May 26, 1875: Journeyman outfielder Jim Clinton notches his only major-league pitching victory

On April 26, 1875, two games into the season, the Brooklyn Atlantics peaked. They vaulted to fifth place in the National Association that day, thanks to John Cassidy’s 3-2 win over the Elm Citys of New Haven. Entering play exactly a month later, May 26, the Atlantics had nothing to show but 10 additional losses, and, with a record of 1-11, now stood 12th in the 13-team league.

The Atlantics had joined the NA in 1872, the second year of its existence as baseball’s first organized professional league, but had done little to revive memories of the venerated amateur champions of the 1860s. Their best performance thus far was a 22-33 mark in 1874. They didn’t come close to that in 1875.

Managing the Atlantic club was Charlie Pabor, who, at age 28, was one of the more experienced men on the team. Pabor had been a star southpaw pitcher in the 1860s with the Unions of Morrisania, and had played in the NA since its inception in 1871. With the exception of one four-inning pitching stint, his 42 appearances with the ’75 Atlantics were all in left field.

Pabor’s team was a youthful one: Seven of the May 26 participants were 25 or younger. Four were holdovers from the 1874 team. The oldest regular was 34-year-old first baseman Fred Crane, a member of the Atlantics in their glory years from 1862 to 1869.

Making his eighth consecutive pitching start for Brooklyn was Jim Clinton. Born in New York City on August 10, 1850, James Lawrence Clinton made his first known appearance on the baseball scene with the Mutuals in August 1869, and spent the next few years playing whenever and wherever possible, with amateur, pro, and semipro clubs in New York and Brooklyn. Always popular with teammates and fans, and respected as a gentlemanly and honest player, Clinton from the beginning demonstrated a willingness and ability to play any position on the diamond, though early on he toiled mostly in the infield and, in later years, mostly in the outfield. His first known pitching start came in May 1870 with the amateur Orientals of New York. Later that year he joined the Eckfords, another Brooklyn club, whose best years were far behind them. He was an Eckford regular, mostly as an infielder, when the team entered the professional arena with the National Association in 1872. He appeared in two games with the NA Atlantics in 1874, but spent the rest of that season with the amateur Reliances of Brooklyn.

Carrying an 0-7 record into the May 26 tilt, Clinton nonetheless had drawn praise for his pitching efforts, as a sampling of press reports shows:

“Clinton … had speed and tolerable command of the ball. …”1

“Clinton pitching – very swiftly, too. … Clinton’s pace bothered the Athletics so much that they appealed as to its legality and it was tested, and the delivery being found to be below the hip the umpire very properly ruled it as legal.”2

“Clinton, as pitcher, appears to cause a little uneasiness to those who are compelled to bat his delivery.”3

“[T]he Hartfords had to meet a new pitcher in the person of Clinton, and there is no questioning the fact that his delivery bothered them.”4

Coincidentally, the Atlantics’ May 26 opponent was the New Haven club that they had defeated a month earlier. At the helm of the Elm City nine was player-manager Charlie Gould, whose baseball career, like that of Pabor, dated well back into the 1860s, when he manned first base for the famed Cincinnati Red Stockings.

As for Clinton’s opposing hurler, Harry Luff, the rookie would normally have been stationed at third base, but when regular pitcher Tricky Nichols suffered a broken finger in New Haven’s May 21 game against the Athletics, Luff was pressed into duty. In all, he made seven starts while Nichols’ digit healed, before returning to the hot corner. Late in the season, during the team’s exhibition tour of Canada, Luff and second baseman Billy Geer were charged with the theft of several valuables from an Ontario hotel, though the case was later dropped for lack of evidence. Like many baseball hangers-on of the era, Luff wound down his patchy career in 1884 with the Union Association, playing briefly for the Philadelphia and Kansas City entries of that short-lived league. During and after his baseball years, it seemed Luff was rarely far from legal jeopardy, dabbling variously through the years in theft, domestic abuse, drunken disorderly conduct, and armed assault.

