Tacks Neuer

A quick glance at John Neuer’s line in the baseball encyclopedias suggests that he was just another cup-of-coffee major league pitcher who had a brief trial and failed to impress. But then a number jumps off the page and demands an explanation: in six major league starts and one relief appearance, Neuer hurled three shutouts.

How unusual is that? In the long history of baseball, no major leaguer who tossed more than one shutout approaches Neuer’s 43% rate of shutouts per games pitched — the next best mark is 14% by Bill McGunnigle and Addie Joss. His 50% shutouts to starts ratio is just as unparalleled, with only Lefty Hockette (29%) and Harry Weaver (25%) having ratios of over twenty percent.

John Neuer’s short major league career included two other startling accomplishments. In his major league debut on August 28, 1907, he tossed a three-hit shutout and led the Yankees to a 1-0 victory over their future arch-rivals — the team now known as the Red Sox. Five weeks later he concluded his big league career in near-identical fashion with a three-hit shutout of the world champion Chicago White Sox. It appears that he is the only pitcher to hurl shutouts in both his major league debut and his final game.1   

These singular achievements raise the obvious question of why a pitcher who experienced so much success against major league hitters would not get many more chances to prove himself. Any attempt to solve that conundrum comes back to the enigmatic man behind that bizarre record, a southpaw whose inconsistency prompted the observation that “Neuer is an extremist. He is like the little girl with the curl — either very good or very bad.”2

John Stein Neuer was born in Fremont, Ohio, on June 8, 1877, the son of newlyweds Henry Neuer and the former Jennie Catherman. The family eventually grew to include eight children, and around 1885 Henry and Jennie Neuer moved their ever-expanding brood from Ohio to Pennsylvania. They settled in the town of Sunbury in Northumberland County, where Henry Neuer worked as a butcher and John came of age.

His twenty-first birthday arrived shortly after the start of the Spanish-American War, and on June 23, 1898, John Neuer enlisted as a Private in the 21st Pennsylvania Infantry, Company C. The Cuban phase of the “splendid little war” was over by August, but Neuer’s service continued until February 15, 1899, when he received his discharge. His time in the military seems to have been a formative experience as he was later active in veterans’ groups.

Upon receiving his discharge, Neuer returned to Sunbury and found work as a railroad brakeman. He would later tell fanciful tales about having pitched on the Bucknell University baseball team in 1898 with Christy Mathewson and Chief Bender and run track at the University of Pennsylvania, but in fact there is no indication that his education extended beyond high school.3 Railroad work provided Neuer with a comfortable income, and over the next few years his life seems to have settled into a predictable routine, with no indication of anything remarkable to come.

There is contradictory evidence about how and when he got the break that launched his baseball career. According to one intriguing but unsubstantiated account, “Neuer was first unearthed in the coal regions, the locality from which come many of the game’s greatest stars. He was a constable, wore a large tin badge and went around a flag station, outside of Wilkes-Barre with a ‘lookin’ fer any sheep’ expression, when it was discovered that he could pitch.”4 In December of 1904, a note indicated that the Detroit Tigers were “said to have signed a Pottsville, Pa., southpaw pitcher named J. S. Neuer, a Pennsylvania Railroad fireman in winter.”5 That was followed, six months later, by a report that a team in Atlantic City had signed a pitcher named Neuer from Hazleton who was described as being “Rube Waddell’s double.”6

There can be no doubt that these notes refer to John S. Neuer, but no mention of the new pitcher could be found in the Detroit papers, and nothing seems to have come of either rumored signing. The left-hander was instead given a trial by Wilkes-Barre (New York State League) on July 27, 1905, and made the kind of spectacular entrance for which he was to become well known. “Wilkesbarre [sic] tried out an amateur pitcher, Neuer of Hazelton [sic],” wrote a sportswriter after the pitcher’s first game, “and he shut out Syracuse with but one hit.”7 That brilliant debut was followed by a shutout of Scranton in which Neuer also banged out three hits and helped turn a triple play.8 He wrapped up his first season as a professional by pitching both ends of a doubleheader in Syracuse, scattering two hits in the morning game before weakening in the second contest and losing 5-0.9

Though he was already twenty-eight when he made his professional debut, Neuer had shown considerable promise. Unlike many pitchers, he was a well-rounded athlete who was described as “a heavy batsman, a fast man on the bases and better than an ordinary fielder.”10 Most important, he could generate tremendous speed with his powerful left arm and lanky frame. (His listed height of 5 feet, 8 1/2 inches appears on his Spanish-American War enlistment documents, but descriptions of him as “tall” and “elongated” and a photo in which he towers over fellow members of the pitching staff suggest that he was significantly taller.)

