Del Paddock

A promising young right-handed pitcher, Del Paddock once tossed two no-hitters in a minor-league season. But he was also a capable hitter, prompting managers to seek to convert him into a position player. Paddock reached the major leagues as an infielder, where he batted .287 in 47 games in 1912, and finished his career in the minors as an outfielder. Had he stuck with pitching, or settled on one position, would his career have turned out differently? Perhaps, but a stubborn streak, and a propensity to challenge team management and jump contracts, may have also contributed to the brevity of his big-league career.

Delmar Leslie1 Paddock was born on June 8, 1887, in Volga, South Dakota, a small town west of Brookings. His father, Chester (a native of New York), was a farmer. His mother, Mary (née Russell), was born in Wisconsin. Del,2 as he was called during most of his life, had two older brothers, Charles and Ross, and a younger sister, Leila.

The family was still in South Dakota at the time of the 1900 US Census, when Del would have been around 13 years old. Sometime during the next few years, though, they relocated to the West Coast and settled in Seattle. By 1910 Chester was employed at a lumber mill in Seattle and Del listed his occupation as ballplayer. The 1913 Seattle city directory lists Delmar as a ballplayer and his father working as a rancher.

Paddock started out as a pitcher and the first reports of him playing ball are from 1904, when he was a member of a youth team called the White Stars.3 It is not known if Paddock was a student at the school, but later that year he also pitched for the Acme Business College baseball team in Seattle4 and a team in Sedro-Wooley.5

In 1905 and 1906 Paddock pitched in the amateur Puget Sound League. By then his control and ability to field his position had caught the attention of Dan Dugdale of the Seattle Siwashes of the Class B Northwestern League.6 In his professional debut, Paddock allowed eight runs and 11 hits over seven relief innings in a 16-3 loss to Aberdeen.7 Dugdale turned him loose and he hooked on with the Vancouver (British Columbia) Beavers, also of the Northwestern League, for 1908.

Possessing a good fast ball and “a puzzling array of curves,” the 5-foot, 9-inch, 165-pound Paddock added a spitball to his repertoire.8 Included among his 19 victories for Vancouver in 1908 were two no-hitters, a 2-0 win over Spokane in June and 3-0 victory over Tacoma in September. However, hints of a stubborn attitude were noticed. One publication observed, “if he [Paddock] only evinces a desire to work there will be no stopping him. That is the point, however. Dell is a stubborn chap, and if he took it into his head not to pitch, no persuasion on earth could induce him to work right.”9

Paddock’s record fell off to 9-12 in 1909. After a salary holdout in spring 1910, Vancouver shipped him to the Calgary (Alberta) Bronchos of the Class C Western Canada League. In the era of small roster sizes, pitchers often played other positions when not on the mound, and Paddock was always a good hitter. When he arrived in Calgary, regular shortstop Clarence Duggan was sidelined by an injury, so manager Bill Carney installed Paddock his as the team’s starting shortstop. In 88 games total (82 at short and only six at pitcher) Paddock batted .267 but committed 44 errors for a woeful .878 fielding percentage.10

In spring 1911 Calgary sold Paddock to Dubuque (Iowa) of the Three-I League, where manager Clarence “Pants” Rowland moved him to third base. 11 That July Dubuque sold him to the Chicago White Sox for $2,000 with the understanding he would report to the White Sox at the conclusion of Dubuque’s season.12 Paddock batted .288 in 103 games for Dubuque. Still taking the mound on occasion, he was described as “a pitcher of rather indifferent merit.”13

Paddock went to spring training with the White Sox in 1912, where he was considered a candidate for the second base position or a competitor with Harry Lord for the starting berth at third. Paddock went north with the team and made his major-league debut on April 14, striking out in a ninth-inning pinch-hitting appearance against the St. Louis Browns. A couple of weeks later, he was a victim of the final roster cutdowns and returned to Dubuque.14

Paddock was in the midst of another strong season, batting .326 in 75 games, when Dubuque sold him conditionally to the New York Yankees for $2,500 in July.15 The conditions in the deal were that he had 10 days to “make good” with the Yankees16 but if they declined to keep him, he would be returned to Dubuque. Paddock thought those terms unfair, so he initially refused to report.17 He soon relented and joined the Yankees while on their western road trip in late July.

Third base had been a revolving door for New York since the departure of Jimmy Austin after the 1910 season. Manager Harry Wolverton immediately inserted the rookie Paddock into the lineup at third base, replacing the current incumbent, Roy Hartzell. He got four singles in nine at-bats in his first two games. After 10 days his contract was purchased outright from Dubuque18 and he was the club’s regular third sacker over the last two months of the season. The switch-hitter19 maintained a batting average between .270 and .290 all year, finishing at .287. Paddock appeared to be one of the few bright spots for the last place (50-102-1) Yankees.

