Fletcher Low

Fletcher Low was a “cup of coffee” baseball player, appearing in just a single game for the Boston Braves in 1915. In that game, he hit a triple, knocked in a run, and scored a run. While his baseball career did not amount to much, he went on to have a successful academic career as a Dartmouth College Professor of Chemistry and a life in politics as a representative in the New Hampshire state house.

Fletcher Low was born in Essex, Massachusetts, on April 7, 1893. He was the only child of Lizzie Brainard Burnham (1868-1920) and George Percy Low (1867-1923), a farmer. He lived with his mother and grandmother Lucy Burnham on Main Street in Essex following his parents’ divorce in 1900.1

He attended Essex High School for two years (1907-1909), Gloucester High for one (1909-1910), and graduated from Exeter Academy in 1911. Low enrolled in Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire in the fall of 1911. He played freshman baseball in 1912 and for the varsity team during his sophomore and junior years, 1913 and 1914. During the 1913 season, he played alongside star pitcher Dave Morey, who would take the mound in two major-league games for the Philadelphia Athletics later that year.

Low, or “Fletch” as he was called by his teammates, was a right-handed thrower and batter, who played shortstop and occasionally third base. At 5-feet-10 and 180 pounds. he was described by Sporting Life as “one of the biggest men in college physically.”2 The Boston Daily Globe noted Low was Dartmouth’s “best hitter and also a remarkable fielder and fast base runner.”3 Surviving box scores from 14 of Dartmouth’s 19 games in 1913 show that Low (frequently misidentified as “Lowe”) batted .280, slugged .400, and had a fielding percentage of .933. Box scores from 20 of the 28 games Dartmouth played during his junior year in 1914 show that Low improved as a hitter, especially his power. Hitting mostly out of the cleanup spot, he batted .325 and slugged .662 with 6 triples and 4 home runs. He also stole 5 bases in those 20 games. His fielding percentage remained the same at .933. In his best game, a 5-4 win over Wesleyan on May 9, Low went 3-3 with 2 home runs, a stolen base, and 3 runs scored. The Dartmouth reported the next day, “All in all, it might be said that Dartmouth had two cracker-jack ball teams in the field yesterday—Low, and the other eight men.”4 Sporting Life described him as a “sensational shortstop” who was getting attention from major-league teams.5

However, Low did not play for Dartmouth in his senior year of college (1915). In the summer of 1914, Low played for the Beverly Progressives, a Massachusetts-based semiprofessional team. Because of this, the Dartmouth Athletic Council regarded him as a professional and declared him ineligible to play his senior year even though Low received no payment from the Progressives. The Boston Daily Globe called this “the worst blow that could be handed the baseball team.”6 Dartmouth’s club, which had records of 12-7 and 16-12 the previous two seasons, fell under .500 (16-18) without Low.       

Low was signed by the Boston Braves as an amateur free agent on March 31, 1915. He graduated from Dartmouth College in June 1915 and reported to the Braves on July 1. Soon after, Low was released by the Braves and picked up by the Troy Trojans of the New York State League only to return to Boston in August. His contract was soon acquired by the Harrisburg Senators (formerly Newark Indians).7 There are no records of Low playing any games for Troy or Harrisburg. By the end of August, he was again with the Boston Braves but didn’t see any playing time until the very last game of the season.

Thursday, October 7, 1915, was a brisk autumn day in Boston. Only 100 spectators came to Braves Field to watch the hometown team compete against the visiting New York Giants. Neither team exists today—the Braves moved to Milwaukee in 1953 and then to Atlanta in 1966. The Giants headed west to San Francisco in 1958. Braves Field—now Nickerson Field on the campus of Boston University—was brand new, having opened two months earlier.

Led by manager John McGraw, the mighty Giants had finished first or second for five straight seasons and appeared in three World Series over that stretch. But in 1915, they were a disappointing 68-83-3 heading into the last game of the season. Since 1901, future Hall of Fame pitcher Christy Mathewson had averaged 26 wins a season, but in 1915 he managed only eight victories and would be out of the game following the 1916 season. The Giants sent Sailor Stroud to the mound that afternoon.

The Braves’ season had been similarly disappointing. The year before, they had won the World Series, shocking the favored Philadelphia Athletics in four games. Entering the final contest of 1915, the Braves were 83-68, good enough for second place behind the Philadelphia Phillies, who would go on to lose the World Series to the other ballclub from Beantown—which featured an exciting young pitcher by the name of George Herman “Babe” Ruth.

