For Glenn Abbott, his days in the major leagues were filled with stories and memories and good feelings.

In an interview, the former American League pitcher conjured up a past filled with recollections of warm summer days in big-league cities around the country. And although he played his last major-league game in August 1984 — when the Detroit Tigers cut him after a terrible stretch after the All-Star break — he continued to make his presence felt by coaching up-and-coming young pitching arms.

Abbott’s tale is an interesting one: a leap from being a member of the World Series-winning Oakland A’s of the 1970s to the expansion Seattle Mariners to the impressive Tigers teams of 1983 and ’84.

William Glenn Abbott was born on February 16, 1951, in Little Rock, Arkansas. “When I was a kid, everybody played baseball,” he told an interviewer in 2008. “I always loved it. When I was 14 or 15, we’d ride bicycles over to the baseball fields and would play a little workup or something and then help prepare the field. It’s just what kids did then.

“The Cardinals were big in Little Rock. I can remember when Dick Allen came to Little Rock; he was the first black to play there. I remember Ferguson Jenkins and guys like that who played there. … I’ve always loved it and played the game. This is not a job to me. I really enjoy what I do. It’s my 39th season, and I love it. I like working with the young kids.”1

In his early days with the sport, Abbott played the infield and caught as well as pitched.

That changed when he entered high school. “I realized that I had the chance to go on beyond high-school ball,” he said. “I realized that I had some ability and didn’t want to take a chance of breaking a finger or something like that.”

Abbott played baseball and basketball in high school and had planned to continue with both sports in college. But he was drafted out of high school in the eighth round by the Oakland A’s in June 1969, and signed immediately. He was 18 years old. For a couple of years during the offseason, he attended State College of Arkansas, now called the University of Central Arkansas. He made the big leagues when he was 22.

Starting in the Rookie-classification Northwest League, Abbott quickly worked his way through minor-league ball and made his debut with Oakland on July 29, 1973, when he started against the Texas Rangers. He was taken out in the fourth inning with Oakland leading 4-2, and Texas runners on second and third. (The A’s eventually won, 7-4.)

Though Abbott’s major-league pitching record was just 62-83, with a 4.39 earned-run average, he had his moments. September 28, 1975, the last game of the season, was a good example. Abbott was the second of four pitchers who combined to throw a no-hitter against the California Angels. Abbott pitched one inning and retired the side in order.

Abbott said the A’s were preparing for the playoff series against the Boston Red Sox, and the manager, Alvin Dark, already had decided that Vida Blue would start but pitch no more than five innings. Abbott was slated to pitch the sixth, Paul Lindblad would throw the seventh inning, and Rollie Fingers would wrap things up in the eighth and ninth, regardless of the score.

“When I went out to take the mound in the sixth inning, the home crowd was booing — people were booing,” Abbott said. “But they weren’t booing me. They were booing because Vida Blue came out of the game and he was pitching a no-hitter. I said to myself, ‘Lord, please don’t let me give up a hit.’” And he didn’t.

Abbott pitched for Oakland for four seasons and compiled a 13-16 record with a 4.08 ERA.

His years with the A’s brought a lot of smiles. “I was on a team where you hear all the stuff about how wild they were, with all the fights and stuff. But the players were all-for-one when they were at the ballpark and on the field. They expected to win. In my first year we won the league championship.” Oakland went on to win the World Series as well.

His next stop in an 11-year major-league career was with the Seattle Mariners, when he became the 24th pick in the 1976 expansion draft.

Abbott viewed the change from winning a title in Oakland to moving to an expansion team in Seattle as a positive experience as well.

“I went from a team that expected to win to a team that didn’t have a lot of confidence,” he said. “They thought they could win but weren’t sure. It was a big adjustment. In expansion, you always have a bunch of Triple-A players who never had a chance to play in the majors. It’s a big step to make. If you can play Double-A ball, you can pretty much play Triple-A ball. But they don’t understand the jump to the majors. It’s like daylight and dark. A lot of guys can’t comprehend that.” 

Abbott’s promise was realized in the 1977 campaign, the first of the Mariners’ existence. He compiled a 12-13 record with a 4.45 ERA, fanning 100 batters. He was the longest-serving of the original Mariners players — his last game for Seattle was on August 21, 1983. His record with the Mariners was 44-62 with an ERA that ranged from 3.94 to 5.27.

Abbott missed the 1982 season because of floating bone chips in his elbow. His arm problems were compounded by a serious bout of viral meningitis. He lost 30 pounds, as well as some vision and hearing, and still had repercussions from the illness into June 1983. He was finally able to pitch again in midsummer of 1983.

Abbott was purchased by the Tigers on August 23, 1983, for $100,000, and stayed with Detroit for parts of two seasons.

“Detroit is a good baseball town, and I wanted an opportunity to go to a winning ballclub,” he said during an interview at PGE Park in Portland, Oregon, his baseball home in 2008, where he was the pitching coach for the Portland Beavers, the San Diego Padres’ Triple-A affiliate. “You really appreciate a chance like that. It’s huge to get that opportunity.” 

He was released by the Detroit organization on August 14, 1984, during the height of the championship run to the World Series. Abbott immediately started a coaching career that topped his pitching career for longevity.

Standing 6-feet-6, Abbott had a playing weight of around 200 pounds, and added a few pounds after his coaching career started. To an interviewer, his native Arkansas showed up in his easy drawl: the word “four” became a two-syllable word when it left Abbott’s mouth. 

In talking about the differences between the two leagues, Abbott made a definitive observation about his playing days: “National League umps were far more consistent back then,” he said, though he wouldn’t comment on the current umpiring situation in the major leagues. 

“I wish I could have played in the National League as a pitcher,” he said. “I like the game a lot better. There’s more things going on, more decisions to be made, pitcher having to hit, et cetera. It’s also a better league to pitch in. The designated hitter means that teams like Boston and New York have no weaknesses in the lineup.”

The right-hander’s feelings about his time with the Tigers? “I knew I had a chance to go to a contending ballclub, and you don’t realize how important that is until later. I was very fortunate,” he said. 

He made his Tigers debut on August 27, 1983, pitching seven innings against Toronto and leaving with the scored tied 2-2. His best game for the Tigers that season was a 5-0 shutout of the Cleveland Indians on September 14. His mark with the Tigers in ’83 was 2-1 with a 1.93 ERA in seven starts

“The Tigers made a run in ’83 and came up a game or two short [actually six games behind Baltimore]. I pitched well for them then, with Sparky [Anderson, the manager,] and Roger Craig as the pitching coach. And in ’84, that team started 35-5 and set a record. We set the [American League] record in Anaheim for the most consecutive games won on the road and got a standing ovation. 

“But I was in the bullpen and wasn’t getting a chance to pitch much because the starters were so good. It made it really difficult; it’s difficult to perform at a high level if you don’t get the chance to play. But Jack Morris and Dan Petry and those guys were just dealing.”

Abbott took the second loss of the ’84 season when the Tigers were 16-1 but recalled few details of the 19-inning game in his interview, despite the fact that he committed two errors that contributed to the loss. 

“Two errors? That’s bad. Maybe that’s why I can’t remember,” he said.

During Detroit’s wire-to-wire American League East championship run in 1984, Abbott pitched in 13 games, eight of them starts, with a 3-4 record and a 5.93 ERA before he was cut. His best game that season was a complete-game victory over the Chicago White Sox on July 16, in which he gave up only four hits and one walk.

Abbott had fond recollections of his teammates from that charmed 1984 season, even though it was a truncated one for him.

Of Sparky Anderson, he said: “He didn’t talk to you much. He would say hi, but that’s the way managers were then. I had no problems with Sparky at all. He was a pretty positive guy. He had some good players on the team. It was amazing; those guys came to play. They never even complained about playing charity games against Cincinnati on an offday.”

Roger Craig, the Tigers’ pitching coach during Abbott’s tenure in Detroit, “was one of the most positive people I’ve ever been around. He was always telling you how good you were. You have to be positive with the guys, and Roger was always that way.”

Abbott said Jack Morris, the Tigers’ acknowledged ace throughout the 1980s, “had tremendous confidence. He was probably the best pitcher of that decade — or one of the best, I’ll say that. He was just getting better and better at the time. Jack was a winning-type pitcher. He threw a no-hitter in April in one of the first televised games [of the season] in Chicago. I remember a fan was yelling after every inning, ‘Hey Morris, you got a no-hitter going’ — trying to get him off stride. And about the eighth inning, Jack said back to him, ‘Damn right. Stay right there ’cause you’re gonna see one.’ He was a quality pitcher.”

Dan Petry, considered the number-two man in Detroit’s rotation for most of the 1980s, “didn’t say a lot,” Abbott said, “but he was very consistent. You knew what you were going to get every time you went out there.”

Abbott also had good words for two relievers who not only saved his bacon on more than one occasion in 1984, but that of other Tigers hurlers during the championship season. Guillermo Hernandez, the 1984 AL Cy Young Award winner and Most Valuable Player, “couldn’t do anything wrong,” he recalled. Aurelio “Señor Smoke” Lopez, who notched a 10-1 record and 14 saves in the midst of Hernandez’s spectacular season, “also was very consistent,” Abbott said.

Alan Trammell, Detroit’s shortstop and the World Series MVP in 1984, “was just as solid as they come. He was a ballplayer. He could handle the bat so well. He was underrated at that time. Howard Johnson was coming along at that time, too, playing third base. They were all very professional, and they expected to win. There was a lot of confidence — a good atmosphere to be in.

“Darrell Evans did a good job. It was the end of his career, but he was very consistent and made a tremendous impact on the club. Whitaker and Trammell and Lance Parrish and Kirk Gibson and Dave Rozema — it makes a difference when your players come up together. You’ve got to have talent, but you need chemistry, too, and it all fell together with the Tigers.”

Abbott said he got a ring and a share of the World Series money that year, even though he left the team in August.

“It might have been a three-quarter share; I can’t remember. It just makes you feel good that your teammates appreciate you,” he said.

His time in the majors flew by, but the memories lingered. 

“I had never seen a no-hitter in professional games, and in the first three years I was in the league, I saw one every year, including being involved in the one against the Angels when I was with Oakland. (It was actually four.) The Angels at that time were a bad ballclub, but Vida Blue was on that day. It was just five innings, but he walked through them. 

“I had a chance to play with guys like Catfish Hunter. They made a big impression on me. They were very professional about the way they approached the game.”

One of his greatest thrills was pitching in Yankee Stadium for the first time. “It was really an experience to go see those monuments for the first time. If you love baseball, that is really something. That’s why I hate to see Yankee Stadium moving. It’s one thing that bothers me. There’s so much history. If you think of the people who played there, Yankee Stadium is like hallowed ground. You hate to see that happen, but I understand it when teams have to go to larger parks.

“The dugouts in Tiger Stadium were so small that everybody couldn’t sit down when you came off the field. It was like a bunker in the bullpen.” 

As for Detroit’s fans: “The Tigers have great fans. Everywhere you go you’d hear people talking about the Tigers. Every night they had big crowds. It was really a unique experience. It was really a cool deal there. I really enjoyed that — very much.”

Abbott began a career as a pitching coach with the Little Falls Mets in 1985, the year after the Tigers cut him loose. He spent five years with the Mets’ organization before joining the Athletics. He logged 13 years at various levels with the A’s. Then Abbott was a pitching coach for five years in the San Diego Padres system, and spent four seasons in the Texas Rangers organization. In 2011 he returned to the Mets’ organization, as the pitching coach for the Savannah Sand Gnats of the South Atlantic League. In 2012 he joined the Binghamton Mets of the Double-A Eastern League. As of 2014 he was still with Binghamton.

Abbott was married in 1973. He and his wife, Patti, lived in Arkansas in the offseason, and wherever he was working during the season. The eldest of their three children, Todd, pitched in the Oakland minor-league system from 1995 through 1998 and became a high-school teacher and baseball coach in Bentonville, Arkansas. Their second son, Jeff, also became a teacher, in Bolivar, Missouri. There is also a daughter, Amy.

Sources

The author relied on baseball-reference.com for the statistical data presented in this article.

Notes

1 Clifford Corn interview with Glenn Abbott on April 21, 2008. Unless otherwise indicated, all quotations from Glenn Abbott come from this interview.

Asked about the game over the years, he would repeat, “It was a gift from God.”1 Indeed, it seems it was.

Wilson Álvarez became the fourth youngest pitcher in history to accomplish the feat.2 He was the 13th Chicago White Sox pitcher to throw a no-hitter, and his was the 14th hitless game in franchise history. It was the first for a Venezuelan pitcher. And this was just his second major-league start.

The world of major-league baseball first heard the name of left-hander Wilson Álvarez in July 1989, when the Texas Rangers called him up for a spot start on July 24. In his native Venezuela, Álvarez was already a well-known name, mostly in Maracaibo, his hometown, where he had been in the news since he was a boy starring in the little leagues.

Wilson Álvarez was born in Maracaibo on March 24, 1970, the son of William Álvarez, an upholsterer, and Ada Álvarez, a homemaker. Maracaibo is one of the most baseball-crazy corners of the world, the place where Luis Aparicio became an idol and where every kid dreams about being a major-leaguer. Wilson and his three brothers, William, Walter, and Willy, were no different. (There was also a daughter, Wendy.)

It was Ada who took the time to take her sons to the Santa Lucía Little League field every weekend for games and during the week for practice.

Maracaibo is the epicenter of the Little League system in Venezuela, home to the Coquivacoa Little League, the first Venezuelan league affiliated with the Williamsport, Pennsylvania-based organization. In 1955 Frank Poteraj, an American oil worker, committed to bring organized baseball for boys to the area and founded the league, encouraging the subsequent affiliation of other leagues. As of 2017, 23 of the 37 affiliated leagues in the country actively operate in the state of Zulia, and of the five Latin American teams that have won the Little League World Series title, two have been from Maracaibo.

It was in these challenging and competitive surroundings that Wilson Álvarez grew up, learned baseball, and began to shine. While in Little League between the ages of 11 and 16, he pitched 12 no-hit games, gaining notoriety as a top prospect.

In August 1984 Venezuela celebrated the induction of Luis Aparicio to the National Baseball Hall of Fame. The National Sports Institute issued a commemorative magazine.3 Aparicio’s picture was on the cover and most of the issue was dedicated to his legacy. The last page, however, showed a picture of 14-year-old lefty Wilson Álvarez, who had recently thrown a 21-strikeout no-hitter in a national youth baseball tournament.

Aparicio’s induction in Cooperstown was celebrated on August 11, 1984. Exactly seven years later, and around the same time in the afternoon that Aparicio made his acceptance speech, the kid from the back cover was pitching a no-hitter, and for one of Aparicio’s old teams, the White Sox.

After the hype surrounding his amateur career, the 16-year-old Álvarez was signed on September 23, 1986, by the Texas Rangers as an international free agent and was assigned to Águilas del Zulia of the Venezuelan Winter League. In his first season, he started one game, had nine appearances as a reliever, and allowed 12 runs in 9⅓ innings pitched, finishing his first professional season with a record of 0-1 and an 11.57 ERA.

A couple months after the winter season Álvarez traveled to his first spring training in the United States and was assigned for 1987 to the White Sox’ team in the Gulf Coast League. He posted a record of 2-5, 5.24 in his first 10 starts. He was promoted to the Class-A South Atlantic League, going 1-5 with a 6.47 ERA in six starts for the Gastonia Rangers. He finished his first year with a combined 3-10 won-lost record and a disastrous rate of 5.2 walks per nine innings.

“Those days were tough,” he recalled. “It was tough to adapt to a new culture, new friends, language, food and all. The expectations were high back home and I felt things were not going on the right direction, although I trusted that I could pitch and do my job.”

Álvarez grew to become 6-feet-1 and 175 pounds.

Álvarez was always a very shy person, very quiet. Some people confused his lethargy with laziness. During his first two years in the minors, the results were disappointing, but only in terms of stats – something not overly significant for a minor leaguer; the “stuff” was there. His fastball was lively; he was working on his command, curveball, and slider.

The level of play in the Venezuelan League was higher than rookie ball and Single-A. During those years, a mix of major leaguers and top-ranked prospects made this winter circuit one of the most competitive. It is not a secret that the aim of Caribbean baseball is winning, not on player development as in the minor leagues.

Between 1987 and 1990 Álvarez’s game was getting shaped by the competitiveness of winter baseball. He became a fan favorite with Zulia, a team managed by Manny Trillo in ’87, Pete Mackanin in ’88 and ’89, and Rubén Amaro Sr. in 1990.

In 1989 Mackanin took the team and his star young arm to another level, winning the league title and the 1989 Caribbean Series in Mazatlán, México. Led by catcher Joe Girardi and first baseman Carlos Quintana, the team also featured top-caliber major-league prospects including Phil Stephenson, Cris Colón, Pete Castellano, Eddie Zambrano, and major-league journeyman infielder Angel Salazar.

Playing with bright major-league prospects and for coaches like Trillo, Amaro, and Mackanin helped shape Álvarez’s character. “Zulia was a very competitive team,” he recalled. “Those guys played with hard-core passion for the game and for the franchise. Most of them were hometown locals just like me and it was a matter of pride to win. It was a completely different scenario than what we were seeing in those years in the minors. The Venezuelan League was about passion. It was tough baseball. Many, many good players were there … major leaguers, foreign players, people wanted us to win and there was a lot of pressure and fun and they had confidence in me, which I always appreciated.”

The Rangers sent Álvarez to Triple-A Oklahoma City for a brief stint in 1988, but he spent most of the season with Class-A Gastonia, where he was 4-11 but recorded a 2.98 ERA. He started 1989 in the Florida State League for the Port Charlotte Rangers, where, going 7-4 with a 2.11 ERA in the first half of the season, he showed at age 19 that his three years of professional experience were really paying off. His strikeout-to-walk ratio improved and his curveball and changeup command was effective after coming back from the Winter League. He was promoted to Double A, joining the Tulsa Drillers of the Texas League the first week of July.

The big-league club was challenging Oakland in the divisional race and after several years the White Sox had a shot at the postseason. They knew their farm system was loaded with great talent from Latin America thanks to the labors of assistant GM Sandy Johnson.

Rangers general manager Tom Grieve decided to start showing off his talent pool by calling up players who could either help or become fodder for trades. In June the White Sox called up 20-year-old Dominican outfielder Sammy Sosa. And on July 24, after just three weeks in Tulsa, Álvarez was called up to start against the Toronto Blue Jays in place of the injured Charlie Hough. The 19-year-old became the first player born in the 1970s to play in the major leagues.

Álvarez’s first pitch, to Junior Félix, was a strike. On his fifth pitch, Félix hit a single to center field. Tony Fernández was up next and he hit a home run to left. On a 2-and-2 count, Kelly Gruber went back-to-back deep to center field. George Bell walked. Fred McGriff got four balls in a row. Manager Bobby Valentine took Álvarez out of the game, bringing in Dominican veteran Cecilio Guante in relief.

The rookie departed after facing five batters and surrendering three hits and two walks for three runs. Having recorded no outs, he carried an earned-run average of infinity.

“Most people thought (calling up Álvarez) was because (White Sox GM Larry Himes) was at the game,” Grieve told the Chicago Tribune. “The purpose of that callup was to win that game and he was the best one we had for that job.”4

“They called me up to show me so they could trade me,” Álvarez declared. “I was devastated. I thought it was going to be almost impossible to get back to the majors. The next day they sent me down back to Tulsa and the day after they told me I was traded to the Chicago White Sox.”

Álvarez took the news badly. His confidence was hurt. The Rangers needed to add a veteran bat for the rest of the season and the White Sox were an aging team with a poor farm system. Chicago sent veteran All-Star Harold Baines and Venezuelan infielder Fred Manrique to Texas for Álvarez, skinny outfielder Sammy Sosa, and infielder Scott Fletcher.

A few days later Álvarez was pitching for the Birmingham Barons of the Double-A Southern League. He pitched just six more games the rest of the season and then returned to Zulia, where his confidence returned with the comfort of playing at home.

