When
the ’73 season opened the Reds had some concerns. Johnny Bench was coming back
from lung surgery; Bobby Tolan from a leg injury he suffered while playing
hoops for the Reds off-season team; anticipated right fielder George Foster was
headed to Triple A; and the starting pitching was a bit thin. Then in his
second start of the season, Gary Nolan, probably the team’s best starter, went
down with an injury that took him out of action for two years. Still, they were defending NL champs and with Jack
Billingham pitching his butt off they opened the season on a 100-victory pace
and were hanging pretty well with the red-hot Giants and Dodgers. Then came a
13-20 June swoon that pulled them down to fourth place that highlighted their
need for another starter and some offensive gaps. The Reds filled the former
hole by picking up Fred Norman from the Padres and the latter – mainly at third
base and right field – by delving into their farm system, with the most notable
pull-up being Dan Driessen. From there they went 91-27 – stoked at least in part
by Hal King’s three-run homer to beat LA July 1 - and a nice early September
run took them past the Dodgers and into first for good. They never looked back
and were sure to steamroll over the Mets to return to the Series. Oops.
Again,
since these posts take so long I am splitting up the bios to two posts. This
time there’s only one offensive record-holder not profiled (Ted Kluszewski was
highlighted on the Reds coaches card and Sam Crawford on the Tigers team card)
so I am including a few of the pitchers on the first post.
Before
there was Babe Ruth there was Cy Seymour, who sounds more like an NYC retailer
than a baseball player, but Cy was the real deal. He grew up outside Albany, NY,
and at some point after high school he began playing semi-pro ball upstate for
some pretty fat paychecks. He was signed by the Giants in 1896 when he was 23 and
in a short season of A ball went 4-6 with a 1.47 ERA and hit .290 before
debuting later that year in NY. In ’97 he won 18 while leading the NL in
strikeouts and walks and then in ’98 had his big season on the mound, winning
25 with a 3.18 ERA and again doing that double leader thing. He also hit .276
while playing 35 games in the outfield. In ’99 his record fell to 14-18 as the
team slid pretty hard but he raised his average to .327. In 1900 it seems a
combination of fallout with management, injury, and poor performance led to an
extreme contraction in playing time and after the season he jumped to the
Baltimore Orioles of the new American League. There Cy hit .303 as a full-time
outfielder and after starting the ’02 season with a .268 average was
distributed to Cincinnati as part of the Baltimore diaspora after
that club had financial problems. He hit .340 the rest of the way and followed
that up with a .342 in ’03 and .313 in ’04. In ’05 he had his big year, hitting
.377 with a .429 OBA. Aside from leading the NL in hitting, he also led it in
hits (219), doubles (40), triples (21), RBI’s (121), and slugging (.559) and
missed a Triple Crown by one homer. In ’06 after his average dipped to .257 the
first half of the year he was sold to NY to be reunited with John McGraw for a
then–record $12,000. He hit .320 the rest of the way and finished the year with
80 RBI’s. In ’07 he hit .294 with 75 RBI’s despite an injury and in ’08 .267
with 92 RBI’s. In ’09 at 36 he started about half the games in the outfield but
hit .311 and after hitting .265 two-thirds of the way through the following
year he was sold to Baltimore, now a minor league team. For them he averaged a
bit over .300 the next two seasons in A and Double A. He then signed with the
Boston Braves before the ’13 season but after hitting only .178 in a few games
was done in the majors. He finished with a .303 average with 1,724 hits, 96
triples, 52 homers, and 799 RBI’s in about ten full-time seasons as a hitter
and on the mound was 61-56 with a 3.73 ERA and 105 complete games in what
amounted to about three seasons as a pitcher. From ’14 to ’18 Cy stuck around
the NY area, returning to semi-pro ball and working various industrial jobs. In
’18 he began working in the shipyards of Brooklyn
for the WW I effort and early the next year contracted tuberculosis while he
was already in less than excellent health. He passed away from the disease
later that year at age 46.
Frank
“Noodles” Hahn was from the same era as Cy Seymour but was a pitcher all the
way. Born in Nashville, he was playing semi-pro
ball by the time he was 15 and two years later in 1896 was signed by Mobile, a Class B Southern
Association team. For them he went 7-4 with a 1.44 ERA and in ’97 was flipped
to Detroit,
then a Class A team. In two seasons there he went a combined 29-36 in nearly
600 innings with strikeout totals near the top of his league. Prior to the ’99
season he was bought by the Reds and he made an immediate impact, going 23-8
his rookie year with a 2.68 ERA and an NL-leading 145 strikeouts. In 1900 his
record fell to 16-20 but he threw a no-hitter. Then in ’01 he went 22-19 while
leading the league in innings (375), complete games (41!), and strikeouts (239)
for his third season in a row on the final stat. In ’02 he had what may have
been his best season ex-strikeouts as he went 23-12 with a 1.77 ERA, followed
up by an ’03 in which he was 22-12 with a 2.52 ERA. While Frank went 107-71
those five seasons the Reds as a team went 341-366. In ’04 he put up a 2.06 ERA
but only went 16-18 and couldn’t break triple figures in K’s. Those six seasons
in which he averaged over 300 innings took their toll and in ’05 he went only
5-3 in a season shortened by injury. In ’06 he hooked up with the Highlanders
but was done after only six games at age 27. He went 130-94 with a 2.55 ERA
with 212 complete games and 25 shutouts. He then returned to Cincinnati where he became an inspector for
the federal government which he did until he retired. He also pitched batting
practice for the Reds until ’46 when he was 68. Shortly thereafter he retired
to North Carolina
where he passed away in 1960 at age 80.
