Fred ‘Dandelion’ Pfeffer: A Star from Louisville’s Early Diamond Days
This article was written by Philip Von Borries
This article was published in A Celebration of Louisville Baseball (SABR 27, 1997)
A 16-year veteran whose professional tenure included four seasons with his native Louisville (including one as a player-manager), Nathaniel Frederick “Dandelion” Pfeffer recorded a personal best .308 mark there in 1894.
But it was Pfeffer’s glove that garnered him his fame.
One of the two greatest second basemen of the pre-modern (pre-1900) era, Pfeffer made his name with Cap Anson’s National League Chicago dynasty teams of the early and mid-1880s, where he was a member of an almost inpenetrable infield known as “The Stone Wall.”
He was exceeded in keystone-bag skills only by the great Bid McPhee of the Cincinnati Reds, although Hall of Famer Mike “King” Kelly — according to Daniel Okrent’s and Steve Wulf’s Baseball Anecdotes — called Pfeffer “the greatest second baseman of them all … he could lay on his stomach and throw a hundred yards.”
Further evidence of Pfeffer’s defensive prowess comes from Mike Shatzkin’s The Ballplayers, which notes that Pfefer “was the first infielder to cut off a catcher’s throw to second base on a double steal attempt and cut down the runner at the plate.”
In some quarters and times, the McPhee-Pfeffer rivalry was a draw, as witness this item from the Louisville Commerical-Gazette of Wednesday, May 6, 1891: “Association players to a man maintain that McPhee is the greatest second baseman in the profession, while the League men are inclined to favor Pfeffer, of the Chicagos.” The article concluded by stating: “Louisville is, in this one instance, of the same opinion as the League.”
Pfeffer, a legitimate Hall of Fame candidate, also was a speedy baserunner who was once timed circling the bases in less than 16 seconds.
As intelligent as he was talented, Pfeffer, in 1899, became one of the game’s first published players with his highly popular book, Scientific Ball.
After wrapping up his major league work with Chicago in 1897, Pfeffer ran a celebrated bar there for years, which he sold for all of $1.50 in 1920 according to newspaper accounts. Later, he was in charge of press boxes at several racetracks in Chicago, where he died in 1932 at age 72.