that time makes plain that the team’s skipper was actually a different person with the same name.11)

While the writer was not able to find Baumgardner’s statistics for that season – Baseball Reference, the Spalding and Reach guides, and the Baseball Hall of Fame archives offer only the final league standings but no individual records – brief game accounts throughout the season give evidence of his effectiveness. One reports Baumgardner struck out 14 in a July 4 game and “had [Ashland-]Catlettsburg at his mercy.”12 The following month, he recorded the only no-hitter in the league that season, also against Ashland-Catlettsburg; afterward, a reporter dubbed him the “premier twirler” for his team, which finished the year with the best record in the league.13 In October, Baumgardner faced major-league competition for likely the first time when the Pittsburgh Pirates came to Huntington for an exhibition game, but the Pirates “hit freely” against him, scoring eight runs on 14 hits, five of them for extra bases.14

Baumgardner stayed with Huntington the next year, as the Virginia Valley League added two teams and became the Mountain States League. Once again he pitched well; by mid-June his record stood at 11-1 – and he received more national attention for his one loss than he did for any of his victories, since newspapers across the country picked up the story because the defeat came in a June 8 game against Charleston in which he and opposing pitcher Dick Niehaus each tossed no-hit ball through 10 innings, Charleston finally winning in the 11th when Baumgardner gave up a run on three hits. A bit more than a week later, on June 18, on the recommendation of scout Billy Doyle,15 the Browns signed him to a contract for 1912.16 However, they allowed him to finish the season with Huntington.17 He ended the season leading the league in strikeouts (292) while finishing tied for the most victories (24) and for the fewest runs allowed per nine innings (1.98).

When Baumgardner first showed up for the Browns training camp before the 1912 season, the team reportedly had small expectations for him. He was young and by most accounts green, a 20-year-old right-handed pitcher with only two seasons of Class-D ball on his résumé. Though the official record lists him at 5-11 and 178 pounds, he reportedly gave the team the impression that he was frail.18 According to one account, the Browns did not allow him to him face any hitters until one day manager Bobby Wallace noticed the speed of his pitches as he threw to catcher Paul Krichell.19 Even as he took the mound to face Browns hitters in an intrasquad game, however, the team still remained skeptical as they had yet see him throw anything but fastballs. Team scout and former player Monte Cross said, “I was a little afraid he did not own a change of pace. He used a side arm delivery entirely and I feared he couldn’t control a curve ball.”20

In that workout, on March 22, however, Baumgardner turned in an outing that led the St. Louis Post-Dispatch to declare him the “newest sensation,” adding that he “monopolized the spotlight for a full half-hour and was the recipient of what was probably the most lavish praise ever heaped upon the head of a bush league pitcher.” According to the story, Baumgardner “served up the most deceptive assortment of breakers ever seen on the local diamond” as his teammates watched in awe.21 It was after this workout that Wallace compared him to Johnson.

Baumgardner made his major-league debut in the team’s fourth game of the season, against Chicago in White Sox Park on April 14, the same day the passenger liner Titanic struck the iceberg that sank it. Opposing him, Ed Walsh was already regarded as one of the premier pitchers in the game – he’d notched 100 victories over the previous four years – but on that Saturday afternoon, Baumgardner was, according to the Chicago Tribune, better, pitching “as neatly as Cy Young or Rube Waddell might have done it in their palmy days … [working] with splendid control … able to cut the ball across any portion of the plate except the middle.”22

In his next outing, the 0-0, 15-inning tie in his home debut six days later, also against the White Sox, his pitching again earned praise: “Baumgardner was a wonder. … His delivery is almost unfathomable. … And his control is excellent.”23 Newspapers across the country began talking about him with enthusiasm. The Washington Post declared Baumgardner “sensational”24 while the Arizona Republic suggested he was “the pitching sensation of the current baseball season.”25 Grantland Rice mentioned him in a column five days after the extra-inning tie game: “‘Fanatic’ suggests that we add Larry Cheney, of the Cubs, and George Baumgardner, of the Browns, to the list of budding slabmen with the stuff. Consider them added, with bells attached and the laurel tied on. Both have arrived and delivered.”26

Even when he lost eight of his next nine decisions, the press’s admiration for Baumgardner was not shaken as writers attributed his record more to the Browns’ inept play rather than his lack of ability. Referring to him as a “speed demon,” the Post-Dispatch wondered what his record would have been had he “been backed up [by] the [pennant-winning] Red Sox?”27 When he went 9-5 over the rest of the season, to close out 11-13, observers declared, “Great things are expected of George Baumgardner … next season.”28

However, the season also brought suggestions that Baumgardner’s eccentricity might get in the way of his ability: After his second start, the 0-0 15-inning game, he left the team for nearly three weeks. St. Louis newspapers explained his absence by saying he had gone back to West Virginia to take care of his mother, who had fallen ill.29 But a newspaper in West Virginia suggested that he had returned to Barboursville because he was homesick; the story reported he had his manager’s permission and that he would rejoin the Browns the following weekend to start against the Tigers.30 However, his next start would not come until nearly a week after that.

Later that year, on a road trip in Boston, Baumgardner missed the team train for New York. When he finally met up with the Browns, manager George Stovall, who had replaced Wallace on June 2, chided him for “loafing,” but Baumgardner defended himself, saying, “I got lost in that bloody town. Never saw so many crooked streets in all my life.”31 Stovall assigned outfielder Willie Hogan as Baumgardner’s keeper when the team was on the road.

When the season ended, Baumgardner went back home to Barboursville, where he bought his mother a house with money he’d set aside from his salary with the Browns. He performed a song-and-dance act to earn extra cash, while doing strength training by cutting trees.32

In January 1913, Baumgardner agreed to his contract with the Browns at what was reported as a “substantial boost” in his salary. When he returned it, Stovall predicted that he would “develop into one of the star pitchers in the … league,” saying that his speed and control would “combine with the experience he had gained the past year [and] he will prove a valuable man for the team.”33

Stovall’s projection that Baumgardner would be valuable to the Browns proved prophetic in a way, as he was something of a workhorse for a bad team. He led them in games started (31), innings pitched (253⅓) and complete games (23); all of those totals ranked among the top 10 in the league. His other statistics were not so good: he went 10-20 with a 3.13 ERA that was among the highest among American League pitchers with 200 or more innings. He also led the league’s hurlers in most hits allowed, 267.

Despite his record, Baumgardner became a prime target of the “outlaw” Federal League. The Browns fired Stovall as manager and, after he hooked up with the Kansas City Packers, he set his sights on acquiring the pitcher for the fledgling league. For the next year, the Browns and Packers engaged in a tug-of-war over the rights to Baumgardner. Starting in the fall of 1913, newspapers gave conflicting reports: Baumgardner had signed with the Packers; Baumgardner was “loyal” to the Browns.34 The conflict came to a head when Stovall, claiming Baumgardner had agreed to jump to the Federal League, threatened to go to court to seek an injunction preventing Baumgardner from playing for the Browns that season when the pitcher decided to stay with St. Louis.35

In the end, there was no injunction and Baumgardner signed a contract with the Browns paying him $3,000 for the season.36 That year, he turned in what was his best season with the Browns, going 16-14 with an ERA (2.79) that ranked in the top half of the league among hurlers with more than 150 innings pitched. Again, when the year ended, the Federal League set its sights on landing him and the Browns found themselves having to court the pitcher when he refused to sign his contract at first. The bone of contention was that Branch Rickey, who had taken over as manager after the team had fired Stovall, had several times mentioned that he would consider trading Baumgardner, who preferred to stay in St. Louis, and he insisted he would not sign unless the team promised it wouldn’t trade him.37 It may also have helped that his contract for 1915 gave him a substantial raise by the day’s standards, to $4,200.38 Perhaps more than his record of the season before, the increase in his salary came about because he had scored highly on an arcane “cardiac test” that Rickey had devised and which, according to Rickey, measured in a mathematical way a player’s competitiveness and coolness under pressure.39

As it turned out, Baumgardner’s performance over the next two years make plain that the test returned flawed results, at least in his case, as he pitched only 30⅓ innings in 1915 and 1916 combined.

He reportedly showed up in camp in 1915 in such bad shape that one sportswriter referred to him as a “class Z” pitcher and suggested he would not be ready to pitch in league competition until sometime in May.40 His condition was made worse when he was struck in the head by a line drive by Dee Walsh while pitching batting practice; he lay unconscious for half an hour.41 (In a gibe at Baumgardner, the writer added, “Had the blow landed on a vulnerable spot the result might have been very serious.”42)

Not surprisingly, then, Baumgardner got off to a miserable start. He made his first appearance on April 15, entering the game in the third with the Browns trailing the White Sox 9-0; he pitched the final seven innings, surrendering seven runs on 10 hits and three walks, though only four of the runs were earned. The next time out, on April 24, he pitched the final inning of a 4-1 loss. Because he surrendered only one hit and no runs, Rickey decided Baumgardner was ready to start; he did the next day, and he pitched well, allowing only one run on four hits; but the Browns were shut out and he took the loss. The press, however, looked on it optimistically:

“Though he lost … much praise is due George Baumgardner, the erratic speed ballist … for the wonderful pitching [he] exhibited Sunday. ‘Baumy’ hurled a beautiful game and deserved better luck. … [The] news of Baumgardner’s return to form will doubtless cheer [Rickey].”43

Rather than being the beginning of his return to the form the Browns expected of him, however, the game was the last time Baumgardner was effective on the mound. Over the next two weeks he pitched in four more games, all in relief, throwing a total of 6⅓ innings, allowing seven runs on 14 hits and six walks. With the Browns in last place, already 10½ games out of first place by May 10, Rickey decided to clean house and tried to send Baumgardner to the minor leagues. He refused and went home to West Virginia instead.44

There, Baumgardner latched on with a local semipro team and at least one report claimed he had gotten into shape and that his pitches seemed to have the same pop and movement; however, rather than taking any initiative to contact the Browns, Baumgardner waited for them to call. “I am waiting to hear from them. … I ain’t much at letter writing, they don’t need to expect any word from me.”45

Rickey offered Baumgardner a chance to come back to the Browns for 1916 but before spring training ended, the Browns gave him his release. He persuaded them to let him stay with the team by saying he would pay his own expenses as he tried to get into shape.46 The team finally gave him a contract calling for $75 a month and he became the focus of much derision after that, as Memphis in the Southern League offered him a contract calling for $200 a month, but he declined, saying, “Nobody would see me if I went to Memphis.”47 One article that mocked him for his lack of financial acumen added, “George Baumgardner … is all puffed up like a pouter pigeon because he has signed a new contract with the Browns. All of which only proves how easy it is to get Baumgardner all puffed up.”48

He appeared in only four games for the Browns in 1916, pitching eight innings, before the team released him for what would turn out to be the last time. He picked up with Little Rock of the Southern Association, which welcomed him enthusiastically: Describing him as a “graceful pitcher” who “works hard but doesn’t show it on the surface,” team President Robert G. Allen predicted that Baumgardner would “burn up this league.”49

However, it later came out that Baumgardner had reported to the team with a “strained and dislocated nerve in his back that [caused] him pain every time he [threw] the ball.”50 After only five games, he surrendered to the pain and went back to West Virginia “to get the old soup bone ready for next year.”51 There, he experimented briefly with trying to become a southpaw.52

Baumgardner returned to Little Rock for 1917 (as a right-handed pitcher) and threw a combined no-hitter with teammate Tom Phillips in the season opener but was bombed his next time out, surrendering 20 hits and eight runs, and then pitched inconsistently after that. After he appeared in 15 games, going 3-5 with a 5.14 ERA, the eighth-worst among pitchers with 70 innings or more, the team let him go, ending his professional career, though at least one newspaper story says that he played independent semipro baseball in West Virginia for a time.53

Baumgardner joined the US Army in early 1918, training at Camp Shelby in Mississippi. While he was there, he reportedly married a woman named Nellie Dietz, whom newspaper accounts of the marriage described as an “artist’s model.”54 They eventually divorced.55 He eventually ended up in France where, in 1919, he reportedly was a sergeant in the 150th Infantry.56

Two years later, Baumgardner signed a contract with Joplin of the Class-A Western League, but there are no records that he ever appeared in a game with them.57

At the time of the 1930 census, Baumgardner was living with a brother in Barboursville and working as a laborer in the building industry.58 The 1940 census also shows him living with his brother, but does not report an occupation; his World War II draft card, which he filed in 1942, also leaves blank the space for employment.59 Baumgardner died from a heart attack due to a coronary occlusion on December 13, 1970.60 His obituary in the Huntington Herald-Dispatch says he was an active member of the Veterans of Foreign Wars and was survived by one of his sisters and several nieces and nephews.61

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

Sources

In addition to the sources cited in the Notes, the author also consultedAncestry.com, Baseball-Reference.com, and Retrosheet.org.

Notes

1 “Pick Up Baumgardner,” Huntington (Indiana) Press, June 20, 1913: 6.

2 “Baumgardner Rube’s Successor; ‘High Nut’ of Baseball,” Akron Beacon Journal, January 11, 1915: 9.

3 Year: 1900; Census Place: Barboursville, Cabell, West Virginia; Roll: 1756; Page: 3B; Enumeration District: 0001; FHL microfilm: 1241756; Year: 1910; Census Place: Barboursville, Cabell, West Virginia; Roll: T624_1678; Page: 3B; Enumeration District: 0007; FHL microfilm: 1375691.

4 George W. Baumgardner player questionnaire on file in A. Bartlett Giamatti Research Cernter of the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum

5 “Allen Could Not Get Pitcher Baumgardner and Now George Signs to Play for Only $75,” Arkansas Democrat (Little Rock), June 9, 1916: 13.

6 George Baumgardner contracts for 1914 and 1915, Giamatti Research Center.

7 “Baumgardner Not Yet Old Enough to Cast His First Vote,” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, May 5, 1912: 20.

8 “G. Baumgardner and Chapman Join Team,” Arkansas Democrat, July 27, 1916: 7.

9 “Baumgardner Rube’s Successor.”

10 Louis Lee Arms, “George Baumgardner, Brownies’ Mound Artist, Is Worthy Successor to Waddell and Raymond,” Washington Times, January 1, 1915: 10.

11 “Hard Hitters Are Wanted for Team,” Paducah (Kentucky) Sun Democrat, July 27, 1910: 4.

12 “Virginia Valley League,” Cincinnati Enquirer, July 5, 1910: 13

13 “Virginia Valley League,” Cincinnati Enquirer, August 15, 1910: 8.

14 “Leach’s Barnstormers Make It Four Straight,” Pittsburgh Daily Post, October 14, 1910: 9.

15 “Scout Who Discovered George Baumgardner Is Signed by Cleveland,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, November 22, 1912: 18.

16 “Another Hurler for Browns,” Indianapolis News, June 19, 1911: 10.

17 “New Battery for Browns,” Washington Post, July 7, 1911: 8.

18 “Pick Up Baumgardner.”

19 Ibid.

20 W.J. O’Connor, “Browns’ Advisory Board Discovers New ‘Wonder’ in Pitcher Baumgardner,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, March 23, 1912: 7.

21 Ibid.

22 Sam Weller, “Youngster Stars in Defeat of Sox,” Chicago Tribune, April 15, 1912: 13.

23 “Browns Tie White Sox in 15 Inning Game,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, April 21, 1912: 21.

24 “Sox and Browns in 15 Rounds Without Score, Washington Post, April 21, 1912: Sports-1.

25 “George Baumgardner of the St. Louis Browns Is the Pitching Sensation of the Current Baseball Season,” Arizona Republic (Phoenix), June 2, 1912: 10.

26 Grantland Rice, “Bingles and Bunts,” Washington Times, April 25, 1912: 15.

27 Clarence Lloyd, “Johnson Shares Pitching Honors With Joe Wood,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, November 13, 1912: 15.

28 “Baseball Aftermath,” Pittsburgh Press, November 11, 1912: 12.

29 “Cobb’s Vicious Slide Puts Out Browns Star Catcher,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, May 6, 1912: 7.

30 “Baumgardner Was Real Homesick,” Huntington Herald Dispatch, April 30, 1912: 2.

31 “Geo. Baumgardner, Bug, Has Keeper to Pilot Him in Larger Cities,” Lansing (Michigan) State Journal, September 17, 1912: 8.

32 “Heat Waves From Radiator League,” Wilkes-Barre Record, December 2, 1912: 9; “Short Snappy Sportlets,” El Paso Herald, January 22, 1913: 9; W.J. O’Connor, “Hedges May Balk Detroit’s Plan to Release High,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, January 31, 1913: 16.

33 “Baumgardner Has Signed,” Pittsburgh Press, January 13, 1913: 19.

34 Clarence F. Lloyd, “Baumgardner Is Loyal to Browns, Rickey Declares,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, November 26, 1913: 7;  “Mystery of the Jumping Quintet Still Unsolved by Browns’ Owner, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, January 10, 1914: 6.

35 “Stovall’s Failure to Land Brownies Means Legal Fight,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, March 12, 1914: 19.

36 George W. Baumgardner 1914 Contract.

37 Harry F. Pierce, “Baumgardner Will Not Sign a Contract With Browns Until Team Reaches Camp at Houston,” St. Louis Star and Times, November 12, 1914: 14.

38 George W. Baumgardner 1915 Contract.

39 W.J. O’Connor, “Cardiac Test Applied to All Browns; Austin Fails,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, January 8. 1915: 14

40 Harry F. Pierce, “Brownies Are Not Enthusiastic Over Opening of Season,” St. Louis Star and Times, April 13, 1915: 11.

41 L.C. Davis, “Sport Salad,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, April 9, 1915: 16.

42 Ibid.

43 John M. Quinn, “Brilliant Return of Baumgardner Brings Promise,” St. Louis Star and Times, April 26, 1915: 10.

44 Harry F. Pierce, “Ordered to Report to Louisville Club, Baumy Balks,” St. Louis Star and Times, May 11, 1915: 13.45 Billy Evans, “Looking Them Over,” Philadelphia Inquirer, March 7, 1916: 12.

46 “Baumgardner Pays His Way,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, April 9, 1916: 35.

47 “Baumgardner Not Best Businessman on Earth,” Twin City Daily Sentinel (Winston-Salem), June 21, 1916.

48 “All Could Not Get Pitcher Baumgardner.”

49 “George Baumgardner,” Daily Arkansas Gazette (Little Rock), July 27, 1916: 8.

50 “Baumie Pitches Well, Jake Hits Homer, Rain Helps,” Daily Arkansas Gazette, August 2, 1916: 6.

51 “Baumgardner Going Home to Plan 1917 Coup,” Arkansas Democrat, August 21, 1916: 7.

52 “George Baumgardner Is Now a Left-Hander, St. Louis Star and Times, March 21, 1917: 13.

53 “Baumgardner Is Out,” El Paso Herald, October 6, 1917: 14.

54 “Cannon Balls, Wedding Bells for Baumgardner,” Daily Arkansas Gazette, February 18, 1918:6.

55 George W. Baumgardner Certificate of Death, on file with the A. Barlett Giamatti Research Center at the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum

56 “An Old Friend,” Arkansas Democrat, March 27, 1919: 11.

57 “Baseball Notes,” Galena (Kansas) Evening Times, May 14, 1921: 3.

58 Year: 1930; Census Place: Barboursville, Cabell, West Virginia; Roll: 2528; Page: 9B; Enumeration District: 0001; Image: 427.0; FHL microfilm: 2342262

59 Year: 1940; Census Place: Barboursville, Cabell, West Virginia; Roll: T627_4397; Page: 14B; Enumeration District: 6-1; The National Archives at St. Louis; St. Louis, Missouri; Draft Registration Cards for Fourth Registration for West Virginia, 04/27/1942 – 04/27/1942; NAI Number: 563733; Record Group Title: Records of the Selective Service System; Record Group Number: 147

60 George W. Baumgardner Certificate of Death

61 “George Washington Baumgardner,” Huntington Herald-Dispatch, December 14, 1970: 6.

This biography is included in 20-Game Losers (SABR, 2017), edited by Bill Nowlin, Emmet R. Nowlin. To get your free e-book copy or 50% off the paperback edition, click here.

