Mlb great hitters that also pitched in a game
 

I have a few very old scrapbooks, 30s - 40s, that I occasionally just flip through and read the articles. I was flipping through one of those dedicated to the Minneapolis Millers minor league team. Included in the book were several newspaper articles regarding Ted Williams when he played for the Millers and the early years with the Red Sox. I came across one very interesting article, attached hereto. Ted actually pitched 3 innings of relief on August 24, 1940, against the White Sox. I checked the usually references for Box Scores to further validate but came up empty.

Regardless, just wondering if anyone else knows of a legendary hitter (other than Ruth and Ohtani) that also pitched in a game.

Article attached, please enjoy.

Jimmie Foxx pitched in 9 games for the Phillies in 1945. He had 2 starts and a 1-0 record.

Ichiro famously pitched an inning for the Marlins later in his career.

Lots of 19th century hitting legends pitched - Anson, Kelly, Brouthers...

Pujols pitched one inning and gave up four earned runs.

Canseco made a token pitching appearance.

Great hitters who also pitched
 

So, there are mentions of Ruth, Williams, Foxx, Anson, Kelly and...Canseco?
Which of those names doesn't belong in a "great hitters" list? Hmmm...

Trent King

On September 5, 1902 Honus Wagner came into a game against the Boston Nationals and pitched the final 5.1 innings of the game, while also going 2 for 4 at the plate.

The starter, Harvey Cushman, gave up ten runs in the first inning and a two thirds. I don't know why they chose Honus, but he finished the game giving up 4 hits, two unearned runs, 2 walks and 5 strike outs.

King Kelly was a great hitter? 46 WAR to Canseco's 42. 138 OPS+ to Canseco's 132. :cool:

Sam Rice came up as a pitcher (career ERA+ of 117) before converting to the outfield where he went on to 2,987 hits despite only playing one season before his age-29 season, due to military service and other emergencies. https://uploads.tapatalk-cdn.com/202...55ecd706a8.jpg

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Stan Musial came in to pitch to one batter Frank Baumholtz who got on because of an error. It was kind of a stunt and I don't thing Musial was proud of it.

Jake Beckley also pitched in a game that the Reds were protesting because of lousy field conditions and the Reds just screwed around and lost.

Most people don't know that Babe Ruth pitched in 5 games during his career with the New York Yankees. He started 4 of those games and made one relief appearance, all 5 of which were victories.

Great hitters...
 

PeterSpaeth- Nope, you aren't wiggling out. In your desire to be clever you
ignored the most important part of the question- the word "great". Canseco
was a .266 hitter who struck out frequently and who, um, gulped enough
steroids to make himself glow to achieve his most noteworthy hitting feats.
1700 career hits too. Great? Overreach, you struck out.

Trent King

462 HR. But my point, of course, was not that Canseco was great, but that Kelly too who you are OK with being on the list was not so great either. Iconic? Of course. But a great hitter? Anyhow, I am sure no one else would even think to fixate on this. He's an example of a noteworthy hitter who also pitched. Perhaps you are overly literal?

Lefty O'Doul pitched in 34 games in 4 different seasons.

George Sisler was fairly impressive in his pitching career. He pitched in 7 different seasons, and in his first couple of years in the majors he had 9 complete games out of 12 starts. Overall he pitched in 111 innings in 24 games, had 1 save, and a 5-6 record with a 2.35 ERA.

Brian

Here is a photo I saved on the computer that depicts Ruth in pitching motion during his later years.

Brian

Wade Boggs pitched 2 and a third innings in 2 games. He walked one guy and struck out 2 guys. It was one inning for the Yankees and one and a third for Tampa.

Mark Grace threw 1 very entertaining inning with ARZ in September 2002.

He threw 1ip 1h 0bb 0bb, imitated Mike Fetters, and his only hit was a HR given up to future Cubs player/manager David Ross.

Grace isn't a HOF, but he was a great hitter...8000+ AB hitting .303 career.

He had the most doubles and overall hits in the 90s. Also my brothers favorite player.

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Ty Cobb pitched in two games, two innings each in 1918. Same line 2 IP, 3 Hits, 1 earned run in each game, 4.50 ERA.
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My brain told me The Chicken King (or if you prefer, Beers on a Plane King) pitched once, so I typed the question into a search, and...