After the season Hal Chase took over as Yankees manager. In December, Paddock was sold to Rochester of the International League. Despite another position change, to the outfield, Paddock batted .270 and his eight home runs led the league. That December Rochester sold him to Buffalo, also of the International League. There was a delay in returning his signed Buffalo contract for 1914; at the time, it was assumed Paddock was a holdout. The delay was explained: he spent the offseason at a lumber camp north of Yakima, Washington, that was 55 miles from the nearest post office. Once he received and signed his contract, he needed to travel 35 miles on snowshoes to the nearest ranch to mail it.20

Paddock reported to Buffalo’s spring training camp at Charlotte, North Carolina, after a six-day trip from Yakima. He played in a few early season games21 but in mid-May he was released to St. Paul of the American Association. Paddock had two strong seasons (1914-1915) as a regular outfielder for the Saints. He was again playing well in 1916 until early September, when he skipped the team to go on a hunting trip, thus drawing his release by St. Paul manager Mike Kelley.22

The following March, St. Paul shipped Paddock to the Chattanooga Lookouts of the Class A Southern Association. In an April 30 game against Nashville, he fractured his leg while sliding into second base and was sidelined for the rest of the 1917 season.23 The arrangement between St. Paul and Chattanooga called for the Saints to be paid the purchase price (which was not reported) by May 1, “if Paddock makes good.” Because he was injured less than 24 hours before the provision was to take effect, St. Paul was denied their money.24

When Paddock registered for the military draft in May 1917, he listed his residence as Remer, a small town in northern Minnesota about 100 miles west of Duluth, and his occupation as baseball player with the Chattanooga club.25 Why he chose to make his home in northern Minnesota is not known. He was an avid outdoorsman, however, and may have visited the area on a hunting trip while playing with St. Paul a few years earlier.

Amid World War I, Paddock tried to enlist in the Army in January 1918 but was turned down in view of the lingering effects of his broken leg. Paddock reported to the Lookouts spring training camp in April and proclaimed himself fully recovered. He said, “My leg never felt better, and so far from being slowed up I feel like the season layoff did me a world of good. I ought to be better this year than I ever was before in my experience on the diamond.”26

Paddock played the first half of the 1918 season with Chattanooga but was called to military duty in June of that year.2728 He was a private with the 6th Company in the US Army, but it is not known if he served overseas. Paddock was discharged in January 1919 and by all accounts returned to Minnesota. Curiously, he is listed in the 1920 US Census as living with his brother Charles in Yakima and working as a laborer in a fruit house.

Paddock returned to professional baseball in 1920 with the Mitchell Kernels of the Class D South Dakota League and batted .356 as one of the team’s regular outfielders. In February 1921 he married Georgia Cloud. Later that spring, he moved back up to Class A when he joined the Sioux City (Iowa) Packers of the Western League. By late May he was one of the league’s top batters, hitting over .350 – when he jumped his contract. An increase in pay induced him to return to Sioux City for one more game but he left the club again to join a semipro club in Hibbing, Minnesota, after receiving “a fancy offer.”29 That August, minor league secretary John H. Farrell placed Paddock on the ineligible list, effectively ending his career in Organized Baseball.30

After that Paddock continued to play with independent teams in northern Minnesota while otherwise living a quiet life with his wife Georgia (they never had any children) at their lake cabin. He made the news in 1924 when he was nominated for the Carnegie Medal for Heroism after rescuing a drowning 11-year-old boy from a nearby lake.31 That year Del was playing with a team in Marble, Minnesota, and he and two other “of the Iron Range league’s best players” left for Great Falls, Montana, to play with the Great Northern team.32 Paddock returned to Montana in 1926 to play with the A.C.M. club of Great Falls in the Northern Montana Industrial Baseball League.33

At the time of the 1930 census, he and Georgia were living in Thunder Lake, Minnesota, and Del was working as a farmer. They still listed their residence as Thunder Lake in 1940, but by 1950 the couple had moved back to Remer. Paddock suffered from heart disease over the last decade of his life and died of a heart attack in Remer on February 6, 1952, at the age of 64. He was first interred at the Stevenson Cemetery near his home, where most of his wife’s relatives were buried.34 Georgia died in 1970 and was buried at the Girard Township Cemetery in Illinois. Soon thereafter arrangements were made to have Del’s remains moved to the same cemetery. He left no known descendants.

