An Unusual Record: Ted Wingfield’s Single Strikeout

Pitching in relief in the final innings of a 12-2 loss to the Philadelphia Athletics on August 10, 1927, sore-armed Boston right hander “Ted” Wingfield notched the final strikeout of his major league career and the only strikeout he recorded in 74½ innings of pitching that season. Wingfield’s one strikeout in 74½ in­nings, or .12 strikeouts per nine innings pitched, endures as the worst single-season strikeout per nine innings fig­ure ever recorded in major league history (over 31 innings).

In addition, Wingfield’s career mark of 1.106 strikeouts per nine innings pitched stands as the worst career mark for any pitcher with more than 500 innings pitched. Although Wingfield had been the bellwether of the Boston staff for two seasons, an arm injury suffered before the 1927 season reduced his effectiveness. Unequaled in baseball history, Wingfield’s single strike­ out in nearly 75 innings is a mark that will likely stand forever and deserves to be ranked with baseball’s “un­breakable” records.

Because records and numbers occupy such a prominent place in baseball lore, even casual fans are likely familiar with Henry Aaron’s 755 home runs, Joe DiMaggio’s 56-game hitting streak, the single-season home run records of Babe Ruth, Roger Maris, Mark McGwire, and Barry Bonds. Periodically, writers and fans muse about what baseball records might be “unbreakable.” For example, in September 1995, The Sporting News published the top twenty “unbreakable” records chosen by fans. They in­cluded offensive records like Pete Rose’s 4,256 hits, Hack Wilson’s 190 RBIs in 1930, Babe Ruth’s 457 total bases in 1921, Owen Wilson’s 36 triples in 1912, and pitching milestones like Cy Young’s 511 career victories and 751 complete games, Jack Chesbro’s 41 victories in 1904, and Walter Johnson’s 110 career shutouts.1  

The reason for The Sporting News survey? The pending erad­ication by Baltimore’s Cal Ripken of one heretofore untouchable record, Lou Gehrig’s 2,130 consecutive games, described by one Sporting News reader in 1978 as “incredible . .. it may well stand for all time.”2 In the 11 years since the fans chose their 20 top “unbreakable” records, one  record  on  the  list, George Sisler’s 257 hits in 1920, has been eclipsed, by Seattle’s Ichiro Suzuki in 2004.

The fall of two of baseball’s most enduring offensive records in the last few years suggests that baseball fans should exercise caution when declaring a particular mark impervious to assault by modem players. Nevertheless, changes in the game since the modem era began in 1901 make  some  records-particularly  pitching  records­ truly unapproachable. For example, Cy Young’s career marks for victories, losses, innings pitched, games started, and complete games will never be threatened. Similarly, Jack Chesbro’s 41 victories in 1904, Ed Walsh’s 464 innings pitched in 1908, and Grover Cleveland Alexander’s single-season shutout record of 16 in 1916 will likewise stand unless the major leagues return to the style of play prevalent between 1901 and 1919.

To illus­trate, in the past 20 seasons only one starter, Roger Clemens with 18 in 1987, has recorded more than 15 complete games, and no major league pitcher has pitched even 300 innings in a season since Steve Carlton in 1980. While Chesbro, Walsh, and Alexander enjoyed seasons unimaginable by today’s standards, some of their con­temporaries nearly matched them. Three other pitchers from the first decade of the 20th century exceeded 400 innings pitched in a season, with Joe McGinnity and Walsh turning in two separate years of 400-plus innings. Jack Coombs of the Philadelphia Athletics notched 13 shutouts in 1910 and Walter Johnson recorded 12 in 1913, while Ed Walsh won 40 games for the 1908 White Sox. Compared to the mediocre numbers posted by many of today’s league-leading pitchers, these amazing pitching records from baseball’s Deadball Era seem almost otherworldly.