Yes, Wade Boggs did pitch in a Major League game. He made his first appearance on August 19, 1997, against the Anaheim Angels, where he pitched 2.1 innings and allowed one earned run, striking out one batter.

This marked the only time he took the mound during his Major League Baseball career.

Mike Donlin also pitched in 4 games. 3 with the Cardinals and one with the Reds.

Lefty first made the majors as a pitcher but was sent down by the Yankees. he perfected his swing in the PCL and made it back to the show as a heck of a hitter. He fell 1 hit shy of .400 one year, hitting .398.

Don't forget Bob Lemon. He started as an outfielder and was converted to a pitcher. In 1950, he appeared in 44 games a pitcher and 77 games as a batter.

I remember the late Rocky Colavito pitching in the sixties. Rocky had a strong arm and plenty of power. I had to look up his pitching performance and found he pitched 2 and 2/3 innings in 1968 and hit a home run in the same game. He pitched three shutout innings in 1958 as well, when playing for the Indians. He is one of my favorite non-Giants players.

Tris Speaker pitched an inning in 1914.

Among the many 19th century hitters who tried it, Pete Browning gave up multiple runs in .1 innings pitched in his career, posting a horrific stat line. I am unable to determine if he counts as a great hitter. He could hit .340, but they hit more than .340 off him.

No doubt most will contest his inclusion as a great hitter, but Justin Verlander will no doubt always remember him from the 2012 Series. I would argue that in his heyday he could totally rake at times. I still wear this shirt proudly.

Total professional stat line (including Atlantic league): 9.1IP, 0R, 5H, 3BB, 4SO.

Wow, you can tell who ate all the meatpies in that photo. It's amazing to see how much more athletic baseball players have become even just in the last 20 years, much less the last 100 years.

This was the not so trim version of Ruth when he was probably in his late 30's. Here for fun is a photo of pitcher Bartolo Colon, who hit a home run about a couple weeks shy of his 43rd birthday in 2016.

Brian

pitcher/ player
 

Wow,
this info is really going to help with that internet baseball guessing game -
Immaculate grid

They often ask questions like - Who pitched in one game..and had at least 3000 hits

I was going to say Sisler as well Brian --- perhaps the most notable 'great hitter of all time' who forged quite an impressive, frequently unmentioned pitching career with great skill prior to becoming a legendary hitter. This is of course to include his playing life prior to the MLB, where it was quite brief...



From the NBHOF: 'Throughout his short-lived pitching career, Sisler relished pitching matchups against the star pitchers of the deadball era. In his interview featured in John Carmichael’s "My Greatest Day in Baseball," Sisler related his feelings the night prior to facing his childhood idol Walter Johnson on Aug. 29, 1915:

“I went back to my hotel that night but I couldn’t eat,” Sisler said. “I was really nervous. I went to bed but couldn’t sleep. At 4:00 a.m. I was tossing and rolling around and finally got up and just sat there, waiting for daylight and the big game. …. “

Despite the lack of sleep, Sisler beat Johnson, going all nine innings and giving up no unearned runs. After defeating Johnson, Sisler remained modest, still sounding like the star struck boy from Manchester, Ohio. He commented that “I don’t know what I expected to do if I had seen him (Johnson). For a minute I thought maybe I’d go over and shake his hand and tell him that I was sorry I beat him but I guess that was just the silly idea of a young kid who had just come face to face with his idol and beaten him.”

The two met again on Sept. 17, 1916, where Sisler again beat the Big Train 1-0, even though he scattered six hits to Johnson’s four. Armando Marsans, one of the early Cuban players in major league baseball, contributed on both sides for the win, scoring the only run of the game and making a spectacular barehanded catch of a potential double line drive to preserve the lead. Sisler escaped trouble in the third with the bases loaded, striking out one and inducing a double play.

The following day, newspaper columnists across the nation expressed amazement at his achievement: The Wilkes-Barre Times-Leader wrote, “This is a feat that stands out as the highlight of the season. It is beyond the batting of Speaker, the pitching of Plank and the rejuvenation of Chase. Without having done any pitching for months and having played first base steadily to step on the mound, (to) shut out a ball club like the Senators and beat Walter Johnson is a miracle feat if ever there was one.”