The 1990 season offered a fresh start for the lefty and after his solid performance in Venezuela he was sent to Triple-A Vancouver. That year he married Daihanna, who was pregnant; he started the season with a record of 7-7 and an ERA of 6.00. He was demoted to Double-A Birmingham by midseason.

On the personal side, his wife gave birth prematurely to their first child, a boy. After complications from a pulmonary infection, the baby died on August 11, just five days old.

“That was hard. We were so excited for the birth of the baby. I couldn’t concentrate on baseball. Losing a child was something we couldn’t understand and we were both so young and hopeful that all was going to be fine with my career, our family. But it wasn’t.”

Álvarez finished the season with seven more starts in Double A, going 5-1 and improving his ERA to 4.27. Birmingham pitching coach Rick Peterson helped him face his emotional struggles.

By spring training of 1991 Álvarez was coming off his best season in winter ball, having gone 3-3 in nine starts for Zulia with an ERA of 1.38, establishing himself as one of the top hurlers of the circuit at the age of 20. He looked like a veteran on the mound and was ready to prove to the White Sox that he belonged in the majors. His fastball was in the mid-90s, and he had better command of his slider and curveball. The White Sox assigned him again to Birmingham and after 23 starts, he was 10-6 with a 1.83 ERA and 165 strikeouts in 152⅓ innings. The stuff was there and the moment to return to the majors was getting close. The White Sox were reshaping their team, and Álvarez was in their plans.

To ensure that Álvarez was fit for the job, the White Sox called him up on August 11. He would face the Baltimore Orioles that Sunday afternoon at Memorial Stadium. It was his second major-league start.

“I couldn’t believe I was getting back and pitching on the same day when we lost our baby,” he said. “I had a million things on my mind, I was nervous because I was afraid that I was not going to be able to make an out like in 1989. I didn’t know what to think or do because of the chance to pitch back on this level. When we arrived on the bus to the ballpark I realized I had left my bag with all my clothes and equipment at the lobby of the hotel. The team sent a person to get my stuff where my wife was waiting. When the bag arrived I got dressed and ran to the bullpen with the belt on my hand to prepare for the game and only was able to warm up for a half-hour.”

That afternoon the baseball gods were behind Álvarez. Facing a tough Orioles lineup with hitters like Cal Ripken, Randy Milligan, Chris Hoiles, and Dwight Evans, he managed to make outs step-by-step, with his solid fastball, circle change, slider, and splitter. Everything worked just fine. The White Sox scored twice in the top of the first and Álvarez struck out the side, all three swinging, in the bottom of the inning. The White Sox scored two more runs in the second, and after walking Dwight Evans in the second, Álvarez resumed mowing Baltimore batters down. The next baserunner reached on a walk in the sixth. Álvarez walked five batters in all, and his catcher, Ron Karkovice, made an error in the seventh, but Álvarez didn’t give up a hit. The White Sox defense did its part with a memorable sliding catch in the seventh inning by center fielder Lance Johnson that helped preserve the gem. Álvarez had himself a no-hitter.

“He didn’t realize he was there,” recalled teammate and countryman Ozzie Guillén. “I’d heard about his performance in the little leagues in Venezuela and in Chicago we knew him as the kid we got in the Harold Baines trade. I never got to actually know him until that day when we needed a pitcher and he came over for a start. I always think that he didn’t believe he was pitching that day and he just let go all his talent from the mound.”5 It was a historic achievement for a Venezuelan pitcher. The whole country watched the game on television and the no-hitter became a national storyline of pride and greatness – a mark for a whole generation.

For the next seven days, every major newspaper in Venezuela sold out their advertising pages to one company or another, each congratulating Álvarez for his game. Even a month after the game, the congratulatory messages were around – billboards in streets with his picture and graffiti on walls with thank-you messages. Everybody was part of the celebration.

Álvarez was the second major-league pitcher to hurl a no-hitter in his second major-league start. He stayed with the White Sox for the rest of the season and established himself in the pitching rotation. He ended his major-league season with a record of 3-2 in nine starts, with a 3.51 ERA.

After his no-hitter, Venezuelan fans followed every game that Álvarez pitched over the next 12 years, hoping to see another no-hitter. It became part of the fan psyche.

After the season Álvarez went back to Venezuela to pitch for Zulia and was received as a hero in his hometown. For Zulia he became the first winner of the pitching Triple Crown, leading the league in wins (8-0), ERA (1.47), and strikeouts (64). He was named the Pitcher of the Year and led the Águilas to the league championship and a spot in the 1992 Caribbean Series.

After his 8-0 record and extraordinary year of 1991, Álvarez became better known as El Intocable (The Untouchable).

Álvarez started the 1992 season as a reliever for the White Sox but he struggled, in large part due to a walk rate of almost six per nine innings. He joined the rotation in mid-June and ended the season with an ERA of 5.20, starting only 9 games out of 34 appearances. That winter he returned to Venezuela; he pitched six games with a 4.08 ERA.

By this time, major league baseball had become more and more aware of the workload of Latin players and began limiting performances in winter ball for key players. The White Sox saw Álvarez as an important part of their plans, and fans in Venezuela had to adjust to seeing fewer major-league stars.

“I wanted to pitch every year and all season in Venezuela,” said Álvarez. “The (White Sox) considered that pitching in Venezuela was a risk, but also necessary to keep in shape during the off months. For me it was a continual growing but also a matter of pride, to be able to pitch in front of my family and friends and for the team who gave me so much. Even with limitations, I tried by all means to pitch back home.”

Álvarez was excited to pitch in “El Juego de la Chinita,” a celebratory game honoring the Virgin of Chiquinquirá, the patron of Maracaibo. This game has been played on November 18 since 1933; Luis Aparicio made his debut in professional baseball in El Juego in 1953, playing for Gavilanes.

“It was special to pitch that day. It’s a spiritual thing. It’s the energy of the fans. The ballpark is packed with over 25,000 people all excited and being part of the celebration that embraced the city. Those games were special and it was an honor for me and for my family to be in the center of the mound representing what we are,” Álvarez said.

In 1993 Álvarez was a full-time starter for the White Sox alongside Jack McDowell (Cy Young Award winner in 1993), Cuban-American prospect Alex Fernandez, and Jason Bere. This quartet won 67 out of the White Sox’ 92 victories as they clinched the AL West. Álvarez (15-8) led the starters with a 2.95 ERA.

The White Sox advanced to the ALCS, against Álvarez’s nemesis, the Toronto Blue Jays, who won the first two games of the series. Álvarez took the mound for Game Three.

“It was a huge game for me, for all people behind me, and I always remembered when I could not record an out in 1989. It was the time to be the face of my team and step up,” he said.

Álvarez threw a real gem, a complete-game 6-1 win at SkyDome, allowing only seven hits and two walks. The win lifted morale and Chicago won the next game, but couldn’t contain the Blue Jays’ offense in the final two games. The Blue Jays won the ALCS and followed with a World Series victory over the Philadelphia Phillies.

In 1994 Álvarez was named to the American League squad for the All-Star Game. He pitched the bottom of the eighth inning, retiring the side in order. For the season he was 12-8, 3.45.

Álvarez spent 1995 and 1996 as a solid member of the White Sox rotation, starting 64 games. He improved his strikeout-to-walk rate and won 23 games (8-11 and 15-10, with ERAs of 4.32 and 4.22).

At the July trading deadline in 1997, Álvarez was 9-8 with a 3.03 ERA. The White Sox looked revamp the team with a younger roster. It was Álvarez’s final year before free agency. Rather than lose Álvarez the White Sox traded him to the San Francisco Giants along with pitchers Danny Darwin and Roberto Hernández in a nine-player deal.

“I was not comfortable with the Giants,” Álvarez said. It was a difficult change switching leagues. I struggled. I never felt comfortable in the dugout. Roberto and I got into a place where we never felt totally welcome. Barry Bonds was not the nicest person in the world and he was the leader of that clubhouse. Overall it was not a good experience.”

During his time with the White Sox, Álvarez was 67-50 but lost 30 games in which the team scored two or fewer runs. After his stint with the Giants he became one of the most sought-after lefties in baseball. The New York Yankees were a top contender for his services, but he chose to sign with the expansion Tampa Bay Devil Rays for five years and $35 million.

Álvarez said, “Signing with Tampa Bay was a decision my family and I took. We stayed living in the Sarasota area after signing with the White Sox and being close to home was the most important factor in place. My daughters were going to school and I was just several miles from the new ballpark. They also offered me the chance of being the number-one starter in the rotation. It was a new challenge and I took it.”

Álvarez became the first starter in the Devil Rays’ history and threw the first official pitch at Tropicana Field. But his season didn’t go as planned. He ended up with a 6-14 record and an ERA of 4.73. Again run support was lacking, perhaps understandably on an expansion team. Álvarez felt some pressure from fans who were expecting a solid performance from the new team and their highly-prized free agent.

Tampa Bay was an inconsistent team. The Devil Rays had signed big names such as Álvarez, Roberto Hernández, sluggers Fred McGriff and José Canseco, and future Hall of Famer Wade Boggs. The rotation was not deep and the bullpen was inconsistent, and the team finished with a 63-99 record. The Devil Rays improved to 69-93 in their second season. Álvarez was 9-9 (4.22).

Álvarez came back to Venezuela and played winter ball in 1999, winning some key games for Zulia, including five games in the postseason that helped the team reach the finals. Zulia won the title, Álvarez’s fourth title with the team. He pitched the opening game for the 2000 Caribbean Series, but lost the game on unearned runs.

When the 2000 season arrived, expectations were high for the Devil Rays but injuries plagued their roster. Five days before the start of the season, Álvarez was placed on the disabled list with shoulder tendinitis.6 He had to undergo arthroscopic surgery. The 18-month rehab process cost him two seasons; he pretty much had to learn again how to throw a baseball. Returning to the field in 2002, he was able to pitch in only three games before June.

“It was the most frustrating time of my life” Álvarez said. “I didn´t think it was too bad at the beginning but then the recovery was not progressing and the surgery was the option. It was hard for me because I wanted to show fans in Tampa that I could bring something for the team, but my condition was not there. I had to relearn how to pitch, how to gain velocity, how to move my arm. The process is long and painful and sometimes you feel like quitting, but my family supported me at all times to go back and compete. I gave everything I could to Tampa Bay, but the injury came in a very wrong time for me and for the team. I understand the frustration of fans and the organization.”

In 2002 Álvarez was able to pitch only 75 innings in 23 games; it was more of a process to regain confidence in his pitches and to work on a change of approach. He was no longer the power lefty and was about to become a specialist. He had to rely more on location.

By the end of the season Álvarez had reinvented himself as a pitcher, with a fresh shoulder, but the Devil Rays released him. He signed with the Los Angeles Dodgers who planned to use him as a reliever. He turned in a solid performance, posting a record of 6-2 with a 2.37 ERA in 21 games, assuring himself a spot in the bullpen as a lefty specialist and occasional starter. In 2004 he pitched in 40 games, 15 of them as a starter.

After signing a new free-agent contract with the Dodgers after the 2004 season, Álvarez was set back again with shoulder injuries in 2005 and on August 1 he opted for retirement instead of another surgery.

On December 30, 2005, Álvarez pitched one last time for Zulia, taking the mound before a handful of fans in Maracaibo with the team eliminated from contention. He wore his number-47 jersey for the last time and retired the side in one inning of work. It was a sentimental afternoon in honor of a local boy who had reached the highest levels of the game.

After Álvarez’s no-hitter, five more Venezuelan-born pitchers (as of 2017) pitched no-hit games: Anibal Sánchez in 2006 for the Marlins, Carlos Zambrano in 2008 for the Cubs, Johan Santana in 2012 for the Mets, Félix Hernández, a perfect game in 2012 for the Mariners, and Henderson Álvarez in 2013 for the Marlins. (The list should be six: Armando Galarraga lost his perfect game for the Tigers in 2010 when umpire Jim Joyce incorrectly called a batter safe at first base.7) For each one of these pitchers, Wilson Álvarez was an inspiration due both to his successful 14-year major-league career and the impact the no-hitter had in a baseball crazed-country.

Wilson Álvarez was the first Venezuelan pitcher with over 100 wins in the major leagues, compiling a record of 102-92 with a 3.96 ERA in 355 games. He made the All-Star team in 1994. In Venezuela he pitched for 12 seasons with a record of 29-18 and a career ERA of 2.49. He was elected to the Venezuelan Baseball Hall of Fame in 2011 and the Caribbean Series Hall of Fame in 2010.

After retiring Álvarez became the pitching coach for the Gulf Coast League Orioles (Rookie) near his residence in Sarasota, Florida. He and his wife, Daihanna, had three daughters, Vivianna, Vanessa, and Valentina. He has returned to the Venezuelan League as a pitching coach for Caribes de Anzoátegui and Águilas del Zulia, where he remained a fan favorite and an icon of the team, being part of four of the five titles in the history of this franchise.

Álvarez reflected, “When you retire it is like all that attention that you had, is gone, from one day to another and it never comes back. So another stage of your life begins and you discover it while still being young.”8

In the 2016-17 season, Álvarez as pitching coach helped guide a young staff to a solid season. Zulia went to the finals for the first time since 2000 and won the title in six games over Cardenales de Lara. In the Caribbean Series the team lost to the Criollos de Caguas of Puerto Rico in the semifinals.

Álvarez’s number-47 jersey remained one of the top sellers among fans, and on December 14, 2016, the team officially retired his number.

“This is the most important moment of my life because I’m here with my family, my teammates, my friends and my beloved team,” Álvarez responded.9 His parents and siblings were at the ceremony, after which he threw out the ceremonial first pitch.

Álvarez established a music label, “47Music,” run by his wife, to support new artists in the Latin Pop genre.

Despite the passage of time, new generations of fans in Venezuela still hear the echoes from August 11, 1991, when a country shouted together: “Wilson threw a no-hitter!”

From Álvarez: “It was a gift from God.”

Sources

This article draws on personal interviews and both on- and off-record conversations with Wilson Alvarez between 1995 and 2017.

The author also consulted ¡A La Carga!, the official magazine of Águilas del Zulia (Maracaibo, Venezuela: Tripleplay Sports Productions, 1997-2002), Baseball Zone (Maracaibo: Tripleplay Sports Productions, March 2001), Diario Panorama (Maracaibo) and the Dallas Morning News.

Notes

1 All quotations by Wilson Álvarez are from interviews with the author unless otherwise attributed.

2 The younger ones were Amos Rusie (7,367 days), John Ward (7,411 days), and Vida Blue (7,725 days.) Alvarez was 7,810 days old.

3 Revista IND. (Caracas, August 1984).

4 Alan Solomon, “Alvarez: The Making of the Sox’ No-Hit Kid,” Chicago Tribune, August 13, 1991: B1.

5 Conversation with Ozzie Guillén about Álvarez’s no-hitter, March 24, 2017.

6 articles.latimes.com/2000/apr/01/sports/sp-14936.

7 See Andres Galarraga and Jim Joyce, with Daniel Paisner, Nobody’s Perfect (New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 2011).

8 eljuegoperfecto.blogspot.com/2010_01_01_archive.html.

9 noticiaaldia.com/2016/12/wilson-alvarez-este-es-el-momento-mas-importante.

Barber was anointed as the majors’ fastest pitcher before he appeared in a regular-season game. He was the first 20-game winner in the modern history of the Baltimore Orioles, but his arm went bad before the team grew into the powerhouse of the American League. After leaving Baltimore, he latched on with eight other teams, proving that a left-hander with a live fastball and a pulse can always find work. A charter member of the doomed Seattle Pilots, he was depicted in Ball Four as a man who wouldn’t lead, follow, or get out of the way.

Stephen David Barber was born on February 22, 1938, in Takoma Park, Maryland, just outside Washington, and grew up nearby in Silver Spring. His father, Stanley, a post-office clerk at the time of the 1940 census, was killed in a tractor accident when Steve was 15.1 His mother, the former Helen Johnson, worked as a secretary and moved in with her parents to raise Steve and his younger brother, Richard.

The girls at Montgomery Blair High School thought Steve looked like the actor Paul Newman, with his wavy hair and blue eyes.2 Big-league scouts thought he looked like a prospect when he went 8-0 and pitched a no-hitter as a senior. But Steve followed his mother’s wishes and went to the University of Maryland.

That didn’t work; he quit midway through his freshman year. “I dropped out of Maryland before I flunked out,” he said.3 The Orioles’ area scout, Walter Youse, heard that Barber was on the loose and gave him a train ticket to the club’s minor-league spring camp at Thomasville, Georgia, in March 1957.

The camp was a cattle call for hundreds of hopefuls trying out for nine farm clubs. Barber, wearing uniform number 285, stood out from the herd well enough to win a contract. He signed for $500, plus $50 for bus fare home to visit his family before he reported to Class D ball in Paris, Texas.

Barber was stuck in Class D and C, the basement of the minors, for three years. He found his way from Paris to Dublin, Georgia, to Aberdeen, South Dakota, to Pensacola, Florida, but he couldn’t find home plate. He walked 446 in 477 innings. He also struck out almost one batter per inning, explaining why the Orioles didn’t give up on him.

“By ’59 I’d been screwed around for three years,” Barber said. “No one would work with me or teach me anything that would give me any control.” He became so frustrated that he stormed out of spring training in 1958 and went home briefly. His Pensacola manager, Lou Fitzgerald, once told him, “I don’t care if you walk five hundred guys, you’re pitching nine innings tonight.” When Barber walked the bases loaded in the first, Fitzgerald came to the mound to say, “Well, you’ve got four hundred ninety-seven to go.”

Barber was wild after hours as well. He and Pensacola teammates Bo Belinsky and Steve Dalkowski made up a trio of hard-throwing, hard-partying lefties. Somebody labeled them “The Lost Boys.” They all drank, but nobody could keep up with Dalkowski, who was even faster and much wilder than Barber on and off the field.

Harry Dalton, an assistant in the Orioles’ front office, told Barber,“I hear you have an attitude problem.” Barber replied, “It seems to me that if I make it, it’s all well and good for you, but if I don’t it’s no big deal because you don’t have any money invested in me.”4

Near the end of the 1959 season, another Orioles executive, Eddie Robinson, watched Barber pitch and brought him to Baltimore to work out in September. Manager Paul Richards liked what he saw and asked, “How come I never heard of you?” The cheeky busher answered, “Probably because I’m not one of your fucking bonus babies.”5 Barber took his case to general manager Lee MacPhail and demanded to be sent to the fall instructional league in Florida, where the Orioles polished their top prospects. Barber told the boss, “Mr. MacPhail, if you send me down there to play for [Orioles coaches] Luman Harris and Harry Brecheen this winter, there won’t be any more minor-league ball for me.”6

Barber got his way. In Florida Brecheen worked with him to tweak his delivery and perfect his slider. On a cold, windy afternoon Richards sat in his car with the heater running and watched Barber buzz through a lineup of the Milwaukee Braves’ best prospects. “The ball was just singing,” teammate Boog Powell remembered. “He’s breaking bat after bat.”7 Richards said, “I think we found our left-hander for next year.”8 The lost boy from Class D had been discovered.

Barber continued to break bats in spring training in 1960, even when he was pitching batting practice. Orioles outfielder Jackie Brandt said, “Barber threw a shot put,” a heavy sinking fastball that tailed away from right-handed hitters.9 He featured a slider and an occasional changeup, but never developed much of a curve. In an exhibition game he shut out the mighty Yankees for four innings, striking out Yogi Berra twice and Mickey Mantle once.

A photographer for This Week, a Sunday newspaper supplement, came to Florida on an assignment to find the fastest fastball. Mantle and Bill Skowron of the Yankees urged him to check out the Orioles’ kid lefty. Radar guns did not yet exist, so the photographer used a high-speed movie camera to time six fireballers. Barber registered 95.55 mph, outpacing the big-name pitchers: Don Drysdale, who also topped 95, Sandy Koufax, Ryne Duren, Herb Score, and Bob Turley.10

The Orioles had never had a winning record in their first six seasons after the St. Louis Browns moved to Baltimore, but they had been building a strong farm system. In 1960 Richards and MacPhail decided to place their bets on the kids. Three rookies – first baseman Jim Gentile, second baseman Marv Breeding, and shortstop Ron Hansen – joined the 23-year-old “veteran” Brooks Robinson in the infield. A fling of young pitchers called the Kiddie Korps included Barber and right-handers Milt Pappas, Chuck Estrada, Jack Fisher, and Jerry Walker. Estrada was the oldest at 22, a week older than Barber.