The dawn of the 1920s ushered in an era of potent offense and few strikeouts. The 1920-29 seasons featured a .285 major league batting average, and 9.62 runs per game compared to the .254 mark and 7.89 runs per game posted by hitters between 1901 and 1919. Home runs increased to nearly 9,900 between 1920 and 1929, a better than 33 percent increase over the 7,381 home runs clouted by major league hitters between 1901 and 1919. Earned-run averages soared from 2.88 in the 1901-19 pe­riod to 4.03 in the 1920s. Along with increased scoring, batting, and earned-run averages came a drop in strike­outs: from 3.67 per nine innings in 1901-1919 to 2.91 per nine innings in 1920-29. In fact, batters in the 1920s struck out less frequently than hitters in any other modern decade.

Not surprisingly, some of the lowest strikeout per nine-inning ratios were posted by pitchers during the era. Several 1920s hurlers who pitched more than 200 innings in a season finished with marks just above one strikeout per nine innings, and one, Ernie Wingard of the St. Louis Browns, actually fell below one strikeout per inning in two seasons, 1924 and 1925. Wingard’s ratio of .950 strikeouts per nine innings in 1924 stands just above Slim Sallee’s 1919 record of 24 strikeouts in 228 innings, or .949 strikeouts per nine innings. 1920s pitchers with more than 200 innings in a season who posted fewer than 1.5 strikeouts per nine innings were Cleveland’s Sherry Smith with 1.24 in 1924 and 1.14 in 1925; Jack Russell of the Red Sox with 1.21 in 1928, Hal Carlson, pitching for the Phillies and Cubs in 1927, with 1.45 and Russell again with 1.47, in 1929.

Between 1920 and 1929, no American League hurler fanned more than 194 hitters, and other than Dazzy Vance, who won seven consecutive strikeout crowns from 1922 to 1928, no National League pitcher recorded more than 173 strikeouts in a season. However, the anemic strikeout totals posted by pitchers in the 1920s hardly reflect ineffective pitching. Wingard won 13 games with a 3.51 ERA in 1924, Smith won 34 games for the Indians from 1924-26, Russell won 17 games combined for two last-place Red Sox teams in 1928-29, and Carlson copped 16 wins in 1927. Most notably, Slim Sallee, the single-season leader in strikeout futility, won 21 games for the world champion Cincinnati Reds in 1919, posting a 2.06 ERA.

In common with his contemporaries, Wingfield’s below-average strikeout totals do not reflect his pitching prowess. In fact, his major league record stamps him as an average major league pitcher. His earned-run average of 4.18 compares favorably to the American League’s mark of 4.15 from 1923 to 1927. Similarly, his marks for hits per nine innings and batting average allowed are both within three percent of league averages for his five-year career. Even more important, in his two years of regular pitching for the Boston Red Sox, he led the staff in victories both seasons with 12 in 1925 and 11 in 1926, representing nearly 25 percent of the 93 victories the Red Sox won in those two campaigns. In 1925, he posted a 3.96 ERA, a full run lower than the team mark of 4.97, and in 1926, Wingfield’s 4.44 per­formance again bettered the team ERA of 4.72.

Born August 7, 1899, in Bedford, Virginia, Wingfield grew up in the Roanoke area. He joined the United States Army at age 17 after a fight with his brother and served 14 months in Europe during World War I. In 1918, during the Argonne offensive, Wingfield was exposed to mustard gas and hospitalized for two months. Following his discharge in June 1919, Wingfield  played  semi-pro  baseball  for teams in Roanoke, and Elizabethton, Tennessee.

