The pride of Key West

In this case, Key West is in Iowa, a town I never knew existed ...

I remember Joe Hoerner as a decent relief pitcher for the Phillies toward the end of his career, but I knew little about him other than he was fairly old at the time and once had made the NL All-Star team. I also knew that at one point, he held the record (long since shattered) for fewest innings per appearance for his career. He never started a game, and as a lefty, usually came into the game to face left-handed hitters.

In the latest SABR Baseball Biography project installment, Brian Cooper writes about the life of Mr. Hoerner and tells me something else I didn't know: Joe died in a farming accident in 1996. RIP.

Click here to read the biography.

The Dump

One of baseball's legendary ballparks was the longtime minor-league facility in Nashville, Tenn., known as Athletic Park, or Sulphur Dell, or The Dump (because, before its baseball days, it was one).

SABR's Baseball Biography Project presents its first bio of a ballpark, as researched and written by Warren Corbett, whose work also includes profiles of broadcasters Mel Allen, Red Barber and Ralph Kiner (who was a heck of a ballplayer, too); pitchers Ken Raffensberger, Monte Weaver, Murry Dickson, Tiny Bonham, Mike Garcia, Art Houtteman, Howie Pollet and George Earnshaw; and iconoclastic owner Marge Schott.

Click here to read all about The Dump.

The Count

John Montefusco was one of the more colorful characters to emerge in baseball in the '70s, but he later fell on some tough times.

As part of SABR's ongoing Baseball Biography Project, Bob Hurte has submitted an essay detailing The Count's life on the diamond and beyond. Click here to give it a read.

The unfortunate Mr. Groom

In the list of no-hitters against pennant-winning teams (and their rough equivalents), I mentioned Bob Groom as having pitched one against the White Sox in 1917, and that Mr. Groom seemed to be a pretty good hurler who got stuck on some bad teams.

I received an e-mail from Catherine Groom Petroski, Bob's granddaughter, who plans to give a presentation about him at the annual convention of the Society for American Baseball Research, July 26-29 in St. Louis. I wrote back that I'd love to attend, but I'm waiting until next year, when the convention is just up the road in Cleveland.

At any rate, Mrs. Petroski mentioned, "In the material I’ve amassed for the biography I’m writing, I would have to agree that BG’s teams were not, all around, very good, except for the 1912 and 1913 Senators."

The record shows that Groom, indeed, had his best season in 1912, when the traditionally lowly Senators rallied behind Bob and another pitcher named Walter Johnson to rise all the way to second place. Groom won 24 games that year, with a 2.62 earned run average.

His ERA rose the following year, and his record leveled out at 16-16. Perhaps seeing the opportunity for something better, he signed with the St. Louis Terriers when the Federal League achieved brief status as a major league in 1914. The Terriers turned out to be the doormats of the FL, though, and poor Bob lost 20 games. St. Louis jumped to second place in 1915, and Groom improved to 11-11, but the Federal League went out of business after the season and his contract was acquired by the St. Louis Browns.

He did OK in '16 (13-9, 2.57 ERA) as the Browns finished fifth, but as St. Louis took a nosedive to seventh in '17, so did Groom. The no-hitter was pretty much his last hurrah in a career that probably could have been much better.

If you're going to be in St. Louis for the SABR convention, Mrs. Petroski's presentation is at 12:30 p.m. on the event's opening day.

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SABR has an ongoing Baseball Biography Project, and the latest entry is Jose Morales, whom I remember as a great pinch-hitter who burned my favorite team at the time, the Phillies on quite a few occasions in the '70s.

Click here to read the biography by Rory Costello, who is an expert on major-leaguers who hailed from the Virgin Islands.

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Trivia question 38: Jose Morales set a major-league record with 25 pinch-hits in a season. Who now holds the mark with 28?

As bad as it got

Each spring, I go into the garage with the intention of clearing away all the junk that's out there. I cam close this year, until my wife saw some of the stuff and insisted it go right back inside.

Of course, along with the masses of junk come little treasures, and I found one while rooting through an overstuffed cabinet.

Several years ago, I somehow found the time to collaborate with fellow SABR Forbes Field Chapter member Tom Baxter on a research project involving Pittsburgh's worst baseball team ever, the 1890 Alleghenys (aka Alleghenies, Innocents, Infants and Colts, but not yet the Pirates). And I found the file that chronicles, day by day, that miserable season when the team managed to lose 113 games while winning 23.

In other words, if you thought the Pirates teams of the past 15 years have been awful, think again.

The problem with the 1890 team is that it lost most of its better players to the Brotherhood, the first players' union, which decided to strike out on its own and form the Players League that year. The Alleghenys basically had to start from scratch, trying an endless series of unproven ballplayers who, as the season wore on, seemed to get worse and worse.

Just a few tidbits from the cover sheet of the project:

• Pittsburgh finished last in batting average (.239 vs. league average of .254), fielding percentage (.896, the last team ever to finish below .900) and earned run average (5.97). The last category is somewhat deceiving, as opponents scored more than nine runs per game. When your team commits 607 errors, many of those runs will be unearned.

• The Alleghenys drew a documented 16,064 fans. That's for the whole season. The low for one game was an officially announced 17, although I found information to the contrary published several decades later in the Baltimore Sun. A.G. Pratt, Pittsburgh's business manager in 1890, claimed: "The Sun's count of 17 spectators at that record-breaking game is absolutely correct, but I have some information that makes the attendance that day even more of a record. The paid admissions totaled only six. There were 17 persons at the game. J. Palmer O'Neil, Willis Orth and I were the only spectators in the boxes, there were six in the grandstand and eight in other parts of the park. Only the six in the grandstand paid to see the game, and I believe they were not Pittsburghers at that, but traveling men."

• Pittsburgh played the first (of three in major-league history) tripleheader, losing all three contests on Sept. 1 at Brooklyn, a team that obviously wanted to get in as many automatic wins as possible. Brooklyn went on to win the National League pennant.

Anyway, next time Pirates fans see their team play a sloppy, uninspired game like the one that took place last night in St. Louis, they can rest assured that the situation never is going to get as dire as it was in 1890.

At least, they can hope.

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For the previously unpublished and unfinished (it goes only through Aug. 19) manuscript "Striking Bottom: The Terrible Season of 1890," click here. In the meantime, I'll see if I can find the account of what happened after Aug. 19.