Beck grew up in Decatur, Illinois, where his father, an avid baseball fan, worked as a carpenter. Playing on local semipro teams after graduating from high school, Walter eventually caught the eye of a St. Louis Browns scout. In 1924, at the age of 20, he began his professional career with the Browns. However, during three seasons (1924, ’27, ’28), he pitched in only 20 games for St. Louis. Instead, Beck spent most of his time playing for numerous minor-league teams. Finally released by the Browns after the 1928 season, he pitched for three teams the following year. In 1930 he joined the Memphis Chickasaws of the Southern Association. There he became a star, winning 62 games during the next three seasons, including 27 in 1932.

The Dodgers were excited about adding Beck to their 1933 roster. The previous season, Brooklyn had finished third in the National League, nine games behind the pennant-winning Chicago Cubs. While the team hit at a .283 clip, third best in the league, Dodgers moundsmen were among the worst in the league. The once reliable Dazzy Vance had slumped for the second year in a row. By the time the 1933 campaign began, he was sitting in the St. Louis Cardinals bullpen. With the exception of 20-game-winner Watson “Watty” Clark, the rest of the Dodgers staff mirrored Vance’s disappointing performance. As a whole they combined for the second worst earned-run average in the league. Team manager Max Carey left no doubt that in 1933 he intended to rebuild his pitching staff. Walter Beck became an integral part of that plan.

Almost as soon as the Dodgers gathered in Miami for spring training, baseball people began touting Beck’s potential. None was more effusive than Jim Nasium, who wrote in The Sporting News, “(Beck) is the bright and shining hope of this Dodger pitching staff. … He will be one of the pitching finds of the year in the National League.”5 Other writers were impressed by Beck’s talent on the mound but also “his obvious intelligence and poise on and off the field.”6 Acknowledging his homey demeanor and conscientiousness, the writers and his teammates dubbed him “Elmer the Great.”7 It was a nickname he carried throughout the season. Most importantly, “(he) has won the unqualified approval of Manager Max Carey.”8

As early as the third day of spring training the Dodgers manager had slotted his newcomer into the team’s starting rotation. Teaming him up with Ray Benge, whom the Dodgers had acquired from the Philadelphia Phillies over the winter, Clark, and young Van Lingle Mungo, who had been impressive late in the previous season, Carey thought he had his pitching problems solved.

The Dodgers’ season started with a win in Philadelphia. The next day Beck made an impressive National League debut. Supported by seven Dodgers runs, he held the Phillies to seven “measly” hits and a single marker. Only in the fourth inning did the home team mount a threat. Catcher Spud Davis led off with a single. Hal Lee followed with another single and both runners moved up a base when Lefty O’Doul in left field misplayed the ball. With runners on second and third, no one out and the score 1-1, “Beck pitched superbly,” striking out two men and getting the third out on a grounder to escape from the jam.9 Phillies manager Burt Shotton was particularly impressed, commenting, “I’ve seen young sensations come up and blow that ball past the hitter but that kid pitches with his head.”10

Beck’s first win was the beginning of a productive two weeks. Though his team struggled, he continued to impress. In his first four starts he lost only once (a 2-1 squeaker to the Boston Braves), giving up just one earned run per game. Four days later he evened the score masterfully, shutting out the Braves, 1-0, for his fourth victory. The Sporting News exclaimed, “Beck was easily the outstanding member of the pitching staff for the first ten days of the season. … Beck is the best young Brooklyn pitcher unveiled since Dazzy Vance.”11

The weeks that followed were not as successful. Dodgers hitters continued to slump while the pitchers faltered. For Beck, the problems began with a 13-4 drubbing by Dizzy Dean and the St. Louis Cardinals. In his next start, against Cincinnati, he failed to get a single out, giving up five first-inning runs. By the end of May Beck had won only one more game while losing four times and giving up more than 10 earned runs per nine innings during the four-week stretch. Meanwhile, the Dodgers were hitting at a paltry .238 clip and scoring only 3.5 runs per game.

June was no better. Aside from a win against Pittsburgh, Beck’s only complete game in more than a month, he lost four more times while his earned-run average continued to soar. Midway through the month, he hit bottom with an embarrassing 15-4 loss to the cellar-dwelling Phillies in which he gave up six runs in less than two innings.

Everyone agreed that Beck’s problem was his loss of control, particularly control of his fastball, and that “when this freshman side-armer can’t throw to his ‘spots’ he might as well be pitching with his left arm.”12 The source of the problem, however, became a well-explored mystery. Since spring training some had warned about the side-arm “bugaboo.” “Those side arm guys can never throw straight two days in succession,” wrote a Brooklyn Eagle scribe.13 Others suggested that the problems arose because Beck was not getting enough work. A week later, there were complaints that he was getting too much work. In mid-June an unnamed “veteran ball player” observed that Beck “doesn’t work into a sweat before he starts on hot days. … All his best work was done in the chill of April.”14 Beck’s lack of concentration was another proposed source of the problem. Critics began calling him a “two-out pitcher,” citing several games Beck had lost games because he allowed opponents to have big innings after he had retired the first two batters.15

In mid-June, manager Carey decided to experiment with his young pitcher by periodically using him in relief. Twice in 10 days Beck wrapped relief stints around his starts. However, because the Dodgers staff was overworked and “tottering,” especially after the June 16 trade of Watty Clark to the Giants, the experiment lasted for only two weeks. Despite the ongoing struggles, the one thing no one questioned was Beck’s confidence. After an ugly loss to the Reds, Carey assured everyone, “He still thinks he’s good.”16

Beck’s and the Dodgers’ travails continued into July. The young hurler started the month with a complete-game victory over the Cubs, but it proved to be his last win for six weeks. His most discouraging effort came on July 23. After coasting through eight innings, he gave up four ninth-inning runs in an 8-5 loss to the Giants.17 Meanwhile his team briefly sank into the National League cellar before scratching its way back to sixth by the end of the month. Finally, in early August a former Memphis teammate, Joe Hutchinson, observed, “He’s pitching too much underhand. He’s always had more stuff when he throws underhand but his sidearm control is much better and he’s practically unhittable that way.”18 Evidently through the course of the grueling season and responding to tough National League hitters, Beck had inadvertently become more of a submarine-style pitcher than a side-armer. By raising his release point, he regained the control he needed to win. The adjustment worked.

In late July, the Dodgers began a seven-week period in which they played 19 doubleheaders, thus putting additional pressure on an already exhausted pitching staff. Despite the workload, Beck began again to show the talent that had excited Dodgers fans three months earlier. On August 13, employing his rejuvenated side-arm style, he ended his five-game losing streak in an 11-0 romp over the Braves. He went on to win two of his next three games. Though he won only twice more during the rest of the season, “Beck’s record over the six-week stretch is amazing. Somehow he managed to salvage five victories. But in the six defeats, the Dodgers supported him with a total of just four runs.”19 Additionally, during that six-week stretch he gave up just over 2.5 earned runs per game.

Beck’s season ended with another frustrating loss, his 20th of the season, to Boston. His teammates were able to score only a single run while committing four errors that allowed all four Boston runs to score. Despite Beck’s dismal 12-20 won-lost record, manager Max Carey was satisfied with his pitcher’s season. “I think the experience he’s gotten taking a regular turn on the mound this year for us will make him a consistent winner next year,” the manager said.20 Certainly Dodgers fans hoped that Carey’s prediction would become a reality.

Encouraged by Carey’s words, Beck was anxious to continue in 1934 what he had started late in the 1933 season. However, when the 1934 season opened, his manager was gone. After a slew of unpopular trades, tensions with his players, and two years close to the National League cellar, Carey had lost the confidence of both fans and the club’s ownership. Instead they preferred Carey’s colorful coach, Casey Stengel. Immediately the new manager let it be known that his primary challenge was his pitching staff. When assessing his pitchers, Stengel listed Van Lingle Mungo as his ace, but “then his voice starts sputtering weakly, something like a dying phonograph record. Benge, Beck, and (Ownie) Carroll didn’t supply the sort of pitching that lifts a club into the first division.”21 Additionally, Stengel was worried that Beck had lost velocity on his fastball, something that Beck himself acknowledged.

Stengel’s concern grew throughout spring training. To compensate for his loss of velocity and trouble pitching to left-handed hitters, Beck attempted to develop a knuckleball. It did not work. He was regularly pounded by the opposition, and even on the few occasions when he did pitch well, he was smacked around by left-handed hitters. Meanwhile the Dodgers manager focused on a couple of rookies or possible trades that would bring an experienced pitcher to Brooklyn. Just a few days before the season opener, Stengel remained “extremely dissatisfied with the Brooklyn pitching staff.”22 Fortunately for Beck, there remained few alternatives and largely because he had a year under his belt, he was penciled in as the fourth man in the Dodgers rotation.

The season started well for “Elmer the Great.” Though his first start ended in a tie, he held Boston to a single run through seven innings. However, the next six weeks did not go as well. He lost four times, gave up over 12 earned runs per game, and only once did he survive as many as four innings. Assessing Beck in early June, Brooklyn Eagle writer Tommy Holmes lamented: “Beck’s performances have been worse than anybody thought they could be.”23 In early June Beck was demoted to the bullpen. For a month he pitched well in relief. In six appearances he gave up only six runs in 14 innings and seemed to have recaptured some of his former effectiveness. As a reward, Stengel decided to give Beck a start in the second game of a July 4 doubleheader against Philadelphia. It became a fateful decision.

Beck’s first start in more than a month didn’t last long. Facing only eight Phillies, he gave up three hits, walked three and allowed three runs in only two-thirds of an inning. Stengel had seen enough. Anticipating Beck’s reaction, Stengel remained in the dugout and instead instructed his catcher, Al Lopez, to inform Beck that his afternoon was over. Meanwhile, from the dugout Stengel waved in a relief pitcher.24

As expected, Beck was furious. Rather than handing the ball to Lopez “(Beck) threw perhaps the best fast ball he has thrown this season up against the right field fence.”25 The ball hit the tin façade with a thunderous boom. Meanwhile, several feet away, right fielder Hack Wilson was dozing with his back to the field. When he heard the boom off the wall, Wilson instinctively rushed to retrieve the ball, turned and fired a perfect strike to second. The crowd howled at the sequence. Soon after, an amused reporter labeled Beck “Boom Boom” and for the rest of his life Elmer the Great was known as Boom Boom Beck.

A week later Stengel gave Beck a chance for redemption with a start in the second game of a doubleheader against the last-place Cincinnati Reds. This time Beck gave up six runs in two innings. The loss was his sixth of the season and helped swell his earned-run average to just over one run per inning pitched. Soon after, with “a so-called speed ball (that) was going faster fence-wards … than it was going up to the plate,” Beck was sent to Albany in the International League.26 Used as both a starter and in relief, he continued to flounder. In late September Albany returned him to Brooklyn.

By the time Beck pitched again, the Dodgers were locked in sixth place with just four games left in their season. Playing his fourth doubleheader in five days, Stengel decided to start two of his most disappointing pitchers, Beck and Leslie Munns. To their manager’s amazement, both won. In the second game, Beck pitched magnificently, limiting Philadelphia to just four hits and winning 10-1. After the sweep, Stengel reported: “The world is upside down.”27 However, despite the performance, no one was surprised when in early November the Dodgers released Beck. He had ended the season with a 7.42 earned-run average and a 2-6 won-lost record.

Not ready to end his career, Beck joined the Mission Reds in the Pacific Coast League. For the next three years he pitched for the Reds, winning 52 games while losing 61. When the club folded in 1938, Boom Boom moved on to two other Pacific Coast League teams in 1938, the Hollywood Stars and the Seattle Rainiers. He was 7-10 combined with a fat 6.67 earned-run average. For most, such a season would signal a further slide into minor-league obscurity, but not for Boom Boom Beck.28

In 1939 Beck’s Memphis manager, Jimmy “Doc” Prothro, was hired to manage the Philadelphia Phillies. Among the worst teams in major-league history, the Phillies at the time were in the midst of five consecutive 100-loss seasons, finishing each season 50 or more games behind the pennant winners and at least 15 games out of seventh place. From 1939 through the 1942 season, Beck was one of the regulars on the Phillies staff. Initially used as both a starter and a reliever, by 1943, his final year with Philadelphia, he came out of the bullpen exclusively. During those five years, he won 12 games while losing 33.

Beck’s major-league career ended three years later after brief stops in Detroit, Cincinnati, and Pittsburgh. After four more years in the minor leagues, his professional playing days ended with the Toledo Mud Hens in 1950. In 1957 he returned to the major leagues as the pitching coach for another bedraggled staff, the Washington Senators, where he remained for three seasons. Like the Phillies during Beck’s playing days, the Senators were considered one of the worst teams in the major leagues, with an equally bad pitching staff. Beck’s last decade in professional baseball was spent as a part-time scout for the Senators and minor-league pitching coach for the Milwaukee/Atlanta Braves.

Throughout the last two decades of his life, Beck’s passion for baseball and his gift for gab made him a popular speaker wherever baseball fans gathered. His colorful tales were sprinkled with stories about the many players, both well-known and not, whom he had encountered during his years in the game. In those 20 years he earned a comfortable living from his investments and he became an avid golfer. Neither a hip replacement in 1975 nor three years later the death of his wife of 49 years, Pearl, slowed him down much. Until his death on May 7, 1987, Walter “Boom Boom” Beck remained a local celebrity in his Decatur, Illinois, home, a devoted golfer, and a captivating story-teller.

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

Notes

1 Tommy Holmes, “Casey Stengle (sic) Another Ready to Go in Big Way for Boy From Decatur,” Brooklyn Eagle, March 1, 1933: 19. “When you see a guy as big and strong and who looks like an athlete, then watch him throw without the slightest suggestion of strain, you just gotta go for him.”

2 Tommy Holmes, “‘Big Injun Me,’ Beck’s First Idea: Wanted to Strike ’Em All Out,” Brooklyn Eagle, March 15, 1933: 22.

3 Jim Nasium, “Brooklyn’s 1933 Hopes Rest on Improved Pitching Staff,” The Sporting News, March 9, 1933: 3. Jim Nasium was the nom de plume of Edgar Forrest Wolfe, a sportswriter and cartoonist based in Philadelphia.

4 Tommy Holmes, “Dodgers’ New Hurler Soon Learned He Wasn’t the Whole Team,” Brooklyn Eagle, March 15, 1933: 22.

5 Jim Nasium, “Brooklyn’s 1933 Hopes.”

6 Thomas Holmes, “Manager of the Dodgers Clings to His Five-Man Starting Idea,” Brooklyn Eagle, March 5, 1933: 36.

7 “Training Camp Notes,” The Sporting News, March 23, 1933: 2.

8 New York Times, March 3, 1933: 20.

9 Stan Baumgartner, “Beck Thwarts Phil Hitters; Frederick Thumps at 1.000 Clip,” Philadelphia Inquirer, April 15, 1933: 13-14.

10 Harold Parrott, “Beck of the Dodgers Impresses With His Nerve in Pitching to Sluggers,” Brooklyn Daily Eagle, April 15, 1933: 10.

11 The Sporting News, April 27, 1933: 3.

12 Harold Parrott, “Juggled Lineup Fails on Attack for Carey After Hurlers Crack,” Brooklyn Daily Eagle, June 5, 1933: 19.

13 Harold Parrott, “Walter’s Wild Spree Predicted by Cards as Dodgers Go Wooly,” Brooklyn Daily Eagle, May 3, 1933: 22.

14 Harold Parrott, “Beck Like a Groundhog, Routed Thrice in the Sun: Clark’s Case Alarming,” Brooklyn Daily Eagle, June 14, 1933: 18.

15 Harold Parrott, “Record Puts Rookie of Carey’s Twirling Staff in Freak Role,” Brooklyn Daily Eagle, June 30, 1933: 21.

16 Harold Parrott, “Blow-Up in Row,” Brooklyn Daily Eagle, May 13, 1933: 12.

17 Harold Parrott, “With Shaute Showing Need for Rest, Carey Must Have Pitchers,” Brooklyn Daily Eagle, July 24, 1933:18. The Eagle said reliever Joe Shaute was the losing pitcher, but other sources, including Retrosheet.org and Baseball-reference.com, give Beck the loss.

18 Harold Parrott, “Carey Predicts Beck Will Be Consistent Winner on Mound in 1934,” Brooklyn Eagle, August 30, 1933: 18.

19 Harold Parrott, “Shut Out Ball Beck’s Best Effort; Defeat His Lot,” Brooklyn Eagle, September 30, 1933: 10.

20 Harold Parrott, “Carey Predicts.”

21 Tommy Holmes, “It Will Be Do or Die for Dear Old Casey,” The Sporting News, March 8, 1934: 1.22 Tommy Holmes, “Dodgers May Offer Braves Cuccinello,” The Sporting News, April 5, 1934: 1.

23 Tommy Holmes, “Boston Uses Brooklyn as Stepladder to Gain Higher Standing Rung,” Brooklyn Daily Eagle, June 3, 1934: D1.

24 Rex Spires, “ ‘Boom Boom’ Beck Had a Gift of Gab,” Decatur (Illinois) Herald and Review, August 2, 1987: 50. This was a story Beck told many times after he retired. However, in his accounts he made it to the second inning before being lifted for a relief pitcher. The Philadelphia Inquirer box score credits him with only two-thirds of an inning.

25 Thomas Holmes, “Dodgers Win, Then Slaughtered,” Brooklyn Daily Eagle, July 5, 1934: 13.

26 The Sporting News, August 9, 1934: 8.

27 Tommy Holmes, “World’s Upside Down, Says Shocked Stengel as Munns, Beck Win,” Brooklyn Daily Eagle, September 25, 1934: 18.

28 Forrest R. Kyle, “Reserve Clause? Old-Timers Wanted Only a Chance to Play,” Decatur Review, January 23, 1970: 13. Of his time in the Pacific Coast League, Beck later claimed: “I sent DiMaggio and Williams to the majors.”

George Glenn Bell was born on November 2, 1874, in Greenwood, New York. He was the second son of three born to Sylvester and Emma Bell. Sylvester Bell, born in 1845, was a Civil War veteran who fought with the 189th New York Infantry. He was wounded in action on March 31, 1865.1 Upon mustering out in 1865, he returned to farm life. He married Emma Bardwell in 1870 and had three sons with her. Emma died in August 1879, at the age of 28. A little over a year later Sylvester married Electa “Lettie” Rude. They had five children, three sons and twin daughters. Greenwood, in western New York on the border with Pennsylvania, was farm country. Sylvester labored as both a farmer and house painter. George worked on the family farm from an early age. Somewhere he picked up a love for baseball. Bell began playing for local sandlot teams and into his adulthood gained a reputation as an excellent pitcher.

In 1898 Bell married Claudia Elizabeth Bush. By 1900 the couple had moved to Union, Pennsylvania, purchased land and began farming. Throughout that period, Bell continued to play baseball in his native New York. He and Claudia had their first child, Freda Jae Bell, on February 14, 1903.

Throughout this period, Bell continued to dominate the amateur baseball scene in the New York and Pennsylvania countryside. All that changed in 1904. Howard Earl, manager of the Amsterdam-Johnstown-Gloversville Hyphens of the New York State League, recruited Bell to pitch for his team.2

Bell, then 29, made an immediate impact. In 1904, his first season with the Hyphens, Bell notched 17 wins, including a no-hit game. (The next season the Hyphens were renamed the Jags.) Bell followed with 25 wins in 1905. That season the Jags were fighting for the pennant and Bell was handed the ball on the final day of the season. He pitched both ends of the doubleheader against Utica, winning both and clinching the pennant for his team.3

In 1906 Bell plied his trade with Altoona in the Tri-State League. There he led his team in wins, with 23, while losing 16. The Mountaineers finished fourth in a six-team division with a 64-62 record, 10½ games back.4

“Farmer” Bell stood 6-feet tall and weighed between 190 and 210 pounds. He batted and threw right-handed. He got his big break in 1907, when he was called up by Brooklyn. At the ripe age of 32, he was pitching in the major leagues for the first time. On February 7, the Brooklyn Daily Eagle announced, “Bell has all the ear-marks of a star, and it is the belief in the local camp that the former Tri-State Leaguer will prove the best pitcher Brooklyn ever had.”5

Patsy Donovan, the Brooklyn manager, asserted that the 1907 Superbas would be a much better team than the 1906 version. He was especially high on his pitching staff. Wrote one sportswriter, “He believes he has a first-class corps with Doc Scanlon, Elmer Stricklett, Harry McIntyre [McIntire] and Jim Pastorious as the regular boxmen … and also feels confident that Bell, a new twirler, will pan out well.”6

Bell fashioned a promising season, pitching in 35 games, starting 27, and posting a 2.25 earned-run average in 263⅔ innings. His 2.25 ERA was the best of his career. Despite those figures, his record was 8 wins and 16 losses. He also pitched two tie games. Bell’s record was as much a reflection on the futility of the Brooklyn club as it was an indictment of him.

