Biggs Wehde

Wilbur Wehde was born on November 23, 1906, in the hamlet of Holstein, Iowa. The town, roughly 45 miles east of Sioux City, was at the time home to fewer than 1,000 residents, mostly first- or second-generation German immigrants. Wehde’s father, Gustave, managed a creamery and brokered other farmers’ produce, while his mother, Frieda, managed the array of daily tasks that provided the metronome for life on the frontier.1 Wilbur had four full siblings, brother Gus and sisters Margaret, Florence, and Mabel. Their lives changed dramatically when Frieda died in 1918. Wilbur was only 11 years old. Gustave remarried, and he and his new wife added four more children to the brood: brothers Ray and Roy, and sisters Evelyn and Fern.

The loss of his mother, and the family’s adaptation to a new normal, had no discernible effect on Wehde’s athletic skills. Starting as a boy, Wilbur played on a variety of local baseball teams, and then later for several semipro and town teams in the Holstein area.2 Not only did Wehde pitch,3 but he was one of the better hitters on some of his teams as well.4 He played for town teams throughout northwest Iowa and even across the border into Minnesota. By 1929, he was referred to as some variant of “Bugs,” “Bigs,”5 or “Biggs” in the newspapers, ostensibly due to his physical size. It was “Biggs” that stuck throughout his future baseball life.

Wehde clearly loved baseball, but with only a high-school diploma and still without any professional prospects, the 21-year-old took the figurative plunge and married Cora Mae Vance in 1928. That happy union lasted until Cora’s death in 1961, and produced a son, Jerry, along with daughters Delores and Joanne.

On the baseball diamond, Wehde’s longest, and most successful, pre-professional time was spent with the Sioux City Cowboys, and in 1929 the right-hander was so well regarded throughout Iowa that he earned a contract with the Dubuque (Iowa) Tigers of the Class-D Mississippi Valley League. On July 7, 1929, he won his first professional decision when he tossed a three-hitter against the Keokuk Indians.6 He continued to pitch well that year, and the local paper credited him with helping Dubuque to the 1929 league championship.7 Overall, Wehde threw 131 innings for Dubuque throughout the summer, enough to entice the Tigers to rehire him for 1930.8

In 1930, despite a won-lost record of 11-13 over 220 innings and an earned run average of 5.11, the pitching-starved Chicago White Sox bought Wehde’s contract and brought him to the Windy City for the final weeks of the big-league campaign.9 Wehde made his major-league debut on September 15, 1930, when he took the mound for the sixth inning in a game against the Washington Senators. Facing four batters, he yielded one hit in what proved to be a 14-9 loss to the visitors. The following day he pitched 1⅓ innings, closing out a 10-2 loss to the Philadelphia Athletics. Two more two-inning stints on September 18 and 19, both mopping up losses to the Athletics and Yankees, respectively, constituted the rest of Wehde’s season. Overall, he pitched 6⅓ innings, gave up seven hits and seven earned runs (along with one unearned run), and had an ERA of 9.95. The team, despite having three future Hall of Famers on the roster – 41-year-old Red Faber, Ted Lyons, and newcomer Luke Appling – finished the American League season in seventh place, 30 games below .500 with a 62-92 record.

In January, Chicago sent Wehde to the Dallas Steers in the Class-A Texas League.10 By July, however, he was back with the White Sox, and made his 1931 debut on July 12 in the ninth inning of the first game of a doubleheader against Cleveland. Five days later he pitched a scoreless inning in Washington, and then appeared in four more blowout losses to the Athletics, the Red Sox, and the Yankees.

On July 28, 1931, Wehde finally earned a victory.

Tuesday afternoon in the Bronx found a moribund 35-59 Chicago White Sox team visiting the 55-38 Yankees. The latter sported a lineup that included an infield of immortals, including Lou Gehrig at first, Tony Lazzeri at second, and Joe Sewell at third base, along with Bill Dickey behind the plate and Babe Ruth in right field. As might be expected, the home team had a 2-0 lead after one inning, and a 5-3 advantage entering the bottom of the sixth.