In his first major-league game, on April 21, Barber gave up three runs to the Washington Senators before he was relieved in the fifth, but two of the runs were unearned. Richards said he was a victim of bloop hits. Three days later at Yankee Stadium, New York pounded out a 12-0 lead in the first two innings. Richards called on Barber to mop up. He held the Yankees scoreless for four innings, allowing only a single to Berra. In his next start he beat the Boston Red Sox with a complete-game six-hitter. He was a sensation, the unknown who rocketed from Class D to the majors. Baltimore fans embraced the Maryland boy as a hometown hero.

Barber showed typical rookie inconsistency, going more than a month without a victory before he faced the Kansas City Athletics on July 28. He walked five in the first five innings. Hank Bauer delivered Kansas City’s first hit in the sixth. Barber allowed no more baserunners and finished a one-hitter with 10 strikeouts. On September 11 he held the Athletics scoreless through eight innings, but loaded the bases with two away in the ninth. Richards summoned a reliever to get the final out. Barber, denied his shutout, pitched a tantrum, throwing equipment around the clubhouse. That fire was just what the manager liked to see. “I was proud of that boy,” Richards said. “I told him he could knock down all the lockers he wants to as long as he battles them on the mound, too.”11

The young Orioles shoved their way into the pennant race. On September 16 they trailed the Yankees by just .001 in the standings when Barber opened a series in New York against Whitey Ford. The Baby Bird walked seven and gave up two home runs while Ford shut out the Orioles until the ninth. The Yankees swept the four-game series, killing Baltimore’s pennant hopes. The Orioles finished second, the best showing in their short history. It was a turning point for the franchise.

Barber ended his first year with a 10-7 record and 3.22 ERA, though he led the league in walks and wild pitches. He made The Sporting News all-rookie team along with Estrada, Gentile, Breeding, and Hansen, who was voted Rookie of the Year.

Newly married in the spring of 1961, Barber shut out the Minnesota Twins in his first start, then added two more shutouts by the end of May. He continued to pile up victories and scoreless innings, but his control still deserted him occasionally. On August 13 he slogged through 11 innings against Boston, walking 11 and striking out the same number, before an error by the Red Sox pitcher let in the winning run. Barber’s wife, Ann, keeping score in the stands, counted 193 pitches. Boston’s Pete Runnels, the reigning batting champ, said Barber had the best stuff in the league: “He knocks the bat right out of your hand.”12

After a slow start, the Orioles got hot in July and stayed that way. They won 95 games, but couldn’t catch the Yankees and Tigers. Barber turned in a sparkling sophomore season, finishing 18-12, 3.33. He tied for the AL lead with eight shutouts, two of them over the Yankees, and opponents batted just .217 against him. But he and Estrada walked the most batters in the league.

Real life intruded on Barber’s blossoming baseball career. After the Berlin Wall was erected in August 1961, President Kennedy called 148,000 military reservists to active duty. Like many ballplayers, Barber had secured a spot in the reserves to avoid being drafted for two years’ service. He reported to Fort Bragg, North Carolina, as soon as the baseball season ended, and just before American and Soviet tanks faced off on opposite sides of the wall in one of the most perilous moments of the Cold War.

Barber’s first child, Steve Jr., was born while he was serving his country driving an Army trash truck. The reservists’ orders said they could be held on active duty for up to a year, so the Orioles made plans to use Barber as a weekend pitcher in 1962, whenever he could get a pass. He squeezed in three weeks of spring training while on leave, then began flying each weekend from Fort Bragg to where the Orioles were playing.

An extra day or two of rest seemed to agree with Private First Class Barber. He won his first three starts and was 4-2 at the end of May. But he faltered during a 25-day furlough in June (was the baby keeping him awake?) and stood at 6-6 when the Army released him on July 9. He won his ninth game on the 28th; a week later he was in a hospital with mononucleosis. That effectively ended his season.

The Orioles failed to build on their success of 1960 and ’61. Richards had left to join the expansion Houston Colt .45s, and the amiable Billy Hitchcock replaced him. The young players reacted as if they had been let out of jail with the departure of the stern Richards. Outfielder Barry Shetrone said there was no discipline and much drinking. Barber and Estrada argued with Hitchcock when he came to the mound to relieve them. The club dropped from 95 wins to 85 losses and finished seventh. After the season GM MacPhail got rid of several of the playboys and traded for the veteran Luis Aparicio to play shortstop and bat leadoff. But he kept the manager.

Baltimore started strong in 1963, and so did Barber. His record was 12-5 by the end of June and he made his first All-Star team, but passed up the game because of a calf injury. Ann fed him a steak, french fries, and salad before every start. One day she substituted green beans, and he lost.

As the Orioles fell back to finish fourth, Barber kept winning without the beans. He beat the Angels on September 18 for his 20th victory, the first 20th-century Oriole to reach that milestone. His walks declined and his strikeout rate rose. His 2.75 ERA was eighth best in the league. The club rewarded Barber with an $8,000 raise to a reported $26,000.

Baltimore got a new manager in 1964: Hank Bauer, a mainstay of the Yankees dynasty whose biography always includes the words “tough” and “ex-marine.” Barber landed in Bauer’s doghouse early when he sat out three weeks with a sore back. After he recovered, his control was poor and he was serving up home runs because his sinker wasn’t sinking.

The Orioles spent most of the season in first place, but Barber blamed himself for losing the pennant. He lost five of his last six decisions. The truth was that the Yankees got hot in September to nose one game ahead of the White Sox and two up on the Orioles. Barber was pitching in bad luck down the stretch; he lost three games while giving up a total of five earned runs. Still, his 9-13, 3.84 record looked like failure.

By this time Steve and Ann Barber had divorced­. Steve married his second wife, Patricia, in January 1965. He regained his control and his sinker to go 15-10 with a 2.69 ERA, the lowest of his career to date. But he was still frustrated by Bauer’s quick hooks; he completed only seven of 32 starts.

The Orioles won the 1966 pennant on December 9, 1965, the day they acquired Frank Robinson from Cincinnati. Robinson won the AL Triple Crown, giving the club the slugger it needed. More important, he became the indispensable leader. With Robinson setting the tone, Barber said, “It was the closest knit group I’ve ever been around.”13

By the All-Star break the Orioles were turning the pennant race into a runaway. Barber was the ace of the pitching staff, leading the league with a 10-3 record and a 1.96 ERA. Then his arm gave out. He pitched only 14 innings after the break. The diagnosis was elbow tendinitis, and the pain dogged him for the rest of his career.

On the last day of the season Barber and 21-year-old right-hander Wally Bunker started a doubleheader to audition for a World Series start. Barber walked the bases loaded in the second and was relieved. Left off the Series roster, he watched from the stands as the Orioles swept the heavily favored Los Angeles Dodgers. “The biggest thrill of my career was being part of that team,” he said later. “Also the biggest disappointment, not getting to pitch in the World Series.”14

Barber dug himself deeper into management’s doghouse during spring training in 1967. As the club’s player representative, he announced that the Orioles wanted to be paid for all radio and TV interviews. The players backed down, but Bauer showed little patience with his sore-armed pitcher. Barber was sent to the minor-league camp for a week. When he returned, he pitched like a man trying to save his job. In his first start he held the Angels hitless until Jim Fregosi doubled with one out in the ninth, then finished a one-hit shutout.

Two weeks later Barber again took a no-hitter into the ninth, against Detroit. The closest call was Jim Northrup’s liner back to the mound in the second. It hit Barber in the backside and he threw Northrup out. The Orioles eked out a 1-0 lead, but Barber was staggering all the way, walking seven in the first eight innings. He walked the first two batters in the ninth, then retired the next two. On the verge of achieving a pitcher’s dream, he threw a wild pitch that allowed the tying run to score. Rattled, he walked the batter. No-hitter or not, Bauer brought in Stu Miller to get the final out.

With runners at first and third, Miller got Don Wert to slap a grounder up the middle that Luis Aparicio speared and flipped to second baseman Mark Belanger for the force out to end the inning. But Belanger dropped the ball as the winning run scored.

Barber became the second pitcher to lose a no-hit game. He walked 10, hit two, unleashed the wild pitch, and made a throwing error. He said, “I was pitching so bad that day that I should have gotten beat 10-1.”15

He got worse. By July 4 Barber stood at 4-9 with a 4.10 ERA and no control. He had allowed seven bases on balls per nine innings. The Orioles dumped him to the Yankees for three minor leaguers. (Barber had earned a reputation as a Yankee-killer with a 15-10 record against them.)

“I’m not coming to the Yankees as a broken-down pitcher with nothing left,” the 29-year-old said.16 But his results didn’t improve: 6-9, 4.05 with New York. One of the victories was the 100th of his career, a shutout of the Minnesota Twins. The 1967 Yankees were a broken-down team. They finished ninth.

The next spring Barber couldn’t straighten his left arm and was sent down to Triple-A Syracuse. Rejoining the big club in June, he went 6-5 in 19 starts with a 3.23 ERA, no better than average in the Year of the Pitcher. The Yankees left him unprotected in the expansion draft after the 1968 season, but neither the new Kansas City Royals nor Seattle Pilots jumped at the chance to acquire a sore-armed 30-year-old pitcher. Seattle made Barber the 37th player chosen in the draft.

Pilots teammate Jim Bouton made Barber a villain in his celebrated 1969 diary, Ball Four. Bouton described watching Barber spend day after day taking heat treatment and cortisone shots for his arm, insisting all the while that it didn’t hurt. Barber came out of a game in May after facing only three batters and didn’t pitch again for three weeks. When he refused a rehab assignment in the minors, Bouton wrote, “‘You son of a bitch,’ I said to myself. ‘You’re the guy who won’t go down in order to help out the club. Instead you hang around here, can’t pitch, and now other guys are sent down because of you.’”17 Barber spent more than a month on the disabled list and finished with a 4-7 record and 4.80 ERA. He was the losing pitcher in the final game in the Pilots’ history.

Barber went to spring training in 1970 declaring himself pain-free and optimistic: “This could be my biggest year in baseball.”18 The Pilots released him a month later, just before the bankrupt franchise was transferred to Milwaukee.

Barber milked another five years out of his dying arm as a vagabond relief pitcher. Chicago Cubs: released. Atlanta Braves: released. California Angels: traded. Milwaukee Brewers: released. When the San Francisco Giants became the fifth team to release him, in August 1974, the handwriting on the wall looked like a mural. Barber hooked on with the Cardinals’ Tulsa farm club and pitched the last six games of his career in Triple A. At 37, he still wasn’t ready to give up. The next spring he wangled a tryout with the Cleveland Indians, managed by his former teammate Frank Robinson, but nothing came of it.

Barber owned a car-stereo business in Arizona, then moved to Las Vegas and opened a car-care shop. Jim Bouton sneered, “He has a bunch of cars lined up getting cortisone shots, whirlpool massage, and diathermy treatments.”19 (Barber never forgave Bouton for Ball Four.) He later worked as a manager in a car dealership and a hearing-aid salesman. Nearing retirement age, Barber drove a school bus for children with disabilities for several years.

In 1988 Barber was inducted into the Orioles Hall of Fame. “I’m not sure I have the kind of accomplishments that are worthy of this kind of honor,” he said. “But I’ll take it.”20 His final record shows 121 victories, 106 losses, and a 3.36 ERA.

Steve Barber died in Henderson, Nevada, on February 4, 2007, just short of his 69th birthday, of complications from pneumonia. His wife, Pat, their daughters Tracy and Danielle, and his son, Steve Jr., and daughter, Kelly, from his first marriage survived.

This biography appears in SABR’s “No-Hitters” (2017), edited by Bill Nowlin.

Notes

1 Stanley and Helen Barber were living in the home of her parents, Sarah and Emil Johnson (a carpenter) at the time of the 1940 census.

2 Blair High alumni include bestselling author Nora Roberts, actress Goldie Hawn, Olympic gymnast Dominique Dawes, Watergate reporter Carl Bernstein, TV anchor Connie Chung, Internet provocateur Matt Drudge, and major leaguers Johnny Klippstein and Sonny Jackson.

3 George Minot, “Steve Barber Has Control So Now He’s Big Leaguer,” Washington Post, May 9, 1960: A20.

4 John Eisenberg, From 33rd Street to Camden Yards: An Oral History of the Baltimore Orioles (New York: Contemporary Books, 2001), 92.

5 Eisenberg, 93.

6 William Tanton, “Steve Barber Steps In,” Baltimore Sun Sunday magazine, June 26, 1960: 184.

7 Eisenberg, 98.

8 Susan Reimer, “Barber Comes Home, Enters Through Hall,” Baltimore Sun, August 6, 1988: 1B.

9 Eisenberg, 98.

10 Leslie Lieber,”Who’s the Fastest Pitcher?” This Week, June 19, 1960: 11.

11 Doug Brown, “Greybeard Philley Filling Big Bill for Flag-Hungry Birds,” The Sporting News, September 21, 1960: 7.

12 Lou Hatter, “Birds’ Barber Draws Praise,” Baltimore Sun, September 17, 1961: 1D.

13 Eisenberg, 167.

14 Eisenberg, 176.

15 Reimer, “Barber Comes Home.” The first pitcher to lose a no-hitter was Ken Johnson of Houston, who lost to Cincinnati, 1-0, on April 23, 1964. Pete Rose reached on Johnson’s ninth-inning error and scored on an error by Nellie Fox.

16 Jim Ogle, “Barber Delighted.” The Sporting News, July 22, 1967: 15.

17 Jim Bouton, Ball Four (repr. New York: Collier Books, 1990), 180-181.

18 Hy Zimmerman, “Pilots’ Painless Barber Impressive,” Seattle Times, February 26, 1970: 66.

19 Bouton, 405.

20 Reimer, “Barber Comes Home.”

Len Barker gave that feeling to the Tribe and their fans. On a cold and misty evening at Cleveland Stadium, Barker pitched the major leagues’ 10th perfect game. The visiting Toronto Blue Jays sent 27 men to the plate, and they went down in order like a row of dominos. The key to Barker’s perfecto was a dominating curveball, one that he threw 70 percent of the time. He was so much in command that he never had a three-ball count on a batter. Barker got stronger as the game went on, and struck out 11 of the last 17 batters he faced. All 11 went down swinging.

“That was one of the most unreal days of my life,” said Barker. “I knew that I had good stuff, maybe even awesome stuff, when I began the game. But as the game went on, I had total command. I could throw anything, anywhere I wanted. My curveball was something else.”1

Although only 7,290 were in attendance that night, many more would claim to have been there. It was an uplifting moment for a city in need of a baseball identity. It was something for Indians fans to hang their collective hat on, to rally around. Of course there were others who decided to still kick dirt on Barker’s evening. A writer in Dallas asked “How can it be perfect if it happened in Cleveland?”2

“Imagine, a perfect game,” said the Indians’ Toby Harrah. “A perfect game and we’re all part of it; all of us and the entire city of Cleveland! It’s so great for everybody, especially this team.”3 Indeed it was pure perfection for one night in Cleveland Indians history.

Leonard Harold Barker II was born to Leonard and Emogene (Lockcart) Barker on July 7, 1955, in Fort Knox, Kentucky. Barker was a pitcher at a young age, starring in American Legion ball. Throwing no-hitters was not the problem, but his control was; he would walk up to a dozen players an outing.

The Barkers relocated to Pennsylvania, where Len enrolled at Neshaminy High School in Langhorne, about 26 miles north of Philadelphia. Barker was a three-sport star at Neshaminy (football, basketball, baseball), but it was his pitching that was his meal ticket. Specifically, he threw an overpowering fastball. Already 6-feet-4, “Large Lenny” was quite a presence on the mound. His control might have been lacking, but the speed he threw with could not be denied.

After his graduation from high school, the Texas Rangers drafted Barker in the third round of the 1973 amateur draft. The Rangers selected pitchers early, first picking high-school phenom David Clyde with the first pick, and then left-hander Rich Shubert in the second round. 

Barker had early success. He went 7-1 in the Gulf Coast Rookie League, registering 54 strikeouts in 59 innings pitched. He was promoted to Gastonia of the Class-A Western Carolinas League in 1974. Barker emerged as the Rangers’ top prospect, posting an 11-7 record, and led the league with five shutouts. He whiffed 140 batters in 124 innings pitched.

The big right-hander had a reputation for being a bit wild, on and off the diamond. In 1976 the Rangers brought him to spring training. Barker was not there long before he found trouble. After a few beers at the bar of the Surf Rider Hotel in Pompano Beach, Florida, Barker and bullpen coach Pat Corrales got into an altercation with some hotel guests. A fist fight broke out and Corrales was arrested. A Dallas sportswriter hid Barker in his room to avoid apprehension. The next day Barker was sent to the team’s minor-league facility in Plant City.

Barker was promoted in 1976 to Triple-A Sacramento (Pacific Coast League). His record for the Solons in 1976 (11-10, 5.55 ERA) was not his best effort, and his walks (96) outnumbered his strikeouts (92). However, Barker started two games at the end of the season for Texas. He got a no-decision in his major-league debut, against California on September 14, 1976. Barker got his first major-league victory in the last game of the season, going the distance to defeat Rich Gossage and the Chicago White Sox, 3-0. He struck out six and scattered three hits. “I’ve got to show ’em I want a job here,” said Barker. “My goal for next spring is to go down there to Florida and make that five-man rotation.”4  

During the offseason Barker played winter ball in Venezuela. His manager was the Rangers’ bullpen coach, Pat Corrales. After the winter league season, Corrales said, “When he’s throwing the ball over the plate, there ain’t nobody hittin’ him. And when he’s right, nobody wants to hit against him. He’ll scare hell out of a batter. That first pitch might be coming right at your ear then the next three are right out there on the corner of the plate.

“But is he ready now? No, I don’t think so. Maybe later in the season, who knows? But consistency is the thing. The first six games in Venezuela this winter he was something else. He had great control. Then he came apart at the end of the season. He’d throw three good innings, then maybe walk five.”5 

Corrales’ assessment was indeed correct. Barker was sent to Triple-A Tucson for the first half of the season. He was recalled by Texas and made three starts, but mostly pitched out of the bullpen. He made the most out the opportunity given him, going 4-1 with a 2.66 ERA. Barker struck out 51 in 47⅓ innings. After the season, on December 23, Barker and Bonnie Elwell were married.

The Rangers dealt closer Adrian Devine to Atlanta as part of a four-team deal. “At first, I couldn’t believe it because (Devine had) had such a good year,” Barker said. “I was trying to figure out why they would trade him. Then it finally sunk in; with Adrian gone this team was handing the job to me. When I finally did realize this was the case, it’s about the nicest feeling I’ve ever had in baseball. I never thought I’d be able to accept going to the bullpen. Of course, if they tell you to go, you’ve got to do it.”6

But the plans went awry in 1978 spring training when Barker did not see much activity. He totaled about six innings of work the entire spring. “We were in a situation where we knew what he could do because he did it for us last year,” said manager Billy Hunter. “We had a lot of new faces, and I needed to see what they could do so they got more work.”7 

In his third pitching appearance of the season, against Boston at Fenway Park on April 16, Barker raised eyebrows when he let go of a pitch that landed on the backstop screen just below the press box. “One year in the Instructional League a pitched slipped and I threw it over the press box,” said Barker.8

With mixed results early in the season, Barker was sent to Tucson to could get some work in on a regular basis. “(Hunter) told me I’ll be back in about three weeks,” said Barker. “I’ll go down, get some starts, get some work, then come back up. I need to get my arm loose, and this will help. I’ve thought about it, and I’d rather go down to Tucson rather than stay here and only pitch once every eight days.”9 

Barker went 4-0 in his abbreviated stay at Tucson, with a minuscule ERA of 1.04. But he was unable to duplicate his success when he was recalled to Texas. Reggie Cleveland took over the closer role. Although Barker earned four saves of his own, his overall record took a few steps backward (1-5, 4.82 ERA).