While playing for the N & W Athletic Club in Roanoke, Fred Wingfield became known as Ted Wingfield, the name that appears in baseball compendiums. According to his daughter, Charlotte Robinson of Greeneville, Tennessee, her father played on a team with several Freds, and the manager gave each one of them a nickname. Wingfield’s happened to be Ted. His play eventually attracted the attention of Chattanooga Lookout manager Sammy Strang Nicklin, and Wingfield ultimately signed a professional contract with the Lookouts of the Southern League in 1921. One account of Wingfield’s early career opined that he cemented his position with the Chattanooga team by impressing the musically inclined Nicklin with his singing voice, causing the manager to take “such an interest in him he became a regular member of the team.” When I mentioned this story to Robinson, she laughed and exclaimed, “What nonsense, Daddy couldn’t carry a tune!”3

In his first season with Chattanooga, Wingfield served as the club’s regular shortstop, although he hit an anemic .226. At short, he committed 70 errors in 116 games for a fielding percentage of .892, helping the Lookouts to a league-leading 345 errors and a league-low .943 fielding percentage. He began the transition from everyday player to pitcher during the 1921 season as he made a handful of appearances on the mound, posting a 2-2 won-lost mark.

Although sportswriter Les Stout claimed that Nicklin switched Wingfield to the mound because his fielding was so “ragged,” Wingfield recalled that his “clowning around” in 1921 began his transition to pitch­ing. Warming up for the first game of a doubleheader against New Orleans, Wingfield began throwing curves to a teammate. Nicklin, apparently impressed with the quality of Wingfield’s curveball, decided to start him on the mound in the second game. Wingfield won the game, 5-3, “and from that time on he was a pitcher.” In his next two seasons with Chattanooga in 1922 and 1923, Wingfield won 14 and lost 24 with an ERA of 3.46. He also continued to play in the field, making 59 appear­ances at shortstop and playing 25 games in the outfield, and improved his hitting, raising his average to .246 in 1922 and increasing it again to .265 in 1923.4

Although Wingfield later claimed, “I never should have switched to pitching,” it was as a pitcher that he made it to the majors, being called up in 1923 by the Washington Senators. He debuted with them on September 23, pitching a scoreless inning in relief of Walter Johnson and, ironi­cally, recording a strikeout. In spring 1924, Washington Post and New York Times sportswriters described the young right hander as a pitcher of promise.” He pitched effectively during spring training, including a long relief stint against the Boston Braves on April 9, and impressed Washington manager Bucky Harris enough to make the club’s opening day roster.5

Although Wingfield pitched well in four early-season games with the eventual world champions, Washington returned him to Chattanooga on May 12, where he posted an 11-6 record and hit .272, playing both shortstop and second base along with his mound duties. In early September, the Boston Red Sox purchased his contract from the Lookouts and brought him back to the American League. After one relief ap­pearance against the St. Louis Browns on September 12, Wingfield made three late season starts for Boston and pitched well, although he went 0-2, losing complete games 4-3 to the Browns on September 14, and 3-2 to the Tigers on September 23. Wingfield finished the 1924 season with an 0-2 record and a 2.45 ERA in 32½ innings.6

In 1925, Wingfield became the “ace” of the Boston staff. He made his first start on April 27 and won his first major league game on May 2, a complete-game 5-4 victory over the New York Yankees, playing that day without Babe Ruth in the lineup. On August 8, Wingfield notched his first major league shutout, a 3-0 blanking of the Chicago White Sox.7 At this point of the season, the Red Sox had won 31 games, Wingfield 6. During the remaining 47 games, Wingfield notched 6 of Boston’s 16 wins. Even more impressive, after September 8, while the Red Sox won only 8 times, Winfield won 5, beating the Yankees twice, followed those wins with victories over the Browns and the Indians, then ended his season with a five-hit 3-1 victory over the world champion Washington Senators, who rested some of their regulars.

During this 23-day stretch, Wingfield pitched perhaps the two most impressive games of his major league career. On September 13, he beat the Yankees and Waite Hoyt, 2-1, surrendering only five hits, with Bob Meusel, Babe Ruth, and Lou Gehrig going 0-for-9. Four days later, he held the hard-hitting St. Louis Browns, a club that fin­ished the season with a .298 average and scored nearly six runs per game, to only four singles in a 2-0 victory. Wingfield ended the 1925 season as the leading winner on a pitching staff that included veteran stars like Howard Ehmke and Jack Quinn and future Hall of Famer “Red” Ruffing. 8 He also finished second on the staff with 18 complete games and 254 ½ innings pitched. As a team, the Red Sox finished the season with the worst record in baseball, 47-105, a .309 winning percentage. Boston was 49 ½ games behind the pennant-winning Senators and 21 games behind the seventh-place Yankees.