Despite these gifts, Neuer was also beginning to display the unpredictability that was to become his trademark. Wilkes-Barre planned on re-signing him for the 1906 season, but getting his name on a contract proved so difficult that with the start of the season approaching team management had all but given up on bringing him back. The southpaw finally came to terms in late March, only to be released in early May. He was given another chance by Syracuse manager Sandy Griffin, whose team had been the victim of Neuer’s best performances in 1905, but this too proved short-lived.11 As a result, Neuer spent most of the 1906 season working at the Valley Hotel in Hazleton and nursing an unspecified injury.

Coming off a lost season and with his thirtieth birthday fast approaching, there seemed little reason to imagine that John Neuer was on the verge of reaching the major leagues. Yet the potential in his powerful left arm continued to fascinate the men responsible for assembling baseball teams, and that winter he signed a contract with the Philadelphia Phillies.12 Alas, his control failed him during the exhibition season, and he was loaned in turn to Trenton and Providence, both of the Eastern League, where his wildness only got worse. In Trenton, one exasperated observer maintained that Neuer “did not seem to understand that there was such a thing as a plate to throw the ball over.”13 Providence tried to return him to Philadelphia after one game, only to have the National League team claim that it had already given the southpaw his unconditional release.14 The impasse was finally resolved when Neuer was dispatched to Savannah of the South Atlantic [Sally] League “for ground rent or as excess baggage.”15

Upon arrival in Savannah, Neuer tried to impress the locals by boasting about his supposed friendship with Mathewson and Bender. In the end, however, it was his pitching that did the biggest talking as he put together a series of strong outings that included a two-hit shutout of Augusta on June 3 and another two-hitter against Macon on June 27. The latter contest saw Neuer hook up in a memorable pitchers’ duel against Jack Quinn, a fellow product of Pennsylvania’s coal-mining region. In the end it was Quinn, destined for a remarkable twenty-three-year major league career, who held Savannah to one hit and earned a 1-0 victory.16

After three stellar months in Savannah, Neuer was purchased by the New York Yankees on August 23, 1907, “for immediate delivery.”17 Yankee manager Clark Griffith handed Neuer the ball on August 28, and the newcomer showed excellent “speed and control” as he held Boston to three hits in a 1-0 victory.18 At the close of the auspicious debut, the home fans “surrounded the young pitcher, shaking his hand and patting him on the back.”19 The performance led an enterprising reporter to track down Phillies manager Billy Murray and ask why Neuer had been allowed to slip away. “I see they call Neuer … ‘Nervy Neuer,’” retorted Murray. “That’s a good name for him. He was with us down South last spring, and he got plenty of nerve.”20

Neuer faced Boston again six days later and recorded his second straight win, though he was much less effective in a 10-5 triumph. He followed that up on September 9 with a dazzling two-hit shutout against the Washington Senators. “The southpaw recruit from Savannah retired the side in order in six of the nine innings,” gushed one account. “Only two hits were chalked up against Neuer, and both were on the scratch order. The new man did not come far from making a ‘no-hit’ game of it.”21 The rookie was now 3-0 with two shutouts and a sparkling earned run average, prompting venerable scribe William Rankin to label Neuer a “find.”22

The three straight wins were followed by three less successful outings. Neuer faced Washington again on September 13 and received a “severe hammering” that “came as a great shock” in light of the ease with which he had just dispatched the Senators.23 In the ninth inning of a 10-2 loss he was removed for a pinch-hitter named Branch Rickey (who was making one of the final appearances of his playing career). Neuer next worked in relief against Detroit on September 21, doing good work against the soon-to-be-crowned American League champions though the game was out of reach before his entrance.24 One week later he got another start against the St. Louis Browns but “couldn’t control the ball” in a 5-2 loss.25 While lack of control was a recurring complaint during Neuer’s career, in this case it wasn’t entirely his fault — a steady rain fell for most of the contest, which made for “wet and cheerless base ball.”26       

John Neuer was given one final start against the White Sox on October 3, and his dominance returned in an 8-0 three-hit shutout. The White Sox had captured the 1906 World Series and had remained in contention to repeat until a disastrous visit to New York saw them drop three straight games. When Neuer’s gem completed the sweep, one sportswriter was inspired to chronicle, “Thereupon the White Sox gathered their moss-covered slapsticks and made their way toward the setting sun, inert and downcast, being finally convinced that the title ex-champions would be theirs not yet but soon.”27

In the words of another poetically inclined scribe, Charles Dryden of the Tribune, “Another of Griffith’s Georgia southpaw phenoms named Izzy Neuer tossed the gaff into the weary champions to the tune of three singles widely distributed. Izzy Neuer will be some older before he pitches a better game.”28 No doubt neither Dryden nor any of the 2,500 in attendance that day imagined that they were witnessing John Neuer’s final major league game.