For a while, Texas coveted Jim Kern, Cleveland’s stellar relief pitcher. From the beginning of the 1978 season the Rangers had intermittent negotiations with Cleveland about a deal. On October 3 the deal was done; Texas shipped Barker and outfielder Bobby Bonds to the Indians for Kern and infielder Larvell Blanks.

Bonds was the main subject of the trade, with his power and speed and his refusal to play in Cleveland. Barker was almost a footnote. Cleveland manager Jeff Torborg did acknowledge that Barker threw with more mustard on the ball than Kern did. Barker is capable of “throwing a strawberry through the side of a submarine,” said Torborg.10

Barker started the 1979 season working out of the bullpen. He made his first start on June 14 against Oakland. He pitched well, giving up one earned run, but had a no-decision in the 2-1 Indians win. Steadily, he improved and he strung six wins together from July 31 through September 4. Included in that streak were two wins over Texas. Barker finished the year at 6-6.

Barker earned a spot in the Indians rotation for the 1980 season. He was given the role that he sought and he responded with his best year of his career. After the All-Star break, Barker reeled off an 11-1 record, lowering his ERA from 5.00 to 3.68. Included were two games in which he recorded double-digit strikeouts; at Chicago on August 18 (12) and at Minnesota on September 1 (11). “Lenny has the ability to be a big winner,” said Indians pitching coach Dave Duncan. “Everyone knows that. Just how much he develops down the road will depend on how much he works on all of his pitches and how much he learns about the hitters throughout the league.”11

Barker won his 19th game of the season on September 27 against Baltimore, but he was unable to get number 20 as he dropped his final two games of the season. He finished with a 19-12 record, and a 4.17 ERA. His 187 strikeouts led the league. “He’s certainly one of the best pitchers in the American League,” said Tribe skipper Dave Garcia, who had replaced Torborg the previous season.12

A month after Barker’s perfecto on May 15, the players’ strike halted the season, wiping out games for two months (June 12-August 10). Barker’s record was 5-3 when play was halted. After the strike was settled, the season resumed with the All-Star Game in Cleveland on August 9. Barker was selected to the AL team and pitched two scoreless innings. “This was great,” he said. “The fans were outstanding. It is a pleasure to play with these guys because you know they are a great bunch of ballplayers.”13 Three losses in September made Barker’s season record 8-7, but he led the league again in strikeouts (127).

Cleveland put together a pretty good pitching staff for 1982 with Barker, Bert Blyleven, John Denny, and Rick Sutcliffe. But injuries to Blyleven and Denny curtailed their 1982 season. Sutcliffe led the league with a 2.96 ERA, and Barker was second in the league with 187 strikeouts. He pitched 244⅔ innings and had a 15-11 record. But it fell apart for the big right-hander in 1983. A bone spur in his right elbow caused his fastball to lose its zip, dropping from the low 90s to the mid-80s. Barker was in the last year of his contract and odds were long that he would remain with the Indians.

The Atlanta Braves were in a fight for the top spot in the National League West. The Braves front office believed that adding another arm to their rotation might give them the edge and targeted Barker. On August 28, 1983, Atlanta acquired Barker (8-13 at the time) for three players to be named later (Rick Behenna, Brook Jacoby, and Brett Butler) and gave him a five-year, $5 million contract. “I couldn’t be happier,” said Barker. I’m going to a first-place team. I got a five-year contract. Wouldn’t you be happy to leave a last-place club?”14 The Braves medical staff believed that the bone spur was not serious. Barker went 1-3 for the Braves in six starts. The Dodgers won the division by three games.

Barker spent the 1984 and 1985 seasons in Atlanta, suffering from pain in his elbow. The bone spurs were more serious than the Atlanta doctors thought and he underwent surgery in 1984. The rehabilitation caused him to work less in spring training the following year. He was shelved with the same elbow problems in the middle of the 1985 season. His record in Atlanta was 10-20 over parts of three seasons, including 2-9 in 1985.

The Braves released Barker at the end of spring training in 1986. He signed with Montreal, but pitched all season for Triple-A Indianapolis. Released after the season, Barker signed with Milwaukee, but was once again relegated to the minors, this time with Triple-A Denver. He did make 11 starts for the Brewers in 1987, posting a 2-1 record. He was plagued with arm problems that placed him on the disabled list. Barker filed for free agency at the end of the season, but there were no takers. He retired from baseball with a career record of 74-76 and a 4.34 ERA.

Barker founded Perfect Pitch Construction, a home-remodeling business. He remained a fan favorite in Cleveland and was a popular player at the yearly Indians fantasy camp. (That was where he met his second wife, Eve.)

In 2010 Barker joined the coaching staff at Notre Dame College in South Euclid, Ohio, and in 2012 he became the head coach. Former teammates Joe Charboneau and Ron Pruitt joined his coaching staff. “When I get around these guys I feel like a kid,” said Barker.15 As of 2016 he and Eve resided in Chardon, Ohio, 30 miles east of Cleveland.

On August 18, 1980, Len Barker was pitching no-hit ball against Chicago through five innings at Comiskey Park. In the bottom of the sixth inning, Leo Sutherland led off with a bunt that rolled past Barker to second baseman Alan Bannister. But the throw was late and the White Sox had their first hit. Barker finished with a three-hitter, as the Indians were victorious, 4-2 in the first game of a doubleheader. After the game, Barker was more upset that he did not get a shutout than he was about Sutherland’s bunt. “I’ll get a no-hitter sooner or later,” said Barker. “At least I hope to be around a long time and one night I’ll have one of those special nights.”16

Perhaps Lenny Barker could add clairvoyance to his arsenal of talents.   

Last revised: February 2, 2017

This biography appears in SABR’s “No-Hitters” (2017), edited by Bill Nowlin.

Notes

1 Terry Pluto, The Curse of Rocky Colavito (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1994), 237.

2 Pluto, 238.

3 Russell Schneider, “Wife and Brother Are Among Joyous Fans,” Cleveland Plain Dealer, May 16, 1981: 6-C.

4 Randy Galloway, “Rangers End Year in Style, 3-0,” Dallas Morning News, October 4, 1976: B-2.

5 Randy Galloway, “Rangers’ Barker: He Keeps on Hummin’,” Dallas Morning News, March 3, 1977: B-3.

6 Randy Galloway, “Pressure Falls on Barker,” Dallas Morning News, February 25, 1978: 22.

7 Randy Galloway, “Reliever Barker Plans to Return,” Dallas Morning News, May 28, 1978: 64.

8 Randy Galloway, “Bosox Run Down Texas, 8-6,” Dallas Morning News, April 17, 1978: 21.

9 Randy Galloway, “Reliever Barker Plans to Return,” Dallas Morning News, May 28, 1978: 64.

10 Bob Dolgan, “Slugger Refuses to Say if He’ll Report to Tribe,” Cleveland Plain Dealer, October 4, 1978: 7-E.

11 Burt Graeff, “Large Lenny’s Head and Arm Give KayCee a Royal Blush,” Cleveland Press, August 23, 1980: C-7.

12 Bob Sudyk, “Large Lenny Barker Gets the Message,” Cleveland Press, September 2, 1980: C-3.

13 Terry Pluto, “Record Crowd Sees NL Win Again,” Cleveland Plain Dealer, August 10, 1981: 5-C.

14 Terry Pluto, “Barker Is Traded to Braves,” Cleveland Plain Dealer, September 29, 1983: 4-B.

15 Bill Lubinger, “Former Cleveland Indians Pitcher Len Barker Finds Perfect Fit at Notre Dame College,” cleveland.com, May 6, 2010.

16 Terry Pluto, “Barker’s Three-Hitter Jolts Chisox,” Cleveland Plain Dealer, August 19, 1980: 1-C.

Vida Rochelle Blue, Jr. was born on July 28, 1949, in Mansfield, Louisiana, a small town in the northern part of the state. He was the eldest of six children born to Vida Blue Sr. and Sallie Blue. His father was a laborer, and Blue remembered having everything he needed, although not everything that he wanted, as he grew up.1 He recalled Mansfield as a town that was still segregated, with a white high school and a black high school, DeSoto High, which Blue attended. As a youngster Blue played baseball and football with his peers. He was a good athlete, and could throw a baseball very hard when he was still quite young.

When he entered high school, the school did not have a baseball team. However, the principal recognized Blue’s talent and formed a school baseball team around him.2 Blue’s pitching prowess got the attention of scouts, including Kansas City A’s scout Ray Swallow. Despite Blue’s wildness – he once pitched a no-hitter and struck out 21 in a seven-inning game, but lost the game due to ten walks – his skill was evident. Blue was equally renowned as a high-school football player, starring as a quarterback. He was recruited by major colleges, including Notre Dame, Purdue, and Houston. Houston was recruiting Blue to play quarterback at a time when there were no African-Americans playing quarterback for major colleges. But Blue’s father died during his senior year in high school, and he decided that he needed to support his family. Baseball would provide that support sooner than football might. He was selected by the Kansas City Athletics in the second round of the 1967 draft and was offered a two-year contract a $12,500 per year. Although he later said he had a stronger desire to play football than baseball, Blue signed with the A’s.

Blue’s professional baseball career began in the Arizona winter instructional league in 1967. He pitched in nine games, striking out 26 batters while walking 22 in 34 innings. At age 18, he reported to spring training with the A’s for the 1968 season, then was assigned to the Burlington Bees of the Class A Midwest League. Blue started the season opener against the Quad City Angels and struck out 17 while giving up only three hits in eight innings. On June 19, in the first game of a doubleheader, Blue pitched a no-hitter in the seven-inning game. Throughout the season, Blue developed his curveball to go along with his dominant fastball, and improved his control. He finished with a record of 8-11 in 24 games, pitching 152 innings and striking out 231 while walking 80.3

For the 1969 season, Blue was assigned to Double-A Birmingham. He pitched in 15 Southern League games, going 10-3, with 112 strikeouts and 52 walks in 104 innings. Oakland A’s owner Charlie Finley was anxious to bring Blue up to the majors, seeing him as his next pitching star. Blue was called up in July, and made his major-league debut on July 20, starting against the California Angels. He lost the game, pitching into the sixth inning and giving up home runs to Aurelio Rodríguez and Jim Spencer. He started three more games, including a win on July 29 over the New York Yankees, before being sent to the bullpen for the rest of the season. In his first major-league season, he finished with a record of 1-1, pitched 42 innings, struck out 24 while walking 18, and finished with an earned-run average of 6.64. Joe DiMaggio, then a coach with the A’s, said of Blue, “It was a shame to bring up a kid like that when he hasn’t pitched two pro years. He throws as hard as anybody, but he hasn’t learned to pitch yet.”4

Blue was sent to the Triple-A Iowa Oaks (American Association) to start the 1970 season. There he crossed paths with fellow pitcher Juan Pizarro. Blue learned a great deal from the veteran Pizarro, and later said that “[Pizarro] helped me more than any single person in my career.”5 With Pizarro’s help, Blue made adjustments in his delivery that helped him to achieve greatness. He was rested for a few weeks in the middle of the season because of an injury, but came back to finish the season. In 17 games, Blue put together a record of 12-3 while striking out 165 in 133 innings.

He was called up to the A’s in September, and started the first game of a Labor Day doubleheader against the White Sox in Chicago’s Comiskey Park. Although he helped himself by hitting a three-run home run, he was knocked out of the game after giving up four runs in less than five innings. However, in his next outing he pitched a complete-game one-hitter against the Kansas City Royals, giving up a single to Pat Kelly with two outs in the eighth inning. After a lackluster start against the Milwaukee Brewers, Blue faced the division-leading Minnesota Twins on September 21. He was matched against Jim Perry, who would win 23 games and the Cy Young Award that season. Blue was the star that night, however, throwing a no-hitter and walking only one batter. Finley telephoned the locker room after the game to congratulate his new star pitcher and tell him he would receive a $2,000 bonus for the performance. Blue made two more starts that season and finished the season as one of the young star pitchers in baseball. Along with Catfish Hunter, Blue Moon Odom, and Rollie Fingers, the A’s pitching staff was one of the primary reasons the A’s would have high expectations for the next few seasons.

Although Blue made a spectacular splash in 1970, his 1971 season ranked among the great pitching seasons of all time. The A’s made the franchise’s first postseason appearance since 1931. It may have been their best season of the 1970s despite the fact that they won the World Series in the following three seasons, 1972-1974.

Blue pitched the 1971 season opener for the A’s in Washington against the Senators, and took the loss, pitching only into the second inning. He then won ten straight games, including nine complete games, and over the course of the season received the attention of the nation. He appeared on the cover of Sports Illustrated and Time. As a hard-throwing left-hander, the press compared Blue favorably to Sandy Koufax. However, this comparison was clearly difficult for Blue as Koufax was one of the greatest pitchers ever, and his prowess was nearly impossible to match. Veteran player Tommy Davis was one of Blue’s best friends and a roommate that season. Davis helped him to navigate through the heavy load of press requests, as well other demands for his time. Anything Blue did drew the attention of the press. For example, it became known that he carried two dimes in his pocket when he pitched. Although it was likely a charm Blue used in his pursuit of winning 20 games, he would not verify that to the press, which drew even more attention.

Blue’s start on July 9 against the California Angels was perhaps his best performance of the season. Although he did not get a decision in the game (he was going for his 18th win), he went 11 innings, gave up seven hits, no walks, and no runs while striking out 17 batters. The A’s eventually won the game 1-0 in 20 innings. In his next appearance, Blue started the All-Star Game for the American League. Although he gave up home runs to Henry Aaron and Johnny Bench, he was the winning pitcher, the youngest in All-Star Game history. Blue’s performance declined slightly in the second half of the season. He won his 20th game on August 7, and won his next two starts, raising the question of whether he could win 30 games for the season. But after number 22, he won only two and lost four of his last nine starts of the season. Surely he tired as the season wore on. The previous season, between the minors and majors, Blue pitched only 171 innings. In 1971, he pitched 312 innings. He finished the season with a record of 24-8 and a league-leading ERA of 1.82, and allowed the fewest runners per inning in the American League.

In the American League Championship Series, Blue faced off against the defending champion Baltimore Orioles and pitcher Dave McNally in Game One in Baltimore. The Orioles matched the A’s in wins, with 101, and the opening game would be a test of Blue. He had a 3-0 lead going into the bottom of the fourth inning, but gave up a run in that inning, and four more in the eighth to lose the game. The A’s were swept in three games, bringing an anticlimactic close to Blue’s magical season.

Despite his dominant regular-season performance, Blue had competition for the American League Cy Young Award. Detroit’s Mickey Lolich had surpassed Blue in wins with 25 to Blue’s 24, and in strikeouts, 308 to 301 (although Lolich pitched a staggering 376 innings). However, Blue edged out Lolich to win the Cy Young Award. Blue actually had an easier time winning the American League Most Valuable Player Award, finishing well ahead of teammate Sal Bando in the voting.

In 1971 Blue became involved in his first controversy with owner Charlie Finley. Finley offered Blue $2,000 to change his middle name legally to “True.” The always creative Finley saw the nickname as another way to market his pitching superstar. Blue declined the offer. He liked his name, thought it unique as it was, and had no desire to change it. Finley however would not let the idea rest. When Blue pitched, his name appeared on the scoreboard as “True Blue.” Finley instructed the A’s radio and television announcers to refer to Blue by the nickname. Blue asked them to stop, and also asked the team’s public-relations people not to refer to him as True Blue in press releases or to use the name on the scoreboard. This situation began the friction between Blue and Finley that blew up after the end of the season.

After his spectacular 1971 season, Blue demanded a pay raise. In 1971 he had made $14,750 in salary and $6,365.58 as his share of the postseason money, and also got a Cadillac as a bonus from Finley. Finley offered a raise, but not nearly what Blue wanted. Bob Gerst, an attorney representing Blue, presented an opening offer to Finley of $115,000. Later he told Finley that Blue would accept $85,000, which was a little less than the average salary paid to the top ten highest paid pitchers in baseball. Finley said he would pay Blue no more than $50,000.

Finley held firm, making the negotiations public and declaring that Blue would not be seeking so much if he had not hired a lawyer to represent him. Both sides made their case to the press and the public, and the acrimonious situation became referred to as “The Holdout.” The situation also served to elevate scrutiny of the reserve clause, which was under new attack by the players. Marvin Miller, director of the Players Association, was critical of Finley and the reserve system.

The holdout extended into spring training. On March 16 Blue and Gerst held a televised press conference to announce that Blue was withdrawing from baseball to take a position with the Dura Steel Products Company. While Blue actually did work for the company for a time, this was obviously an effort to combat Finley as it was clearly Blue’s desire to play baseball.

When the season started, Blue was placed on the restricted list, meaning he could not play for the first 30 days of the season. The major-league season was delayed ten days by a players strike in spring training, and opened on April 15 without Vida Blue. In late April Commissioner Bowie Kuhn organized a meeting between Finley, Blue, and Gerst. They reached an agreement on a $63,000 deal. However, Finley and Blue couldn’t agree on the wording of the announcement of the agreement. Finley did not want to appear as conceding anything, and insisted that he was paying Blue $50,000, an additional $5,000 signing bonus, plus $8,000 for Blue’s college fund. Blue wanted the deal to state what it was: payment of $63,000. Finally, on May 2, Blue signed for the package.6

Although Blue had missed only 18 playing days, he had not been conditioning and practicing as he would have during spring training and was not ready to pitch. He did not make his first appearance, which was only one inning long, until May 24. The 1972 season was tough for Blue. Although he did post a relatively good ERA of 2.80 and allowed only 165 baserunners in 151 innings, he finished with a disappointing record of 6-10.

His team, of course, won the American League West and faced the Detroit Tigers in the League Championship Series. Blue pitched exclusively out of the bullpen, pitching middle relief in Games One, Three, and Four. In each appearance, the games were in the balance, and Blue acquitted himself well. In the fifth and decisive game, Blue relieved Blue Moon Odom in the sixth inning of a 2-1 game, and pitched the final four innings for the save.

In the World Series against the Cincinnati Reds, Blue pitched in relief in Game One, picking up the save, as well as in Games Three and Four. With the A’s leading three games to two, he started Game Six. He was not as sharp as a starter as he had been in relief, and allowed three runs, including a Johnny Bench home run, in 5⅔ innings, and took the loss. The A’s won Game Seven, 3-2.

In 1973 Blue returned to form as an All-Star-caliber pitcher. He went 20-9, with an ERA of 3.28. While he was not the power pitcher that he was in 1971, striking out 158 in 263⅔ innings, he was described by many as a smarter pitcher. A Sports Illustrated article quoted teammate Sal Bando as saying, “In the first part of 1971 Vida was overpowering everybody, now he is overmatching them.”7 The article described Blue’s pitching style: “He jogs out to his position and works with quick efficiency, throwing his left-handed darts out of a fluid, high-kicking motion.” Blue’s pitching repertoire included his highly regarded fastball as well as a good curveball and changeup.

For the first four months of the 1973 season, Blue pitched well, but was often inconsistent. He hit his stride in August, winning six straight starts, including four complete games. He put together another streak of five consecutive wins in September, helping to lead the A’s to a division win over the Kansas City Royals. In the American League Championship Series, Blue started Game One against the Baltimore Orioles’ ace, Jim Palmer. Blue did not make it out of the first inning, giving up three hits and two walks before being relieved by Horacio Piña. Baltimore got four runs in the inning, and won, 6-0.

Blue again faced Palmer in Game Four and pitched much better. Through six innings he shut out the Orioles, giving up only two hits as the A’s held a 4-0 lead. However, after getting one out in the seventh, Blue gave up a walk to Earl Williams, a single to Don Baylor, an RBI single to Brooks Robinson, and a three-run home run to Andy Etchebarren, tying the game, 4-4. He was relieved by Rollie Fingers, who went on to lose the game, 5-4.

