Posting the back story despite knowing few if any care
. . . my quest for the entire 1887 Detroit Wolverine team . . .
22 different players would collect stats with the 1887 Detroit Wolverines. Amazingly, 20 of those 22 players would be issued Old Judge cards. The two players who wouldn’t be memorialized by Goodwin are Fatty Briody (catcher) and Bill Burke (pitcher). Fatty can be found on several Detroit team pictures and is found on the Detroit baseball currency. Bill Burke however is the single most difficult player to find a card or image of. SF Hess came to the rescue when in 1888 they covered the California League with their N321 cards which include Bill “Turk” Burke but these cards are tough in comparison.
Bill Burke, Ed Beatin, and others would be recruited by Detroit during the summer of 1887 due to concerns with their pitching talent. Bill Burke was a giant at 6’-3”, 210lbs; a bit larger than even Big Dan Brouthers and Big Sam Thompson. One excerpt from the Detroit Free Press refers to Bill as “The gigantic twirler who came all the way from the Pacific slope”. Following is a summary of Burke’s only two games in the majors.
1st Game (July 20th, 1887 Detroit 6 at Washington 9)
Headline: “
ROUGH ON BURKE – He Pitches a Good Game, but is Downed by Wretched Fielding”
Bill would be on the losing end of a ten inning contest 9 to 6 but only gave up 2 earned runs. An astounding ten errors by Brouthers, Ganzel, Rowe, and White led to seven unearned runs and the loss.
2nd Game (August 9th, 1887 Washington 10 at Detroit 13)
Bill would be hit more freely this game including four straight singles to lead off the fifth but this time superb fielding limited the damage. After five innings the game was tied 5 to 5 and manager Watkins asked Burke to swap with Larry Twitchell (Left Fielder) as he feared Burke would continue to be hit freely. Burke’s actions may have sealed his fate with Detroit; here is how the Detroit Free Press captured the exchange:
“Burke did not consider that it was the proper caper to take him out of the box, and so when in the last half of the sixth he received his instructions, he coolly put on his coat, sat down on the players’ bench and said he wouldn’t. This was a decided novelty and aroused the interest as well as the amusement of the spectators. Burke remained obdurate for a couple of minutes, but finally became rational and trotted out in the field. Burke has a good many things to learn, and one of them is that such a childish exhibition as he made of himself yesterday will not earn him the esteem of ball patrons here. The veteran pitchers of the league make a point of obeying orders such as that given him yesterday. Burke needs to indulge in a little quiet thought.”
And so the game resumed and when Twitchell was hit hard in seventh a few spectators indulged in calls for Burke. The ninth inning saw Detroit trailing 10 to 5 when they would score an amazing 8 runs with the biggest hit being a Bill Burke single with two outs to score the tying run. Despite giving up 5 runs over final 4 innings, Twitchell gets the win.
Despite his hitting heroics Burke would not be retained by Detroit. He would return to California and play for Stockton together with a few other minor league circuits but never return to the majors.
I present to you, Bill “Turk” Burke, the last player I needed from the 1887 Detroit World Champion squad.