Greatest UNKNOWN Pitcher Ever!!

[RL]

What a great made up story..I was fooled until the last sentence

[Dead-Ball-Hitter]

Facts and fantasy meet in this story. Pat was indeed a 2 time gold medalist and a well known NY policeman. He’s a renown strongman with a statue erected in his family’s home town in Ireland. Numerous other details are embellished for entertainment purposes here at year end. Best regards, Joe

[Bill77]

As crazy as it sounds he might have actually played short stop in the minors.https://www.baseball-reference.com/r...d=mcdonn001p--

[G1911]

As a collector of track T cards, I was really surprised how I had not known any of this for the first couple paragraphs. Well done.

[jingram058]

Other than people like us, ask someone who Johnny Vander Meer was. They won't have a clue.

[Shoeless Moe]

John Clarkson

https://www.baseball-reference.com/p...larkjo01.shtml

The Cy Young award today would have been the John Clarkson award had he not wrapped up his 328 win career in only 12 years.

Cy Young pitched 22 years to get to 511.

Koufax 165 wins in 12 years.

[GeoPoto]

Why make it up when the true story is this good. Everything that follows is true and precedes the "player's" pivotal role in game 7 of one of the greatest World Series ever played!

"(The trade) proved a very prescient move. Beginning in 1919, the "Team" won seven consecutive . . . League pennants, and for three of those years "Player", who by then considered himself a hitter who occasionally pitched, put on one of the most dazzling offensive demonstrations the league had ever seen. In his first two seasons, 1917 and 1919 (he was in the US Army in 1918), with the exception of a lone pitching appearance in his first year, "Player" played exclusively at first base and in the outfield: In 185 games, he posted averages of .333 batting and .510 slugging. Then he really caught fire. From 1920 to 1922, "Player's" numbers were staggering, as he batted .378 in 439 games, scored 340 runs, drove in 399, and had a slugging average of an astounding .590. In both 1920 (161) and 1921 (120), "Player" led the league in RBIs; in 1921, he won the league Triple Crown, batting .412 (the league’s highest season average in the 20th century), with 24 home runs and 120 RBIs. His 246 hits that season remain the league’s single-season record.

Yet "Player" continued to pitch when needed, and those results, too, were staggering. From 1920 through 1922, "Player" pitched in 56 games and produced a 41-6 record, a winning percentage of .872: in both 1921 (.923) and 1922 (.867), he led the league in that category. In 1920 (2.10) and 1922 (1.73), "Player" also led the league in ERA, and over three seasons his ERA was an astounding 2.07. During those years, by virtue of his performance both at the plate and on the mound, the press bestowed on "Player" the moniker "Babe Ruth of the Minors".

https://www.net54baseball.com/attach...1&d=1640433421

[Mark17]

Originally Posted by RL

What a great made up story..I was fooled until the last sentence

I was fooled until the comment about Waddell trying to intimidate hitters. His stuff was intimidating, but Rube himself wasn't.

[Aquarian Sports Cards]

If auction write-ups told me stuff I didn't know (Babe Ruth was great doesn't cut it) like this fictional one did I'd be all for it!

[bobbyw8469]

I thought Syd Finch was the greatest unknown pitcher ever?

[h2oya311]

I always think (briefly) of Will "Whoop-La" White as far as unknown pitchers. He lived in the shadow of his older brother, Deacon White, but has several interesting points of notoriety.

> He was the first, and for many years only, major league player to wear eye glasses while playing ball.
> His career ERA is 9th all time (say what?).
> In 1879, he started 75 games and completed all 75 of them with 680 IPs, and 2,906 batters faced, all of which are major league records which are unlikely to be broken, although the first could be if TB continues to use the same "opener" for a full season.

This guy is the opposite of the OPs fantasy pitcher with respect to intimidation. But he'd be on my "real" list of obscure pitchers who were actually better than people know.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Will_White

[h2oya311]

and George, outstanding write-up on Buzz. I'm still looking for my first card of his...