Monday, June 25, 2007

Fire


When you pore through the minutiae of baseball encyclopedias for the better part of three-and-a-half decades, you keep coming across interesting tidbits that stick in your mind.

So when I saw that the latest SABR Baseball Biography Project was about a pitcher named Joe Cleary, I recognized the subject of the profile right off the bat.

Cleary is one of the many players whose appearance in the baseball reference books comes about because of a solitary appearance in the majors. What makes Mr. Cleary memorable is one of the numbers attached to his entry: 189.00. That's his lifetime ERA, the result of pitching one-third of an inning for the 1945 Washington Senators and giving up seven earned runs. (I've read some reference books that don't even credit him with getting that one out, which would give him a lifetime ERA of infinity.)

And that's all I knew about Joe Cleary, except the biographical information that lists him as a native of Cork, Ireland, and having the nickname of "Fire" or "Fireman." ("Arsonist" would seem to be more appropriate ... sorry.)

At any rate, biographer Charlie Bevis does a fantastic job of putting a face, so to speak, on Mr. Cleary, who died in 2004 at age 85.

Even if you've never seen his listing in Macmillan, click here to read all about the man with the 189 ERA.

2 comments:

Heidi Price said...

I am not being sarcastic when I write that this is so much more interesting than reading about the Pirates.

Harry Funk said...

Yeah, I'm having trouble paying any attention whatsoever to the Pirates these days. I'll help the cause of Saturday's protest then ignore them until they put a decent team on the field (as in, forever ...)