The Brooklyn Eagle was not averse to pointing that out. On April 25, the Eagle reported on Bell’s 13-inning performance in a 1-1 tie with Boston, “Bell deserves a lot of sympathy, but he made it apparent nevertheless that he is a star.”7 On May 15 Bell gained his first major-league win, defeating St. Louis 10-0, surrendering five hits and a walk. The Eagle announced, “George Bell registered his first victory. He should have had three.”8 Bell continued to pitch well until late July, when he evidently tired. Throughout August and September, he made several relief appearances and his starts were spotty. On August 25, the Eagle wrote, “George Bell has figured as a trial horse quite frequently of late, went to the rescue, but while he checked the opposition, the home batters could do very little with Karger’s [Ed Karger] southpaw shots.”9Perhaps best summing up Bell’s season, the Eagle wrote on September 26, “George Bell lost a tough game yesterday, 3 to 1. … Both boxmen were in rare form, and had not Jordan and Levine bunched sad miscues in the seventh inning the big twirler would have applied the whitewash.”10 The 1908 season was not a good one for Bell, professionally or in his personal life. He finished the campaign with a 4-15 record. Bell pitched in 29 games, starting 19. He did not pick up his first victory until July 12. His ERA was 3.59 in 155⅓ innings. Coverage of his season reflected his struggles, though not without irony. In one account, the Eagle wrote, “George pitched good ball. It was not as good as the article handed out by one “Slats” Beelee, however, and the backing the Brooklyn nine gave George was not good. … The result was to be expected.”11 That result was a 3-1 loss to Boston.

 After a loss to New York on September 9 the Eagle observed, “[H]is habit of winding himself into a huge a knot when delivering the ball, and in the process of disentanglement was so slow and painstaking that the men on bases had a dozen yards start on the ball.”12

Most poignantly, Bell lost his infant child during the season. As the tragedy unfolded, Bell arguably pitched the most brilliant game of his career. Leading up to that start, Bell had been in manager Donovan’s doghouse. He was being used sparingly because of weight and conditioning concerns.13 On July 31 Bell was scheduled to start against Pittsburgh. Shortly before the game was to begin, he received a telegram informing him that his infant child was gravely ill and not likely to survive.

As it turned out, there was no transportation immediately available for Bell to get home. Wrote the Eagle, “Rather than having him sitting around worrying about the situation, Manager Donovan suggested that Bell go in and pitch the game, and Bell agreed to do it.”14 Bell pitched Brooklyn to a 2-0 victory, outdueling Irv “Young Cy” Young. His sacrifice bunt in the third inning helped set up the first run of the game. The Eagle concluded, “He left last night in ample time, accompanied not only with the sympathies of his comrades, but with their congratulations, as well. For no pitcher, even with his mind clear of trouble, ever performed a better’s day work.15

Bell was absent from the team over the next two weeks. Upon his return to Brooklyn he did not pitch effectively for the remainder of the season. Compounding his ills, he was struck on the pitching arm by a batted ball on September 2 and missed his next two starts.16

Bell’s 1909 season began with a new-look Brooklyn team. Harry Lumley had been hired to manage the team. One of his first acts was to drop several players who had “exhausted the limits of their usefulness to Brooklyn.”17

Bell pitched well out of the gate. He defeated Philadelphia in his home opener, 7-3, on May 5. After he beat Philadelphia in his next start, the Eagle said, “Brooklyn won it because Bell pitched another of his surprisingly fine games. …”18 Continuing his winning ways, Bell defeated Pittsburgh 2-0 on May 19. The Eagle wrote that he pitched “masterly ball.”19

After his fast start, Bell continued his good season through July. After he shut out Chicago 1-0 on July 17, the Eagle correspondent wrote that Bell was “pitching the best ball of his career.”20

In August, Bell’s performance, while adequate, fell off a little. Still he continued his mastery over a very strong Pittsburgh nine, defeating the Pirates 4-1 on August 5. After a loss to Cincinnati on September 28, the Cincinnati Enquirer observed, “George Bell, who has gained in weight, until he has some trouble in getting around at his former speed, was easy for the fourth placers, who bunched their long hits on him and won solely on their merits, earning all their runs.”21

Whether that observation was based on fact or reputation, it’s easy to believe that the strain of a full season had begun to affect Bell’s performance. The fact that he struggled with weight and conditioning issues throughout his career adds to the likelihood that the Enquirer’s observation was accurate.

In the end, 1909 proved to be Bell’s most productive season. In 33 appearances, he started 30 games, completing 29. He fashioned a 16-15 record. Bell tossed six shutouts, and had an ERA of 2.71 over 256 innings pitched. Still he was nearing 35 and was battling a return of weight issues as he looked forward to the 1910 season.

There was talk of a trade in the works between Brooklyn and Chicago. The Cubs were good but lacked pitching. Brooklyn wanted to shore up its infield defense. As spring training moved along, the names bandied about were Harry McIntire, Nap Rucker, and Bell. Rucker was highly thought of by Brooklyn, and was their best and youngest pitcher. In the end, McIntire was traded to the Cubs for three infield prospects.

Based on their spring training, the Superbas were excited about their prospects of moving up in the standings. A Georgia newspaper wrote, “Big George Bell will play the roll (sic) of iron man this season with the Brooklyn Superbas. Bell pitched great last year. And Manager Dahlen thinks he will be another Christy] Mathewson, if he is given plenty of work.”22

Bill Dahlen was Brooklyn’s third manager in three seasons. In addition to trading McIntire for infield prospects from the Cubs, Brooklyn brought up a 21-year-old outfielder, Zack Wheat. The Superbas were positioned for the modest goal of cracking the “upper” division by year’s end. Right from Opening Day, Dahlen kept his promise to use Bell often. Rucker was hit hard by Philadelphia in a 6-2 loss. Bell relieved in the sixth and completed the game. The Eagle reported, “Bell stopped the bingling while he tarried.”23 Throughout May, Bell pitched well, without luck. The Eagle wrote, “George Bell appears to be Harry McIntire’s logical successor as the champion hard luck pitcher in the league. He lost some tough ones … but yesterday’s was the limit.”24

That trend continued through June, July, and August. Late in August Bell and Dahlen got into a row during a game he pitched against Pittsburgh. Through 11 innings the game was tied, 3-3. In the 12th, after a single and strikeout, Dahlen came to the mound and “instructed [Bell] to pass Clark [Fred Clarke] and Wagner [Honus Wagner]. … Bell did not like the plan, and he told his manager. But he had to obey instructions.”25 The Eagle man noted, “It was needless to say that Dahlen was mad after it was over and George Bell was just angry. Indeed, the two had some hot words before they left the field.”26

Reporters covering the Superbas sympathized with Bell’s plight early on. However, as the season persisted, subtle comments of a more critical nature were presented for its readers’ consumption. For example, on June 26 the paper wrote, “Both Bell and [Al] Mattern pitched admirably and received gilt-edged support. Bell, however, had his usual one bad inning.”27 After a 3-2 loss to Pittsburgh in August, the paper said, “George Bell was on the mound for Brooklyn, and although pounded for twelve hits, he managed to keep them pretty well scattered until the 7th.”28

By September, Bell began to show signs of fatigue. Throughout much of the month, he pitched poorly, losing to Boston, St. Louis, and Philadelphia, all second-division teams. On September 28, Bell shut out Pittsburgh, 2-0. The Eagle reported, “George Bell did the trimming, and in quite an artistic style. Behind Bell the Superbas played snappy baseball in every department.”29

Finally, on October 12, the last day of the season, Brooklyn played a doubleheader against Boston. In the first game, Bell pitched eight innings, allowing one run on six hits. He left with the score tied. Rube Dessau came in relief and promptly conceded eight runs. That game represented a perfect microcosm of Bell’s season.

Bell, statistically, had his most impressive season. He pitched in 44 games, starting 36. In 310 innings pitched he had an ERA of 2.64. Bell completed 25 games with four shutouts. His record was 10 wins and 27 losses, with a WAR (wins above replacement) of 4.6, the best of his career.

Bell started 1911 with the same bugaboo that had persisted throughout much of his major-league playing career, weight. On New Year’s Eve, the Eagle reported, “Bill Dahlen, manager of the Superbas, in pursuance of the Black Hand propaganda issued the other day, is planning a hustling campaign with the object in view of starting his athletes right for the season. … George Bell attracted the attention of the cheerful leader, who declares that the Academy Corner farmer was so far beyond the limit in avoirdupois last season as to have been able to challenge for the heavyweight wrestling title.”30

As might be expected, Bell’s 1911 season was plagued by injury and illness. He missed time in May due to illness, and on his return, he was not effective through several starts. Box scores indicate that he was relegated to the bullpen, with spot starts throughout June and early July. Bell sprained his ankle and was out from mid-July through late August. Ironically, on April 12 the Eagle had written, “George Bell has reported for opening of the season in the best shape ever … and if hard work will accomplish anything, George will be a top-notcher.”31

Through April Bell pitched well, winning twice and losing twice and keeping his team in every game. After he shut out the Phillies on the 29th, the Eagle wrote, “It was peaches and cream for George Bell, and he fairly reveled in the going.”32 The article did go on to reference “our own fat boy,” so weight was still an issue.

Bell then missed nearly two weeks with flu-like symptoms. On his return in mid-May, his pitching fell off. On the 23rd the Eagle wrote, “Bell started like a house afire, but burned out in the fourth and died down in the fifth.”33

While Bell did defeat Chicago 1-0 on May 17, his overall performance led to demotion to the bullpen. The day he pitched so well against Chicago, trade rumors surfaced of a deal between New York and Brooklyn that would have sent Bell and Jake Daubert to New York for Fred Merkle, Art Devlin, and an unnamed outfielder. That trade rumor was quickly denied by Superbas owner Charlie Ebbets, who remarked, “it would be an excellent trade for New York.”34

Throughout June and early July, Bell made only two more starts. He continued to be hit hard. In mid-July he hurt his ankle. Recovery was slow. On his return to the mound on August 20, Bell was shellacked by Pittsburgh, giving up seven runs in 7⅓ innings. On August 25, the St. Louis Dispatch wrote, “George Bell … has been of little value to his team this season because of illness. He is probably done for the season.”35 And so it was!

On September 21 Bell was released. On the 25th the Altoona Tribune reported, “Baseball fans will be grieved to know of the release of the veteran pitcher, George Bell, of the Brooklyn club, to the Toronto club of the Eastern league. Bell was a member of the Superbas for five years, being one of team’s pitching mainstays until the present season. He was bothered by a bad foot for the greater part of the season. … It refused to mend and Bell became practically worthless as a pitcher.”36 Bell refused to accept the assignment and went home for the season. His season record was 5-6. He pitched in 19 games, starting 12. He completed six, with two shutouts. Bell pitched 101 innings and compiled an ERA of 4.28.

Bell pitched four seasons in the minor leagues before hanging up his spikes. He pitched with Newark in the International League from 1912 until his release during the 1914 season. For two of those seasons, he pitched relatively effectively, crafting 10-4 and 10-11 records, with low ERAs. In 1914, Bell’s final season there, he was 1-4 before his release in August. He then joined the Keene, New Hampshire, club in the Twin Mountain League, a semipro team.37

Bell finished his professional career in 1915. The Wilkes-Barre Record made note, “George Bell, the former Brooklyn and Newark hurler, has been signed by Syracuse. The Syracuse Journal man refers to Bell as a “promising youngster” who is being sent to Syracuse for further seasoning. Gee whiz; smoke up! Bell is already so well-seasoned the he is full of weather cracks.”38 That season, at age 40, Bell crafted a 12-7 record with two clubs, Syracuse in the New York State League and Warren in the Interstate League.

Bell continued to play an active role in local baseball, pitching for and managing several semipro clubs in rural Pennsylvania and New York. In 1916 he managed the St. Mary’s team of Altoona.39 In 1921 he was managing and pitching for the Blossburg club.40

In 1918 Bell enlisted in the Army. The Pittsfield Post-Gazette wrote, “One of baseball’s almost forgotten figures, George Bell, formerly with Brooklyn, is still pitching. Bell, though aged 40 [actually 43], enlisted some time back in the Army and is now stationed at Fort Slocum, New York. He pitches on one of the fort teams and still does a good job of it. When Bell enlisted, he tipped the scales at 220 pounds. He now weighs 173 and says he never felt better in his life.”41

By 1914 Bell owned four farms in Pennsylvania.42 In addition to maintaining a connection to baseball and farming, in 1925 Bell and his wife purchased and ran a summer and hunting lodge in Stony Creek, New York.43

By 1935 Bell was spending part of the year living with his daughter in the Jackson Heights section of Queens in New York City. Through an acquaintance, he got in touch with the National League office and requested a lifetime pass to ballgames. In the back-and-forth correspondence he was notified that he did not meet baseball’s criteria of 10 major-league seasons to be eligible for the pass. He was informed that if any changes to that protocol were made, he would be notified.44

Bell died at the Bronx Veterans Hospital on December 25, 1941, of pyelonephritis, secondary to chronic uremia. It seems likely that his residence in Jackson Heights corresponded with his illness and treatment. He was buried in New York State, but after his wife died he was interred beside her in Lakeland, Florida.

In the end, Bell’s major-league career lasted five seasons. His Achilles’ heel throughout his career was conditioning, specifically his weight. His weight problems came up frequently throughout his five Brooklyn seasons. It got him in the doghouse with one manager, and led to special efforts by two others at “extra conditioning.” His weight struggles, by all account, affected his performances. Bell finished his career with a 43-79 record. His ERA of 2.85 was near the league average. Of the 160 games Bell pitched in, he started 124. He completed 92 games, 17 of those by shutout.

One can speculate that had Bell begun his career at an earlier age and kept himself in shape throughout, he could have crafted a good career. The fact is that he acquitted himself well in four of the five seasons he pitched in the majors, all in his 30s. The last season was spoiled by illness and injury. In fact, he pitched a couple more seasons at the minor-league level, and did well. But what-ifs are just that. Still, in the end he could hold his head high and know he belonged in the major-league pitching fraternity.

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

Notes

1 Report of the Adjutant-General, 124. Bell, Sylvester. Found in dmna.ny.gov/history/reglist/civil/rosters/Infantry/189th_Inf_CW_Roster.pdf. Sylvester Bell was wounded at Boydton Plank Road, Virginian, during the Appomattox Campaign. In the New York State Adjutant-General Report he is listed as 20 years old, though he could not have been more than 19.

2 Fulton County Baseball and Sports Hall of Fame Induction Biography: George Bell, Gloversville, Fulton County, New York, emerydesigns.net/Hall_of_Fame/george.bell.html.

3 Wilkes-Barre Record, February 6, 1912: 19.

4 checkout.bigcartel.com/2176336/orders/LKLA-969960.

5 Brooklyn Daily Eagle, February 7, 1907: 10.

6 Pittsburgh Press, February 10, 1907: 18.

7 Brooklyn Daily Eagle, April 25, 1907: 24.

8 Brooklyn Daily Eagle, May 15, 1907:  22.

9 Brooklyn Daily Eagle, August 25, 1907: 35.

10 Brooklyn Daily Eagle, September 26, 1905: 23.

11 Brooklyn Daily Eagle, May 15, 1908: 22.

12 Brooklyn Daily Eagle, September 10, 1908: 20.

13 Tacoma Daily News, August 18, 1908: 9.

14 Brooklyn Daily Eagle, July 31, 1908: 18.

15 Ibid.

16 Brooklyn Daily Eagle, September 2, 1908: 18.

17 Cincinnati Enquirer, January 10, 1909: 10.

18 Brooklyn Daily Eagle, May 11, 1909: 22.

19  Brooklyn Daily Eagle, May 20, 1909: 20.

20 Brooklyn Daily Eagle, July 18, 1909: 43.

21 Cincinnati Enquirer, September 28, 1909: 4.

22 Marion (Georgia) Daily Mirror, March 31, 1910: 6.

23 Brooklyn Daily Eagle, April 21, 1910: 23.

24 Brooklyn Daily Eagle, May 5, 1910: 21.

25 Brooklyn Daily Eagle, August 26, 1910: 18.

26 Ibid.

27 Brooklyn Daily Eagle, June 26, 1910: 53.

28 Brooklyn Daily Eagle, August 13, 1910: 18.

29 Brooklyn Daily Eagle, September 29, 1910: 25

30 Brooklyn Daily Eagle, December 31, 1910:  21.

31 Brooklyn Daily Eagle, April 12, 1911: 27.

32 Brooklyn Daily Eagle, April 29, 1911: 25.

33 Brooklyn Daily Eagle, May 23, 1911: 25.

34 Brooklyn Daily Eagle, May 17, 1911: 6.

35 St. Louis Dispatch, August 25, 1911: 8.

36 Altoona Tribune, September 25, 1911: 10.

37 Watertown (New York) Daily Times, August 12, 1914: 6.

38 Wilkes-Barre Record, April 29, 1915: 9.

39 Altoona Tribune, February 28, 1916: 14.

40 Wellsboro (Pennsylvania) Agitator, August 24, 1921: 2.

41 Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, September 16, 1918: 8.

42 Jersey Journal (Jersey City, New Jersey), January 19, 1914: 7.

43 Baseball Hall of Fame Library, player file for George Glenn Bell.

44 Baseball Hall of Fame Library, player file for George Glenn Bell. Correspondence of June 13, 1935, Fred Jacklitsch to Ford Frick; Bill Brandt to George Bell, June 20, 1935; George Bell to Bill Brandt, June 24, 1935; Bill Brandt to George Bell, July 6, 1935.

“I really didn’t have a great record with UCLA,” Bonham said. “Too, I think a lot of clubs thought I had a bad attitude.”1

Bonham eventually signed a free-agent contract with the Chicago Cubs. Less than a year later, the 6-foot-3 right-handed pitcher was in the major leagues.

Bonham, who was born in Glendale, California, was raised in the Pacoima neighborhood in the northern San Fernando Valley of Southern California. After his senior season at Francis Poly High School, when he earned second team All-East Valley League honors, he was selected in the 31st round of the June 1966 amateur draft by the California Angels.

Bonham opted to attend Los Angeles Valley College and was drafted again by the Angels before his freshman season started. He was selected in the fourth round of the secondary phase of the January 1967 draft.

Bonham again turned down the Angels and pitched two seasons for Los Angeles Valley. As a sophomore in 1968, he had a couple of standout performances. On March 16 he struck out the first nine hitters he faced and finished with a school-record 20 strikeouts in a 3-2 victory over Santa Monica. On April 10 he pitched a no-hitter and struck out 18 in a 1-0 victory – and scored the winning run in the bottom of the ninth – over L.A. Pierce. In 67⅓ innings that season, he struck out a team-record 88 batters.

After the season, Bonham was drafted again when the Baltimore Orioles selected him in the 31st round of the June 1968 amateur draft. Bonham turned the Orioles down and enrolled at UCLA.

In 1969 Bonham helped the Bruins earn their first berth in the College World Series. The UCLA team, which included future major leaguer Chris Chambliss, went 42-10-1 in the regular season and took a 13-game winning streak into the College World Series, in which they were winless.

In his senior season, Bonham earned the team’s pitcher award, winning four games with a 2.60 ERA while striking out 110 in 82⅔ innings. After going undrafted in June, he signed with the Cubs for a $2,000 bonus.

