Harry Stovey was a trailblazing baseball player and a good person. Some of my favorite facts about him:
1) Was the all-time career Home Run king on separate occasions. He surpassed Charley Jones in 1885 when he hit his 46th career Home Run. Though he was surpassed by Dan Brouthers, he later retook the lead in 1889 and became the first player to reach 100 Home Runs the following year.
2) Is one of only three players to have played in a minimum of 1,000 games and averaged more than one run scored per game. Billy Hamilton and George Gore are the others. Stovey scored 1,495 runs in 1,489 games, including nine seasons of 100 or more runs scored.
4) Played on championship teams in 3 Leagues. He won the pennant in 1883 in the American Association, the year he became the first hitter to hit more than 10 Home Runs in a season (14), which was more than five of the seven American Association Teams hit in total. He won a championship in the short-lived Players League with the Boston Reds in 1990. And he won a pennant in 1891 with the Boston Beaneaters.
4) He is credited with inventing sliding pads to protect the often bruised and scraped hips he suffered while sliding on the crudely manicured nineteenth-century fields. He is recognized as one of the first baserunners to slide feet-first into bases and mastering the technique of the pop-up slide, a revolutionary method of going into a base that put added pressure on the defense. However, his aggressive sliding led to many leg injuries (of himself—he did not spike people) during his career.
5) Was born Harry D. Stow but went by Stovey so that his Mom wouldn’t know he was playing baseball if she read a box score in a paper. After he retired from baseball in 1893, he resumed the name Harry Stow, and Harry Stovey ceased to exist. In 1895 he joined the New Bedford police force and served for 28 years. While patrolling his beat along the city’s waterfront one day in 1901, Officer Stow spotted a seven-year-old boy who had fallen between two piers and was struggling in the water. He dived in and saved the boy’s life. Soon afterward he was promoted to sergeant for bravery and became a captain in 1915.
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