In the sixth, Chicago starting pitcher Tommy Thomas let in five more runs and with two outs, manager Donie Bush replaced him with Wehde. After walking Lyn Lary and allowing a run-scoring single by Dickey, Wehde escaped when Lary failed to evade a rundown between second and third. The visitors failed to score in the top of the seventh, so Bush left his blowout specialist Wehde in to try to eat a few innings in what looked like a certain defeat. Wehde walked a batter and gave up one hit and one run in the otherwise uneventful inning. The score stood 12-3, Yankees. Chicago then scored 11 runs in the top of the eighth – off three future Hall of Famers (Herb Pennock, Red Ruffing, and Lefty Gomez) – and held on to win 14-12, making Wehde the pitcher of record for the victorious White Sox. It was one of the more improbable decisions that season, and it proved to be the sole win of Wehde’s big-league career.

Wehde did not bat in the big inning. After the first four runs had scored, he was due up with one out and runners on first and second. Smead Jolley pinch-hit for him and doubled to drive in the fifth run of the rally. 

Biggs Wehde made one more appearance in the majors, one-third of an inning in a 7-2 Chicago loss to the Detroit Tigers on August 3. On August 16 he and catcher Hank Garrity were sent down to the Minneapolis Millers in the American Association.11 The 24-year-old pitcher never returned to a major-league pitching mound.

In 1932 Dubuque managed only 47 wins, and a last-place finish, in the Mississippi Valley Leagues. Wehde’s ERA soared to 5.94 over 150 innings, and when the league folded due to the hardship imposed by what was becoming the Great Depression, he returned to Holstein and resumed play in the Sioux City environs, primarily with the independent Nebraska All-Stars in South Sioux City.12 In 1934 and 1935, Wehde was able to remain near home and play in Organized Baseball by joining the Sioux City Cowboys of the Class-A Western League. Given the level of the competition, 1934 may have been the best season of Wehde’s career. Supporting his 10-2 record, his Runs-Against-per-Nine-Innings (RA/9) dropped below 4.00 (3.98). He was one of the first players re-signed for 1935, but the local paper noted that he was finally serious about returning to the White Sox. “Baseball experts are unanimous,” the reporter wrote, “in declaring the big right hander would still be in the majors except for a tendency to take things lightly. But his hard work after joining the Cowboys … and his promise … that he’ll ‘win at least 20 ball games in 1935 and get back up to that big show again’ indicates his serious intent.”13

In 1935 Wehde’s pitching was inconsistent, and his RA/9 bloated to 5.61. It appeared his career might have ended, and he did not play in 1936.

Intermittently working at the local stockyards,14 Wehde spent some time mining and playing semipro baseball in the Black Hills, in Lead, South Dakota.15 In 1938 he signed with the new Sioux City Cowboys, this time in the Class-D Nebraska State League. In 1939 he helped pitch the team to Sioux City’s first championship in a quarter of a century, defeating Lincoln in the Western League championship series.16 He remained with the team until 1940, even as it relocated to Mitchell, South Dakota, and rejoined the Western League. In 1941 Wehde pitched for the Pueblo (Colorado) Rollers, the St. Louis Browns affiliate in the Western League. He went 8-5 that year, and joined the Sioux Falls (South Dakota) Canaries in the slightly better Northern League for the 1942 season.

At age 35, and with war raging around the world and a number of minor leagues suspending play, Wehde left baseball and enlisted in the United States Navy. In retrospect, Wehde’s minor-league time was successful. In addition to his 1-0 record in the major leagues, he logged an 83-66 record in the minors, and threw 1,443 professional innings. He had been able to play near home since 1934, sparing Cora and the family the burden of cross-country moves every year or two.