In his short span as pitcher, George Sisler defeated Johnson twice among his five career victories. These wins over arguably the greatest pitcher in baseball history cemented George Sisler’s status as a rising superstar at the end of the deadball era, revealing his tremendous potential as a pitcher and position player, and drawing comparisons to his contemporary Babe Ruth.'

Unfortunately AI still gives a ton of wrong answers. He actually only pitched the 8th inning that game. He faced 4 batters. Walking one and striking out one while not giving up a hit or earned run.

He would be by no measure considered a "great hitter", but if you haven't seen the video of Miguel Rojas pitching garbage time earlier this year and mimicking a different Dodgers pitcher (Kershaw, Yamamoto, Sasaski, and Glasnow) for each batter he faced it's worth a watch.

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/CaNluhV-i8Y

Here is a scored program from Ruth's last pitching appearance & win, it was a complete game.

Canseco and Boggs were the two who immediately came to mind that I remember from my youth.

WAR is a cumulative stat. Kelly had a WAR of 46 over 1456 games; Canseco 42.4 over 1887 games——next!

Canseco has 7057 at bats. He played in 1887 games so still more than Kelly but not quite the disparity you indicated.

LOL, my bad--sorry. I've corrected my prior post.

If Canseco getting halfway through his 44th season before his first steroid induced heart attack isn't HOF material, I don't know what is.

Martin Dihigo
 

Just thought I would add probably one of the greatest all around baseball players ever. Martin Dihigo was a great hitter and better than average pitcher. Just going by his known stats from baseball reference, he was a .307 hitter with a .587 W-L % as a pitcher.

Good point. Many of Dihigo's best seasons were spent in Mexico. My favorite season of his is 1938, when he was 18-2 with 184 strikeouts and a 0.92 ERA in 22 games for Aguila, while hitting .387 with a .599 SLG, 9 stolen bases, 26 walks, 4 strikeouts, and an OBP of .482 in 142 at-bats.

Don't know of any else with a batting average four times higher than their ERA in a full season. (I know 0.92 is larger than .387, but you know what I mean.)

For his career in Mexico he was 119-57 with a 2.84 ERA on the mound, and .317/55/370 in 1917 at-bats.

(Stats taken from The Mexican League by Pedro Treto Cisneros.)

At age 25, Sam Rice was primarily a pitcher with very little pro experience when Clark Griffith acquired him in late July 1915 from the Petersburg Goobers of the Class C Virginia State League in exchange for a debt owed to Griffith that the financially strapped team was unable to pay. The following is from SABR's bio of Rice:

"In his second major league outing, on August 10, Rice set the Detroit Tigers down in order in two more innings of relief. According to the Washington Post, Rice looked good against the Tigers. 'He got Ty Cobb on a sickly fly to left, fanned Sam Crawford and Bobby Veach, and caused George Burns to foul out. Any time a pitcher can dispose of this quartet so easily, he must have something other than a glove and a pleasant smile.

Rice followed his two successful relief appearances with a start on September 7, pitching a complete game against the Philadelphia Athletics in which he recorded his only win as a major league pitcher. He gave up two runs on five hits and four walks against the A’s ...' "

After being used sparingly as a pitcher, Rich became a full-time outfielder in July 1916, hitting .299 in 197 at bats for the year, and the rest is history. His 2-year pitching record is 9 games, 39.1 innings pitched, a W-L record of 1-1, and an ERA of 2.52. Here's another one of Sam's rookie cards:

Here's a photo of Ted Williams pitching against the Tigers, that just showed up on ebay:

Steve

Wow - great photo of Ted pitching in the game!

Jim O’Rourke and Buck Ewing also pitched

I remember Bert “Campy” Campaneris and César Tovar playing all nine positions in one game and distinctly remember the back of this card.

To be honest, it took me a while to understand that Ted's 1959 Fleer set includes this card of him pitching. I had assumed he was in the outfield somewhere, since it shows a righthanded hitter. :-)

Ted Williams Pitching
 

Ted was a pitcher in high school. Here is a photo of him pitching for Hoover High: https://sabr.org/sabr-rucker-archive/willite01_127/

Below is a postcard on sale on eBay.

In that game on August 24, 1940, the Tigers won 12-1 over the Red Sox.

Rudy York went 4 for 6, with 3 runs and 5 RBIs and a home run.

Of the two outs York made, one was being called out on strikes against Ted Williams.