Bonham made his professional debut with Huron (South Dakota) of the Class-A Northern League. In 18 games, he was 3-3 with six saves and a 3.00 ERA. In 39 innings, he struck out 69.

In December the Cubs announced that Bonham would be invited to 1971 spring training as a nonroster player. Bonham took advantage of the opportunity and caught the attention of manager Leo Durocher.

On March 21 he pitched four scoreless innings against the Milwaukee Brewers, which all but clinched a spot on the Cubs roster. The outing was his second in a row of four shutout innings.

“He’s going back to Chicago, unless a train runs over him, God forbid, bit my tongue,” Durocher said.2

Bonham made his major-league debut against the St. Louis Cardinals on April 7, in the second game of the season. He entered the game in the top of the fourth inning, with two runners on, none out, and the Cardinals leading 6-0. He walked the first two hitters he faced and then gave up a two-run single to the next hitter. After issuing another walk, Bonham was replaced.

On April 18 Bonham made his first start, going 3⅔ innings in an 8-1 loss to the Giants in San Francisco. Over the next 24 days, he made just two relief appearances (April 23 and May 9) and on May 13 he was optioned to Tacoma (Pacific Coast League). He had pitched in five games and was 0-1 with an 8.44 ERA.

“This will give him a chance to pitch,” observed Durocher. “It was not doing him any good sitting on the bench here all the time.”3

Two days after being sent to Tacoma, Bonham picked up a victory in relief in an 8-7 victory over Portland. In three weeks at Tacoma, he appeared in eight games (11 innings) and was 2-1 with four saves and a 2.45 ERA. The Cubs recalled him on June 3.

Bonham picked up his first major-league victory on June 17, pitching three shutout innings in the Cubs’ 7-6, 10-inning victory over the Cardinals in St. Louis. For the season he was 2-1 with a 4.65 ERA in 33 games.

In his second spring training with the Cubs, Bonham wasn’t quite as impressive as when he was a rookie in 1971, and was the final roster cut before the season started. Bonham was optioned to Wichita (American Association), where he was solid as a starter.

On April 28 Bonham pitched a one-hitter in the Aeros’ 2-0 victory over Indianapolis. Less than two weeks later, he threw another one-hitter in Wichita’s 2-0 victory over Oklahoma City. After going 10-4 with seven complete games and three shutouts in 18 starts, Bonham was recalled by the Cubs on July 17.

On July 21, he started and went seven innings in the Cubs’ 11-3 victory over the Astros in Houston. He made three more starts, but for the rest of the season was primarily used as a reliever. He was 1-1 with a 3.12 ERA and four saves in 19 appearances with the Cubs.

Bonham stuck with the Cubs for good in 1973. He was used as a spot starter and reliever. His 44 appearances included 15 starts (and three complete games) and six saves.

Bonham had a solid spring in 1974 with a 2.86 ERA and was named the Cubs’ Opening Day starter. At Wrigley Field on April 9, Bonham pitched his first career shutout, a four-hitter in a 2-0 victory over the Philadelphia Phillies. But it would turn out to be a long season for Bonham and the Cubs.

Bonham’s second victory didn’t come until May 12. A loss to the Padres on June 18 dropped his record to 4-10. But between June 23 and July 18, Bonham pitched well, going 5-1 in seven starts to improve his record to 9-11. Then he won just 2 games and lost 11 over the final 2½ months of the season. On September 20 in St. Louis, Bonham allowed five runs in four innings in a 5-2 loss to the Cardinals. The loss was his 20th of the season.

Bonham finished with an 11-22 record and a 3.86 ERA in 44 appearances (36 starts and a career-high 242⅔ innings). He had 10 complete games, among them two 1-0 losses, a 2-0 loss and two 2-1 losses. The Cubs, who were 77-84 in 1973, were 66-96 in 1974.

“When I pitched badly I lost,” said Bonham, “and when I pitched good, I lost some of those games, too. For a while, it seemed it didn’t make any difference how I pitched. I didn’t get much in the way of results. It’s an unsuccessful thing to lose that many games and it makes you feel like a failure. It’s tough to digest 20 losses. But I try to look at the other aspects. I got a lot of innings in. I picked up a lot of experience.

“When you lose 22, you’ve got something wrong. I have to change something, but I don’t really know what it is. I’m going to have to keep working hard until I find the answer.”4

Bonham was one of three 20-game losers in the National League in 1974. Randy Jones and Steve Rogers were the others. There were two 20-game losers in the American League, Mickey Lolich and Clyde Wright.

Bonham and the Cubs showed improvement in 1975. He was 13-15 with a 4.71 ERA. In his 36 starts, he had seven complete games and two shutouts as the Cubs improved to 75-87. In 1976 Bonham was 9-13 with a 4.27 ERA in 31 starts.

The 1977 season was the first in which Bonham was used exclusively as a starter. After beating the Padres 10-5 in Chicago on August 6, he was 10-10. But the victory was his last of the season. Over the final seven weeks of the season he made eight starts and went 0-3. For the season, he was 10-13 with a 4.36 ERA in 34 starts.

After the season Bonham asked to be traded, because he “felt a change of scenery might him turn around a career that has been a disappointment to him.”5 And on October 31 the Cubs obliged, trading him to the Cincinnati Reds for veteran pitcher Woodie Fryman, minor-league pitcher Bill Caudill, and cash.

Bonham, who was 53-70 in six seasons with the Cubs, said, “I’m not leaving with any animosity. I wanted to leave only to help Bill Bonham pitch the way he hasn’t yet pitched. This is a new direction for me. The fans of Chicago have been great, and the Cubs management has been the same. I asked to be traded to one of five clubs, and Cincinnati was my first choice. I thank (Cubs GM Bob) Kennedy for accommodating me.”6

Bonham got off to a good start with the Reds in 1978, winning his first seven decisions before suffering his first loss on June 12.

His second start of the season was a 12-3 complete-game (his only one of the season) victory over the San Francisco Giants in Cincinnati. Five days later, he pitched into the ninth inning of an 8-2 victory over the Dodgers in Los Angeles to improve to 3-0. After that outing, Bonham experienced discomfort in his elbow, and was sidelined for four weeks.

“Last year I had some stiffness in my arm that cost me a starting assignment, but I pitched regularly after that,” Bonham said. “This soreness is different.”7

Bonham returned to the mound on May 12, when he took a shutout into the seventh inning and combined with Paul Moskau to beat the Philadelphia Phillies, 3-0. After a no-decision on May 17, he and Pedro Borbon combined to shut out the Braves, 10-0, in Atlanta, on May 22.

Bonham, who improved to 5-0 with that victory, admitted after the game how much the elbow injury had scared him. “I knew I hurt the elbow really bad,” he said. “And, at the time, I was afraid I wouldn’t pitch again. I really worried a lot. Then I realized I was overreacting, putting pressure on myself.”8

At that point, Bonham said, he told himself, “I am a Christian. God gave me the ability to pitch. If he wants me to, I will. So after that I was able to relax.”9

On July 7 Bonham improved to 9-2, allowing just one run and striking out seven in 6⅔ innings in a 2-1 victory over the San Francisco Giants in Cincinnati. But then he was sidelined again because of discomfort in his elbow. After a month on the sidelines, Bonham returned on August 6 and allowed one run in five innings (with no decision) in the Reds’ 3-1 victory over San Diego.

Back-to-back losses in August dropped Bonham’s record to 9-4. He earned his 10th victory (6-3 over the Astros in Houston) on September 4 and 11th (6-3 over the Giants in Cincinnati) on September 9. On September 14, he allowed four runs in 5⅓ innings in an 8-1 loss to the Padres in San Diego. It was Bonham’s final outing of the season, which saw him go 11-5 with a 3.53 ERA. He didn’t have a shutout, but he combined with relievers on four occasions for shutouts.

On September 27 Bonham had surgery on his right elbow in Los Angeles, where Dr. Frank Jobe “removed loose bodies and bone spurs from his right elbow and transplanted the ulnar nerve.”10

Bonham was able to open the 1979 season in the Reds’ rotation – the number 2 starter behind Tom Seaver. His first start of the season was a no-decision; he allowed two runs in seven innings in a 4-2 loss to the San Francisco Giants.

After his second start, a 4-2 victory over San Diego, Bonham experienced stiffness in his right shoulder and was sidelined for three weeks.

He made his next start on May 6, going just three innings in the Reds’ 17-5 victory over the Houston Astros. After giving up four runs in the first inning, Bonham pitched two scoreless innings before being removed because he had thrown 65 pitches.

After going six innings (a no-decision) in his next start, Bonham was in the rotation the rest of the season. He made 29 starts, going 9-7 with a 3.79 ERA.

But heading into spring training in 1980, there were some lingering issues for Bonham.

“He was still experiencing stiffness in his forearm,” Reds manager John McNamara said. “However, Dr. Frank Jobe assured him he’d be all right and could start working out after the first of the year. Last year we had to handle Bonham with kid gloves because he was coming back after elbow surgery. I’m hoping that won’t be the case this year.”11

Bonham opened the 1980 season in the starting rotation. In his first outing, on April 12, he went 6⅔ innings with no decision in a 5-4 victory over the Atlanta Braves. A week later, he got his first victory of the season, allowing four hits and one run in a 6-1 victory over the Braves. But in his third start, Bonham retired just one of the seven hitters he faced and allowed five runs in a 7-1 loss to the Cubs.

That was Bonham’s last outing for two months. In mid-May he was placed on the 21-day disabled list. After rejoining the Reds, on July 26 he went five innings and teamed with reliever Tom Hume for a 5-1 victory over the New York Mets. It was his final major-league appearance.

Six days after the victory over the Mets, Bonham was scratched from a start against the Phillies after he experienced pain in his right shoulder. He returned to the disabled list. He was reactivated in September but did not pitch. In his abbreviated season, four appearance, he was 2-1 with a 4.74 ERA.

On October 28, 1980, Bonham underwent shoulder surgery in Los Angeles. Dr. Frank Jobe removed “a chronic bursa” from Bonham’s right shoulder.12

A month after the surgery, Bonham, his wife, and Hume and his wife were staying at the MGM Grand Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas, when the hotel was devastated by a fire.

The Bonhams and the Humes were in their rooms on the 24th floor when the fire broke out shortly after 7 A.M. After being awakened by shouts, “the Humes quickly aroused the Bonhams, who occupied an adjoining room, and the two couples headed for the fire exit stairway, aware they were 24 floors away from safety. As they descended, the smoke became denser. It became unbearable when they reached the 16th floor. All the guests who jammed the stairway then turned around and headed for the rooftop.”13

About 1,000 people were rescued from the rooftop. The blaze, one of the worst hotel fires ever in the United States, claimed 85 lives, 75 from inhalation.

Recovering from the shoulder surgery, Bonham was optioned to Triple-A Indianapolis at the start of the 1981 season. In early June, a week before the major-league season was halted by the players strike on June 12, the Reds recalled Bonham and placed him on the disabled list. During the strike, he worked out in Cincinnati, throwing a simulated game every fifth day.

“I’ve been throwing all of my pitches – fastball, slider, curve and changeup – and haven’t experienced any discomfort,” Bonham said. “That’s what I tried to do in spring training and after the Reds sent me to Indianapolis at the season’s start. But when I tried to get into the groove, my arm was too sore.”14

In July Bonham was sent to Indianapolis on a 20-day rehabilitation assignment. But in late August, Bonham, who was in the final year of a four-year contract, was released by the Reds.

Bonham continued working out in the offseason and was invited to spring training by the Reds in 1982 on a conditional basis. He was one of the surprises of spring training for the Reds and battled Mike LaCoss and Charlie Liebrandt for the fifth spot in the Reds’ rotation.

On March 23 he pitched five scoreless innings in a 6-2 exhibition victory over the Detroit Tigers. Five days later, on the 28th, he had his worst outing of the spring, allowing five runs in three innings. “After today’s performance, I am sure it will be hard to break camp with the team,” Bonham said, “I’d like to take a little more time. I’m not ready to start, at least not ready to start every fifth day.”15

Manager McNamara said, “He threw the ball pretty well. He just got hit, that’s all. He threw some pretty good curve balls. As far as giving up the runs, that does not concern me. He’s not missing out of the strike zone by much. Before, he was all over the place. Most of the pitches he missed with were down. If you’re going to be wild, it’s best to be wild down.”16

When the Reds announced their regular-season roster, they said Bonham would remain at their minor-league complex in Tampa.

In late June, Bonham signed a minor-league contract and was assigned to Indianapolis. Manager George Scherger said Bonham was “up to 80 pitches per workout and we are all encouraged he can pitch again.”17 The optimism was short-lived. Bonham made his first start on July 2, going four innings in a 5-3 loss to Louisville. He allowed two runs in the first inning but then threw three shutout innings. He threw 66 pitches – 34 in the first inning.18

Five days later Bonham was scheduled to start against Oklahoma City but was scratched because of a sore arm. On July 9 the team announced that Bonham had returned to his home in California. His playing career was over at the age of 33.

Bonham spent parts of 10 seasons in the major leagues, going 75-83 with 11 saves and a 4.01 ERA in 300 appearances (214 starts). He had four shutouts among 27 complete games. In parts of six minor-league seasons, he was 17-9 with 10 saves and a 3.25 ERA in 52 appearances. He struck out 227 in 216 innings.

Bonham worked as a roving minor-league pitching instructor in the Houston Astros organization for several seasons. After that, he helped his wife run a boutique in the Southern California coastal town of Solvang.

Last revised: July 1, 2017

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

Sources

In addition to the sources cited in the Notes, the author also consulted Baseball-Reference.com, milb.com, and retrosheet.org. When contacted in May of 2017, Bonham politely declined to speak about his career.

Notes

1 Earl Lawson, “Father-Critic Finds Little Fault With Reds’ Bonham,” The Sporting News, May 6, 1978: 9.

2 George Langford, “Cubs Rookie ‘Wings’ Way Toward North,” Chicago Tribune, March 22, 1971: C2.

3 George Langford, “Bonham Optioned; Cubs Get Newman,” Chicago Tribune, May 14, 1971: C4.

4 Jerome Holtzman, “Bonham Spots Light Beam in 22-Loss Season,” The Sporting News, October 26, 1974: 18.

5 Richard Dozer, “Caudill Seen as Gem in Cub Future,” The Sporting News, November 19, 1977: 48.

6 Ibid.

7 Earl Lawson, “Seaver’s Slump Has Reds ‘Concerned,’” The Sporting News, May 13, 1978: 19.

8 Earl Lawson, “Reds Fire Away With BBs – Bonham and Bair,” The Sporting News, June 10, 1978: 8.

9 Ibid.

10 Earl Lawson, “Foster Swung More, Connected Less in 78,” The Sporting News, October 14, 1978: 36.

11 Earl Lawson, “Keystone No. 1 Question for Reds,” The Sporting News, February 9, 1980: 38.

12 “Caught on the Fly,” The Sporting News, November 15, 1980: 59.

13 Earl Lawson, “’God Was Watching,’ Says Grateful Hume,” The Sporting News, December 20, 1980: 47.

14 Earl Lawson, “Reds: Bonham’s in Trim,” The Sporting News, August 1, 1981: 37.

15 Wire services, “Bonham’s Stock Takes a Plunge,” Richmond (Indiana) Palladium-Item, March 29, 1982: A5.

16 Ibid.

17 “Bill Bonham Signs,” Indianapolis Star, June 28, 1982: 23.

18 David Knight, “Birds Use Their Free Tickets,” Indianapolis Star, July 3, 1982: 26.

Brandt was born on February 17, 1905, in Spokane, one of eight children. His parents were August Brandt, born in Illinois with his occupation listed as a tinner, and the former Magdelena “Maggie” Heintz, who was born in Germany. Young Ed took to baseball at an early age and pitched his Grant Grammar School team to three school championships. He graduated to Lewis and Clark High School and continued his spectacular success, three times striking out 21 batters in a game. He quit school, however, when he got an offer to pitch for the Willys-Overland team in the Spokane City League. To support himself when he wasn’t pitching, Brandt got a job in a sawmill, but quit after a friend got his hand tangled up in a saw and lost a finger, concluding that there must be a better job for an aspiring pitcher.1

Brandt’s success pitching for Willys-Overland led to an offer from the Seattle Indians of the Pacific Coast League in the fall of 1922, when he was just 17 years old. He reported to spring training with the Indians, who trained in San Jose, California, in 1923. He soon became homesick and convinced he couldn’t compete at that level, jumped the club, and returned home to Spokane. But Seattle persisted and persuaded Brandt to report to the Aberdeen Grays of the Class-D South Dakota League to gain some confidence. After a couple of good outings there, he again became plagued with self-doubt and headed home again to Spokane, shortly before the league folded on July 17.2

Brandt later said, “I knew I would win ballgames in the semipro league, but I also knew I would be a failure in Organized Baseball.”3

He managed four appearances for Seattle in 1924 before returning home and pitching exceptionally well in the Spokane City League. Brandt remained much more comfortable pitching at the semipro level and toiled for town teams in Tonasket, Washington, and Wallace, Idaho, while making five appearances for Seattle in 1925. A Braves scout saw him in Wallace and wanted to sign him but he was under contract to Seattle and apparently failed to meet the Braves team in Chicago as promised, so Boston passed on him. In 1925, while pitching semipro ball for Baker, Oregon, he unknowingly pitched a game against a team that included Chick Gandil, one of the banned Black Sox from the 1919 World Series. Although Gandil was playing under an assumed name, Brandt found himself on Organized Baseball’s ineligible list.4

Seattle managed to get Brandt reinstated in 1926 and he appeared in four games for the Indians, going 2-0 with a 3.43 earned-run average in 21 innings. The following year, at age 22, he began to show his potential, winning 19 games against 11 losses with a 3.97 ERA in 261 innings for a third-place Seattle club. Late in the year, the Boston Braves purchased his contract for $20,000, but Brandt balked, demanding part of the purchase price. When he didn’t get it, he again jumped the club and went home to Spokane.

With no other recourse, Brandt reported to the Braves for 1928 and stuck with the club out of spring training.5 He made his major-league debut on April 15, starting the third game of the year against the Brooklyn Robins at Ebbets Field. He pitched an eight-inning complete game, losing a pitcher’s duel to Watty Clark by a 3-2 score. Brandt was about two months past his 23rd birthday. He won his first big-league game four days later on April 19 against the Giants in the Polo Grounds, relieving Joe Genewich to start the fourth inning with the Braves trailing 5-2. Boston came back to tie it, 8-8, in the ninth and won it with a run in the 10th inning to give Brandt the win. He pitched seven relief innings in all, allowing three runs on four hits.6

That performance earned Brandt a start a week later and he did not disappoint, hurling a masterful two-hit shutout against the Robins to win 4-0. As with many young left-handers, his control was not his strong suit. He walked five while striking out only one.7 After a rough outing against the Giants on April 29, Brandt pitched all 11 innings of a 5-4 extra-inning win against the Pirates in Forbes Field to bring his record to 3-2. After some indifferent starts, he again righted himself with two consecutive complete game victories in late May, 3-1 over the Phillies and 4-1 over Brooklyn, to bring his record to 5-5. He threw another complete game on June 8 to beat the Pirates 9-5 and go 6-5 with an earned-run average of 3.61.8

Brandt, however, then ran into tough sledding and lost six decisions in a row to drop his record to 6-11 and raise his earned-run average to almost 5.00. A complete-game 3-1 win against the Cubs on July 25 broke the skid, but then Brandt lost six of seven to fall to 8-17. It didn’t get any better. After a 9-2 complete-game win over Brooklyn on September 5 in which he scattered 13 hits, he lost his final four starts to fall to 9-21 for his rookie campaign. His 20th loss occurred on September 21 against the Cincinnati Reds by the score of 3-2. Brandt’s final earned-run average in 1928 was 5.07 in 225⅓ innings. He completed 12 out of 32 starts and relieved six times for 38 total appearances.