Neuer spent the off-season working as a clerk at the Valley Hotel and trying to resolve a grievance with the Phillies over his unceremonious departure in May. At last, the National Commission ruled in his favor, determining that “Neuer was entitled to a month’s pay and that the Providence Club should pay him for five days and the Philadelphia Club the difference, less amount already received, all told $306.33.”29 There was also the matter of agreeing to terms on a 1908 contract with the Yankees. This caused some anxious moments until the team secretary opened the day’s mail to find a contract with a signature “that looked as if it had been written with a bath towel.” He correctly concluded that it was Neuer’s.30

Yankee manager Clark Griffith had recently retired after an illustrious pitching career, and the team’s training camp in Atlanta seemed the ideal opportunity for John Neuer to learn the finer points of pitching.31 Griffith was a slightly built right-hander who had once been told by the smirking captain of his high school baseball team, “You’re too small to play with us big fellows.”32 Yet Griffith’s ability to change pace, his pinpoint control, and his use of a variety of trick pitches had enabled him to baffle major league hitters for more than a decade. It was thus intriguing to imagine him transforming the gifted-but-raw southpaw into a finished product.

Instead Neuer spent much of the exhibition season experimenting with new pitches that were notoriously difficult for even control specialists to throw for strikes. One of these was the brand-new knuckleball, which was still being thrown with the knuckles instead of the finger-tip method favored by most subsequent practitioners. According to New York sportswriter Bozeman Bulger, Neuer worked on the knuckleball “so hard a few days ago that his knuckles were worn off worse than those of a man who tries to wash his own flannel shirt while camping.”33

When not practicing his knuckleball, Neuer found time to declare “that he has already discovered how to evade the new ‘soiled-ball’ rule. He plans to fill his pockets with emery dust as a first aid to the grip.”34 Two years later, another Yankee pitcher named Russ Ford would become the sensation of baseball by winning 26 games while relying on a mysterious pitch that in 1914 was revealed to be the “emery ball.” The pitch proved so lethal that after the 1914 season it became the first specific pitch to ever be banned from major league baseball. It was thus not surprising that Neuer found the novel pitch alluring and during the spring campaign he may well have traded ideas about its first two masters — Ford, who pitched for Atlanta in 1908, and Griffith, who later admitted to having used the pitch secretly in the 1890s.35

While the allure of these new pitches is understandable, these experiments proved very unwise. Clark Griffith was reported to have “visions” that Neuer could become “one of the greatest ever in the twirling line,” which may explain why he encouraged this approach.36 Yet Neuer’s spectacular success in 1907 showed that he already possessed enough stuff to retire major league hitters — what he needed was not a new trick pitch, but command of those pitches. Instead, by the end of the exhibition season he was reported “to have mastered three styles of delivery of the ‘foolers,’” but had sadly neglected his control.37 In the words of one sportswriter, “Griff had him pitching the spit ball until he was so wild he couldn’t hit the grand stand.”38

Early reports from the training camps of the Yankees revived a familiar comparison by dubbing Neuer “Rube Waddell, the second” and predicted that he would be one of two southpaws on the 1908 staff.39 But everything changed after a couple of disastrous exhibition outings, one of them a defeat to Atlanta in which “Jack Neuer’s wildness was largely responsible … He walked six men, hit two more, and made a wild throw all in six innings, after which Joe Lake took hold.”40 An exasperated Griffith farmed Neuer to Newark of the Eastern League, beginning the rapid descent of the pitcher who had taken the American League by storm eight months earlier.

