Greatest UNKNOWN Pitcher Ever!!

[gabrinus]

His heavy handed pitching style broke more bats than anyone in the history of baseball...Jerry

[RL]

What a great made up story..I was fooled until the last sentence

[Dead-Ball-Hitter]

Facts and fantasy meet in this story. Pat was indeed a 2 time gold medalist and a well known NY policeman. He’s a renown strongman with a statue erected in his family’s home town in Ireland. Numerous other details are embellished for entertainment purposes here at year end. Best regards, Joe

[Bill77]

As crazy as it sounds he might have actually played short stop in the minors.https://www.baseball-reference.com/r...d=mcdonn001p--

[G1911]

As a collector of track T cards, I was really surprised how I had not known any of this for the first couple paragraphs. Well done.

[jingram058]

Other than people like us, ask someone who Johnny Vander Meer was. They won't have a clue.

[Shoeless Moe]

John Clarkson

https://www.baseball-reference.com/p...larkjo01.shtml

The Cy Young award today would have been the John Clarkson award had he not wrapped up his 328 win career in only 12 years.

Cy Young pitched 22 years to get to 511.

Koufax 165 wins in 12 years.

[Mark17]

Originally Posted by RL

What a great made up story..I was fooled until the last sentence

I was fooled until the comment about Waddell trying to intimidate hitters. His stuff was intimidating, but Rube himself wasn't.

[Aquarian Sports Cards]

If auction write-ups told me stuff I didn't know (Babe Ruth was great doesn't cut it) like this fictional one did I'd be all for it!

[bobbyw8469]

I thought Syd Finch was the greatest unknown pitcher ever?

[h2oya311]

I always think (briefly) of Will "Whoop-La" White as far as unknown pitchers. He lived in the shadow of his older brother, Deacon White, but has several interesting points of notoriety.

> He was the first, and for many years only, major league player to wear eye glasses while playing ball.
> His career ERA is 9th all time (say what?).
> In 1879, he started 75 games and completed all 75 of them with 680 IPs, and 2,906 batters faced, all of which are major league records which are unlikely to be broken, although the first could be if TB continues to use the same "opener" for a full season.

This guy is the opposite of the OPs fantasy pitcher with respect to intimidation. But he'd be on my "real" list of obscure pitchers who were actually better than people know.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Will_White

[h2oya311]

and George, outstanding write-up on Buzz. I'm still looking for my first card of his...