Beyond third base: Nabors' nadir

As a baseball fan living in Pittsburgh, I've become fascinated with the sport's historic losers.

Well, that's not really true. I've been fascinated with baseball's losers since long before I moved to Pittsburgh. Maybe that's because I couldn't hit a lick when I was a kid. Seriously, it was embarrassing ...

Anyway, on the heels of Joe Cleary and his 189.00 ERA, I present Jack Nabors, who had the misfortune of pitching for the Philadelphia Athletics after Connie Mack decided to divest his payroll of any players making more than what passed for minimum wage.

Look it up. The A's went from winning the American League pennant in 1914 to winning a whopping 43 games against 109 losses the following year, in a plunge that was even more precipitous than Wayne Huizenga's 1997-98 Florida Fish.

Mack's apologists say he was embarrassed by his team being swept by the "Miracle" Boston Braves (and miraculous they were) in the '14 Series, but the cleaning of the house probably had more to do with competition from the upstart Federal League and the probability that Connie's stars were going to try to squeeze more money out of him.

The pitching staff of the 1915 Athletics is an interesting one. No less than 27 hurlers took the mound for the team at some point during the season, in an era when teams general had four-man rotations and a couple of guys on hand for emergencies. And Mack was going for a staff that was uniformly wet behind the ears: Their average age was 22.

Nabors, in fact, was the oldest pitcher to appear for the A's that year, having turned 27 the previous Nov. 19. The native of Montevallo, Ala., made his major-league debut in 1915 and turned in an 0-5 record in five starts and two relief stints, giving up 45 runs in the process.

(One A's pitcher, Bruno "Boon" Haas, set one of baseball's unbreakable records when he walked 16 batters in his very first start on June 23, 1915. Amazingly, Mack gave him another start and used him in relief four times after that.)

If the remaining Athletics fans thought '15 was a bad season, they were in for a rude awakening. The 1916 version holds the 20th-century record for lowest winning percentage, .235 (36-117), even worse than the '62 Mets.

The pitching staff had two decent hurlers in the rotation, Elmer Myers (14-23) and "Bullet" Joe Bush (15-24 with 8 shutouts), who combined for 80 percent of the A's wins that year. Another youngster having the proverbial cup of coffee, James "Rube" Parnham - a native of Heidelberg, Pa., my wife's hometown - went 2-1. That left the rest of the staff with a composite of 5 wins and 68 losses.

Contributing to that abysmal showing were two other members of the rotation, Tom Sheehan and Mr. Nabors. Sheehan, who was named manager of the San Francisco Giants 44 years later, went 1-16. Nabors did even worse, losing 20 while winning just once.

Philadelphia sportswriters apparently had a ball trying to describe what they were seeing on the field. Here's part of a late-season article that appeared in The Philadelphia Inquirer following a loss to the Washington Senators:

Elongated Jack Nabors tried hard enough to stave off defeat No. 115 for the Athletics yesterday, but pop-eyed support by [shortstop Lawton] Witt and [second baseman Roy] Grover enabled two Washingtonians to travel the 360 feet of pathway around the diamond and these runs were sufficient enough to give the Senators their second victory over the much-abused Mackmen. The final verdict was 4 to 1, the other two markers being compiled in the ninth, when Rube Bressler, who succeeded Nabors in this round, gave a weird exhibition of pitching.

Had Jack been flawlessly supported the Senators would not have reached the counting station. Grover's fumble of Menesky's [actually, "Leaping" Mike Menosky's] roller in the sixth, when two were down and a man on second, set the stage for [outfielder Elmer] Smith to single in the first counter for the Capital brigade. In the very next inning "Whitey" Witt, who showed up poorly all day, erred on [Howard] Shanks' bouncer and that bull blossomed into the second tally scored on Nabors. ...

It was one of Nabors' best exhibitions, for he forgot to pass a man, eliminated wild pitches from his repertoire and in general behaved with all the skill and cunning a regular moundsman uses in his daily labors.

Gotta love that old-time sportswriting!

That turned out to be the last start for "Elongated" Jack (listed at 6-foot-3, very tall for the time). He returned for two relief appearances for the A's in 1917 without a decision, then passed into the record books with a lifetime mark of 1-25. He died Nov. 20, 1923, one day after his 36th birthday.

Just for the record, the last surviving member of the worst team of the 20th century was outfielder James "Shag" Thompson, who died in 1990 at the age of 96. He hit .203 in 79 career at bats. (I couldn't find any information on the final disposition of outfielder James "Don" Brown, who appeared in 14 games. He was born in either 1893 or 1897, meaning he'd be 110 or 114 if he were alive today. Either way, that would be a record for former major-leaguers!)

Trivia question 44: What pitcher of the 1980s left the majors with an 0-16 career record?