Neuer was even worse upon arrival in Newark, being charged with nine walks, two hit batsmen, two wild pitches and three errors in his debut. After only a month, manager George Stallings chose to “weed out his pitching staff by turning Jack Neuer back to the New York Americans, from whence he came. Neuer has only shown form in one game since he joined the Indians, and that was in Rochester, on the Western trip of the Redskins, when he pitched the Braves to victory against the Broncos. In the other four games he operated he was wild and inefficient. Neuer leaves the Eastern League with two season records — one for the greatest number of strike-outs in a game, and the other for granting the biggest number of bases on balls in a game. His strike-out record is thirteen, and his free pass record is also represented by the hoodoo number, thirteen.”41

But Griffith didn’t want the erratic southpaw either, and in short order Neuer was returned to Newark again, shipped to Toronto, and finally given his unconditional release. He soon caught on with Little Rock of the Southern League and seemed to have regained his form when he shut out Birmingham on two hits in the second game of a July 11 doubleheader. He followed the stellar performance by injuring his arm so severely that it was feared he might be out for the season.42 He returned much quicker than expected, but his control didn’t and when he walked the first two batters on August 1, 1908, Little Rock manager Mike Finn yanked him from the game and then handed him his release.43  

Once again Neuer was not out of work long. Within weeks, word came that the Chicago Cubs — en route to their third straight National League pennant — were “going to give the erratic southpaw pitcher, ‘Tacks’ Neuer, a thorough trying out.”44 It was another golden opportunity for Neuer, with veteran Chicago sportswriter William Phelon reporting that the new signee was “thought to be a star who didn’t get a fair chance to shine. Griffith showed repeatedly that he couldn’t judge pitchers, and he let out Neuer for lack of control in the Spring practice. What of it? On that basis, Griffith would have fired Reulbach in a hurry, for no man could be any wilder than Big Ed in the earlier days each year.”45 Neuer was not deemed ready to use in the midst of a pennant race, so the Cubs loaned him to Johnstown, Pennsylvania, of the Tri-State League, where on August 26 he demonstrated both his potential and his maddening inconsistency: “Neuer … broke the season strike-out record in the Tri-State, when he made 12 of the Lancasters fan the wind. He was hit hard between times, however, and lost the game.”46   

John Neuer remained in Johnstown for the remainder of the 1908 season, thus missing out on the Cubs’ second straight World Series title and a legendary pennant race. Nevertheless, the man who had pitched so well for New York’s American League entry in 1907 played a tangential role in breaking the hearts of the fans of New York’s National League franchise. Neuer had been loaned to Johnstown in exchange for the rights to a young southpaw named “Rube” Kroh. Cubs manager Frank Chance hardly used Kroh during the dramatic pennant race, but Kroh contributed in a different way. At the conclusion of the fabled “Merkle’s Boner” contest, it was Kroh who was credited with having “swarmed upon the human potato bugs and knocked six of them galley-west” so that the ball could be relayed to Johnny Evers for the controversial force-out.47

Despite his dismal 1908 campaign, as the next season approached there were those who still believed Neuer might yet fulfill the potential he had flashed in 1907. According to one observer, “The Cubs have a pitching asset who was entirely overlooked both last fall and in all directions of the winter — which goes to show how easily a ball-player can be forgotten. The asset is a left-handed pitcher named Neuer, and no southpaw in the land seemed to have a brighter future than this young man two years ago. Griffith got him for the Highlanders, and in a bunch of games he pitched during the fall of 1907 nobody showed more speed and skill. He went wild in the spring — couldn’t get them anywhere near the plate — and was farmed out. Late in the season the Cubs got him, but he was so inaccurate in practice that he never pitched an inning, and very few of the fans and scribes now remember that there ever was such a pitcher on the team. Nevertheless, Mr. Neuer, if he could show the goods, is entitled to come back and work for the world’s champions any time, and he says he is going to do so. Neuer has been putting in the winter in quiet, but determined practice, and [now] he thinks he can burn them over again when springtime comes. Should he make good the team would have a plethora of pitching stars.”48

Instead Neuer was loaned to Rochester of the Eastern League before the start of the 1909 campaign. The Cubs had one of the greatest pitching staffs in baseball history, and that fact alone may account for Neuer’s latest setback. Nevertheless, several newspaper accounts of the decision to again farm him out suggested that his inability to find the strike zone was not the only factor.

A profile of the new acquisition in one Rochester newspaper described the “erratic southpaw” as having “plenty of smoke and curves” but as being “in a class with ‘Rube’ Waddell and ‘Bugs’ Raymond” as “one of the eccentric characters of baseball. Neuer and Raymond have not been able to break into the newspaper columns as often as the irrepressible G. Edward Waddell, who just now is figuring on making his debut in society, but Neuer and Raymond have not been in the game as long.” A summary of his previous stops described how “One day ‘Tacks’ would look like the confectionery child, and the next day would be liable to bounce a ball off some fan’s head in the grand stand.” The piece concluded by attributing his availability to “his funny ways and the fact that control was not in his repertoire, only at times.”49