The 1926 season saw the Red Sox continue their woeful play as their winning percentage actually declined to .301. Although the club won 46 and lost 107, Wingfield recorded an 11-16 mark to again lead the staff in victories. He was not as effective as he had been in 1925, however. Wingfield won only two games after August 3, and only one after a 1-0 win over the White Sox on August 19, as the Red Sox closed their forgettable season by going 4-28. His last win of the 1926 season came in a gritty 3-2 victory in 10 innings over the second-place Indians on September 20. Entering the day trailing the eventual pennant-winning Yankees by 3 ½ games, the Tribe had to win the game. However, Wingfield held the Indians to only seven hits, costing the Cleveland club “a royal opportunity to cut the leaders’ margin,” since the Yankees lost a doubleheader that day to the White Sox. He finished the season with a 4.44 ERA in 190 ½ innings, again second on the staff, and his nine complete games tied for the staff lead.

Although Wingfield’s 1925-26 record of 23 wins and 35 losses seems unimpressive, during one 154-game stretch between July 31, 1925, and July 30, 1926, Wingfield won 16 games, almost one-third of the 49 wins the Red Sox garnered during this period. Wingfield also pitched effectively against the league’s good teams during 1925 and 1926, as 13 of his 23 victories came against first­ division ball clubs, with three coming against eventual pennant winners Washington and New York. In fact, Wingfield beat the Yankees more frequently than any other opponent, notching six wins against them in 1925- 26, causing one sportswriter to describe him as a “Yankee Killer.”9

After two successive 100-loss seasons, the Red Sox hired as manager Bill Carrigan, who had led the club to two world championships in 1915 and 1916. Carrigan’s return caused American League umpire Billy Evans and league president Ban Johnson to predict better things for the team in 1927. Evans found “a half dozen reasons” during spring training to think the Red Sox would be better, and Johnson considered Boston not only a poten­tial first-division team, declaring the team “will be in a pennant fight. .. there is not a club in the league that should be counted out of a first division chance,” but a potential pennant winner, mainly because manager Carrigan “unquestionably has the courage and character that mean new spirit and better results in Boston.”10

Other observers were not quite so sanguine about Boston’s chances. Although Frank Getty of the Atlanta Constitution and Shirley Povich of the Washington Post disagreed about which team would win the American League pen­nant, they both predicted a last-place finish for the Red Sox. Getty and Povich proved prescient as the club lost its first six games and settled into eighth place, a spot in which it remained the entire season. By the end of May, the club had posted a .289 winning percentage and trailed the fabled 1927 Yankee team by 15 games, en route to a final mark of 51-103, 59 games behind New York.

After two years as Boston’s biggest winner, Wingfield proved a major disappointment in 1927, mainly because of a “sore arm” he began suffering in spring training. Some 40 years later, Wingfield remembered, “I hurt my arm that spring, the first ball I threw 1 could feel it in my shoulder. Then I began to throw underhanded.” His daughter confirmed her father’s physical problems, main­taining, “The Red Sox knew he had a sore arm but they kept pitching him.”’11

After a two-inning relief stint on opening day, Wingfield made three successive starts, pitching effectively in only one of them. By May 3, his record stood at 0-2, his ERA at 5.82. Carrigan used Wingfield out of the bullpen for nearly a month, and he continued to struggle, allowing four earned runs in four and one-third innings of work. On May 31, Wingfield started against the Senators and won his last major league victory, a 4-1 decision over Senator right hander Hod Lisenbee. Wingfield made three more starts in June, pitching well. He worked seven innings and allowed seven hits and two runs to the Tigers in a 5-3 loss on June 8, then followed that performance with an eight-inning effort against the St. Louis Browns on June 13, allowing nine hits and two runs in a 2-0 loss to Elam Van Gilder. Eight days later, Wingfield pitched his final complete game in the majors, a 7-3 loss to the powerful Yankees. At this point, Wingfield had pitched 52 ½ innings with a 1-6 mark and an improving 4.47 ERA. He had allowed 16 walks and struck out no one, shattering all previous records for strikeout futility.