Acknowledgments

This biography was reviewed by Bill Lamb and Rory Costello and fact-checked by Dan Schoenholz.

Sources

Unless otherwise noted, statistics from Paddock’s playing career are taken from Baseball-Reference.com and genealogical and family history was obtained from Ancestry.com. The author also used information from clippings in Paddock’s file at the National Baseball Hall of Fame.

Notes

1 Baseball-Reference.com, Retrosheet.com, and findagrave.com (photo of gravestone not found) list his middle name as Harold. However, on other vital records documents including his death certificate, World War II draft registration card, and the Minnesota Death Index, all accessed on Ancestry.com, his middle name was Leslie.

2 The shortening of his first name Delmar to Del was also spelled with two “Ls” (Dell) in some coverage during his playing career.

3 “White Stars Meet Defeat,” Seattle Star, May 31, 1904: 3.

4 “Win A Close Game,” Seattle Times, June 5, 1904: 16.

5 “Sedro-Wooly 18; Seattle 2,” Seattle Times, June 21, 1904: 16.

6 “Gossip About the Players.” Seattle Times, September 1, 1907: 15.

7 “Rush Batted Out of Box by Aberdeen,” Seattle Star, September 5, 1907: 2.

8 “No-Hit, No-Run Game for Pitcher Paddock,” Vancouver (British Columbia) Province, June 19, 1908: 11.

9 “Paddock Will Get Trial with Beavers,” Vancouver Province, March 17, 1910: 12.

10 “Fielding Averages in the Western Canada League,” Calgary (Alberta) Albertan, October 10, 1920: 2.

11 “Del Paddock,” Davenport (Iowa) Times, June 3, 1911: 8.

12 “Sells Third Basman,” Des Moines Register, July 16, 1911: 33.

13 “Twenty Greatest Players in Western Canada League,” Edmonton (Alberta) Journal, January 21, 1912: 7.

14 “Twenty-Six on Sox List,” St. Louis Star and Times, April 26, 1912: 16.

15 “Yanks Get Paddock,” (Salt Lake City) Herald-Republican, July 29, 1912: 11; “Paddock to Go to New York Yankees,” Chicago Tribune, July 23, 1912: 11.

16 The team was still sometimes called the Highlanders.

17 “Paddock Will Not Go,” Davenport Times, July 23, 1912: 7.

18 “No Strings Attached to Pitcher Jack Quinn,” New York Sun, August 5, 1912: 8.

19 Baseball-Reference.com and Retrosheet.com say that Paddock batted left, but one contemporary report said that he was “a natural left-handed batter, but switches when hitting against a southpaw.” See “Highland Pitchers Are No Longer Easy Marks,” New York Sun, August 19, 1912: 8.

20 “McConnell’s Attitude Pleasing,” Buffalo Courier Express, February 1, 1914: 49.

21 No batting or fielding statistics could be found for Paddock’s brief time in Buffalo in 1914. In Spalding’s 1915 Official Base Ball Guide, 123, he is included in a list of “Players who participated in less than ten games.”

22 “Del Paddock Goes Hunting,” Rochester (New York) Democrat and Chronicle, September 17, 1916: 39.

23 “Del Paddock Out,’ New Orleans Item, May 1, 1917: 11.

24 “Injury to Paddock Deprives Kelley of His Purchase Price,” Grand Forks (North Dakota) Herald, May 4, 1917: 2.

25 U.S., Headstone Applications for Military Veterans, 1861-1985. accessed on Ancestry.com.

26 “Del Paddock Arrives; Claims Leg Well Healed,” Chattanooga (Tennessee) Daily Times, April 2, 1918: 8.

27 “Dell Paddock Leaves Club; Enters Army on June 2 Call,” Chattanooga Daily Times, June 10, 1918: 8.

28 Per U.S., Headstone Applications for Military Veterans, 1861-1985 on Ancestry.com, Paddock enlisted on August 28, 1918.

29 “Jumps Packer Contract,” Sioux City (Iowa) Journal, June 16, 1921: 10.

30 “Diamond Gossip,” Tampa Bay (Florida) Tribune, August 22,1921: 9.

31 “Carnegie Medal to Be Asked for Del Paddock, Former St. Paul Star,” Minneapolis Daily Star, August 29, 1924: 20.

32 “Valued Players Lost by Chisholm, Marle Clubs,” Minneapolis Daily Star, July 10, 1924: 21.

33 “21 Prospects Vieing (sic) for Berths on Company Club; Has Likely Mound Staff,” Great Falls (Montana) Tribune, April 18, 1926: 10.

34 https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/75143724/delmar_harold_paddock