In the World Series against the New York Mets, Blue’s postseason troubles continued. He started Games Two and Five, both against Jerry Koosman. In Game Two, a high-scoring affair, Blue gave up solo home runs to Cleon Jones and Wayne Garrett. He was relieved in the sixth inning after allowing two baserunners who would later score. The Mets went on to win the game 10-7 in 12 innings. In Game Five, Blue gave up two runs in 5⅔ innings and lost to Koosman who, with reliever Tug McGraw, shut out the A’s, 2-0. The A’s won the Series, softening the effects of Blue’s lackluster pitching.

In 1974, although his won-lost record was not as impressive as in 1973, Blue pitched equally well. He finished with a record of 17-15 and an ERA of 3.25. He was durable, making 40 starts, and struck out 174 batters in 282⅓ innings. The A’s faced off again against the Orioles in the AL Championship Series. With the series tied one game apiece, Blue started Game Three, matched up again against Jim Palmer. Unlike 1973, Blue pitched brilliantly. He pitched two-hit, no-walk shutout, striking out seven in the 1-0 win. In the World Series against the Los Angeles Dodgers, Blue started Games Two and Five, matched up against Don Sutton in both games. In Game Two he was bested by the Dodgers, giving up a run in the second and a two-run homer to Joe Ferguson in the sixth, taking the 3-2 loss. In Game Five Blue pitched five shutout innings before giving up two tying runs in the sixth. After allowing a walk in the seventh, Blue was relieved by Blue Moon Odom, who went on to win the game for the A’s.

The 1975 season was Vida Blue’s best since his masterful 1971 season. He started the All-Star Game and finished the season with a record of 22-11 and an ERA of 3.01. With the departure of Catfish Hunter to the Yankees, Blue and Ken Holtzman starred on the A’s pitching staff and helped to lead the A’s to their best record since 1971. Among his pitching highlights that season, Blue was the starter and one of four A’s pitchers to pitch a combined no-hitter against the California Angels on September 28, in the last game of the season. However, after three straight World Series championships, the A’s were swept in the AL Championship Series by the Boston Red Sox. Blue started Game Two against Reggie Cleveland. He gave up a two-run home run in the fourth inning to Carl Yastrzemski and two more hits before being relieved. Although he had ten more seasons in the major leagues, this was Blue’s last postseason appearance. Over his career, his postseason numbers were unexceptional, with a record of 1-5 and an ERA of 4.31 in 17 appearances.

The 1976 season was another controversial year in Blue’s career, although the controversy was not of his doing. Starting with the departure of Catfish Hunter to the Yankees before the 1975 season and the trade of Reggie Jackson and Ken Holtzman to the Orioles before the 1976 season, the dynastic A’s were being dismantled. Through mid-June, the A’s were in fifth place in the West Division, 11 games behind the Royals. Blue had a record of 6-6 in 15 starts, with an ERA of 3.09. Then, just a few hours before the June 15 trade deadline, Charlie Finley announced that he was selling Blue to the New York Yankees for $1.5 million, and Joe Rudi and Rollie Fingers to the Red Sox for $2 million. However, the transactions were held up by Commissioner Bowie Kuhn. Kuhn and Finley had battled over a number of issues over the years, but this event brought their rancorous relationship to a breaking point. In retrospect, the attempted sale of these players was yet another step in the process of transitioning from the rule of the reserve system and moving toward free agency for players. It foreshadowed transactions in the years to come. Kuhn justified his concern with the transactions, stating: “The issue is whether the assignment of the contracts is appropriate or not under the circumstances. That’s the issue I have to wrestle with. I have to consider these transactions in the best interest of baseball.”8

On the 18th Kuhn announced that the sale of the three players would not be in the best interests of baseball, and disallowed them. Blue thus remained with the A’s. However, with all of the legal threats made by Finley after Kuhn’s ruling, Blue did not pitch again until July 2. Both he and the A’s improved over the remainder of the season. Blue finished 1976 with a record of 18-13 and an ERA of 2.35, and the A’s finished in second place, 2½ games behind the Royals.

In 1977 the team was truly dismantled, not by Finley’s actions, but by his inaction in signing his players who were now eligible for free agency. Joe Rudi, Rollie Fingers, and Sal Bando, who had all been with the team throughout the championship years, left the A’s via free agency. However, Blue had signed a three-year contract before the “trade” to the Yankees, and was ineligible for free agency. The 1977 season was a forgettable one for Blue. He led the league in losses with a record of 14-19, and had an ERA of 3.83. The A’s finished last in the American League West, behind even the expansion Seattle Mariners.

During 1978 spring training, Blue was traded to the San Francisco Giants, giving him a new opportunity. For Blue the A’s got seven players and $300,000. The new environment with the Giants and distance from Charlie Finley helped to restore his career as he became the ace of the Giants’ pitching staff. The Giants were a solid squad, and were in first place as late as August 15 before fading and finishing in third for the 1978 season. Blue started the All-Star Game for the National League, making him the first pitcher to start the game for both leagues. He had a very good year overall, going 18-10 with a 2.79 ERA. He finished third in the balloting for the NL Cy Young Award and was named The Sporting News National League Pitcher of the Year. Although he was only 28 years old and his career would extend on for several years, 1978 was Blue’s last great year. In 1979 he and the Giants saw a significant decline. Blue finished the season with a record of 14-14 and an ERA of 5.01 while the Giants finished 19½ games under .500 and in fourth place. In 1980 Blue rebounded a bit, with a record of 14-10 and an ERA of 2.97. In the strike-shortened 1981 season, he went 8-6 with a 2.45 ERA. It was the first full season in Blue’s career in which he did not win 14 or more games. He did pitch and get the win in the All-Star Game, becoming the only pitcher to win the game for each league.

On March 30, 1982, at the end of spring training, Blue was traded with another player to the Kansas City Royals for four players. He pitched pretty well for the Royals, with a record of 13-12 an ERA of 3.78, and led the pitching staff in strikeouts. He did fade at the end of the season. After throwing a one-hitter against the Mariners on September 13, Blue started four more games, losing his last three decisions while his ERA grew from 3.36 to 3.78. In 1983 Blue struggled mightily. After seven starts and a record of 0-3 he was relegated to the bullpen. He stayed in the pen and made spot starts, but did not pitch well in either role. With a record of 0-5 and an ERA of 6.01, he was released by the Royals on August 5.

At the time, Blue’s problems on the field paled in comparison with his problems off the field. Blue and Royals teammates Willie Wilson, Jerry Martin, and Willie Mays Aikens were implicated in buying cocaine. Blue pleaded guilty to cocaine possession and served 81 days in prison. On December 15, 1983, he was suspended for a year by Commissioner Kuhn. He was out for the 1984 season, then after being reinstated he signed with the Giants in the spring of 1985. Considering that he had missed a full season, Blue pitched respectably as both a starter and reliever, going 8-8 with a 4.47 ERA in 1985. In 1986, he returned to the Giants, pitching exclusively as a starter, and went 10-10 with an ERA of 3.27. Blue was a free agent after the season and signed with the A’s for 1987, but abruptly retired during spring training. It was rumored that he had tested positive for drugs and retired rather than face another possible drug suspension. In announcing his retirement, Blue suggested that he still struggled with drug addiction, stating, “I reached the point where I had to choose between baseball and life.”9 In an autobiography published in 2011, he indicated that he had struggled with substance abuse for much of his career: “Along with all the glory that I’d achieved, there was a growing darkness reaching for me. And the light began to dim as early as 1972.”10 It makes one wonder what his career might have been but for his struggle with drugs.

In 1992 Blue became eligible for election to the Baseball Hall of Fame. He received a modicum of support in the four years he was considered, with his highest vote total, 8.7 percent, occurring in 1993. He was automatically removed from the ballot in 1995 because of his low vote totals. Some have wondered why Blue did not receive more serious consideration for the Hall of Fame, considering that his career numbers are quite similar to those of his former teammate, Hall of Famer Catfish Hunter. Perhaps the negative impressions created by his drug problems led to his lack of consideration. Regardless of his worthiness for the Hall of Fame, Vida Blue was one of the top pitchers of his time. In his 2001 Historical Baseball Abstract, Bill James ranked Blue as the 86th best pitcher in the history of baseball. Blue finished his career with 209 wins and 161 losses, 2,175 strikeouts, three 20-win seasons, a Cy Young Award, and a Most Valuable Player Award in his 17-year major-league career.

After retirement Blue retained a close association with baseball. He played in the Senior Professional Baseball Association in 1989 and 1990. He became active in philanthropic work, and spoke to a number of audiences about his struggle with substance addiction. Most recently, Blue served as a television analyst for the San Francisco Giants.

Postscript

Vida Blue died at the age of 73 on May 6, 2023. The cause was complications stemming from cancer, according to a statement released by the Oakland Athletics.

Sources

Blue, Vida, as told to Marty Friedman, Vida Blue: A Life (Nashville, Indiana: Unlimited Publishing LLC, 2011).

Clark, Tom, Champagne and Baloney: The Rise and Fall of Finley’s A’s (New York: Harper and Row, 1976).

Clark, Tom, Baseball: The Figures (Berkeley, California: Serendipity Books, 1976).

Clark, Tom, Blue (Los Angeles: Black Sparrow Press, 1974).

Clark, Tom, Fan Poems (Plainfield, Vermont: North Atlantic Books, 1976).

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

James, Bill, and Rob Neyer, The Neyer/James Guide To Pitchers (New York: Fireside, 2004).

Kuhn, Bowie, Hardball: The Education of a Baseball Commissioner (New York: Times Books, 1987).

Libby, Bill, and Vida Blue. Vida: His Own Story (Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1972).

Markusen, Bruce, A Baseball Dynasty: Charlie Finley’s Swingin’ A’s (Haworth, New Jersey: St. Johann Press, 2002).

Neyer, Rob, and Eddie Epstein, Baseball Dynasties (New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 2000).

baseball-reference.com

Notes

1. Bill Libby and Vida Blue, Vida: His Own Story, 16.
2. Libby, 20.
3. Libby, 43-45.
4. Libby, 49.
5. Libby, 51.
6. Libby, 231-248.
7. Ron Fimrite, “Vida’s Down With the Growing-Up Blues,” Sports Illustrated. September 10, 1973.
8. Ron Fimrite, “Bowie Stops Charlie’s Checks,” Sports Illustrated, June 28, 1976.
9. Ron Fimrite, “Oakland A’s Pitcher Vida Blue,” Sports Illustrated, May 19, 1997.
10. Vida Blue, as told to Marty Friedman, Vida Blue: A Life, 55.

In an era when pitchers threw underhand from 45 feet and batters could request a pitch location, Borden’s pitching style was described by pioneer baseball writer Henry Chadwick as “having speed, but with little strategy. … In addition to his swiftly moving fastball, he also delivered a curveball that moved down and away from right-handed batters. Both pitches he delivered from a low arm angle.”1 He was called “phenomenal” when he broke in, but was released in the middle of his second season, causing Sporting Life to note that Borden’s career “went up like a rocket and came down like a stick.”2

Joseph Emley Borden was born on May 9, 1854, in Jacobstown, Burlington County, New Jersey. He was the fourth of John H. and Sarah Ann (Emley) Borden’s six children. His parents were New Jersey natives; his father was a prominent and well-to-do merchant who manufactured boots and shoes. Borden was a descendant of Henry Borden (1370-1469) of Headcorn, Kent, England. Researchers believe that the family (originally named DeBourdon) came from Normandy with William the Conqueror in 1066.

By 1870 the Borden family had relocated to Philadelphia, where 16-year-old Joe began to play baseball. In 1875 he was a member of the J.B. Doerr club, a crack amateur squad that played the best teams in Philadelphia and environs. On July 12, Doerr faced the professional Philadelphia Athletics of the National Association. With Borden in the box pitching under the name “Josephs,” Doerr won 6-4. Borden’s outing earned him widespread notice in the press.

Meanwhile, the White Stockings (also called the Pearls), another Philadelphia National Association club, needed a pitcher; Cherokee Fisher, who had started all 41 games up to July 22, was dismissed from the team for what author David Nemec called “drunkenness and general misbehavior.”3 George Zettlein, formerly of the Chicago White Stockings, was signed as a replacement but wasn’t immediately available. Desperate for help, manager Mike McGeary invited Borden to pitch for a few days as a noncontract player.

Before his professional debut against the Athletics on July 24, Borden persuaded McGeary to enter his name on the lineup card as Josephs; baseball historian Rich Westcott wrote that “Borden’s family… did not approve of his playing baseball. … Borden … used pseudonyms, pitching under the name of Nedrob (Borden spelled backward) or Joe Josephs.”4 In a game the Philadelphia Inquirer called “long and tedious, although closely contested in the first six innings,” Borden surrendered eight runs in the seventh and eighth innings as the Pearls lost 11-4; “Joseph’s pitching was swift but rather wild,” the Inquirer said.5 Teammate Tim Murnane, who later played with Borden in Boston and became a respected sportswriter for the Boston Globe, said Joe “was hammered all over the lot.”6

Borden’s second outing, an 8-1 loss, came two days later against Chicago; again, the Inquirer said, he was “rather wild.”7

With two losses under his belt, no one could have expected what came next. On July 28 Borden threw major-league baseball’s first no-hitter, a 4-0 shutout of the Chicago White Stockings before 500 spectators at Philadelphia’s Jefferson Park. In the Chicago Tribune’s opinion, “The threatening appearance of the weather deterred many from witnessing one of the best games ever played. From the effective pitching of Josephs the Chicagos were unable to make a base hit throughout the entire game — a thing unparalleled in the annals of baseball.”8 The 1 hour and 40 minute contest was the National Association’s only no-hitter during its five years of play.

Two early August contests with Boston, by far the best National Association team, made a big impact on Borden’s short major-league career. On August 3 rainy weather in Boston forced cancellation of the day’s game between the Pearls and Red Caps, but a large contingent of fanatics were treated to a muddy exhibition between the two clubs, with each team exchanging pitchers and catchers. Boston won the six-inning contest, 4-2, with the Boston Globe noting that Borden “bothered his own men so that they went out in one, two, three order” in the first and second innings.9

Though the weather was threatening on August 4, the 4-3 Boston victory in 11 innings was, in the Globe’s opinion, “one of the most, if not the most exciting game ever played in this city.”10 According to the Boston Journal, “Josephs, for an amateur player, is certainly a marvel. Not only is he one of the finest pitchers which the Bostons have ever faced, but he is a splendid fielder and good batsman. His delivery is swift and accurate, and he has the strength to hold out, as his pitching of yesterday demonstrated, for in the eleventh inning he was, if anything, swifter than in the other innings. … [He is] a pitcher, not a thrower.”11

After a 2-0 loss to Chicago on August 5, Borden notched his second win of the year on August 9 with a 16-0 rout of the St. Louis Brown Stockings, surrendering just four hits. From August 18 through the end of the season on October 25, George Zettlein pitched 21 of the Pearls’ remaining 23 games. Borden briefly returned to the box on September 2 against Boston, a contest that ended in an 8-8, 10-inning tie. He finished the season with a 2-4 record, pitching 66 innings and posting an ERA of 1.50, third in the league. His opponents’ batting average of .181 and on-base percentage of .203 were the lowest for a pitcher that season. (It was the last year of the National Association, a league that started with 13 teams and finished with seven.)

Borden came to be known as “the phenomenon” or “Josephus the Phenomenal.” He again pitched for the Doerr club on September 3, but received lucrative offers from several professional teams, including the Philadelphia Pearls. Knowing that he could fall back on work in the boot and shoe business, with his father or otherwise, Borden sought a long-term contract.  Nevertheless, on September 5, the Boston Red Caps’ president Nathaniel Apollonio, and manager Harry Wright, signed Borden to a three-year contract worth $2,000 a year. According to baseball historian Peter Morris, this was one of the first multiyear contracts in major-league history. 

The Boston Daily Advertiser was effusive in its praise of Borden, calling him “probably the best pitcher in the country next to [future Hall of Fame member Al] Spalding,” who would soon sign with Chicago.12 

With the National Association giving way to the new National League, the Boston club held its first 1876 practice at a YMCA on March 16. Borden was reported to be in splendid condition due to playing skittles during the winter. According to the Globe, all of the players were weighed and measured; Borden was listed at 5-feet-7¼-inches tall, (shorter than the 5-feet-9 listed in today’s records) and 139¾ pounds.

The first game in National League history took place on April 22 at the Philadelphia Athletics’ Jefferson Street Grounds. Borden and the Red Caps edged the Athletics, 6-5, before 3,000 spectators, making him the league’s first winning pitcher. The Athletics stroked ten hits, but squandered a superior offensive attack by making 11 errors. In a rematch two days later, Philadelphia routed Boston, 20-3; according to the Inquirer, “Josephs … was hit with ease.”13 

On April 25 Borden was the winning pitcher in a 7-6 victory over the New York Mutuals; manager Harry Wright replaced him with Jack Manning in the fifth inning, after he had surrendered five runs, making Borden the first starting pitcher in the National League to be relieved.

Boston’s first home game, on April 29, was a 3-2 loss to Hartford. The winning run scored on Borden’s wild pitch with two outs in the 10th, a ball that sailed 10 feet over the catcher’s head and into the grandstand, where, according to the Globe’s Tim Murnane, “[it]made a hit with a swell society woman of Chicago … hitting her in the face. The game was delayed while Mr. Borden went into the stand and made a dignified apology, and later called at the woman’s residence, where in due time he was royally entertained and pronounced a well-bred gallant.”14

Borden’s next game was also memorable. In the third inning of a 15-3 Hartford victory, he hit a leadoff single but became confused about who had the ball and was tagged out by first-baseman Everett Mills, thus becoming the first National Leaguer to be a victim of the hidden-ball trick. For the second game in a row, Borden was replaced at pitcher by Manning and spent the rest of the game in right field.

On May 23, 1876, Borden pitched what might have been the first no-hitter in National League history, blanking the Cincinnati Red Stockings, 8-0. Box scores indicate two hits for the Reds, but 75 years later, according to SABR researcher David Nemec, baseball historian Lee Allen found that the two hits charged to Borden were really walks called hits by official scorer Opie Caylor, who usually counted walks as hits. This conclusion continues to be controversial; scorekeeping was not uniform in that era. Other historians doubt Allen’s interpretation and maintain that George Bradley threw the league’s first no-hitter, in July 1876.

Borden’s stock took a dive during June. Chicago, with Al Spalding pitching, won three straight against Boston and Borden between May 30 and June 3, putting to rest the assertion that Borden was anywhere near Spalding’s equal. Joe’s wild throws and his nervous demeanor were harshly criticized by fans and the press, which suspected that he had a sore arm. Others speculated that he had changed his delivery or “lost his cunning.” In the Chicago Tribune’s opinion, “These games should … convince the Bostonians that Borden is nothing more than a third-class player in the pitcher’s position. If they don’t believe it now, they will within two weeks.”15 According to author Neil Macdonald, “It was plainly evident that [Borden’s] future was becoming the substance of clouds. He was throwing so wildly that batsmen and umpires gyrated in turbulent terror dodging his errant throws. … He was throwing tantrums over his own inability to throw strikes.”16 

On June 29 Borden recorded his final major-league “first.” Pop Snyder of the Louisville Grays hit a 10th-inning home run off him to give Louisville an 8-6 win over Boston. It was the first extra-inning game-winning home run in the National League.

Borden’s final pitching appearance was on July 15, 1876, a 15-0 loss to Chicago and Al Spalding; Borden was relieved by Manning in the fifth after giving up four runs. The Chicago Tribune concluded that the two pitchers’ performance represented “some of the worst pitching of the year. … Neither Manning nor Josephs were any sort of use against the Whites, who had their batting armor on and made things very lively in the field.”17 This was the final straw for Harry Wright, who had Manning make the next 11 starts. Foghorn Bradley replaced him for the final 17 games. 

Borden made his final major-league appearance on July 19 in Philadelphia, where he played right field in a 10-7 win over the Athletics. It was his 16th game in the outfield, where he had seven errors and a miserable .462 fielding percentage. For the year, Borden was 11-12 in the box with a 2.89 ERA (10th in the league) in 218 1/3 innings. He had 22 errors as a pitcher (second in the league), 34 strikeouts (sixth), and 21 wild pitches (third). 