Since 1900 only three major league pitchers have pitched more than 20 innings in a season without record­ing a strikeout: Left hander Leo Townsend of the 1920 Boston Braves led the group with 24 ½ innings and no strikeouts, followed by left hander Stan Baumgartner of the 1926 Philadelphia Athletics and right-hander Aloysius “Wish” Egan of the 1902 Detroit Tigers, both of whom worked 22 ½ innings without recording a strike­ out. Since 1900 the worst strikeout ratio in major league history among pitchers with at least one strikeout be­ longed to right-hander Dick Braggins of the Cleveland Blues, who recorded one strikeout in 32 innings in 1901, a strikeout per nine innings ratio of .281.

Wingfield had passed Townsend’s mark in his May 31 victory over the Senators, finishing that game with 28 ½ innings and no strikeouts.12 In his next five appearances, Wingfield ex­tended his strikeout-less streak to 66½ innings. On August 10, he struck out Athletics infielder Chick Galloway with two outs in the sixth inning, finally ending his strikeout drought at 67½ innings. With this strikeout Wingfield eradicated Braggins’ single-strikeout record as his strikeout per nine innings ratio stood at .129.13

Wingfield pitched only two more games in the majors after August 10, ineffective appearances against the Detroit Tigers and Cleveland Indians. In early September, the Red Sox sent him to Portland of the New England League after a stretch in which the right hander allowed 17 hits and l O earned runs in eight innings, raising his season ERA from 4.32 to his final mark of 5.06.14 Although Wingfield clearly pitched poorly in August, his demotion might have been the result of questions about his arm injury.

In early August, Sporting News beat writer Burt Whitman blamed Wingfield and “Red” Ruffing for most of the team’s pitching problems, writing that Wingfield “has been bothered by hypothetical sore arms all season He has been told by specialists that it is all in his head—that sore arm—but nevertheless he has been of very little use to Carrigan this year.” 15 Whether the demotion stemmed from just poor pitching, the club deciding Wingfield lacked the requisite commit­ment to perform for Canigan, or a combination of both, his release marked the end of a major league career that saw him post a 24-44 record in 553½ innings of pitching. 

During the next two years, Wingfield saw limited duty with Nashville of the Southern Association and Minneapolis of the American Association. He continued to suffer the effects of the sore arm he developed in 1927, pitching 81 innings for Nashville in 1928 and only 14 for Minneapolis in 1929. He also went 0-6 for Hartford of the Eastern League in 1929.

After his organized base­ ball playing days ended, Wingfield continued to play ball on the weekends for semi-pro teams in Virginia and Tennessee, began a 35-year career as a rural letter carrier for the U.S. Post Office, and demonstrated considerable talent as a baseball executive. In 1936, he helped organ­ize the Class D Appalachian League, resurrecting an association of Tennessee and Virginia ball clubs that had disbanded in 1925. When the league began play in 1937 with four teams, Elizabethton, Johnson City, and Newport in Tennessee, along with Pennington Gap, Virginia, Wingfield served as president of the Elizabethton Red Sox. The league then expanded to six teams in 1938, adding clubs in Kingsport and Greeneville, Tennessee. Wingfield’s Elizabeth­ ton team enjoyed consistent success during his tenure as president, winning regular season championships in 1937 and 1938. Although the club lost in the playoffs both years, it won the league championship in 1939, after finishing second during the regular season.

