Great cards, Val.
Player #104A: Frederick "Firpo" Marberry Part 1. Pitcher with the Washington Senators in 1923-1932. 148 wins and 99 saves in 14 MLB seasons. First prominent reliever; used as a closer. Important piece of the Washington team that won back-to-back AL pennants in 1924-1925. 1924 World Series champion. His most productive season was 1929 with Washington as he posted a 19-12 record with a 3.06 ERA in 250.1 innings pitched. He ended his career with Washington in 1936.
Smiles describes Marberry's emergence as baseball's first "closer": The next day (June 17) the Senators started (a) nine-game winning streak with a 12-6 win in the third game of the series with the White Sox. . . . The Senators were leading, 7-0, in the third when Zachary blew up. After a walk with one out, he gave up a triple, double, single, walk and single, consecutively. Bucky pulled him and brought in Marberry, who got a strikeout to end the inning. Marberry stayed in the game and was the winner, pitching the last 6.1 innings and allowing just two runs. Bucky called on Marberry to close out one-run games in the bottom of the ninth and 12th in the next two games against the White Sox and A's. In the first instance, Bucky called him in with the bases loaded and one out. The Senators had scored two in the top of the ninth with two out to take a 5-4 lead. . . . In the bottom Mogridge loaded the bases with one out on a single, his own error and a walk. Marberry came in and got Kamm and Archdeacon to ground to Shirley at first.
After a travel day the Senators won in Philadelphia, 3-2, in 12 innings, with Marberry again being called in to get the final two outs with the winning runs on base. . . .
. . . It was in this stretch of three consecutive games that Marberry, with a win and two saves, defined his role for 1924. Griffith and Bucky were decades ahead of their time with the way they used Marberry to close games in 1924. Griffith, who had been both a starter and reliever in his pitching career, had experimented with relief specialists. In 1923 Washington sportswriters called Allan Russell "the King of Finishers" after he appeared in 52 games, a record 47 in relief, and finished 26 games. . . .
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