Fletcher Low started the game on the Boston Braves bench. The Braves jumped out to a 2-0 lead and after one turn through the lineup, manager George Stallings put Low at third base. It was his only big-league game, making Low one of approximately 1,500 “cup of coffee” players in the history of major-league baseball.

Low jogged out to his position with his fellow infielders, future Hall of Famers Rabbit Maranville (shortstop) and Johnny Evers (second base). He must have been nervous, but perhaps those jitters subsided when it became clear that the professionals were not taking this particular game too seriously. The New York Tribune reported the next day that, “Every batter took a swing at the first ball, and none of the pitchers delayed the game by trying to catch men off base or by stopping to think about how the batter might be fooled.” 8 The Giants’ pitcher even apologized after striking out Boston’s Iron Davis in the second inning. The headline in the New York Sun the next day was even more blunt, stating “Neither side tries to play baseball.” 9 The brief article read:

“Boston, Oct. 7—Conspiracy is one of the most difficult charges to prove, so the lawyers say, but the handful of fans who paid money to see the final meeting of the Braves and Giants to-day surely have good grounds for action. No effort was made by any one to play baseball, and it surely was obtaining money under false pretenses to charge anything to see such a joke contest. The score was 15 to 8 in favor of the visitors, and the only thing good to be said about what occurred is that it was all over in about an hour.”

The New York Tribune reported that, “Stallings put fourteen men [actually 15] into the box score. Several of his substitutes were youngsters, who came out of the game guessing that they would stick all right if that was the sort of baseball that was played in the National League.”10

In the bottom of the third, Low dug in for his first at-bat in the majors and grounded out.11 In the fifth inning, Stallings emptied his bench. He replaced Maranville with Red Shannon, who—like Low—was playing in his first big-league game, and swapped Evers for Joe Shannon, who was playing in his last. Red and Joe Shannon—then just 18 years old—were twins, and this marked the first time in the game’s history that twins played together in a game. It has happened again just twice: Eddie and Johnny O’Brien in 1953 and José and Ozzie Canseco in 1990.

Low recorded outs in his next two at-bats as well, flying out to center in the fifth inning and popping to third in the seventh. Four chances in the field came his way—all popups—and he handled them cleanly.

Meanwhile, the Giants scored five runs in the ninth and entered the bottom of the last inning with an insurmountable 15-6 lead. With two outs in the bottom of the ninth, Low finally connected with one of Stroud’s offerings and raced around the bases for a triple. (Braves Field was conducive to three-baggers—and even more to inside-the-park homers—because of its vast field dimensions, designed intentionally by club owner Jim Gaffney.) The hit scored Joe Shannon, giving Low an RBI. Dick Egan singled and Low touched home plate himself, scoring the final run of the game and the Braves’ 1915 season.

Low’s contract was purchased by the Montreal Royals of the International League (Class AA) in December, only to be repurchased by the Boston Braves in early 1916, after which it was yet again sold, this time to the Springfield Ponies of the Eastern League on April 29, 1916. During the following four summers, Low played minor-league ball in the Eastern League for Springfield (1916) and the Hartford Senators (1916-1919). However, he never made it back to the majors, hampered, in part, by an arm injury. Low batting averages (.272 in 1916; .250 in 1917; .206 in 1918; and .250 in 1919) with little extra-base power and mediocre fielding stats also impeded his advancement.

On February 19, 1916, four months after his only major-league game, Fletcher Low married Margery Story, also from Essex, Massachusetts. They were together for 42 years and had four children—David, Georgia, Nancy, and Joanne—and two grandsons.

In 1917, Low returned to Dartmouth College as a Chemistry Instructor.  In 1918, he was hired as an assistant coach of Dartmouth baseball under the new head coach. Dr. A.J. Ranney.12 The team went 8-8. The following year, former New York Giants pitcher Jeff Tesreau was hired to manage the team, but Low was not kept on the coaching staff. Tesreau would lead the Dartmouth Green ballclub from 1919 until his death in 1946.