Borden was mediocre as a hitter, posting a .188 average; extra-base hits were rare (three doubles) and RBIs (8) were hard to come by. One of his better days at the plate was against Al Spalding on June 3, when he was 2-for-4 with a run scored.

Although Borden was released by the Red Caps on August 17, there was the matter of the two-plus years remaining on his contract. According to Peter Morris, club management came up with a plan to deal with the situation. First, they tried to get Borden to abandon his contract, which failed. Next, they gave him twice-a-day groundskeeping duties while also requiring him to attend daily practices. Borden, who had obtained legal advice on the contract’s validity, did all that was asked of him, including serving as an umpire for an exhibition game between Boston and Fall River on October 14. He continued to be employed by the Red Caps until February 1877, when club president and noted tightwad Arthur Soden negotiated a buyout.

With his exit, the press brutally reviewed Borden’s tenure in Boston. The Boston Herald called his engagement “ill-advised, although he showed some talent as a pitcher. … [He was] one of the most outrageous frauds who ever saw his name in a score sheet … hired at a large salary to do certain work which he could not do, and the least spark of manhood or decency in him would have dictated his withdrawal when he could not carry out his contract. No one but a plug would have hung on and drawn money for which he returned no service. … he was a glaring failure.”18 

In 1900 the Globe’s Murnane called Borden “perhaps the greatest failure that ever came to the Boston club.” He wrote that Borden’s initial trial with the 1875 Philadelphia club was “as much for a joke as anything,” suggesting that he “was cute enough to lay up for the rest of the season and pick the best offer for the next year.”19

Done with professional baseball, Borden returned to Pennsylvania. In 1878 he was living in West Chester, near Philadelphia, and had his own business manufacturing and retailing boots and shoes. He briefly returned to baseball during the summer of 1883 when he joined West Chester’s Brandywine Base Ball Club, a semipro team that played the region’s best competition. On August 28 Borden pitched, played first base, and was 1-for-11 as Brandywine won games from two clubs, Christiana and the Alerts of Rock Run. His only other connection to baseball occurred in July 1888 when he was on a sales trip to Washington and ran into Boston Beaneaters’ manager John Morrill, a former Red Cap teammate, on the train. Morrill introduced him to future Hall of Fame pitcher John Clarkson and catcher King Kelly.

In early June 1889, Sporting Life reported that Borden was a victim of the disastrous Great Johnstown (Pennsylvania) Flood, an error that was corrected in its June 19 issue, which said that he was “safe at his home in Philadelphia.”20

On February 7, 1891, Borden married Henrietta S. Evans in West Chester. The Inquirer described the festivities as “a brilliant society wedding.”21 Evans was the daughter of newspaper publisher and politician Henry S. Evans and his wife, Jane, whose father was a doctor, historian, noted botanist, and former Congressman William Darlington. Her grandfather was Revolutionary War General John Lacey, who later served in the New Jersey legislature. The Bordens set up residence with her mother in West Chester. They had two children, Richard, who did not survive his first year, and Lavinia.

By the time of his marriage, Borden was out of the footwear business and was an officer of a Philadelphia bank, Guarantee Trust and Safe Deposit Company, a position he held for more than two decades. He was also the Philadelphia representative of the U.S. Shipping Board, a federal government agency. By 1900 the Bordens had moved to Fernwood, a neighborhood in Yeadon, a west Philadelphia suburb.

Although he wasn’t involved in baseball, Borden took pride in being in good physical condition and trained regularly at the Philadelphia Boxing Academy, where he was an amateur boxer “as good as the best,” in the opinion of the West Chester Daily Local News.22 An avid hunter, Borden was a member of the Girard Kennel Club and owned some of the finest hunting dogs in the country, both beagles and bird hounds. One of his bird dogs, Ruby D III, won every show she was exhibited in and, according to the Daily Local News, “proved so finely drawn in all points that she became known world-wide and the standard of the class was raised by the dog authorities because of her showing.”23

Borden died on October 14, 1929, at the home of his daughter, Lavinia Cook Borden Adams, in Lansdowne, Pennsylvania. He was 75; the cause of death was listed as paralysis. He was survived by his daughter and a sister, Florence Borden of Philadelphia. His death came on the same day the Philadelphia Athletics won the World Series with a 3-2 victory over the Chicago Cubs. He is buried in the Darlington family plot at West Chester’s Oaklands Cemetery. According to Rich Westcott, “His grave site was unkempt and unnoticed for many years until located by SABR member Tom Taylor [in 1990]. The unadorned tombstone makes no mention [of his] baseball career.”24     

This biography appears in SABR’s “No-Hitters” (2017), edited by Bill Nowlin.

Acknowledgements

Thanks to Karen Zindel for her research at the Chester County Historical Society, West Chester, Pennsylvania.
 

Sources

In addition to the items in the notes, the author also consulted Borden’s player file at the National Baseball Hall of Fame and numerous other newspaper articles, as well as the following publications:

Creamer, Robert W. “Twas Time For A Change.” Sports Illustrated, April 4, 1986.

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

Prager, Joshua. The Echoing Green: The Untold Story of Bobby Thomson, Ralph Branca and The Shot Heard Round The World. (Random House Digital, Inc., 2008).

Vincent, David, and Jayson Stark. Home Run: The Definitive History of Baseball’s Ultimate Weapon (Dulles, Virginia: Potomac Books, 2008).

Notes

1 Neil W. Macdonald, The League That Lasted: 1876 and the Founding of the National League (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland, 2004), 74.

2 “Philadelphia News,” Sporting Life, June 27, 1888: 2.

3 David Nemec. The Great Encyclopedia of Nineteenth Century Major League Baseball (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2006), 7.

4 Rich Westcott. “Joe Borden: The First No-Hit Pitcher and National League Winner,” The National Pastime, Vol. 23 (2003): 69-70.

5 “Philadelphia And Suburbs: Out Door Sports,” Philadelphia Inquirer, July 26, 1875: 2.

6 T. H. Murnane, “Old-Time Baseball,” Boston Globe, February 19, 1900: 6.

7 “Base Ball,” Philadelphia Inquirer, July 27, 1875: 2.

8 “Chicagos-Philadelphias,” Chicago Tribune, July 29, 1875: 5.

9 Undated Boston Globe newspaper clipping.

10 “Yesterday’s Sports,” Boston Globe, August 5, 1875: 5.

11 “Boston and Vicinity,” Boston Journal, August 5, 1875: 4.

12 “Our New Pitcher,” Boston Daily Advertiser, September 6, 1875: 57.

13 “Base Ball,” Philadelphia Inquirer, April 25, 1876: 2.

14 T. H. Murnane.

15 “Base Ball, Chicago Tribune, June 4, 1876: 3.

16 Neil W. Macdonald. The League That Lasted: 1876 and the Founding of the National League of Professional Baseball Clubs (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland, 2004), 119, 123.

17 “Base Ball, Chicago Tribune, July 16, 1876: 3.

18 Undated Boston Herald newspaper clipping.

19 T. H. Murnane.  

20 “One Saved, The Other Lost,” Sporting Life, June 19, 1889: 1.

21 “Brilliant Society Wedding,” Philadelphia Inquirer, February 8, 1891: 5.

22 Daily Local News (West Chester, Pennsylvania), October 16, 1929.

23 Ibid.

24 Westcott, 70.

The memory that truly brings out the goose bumps is Braden’s May 11, 2005, start for his hometown Stockton Ports, the Athletics’ California-based A-ball affiliate. Braden had struck out 10 by the ninth inning, and only the “beer batter” (a cherished minor-league tradition) stood in the way of a five-hit, complete-game victory. Banner Island Ballpark maintained beer sales up through the ninth inning, and Braden rewarded the 1,800 or so fans who endured with an 11th and final strikeout that cut the price of their final pours.2

“To do that in my hometown wearing the name of my hometown across my chest, with friends and family in the stands, and waiting for that last strike hearing them chant, ‘Let’s go Dallas, clap, clap, clap-clap-clap,’ I’m getting goose bumps right now thinking about it,” he said.

Braden was promoted to Double-A three days later, but he never lost his appreciation for his gritty hometown and blue-collar upbringing.

Dallas Lee Braden was born on August 13, 1983, in Phoenix, Arizona. His mother, Jodie Atwood, wondered why her son wasn’t eating for the first two days of his life when doctors discovered he was born without a uvula, a small piece of tissue in the back of the throat. Atwood took her infant son west to Stockton, her mother’s city of residence, so the boy could undergo emergency mouth surgery.

Atwood put down roots in Stockton, and the single mother and son sometimes resided with Braden’s grandmother, Peggy Lindsey, who managed a motel, and sometimes lived in their own apartments.

“It’s been us three, my entire life,” Braden said. “It had to be us three, because we didn’t have the money.”

Baseball hooked Braden by age 4 when he first slipped on a glove given to him by a neighbor. As Braden’s arm showed promise and velocity beyond his years, Atwood moved to a different Stockton neighborhood so her son could join the Hoover Tyler Little League. “And sacrifices like that began very early on,” he said.

Atwood by this time had started her own home-cleaning business, and she’d often hold her son out of school so he could help her clean an extra house or two. She’d always explain her reasoning for such decisions.

“Every step of the way, it was with my future in mind,” Braden said. “And being able to look back and reflect on that, it honestly feels like she didn’t take a breath without thinking that I might be able to catch some of the air that she let out.”

As Braden reached working age, his mother agreed that he could forgo taking on a job if he continued working hard on the diamond.

Braden excelled as a baseball player at Stockton’s Amos Alonzo Stagg High School, although his poor grades and truancy twice got him booted off the team.3 He was a senior en route to a 9-1 record when his mother awoke one morning complaining of a headache. He attended class and baseball practice that day, but she wasn’t there to pick him up. A friend’s mother took him to the hospital, where devastating news awaited.

“They must have missed something in the blood work and the cancer has gone to her brain and this is now terminal, inoperable tumors,” he learned. “Like, ‘We didn’t see this. We’re sorry.’”

Atwood underwent chemotherapy treatments, but they did little good. She died on May 20, 2001, just a few months after her diagnosis, with peace that her son was about to fulfill her dream by completing high school. The loss of the woman Braden called his best friend was devastating.

“You talk about the rock or a guiding light in every sense of the word, in every possible embodiment, that was her,” Braden said.

Two weeks after his mother’s death, the Atlanta Braves selected Braden in the 46th round of the 2001 amateur draft. But at 5-feet-9 and 140 pounds “soaking wet in a cotton uniform,” he didn’t think he was ready for the pros.

“I needed to grow up physically,” he said. “I needed to grow up mentally.”

Braden turned to Grandma Peggy, who was always there to provide support and guidance. The pair drove north to American River College in Sacramento to ask if the school was holding tryouts. When head coach Kevin Higgins told them the roster was pretty much set, Lindsey piped in that her grandson had been drafted by the Atlanta Braves and was a left-handed pitcher. “That’s when he perks up,” Braden recalled.

Braden spent two seasons with the Beavers, winning 12 games and earning an honorable mention for all-conference pitcher in 2003.4 He transferred to Texas Tech, where he grew as a ballplayer and a man under head coach Larry Hays, a “tremendous leader, tremendous father figure.”

Moving from the streets of Stockton to the Bible Belt was quite a culture shock for Braden, who had always played with a “me against the world” chip on his shoulder. He said that in Stockton he learned to avoid looking at others, and he now had to find a way to accept people for who they were.

“I learned to be able to sort of turn that into a character if I had to or out of necessity,” he said. “Meaning, I can tap into this, but I don’t have to live this rigid anymore.”

The Oakland Athletics selected Braden — now 6-foot-1, 185 pounds — in the 24th round of the 2004 amateur draft. He signed and reported to Vancouver, posting a 2-0 record in a relief role for the Canadians before heading east to start for the Kane County Cougars. The lefty was throwing an 88-92 mph fastball at the time with a straight change and a screwball.

“The screwball was the moneymaker for me,” he said. “I was able to get some swings and misses on that pitch.”

Braden began the 2005 season in Stockton, compiling a 6-0 record for his hometown Ports and occasionally fanning the “beer batter” before his promotion to Double-A Midland. He posted a 9-5 record for the RockHounds, but lingering arm troubles forced him to undergo shoulder surgery during the 2005-2006 offseason. Braden began the 2006 season on a rehab assignment before returning to Stockton for three starts (2-0) and Midland for one. The 2007 season was poised to be Braden’s breakout season after he posted a sub-1.00 ERA during winter ball.

“I go through spring training, and they’re telling me, ‘You’re going to be our guy in Triple-A and when the phone rings you’re the first one on the plane,’” Braden said.

But the plan went awry just days before the Athletics broke camp. The Washington Nationals released Braden’s friend Colby Lewis, and the A’s signed the right-hander and gave him Braden’s promised spot in Triple A. A dejected Braden headed back to Midland, but two starts later he got the bump to Sacramento. When Oakland’s Rich Harden landed on the 15-day disabled list with a strained left hamstring, the A’s called up Braden to start an April 24, 2007, road game at Camden Yards in Baltimore.

The 23-year-old rookie “couldn’t feel anything” but tossed six innings of three-hit ball to lead the A’s to a 4-2 win over the Baltimore Orioles. It was Braden’s only win of the season, as he finished with a 1-8 record and a 6.72 ERA.

Braden spent the first half of the 2008 season bouncing between Oakland and Sacramento, serving in a relief role while with the parent club. He worked his way into the rotation for the second half of the 2008 season and pitched well enough to keep the job into 2009. By this time he was strictly fastball-straight change, although he occasionally mixed in a modified screwball that found its movement through finger pressure rather than arm stress.

“At no point was I going to overpower you with anything, but I will stare you down with the meanest 85 you ever felt,” Braden said. “And I had to pitch that way.”

Braden was throwing some of his best stuff at the start of the 2010 season when a walk-by incident landed him in the New York tabloids.

The A’s were hosting the Yankees on April 22, 2010, when Robinson Cano popped a flare up the third-base line that was ruled foul. Baserunner Alex Rodriguez, who had rounded second and was nearing third, strolled across the pitcher’s mound as he headed back to first. The unprecedented trespass prompted Braden to howl, “Get off my $@*&#% mound!” and A-Rod’s shrug like it was no big deal further infuriated Braden.

“Right over the rubber,” Braden said. “That is like me coming to get a ball from the umpire after a foul ball and then digging in to your batter’s box.”

Braden continued jawing at Rodriguez after squeezing his glove to complete Cano’s 3-6-1 inning-ending double play. The fired-up pitcher chucked the ball into the dugout, kicked a stack of Gatorade cups, and slammed down his glove.

Seventeen days later, Braden landed on front pages for a more admirable accomplishment — he threw the 19th perfect game in major-league history. It was Mother’s Day, a somber yet significant holiday for a man who lost his mom to melanoma when he was 17. Grandma Peggy was in the crowd at Oakland that afternoon, and after she and Braden shared a touching on-field moment celebrating the perfecto, she quipped, “Stick it, A-Rod,” in earshot of reporters.5

The quote landed on the cover of the New York Daily News, and Braden was invited to deliver David Letterman’s Top 10 list of “thoughts that went through Dallas Braden’s mind while he threw his perfect game.”

“No. 3: Even I’ve never heard of me,” the pitcher deadpanned.6

Braden was warming up in the bullpen for his final start of the 2010 season when he felt his shoulder pop. He made it into the fifth frame before catcher Kurt Suzuki walked to the mound and asked, “What the hell is wrong with you? What do you got?”

“And I said, ‘Nothing, that’s the problem,’” Braden said. “And he goes, ‘Well, let’s throw the changeup.’”

Braden spotted enough well-placed changeups to finish out the inning and secure a win, but the shoulder problems persisted into the spring of 2011. Neither stretching nor anti-inflammatories provided much relief, and Braden made just three starts that season. When he walked off the Oakland mound in the fifth inning of his start on April 16, 2011, against Detroit, he knew he had thrown his last career pitch.

It was hard for Braden to sit in the training room and “look these guys in the eye, cash a paycheck and actually put this uniform like I deserve to,” he said. “I didn’t know how to fake it.”

Braden endured two additional surgeries before declaring his arm “a shredded mess” and retiring in January 2014.7 He joined ESPN as a Baseball Tonight studio analyst for the 2014 season and married actress Megan Barrick that November. They took up residence in the Los Angeles area.

In 2015 Braden added in-game analyst to his ESPN résumé as the network signed him to a multi-year extension.

Phil Orlins, ESPN’s MLB senior coordinating producer, said Braden “oozes passion and enthusiasm,” bringing “energy, knowledge, and a blue-collar personality that connects with our viewers.”8

That authenticity continued to endear him to the community of Stockton, where the Ports retired his number 50 jersey in 2015. Braden said he was ecstatic that his short career continued to let him make a living hanging around ballparks.

“I’m still afforded an opportunity to be around some of the best athletes in the world, to be around some of the most beautiful cathedrals man will ever make, to see the big green fields that are baseball diamonds,” Braden said. “I’m so thankful the game has given me the opportunity to still be around it.”

Last revised: February 8, 2018

This biography appears in SABR’s “No-Hitters” (2017), edited by Bill Nowlin.

Notes

1 Author interview with Dallas Braden, January 5, 2016. All quotations in this biography are taken from this interview unless otherwise noted.

2 Jagdip Dhillon, “Braden enthralls hometown crowd with shutout,” Recordnet.com, recordnet.com/article/20050512/A_SPORTS/305129920, accessed January 26, 2016.

3 Susan Slusser, “Braden throws 19th perfect game,” SF Gate, sfgate.com/sports/article/Braden-throws-19th-perfect-game-3264978.php, accessed January 26, 2016.

4 Thanks to Doug Jumelet, Head Baseball Coach at American River College.

5 Carl Steward, “Steward: ‘Grandma Peggy’ gets the final word on A’s pitcher Dallas Braden, and on A-Rod,” Inside Bay Area, insidebayarea.com/ci_15052220, accessed January 25, 2016.

6 CBS, “Dallas Braden’s Top 10 on Letterman,” Youtube.com, youtu.be/Hx1sxa2dwws, accessed January 26, 2016.

7 Susan Slusser, “Ex-A’s pitcher Dallas Braden says he is hanging it up,” SF Gate,blog.sfgate.com/athletics/2014/01/14/ex-as-pitcher-dallas-braden-says-he-is-hanging-it-up/.

8 Ben Cafardo, “ESPN reaches multi-year extension with MLB analyst Dallas Braden,” ESPN Front Row, espnfrontrow.com/2015/03/espn-reaches-multi-year-extension-mlb-analyst-dallas-braden/, accessed January 26, 2016.

While being the architect of the National League’s inaugural no-hitter is Bradley’s most noted accomplishment, during that same 1876 season besides shutting out the Dark Blues, he did the same to 15 other teams – a total of 16 shutouts in the season: a record that was matched only by Grover Cleveland Alexander in 1916 (it must be those presidential names). Referring to Bradley as the “Chicago King,” baseball historian David Nemec suggested that the term may have arisen because Bradley’s first shutout victim that season was the Chicago White Stockings, who succumbed 1-0 on May 5.3 The unlikelihood that this record will ever be surpassed is underscored by the fact that since Juan Marichal threw 10 shutouts in 1965, only three pitchers have reached double figures: Bob Gibson with 13 in 1968, Jim Palmer with 10 in 1975, and John Tudor with 10 in 1985.

Bradley’s professional career extended over 15 years, including 11 seasons with nine different teams in four different major leagues – in many ways mirroring Organized Baseball’s state of flux at the time. Appearing in 347 games as a pitcher, Bradley compiled 171 victories. He played in 269 other games as a position player – mostly at third base, where his fielding skills were quite accomplished. In addition to his major-league travels, Bradley played for eight minor-league teams.

Born in Reading, Pennsylvania, on July 13, 1852, to George and Margaret Bradley,4 George was the first native of the city to play in the major leagues. Although references to Bradley in Reading newspapers during his career occasionally mentioned his having been “born and raised in Reading,” there is otherwise little information available about his life before he started playing in Philadelphia in 1872, the same year in which he married Philadelphia native Charlotte Heavener.