In 1944 the Navy assigned Wehde to a newly commissioned attack transport ship, the USS Missoula (APA-211), built at a shipyard in Richmond, California. He and most of the rest of the crew reported aboard in October 1944,17 a month after the ship was commissioned, and immediately began abbreviated training prior to heading to the Pacific Theater. In January 1945 Supply Clerk (Petty Officer 3rd Class, SK3) Wehde and the ship sailed toward Japan. USS Missoula delivered part of the 5th Marine Division to the invasion of Iwo Jima (including the men who famously raised the American flag on Mount Suribachi). In March, after hostilities died down, the ship and crew headed to the Philippines, and later in the year to Okinawa, where they participated in that final large-scale invasion of the Pacific war. In early 1946, the ship returned to California, and Wehde was released from active duty.

The ship’s participation in those two significant military actions netted every eligible crew member the American Campaign medal, the Asiatic-Pacific Campaign medal, and the World War II Victory medal, among others. Wehde’s obituary noted that he was a member of both the American Legion and the Disabled American Veterans.

Back home in Correctionville, Iowa, with Cora and the family, and too old for baseball, Wehde returned to work in the Sioux City stockyards. Before the war, he had started as basic yardman. From there he advanced to general labor, then to meat packing. After the war, he worked the animal chutes, and was eventually promoted to chute foreman.18 He remained there for the rest of his working life, until an on-the-job accident forced him into early retirement.19 His wife, Cora, died in 1961, and Wehde retired from the stockyards three years later, in 1964. In 1969 he was diagnosed with an undisclosed illness, and he died on September 21, 1970, at the Veterans Affairs Hospital in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. He was buried next to Cora at Calvary Cemetery in Sioux City, Iowa.

Sources

In addition to the sources cited in the Notes, the author relied on Baseball-Reference.com. The Sioux City Journal provided most of the reporting on Wehde, and the Navy Historical Center generated the information on USS Missoula and its achievements during World War II.

Photo credit: Wilbur “Biggs” Wehde, courtesy of Encyclopedia Dubuque.

Notes 

1 “Holstein Warehouse Burned,” Sioux City (Iowa) Journal, April 3, 1926: 2.

2 “Death Takes Former Hurler for White Sox and Cowboys,” Sioux City Journal, September 23, 1970: 9.

3 “Holstein Is Winner,” Sioux City Journal, August 19, 1925: 11.

4 “Holstein Beats Rats,” Sioux City Journal, July 20, 1926: 11.

5 “Cowboys Appear Stronger This Season,” Sioux City Journal, April 14, 1929: 21.

6 “Dubuque Takes Pair of Games in Sunday Bill,” Courier (Waterloo, Iowa), July 8, 1929: 10.

7 “Dubuque Valley Champion Team Well-Balanced,” Sioux City Journal, September 11, 1929: 20.

8 Statistics from baseball-reference.com, online: Biggs Wehde Minor Leagues Statistics & History | Baseball-Reference.com. Accessed May 17, 2021.

9 “Dubuque Sells Hurler to ChiSox,” Des Moines Tribune, September 13, 1930: 9.

10 Irving Vaughan, “Now the Draft’s Settled, Traffic Should Improve,” Chicago Tribune, January 21, 1931: 23.

11 “Wehde Sent Away,” Chicago Tribune, August 16, 1931: 24.

12 Dan Desmond. “All Stars Defeat Vermillion, 11-6,” Sioux City Journal, August 18, 1933: 11.

13 “Wehde Signs Contract for Next Season,” Sioux City Journal, January 9, 1935: 13.

14 “Death Takes Former Hurler for White Sox and Cowboys.”

15 Dan Desmond. “Sport Static,” Sioux City Journal, May 2, 1937: 29.

16 “Cowboys Snare Loop Pennant; Whip Links, 8-3,” Sioux City Journal, September 17, 1939: 17.

17 U.S. Navy Muster Roll of the Crew, USS Missoula (APA-211), pg. 9.  Filed: March 31, 1945.

18 Wilbur Wehde in Sioux City, Iowa, directories in 1939, 1941, 1943, 1947, and 1957.  Online: Ancestry.com – U.S., City Directories, 1822-1995  Accessed: May 19, 2021.

19 “Death Takes Former Hurler for White Sox and Cowboys.”