The club not only succeeded on the field, Wingfield made it a financial success as well; the club finished the 1939 season “in good financial condition,” and Wingfield was reelected by the stockholders for another term as the club’s president. 16 The league Wingfield helped build still oper­ates today as a 10-team short-season Class A “rookie” organization. Elizabethton remains a member along with Johnson City from the reconstituted 1937 league, and two additions from 1938, Kingsport and Greeneville, continue to field teams. In 2005, the Elizabethton entry won the league championship and in 2006 posted the loop’s best record, continuing a tradition begun by the 1937-39 clubs. Finally, the Bluefield Orioles, a member of Baltimore’s farm system since 1958, enjoy the longest affiliation with a major league club of any minor league franchise. 17

In the 1950s, Wingfield became involved in youth baseball, coaching little league in Elizabethton. In 1969, the Postal Service forced Wingfield to retire because he had reached the age of70. He continued to follow major league baseball, although the amount of time it took to play a ball game disturbed him. In 1971, he compared the brisk pace of baseball in the 1920s with the early 1970s version that saw “pitchers take too long between deliveries and batters get out of the box too often.” The advent of the designated hitter in 1973 disgusted him, a predictable reaction for an old pitcher who took pride in his own hitting ability, including a . 234 lifetime major league average and only 14 strikeouts in 192 at-bats. After retiring from the post office, he spent his time play­ing golf and fishing. Wingfield’s nephew Buddy described him as a “great fly fisherman,” and fondly re­membered many enjoyable hours spent with his uncle fishing for trout in the rivers around Elizabethton. Wingfield suffered a pulmonary embolism in July 1975 and died July 18 at the age of 75. 18

As he reminisced about his career in 1971, Wingfield clearly understood his good fortune, telling Henry Jenkins: “I look back on pitching in the majors as the best part of my life. We rode the best trains [there were no airplane trips then] and had the best of everything.” Wingfield might have added that he played during one of the game’s greatest eras, with and against some of its most fabled stars. As did the majority of major leaguers prior to free agency, Wingfield never made much money playing ball; his daughter claimed his highest salary as a big leaguer was $750 a month, or around $4,000 a year. Along with many of his contemporaries, he spent years in the minors, then continued to play semi-pro baseball after his retirement because he loved the game. Considering the quality of the team with which he per­ formed, Wingfield made a creditable record in major league baseball. To be sure, his is not a well-known name, and his record-setting performance in 1927 lan­guishes in obscurity. In fact, Wingfield’s 1927 record deserves to be ranked along with the record-setting pitch­ing performances of Jack Chesbro, Grover Cleveland Alexander, Cy Young, and Ed Walsh, as one of baseball’s “unbreakable” marks. 19

ROBERT BIONAZ has been a SABR member since 1992. He grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area and is a long­ suffering fan of the San Francisco Giants. He is an Associate Professor of History at Chicago State University.

 

Sources

Interviews

Charlotte Robinson, daughter of “Ted” Wingfield, December 10, 2006.

Elmer “Buddy” Wingfield, nephew of “Ted” Wingfield, December 9-10, 2006.

Internet

Baseball Library – www.Baseball Library.com

Minor League Baseball – www.minorleaguebaseball.com

Retrosheet – www.retrosheet.org

SABR Baseball Encyclopedia – www.sabr.org

Newspapers and Periodicals

Atlanta Constitution

Chicago Tribune

Elizabethton Star, Elizabethton, Tennessee, Courtesy of “Buddy” Wingfield

New York Times

The Sporting News, St. Louis

Washington Post

Wingfield’s File National Baseball Hall of Fame Library, Cooperstown

Drohan, John, “Harmony Saved Wingfield’s Job,” ca. 1925.

Stout, Les, “Boston Baseball Hopes,” ca. 1925

“Wingfield, Red Sox Pitcher, A Convert,” ca. 1925.

Encyclopedias

Neft, David S., Richard M. Cohen, and Michael L. Neft. The Sports Encyclopedia: Baseball. New York: St. Martin’s Griffin, 2001.