Meanwhile, Low pursued his master’s degree, and eventually a Ph.D. at Columbia University in New York, which he earned in 1927. His doctoral thesis was titled “A Study of the Stability of Bredig Gold Sols,” which at the time helped chemists better understand the circumstances under which a solution of gold nanoparticles is stable. Today, gold sols are researched for their potential in electronics and biomedicine. In 1924, Low was promoted to Assistant Professor in the Dartmouth Chemistry Department; 10 years later he became full professor. He stayed connected with Dartmouth sports, serving from 1925-1931 as the faculty representative of the Dartmouth Athletic Council—the very council that declared him ineligible to play ball his senior year. He taught chemistry to thousands of Dartmouth undergraduates for 43 years until his retirement in 1960, two years after Margery died. Rumor has it that he had a container on his desk for those many years, running an experiment about the solubility of gold—a great conversation starter for students coming to his office.

In 1960, after retiring from Dartmouth, Low—by then in his mid-60s—began his new career in state government. He had served on the Hanover finance committee (1937-1944), the board of education (1941-1950), and as a Hanover selectman (1950-1964). In 1961, he was elected as a “Main Street Republican” to be Hanover’s representative in the New Hampshire House of Representatives. He was such a regular at Lou’s Restaurant on Main Street in Hanover that the waitstaff knew a thumbs-up from the Professor meant a black coffee, a thumbs down signaled for a cold coke. Today, a large black and white photograph hanging on the back wall of Lou’s includes Fletcher Low.

A teacher at heart, Low left politics in 1966 to volunteer for AmeriCorps VISTA (Volunteers in Service to America). For three years, he taught and tutored economically disadvantaged kids in Townsend, Tennessee. He said, “The years I spent as a college professor were with me more than ever…I know young America—its aspirations, fulfillments, and disappointments. They are the same in the Job Corps as they are at Dartmouth. And the feeling of understanding between teacher and pupil is the same, too.”13

In 1969, he returned to Hanover. Fletcher Low died in his home at the age of 80 on June 6, 1973. He is buried with Margery in the Dartmouth College Cemetery.

Acknowledgments

Thanks to the Rauner Special Collections Library at Dartmouth College for providing documentation to fact-check details of Low’s undergraduate baseball years and Professor Low’s career at the college. I am grateful to Fletcher Low’s grandson, David Publicover, for fact-checking and sharing details of his grandfather.

This biography is an expanded version of an article initially published as J.M DeSilva, “A Single Triple,” The Dartmouth Alumni Magazine, May-June 2021. https://dartmouthalumnimagazine.com/articles/single-triple. It was reviewed for SABR by Bill Lamb and Rory Costello and fact-checked by Dan Schoenholz.

Sources

In addition to the sources shown in the Notes, the author used Baseball-Reference.com, Retrosheet.org, Statscrew.com, Findagrave.com, Ancestry.com, LA84.org (Sporting Life archives and Sporting News contract card), and retrieved college box scores from The Dartmouth.

Photo Credit

Fletcher Low during his playing days at Dartmouth (1913-1914), courtesy of the Rauner Special Collections Library at Dartmouth College.

Notes

1 “Divorce Docket,” The Daily Item, June 1, 1900: 3. U.S. Census records, 1900 and 1910.

2 “National League Notes,” The Sporting Life, April 10, 1915: 6.

3 “Dartmouth Loses Low,” The Boston Daily Globe, January 25, 1915: 14.

4 “Green Wins Brilliant Game from Wesleyan 5-4,” The Dartmouth, May 11, 1914: 1.

5 “Collegiate Notes,” The Sporting Life, April 17, 1915: 16.

6 “Dartmouth Loses Low,” The Boston Daily Globe, January 25, 1915: 14.

7 “Baldwin is Badly Beaten Boston,” Atlanta Georgian, August 20, 1915: 6.

8 “Giants Beat the Braves in a Baseball Burlesque,” New York Tribune, October 8, 1915: 14.

9 “Neither Side Tries to Play Baseball,” New York Sun, October 8, 1915: 8.

10 “Giants Beat the Braves in a Baseball Burlesque.”

11 Retrosheet reports in its play-by-play of the game that Low grounded out to third base. But a scorecard of the game from National Baseball Hall of Fame records the out “6-3.”

12 “Baseball at Dartmouth.; Prospects for Nine Bright, Though Dates Are Unsettled,” The New York Times, February 17, 1918: 30.

13 “Obituaries. Faculty. Fletcher Low,” The Dartmouth Alumni Magazine. July 1973: 42.