Dolf
Luque (pronounced Lu-KAY) was the first prominent Latin MLB player ever. Born
in Havana – his nickname was “The Pride of Havana” – he played semi-pro ball
down there until 1911 when he put in a couple seasons for the national team and
was then brought north by a Cuban businessman who was part owner of a D League
team in New Jersey. In ’13 Dolf went
22-5 and also hit .281 in off-days playing third base to pique the curiosity of
the Boston Braves for whom he pitched a few innings the next couple years. He
spent most of that time in Double A going 2-10 the first year and 15-9 the
second before being sold to Louisville,
another Double A team with a loose affiliation with the Reds. For that team
Dolf went a combined 26-14 with a 2.41 ERA while in ’17 also playing a bunch at
third again. In ’18 he came up to Cincinnati
and went 6-3 the rest of the way in the rotation. In ’19 he added four wins and
three saves mostly working in the pen and added five innings of shutout relief
in the Series. He returned to the rotation the next two seasons, going 30-28
and then led the NL in losses in '22 with 23, though his 3.31 ERA was
considerably better than league average. In ’23 he had his big season, going
27-8 with a 1.93 ERA and six shutouts, leading the majors in all three
categories. The next five seasons he was a more pedestrian 63-71 and in ’25
added another ERA title with a 2.63. In ’29 he had a 5-16 season and the next
year was traded to Brooklyn where he went
21-14 in a couple seasons. Prior to the ’32 season when he was 41 he signed
with the Giants where he became a relief guy, his best season being ’33 when he
went 8-2 with four saves and a 2.69 ERA with another excellent Series outing.
He stayed with NY through ’35 and finished with a record of 194-179 with a 3.24
ERA, 206 complete games, 26 shutouts, and 28 saves. He also hit .227 with five
homers and 90 RBI’s and in the post-season went 1-0 in nine shutout innings
with eleven K’s. He also went 93-62 in Cuba over 22 seasons and won eight
titles there as a manager from 1919 through ’54, going 565-471 during that
time. In the early to mid-Fifties he also managed in Mexico during the regular season,
winning a couple pennants there. He passed away in 1957 back in Havana shortly thereafter
at age 66.
Bucky
Walters was sort of Cy Seymour in reverse. He grew up in Philadelphia and quit high school his
sophomore year to work as an electrician and played semi-pro ball as a
shortstop and occasional pitcher. He got signed by a scout in 1929 to a team in
Alabama and then was shipped up to North Carolina where he pitched and played
third, hitting .296 for the C level team. He then chucked pitching a few
seasons, moving to B ball in ’30 as an infielder and to A ball in ’31 where he
hit .326 while playing third. That year he was signed by the Boston Braves and
moved to their system. After a mediocre season in Double A in ’32 he moved to
the Pacific Coast League and hit .376 at that level in ’33 and was then sold to
the Red Sox, hitting .256 up top while playing third. Midway through ’34 Bucky
got sold to the Phillies, where he hit .260 and pitched his first bit in the
majors. He then took on that role full-time the next season but in the next
three-plus seasons went 38-53 with an NL-average 4.48 ERA, leading the NL in
losses with 21 in ’36. In June of ’38 he was traded to Cincinnati where things immediately turned
around. He went 11-6 the rest of the way and lowered his ERA by almost two
runs. In ’39 he won the pitching triple crown and an MVP award with 27 wins, a
2.29 ERA, and 137 strikeouts in 319 innings. In ’40 he again led the NL with 22
wins and a 2.48 ERA. In ’41 he won 19 while leading the NL in innings with over
300 for the third season in a row. After winning 15 each of the next two years
he went 23-8 in ’44 in his last of five All-Star years. He pitched very well
the next two seasons though his workload dropped and finished things up with
the Reds in ’48, going a combined 198-160 with a 3.30 ERA, 242 complete games,
and 42 shutouts. He made it to the Series in both ’39 and ’40, going 2-2 with a
2.79 ERA with a shutout in four starts. He also hit .243 lifetime. In ’48 and
’49 Bucky managed the Reds after his release as a player and went a combined
81-123. He then moved back to Boston
as a Braves coach from ’50 to ’55 except in ’52 when he managed in Triple A for
half a season and won a league title. He was then a coach with the Giants
(’56-’57) and an administrator with the Phillies (’58-’59) before leaving
baseball in ’60 to become a sales rep with the Ferco Machine Screw Company in
Philly for a bunch of years until he retired. In ’77 he lost a leg and then
suffered kidney failure and eventually passed away from that disease in ’91
when he was 82.
I’ll
do the hook-up on the next post also.