Early in the 1874 season, while playing for Philadelphia’s Modoc club (described as a “third-rate amateur club”5) against an independent team from Easton, Pennsylvania, Bradley showed skills that caught the eye of Easton’s manager, Jack Smith, who signed him as an infielder who would also pitch batting practice. When Smith observed that Bradley’s new teammates couldn’t handle his pitches during batting practice, he tried him out as a starting pitcher. That experiment went so well that that Smith, who had been the starting pitcher, benched himself in favor of Bradley. Bradley and catcher Tom Miller developed a fine relationship, which would lead to their both playing for the St. Louis Brown Stockings the next season. The chemistry between the two was noted by the Easton Daily Express after a 14-0 Easton victory over the Collins Club of Philadelphia in August. “Bradley and Miller worked together like a charm, many people remarking that it was their best game this year,” the paper said, also describing Bradley’s pitches in the game as “lightning bolts.”6

Later that month Bradley returned to his hometown of Reading when Easton came to play the semipro Reading Actives. Before a crowd of about 4,000, Easton won the game, 11-6, in what the Reading Eagle described as “one of the most closely contested (games) that either club has ever played.” With the score tied, 4-4, Easton broke the game open with five runs in the eighth inning. (The Reading Times account attributed the rally to Easton “doing some heavy batting,”7 while the Eagle found Easton’s runs to be the product of “bad luck, overthrows and a general demoralization”8 on the part of the home team.) Although no statistics on the 1874 Actives or its players can be found, must have been a good one; the game account in the Eagle was headlined “Actives’ First Defeat.”9 The account related that Bradley’s “balls came in very swiftly and during the first part of the game were not hit.”10

The Eagle said the Easton club was “regarded by knowing professional players to be the very best club in the country not on the professional lists,”11 and said Easton clearly came to town as “enemy” in the eyes of the Reading locals. The Easton Daily Express complained that followers of the Actives “were in danger of life and limb from the blackguards and roughs of Reading, (unable) to praise the Eastons without being insulted and threatened.”12

In a return match a few weeks later, Easton again won, 34-18, with the Express declaring that Reading did not appear “to get the hang of Bradley until the ninth inning.”13

In early August Easton lost at home in front of a crowd of 2,000 to the National Association Brooklyn Atlantics by 30-11 in a game in which Bradley gave up 19 hits but was victimized by 16 Easton errors that resulted in only 4 of the Atlantics’ 30 runs counting as earned runs.14 At the end of the season Easton achieved consecutive exhibition victories over three National Association teams: the Atlantics in a rematch, then the Philadelphia Whites and finally the Philadelphia Athletics. As a result, Bradley was invited to pitch for the Athletics in an October exhibition against the Boston Red Stockings. In the game he impressed enough that St. Louis signed him after the season.

The 1875 Brown Stockings were managed by 39-year-old shortstop Dickey Pearce, and its roster included a number of players besides Bradley with Easton connections, starting with his batterymate Tom Miller, who had played four games with the Athletics near the end of the 1874 season. Also signed from the 1874 Easton team were third baseman Bill Hague, a light hitter known for his strong throwing arm and light-hitting outfielder Charlie Waitt. Browns second baseman Joe Battin played for Easton in 1873 before signing with the Philadelphia Athletics, where he spent the 1874 season.

Bradley’s major-league debut was as the Opening Day pitcher on May 4, 1875, pitching the team to a 15-9 victory over the St. Louis Red Stockings. Two days later, on May 6, Bradley became an instant St. Louis fan favorite, shutting out the hated Chicago White Stockings, 10-0, in front of 8,000 fans at Grand Avenue Park in St. Louis, with another 2,000 peeking through knotholes or perched in trees outside the park.15

On June 2 Bradley suffered his first loss of the season, 10-3 to a Boston Red Stockings team that went an amazing 71-8 that season. Boston’s lineup featured future Hall of Famers Harry and George Wright, Al Spalding, Orator Jim O’Rourke, and Deacon White, who would hit a league-leading.367. Also in the Boston lineup were White’s closest competitors in the batting race, Ross Barnes (.364) and Cal McVey (.355). The Red Stockings’ victory boosted their record so far to 25-0.

Three days later Bradley avenged the loss by handing the Red Stockings their first defeat as he pitched St. Louis to a 5-4 win. The Boston Globe said that Bradley and “the ‘Brown Sox’ were carried off the field on the shoulders of their friends.”16

On June 7, with St. Louis in a frenzy over “Brown Stocking fever,” a crowd described by the Globe as “the largest ever seen on a ball field in this city, about 8,000” 17 saw the Red Stockings pound Bradley for 24 hits (he was said to be suffering from an attack of vertigo), with Spalding holding the home team to six hits as the visitors won, 15-2.

Just as was the case during their season in Easton, Bradley worked well with Miller, the duo being credited for much of the Browns’ success. A contemporary commentator wrote that the two constituted “the main strength of the club,” adding, “They are not supported by a first class field but, if their work of to-day is a criterion, they do not need one. The field(ers) were called upon to do but the easiest kind of play… and scarcely a ball was struck that would bother an ordinary player.”18 The leading hitter on the team was outfielder Lip Pike, while outfielder Jack Chapman exhibited such skill in the field that he earned the nickname of “Death To Flying Things.”

A number of factors contributed to Bradley’s success on the mound. At 5-feet-10 and 175 pounds, he was a big man for the times (in 1876 he was the fourth-tallest pitcher in the National League) and he used his size to power his delivery. Equally imposing from a psychological standpoint was the “smile” Bradley showed batters. In his analysis of Bradley’s pitching technique, baseball historian Neil MacDonald declared the rather innocuous moniker of “Grin” to be a nickname that “belied a serious, savagely determined … man who wanted to play and win as much as any man alive.”19

MacDonald wrote that Bradley combined the abilities of a “straight pitcher like Al Spalding, considered to be the best in the game, with the ingenuity of a breaking ball specialist like Candy Cummings, the consummate chucker of curves.”20 An additional factor contributing to Bradley’s success during the 1876 season involved a new tactic learned from Browns teammate Mike McGeary: crushing game balls in a vise.

On October 26, 1875, Bradley returned to Reading with the Browns for an exhibition game against the semipro Reading Actives. Bradley and catcher Tom Miller were featured in ads in the Times and the Eagle referring to him as “The famous Bradley” and proclaiming, “The old foes are coming. Bradley and Miller – St. Louis professionals versus Actives.” 21 Upon Bradley’s arrival in Reading the day before the game, the Eagle described him as “the best looking ballplayer in the profession.”22

The next day the Browns defeated the Actives 18-11 in a sloppy game in which the Actives committed 20 errors and the Browns 12. Bradley entered the game in relief of the Browns backup pitcher, Pud Galvin, who surrendered eight runs in five innings, allowing the Actives to pull ahead at one point, 8-7. Bradley quieted the Actives’ bats and the Browns erupted for 11 runs in the final four innings. (The Eagle headlined its game story “One of the Worst Games Yet,”23 but failed to provide the score. Without the Reading Times’s game account, posterity would never have known the score.)

The 18-year-old Galvin had been signed at the start of the season to back up Bradley after he had pitched impressively for the Niagara amateur team of St. Louis in a preseason game against the Browns.24 Galvin pitched in three games in a row in late May, winning two, when Bradley was sidelined with health problems. Bradley returned the lineup on May 29, after which Galvin made only four more pitching starts. On his way to becoming baseball’s first 300-game winner, over the next 17 years Galvin won another 361 games en route to his induction into the Baseball Hall of Fame.

The National Association of 1875 suffered from a great disparity between the haves and have-nots, The Browns finished in fourth place with a record of 39-29, a distant 26½ games behind the Red Stockings. As the winning pitcher in all but six of the Browns’ victories, Bradley finished his rookie season with a record of 33-26, starting 60 games and finishing 57, with 5 shutouts. In 535⅔ innings pitched, Bradley struck out 60 and gave up a remarkably low 17 walks.

During the tumultuous offseason that followed, the National League was created, the National Association dissolved, a number of former National Association teams (the Browns among them) joining the new league, and a multitude of players moving to new teams. Although Bradley remained with the Browns, his surrounding cast underwent changes, the most dramatic being catcher Tommy Miller contracting a disabling illness over the winter from which he died on May 29, 1876.25 Miller’s replacement, Honest John Clapp, was signed away from the Philadelphia Athletics in the offseason and is viewed as one of the most talented catchers in baseball at the time. Despite the success Bradley enjoyed over the two seasons Miller was his batterymate, at least one commentator credited Clapp for helping Bradley go from very good in 1875 to superlative in 1876.26

Other changes to the Browns lineup included Bill Hague and “Death To Flying Things” Chapman both signing with Louisville, and 40-year-old Dicky Pearce being replaced as shortstop by Denny Mack. Pearce and as manager by Mase Graffen. (With superior fielding skills, Pearce returned as the starting shortstop later in the season even though he was 14 years older than Mack.)

Also moving on was Pud Galvin, leaving his role as Bradley’s understudy to become the primary pitcher with the St. Louis Red Stockings, an unaffiliated team made up mostly of members of the team’s 1875 National Association entry. Galvin was not replaced as Bradley’s backup, or change pitcher; during the 1876 season Bradley threw every inning for the Browns except for four innings of relief pitched by Joe Blong.

On April 25, 1876, just before the start of the season, the Louisville Courier-Journal declared that Bradley was the hardest man in the profession to bat against.27 This did not appear to be the case at the season’s outset, as the Browns and Bradley lost the first two games of the season to a bad Cincinnati Reds club that won only seven more games that season. As the season progressed, Bradley did his best to confirm the Courier-Journal’s analysis. During a series in late May against the New York Mutuals, he threw only 24 balls in 27 innings.28 A 17-0 shutout of the Athletics on June 1 was his sixth of the year. He pitched two more shutouts in June, four in July, three in August, and one in September on his way to setting the record of 16 in a season.

In early July Bradley signed a contract with the Philadelphia Athletics for the following year. When word of this came out, the St. Louis press criticized him for “treachery,” and the Chicago Tribune speculated that he would not try to win games in a coming series against the Hartford Blues. Bradley’s response to this was to shut out Hartford three times in five days, culminating with the 2-0 victory on July 15 in which the Dark Blues failed to get a hit. The Tribune ran a retraction.29

Appreciation of no-hitters was in its nascent state at the time, and most accounts of the game focused on Hartford’s poor hitting, with little attention given to the fact that Bradley had not allowed a hit, with some accounts not even mentioning that it was a no-hitter.30

On May 23 Boston’s Joe Borden had shut out the Cincinnati Reds, giving up only two walks, which were recorded as hits consistent with scoring rules at that time. Bradley’s gem has been considered the first no-hitter in the National League. (The previous season Borden, pitching for the Philadelphia Pearls in the National Association, threw the first major-league no-hitter, 4-0 against the Chicago White Stockings. As for his 1876 shutout of Cincinnati, sportswriters and league officials disagreed over categorizing as walks as hits, but, as Neil W. McDonald wrote, “Enough doubt has been cast on Borden’s efforts against Cincinnati to erase his honor of tossing the first National League no-hitter. Only God and the ghosts of ’76 know if Borden was sinned against.”31

Three days later against Cincinnati, Bradley took another no-hitter into the ninth before Charley “Baby” Jones broke it up with a two-out double. Bradley’s scoreless streak of 37 innings remained the NL record until Christy Mathewson surpassed it at 39 in 1901.

Along with Bradley’s range of pitches, pinpoint control, having the best catcher in the league, and having a withering grin, an unseemly side to his success in 1876 involved gamesmanship (or cheating, depending upon one’s view). According to Bradley’s former manager Frank Bancroft, the pitcher learned from teammate Mike McGeary how to steam open the sealed box containing the new ball to be used for the game, put the ball in a vise to crush it, and then reseal the box, creating a new mushy ball.32Aside from the process enhancing Bradley’s curve, the ball usually lost its shape over the course of the game, allowing a crafty pitcher like Bradley to alter its plateward course with more trickery.33

With the Browns in third place for much of the season behind Chicago and Hartford, on August 17 Bradley shut out the visiting White Stockings, 3-0, culminating a stretch in which the team went 14-3 and moved past Hartford into second place, six games behind Chicago. The Browns took another game from Chicago and moved within five games of first, the closest they would get that season. (They finished in second place also with a record of 45-19, six games behind the White Stockings.) Bradley pitched 573 innings, all but four innings of the St. Louis season, and every decision was his. In addition to his record-setting 16 shutouts, he had a league-low 1.23 earned-run average. He also led the league with 34 wild pitches.

Although Bradley had signed with Philadelphia for the 1877 season, the A’s were expelled from the National League for failing to complete their full schedule, and Bradley was able to nullify the contract. Instead he signed with Chicago, but tried to avoid burning bridges in St. Louis, sending the following letter to the St. Louis Globe-Democrat (published October 18, 1876), expressing his sentiments to St. Louis fans:

To the Editor of the Globe-Democrat:

Dear Sir: In leaving St. Louis I think it due to myself to make a few remarks in explanation of contracting in Chicago when I did so. I had a private misunderstanding with some of the officers of the St. Louis Club, this being the prime cause of my signing in Chicago.

I desire to say that my relations in St. Louis have been of the most pleasant character and to the hosts of warm friends I have acquired I desire to leave the most sincere expression of gratitude for the kind appreciation of my poor services. I shall always remember St. Louis with the liveliest feelings of respect and can never readily forget the generous treatment I have received in this city, where my professional reputation has to a great extent been made

Yours, etc. G.W. Bradley34

The plan with the White Stockings was that Bradley would succeed Al Spalding as the pitcher, with Spalding moving to first base. The plan didn’t work out well. Bradley finished the season with a disappointing 18-23 record, with Chicago making no attempt to keep him for the next season. Reasons advanced for the falloff in Bradley’s performance were that his former teammate McGeary, who had taught him the crushed-ball ploy, warned other teams of the trick,35 and that the White Stockings made the mistake of not signing John Clapp to catch Bradley.36

After his season with the White Stockings, Bradley set out on an odyssey that would see him switch teams 16 times over the next 12 seasons, playing in 16 cities in various major and minor leagues. Bradley began the 1878 season with New Bedford of the fledgling International Association (which was meant to rival the National League but never did), signed by its manager, Frank Bancroft. When things didn’t work out with the league to Bancroft’s satisfaction, after just three games he pulled the club from the league and instead played an independent schedule for the season.37 The team played 130 games against teams on the East Coast, with Bradley logging in more than 760 innings.38

The next season (1879) Bradley pitched for the last-place Troy Trojans of the National League, posting 13 wins to go with a league-leading 40 losses. In 1880 he moved to the Providence Grays of the National League, where he alternated playing third base and pitching with John Montgomery Ward. After signing with the Detroit Wolverines of the National League for 1880, he was released because of health issues after playing one game at shortstop. He then signed with the Cleveland Blues, but negotiated a release that resulted in his being sold for $50039 to the Philadelphia Athletics of the American Association (Bradley’s third major league) in June of 1883. 40

With the A’s Bradley won 16 games as the team’s primary backup pitcher to Bobby Mathews; when not pitching he played third base. In September, when Mathews was out with arm problems, Bradley and Jumping Jack Jones put together a string of pitching performances that enabled the A’s to win seven in a row on their way to the pennant. Despite his heroics, Bradley was released after the season, telling one interviewer, “They sent me adrift, just as you would a broken down horse. But that was strictly business, you know.41

The next year Bradley signed with the Cincinnati Outlaw Reds of the ill-fated Union Association, which existed only in 1884 (Bradley’s fourth and final major league). His record was 25-15 as the team’s primary pitcher. After the dissolution of the UA, for his playing in that league and jumping his contract with the Philadelphia, Bradley found himself blacklisted from other major-league teams for the 1885 season. Adding financial insult to career injury, Bradley never received what the Cincinnati team agreed to pay him, leading him to sue the defunct team. He eventually settled for $1,500 in cash, considerably less than what he was owed, since the team had gone bankrupt.

In 1886 Bradley signed with the Philadelphia Athletics again, as a shortstop, but was released after 13 games with an average of .083. Despite letting him go, Athletics manager Bill Sharsig called him “the hardest working and most conscientious player for his club that we ever had.”42 Despite these fine intangibles, Sharsig said, Bradley’s hitting was too weak to keep him on the team.

Over the remainder of 1886 and the next four seasons Bradley played for seven minor-league teams, beginning with Nashville of the Southern League. At the outset of the next season he not only played for Nashville, but managed the team as well, where he played third base, and also envisioned making a pitching comeback.43 Replaced as manager at the end of May,44 he moved on to play with the New Orleans Pelicans of the same league, then appeared briefly with the Baltimore Orioles of the American Association before finishing the season with Danville in a league in Illinois.45 In 1888 he played third base and first base for the New Orleans Pelicans of the Southern League. When the league disbanded in July, New Orleans joined the independent Texas League. Bradley moved north for the 1889 season, playing third base (and pitching one inning) for the Sioux City Corn Huskers of the Western Association. In 1890 he went full circle and finished his career in Easton of the Eastern Interstate League, playing 21 games at third base and batting .299.

With his baseball career over, Bradley first worked as a night watchman and then joined the Philadelphia police force. His son George W. Jr. apparently showed some baseball talent, and in 1907 Bradley talked of his son’s growing abilities, referring to him as a, “keeper” (who) …will make good either at third-base or behind the bat.46 No records could be found relating to a baseball career for George Jr.

In 1915 Bradley made an appearance at a revival in Philadelphia conducted by the former major leaguer Billy Sunday, whose career overlapped Bradley’s. Seeing Bradley, on duty and in uniform, Sunday encouraged him to come forward, calling out to him, “Brad, God bless you, old scout.”47 An account of the event described how Bradley “gulped hard as he transferred his mace to his left hand and reached up to grip the reaching hand of his former rival. Then … said simply, ‘Bill, I feel better now. Thanks.’” 48

Bradley retired from the police in 1930.49 He died of liver cancer on October 2, 1931, and was buried in Northwood Cemetery in Philadelphia. He was survived by his wife, Charlotte; his daughter, Lottie Crouse; and three sons, George W. Jr., John, and Morris. His obituary in the Philadelphia Inquirer called him “a close friend of many prominent men connected with big-league baseball today.”50 His hometown Reading Eagle ran a brief item noting that he pitched the first no-hitter in the National League, with no mention of his local connection.51

An updated version of this biography appears in SABR’s No-Hitters book (2017), edited by Bill Nowlin.

Sources

In addition to the sources cited in Notes, the author accessed Bradley’s player file from the National Baseball Hall of Fame.

Some of the material in this article was also used were used in “Days of Grin and Heck: Berks County’s First Two Major Leaguers,” which appeared in The Historical Review of Berks County, Summer, 2014, Volume 79, Number 5.

Thanks to David Nemec for information and guidance in correspondence with the author, April 21, 2014.