While Billy Geer’s baseball career lasted only six partial and mediocre seasons, his post-playing days proved a grand, decades-long crime spree, during which he lived off forged checks and stayed one step ahead of the law by crisscrossing the country under a dozen or so aliases. When the law finally caught up, Geer received well-deserved prison sentences coast-to-coast, including in Minnesota (1892), Virginia (1898), Utah (c.1900), Iowa (1904), Illinois (1907), and Missouri (1923).

Clouds and rain of the previous day gave way to a clear sky and a temperature around 80 degrees on the 26th, but the reported attendance for this Wednesday afternoon match at Brooklyn’s Union Grounds was a mere 100. The Atlantics opened the scoring with a run in the bottom of the first, then added three in the second. while the Elm Citys were unable to score until the top of the fifth. Brooklyn padded its lead to 12-1 by adding three runs in the sixth and five more in the seventh. New Haven’s three-run burst in the eighth was too little too late, the Atlantics scoring twice in the bottom of that inning to make the final tally 14-4.

Clinton did a good job of keeping the ball in the infield. Catcher Jake Knodell was credited with eight putouts in the game; first baseman Fred Crane, seven; and Clinton himself, two. There were but four fly putouts by the Brooklyn outfielders. On the Elm City side, teenage rookie (and New Haven native) Jim Keenan, who would build a solid career as a catcher lasting into the 1890s, subbed for Luff at third and committed eight errors there. Errors played a major role in the game, with 20 perpetrated by New Haven and 10 by Brooklyn. All four Elm City runs were unearned, as were all but three Atlantic runs. The New York Clipper declared the contest “very uninteresting after the first five innings.”5 The New York Herald called it “A Muffing Game” and noted the “inexcusable errors” by both nines.6 The Brooklyn Times Union dryly summarized, “the game was not over brilliantly played,” but also said that Clinton pitched well.7 At 3 hours 10 minutes, it was the longest game of the Atlantics’ season.

Three days later the Brooklynites were beaten for a sixth time in the season by Hartford’s Hall of Fame curveballer Candy Cummings, with Clinton giving up five runs in the first before being relieved by Cassidy and moving to right field.

The Atlantics failed to win another game and finished the season at 2-42. Released in August, Clinton was quickly picked up by the semipro Eagle Club of Louisville. He pitched consistently for the Eagles into early October, notching several wins. Beginning the 1876 season with a semipro club in Memphis, he was signed by the Louisville Grays of the newly formed National League in August. He pitched several games for Memphis and Louisville against amateur and semipro teams, but made his only NL start in Louisville’s season finale, taking an 11-2 complete-game loss to Cummings and the Hartfords on October 5.

Clinton spent the next five years making the rounds of the International Association and the

Eastern Association, as well as other pro and semipro leagues of “minor” status, playing with at

least a dozen different clubs in that time span. His next appearance on a major-league roster

was with NL Worcester in 1882, after which he enjoyed some productive seasons as an outfielder with Baltimore and Cincinnati of the American Association, up through 1886. Although he still occasionally pitched – and won – games in the minors, he never again hurled in the majors, making the May 26, 1875, victory the solitary win of his big-league career.8

Acknowledgments

This article was fact-checked by Bruce Slutsky and copy-edited by Len Levin.

Sources

In addition to the sources cited in the Notes, the author consulted Baseball-Reference.com, Retrosheet.org, and:

Nemec, David. Major League Baseball Profiles: 1871-1900, Volumes 1 & 2 (Lincoln, Nebraska: Bison Books, 2011).

Wright, Marshall D. The National Association of Base Ball Players, 1857-1870 (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland, 2000).

Notes

1 New York Clipper, May 22, 1875: 61.

2 New York World, May 12, 1875: 8.

3 New York Herald, May 14, 1875: 5.

4 New York Clipper, May 22, 1875: 58.

5 New York Clipper, June 5, 1875: 77.

6 New York Herald, May 27, 1875: 7.

7 Brooklyn Times Union, May 27, 1875: 3.

8 Harry Luff achieved his own pitching highlight a few days after the loss to the Atlantics, garnering a 9-2 triumph over Washington on May 31 for the first and only win of his career. New Haven’s season record of 7-40 landed them eighth place in the NA.