The Braves as a team managed only 50 wins against 103 losses to finish in seventh place, 44½ games out of first. Star second baseman Rogers Hornsby, who batted .387 to lead the league, had taken over as manager of the club in mid-May from Jack Slattery.9 Under Hornsby’s tutelage the team went 39-83. Hornsby disliked pitchers and was notoriously tough on them throughout his career; thus, one can surmise that the sensitive Brandt did not exactly flourish under the Rajah. In fact, Brandt was 4-16 after Hornsby became manager.

Braves owner Emil Fuchs decided to manage the team himself in 1929 and while the team won six more games than in 1928, it sank to the basement, 43 games behind the pennant-winning Cubs. Fuchs used Brandt more sparingly, due in part to Brandt’s missing almost the month of May with an injury and to his indifferent success. For the year he won 8 while losing 13, but his earned-run average rose to an unsightly 5.53 in 167⅔ innings. Still, he managed to complete 13 of his 21 starts.

Fuchs brought in future Hall of Famer Bill McKechnie to manage the club in 1930. McKechnie had a great reputation for his ability to handle pitchers, but had no early success in turning Brandt around. While the club improved to 70 wins and finished in sixth place, 22 games out of the pennant, Brandt suffered with a sore arm for much of the season and scuffled to a 4-11 record. His earned-run average (5.01) was not much improved. McKechnie used Brandt primarily as a long man out of the bullpen, but he did start 13 games, completing four.

After his first three big-league campaigns, the 25-year-old Brandt’s record stood at 21 wins against 45 losses. He was regarded “as a mystery man … [who] seemed to have everything a pitcher needed to win except confidence.”10

At some point, probably during spring training in 1931, McKecknie had a conversation with Brandt in which he asked the lefty, also known as Big Ed for his tall frame, what he liked to do in the winter. Brandt said he liked to hunt, to which McKechnie said, “Then you’d better make up your mind that you’re a major-league pitcher and not just a semipro star. If you don’t, you’ll be scratching the year ‘round on a job in a sawmill or a tin shop. Get me?”11

Brandt had undergone surgery for a chronic sinus condition over the winter, so whether it was McKechnie’s admonition or better health or both, he started the 1931 season like a house afire, winning his first eight starts, all complete-game victories. Although he cooled off a little once the dog days of summer arrived, Brandt still finished the season with 18 wins and 11 losses for a team that won only 64 games and finished in seventh place, 37 games out of the lead. His 2.92 earned-run average was third lowest in the league and his 23 complete games were second-most. He topped off his career year by being named to Babe Ruth’s mythical All-American baseball team12 and even finished 10th in National League MVP voting.

Under McKechnie, the Braves improved to .500 and fifth place in 1932 with a 77-77 record. Brandt again was the workhorse of the staff, leading the team in wins while also finishing at .500 with a 16-16 record in 254 innings. His earned-run average jumped by a run to 3.97 and he gave up more hits, 271, than innings pitched. He completed 19 of 31 starts and tossed two shutouts.

Brandt returned to his 1931 form in 1933, again posting 18 wins against 14 losses as the Braves improved to an 83-71 record to finish in the first division, only nine games behind the pennant-winning New York Giants.13 He could again claim to be, along with Carl Hubbell, one of the top two left-handers in the National League. His 2.60 earned-run average was fourth lowest in the league while his 23 complete games were the third most and his 288 innings were fourth highest.

Brandt pitched in tough luck early in 1933 and his 5-3 loss to the Pirates on June 18 dropped his record to 4-8, even though his earned-run average stood at 2.77. But from there he went 14-6, benefiting from better run support as he continued to pitch well. During one stretch Brandt won six decisions in a row, including a four-hit shutout against the Cincinnati Reds on July 2. He finished the season by winning four of five starts, including another four-hit shutout of the Reds on September 19.

Brandt was one of the best hitting pitchers in the National League during his career and in 1933 had his best year at the plate, batting .309 with 30 hits in 97 official at-bats. He was a good-enough hitter to be used as a pinch-hitter several times during his career, which ended with his batting average at a more than respectable .236.

In 1934 Brandt had another solid year, finishing at 16-14 for a Braves team that again finished in fourth place, with a 78-73 record. He threw 20 complete games among his 28 starts, fifth most in the league, and finished with a respectable 3.53 earned-run average in 255 innings. He threw a two-hit shutout against the Cubs in May, a three-hit shutout of the Pirates in July, and whitewashed the Giants in August on another two-hitter.

The Braves’ 1935 season began with a lot of hoopla as the team signed the 40-year-old Babe Ruth. Brandt pitched the season opener on April 16 and defeated Giants ace Carl Hubbell, 4-2, as the Babe smashed a home run and a double and made a great running catch in left field.14 But Ruth was at end of the line and on June 2 announced his retirement, as the wheels were coming off the bus both for the Braves and for Brandt.15 The team fell off the cliff to a 38-115 record, finishing in the basement, 61½ games out of the lead and 26½ games out of seventh place. The team lost 15 in a row on the road in July and then went 2-28 from mid-August to mid-September.16

Brandt didn’t help rescue the Braves as his earned-run average rose to 5.00 in 174⅔ innings and he won only five of 24 decisions. On April 27 he beat the Dodgers 4-2 to bring his record to 2-1 for the young season. He then lost seven in a row. On June 30 Brandt defeated the Phillies 9-3 in a complete-game 12-hitter to bring his record to 5-8. It was his last win of the season as, plagued by a sore arm,17 he lost 11 consecutive decisions to finish the year 5-19.18

With nothing to lose, the Braves cleaned house after their disastrous ’35 campaign and on December 12 dealt Brandt and utilityman Randy Moore to the Brooklyn Dodgers for second baseman Tony Cuccinello, catcher Al Lopez, and pitchers Ray Benge and Bobby Reis.19 The Dodgers were entering their third season with Casey Stengel at the helm and had finished 29½ games off the lead in fifth place in 1935. The trade didn’t help much as the club slipped to seventh in 1936, 20 games under .500.

Brandt was in effect the Dodgers’ number-three starter, behind Van Lingle Mungo and Fred Frankhouse, who had come over from the Braves in a separate deal. Brandt started the year slowly and after a 5-3 loss to the Cubs on July 21, saw his record fall to 3-10. But with better run support, he won eight of his final 11 decisions to finish with an 11-13 record. He threw 12 complete games in 29 starts and ended with a respectable 3.50 earned-run average in 234 innings.

Brandt showed his moxie and impressed at least one sportswriter when he was felled by a first-inning line drive struck by Johnny Moore of the Phillies in a meaningless game at the Baker Bowl on August 5. He staggered to his feet, and although initially wobbly, finished with eight shutout innings to win the game 7-3.20 In Brandt’s last start of the year, he pitched 12 innings against the Phillies in a no-decision that the Dodgers lost in the 13th, 4-2. One headline the next day was titled “Brandt Closes Luckless Year with Dodgers.”21

Brandt’s strong finish convinced the Pittsburgh Pirates to acquire him after the season in a trade for southpaw pitcher Ralph Birkofer and infielder Cookie Lavagetto. The Pirates had finished in fourth place the previous two seasons under manager Pie Traynor and were looking for pitching help to bolster a lineup that had hit a robust .286 in 1936 to tie for the league lead. It was a chance for Brandt to pitch for a contender as well as for a club that could provide run support.

Brandt won his first three starts as the Pirates got off to a fast start in 1937, winning 11 of their first 14 games. But plagued by lack of run support, his old bugaboo, and a sore arm, he lost his next five decisions to fall to 3-5 as the Pirates settled into third place. Brandt, who was known to drink and carouse a bit, also managed to get cross-ways with strait-laced manager Traynor. As a result, there was speculation that Traynor did not use Brandt as much as he might have during Brandt’s tenure with the club.22

Brandt continued to be inconsistent in ’37 but pitched a sparkling two-hit shutout against his old team, now called the Boston Bees, on July 30 in a game the Pirates won 1-0 with a run in the bottom of the ninth.23 He similarly defeated the Reds 1-0 on September 9 in a game the Pirates also won in the bottom of the ninth on an Arky Vaughn triple and a single by Bill Brubaker.

For the season, Brandt won 11 and lost 10 in 176 innings with a solid 3.11 earned-run average. He started 25 games, completed seven, and appeared eight times in relief as the Pirates finished in third place with an 86-68 record, 10 games off the pace.

After the season, it was revealed that Brandt had secretly gotten married during the season on August 5 in Wheeling, West Virginia. It was reported that the newly married couple was spending the offseason on Brandt’s ranch near Libby, Montana.24

The 33-year-old Brandt returned to the Pirates for the 1938 season but was plagued by arm trouble early in the year and missed three weeks in late June and early July. He was used as a spot starter, with 13 starts, and in relief, with 11 appearances. Brandt was still capable of throwing a gem and shut out the Phillies 8-0 on July 19 for his second win of the year. But for the year he was inconsistent and finished 5-4 with a 3.46 earned-run average in only 96 innings for a Pirates team that was in the pennant race all year and finished in second place, only two games behind the Cubs, their hearts broken by Gabby Hartnett’s famous homer in the gloamin’.

Brandt reported to spring training with the Pirates in 1939 in San Bernardino, California. However, he was abruptly given his unconditional release by Traynor on March 23 for “breaking training rules.” According to Traynor, Brandt didn’t arrive at the team hotel the night before “until a little before breakfast time.”25 Five days later Brandt signed with the Hollywood Stars of the Pacific Coast League.26 He began the season with the Stars but again encountered arm problems. After going 2-3 in six appearances, he was again released, effectively ending his professional baseball career.27

After baseball, Brandt returned to Spokane and then for a time ran a dude ranch and hunting lodge that he had purchased in Montana. He spent about six months in the Army in 1942 and 1943 and was a private in the 41st Armored Regiment stationed at Camp Polk, Louisiana, where he was listed as a physical director.28 He was apparently discharged because of his age and again returned to Spokane to work in the local war industry. He subsequently purchased a tavern in nearby Clayton but continued to live in Spokane.29 He was granted a divorce from his wife in August 1944.30

Shortly before midnight on the evening of November 2, 1944, Brandt and his fiancée were involved in a minor traffic accident as they prepared to return to Clayton from Spokane. As Brandt talked on the street to the driver of the other car, he was struck and fatally injured by another car that was traveling about 40 miles per hour.31 He was just 39 years old.

Ed Brandt’s lifetime major-league record was 121 wins against 146 losses with a 3.86 earned-run average. Although he finished 25 games under .500, it is important to remember that he toiled for second-division teams for the bulk of his career and was uniformly considered a hard-luck pitcher during his playing days.32 From 1931 through 1934, he was considered one of the elite left-handers in the National League, finishing among the league leaders in innings pitched, complete games, and shutouts. During those years, he averaged 17 wins a campaign and put together a 68-55 record for Braves teams that finished no better than fourth place. Not bad for a reluctant major leaguer who for many years thought he could never succeed in Organized Baseball.

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

Sources

The author would like to thank Greg Ivy for his genealogical research help for this biography.

Notes

1 Harry T. Brundidge, “Ed Brandt Won Belated Success After Prolonged Battle,” The Sporting News, November, 19, 1931: 7.

2 Lloyd Johnson and Miles Wolff, eds., The Encyclopedia of Minor League Baseball (Durham, North Carolina: Baseball America, Inc., 2d ed. 1997); Brundidge: 7.

3 John E. Spalding, Pacific Coast League Stars, Volume II (Manhattan, Kansas: Ag Press, 1997), 46.

4 Brundidge: 7; Tommy Holmes, “Ex-Brave Signs With Flatbush Club,” unidentified clipping dated January 24, 1936, from the Ed Brandt clippings file, National Baseball Library.

5 Brundidge: 7.

6 The Giants’ lineup featured Hall of Famers Bill Terry, Edd Roush, Freddie Lindstrom, and Travis Jackson as well as Lefty O’Doul, who many believe should be in the Hall of Fame.

7 He had also walked five in his first appearance, but also struck out five.

8 Two of the runs scored by the Pirates were unearned.

9 The 1928 Braves not only had Hornsby at second, but had future Hall of Famer George Sisler playing first base.

10 “And then suddenly the big left-hander was off to the races,” Holmes.

11 Brundidge: 7.

12 Harold “Speed” Johnson, Who’s Who in Major League Baseball (Chicago: Buxton Publishing Co., 1933), 89.

13 Ben Cantwell had his career year in 1933 and could lay claim as the ace of the Braves staff.  He went 20-10 with a 2.62 earned-run average in 255 innings. By 1935 Cantwell had slipped to an unsightly 4-25 record. Cantwell’s lifetime record was 76-108, although his career earned- run average was a respectable 3.91.

14 Harold Kaese, The Boston Braves – An Informal History (New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1948), 231.

15 Al Hirshberg, The Braves – The Pick and the Shovel (Boston: Waverly House, 1948), 49-62; Mitchell Conrad Stinson, Deacon Bill McKechnie – A Baseball Biography (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, 2012), 154-58.

16 Gary Caruso, The Braves Encyclopedia (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1995), 56-57; Jonathan Weeks, Cellar Dwellers – The Worst Teams in Baseball History (Lanham, Maryland: Scarecrow Press, 2012), 91-102.

17 Holmes.

18 He did pitch in some tough luck, losing two games by 3-2 scores, one by a 2-1 count, and one 1-0 game.

19 While the trade seemed to favor the Braves, it largely involved players who seemed to be on the downside of their careers. Dan Daniel, “Brooklyn Given Brandt and Moore in Big Deal,” New York World-Telegram, December 13, 1935.

20 The Old Scout, “Pirates Aided by Acquisition of Ed Brandt,” unidentified clipping dated December 7, 1936, from the Ed Brandt clippings file, National Baseball Library.

21 Edward T. Murphy, “Brandt Closes Luckless Year with Dodgers,” unidentified clipping dated September 25, 1936, from the Ed Brandt clippings file, National Baseball Library. Hugh Mulcahy pitched all 13 innings for the Phillies. He earned his first major-league victory when Chile Gomez hit a two-run single in the top of the 13th and Mulcahy followed with a scoreless bottom half of the inning.

22 James Forr and David Proctor, Pie Traynor – A Baseball Biography (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, 2010), 148, 169.

23 Al Todd doubled to lead off the ninth, moved to third on a bunt hit by Pep Young, and scored on a fly ball by Red Lucas to end the game.

24 Unidentified clipping dated October 7, 1937, from the Ed Brandt clippings file, National Baseball Library.

25 Brandt was released even though it left the Pirates with only one left-handed pitcher, rookie Ken Heintzelman.  “Pirates Release Brandt, Veteran,” unidentified clipping dated March 23, 1939, from the Ed Brandt clippings file, National Baseball Library. Traynor reportedly sat in the hotel lobby until 3 A.M. waiting for Brandt and teammate Russ Bauers to come in for the evening before giving up and going to bed. Forr and Proctor, 173-74. 

26 Unidentified clipping dated March 28, 1939, from the Ed Brandt clippings file, National Baseball Library.

27 “Hollywood Club Releases Ed Brandt,” unidentified clipping dated May 3, 1939, from the Ed Brandt clippings file, National Baseball Library.

28 Unidentified clipping dated January 21, 1943, from the Ed Brandt clippings file, National Baseball Library.

29 “Crash Fatal to ‘Lefty’ Brandt,” Spokane Spokesman-Review, November 3, 1944: 15.

30 Unidentified clipping dated August 31, 1944, from the Ed Brandt clippings file, National Baseball Library.

31 Brandt was struck by a car driven by First Lieutenant Louis Sanchez, who was convalescing at the Fort Wright Hospital from battle fatigue after more than 50 missions over Germany as a bombardier. He had won the Air Medal and Distinguished Flying Cross and may have been suffering from what we would now call post traumatic stress syndrome. On the night of the accident Sanchez was being followed by a patrol car because of his speeding and erratic driving. No alcohol was involved, however. “Question Raised in Brandt Death,” Spokane Spokesman-Review, November 3, 1944: 14.  

32 Murphy, “Brandt Closes Luckless Year with Dodgers”; The Old Scout, “Pirates Aided by Acquisition of Ed Brandt” (“For eight years the husky left-hander has been tossing ’em in for light scoring teams.”); Letter to the Editor of The Sporting News from J. Roberson dated June 1, 1933, from the Ed Brandt clippings file, National Baseball Library (Ed Brandt is “the greatest pitcher in the National League” and “the champion hard luck pitcher in the game today,” and would win 25 games with a better-hitting team).

In Leviathan, the English philosopher Thomas Hobbes opined, “Life is nasty, brutish, and short.” Sadly, these six words well encapsulate the professional career and truncated life of Buster Brown, a slightly-below-average hurler who had the dual misfortune of toiling for truly terrible teams before his untimely death at the all-too-abbreviated age of 32.

Born in Boone, Iowa, on August 31, 1881, Brown stayed closed to home by attending Ames Agricultural College, now known as Iowa State University, where he went 14-0 as a sophomore.1 He pitched no-hitters against Coe College, striking out 16, and against Grinnell College with 14 strikeouts.2 Described by his alma mater “as an exceptional pitcher and captain of the 1905 team,”3 Brown mixed baseball business with collegiate pleasure by playing university ball during the school years and pro ball during the summers. He pitched for semipro Onawa (Iowa) in 1902, in the Three-I League for the 1903 Rock Rapids (Iowa) Islanders, and in the Western League for the 1904 Omaha Rangers.4

The St. Louis Cardinals bought Brown from Omaha in the summer of 1904 and had high hopes for the young righty. Going into the 1905 season, a member of the St. Louis front office claimed that Brown would “make some … batters think [Christy] Mathewson is doing the pitching before the season is half gone.”5

Brown, “the former handler of the expectoration pellet,” had other ideas and received permission to delay reporting until June 1 so he could finish the college term.6

The Cardinals occupied sixth place in the National League standings when Brown made his major-league debut, on June 22, 1905. The circumstances seemed favorable: St. Louis hosted Boston, which languished in seventh place and would send Vic Willis and his 1-11 record to the mound. Brown hit hard and got hit hard. He tripled in his first at-bat but gave up eight runs on 11 hits in six innings of toil. Brown “sustained all of the blows familiar to the big gunners, got rattled just like a veteran, fired [pitches] squarely over the plate, indicating the experience of a trained boxman when about to go for a jaunt in his airship.”7 It was a damning description in the early days of manned flight.

Brown recovered after this subpar start to enjoy a promising rookie campaign.8 Although he had an 8-11 record, his .421 winning percentage bettered the team’s .377 mark. Of the five St. Louis pitchers who pitched in more than 20 games, Brown had the lowest ERA at 2.97. He also tied for the team lead with three shutouts, and finished, despite his delayed start, fourth on the squad in WAR.

Brown had a similar second season, winning eight games again (although losing 16 this time). He set career highs in complete games (21) and strikeouts (109). Facing the Cubs in Chicago in a year when the West Siders would go 116-36, Brown gave up only three hits in a 15-inning complete-game 4-2 victory. Brown survived eight walks and a wild pitch in the win. He held the Cubs hitless after the fifth inning.9

Over the course of 1906, Brown yielded just two home runs and even hit one himself, an inside-the-park job on a “long hit between centre and right fields”10 in an 11-2 loss to the Giants. Brown walked five and threw two wild pitches, a typical outing in a campaign that saw him issue the fourth-most walks in the NL and throw the most wild pitches. Brown struggled with his control throughout his career.