Notes

“Theodore Breitenstein was at one time the greatest left-handed pitcher in America.” — Alfred H. Spink, founder of The Sporting News 2

“Breitenstein is one of the few left-handers who can locate the plate when he wants to, and in addition to this he has terrific speed, sharp curves, and there is not a pitcher in the league that fields his position better.” — Wee Willie Keeler, 18973

Breitenstein was a freckled-faced redhead. His nickname was “Breit” (rhymes with write). He was also called Red, Theo, and “The,” the first syllable of Theo.4 Unlike Carlton, Breitenstein was small, 5-feet-9, and weighed between 137 and 150 pounds early in his career, increasing to 167 pounds later on.5

Born on June 1, 1869, in St. Louis, Theodore J. Breitenstein was the youngest of the three children of German immigrants Louis Breitenstein (1822-1888, a cabinet maker) and Elizabeth (Moore) Breitenstein (1825-1883).6 Louis and Elizabeth died when Theodore was a teenager.  Theodore went to work making cookstoves for the Wrought Iron Range Company of St. Louis and played on the Home Comforts, a baseball team named for the company’s brand of ranges and furnaces. With Theodore pitching, the team won the 1889 St. Louis Baseball League championship game.7

In 1890 Breitenstein was one of the Brown Reserves, a group of promising amateurs permitted by St. Louis Browns owner Chris Von der Ahe to practice at the Browns’ ballpark.8 This led to Breitenstein joining the Browns in 1891. He made his major-league debut on April 28, pitching two scoreless innings in relief against the Louisville Colonels.9 He went to the Grand Rapids (Michigan) Shamrocks in May and returned to the Browns in August.10 On October 4, the last day of the season, Breitenstein made his first major-league start and threw a no-hitter against the Colonels. Except for one base on balls, it was a perfect game. The 22-year-old hurler did not realize he had a no-hitter going until the game was over; his teammates had kept mum so that he would not get rattled.11

After hearing “tales of pitcher Breitenstein’s drinking,” Von der Ahe had doubts about his future.12 Breitenstein pitched erratically for the Browns in 1892. On April 15 he hurled a three-hitter against the Pittsburgh Pirates, but a week later the Pirates hammered him for 12 runs in the first inning.13 On April 24 Breitenstein allowed 12 hits and nine walks in a 10-2 loss to the Cincinnati Reds, yet on May 6, he had a no-hitter through eight innings against the Brooklyn Grooms en route to a two-hitter, albeit with seven walks.14 On May 14 he walked 10 batters in a 5-3 loss to the Chicago Colts, but a week later he outpitched Cy Young in a 4-1 victory over the Cleveland Spiders.15

The roller-coaster continued throughout the season. In early June Breitenstein was knocked out in blowout losses to the Philadelphia Phillies and Baltimore Orioles.16 Then he tossed a two-hitter against Louisville on June 20, and four days later went the distance against Cy Young in a 16-inning, 3-3 tie.17 Sporting Life cautioned Breitenstein in July:

“Breitenstein and jag juice [hard liquor] have been trotting a rapid heat lately. … He is the only player on the team who has been fined this season, and if he insists on dallying with the stuff that purloins the brain an indefinite suspension will be the result. But he is a good-natured, hard-working lad, and he ought to think it over a couple of times before following … the ruddy road to ruin.”18

Von der Ahe suspended Breitenstein for part of August and September.19 The Browns finished in 11th place in the 12-team National League. Breitenstein compiled an unimpressive 9-19 record and 4.69 ERA in 282⅓ innings, yet his nine wins were second most on the Browns’ pitching staff.

In 1893 the pitching distance was increased from 50 feet to 60 feet 6 inches. This sparked a 29 percent increase from 1892 in National League scoring per game. The new distance suited Breitenstein. He pitched 382⅔ innings in 1893, led the league with a 3.18 ERA, and posted a 19-24 record for the 10th-place Browns. Highlights included a two-hit shutout of Cap Anson’s Chicago Colts on May 7, and a two-hitter against John Ward’s New York Giants on the Fourth of July.20 Breitenstein’s favorite catchers were Dick Buckley and Heinie Peitz; he credited Buckley for his success as a pitcher.21 The German duo of Breitenstein and Peitz became known as the Pretzel Battery.22

After a doubleheader in St. Louis on August 1, 1893, the Browns traveled to Louisville for a three-game series. Along the way, they stopped to play an exhibition game at Vincennes, Indiana. Breitenstein “filled up on Indiana whisky” and refused to board the train to Louisville; three teammates “attempted by main force to put Breitenstein on the train, but failed.”23 After sobering up, he returned to the team and apologized to Von der Ahe.24

In 1894 Breitenstein was overworked, underpaid, and bullied by Von der Ahe. He pitched 447⅓ innings, the most innings in one season by a National League pitcher from 1894 to 2014. His 27-23 record was remarkable on a team with a 56-76 record. His ERA jumped to 4.79 but was better than the league average of 5.33. Sporting Life said, “Breitenstein is one of the lowest-salaried and most effective pitchers in the League.”25 Breitenstein’s contract paid him a meager $1,350 for the season and included a “temperance” clause that permitted Von der Ahe to fine him $100 for each time he was caught drinking; this fine was levied once during the season.26 According to reporter O.P. Caylor, Von der Ahe liked to swear at Breitenstein in German and “know that he is understood.”27

Breitenstein’s relentless workload and rocky relationship with Von der Ahe were demonstrated during a doubleheader against Brooklyn on September 9, 1894. He pitched a complete game in the first game, and the Browns won, 7-5. He had thrown complete games on September 1, 3, 6, and 9, and pitched in relief on September 4 and 8.28 Nonetheless, after two St. Louis hurlers were battered in the second game of the doubleheader, Von der Ahe wanted to put Breitenstein into that game, too, and was angered that he had changed out of his uniform. Von der Ahe ordered him to put his uniform on and go in to pitch. Breitenstein refused, so Von der Ahe fined him $100 and suspended him.29 Breitenstein explained:

“The cranks [baseball fans] have but a slight appreciation of the fearful strain a pitcher’s arm is subjected to. A man who takes his regular turn in the box ought to be asked to do extra work only in case of an emergency. I have had but little trouble with my arm and seldom complain when called on to go into the points. I make it a rule to trust the straight ball and change of pace until a man gets on base, when I resort to the [more strenuous] drop and curved ball to outwit an opponent. … I don’t loaf in the box, but I adopt this system of saving my arm.”30

Breitenstein returned to action on September 15 in St. Louis and was defeated 7-2 by the Giants.31 That evening the 25-year-old pitcher married 18-year-old Ida L. Uhlmansick. Like Breitenstein, Ida was a native of St. Louis and a child of German immigrants.32 She was “a pretty German girl, with eyes that are blue and hair that is blond.”33 Breitenstein promised to be a model husband, and Ida said she would lock him in at night if necessary.34 The couple resided in St. Louis. In the offseason Breitenstein worked at a stove foundry as a machinist.35 He was said to be “a first-class workman” with “not a lazy bone in his body.”36

Breitenstein rejected Von der Ahe’s initial offer of $1,800 and signed for $2,000 for the 1895 season.37 The Browns were even weaker in 1895 than in 1894. Statistics published by the Pittsburgh Daily Post on August 5, 1895, indicate that Breitenstein’s won-lost record was 16-18 when the rest of the St. Louis pitching staff had a combined record of 12-41.38 Von der Ahe turned down offers of $10,000 for Breitenstein from both the Phillies and Pirates, an enormous sum for that era.39 Breitenstein was the most popular player in St. Louis, and “St. Louis patrons were up in arms against” any sale of the hometown favorite.40 Sporting Life said, “The League should insist on making Von der Ahe keep his great pitcher, Breitenstein, as the sale of this young man will be the deathblow to base ball in St. Louis.”41

Breitenstein finished the 1895 season with a 19-30 record in 438⅔ innings, and the Browns landed in 11th place with a 39-92 record. He was credited with 49 percent of the team’s wins (19 of 39); no pitcher won a greater percentage of his team’s victories from 1893 to 2014.42 Reportedly, Breitenstein “dissipated” (abused alcohol) on one road trip.43 Despite losing 30 games, he was wanted by every team in the league. Sporting Life said: “What a good-natured, hard-working little wonder he is. The balls come in over the plate like a zig-zag streak of lightning, and there is not a moment’s rest for him in the whole nine innings. … He has the nerve and the heart and the equilibrium of temper and the modesty, and yet with it all the confidence, too.”44

In 1896 St. Louis again finished in 11th place, with Breitenstein earning 18 of the team’s 40 victories. The Cincinnati Reds acquired him after the season for a reported $10,000. Thrilled to leave Von der Ahe, Breitenstein demonstrated what he could do on a good team. In 1897 he compiled a 23-12 record for the fourth-place Reds, including 10 consecutive victories from June 11 to July 18. The Cincinnati Enquirer said, “Some of those who in the early spring used to refer to Breit as a ten-cent counterfeit, are now quite ready to take off their hats to him as the only genuine, blown-in-the-glass, Ten-Thousand-Dollar-Beauty in the business.”45 Breitenstein enjoyed his three-hit shutout of St. Louis on June 30, with Von der Ahe looking on.46 Without Breitenstein, St. Louis won only 29 games; the 1897 Browns, with a .221 winning percentage, rank as the second worst major-league team between 1891 and 2014.

The Pretzel Battery was reunited when Breitenstein joined the Reds. He and Peitz were a clever pair. They would “argue” with each other during pivotal moments of a game. Breitenstein described the ploy:

“The batter, of course, is interested in the supposed quarrel, and when he sees that Peitz apparently is not ready to catch, he takes his eye off the ball. Then Heinie gives me the sign, and I shoot it over. The batter either hits late at the ball and pops it up, or misses it entirely. I tell you, we have pulled out of many a tight hole with that trick.”47

With Peitz behind the plate, Breitenstein outdueled Cy Young on Opening Day in 1898.48 A week later, against Pittsburgh, Breitenstein hurled his second career no-hitter.49 After shutting out Cleveland on September 4, he had an 18-8 record and the Reds were in first place with a 1½-game lead over the Boston Beaneaters. The Beaneaters won 30 of their remaining 35 games to capture the pennant, while the Reds fell to third place, 11½ games back. Breitenstein finished the season with a 20-14 record. He was bothered by a sore arm late in the season, and an X-ray revealed a bone spur near his left elbow.50

Breitenstein’s arm troubled him in the spring of 1899,51 but he pitched well for the Reds in 1899 and 1900. In February 1901, the St. Louis Republic lobbied for his return to St. Louis.52 The Reds complied by releasing Breitenstein, and he signed with the St. Louis Cardinals. After he pitched poorly in three starts, though, the Cardinals released him. Breitenstein “gave no indication of any of his former prowess, and the necessity of reducing [the Cardinals] to the League limit of 16 men by May 15 forced his release.”53 This ended his major-league career, a few weeks before his 32nd birthday. Breitenstein had thrown 301 complete games in the major leagues, establishing a record for southpaws that has been exceeded by only Eddie Plank and Warren Spahn in major-league history through 2015.

Beginning in June 1901, Breitenstein pitched for the St. Paul (Minnesota) Saints of the Western League, but the team released him in August “in the interests of good discipline.”54 He finished the season with the semipro Alton (Illinois) Blues.55 In December Breitenstein was thrown from a horse-drawn carriage and broke his right (nonpitching) arm.56 That winter was a low point in his life, both physically and mentally, and he said he would never again play baseball.57

Breitenstein’s friend and former teammate Charlie Frank, who managed the Memphis Egyptians of the Southern Association, persuaded him to return to baseball as a member of the Egyptians.58 Breitenstein posted a 21-11 record for Memphis in 1902. One of his six shutouts was a three-hitter against the New Orleans Pelicans on June 24; the “New Orleans left-handed batters found Breitenstein an unsolvable proposition” and opted to bat right-handed against him.59

Breitenstein still had the stuff to pitch in the major leagues, but he turned down a chance to join Connie Mack’s Philadelphia Athletics in the spring of 1903.60 With six shutouts and a 17-11 record, Breitenstein helped the Egyptians win the 1903 Southern Association pennant. On September 19 his triple knocked in two runs in his 3-0 shutout of the Atlanta Crackers; the Memphis “crowd went frantic and a subscription of $75 was taken up for the pitcher.”61 Despite the appreciation shown in Memphis, Breitenstein was loyal to manager Frank and followed him the next season to New Orleans.

Breitenstein pitched spectacularly for the New Orleans Pelicans from 1904 to 1906, with a 57-20 record and a 1.50 ERA. The Pelicans won the 1905 Southern Association pennant. The Philadelphia Athletics and St. Louis Browns tried to lure Breitenstein back to the major leagues, but he declined.62 Earning a $2,700 salary in New Orleans, he was better paid than many major-league hurlers.63

Following an offyear in 1907, Breitenstein was exceptional in 1908, with a 17-6 record and a minuscule 1.05 ERA. Over the final two months of the season, he threw seven shutouts. A dramatic showdown occurred on September 19, the last day of the season. The Pelicans needed to defeat the Nashville Volunteers to win the pennant; otherwise, Nashville would take the flag.  Nashville won the game, 1-0, in “a brilliantly contested pitchers’ battle between Carl Vedder] Sitton and Breitenstein.”64 Sportswriter Grantland Rice called it “the greatest game ever played in Dixie.”65

Breitenstein was known as “The Grand Old Man” of the Southern Association. The Cleveland Plain Dealer said: “He is a little, weazened up old man with furrows on his face. … His looks are typical of a player who has baked beneath the boiling suns on a ball field season after season.”66  At age 40, “the wise old owl” pitched a no-hitter against the Montgomery (Alabama) Senators on August 15, 1909; the Senators “were utterly unable to connect” with his offerings.67 It was the third no-hitter of his professional career, and it came 18 years after his first. On August 27 Breitenstein threw an 11-inning, two-hit shutout against the Birmingham Barons.68 He followed that with a 12-inning, three-hit shutout of Montgomery on September 5.69

New Orleans won the 1910 Southern Association pennant by a comfortable eight-game margin over second-place Birmingham. Breitenstein compiled a 19-9 record and a 1.53 ERA, with eight shutouts; however, the brightest star on the Pelicans was Shoeless Joe Jackson, a sensational 22-year-old center fielder who led the league with a .354 batting average. The next season was Breitenstein’s last as a player, and at age 42, he helped the Pelicans win another pennant. He stayed in the Southern Association as an umpire from 1912 to 1918.

After leaving baseball, Breitenstein was employed at a Ford assembly plant, and later at Forest Park, in St. Louis. He enjoyed watching major-league games at Sportsman’s Park,70 but felt the pitchers were pampered. “Now, if a boy is hit in the first couple of innings, they put the blankets on him and he’s through for four days,” he said in 1929. “We worked three or four times a week, and lots of times played the outfield when we weren’t pitching.”71

Breitenstein offered advice to young pitchers:

• “More batsmen are fooled by change of pace than by all the speed, curves or shoots in the world. A good change of pace is the most valuable faculty a pitcher can possess.”72
• “Study your batters. If you know he likes a high ball give him a low one and vice versa. Not all the time, of course, for if they know what is coming they are liable to lay for it. Mix them up at unexpected moments.”73
• “Never pitch for strike-outs. Their day is over. Always remember that you have eight men to help you.”74

Ida Breitenstein died on April 25, 1935. Heartbroken over the loss of his wife, Theodore died eight days later of heart failure, at the age of 65.75 They are buried at St. Peter’s Cemetery in St. Louis.76

“Over the hills to the Old Men’s Home
Rattles the dismal car.
Famous fielders and willow wielders
Have made the journey far.
Countless the inmates all down and out,
Never again to star.
But silky fine is T. Breitenstein,
The Grand Old Man ain’t that!”77

— Pointers from Pelicanville, 1910

This biography appears in SABR’s “No-Hitters” (2017), edited by Bill Nowlin.

Notes

1 In 2015 Baseball-reference.com indicated that Breitenstein had earned 160 major-league wins and 165 minor-league wins, for a total of 325 wins in professional baseball; however, his 1891 minor-league record is not included in this tally.

2 Alfred H. Spink, The National Game, 2nd Edition (St. Louis: National Game Pub. Co., 1911), 124.

3 Harrisburg (Pennsylvania) Daily Independent, July 9, 1897.

4 Although record books give his name as Ted Breitenstein, the research for this biography found no evidence that he was called Ted by his contemporaries.

5 The Sporting News, April 5, 1934.

6 Ancestry.com. Theodore’s middle initial is given as “J” in the 1910 US Census and in 1895 and 1917 St. Louis city directories.

7 Spink, The National Game, 53.

8 The Sporting News, April 5, 1934; St. Louis Post-Dispatch, March 16, 1890.

9 Chicago Tribune, April 29, 1891.

10 Fort Wayne (Indiana) Sentinel, August 6, 1891.

11 The Sporting News, February 21, 1929. Breitenstein (1891), Bumpus Jones (1892), and Bobo Holloman (1953) were the only pitchers to throw a no-hitter in their first major-league start, through 2014.

12 Sporting Life, March 12, 1892.

13 Pittsburgh Dispatch, April 16 and 23, 1892.

14 Sporting Life, April 30, 1892; Brooklyn Daily Eagle, May 7, 1892.

15 Brooklyn Daily Eagle, May 15, 1892; Los Angeles Herald, May 22, 1892.

16 Chicago Inter Ocean, June 7, 1892; Pittsburgh Daily Post, June 11, 1892.

17 St. Paul Globe, June 21, 1892; San Francisco Call, June 25, 1892.

18 Sporting Life, July 2, 1892.

19 St. Paul Globe, September 19, 1892.

20 Chicago Tribune, May 8, 1893; Cleveland Plain Dealer, July 5, 1893.

21 Sporting Life, January 25, 1896.

22 New York World, July 12, 1893.

23 Sporting Life, August 12, 1893.

24 Chicago Tribune, August 5, 1893.

25 Sporting Life, May 12, 1894.

26 Sporting Life, March 17, 1894; Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, July 17, 1894.

27 Kansas City (Kansas) Gazette, May 13, 1894.

28 Washington Times, September 2 and 5, 1894; Philadelphia Times, September 4, 1894; Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, September 7, 1894; Chicago Inter Ocean, September 9, 1894.

29 Sporting Life, September 13, 1894; Scranton (Pennsylvania) Tribune, September 14, 1894.

30 Springfield (Missouri) Leader, September 17, 1894.

31 Richmond (Virginia) Dispatch, September 16, 1894.

32 Ancestry.com.

33 Sporting Life, September 22, 1894.

34 Ibid.

35 Sporting Life, December 9, 1893, and November 24, 1894.

36 Sporting Life, October 31, 1896.

37 Philadelphia Times, January 26, 1895; Sporting Life, March 9, 1895.

38 Pittsburgh Daily Post, August 5, 1895.

39 New York Tribune, June 9, 1895; Pittsburgh Daily Post, July 9, 1895.

40 Brooklyn Daily Eagle, July 25, 1895; Sporting Life, August 3, 1895.

41 Sporting Life, July 20, 1895.

42 SABR, The SABR Baseball List & Record Book: Baseball’s Most Fascinating Records and Unusual Statistics (New York: Scribner, 2007), 266.

43 Sporting Life, July 13, 1895.

44 Sporting Life, June 22, 1895.

45 Cincinnati Enquirer, July 19, 1897.

46 The Sporting News, July 3, 1897.

47 Sporting Life, August 13, 1898.

48 Cincinnati Enquirer, April 16, 1898.

49 Chicago Tribune, April 23, 1898.

50 Sporting Life, August 27 and September 10, 1898; Kansas City Journal, December 18, 1898.  X-rays were discovered in 1895 by Wilhelm Roentgen. The X-ray of Breitenstein’s arm in 1898 is an early example of the use of X-rays in sports medicine.

51 Louisville Courier-Journal, May 8, 1899.

52 St. Louis Republic, February 3, 1901.

53 St. Louis Post-Dispatch, May 12, 1901.

54 Minneapolis Journal, June 3 and August 16, 1901.

55 St. Louis Republic, August 31, 1901.

56 Sedalia (Missouri) Democrat, December 9, 1901.

57 Sporting Life, January 25, 1902.

58 Atlanta Constitution, March 31, 1902.

59 New Orleans Times-Picayune, June 25, 1902.

60 Mansfield (Ohio) News, May 16, 1903.

61 Atlanta Constitution, September 20, 1903.

62 Washington Times, September 2, 1905; Atlanta Constitution, September 9, 1905.

63 Washington Post, December 12, 1905.

64 Sporting Life, October 3, 1908.

65 John A. Simpson, The Greatest Game Ever Played in Dixie: The Nashville Vols, Their 1908 Season, and the Championship Game (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland, 2007), 25.

66 Cleveland Plain Dealer, March 28, 1909.

67 New Orleans Times-Picayune, August 16, 1909.

68 Sporting Life, September 4, 1909.

69 Sporting Life, September 18, 1909.

70 The Sporting News, April 5, 1934.

71 The Sporting News, February 21, 1929.

72 St. Louis Post-Dispatch, May 10, 1896.

73 Ibid.

74 Ibid.

75 Cleveland Plain Dealer, May 4, 1935.

76 http://stpeterschurch.org/cemetery/cemetery_SearchResults.php?S=2&L=124.00&LO=1.

77 New Orleans Times-Picayune, July 30, 1910.