 

Notes

1. The Sporting News, September 11, 1995, p. S-12. Several records have been modified due to additional research. See SABR Encyclopedia ofBaseball at www.sabr.org. Except where otherwise noted, all statistical data is from Retrosheet, www.retrosheet.org
2. The Sporting News, September 9, 1978, “Voice of the Fan,” 4.
3. Biographical data obtained from an articled titled “Boston Baseball Hopes” by Les Stout, ca. 1925, and article titled “Harmony Saved Wingfield’s Job” by John Drohan, 1925, in Wingfield File, Hall of Fame Library, Cooperstown. Interview with Charlotte Robinson, December 10, 2006. Although known now primarily by the nickname, contemporary reports almost always referred to him as Fred Wingfield.
4. The different accounts of Wingfield’s transition are from Stout, 1925; and article titled “Betsy’s Ted Wingfield Was Once Star Pitcher for Boston Red Sox” by Henry Jenkins, Elizabethton Star, March 15 1953, p. A-9; and “Sideline Review” by Henry Jenkins, Elizabethton Star, ca. 1971. Both articles provided courtesy of Elmer “Buddy” Wingfield.
5. Washington Post, April 1, 1924; p. S3, New York Times, April 13, 1924, p. SI; Washington Post, April IO, 1924, p. SI.
6. New York Times, September J 3, 1924, p. S2; September 16, 1924, p. 18; September 24, 1924, p. 26; Washington Post, September 20, 1924;
7. SI. Wingfield’s Chattanooga figures are from The Sporting News, December 15, 1921, p. 8; December 28, J 922, p. 8; November 29, 1923, page 7; December 11, 1924, p. 7. The account of Winfield’s conversion from regular player to pitcher comes from an anonymous article titled “Wingfield, Red Sox Pitcher, a ‘Convert’ ,”ca. 1925, in the Wingfield file, Hall of Fame Library, Cooperstown. New York Times, May 3, 1925, SI; Atlanta Constitution, August 9, 1925, p. B3.
8. New York Times, October 2, 1925, 18; September 18, 1925, p. 19.
9. For an account of the August 19 shutout see Chicago Tribune, August 20, 1926, p. 17.  For accounts of the September 20 game see New York Times, September 21, 1926, p. 23; Washington Post, September 21, 1926, p. 17; quote is from New York Times, September 21, 1926, 23. The “Yankee Killer” reference is taken from “Betsy’s Ted Wingfield,” in the Elizabethton Star, March 15, 1953, p. 9-A.
10. The Sporting News, April 14, 1927, p. 7; Washington Post, April 10, 1927, 21.
11. From “Sideline Review” Elizabethton Star, ca. 1971; Robinson inter­ view, December l 0, 2006.
12. Statistics on Townsend, Baumgartner and Egan are from David S. Neft, Richard M. Cohen and Michael L. Neft, The Sports Encyclopedia: Baseball (New York: St. Martin’s Griffin, 2001), 17, 127, 148. All information regarding Wingfield’s daily pitching record for 1927 supplied courtesy of Hall of fame Library, Cooperstown.
13. The account of Winfield’s strikeout is taken from BaseballLibrary.com.
14. New York Times, September 2, 1927, 11.
15. The Sporting News, August 18, 1927, 1.
16. For Wingfield’s obituary see The Sporting News, August 9, 1975, 40. For season and playoff results for the Elizabethton team see The Sporting News, September 16, 1937, p. 7; September 8, 1938, IO; September 14, 1939, p. J 3. The club’s financial success was reported in The Sporting News, November 23, 1939, p. 3.
17. Elizabethton is now an affiliate of the Minnesota For a brief history of the Appalachian league, see www.minorleaguebaseball.com. For Wingfield’s post-1929 career see, “Sideline Review,” ca. 1971. Robinson interview, December I 0, 2006. For his 1928 and 1929 statistics, see The Sporting News, December 27, 1928, p. 8; December 19, 1929, p. 9.
18. Details of Wingfield’s personal life provided by “Buddy” Wingfield and Charlotte Robinson in conversations on December 9-10, 2006. See also, “Sideline Review,” 1971.
19. “Sideline Review,” 1971; Robinson interview, December 10, 2006.