The results of this game notwithstanding, in the 1906 offseason New York Giants manager John McGraw was “hot after” Brown; according to rumor, he was willing to give Joe McGinnity to St. Louis for Brown and [catcher Mike] Grady.11 The deal looked lopsided given that McGinnity had just gone 27-12, the eighth time in eight seasons that he had won at least 21 games, but the Iron Man at the age of 35 had little left. St. Louis supposedly rebuffed the exchange, wanting both cash and players for Brown.12

St. Louis had overplayed its cards. Brown got off to a terrible start in 1907, with a 1-6 record and a relatively high 3.39 ERA (nearly a full run above the league average of 2.46). On June 10, St. Louis traded Brown to the Philadelphia Phillies for left-handed pitcher Johnny Lush.13 In its first issue after the trade, The Sporting News featured Brown on its front page and captioned a photo of him by noting that his “lack of control is a great handicap to have, but if he succeeds in overcoming this weakness, he will rank higher. … He has been charged with sulking during his career as a Cardinal and has several times expressed his desire to enter the services of another team.”14

Although badmouthed on the way out of St. Louis by unnamed sources who accused him of being “too nervous to stand a hard game … and a weakling,”15 Brown found freedom in Philadelphia, where his 9-6 record and 2.42 ERA would have served as personal bests if they could have stood apart from his subpar St. Louis statistics. Capping off a happy campaign, Brown announced after the 1907 season that he would marry Nina Myers of Onawa, Iowa.16

Brown pitched in only three games in relief in 1908 but did get married; a postseason brief notes that he and his wife would return from Philadelphia to Prairie City, Iowa.17 Brown saw little more action in 1909 than he had the previous year; through mid-June, he had appeared just seven times, with only one start. Used in mop-up situations, Brown for the Phillies in 1908 and 1909 had no decisions. Granting its unwanted man freedom, Philadelphia on July 16, 1909, swapped Brown, Lew Richie, and Dave Shean to the Boston Doves for Johnny Bates and Charlie Starr. Boston manager Harry Smith welcomed his new pitcher, saying he expected Brown to be a winner for the Doves. “Brown has loads of stuff, but lacks control, owing to idleness,” Smith noted.18

While defying Smith’s prediction with a 4-8 record, Brown proved a valuable member of the Boston staff, a sad-sack assortment of 15 pitchers, none of whom had a winning record. Brown yielded just 7.9 hits per nine innings, the best mark on the team among the regular starting pitchers. Despite joining the team midway through the season, Brown finished third on the awful 45-108 club in WAR.

In 1910, Boston remained in last place despite winning eight more games than the prior year. Brown easily led the team in WAR and had a fine 2.67 ERA in a year when the NL as a whole had a 3.02 mark. Brown set a career high in games pitched with 46, ranking him in a four-way tie for third in the league, and in innings with 263. But in this, his best season, Brown went just 9-23 (just trailing his teammate Cliff Curtis in this dubious category; Curtis had a 6-24 record).

One of Brown’s nine wins came on May 26 when he stifled the defending World Series champion Pittsburgh Pirates on a complete-game, four-hit effort in a 4-1 Boston road victory. The Boston Globe reported that Brown’s “delivery proved puzzling to the champs.”19 Perhaps his most painful defeat came against a man to whom he had once been crazily compared, Christy Mathewson.20 Facing Big Six and the Giants, a first-division club, Brown through eight innings had yielded just one hit and enjoyed a 3-0 lead. But New York rallied for a trio in the ninth to tie the score; an error in the 14th sparked a five-run rally that led to a frustrating 8-3 loss for Brown. The Globe concluded, “While Brown was effective with his slow ball, he failed to put on the extra speed and at the close was outpitched by the wonderful Mathewson. … Brown pitched one of the prettiest games seen at the park in a long time, and but for a slip in the last ditch would have a good one on the [one and] only Matty.”21

In 1911, Boston bottomed out with a 44-107 record, helped in part by a 14-game losing streak suffered by Brown after he had pitched brilliantly on Opening Day to beat Brooklyn. After this strong start, a Boston correspondent optimistically opined, “Brown has the makings of a first-class box artist. With a strong club behind him I think he would prove to be one of the best twirlers in the league.”22

Alas, Boston had a terribly weak club with “a very error-prone defense.”23 Fred Tenney managed the Rustlers; his career winning percentage as a skipper, .334, only slightly eclipsed that of Brown, his most-used pitcher. Brown lost to Philadelphia on April 19 and kept on losing through July 28 against Pittsburgh, a streak he finally broke by beating St. Louis on August 2, Boston’s first win after dropping 16 straight games. Over the last two-plus months of the season, Brown got even wilder but proved tougher to hit; his 7-4 record over the closing stretch appears even more impressive in comparison with Boston’s 37-103 mark over the rest of the season.

1911: A Tale of Three Seasons24

Completing a four-year stretch in which he went just 25-64, Brown bottomed out in terms of winning percentage in 1912 by taking just four of 19 decisions although for the only season in his career he struck out more batters than he walked (68-66) and had a career-best WHIP of 1.259. He pitched a one-hitter against Philadelphia on May 2725 before suffering through another months-long winless streak beginning with his next appearance. Brown went 0-11 from May 31 through September 10. He earned his final win on September 14, 1912, in game two of a doubleheader against St. Louis. In a complete game, Brown gave up only eight hits while leading both teams with three hits of his own, including two doubles, as Boston won 11-2.

Even after four frustrating seasons, Brown had high hopes for 1913. After signing his contract, Brown penned a letter, writing, “I hope this will be our banner year … and I have a feeling that … the team will be much stronger than it was last year.”26 Boston did go from 52 wins in 1912 under Johnny Kling to 69 wins in 1913 under George Stallings, but Brown did not contribute. He pitched just twice, both times in long relief in April home games that the Braves easily lost.

Unwittingly, Brown helped the 1914 Miracle Braves triumph. On May 1, 1913, Boston traded Brown and $4,000 to Toronto of the International League.27 The Braves received Dick Rudolph, who in 1914 alone won three more games for Boston than Brown won in his 139 games pitched in the Hub (Rudolph’s 28 wins included 26 in the regular season, and Games One and Four of the World Series sweep of Philadelphia).

Brown would not live to see the miracle. He died on February 9, 1914, at the age of 32 “after an operation for a growth under his arm.”28 His death certificate lists the cause of his death as acute lymphangitis with a contributing factor of dilation of the left ventricle of his heart.29

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

Notes

1 “Buster Brown, ‘Losing Ways” diamondsinthedusk.com/uploads/articles/153-img2-BROWN_Buster.pdf (accessed March 1, 2017).  2 “Charles E. Brown, Pitcher of the St. Louis National Club,” Sporting Life, May 11, 1907: 1.

3 “Diamond Reflections:  Cyclones in the Majors,” add.lib.iastate.edu/spcl/exhibits/baseball/majors.htm

(accessed March 1, 2017).  4 Diamonds in the Dusk credits Brown with a 27-15 record, 107 strikeouts, and 63 walks in 1904. Baseball Reference lists Brown with 28 games pitched (and 63 walks) that season.

5 Wm. G. Murphy, “St. Louis Sayings,” Sporting Life, February 25, 1905: 8.

6 Wm. G. Murphy, “St. Louis Siftings,” Sporting Life, March 11, 1905: 2.

7 “Brown Bounced,” Boston Globe, June 23, 1905: 8.

8 “Brown of St. Louis, with his strength and two months’ experience, has developed into one of the stars.”  “National League News,” Sporting Life, September 16, 1905: 3.

9 “Spuds Drop Two but Retain Lead,” Chicago Tribune, May 31, 1906: 11.

10 “Easy Win for Giants,” New York Times, June 17, 1906.

11 Wm. F.H. Koelsch, “Metropolitan Mention,” Sporting Life, December 22, 1906: 10.

12 “National League News,” Sporting Life, December 29, 1906: 7; “New Year Notes,” Sporting Life, January 5, 1907: 10; “National League News,” Sporting Life, February 23, 1907: 5.

13 St. Louis also received $5,000, according to “Local Jottings,” Sporting Life, June 22, 1907: 7.

14 “Charles E. Brown,” The Sporting News, June 15, 1907: 1.

15 “An Odd Handicap,” Sporting Life, July 6, 1907: 5.

16 “Buster Brown to Marry,” The Sporting News, December 12, 1907.

17 “The Phillies’ Winter Quarters,” Sporting Life, October 31, 1908: 5.

18 “National League Notes,” Sporting Life, July 31, 1909: 9.

19 “Boston Wallops Groggy Pirates,” Boston Globe, May 27, 1910: 7.

20 The two did have similar builds.  Brown stood an even 6 feet tall and is listed as weighing 180; Mathewson had an extra inch and 15 more pounds.

21 “New York Wins, 8 to 3, in 14th,” Boston Globe, July 7, 1910: 6.

22 A.H.C. Mitchell, “Boston Briefs,” Sporting Life, April 22, 1911: 5.

23 Tom Ruane, “The Deadball Era’s Worst Pitching Staff,” retrosheet.org/Research/RuaneT/bsn1911_art.htm (accessed March 21, 2017).

24 Data compiled from “The 1911 BOS N Regular Season Pitching Log for Buster Brown,” retrosheet.org/boxesetc/1911/Kbrowb1020091911.htm (accessed March 21, 2017).  Small discrepancies exist between the sums of some of these daily results as compared to Brown’s seasonal records.

25 “The Phillies were unable to connect with the curves of ‘Buster’ Brown … and that tells the reason for their whitewash.” Brown went seven scoreless innings, striking out eight and giving up just one hit, according to the box score and game story at “See Both Teams Win in Philadelphia,” Boston Globe, May 28, 1912: 7. Retrosheet has Philadelphia getting two hits off Brown. See retrosheet.org/boxesetc/1912/B05272PHI1912.htm.

26 “Brown Sixth Brave to Sign,” Boston Globe, December 24, 1912: 7.

27 Diamonds in the Dusk credits Brown with a 13-13 record, 228⅓ innings pitched, 80 strikeouts, and 94 walks for Toronto in 1913. Baseball Reference has no data on Brown’s Toronto time.

28 “W.M. Tackaberry’s Toronto Topics,” Sporting Life, April 4, 1914: 13.

29 The death certificate comes from the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum’s file on Brown. Thanks to Reference Librarian Cassidy Lent of the Hall for scanning the Brown file.

Byrd was, in fact, a Darlington native and the American League Rookie of the Year in 1952, when he had a 15-15 record for the Philadelphia Athletics, and compiled a 3.31 ERA in 228⅓ innings. He was a local boy who made good, but returned home after his professional career was over. He compiled a lifetime record of 46-54 in seven seasons in the major leagues, and 120-129 in 12 seasons in the minor leagues.

Harry Byrd was born on February 3, 1925, in Mont Clare, South Carolina, an unincorporated village about seven miles northeast of Darlington. He was the youngest of six children – two girls and four boys – born to James Curtis Byrd Sr. and Annie Tuttle Byrd. His father, like most folks in Mont Clare, made a living as a laborer in logging and pulp lumber operations, and raised chickens for food and extra income. Later he became a superintendent in a sawmill.

Mont Clare had a grammar school for grades one to seven, with two teachers. Harry and a group of nine or 10 boys with ages in an approximate four-year range learned to play baseball together at the school. They played ball all the time. One of the boys later explained that the only two things to do at recess were see-saw or play baseball. “After all,” he said, “the interest span for see-sawing is very limited for boys that age.”1 The boys started playing games with nearby villages when they were about 10 years old. Harry was chosen as the pitcher because he won the team’s long-throw contest. There were no official leagues, and games were arranged on an ad-hoc basis. The coach drove the players to away games in a wagon towed behind his car.

Harry enrolled at Darlington St. John’s in eighth grade. He started logging with his father when he was 12 years old, and the hard labor turned him into an imposing physical specimen, with wide shoulders and well-developed muscles. He played football and baseball at St. John’s High School. As a junior Byrd pitched St. John’s to the 1942 State Class-A Championship. Legendary Columbia High School coach H. B. Rhame called Byrd “the best high school pitcher he had ever seen.”2 Five players from the old Mont Clare youth team were on the squad – Harry, his older brother, Wesley, Tom Tyson, Robert Richardson, and Tom Kleven.

Later in 1942 Harry’s father moved the family to Pelzer, South Carolina, probably to take a job in textile mills that were booming to fill wartime orders. Pelzer was an unincorporated village in northern Anderson County, just south of Greenville. Harry pitched for the Pelzer Bears town team and a Junior American Legion team from Greenville in the spring of 1943. He graduated with the Pelzer High School Class of 1943 on May 24, and enlisted in the Army on June 8. He was assigned to an airborne division, but then was transferred to the 567th Anti-Aircraft Battalion, which arrived in Europe on December 20, 1944. Byrd was discharged on February 3, 1946, and returned to his family, now back in Mont Clare. He still had the desire to play baseball. “There wasn’t much time to play ball in the Army,” he declared. “I played a little softball now and then, but it didn’t do anything for me. I began to wonder whether I’d be able to pitch again.”3

He did not have to wait long to find out. Johnny Stokes, Darlington County sheriff and Harry’s Legion coach, had alerted Philadelphia Athletics scout Ira Thomas about Byrd back in 1941 and 1942. Thomas signed the burly right-hander shortly after he came home, and the A’s assigned him to their Martinsville (Virginia) farm team in the Class-C Carolina League.

Byrd had a 15-12 record for sixth-place Martinsville, but had control problems all year. He walked 108 batters in 236 innings, and finished with a 4.77 ERA. Harry returned to Mont Clare after the season, and worked in local logging operations, a practice he maintained throughout his baseball career. (Major-league sportswriters later frequently referred to him as a “lumberjack” or “woodsman.”) He also met Mary Lee Lyles, a girl from nearby Hartsville. They were engaged before Harry returned to baseball in early 1947, and were married in October.

Byrd spent the next two seasons with Savannah (Georgia), the A’s farm team in the Single-A Sally (South Atlantic) League. He had solid, but unspectacular results: 16-13, with a 5.56 ERA in 1947, and 15-15, with a 4.09 ERA in 1948. He continued to have control problems and was overshadowed by other young pitchers in the A’s organization: Lou Brissie, Carl Scheib, Alex Kellner, and Bobby Shantz. Brissie was 24 years old in 1948, Byrd and Kellner were 23, while Shantz was 22, and Scheib only 21.

Savannah sold Byrd to Buffalo of the Triple-A International League in October 1948. It is unclear whether the Athletics had given up on him, or felt they had too many young pitchers in their organization, or if they simply wanted to give him experience in a tougher league. (They owned no farm teams above Class A.)

Byrd got off to a good start in the Buffalo spring training camp in Waxahachie, Texas. Bisons manager Paul Richards called Byrd the best rookie pitcher in his training camp, and Byrd said Richards taught him how to pitch. “Before he took hold of me, I was just a thrower. I still had a lot of rough spots, understand, but after three weeks under Richards I felt I had a chance to go somewhere in baseball.”4 The relationship was strained when Harry learned his father had suffered a heart attack. He asked the team for a leave to go home to care for his father’s 400 chickens. Team officials figured Byrd was just homesick and refused his request. Byrd went home anyway, and Buffalo suspended him. Byrd later regretted his decision. “I was a fool to leave the Buffalo team in spring training,” he said in a 1952 interview. “But I could think only of my father at the time. He recovered, and is in fairly good health now. But that season almost wrecked me.”5

Back home in Mont Clare, Byrd contemplated quitting Organized Baseball, and soon began pitching for his old Legion coach, Johnny Stokes, with nearby Hartsville in the semipro Palmetto League. When Buffalo offered to reinstate Byrd, Stokes talked him into accepting. He was optioned in mid-August to Savannah, where he had a subpar 2-8 record with a 4.67 ERA in 54 innings of work.

Byrd was still under contract with Buffalo, which had moved its 1950 spring-training base from Texas to Avon Park, Florida. He was brought to the A’s camp in West Palm Beach early in spring training to pitch batting practice and impressed Hall of Famer Mickey Cochrane, who had just been hired as one of the team’s coaches. “He’s big and fast,” Cochrane said. “He’s strong and has a good fastball. His curve is fair, but getting better. I think he’s a helluva prospect.”6 Thanks to sore arms by three expected starting pitchers – Alex Kellner, Dick Fowler, and Joe Coleman – the Athletics purchased Byrd’s contract from Buffalo and he found himself on the Opening Day roster.

Byrd’s first major-league game was forgettable. He entered the game in the top of the ninth inning against Boston at Shibe Park on April 21, with the Athletics trailing 4-1, and gave up a grand slam to Vern Stephens. He was optioned to Buffalo in June after making six short relief appearances. Byrd struggled to a 4-9 record with the last-place Bisons. His 6.75 ERA (in 108 innings) was the highest in the International League for pitchers who worked more than 100 innings.

Nevertheless, the Athletics placed Byrd on their 1951 spring-training roster. He saw little action once spring-training games began and was optioned to Single-A Savannah once again, but was encouraged by advice given to him during training camp by the A’s new pitching coach, future Hall of Famer Charles “Chief” Bender. “It was the Chief who encouraged me to throw side-arm, my natural style,” Byrd said in a 1952 interview.7 He had been a side-armer growing up, but professional pitching coaches had drilled him on throwing straight overhand. “He needed to wind up in order to get anything on the ball up top,” Bender recalled. “But I noticed that when he threw from down near his chest, he had speed to burn.”8 Byrd had a solid season at Savannah, with an 18-14 record and a 3.59 ERA in 248 innings pitched. He thrived on the heavy workload.

The Athletics seemed to have the nucleus for a strong team coming into spring training in 1952. After finishing above .500 three seasons in a row, 1947-1949, they had a miserable 52-102 record in 1950, but in 1951 under new manager Jimmy Dykes, their first new manager in 50 years, the team finished 18 games better at 70-84. First baseman Ferris Fain led the league in batting with a .344 average, outfielder Gus Zernial led the league with 33 home runs and 129 RBIs, and Bobby Shantz became the team’s ace starter with an 18-10 record.

Byrd felt good about his season at Savannah, was in good shape after an offseason of hard physical labor in a sawmill, had a good relationship with A’s pitching coach Chief Bender, and was looking forward to reporting to 1952 spring training. He was given more chances to pitch in early exhibition games than he had in 1951 and made the Opening Day roster.

Byrd was used sparingly early in the season. He impressed Dykes with a six-inning relief job against Washington on May 10 when he came in to replace an injured Morrie Martin. Dykes rewarded Byrd with a start against the Browns at St. Louis on May 14, but he lasted only three innings, and didn’t get another start until May 27. Byrd came through with a complete-game 7-3 victory – his first major-league win – over the Red Sox at Boston, and Dykes put him in the starting rotation for the rest of the season. The team was 31-37 at the All-Star break, and in sixth place. Shantz was 14-3 and almost single-handedly keeping the team competitive. Byrd was 5-7 overall, but 4-5 as a starter.

The A’s were 48‑38 after the break and finished the season in fourth place. Shantz continued his brilliant season with a 10-4 second-half record, while Byrd was 10-8. Byrd was a workhorse, starting 19 games, relieving in three others, and pitching 155⅔ innings … and asking for more work. “I’ve been lucky, I guess,” Byrd drawled. “Never had a sore arm. My arm’s been tired, understand, but never sore. Luck, I guess.”9

Byrd started five games with only two days’ rest. Two came late in the season. He beat Boston on August 28, giving up three earned runs in eight innings, and on August 31, in the same series in Philadelphia, he shut out the Red Sox 2-0. Then, on September 3 he pitched a one-hit shutout to beat the Yankees, 3-0.

Byrd finished the season with a 15-15 record. He could have been 17-13, but he lost 1-0 at Cleveland on September 11 and 1-0 at New York on September 21. His ERA at the All-Star break was 4.46 in 72⅔ innings pitched, but his second-half ERA was 2.78, bringing his season’s average down to 3.31. Byrd gave a lot of credit for his success to Bobo Newsom, the 19-year veteran pitcher the A’s signed in June after his release from the Washington Senators. Newsom was from Hartsville, just a few miles down the road from Darlington, and the two had a lot in common. “I never could have done it without Newsom,” Byrd volunteered. “He helped me a lot. Bobo was the first to notice that I was rearing back so far that I was letting go of the ball too soon.”10

The A’s had a lot to feel good about – Ferris Fain won his second consecutive batting title with a .327 average; Gus Zernial had another good year, with 29 home runs and 100 RBIs; and Bobby Shantz was voted the league’s Most Valuable Player.