Other newspapermen dropped similar hints. A reporter in Wilkes-Barre wrote that Neuer had “played with probably thirty clubs in half that many leagues” since being released by that city’s team in 1906.50 One in Trenton added that “the erratic southpaw pitcher” had “pitched in almost every town of importance in the East and many in the West. He has a great arm but is inclined to wildness. … His friends here are confident that ‘Tacks,’ as he is better known, will make good if he keeps in condition.”51 According to a third, “Tacks Neuer … could be one of the best twirlers in the business if he would take up baseball seriously.”52

It was also noteworthy that Neuer was increasingly being referred to by the nickname of “Tacks.”53 As was explained in one account, the moniker had a very specific meaning: “Restless, uneasy, erratic athletes are styled ‘Tacks’ or ‘Jiggs.’”54 Another press account stated that Neuer had “been nicknamed ‘Bugs’ because of his strange behavior on so many occasions,” though this name was not commonly used in newspaper coverage.55

In any event, his stay with Rochester was a brief one, with lack of control again the culprit.56 Neuer made a brief return to his home in Hazleton and told friends that his next pitching stop would be on the west coast. Instead he soon signed with Fort Wayne, prompting those who had heard of his comments to speculate that the southpaw “evidently went broke in Fort Wayne and signed up.”57 The question became moot when Neuer was released from his latest club within days of his arrival. He spent the rest of the 1909 season playing semipro ball in Brooklyn and the Catskills.

Neuer tried to get back into organized baseball in 1910 by signing with the Binghamton Bingos (New York State League). As the start of the season approached, he showed signs of a renewed dedication by taking part in daily workouts at Fordham College.58 Soon, however, he was exhibiting such a complete lack of control that manager Jack Warner didn’t dare use him in a regular-season game. Warner finally relented after “many days of pleading” by Neuer and came to regret having given in. After five disastrous innings in which he “was convicted by a jury of fans of inability to throw even a fit,” Neuer was removed from the game and handed his release. “Never again,” declared Warner after the sorry performance, “will a player work me as ‘Tacks’ has been doing with a game of bluff such as he has handed out about how he could have the enemy coming right up and eating out of his hand.”59

For all intents and purposes, that was the end of Neuer’s baseball career. He was signed by Buffalo in June of 1910, but the “eccentric southpaw” was released after again demonstrating his familiar propensity to pitch “some good ball and then some very bad ball.”60 He later played for the Ridgewoods of Brooklyn and several other semipro clubs in the vicinity and may also have played briefly for Lima (Ohio State League) in 1912 and Poughkeepsie (New York-New Jersey League) in 1913. But his days of earning a living with his strong left arm were over. 

Throughout John S. Neuer’s singular baseball career, reporters often dropped hints about his odd off-the-field behavior and even chastised him for not taking the game seriously enough. Yet once his days as a professional player were over, “Tacks” Neuer led an unremarkable life that was most notable for its demonstration of his deep love of the game. He spent the next several years in Brooklyn working as a master mechanic and became well known on the local semipro diamonds for his entertaining style of umpiring. One account noted that “Neuer is a whole show in himself and well worth the price of admission,” while another added that “[h]is ‘strike tuh’ had an emphasis on it that caused amusement for the crowd present.”61 He later moved to Greene, New York, to accept a job as an engineer with the Bendix Aviation Corporation. Even then, however, he continued to umpire semipro and amateur games whenever the occasion arose.62

Neuer had a first marriage to a woman named Josephine about whom little is known, though she may have been the mother of his only child, a son named Eugene. In 1917, he was remarried to a Brooklyn neighbor named Elizabeth Keeley, and this marriage lasted until his death. In 1942, Neuer retired from Bendix and moved back to the town of Northumberland, near his childhood home of Sunbury. Fittingly, Sunbury got a minor league team after World War II, and the former major leaguer became an avid supporter. He was also active in veterans’ groups and in the Sunbury Lodge of Elks. In 1965 his failing health forced him to move into the Northampton County Home and Hospital in Coal Township. John S. Neuer died there on January 14, 1966, only a few months shy of his ninetieth birthday.

Sources

The late Bill Haber did yeoman research on Neuer when he was still a “missing player,” tracking down both his death certificate and an obituary that appeared in the Sunbury Daily Item, January 14, 1966. Both documents were of great help, as were the contemporaneous articles cited in the notes. Thanks also to Tom Shieber, Lyle Spatz, Richard Malatzky and Ron Liebman for research assistance.

Notes 

 1 It would take a prohibitive amount of research to rule out the possibility that any other pitcher accomplished this feat, but SABR member Ron Liebman was unable to find anyone else who did so.