1883 - OF John Owen “Chief” Wilson was born at his family's ranch in Bertram, Texas. Chief, by the way, wasn’t a Native American. Wilson set the organized baseball record of 36 triples in 1912, though oddly he never had more than 14 three-baggers in his other eight big league campaigns. Chief was a Pirate for six years (1908-13), driving in a league-leading 107 runs in 1911 and hitting .274 as a Bucco. He was the starting RF for the 1909 World Championship club. He played three final seasons for St. Louis and retired to his Texas ranch, passing away at age 70. His moniker has a couple of possible origins: one is that it was given by manager Fred Clarke, who thought the clean cut Wilson looked like a "Chief of the Texas Rangers." Another is that he and Hans Wagner attended a Wild West show when Wilson was a rookie, and that Honus thought the darkly tanned outfielder looked like one of the Indian chiefs in the act, per Ron Waldo in “Honus Wagner and His Pittsburgh Pirates...”
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| Chief Wilson - 1912 T207 |
1902 - Sam Leever outdueled Christy Mathewson 2-0 in the opener of a doubleheader at Exposition Park; Leever surrendered three hits and Matty six. Tommy Leach and Hans Wagner each had a pair of hits and scored. The Giants bats woke up in the second game as NY earned a split with an 8-1 victory. The Pittsburgh Press astutely noted that “(Deacon) Phillippe’s steady pitching was just to the liking of the Giants.”
1902 - Barney Dreyfuss announced the suspension of C Rowdy Jack O’Connor because he was recruiting players from the powerhouse Pirates club to switch leagues, under the direction of AL President Ban Johnson. O’Connor even held a meeting with Johnson (he claimed he was in Pittsburgh to do spadework for an AL franchise to compete against the Pirates) and some teammates to pitch the merits of the American League, which was coolly interrupted by manager Fred Clarke. The main target was Hans Wagner, who refused to bite even though the junior circuit was offering $1,000 signing bonuses and hefty $15-16,000 contracts over two years to prospective jumpers. Dreyfuss found out about the raid from Jess Tannehill, who blabbed about the conspiracy while under anesthetic to have a dislocated shoulder put back into place, per Ronald Waldo’s book “The 1902 Pirates: Treachery and Triumph.” Barney was wise to keep the club together; the 1903 team won 91 games and the NL flag, meeting Boston in what’s considered baseball’s first World Series.
1905 - OF Jim Mosolf was born in Puyallup, Washington. Jim played the first three of his four big league seasons as a bench bat from 1929-31, hitting .315 over that span mainly as a deluxe pinch-hitter. Jim spent eight years in the minors where he batted .321 over his career. His brother George, an infielder, also had a four-year MLB run.
1907 - LHP Wally “Preacher” Hebert was born in Lake Charles, Louisiana. Wally was the epitome of the wartime baseball warrior - the sidewinding southpaw tossed for three years for the St. Louis Browns and then returned after a decade-long stint in the Pacific Coast League to pitch for the 1943 Pirates at the age of 35, going 10-11, 2.98 before retiring back to the bayou to farm and fish. His nickname, per Wikipedia, is a slightly twisted tale: Hebert got the nickname ‘Preacher’ in first grade when he wore a hat to school that his classmates thought was a preacher's hat. However, the travelogue book “The Walk West, A Walk Across America 2” that included a visit to Wally has a different version. Hebert claims that he got his nickname from baseball, and that it was originally “Mississippi Mudcat.” However, another player had that moniker, so his teammates changed the nickname to “Preacher” and he never could figure out why.
1907 - SS Coburn “Cobe” Jones was born in Denver. Cobe played in just 26 games from 1929-30, hitting .265 in 65 at-bats. His playing career was cut short by diabetes, diagnosed in 1929. Starting in 1932, he was director of boys programs for a hometown community center, managed Denver’s minor league club for a spell and scouted. Cobe, a four-sports star in HS, was inducted into the Colorado Sports Hall of Fame in 1973.
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| Nick Maddox - 1908 photo Bain/Library of Congress |
1908 - The Pittsburgh Press wrote that “Nick Maddox was pretty nearly the whole show at Exposition Park...” and the reporter was right. Maddox tossed a seven-hit complete game, had three hits and drove in both Bucco runs in a 2-1 win over the Brooklyn Superbas. It was Nick’s eighth straight win and put the Bucs in first place; they would finish the year with 98 wins, one game behind the Chicago Cubs.
1916 - RHP Murry Dickson was born in Tracy, Missouri. He tossed five years (1949-53) for some sad Pirate teams, leading the league in losses in 1952-53. But he also won 34 games in 1951-52 for Buc squads that tasted victory just 106 times, so he was responsible for nearly ⅓ of the Pirate wins during that span. Murry finished with a Pittsburgh final line of 66-85/3.83 and was an All Star in 1953. The soft-tossing righty put in 18 big league years with five teams before retiring after the 1959 season. He became a carpenter after his playing days.
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