Byrd and his family shared a home with Everett “Skeeter” Kell (younger brother of future Hall of Famer George Kell) and his family during the season. A’s officials suggested he should stay in Philadelphia over the winter to cash in on his reputation, but he moved back to Darlington. “Can’t do it,” he said. “You can’t go huntin’ or fishin’ in Philadelphia like you can down home.”11 More than 200 local supporters attended the Darlington Lions Club “Harry Byrd Night” on October 13. Chamber of Commerce president Kenneth James presented Byrd with a repeating shotgun from the Lions Club. “I hope your eye is as keen on partridge as it is on home plate,” he said.12

In late November the Baseball Writers Association of America announced they had voted Byrd the 1952 American League Rookie of the Year. Byrd tallied nine votes to eight for catcher Clint Courtney of the Browns and seven for catcher Sammy White of the Red Sox. (Three writers from each city in the league served as the electors.) It was a mild surprise. The Sporting News had selected Courtney as Rookie of the Year in its September 24 edition, but it was the third year in a row its choices differed from the official BBWAA voting.

A reporter from nearby Florence caught up to Byrd and his wife, Mary Lee, at a cold Friday-night high-school football game on November 21 to ask him about the award. He wrote that “There probably wasn’t a more surprised man in Darlington yesterday than Harry Byrd. He still wore that dazed look late last night, hours after he had been informed of his selection as the American League’s ‘Rookie of the Year’ for 1952.”13 Byrd said he didn’t think he had a chance to win the award, but seemed more interested in the game between bitter rivals Darlington and Hartsville. Asked what immediate plans he had, Byrd said he had a deer hunt Saturday morning and would be hunting squirrels in the afternoon … just like many other men in the area.

Byrd changed his offseason plans a little, however, and decided to do a little less work in the sawmill. In August he had speculated that the hard physical labor tightened up his muscles too much. “But next winter I think maybe I’ll quit a month earlier, and do a lot of runnin’. I’ve always been slow gettin’ started, and I believe maybe all that sawin’ may tighten me up. I know I’ve always had trouble gettin’ loose.”14 Probably because of the reduced hard physical labor, Byrd came into spring training overweight. Byrd claimed it was only 10 pounds, but manager Jimmy Dykes said it was 20 or more. Harry’s weight was a sore spot between the two all season.

The A’s figured their starting pitching would be strong, and general manager Art Ehlers had made a big trade in December to bolster their offense. The A’s traded their two-time batting champ Ferris Fain and minor-league infielder Bobby Wilson to the Chicago White Sox for Eddie Robinson, a three-time All-Star who had 29 HRs and 117 RBIs in 1951 and 22 HRs and 104 RBIs in 1952, Joe DeMaestri, and Ed McGhee.

The A’s closed out April at 7-6, a far cry from their disastrous 1-8 start in 1952. Manager Jimmy Dykes took advantage of two open dates and three rainouts to start his aces Shantz and Kellner in 10 of the team’s first 17 games. Byrd started three times. The team was 10-7 and in third place after a doubleheader sweep of Chicago on May 3, but then lost seven straight and fell to seventh place. They would remain in sixth or seventh the rest of the season.

Byrd hit bottom on May 10 when he failed to complete the second inning in an eventual 8-0 loss to the Senators. He was 1-4 at the time, with a 6.30 ERA, but steadily improved his record to 9-10 and a 4.20 ERA at the All-Star break. Byrd was a consistent arm for Dykes on a pitching staff full of injuries, including 1952 AL MVP Bobby Shantz, who tore a tendon in his shoulder on May 21. Alex Kellner missed parts of June with shoulder soreness, then fractured a finger on his left hand on August 26 and was lost for the season. Carl Scheib had persistent arm troubles and started only eight games all season

Thus, Dykes had to look for number one and two starters as well as number four. The one constant was Harry Byrd, strolling to the mound every three or four days, sometimes less. Dykes started Byrd three times with two days’ rest in the second half, and once, on September 2, with only one day of rest after a short, four-inning start on August 31.

Byrd beat the Indians 9-3 on July 18, his first start after the All-Star break, pulling his record even at 10-10. But then his season imploded. He lost nine games in a row, and started five others during that streak where he had no decision. He finally broke the streak with a 2-0 shutout of the Browns on September 13. The A’s were in collapse, as well, with a 5-22 record from August 15 to September 9.

Byrd suffered his 20th loss in his last start of the season, on September 22 when the Yankees knocked him out of the box with six runs in 1⅔ innings. He finished with an 11-20 record and a 5.51 ERA in 236⅔ innings pitched. His second-half record was 2-10, with a 7.46 ERA.

It is fair to ask why Dykes kept writing Byrd’s name in the starting lineup. One answer is that he had no choice – the injuries to Shantz, Kellner, and Scheib left him no other options. Another answer is that Dykes and the Athletics still believed that Byrd had major-league stuff. Other teams in the league believed it, too. As soon as the season ended, the league’s scribes began speculating on possible trades, frequently mentioning Byrd. The New York Yankees had an aging pitching staff: Allie Reynolds (36 years old), Vic Raschi (34), Eddie Lopat, (35), and Johnny Sain (35). Byrd was the Yankees’ first choice in the trading marketplace, but Boston, Chicago, and Cleveland were also seriously interested in him, if for no other reason than to keep him away from New York.

There were big changes in the A’s front office on November 2 when Art Ehlers left to become general manager for the new owners of the St. Louis Browns, who were moving the franchise to Baltimore. Connie Mack’s sons Roy and Earle quickly took control of the team and signed infielder Eddie Joost to replace Jimmy Dykes as manager. Dykes was offered a front-office job, but negotiated a release and soon was made manager of the Orioles.

Joost was realistic about the team’s future. “I see no first-division possibilities as we now stand. We have to make some changes – and we will. We’ll trade anybody except Bobby Shantz and maybe Harry Byrd. …”15 He voiced the majority opinion on Byrd, saying that “most people agree that few – if any – have as much on the ball as Byrd.”16

However, the Athletics and Yankees announced a big 13-player trade on December 16. The A’s sent Byrd, Eddie Robinson, Tom Hamilton, Carmen Mauro, and Loren Babe to the Yankees in exchange for Vic Power, Bill Renna, Don Bollweg, John Gray, Jim Robertson, Jim Finigan, two additional players to be named later, and $25,000.17 A’s beat writer Art Morrow wrote that obtaining Byrd and the slugging Robinson practically guaranteed another pennant for Casey Stengel: “ ’Twas the week before Christmas, chuckled New Yorkers, and Santa Claus dropped in early at Yankee Stadium.”18

The Yankees dismissed worries about Byrd’s physical condition. “Byrd is a good, strong pitcher,” Stengel said. “He wasn’t in the best of physical shape much of last season, but did not have a sore arm. He’s experienced and strong and should be a topflight pitcher.”19

The Yankees brought Byrd to New York for a physical in early January. Ordinarily, players are permitted to take physicals in their hometowns, but the team wanted to talk to him about his conditioning. Byrd tried to downplay his weight, insisting that working in a sawmill after the season had already brought his weight down 10 pounds, from 218 to 208. When asked in an interview if he gained weight because he had lost interest over the A’s poor season, Dan Daniel wrote, Harry protested. “No, it wasn’t that. Not exactly.”20 When asked to clarify, Byrd said, “I don’t want to say what it was.”21

Byrd’s reticence and awkwardness gave him a bad reputation with the press, even though his temperament could simply have been the natural result of his rural upbringing. The front-page story in the January 6, 1954, issue of The Sporting News reported on rankings of players on each team by major-league writers. There were 44 categories, ranging from “fastest runner” to “best dressed” to “best all-around athlete.” Byrd was cited as “most temperamental,” “least cooperative with writers,” and “worst dressed.”22 Others were more forgiving. In November 1957, for example, Detroit general manager John McHale claimed many bad reputations were overexaggerated. “We found that with Byrd. Nobody wanted him a year ago because of reports on his behavior. … He gave us less trouble than anyone on the club.”23

Byrd later laid the blame on Jimmy Dykes for pitching him too much in batting practice and making him run too much during the 1953 season. Dykes made a sharp reply. “He wasn’t in shape and I was determined to get him in shape. Too many players are satisfied today to coast along. They don’t have enough drive. I did Byrd a favor and he doesn’t know it. In fact, he asked to pitch batting practice. Now he blames it on the manager, claims it was too much. That’s the bunk.”24

The Yankees sold longtime ace Vic Raschi to the Cardinals on February 23, 1954, opening a spot for Byrd in the rotation. Tom Morgan was also expected to compete for a starting job after spending a year and a half in military service.

Byrd had bad luck while losing his first three starts. He gave up only three earned runs in 17 innings pitched, but the Yankees did not score a run when he was on the mound in those games. He finally won his first game on May 9, pitching seven innings in a 7-4 victory over the Athletics, but tore a muscle in his side in a game on May 14 and sat out two weeks. Then he was plagued several times by attacks of hives, caused by a reaction to some antihistamine shots. Byrd had a 4-5 record, with a 3.96 ERA in 61⅓ innings pitched, at the All-Star break, and had become a spot starter. Six of his 11 starts had been in doubleheaders, when extra starting pitchers were required.

Byrd pitched a complete-game shutout to beat Detroit 6-0 on July 18, his first start after the All-Star Game. In his next start, on July 22, he pitched another complete game to beat Chicago, 11-1. Both games, not surprisingly, were in doubleheaders, but he had worked his way back into the starting rotation. On August 28 he started and pitched six innings in a 4-2 win against Detroit, bringing his overall record to 9-7. Since the All-Star Game he had started nine games, completed four, with a 2.05 ERA and a 5-2 record. At the time the Yankees were 88-40 and 3½ games behind Cleveland, and appeared to be on their way to winning at least 100 games for the first time since 1942.

But Harry made only two appearances the rest of the season. Rookie Bob Grim, on his way to a 20-6 record and Rookie of the Year honors, and Whitey Ford each started five of the team’s final 26 games. Byrd’s fate with the Yankees was foretold when Tommy Byrne, a regular starter for the Yankees in 1949 and 1950, was purchased from Seattle of the Pacific Coast League on September 3, and started five games in September.

Byrd was not surprised when he found that he was traded to Baltimore in a multiplayer deal on November 17, 1954. Harry and Jim McDonald, Willie Miranda, Hal Smith, Gus Triandos, Gene Woodling, and four players to be named later were sent to the Orioles in return for Billy Hunter, Don Larsen, Bob Turley, and four players to be named later. Byrd said he was happy to be traded. “Not that I’m sore at the Yankees or at Casey Stengel or at the organization,” he said. “It’s not that. It’s just that I have to pitch regularly to be effective and I didn’t get that chance to pitch regularly with the Yankees.”25

Byrd started well at Baltimore in 1955, beating the Senators 3-0 on April 23 with a three-hit shutout, but the Orioles placed him on waivers and Chicago picked him up on June 15. He shut out the Senators again, giving up only four hits in a 7-0 win on June 23, but was not very effective the rest of the season. His combined record was 7-8, with 20 starts and a 4.61 ERA in 156⅓ innings pitched.

Chicago traded Byrd to Detroit on May 15, 1956, along with Bob Kennedy and Jim Brideweser in exchange for Fred Hatfield and Jim Delsing. He had pitched only 4⅓ innings in three games at the time. Detroit sent him to their Charleston farm team in the Triple-A American Association, where he spent the rest of the season. Used as a starter there (21 of 24 games) his record was 8-9, with a 4.06 ERA.

Byrd decided to play with Centauros de Maracaibo in Venezuela’s four-team Occidental League over the winter to build up his arm strength. The league played a 57-game schedule from December 1956 to February 1957. Byrd had an 11-7 record with a 2.36 ERA for the third place (28-29) Centauros, and got a lot of work, pitching 156 innings.26

Detroit assigned Byrd to Charleston again in 1957. After several games he was sent down to the Tigers’ Birmingham farm team in the Double-A Southern Association. He was recalled by the Tigers in late June, and pitched two innings in relief only hours after he joined the team in Washington. Although he was a starting pitcher at Charleston and Birmingham, he became a short reliever in Detroit. He pitched in 37 of the team’s 89 remaining games, and had a 4-3 record and a 3.36 ERA in 59 innings pitched.

Byrd appeared to be a key man in Detroit’s bullpen plans for 1958. He was placed on the Detroit 40-man roster in January, but was the last man cut in spring training and returned to Birmingham. In July, Detroit sold the 33-year-old’s contract to Omaha (a Cardinals farm team) in the Triple-A American Association. “Youth has the right of way in the Tigers’ farm system,” said an article in The Sporting News. “When veteran Righthander Harry Byrd was sold by the Birmingham Barons (Southern) to Omaha (American Association), it was announced here [Detroit] that the move was made to give young pitchers more work. Byrd, whose bull-pen work was vital in the Tigers’ fourth-place finish last season, had an 8-11 mark at Birmingham.”27

Harry never made it back to the big leagues. He had an 8-16 record for Miami in the Triple-A International League in 1959, and pitched for Miami and for Portland (Oregon) of the Triple-A Pacific Coast League in 1960. He retired in 1961, after pitching in 21 games for Portland and Hawaii in the PCL.

When it was over, Byrd returned to his roots back in Darlington, where he worked, hunted, and fished with folks he grew up with. He was active in the local VFW, hunters’ clubs, and several baseball alumni organizations, and was a member of the Wesley Memorial United Methodist Church. He returned to work in the lumber business and eventually worked for more than 10 years as a foreman with the R.E. Goodson Construction Company, whose origin was building roads for logging operations. He played some more baseball, too, as player-manager for the Darlington Rebels in the semipro Border Belt League (consisting of eight towns on either side of the South Carolina/North Carolina border).

Harry died after a short illness on May 14, 1985. He left behind his wife, Mary Lee, and two daughters, Pamela and Vicky.

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

Sources

In addition to the sources listed in the notes, the author consulted baseball-reference.com, newspaperarchive.com, newspapers.com, and retrosheet.org, as well as:

Cobb, Bill, and Gene Welborn. Memories of Pelzer 1881-1950 (Bountiful Utah: Family History Publishers, 1995).

Johnson, Lloyd, and Miles Wolff, eds. The Encyclopedia of Minor League Baseball (Durham, North Carolina: Baseball America, 1997).

“A History of the 567th Battalion.” 567thbattalion.com, accessed June 1, 2017.

Anderson County Library, Anderson, South Carolina 29621.

Baseball Hall of Fame Library, Cooperstown, New York, player file for Harry Byrd.

Darlington Historical Commission, Darlington, South Carolina 29532.

Hennepin County (Minnesota) Library: Ancestry Library Edition; ProQuest Historical Newspapers, the New York Times; and ProQuest Newsstand.

Notes

1 Arthur Richardson, “How Harry Byrd Came to Be a Major League Pitcher,” Darlington News & Press, September 27, 1990: One-C.

2 “Statistics About Darlington Class A Baseball Champs of South Carolina,” Florence (South Carolina) Morning News, May 31, 1942: 5.

3 Edgar Williams, “1953’s for the BYRD!,” Baseball Digest, November 1952: 21.

4 Williams: 22.

5 Ibid.

6 Art Morrow, “Wyse Posts First Win – Gets Connie to Up Pay Terms,” The Sporting News, April 12, 1950: 16.

7 Art Morrow, “Hats Off,” The Sporting News, September 17, 1952: 22.

8 Ibid.

9 Art Morrow, “ ‘Get Lost for Awhile,’ Dykes Tells Bobby in Effort to Ease Tension on A’s Ace,” The Sporting News, August 20, 1952: 9.

10 Art Morrow, “Dotted Line Dash of Athletics Finds Bobo Out in Front,” The Sporting News, October 8, 1952: 8.

11 Williams: 23.

12 Arthur Strickland, “Harry Byrd Honored by Darlington Friends,” Florence (South Carolina) Morning News, October 14, 1952: 9.

13 Bob Weirich, “Surprised Byrd Says, ‘Who, Me?’ at AL Rookie-of-Year Selection,” Florence Morning News, November 22, 1952: 1.

14 Morrow, “ ‘Get Lost for Awhile.”

15 Art Morrow, “Joost Plans Player Changes, Few Rules,” The Sporting News, November 25, 1953: 3.

16 Ibid.

17 Daniel, “Champs Now Eyeing Turley or Larsen in Oriole Trade,” The Sporting News, December 23, 1953: 9.

18 Art Morrow, “A’s Given Eight, Including Power, Bollweg and Renna,” The Sporting News, December 23, 1953: 9.

19 Dan Daniel, “Champs Now Eyeing Turley.”

20 Dan Daniel, “Byrd, First Yank to Sign, Denies He’s Overweight,” New York World-Telegram and Sun, January 14, 1954.

21 Ibid.

22 C.C. Johnson Spink, “The Low-Down on Majors’ Big Shots,” The Sporting News, January 6, 1954: 1-2.

23 Watson Spoelstra, “Swap Sewed Up by McHale in Frank’s Absence in Cuba,” The Sporting News, November 27, 1957: 7.

24 “ ‘Byrd Out of Shape,’ Snaps Dykes to ‘Overwork’ Charge,” The Sporting News, March 10, 1954: 20.

25 Van Newman, “ ‘Great to Be Yank, But Not Once-a-Week Kind!’ – Byrd,” The Sporting News, February 16, 1955: 13.

26 Olaf E. Dickson, “Dickens, Hoskins Occidental Loop Bat, Hill Leaders,” The Sporting News, February 20, 1957: 30.

27 “Byrd Sale Points Up Bengal Emphasis on Kids in Chain,” The Sporting News, July 16, 1958: 17.

Baseball is an apt metaphor for life. It’s incredibly complex, with many facets that make sense. And there are also plenty of maddening aspects that are excruciatingly difficult to wrap your head around. The one tendency that is most striking about the game is how unfair it can be at times. Just imagine that you were a participant in a simple trade to benefit both parties, one solid player for another. Yet, as the years go by, you wind up being another player on the bench, an answer to a trivia question in some seedy bar, and — the final touch — a footnote in history.

This must have been what Rick Wise felt if he watched television on the evening of October 21, 1980, as Steve Carlton was charged with the awesome responsibility of pitching the Philadelphia Phillies to their first-ever World Series title. The journey to the doorstep of immortality was an improbable one. The Phillies established themselves as the top club in the National League East from 1976 to 1978, only to lose in the NLCS all three years. In Game Five of the 1980 National League Championship Series, Philadelphia fought back from a 5-2 deficit to clinch the pennant in front of a raucous Houston Astrodome crowd. In Game Five of the 1980 World Series, the Phillies scored two runs off Kansas City Royals relief ace Dan Quisenberry in the top of the ninth inning to go up 4-3 and win the game, thus sending the Phillies back home up three games to two in the Series, with Carlton ready to go.

Where would the 1972 Phillies have been without Carlton? That question may have been answered on the night of October 21, 1980, when Carlton pitched seven solid innings and Phillies fans finally saw their team win its first World Series. Without Lefty the Philadelphia Phillies of his era would be somewhere between here and parts unknown.

Steve Norman Carlton was born on December 22, 1944, in Miami, Florida, the only son of Joe Carlton, an airline maintenance worker, and his wife, Anne. As a boy Steve liked to hunt. One time, while he was rabbit hunting in the Everglades, his rifle jammed so he picked up a rock and from 90 feet away hit a rabbit in the head. He was also known to knock off a line of birds hanging from telephone wires with just a handful of rocks. Once Carlton flung an ax toward a quail that had taken shelter between the branches of an oak tree. With incredible precision, he sliced the head off the bird.

During his teenage years, Carlton became a big believer of the teachings of Eastern philosophy, in particular the writings of Paramahansa Yogananda, who believed that greatness in life can be achieved through meditation. The teachings of the Yogananda and other philosophers played a crucial role in Carlton’s maturation process as a big-league pitcher.

At North Miami High School, Carlton played baseball and basketball. A basketball forward who could outjump most centers, he could also throw a football 75 yards. He had no plans beyond high school and had little to no interest in academia, nor did he have a desire to attend a major university. Even as a young baseball player he showed the signs of the enigmatic superstar that puzzled many throughout his career. His concentration swirled around what was in front of him rather what was around him. In his senior year of high school, Carlton was good enough on the pitching mound that he decided to quit the basketball team and focus solely on baseball.

In October 1963, while attending Miami Dade College, Carlton signed a $5,000 bonus contract with the St. Louis Cardinals. For Rock Hill of the Class-A Western Carolinas League in 1964, he compiled a record of 10-1 with an ERA of 1.03 and struck out 91 batters in 79 innings. In midseason Carlton was promoted to advanced Class-A Winnipeg (Northern League) and then to Double-A Tulsa. Overall, he won 15 games. In 1965 he made the Cardinals roster out of spring training and on April 12, 1965, Carlton made his major-league debut, against the Chicago Cubs at Wrigley Field, facing one batter in a relief role and walking him.

The young left-hander had a very introverted personality, but there was a tinge of brashness to it. One day as catcher Tim McCarver stood shaving in front of a mirror, Carlton walked up behind him, tapped him on the shoulder and said, “You need to call more breaking balls behind in the count.”1 With shaving cream halfway around his face, McCarver looked up at his new teammate and was incredulous as he felt that a young nobody would call him out in front of his teammates. “Who are you to tell me to call more breaking balls behind in the count?” McCarver said. “What kind of success have you had to tell me that?”2

The pairing of McCarver and Carlton was quite interesting. McCarver had a knack for getting close to pitchers, but Carlton was a very stubborn pitcher who would make up his mind beforehand. McCarver was also known to be very headstrong, and the two would often butt heads. McCarver would eventually become Carlton’s personal catcher for the Phillies during the late 1970s.

Carlton saw little action for the Cardinals in 1965 and spent the early part of the 1966 season at Triple-A Tulsa, going 9-5, with an ERA of 3.59. On July 25, the Cardinals summoned Carlton to pitch in an exhibition game during the Hall of Fame festivities in Cooperstown. Facing the defending American League champion Minnesota Twins, the 21-year-old impressed the Cardinals by pitching a complete game and striking out 10 as the Cardinals won, 7-5. Six days later, on July 31, he was in a Cardinals uniform, starting against the Los Angeles Dodgers. In four innings of work he struck out one, walked two, and gave up two runs. On August 5 Carlton started again and got his first major-league victory, over the New York Mets. He tossed a complete game, striking out one, walking three, and yielding only one run. By the end of the season he had made nine starts and won three games. The next season Carlton became a vital piece of the Cardinals rotation, winning 14 games, losing 9, and posting an ERA of 2.98. On September 20 Carlton struck out 16 batters and pitched a complete game but wound up the loser as St. Louis lost to Philadelphia, 3-1, at Connie Mack Stadium. The 1967 Cardinals won the pennant and the World Series, beating the Boston Red Sox in seven games. Carlton started Game Five, pitched six innings, giving up three hits and one unearned run, and took the 3-1 loss.

The most dominant force on the successful Cardinals teams of the 1960s was pitcher Bob Gibson. He was the most competitive and most feared pitcher of his era. He saw the battle between a pitcher and batter as a simple act of survival. Sandy Koufax was Picasso, but Bob Gibson was the Terminator. And Steve Carlton wanted to be just like him. Carlton watched Gibson go about his daily business. How he conducted himself on the mound. From Carlton’s point of view, the pitching mound was Bob Gibson’s office. No one dared to walk into his office. “Steve learned more from Gibson than he did from anybody,” said Tim McCarver. “The way he went about his independent selection of pitches. His refusal to listen to meetings because nobody could pitch like he could.”3

In 1968 Carlton won just 13 games (he lost 11) but was 8-4 at the end of June and was named to his first All-Star team. His mentor, on the other hand, dominated the league with a minuscule ERA of 1.12. In that year’s World Series, Carlton pitched four innings in relief, giving up three earned runs and seven hits as the Detroit Tigers came back from a three-games-to-one deficit to beat the Cardinals.

During an exhibition game in Japan after the season, Carlton decided to test the pitch that was an effective part of Gibson’s arsenal. He would do so against the greatest player in the history of Japanese baseball, Sadaharu Oh. “I had been fooling with a pitch in Japan, after Sadaharu Oh hit two home runs off me, I figured what the heck,” Carlton said. “I threw Oh, a left-handed hitter, the slider. When he backed away and the ball was a strike, I knew I had something.”4

With a new pitch added to his repertoire, Carlton’s 1969 season was his best so far. He won 17 games, losing 11. He had 210 strikeouts 236⅓ innings. Carlton lowered his ERA from 2.99 the previous season to 2.17. His WAR (Wins Above Replacement) was 6.8. He made his second All-Star team. On September 15 he set a major-league record by striking out 19 in a nine-inning game against the visiting New York Mets. Carlton, however, lost the game, 4-3. After the 1969 season, Carlton believed that he earned his way into the conversation as one of the game’s elite pitchers and wanted to be compensated fairly. He asked for a raise in his salary from $26,000 to $50,000 for 1970. The Cardinals had a different view and Carlton missed a significant part of spring training. Then he led the National League with 19 losses (he won 10 games) and his ERA jumped dramatically to 3.73. On May 21 in Philadelphia, he struck out 16 Phillies but lost the game, 4-3.

Carlton’s mechanics were off in 1970. He had taken a break from the slider, the pitch that brought him to the precipice of superstardom. There are conflicting tales as to why he stepped away from the pitch, but one story that sticks out is that the Cardinals cajoled Carlton into not throwing the slider for fear it might hurt his curveball.5

One of the most important people to enter Carlton’s life was a night watchman who was known to people as “Briggs.” During the 1970 season, he was sending Carlton four or five letters a week. Briggs was concerned that Carlton’s lackluster performance on the mound was due to poor concentration. So, he sent him letters that contained snippets of writings from Nietzsche and Schopenhauer. Carlton was aware of the work of the two philosophers but never applied their theories to baseball. One can suggest that for a fan to send his favorite player five letters a week is a strange individual, but Carlton viewed Briggs as anything but strange. He was a spiritual guide who understood that the key to solving the riddle that is a major-league hitter is to develop a mind free from distraction.

With a newfound concentration and focus, Carlton produced his first 20-win season in 1971. A look at the numbers, though, suggests that he had only slightly improved from his mediocre 1970 campaign:

1970: 10-19, 3.73 ERA, 193 strikeouts, 109 walks, 4.2 WAR, 1.372 WHIP, 13 CG

1971: 20-9, 3.56 ERA, 172 strikeouts, 98 walks, 4.1 WAR, 1.365 WHIP, 18 CG

In 1971 Carlton made his third All-Star team. A notable highlight of the season was a 12-strikeout performance against the Los Angeles Dodgers on June 22. Eleven days later he walked 10 batters in a start against the San Francisco Giants. After the season, he again asked for a raise. This time the asking price was for $65,000 per year. Gussie Busch, the Cardinals owner, offered $60,000. Carlton decided to hold out. His holdout, combined with teammate Curt Flood’s refusal to accept a trade to the Philadelphia Phillies after the 1969 season, and the ensuing litigation deeply angered Busch, who felt he had no other alternative but to defend his principle — that he was the owner of the club and had the final say on policy, no matter how unpopular it might be. Thus, he ordered that Carlton be traded.

Carlton was traded to the Philadelphia Phillies for right-handed pitcher Rick Wise on February 25, 1972. The trade didn’t cause an earthquake around the league. Wise had won 75 games to that point in his big-league career while Carlton had won 77. Wise walked fewer batters while Carlton struck out more. Carlton held the major-league record for strikeouts in a nine-inning affair but Wise also had a notable historic performance on June 23, 1971, when he pitched a no-hitter and slugged two home runs against the Cincinnati Reds. McCarver remarked that the deal was “a real good one for a real good one.”6 However, Carlton was incensed that the Cardinals would trade him to Philadelphia. He was so angry that he called the head of the Players Association, Marvin Miller, and asked him what could be done about the deal. Miller gave Carlton two options — accept the deal or retire. Carlton decided to accept the trade.

Carlton set a personal goal of 25 victories that year. He began to throw the slider again. In his second start of the 1972 season, in a battle between student and teacher, Carlton got the best of his former mentor, Bob Gibson, by tossing a three-hit shutout against the Cardinals. He began the season 3-0. On April 25 he had a 14-strikeout performance against the San Francisco Giants, and on May 7 he struck out 13 Giants and upped his record to 5-1. But he then lost five games in a row and on May 30 his record was 5-6. Then Carlton went on a tear, pitching in 19 games with 15 wins and four no-decisions, and on August 17 his record was 20-6. In this stretch, he posted a WHIP of 0.932, and struck out 8.2 batters per nine innings. He hurled five shutouts and tossed 15 complete games.

On October 3 Carlton’s complete-game victory against the Chicago Cubs in Wrigley Field made his season record 27-10. The Phillies finished with a record of 59-97, which made them the cellar dwellers in the National League East. Carlton’s ERA for his remarkable campaign was 1.97. He tossed 30 complete games and hurled eight shutouts. Carlton struck out 310 batters and walked 87 in 346⅓ innings. His WHIP was 0.993 and his WAR was 12.1. Teammate Don Money, a third baseman, posted the second highest WAR on the club, a paltry 1.9.

The most impressive stat from Carlton’s 1972 season was 46 percent — he accounted for 46 percent of the Phillies victories. Carlton was a one-man wrecking crew for the Phillies. Not only was he a maestro on the mound, but he was pretty handy with the stick as well. On April 19 he had two hits off his mentor and former teammate Bob Gibson, as the Phillies beat the Cardinals, 1-0. On July 23 the Phillies beat the Dodgers 2-0 on a two-run triple by Carlton. And on September 28 Carlton had a single and an RBI double as the Phillies defeated the Pittsburgh Pirates, 2-1.

Carlton was the unanimous choice for the 1972 NL Cy Young Award, and he also finished fifth in the MVP voting behind Cincinnati Reds catcher Johnny Bench.

Pittsburgh Pirates slugger Willie Stargell offered the best metaphor to describe Carlton in 1972: “Sometimes I hit him like I used to hit Koufax, and that’s like drinking coffee with a fork.”7

Historic pitching seasons typically come in the context of a club soaring to championship heights. Lefty Grove, Bob Gibson, Sandy Koufax, and Greg Maddux all had such seasons. Carlton’s incredible season was remarkable for many reasons, but the most extraordinary aspect was that while the Phillies were an abysmal failure on a daily basis, he succeeded whenever he got the opportunity. Baseball is a sport centered on the psychology of how players handle failure. Steve Carlton was surrounded by a disastrous Phillies team but he managed extremely well by establishing himself as the best pitcher in the game. He took the ideas put forth by Bob Gibson and turned them into poetry during the summer of ’72.

There was hope that Carlton would deliver an encore performance of his record-breaking 1972 campaign. He started the 1973 season 4-2, but by August 26 he was 11-16 with an ERA of 3.90. There were no memorable highlights to speak of in 1973, but there were a number of lowlights. His best game was a four-hit shutout with 12 strikeouts against the San Diego Padres on May 26. Carlton probably was suffering a tired arm. In ’72 he pitched in 346⅓ innings, the most in his career. After a mediocre 1973, some wondered if he had been a one-season wonder.

Carlton stopped talking to reporters in 1973. Later he would say that speaking to reporters disrupted his concentration and it affected his performance. He never stopped talking to the Philadelphia radio crew, but when he spoke it was only about subjects other than baseball. The silence was so deafening that Braves announcer Ernie Johnson remarked, “The two best pitchers in the National League don’t speak English: Fernando Valenzuela and Steve Carlton.”8

In 1976, Carlton finally found the right mental balance on the mound and won 20 games for a Phillies team that won its first of three straight division titles. He collaborated with trainer Gus Hoefling, who believed in the philosophy that your body is your temple. Under Hoefling’s guidance, Carlton incorporated a grueling training regimen that included martial arts, meditation, and stretching his left arm in a container of rice. Carlton sought to become devoid of emotion. He believed that emotion was subjective and the training was designed to remove any form of distraction that could disrupt his concentration on the mound. The Phillies organization went so far as to build him a $15,000 “mood behavior” room next to the clubhouse. Carlton would sit in this soundproof room and sit on an easy chair staring at a painting for hours. On days off, his teammates would catch Carlton performing martial arts exercises to keep up with his strength training.

On October 9, 1976, Carlton pitched in his first postseason game since the sixth game of the 1968 World Series, as he took the mound for Game One of the NLCS against the Cincinnati Reds. He gave up five runs, four of them earned, struck out six, and walked five in seven innings of work as the Phillies lost 6-3 to Cincinnati. The Reds swept all three games.

In 1977 Carlton won 23 games, made his sixth All-Star team, and won his second Cy Young Award. On August 21, 1977, he struck out 14 as the Phillies beat the Houston Astros, 7-3. Four starts later, Carlton again struck out 14 as the Phillies defeated the Cardinals, 11-4. However, in the 1977 NLCS he was anything but super. In 11⅔ innings of work, including the loss that clinched it for the Dodgers in Game Four, Carlton gave up nine earned runs and had an ERA of 6.94.

In 1978, Carlton produced a 16-13 record for a Phillies team that won its third straight division crown. In 1979, the Phillies fell to fourth place in a tough National League East, but Carlton had a good year. He posted an 18-11 record and made the All-Star team for the seventh time. He pitched two one-hitters. The second was against the Mets on the Fourth of July. The next start, he struck out 14 in a complete-game victory over the Giants.

In 1980 Carlton finally established himself as one the great pitchers in the game. In a year that saw the Phillies fight their way to a World Series title, Carlton produced many incredible highlights. In his fourth start of the year, he pitched a one-hitter against the Cardinals. In his two consecutive starts against the San Diego Padres he struck out 22 in 16 innings. In the 1980 postseason, Carlton went 3-0 with a 2.30 ERA. In the second game of the World Series, against the Kansas City Royals, he gave up 10 hits but struck out 10 and got the win. Carlton returned for Game Six and handcuffed the Royals, 4-1, to help seal the Phillies’ first World Series title.

In the strike-shortened 1981 season Carlton finished third in the Cy Young Award voting behind Dodgers rookie left-hander Fernando Valenzuela.

The next season, 1982, was another banner year for Carlton as he became the first pitcher to win a fourth Cy Young Award. He led all major-league pitchers with 23 wins. He was the leader in strikeouts with 286. He tossed six shutouts and completed 19 games.

In 1983 Carlton posted a record of 15-16 and led the National League in strikeouts with 275 as the Phillies won the National League pennant. In his only World Series appearance, Carlton struck out seven in 6⅔ innings as the Phillies lost Game Three to the Baltimore Orioles, 3-2.

From 1982 to 1984, Carlton competed with Nolan Ryan for the top spot on the all-time strikeout list. The mark to beat was the 3,509 strikeouts of Walter Johnson. Ryan tied the mark on April 27, 1983. With his 3,526th strikeout on June 7, 1983, Carlton surpassed Ryan as the strikeout king. The 1983 season ended with Carlton at the head of the list with 3,709 strikeouts to Ryan’s 3,677. (Eventually Ryan caught up to Carlton and took over as the all-time strikeout king by a considerable margin.)

On September 23, 1983, Carlton went eight innings and got victory number 300, defeating the Cardinals, 6-2. He struck out 12 and picked up his 15th win of the season. By 1985, his skills had diminished considerably. He found himself on the disabled list for the first time in his career with a strain in his rotator cuff. When Carlton was released by the Phillies on June 24, 1986, he was 18 strikeouts short of 4,000. Ten days later he signed with the San Francisco Giants. On August 5 Carlton became the second pitcher to record 4,000 strikeouts as he fanned Eric Davis of the Cincinnati Reds. But his brief tenure with the Giants was mostly unsuccessful, and he was released on August 7, two days after the record strikeout. He went 1-3 with the Giants with a 5.10 ERA. In his only win, he pitched seven shutout innings against the Pirates.

Carlton announced his retirement but it was short-lived. He finished the 1986 season with the Chicago White Sox, going 4-3 with a 3.69 ERA. The White Sox did not offer him a contract for 1987, so he signed on with the Cleveland Indians, where he made history with teammate Phil Niekro as they became the first teammates with 300 wins each to appear in the same game.

The combination was broken up on July 31, 1987, when the Indians traded Carlton to the Minnesota Twins. On August 8, 1987, he got his 329th and final victory as the Twins defeated the Oakland A’s, 9-2. When the Twins won the World Series that year, the team made a customary visit to the White House to receive congratulations from President Reagan. In the photo that was taken of the occasion, all of Carlton’s teammates were listed by name but he was listed as an unidentified Secret Service agent.9

Carlton pitched his final major-league game against the Indians on April 23, 1988. He allowed eight earned runs in five innings of work and was the losing pitcher. Carlton was released by the Twins on April 28 after four games (0-1, 16.76 ERA).

Carlton sought work from another team but found no takers. No one wanted to take a chance on a pitcher who was beyond the twilight of his career. The New York Yankees offered him the use of their training facilities but no spot on their spring-training roster for 1989. He believed that there was a conspiracy by the Twins organization to prevent from ever pitching again. “The Twins set me up to release me by not pitching me and other owners were told to keep their hands off. Other teams wouldn’t even talk to me. I don’t understand it,” Carlton said in a 1994 interview.10 There was no conspiracy. No collusion between teams. Big-league GMs saw what everybody else had seen. Steve Carlton was done.

Carlton retreated to Durango, Colorado, with his wife, Beverly, whom he married in 1965, and spent time riding motorcycles and dirt bikes. He was an avid skier, and devoted hours to poring over his Eastern metaphysical books. His sons Steven and Scott were already grown and living in different states.

And yet, Lefty believed he could still pitch on a major-league level.

In 1994 Carlton was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in his first year of eligibility with 96 percent of the vote. For a man who refused to entertain reporters’ questions for many years, he called a press conference on the day he was elected. For 45 minutes Carlton spoke at great length on numerous subjects including fear. Prior to his formal enshrinement, Carlton made some controversial comments to writer Pat Jordan in which he declared that the last eight US presidents up to that point were guilty of treason, that AIDS was created by the government to eradicate society of gays and blacks, and that the world was being ruled by the Elders of Zion and Jewish bankers. Carlton’s teammate and closest friend Tim McCarver defended him against charges that he was an anti-Semite. “He is a very complicated person and has a hard time being human,” said McCarver.11

The psychology of Steve Carlton the big-league pitcher was one of pure determination to perfect his craft. He turned a simple game of toss between catcher and pitcher into a mental game of chess within himself. When Carlton finally ended his freeze-out of the press, many were confused by the bizarre nature of his comments, but it shouldn’t have come as a surprise. Because of the flawed nature of his introverted personality, Carlton gave the press what he thought they wanted to hear instead of chatting with them on a more personable level. To the press he was a goofy former big-league pitcher content with living a life of isolation in the mountains. To many baseball fans, he was an artist. No one knew the real Steve Carlton.

Nevertheless, when he delivered his Hall of Fame acceptance speech on July 31, 1994, he was greeted enthusiastically by many Phillies fans who had come to pay homage to a man who had provided them with endless amounts of joy during their summers.

In 1998 Carlton and his wife, Beverly, were divorced after 33 years of marriage. That year he was ranked number 30 by The Sporting News among the 100 Greatest Baseball Players. The next year he was a nominee for the Major League Baseball All-Century Team. With his jersey number 32 already retired by the Phillies in 1989, Carlton received another honor as the club unveiled a statue of him outside Citizens Bank Park in 2004.

As of 2017 Carlton was living in Durango. He had reduced his public appearances to charity golf outings and taking part in ceremonial first pitches at Phillies games, the most notable being in 2008, when he tossed out the traditional first pitch prior to Game Three of the World Series between the Phillies and Tampa Bay Rays.

In his 24 years as a major-league pitcher, Carlton finished with a record of 329-244. His career ERA was 3.22. He struck out 4,136 batters, good enough for fourth place on the all-time list. Carlton is the major-league record holder (as of 2017) for pickoffs with 144. He pitched six one-hitters, and started 69 consecutive games in which he pitched at least six innings.

In an interview with Roy Firestone, Carlton was asked, “Why do you think you were put on this earth?”

“To teach the world how to throw a slider,” Carlton replied.12

He was pretty darn good at it.

Last revised: September 1, 2017

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

Sources

In addition to the sources cited in the Notes, the author also consulted Baseball-reference.com, Stevecarlton.com, and the following:

Fimrite, Ron. “Eliminator of the Variables,” Sports Illustrated, April 9, 1973: 82-89.

Notes