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12/12 Through the 1960s: Adams - Kremer, Arky To Brooklyn, 1913 Megadeal, Don, Freddie & French Join, Deac Signs, Jack Goes; HBD Bill, Clyde, Hank, Diamond Joe, Tully & Phenomenal

Thursday, December 12, 2024 7:39

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1864 – LHP John “Phenomenal” Smith (John Gammon was his birth name) was born in Philadelphia. He made a couple of brief stops in Pittsburgh in 1884 & 1890, compiling a 1-4 record. He was actually born John Francis Gammon, but got his nickname when he struck out 16 batters in a no-hit game in 1885 while pitching for minor league Newark, with no batter hitting the ball out of the infield. Only two runners reached base, one on a walk and one on a dropped third strike – and Smith picked both of them off. Phenomenal played eight years of big league ball, then had a long minor league career as a player/manager until 1905, mostly manning the pasture rather than the hill.
1874 – RHP Tom “Tully” Sparks was born in Etna, Georgia. Out of Beloit College, Sparks spent 12 years in the show, with 1899 being his sole Bucco campaign. He was used as a swingman in Pittsburgh and went 8-6/3.86 in 28 outings/170 innings. Tully tossed in the MLB until 1910, mostly with the Philadelphia A’s, as a good pitcher on so-so teams, and closed out his pro career in 1913.
1876 – OF “Diamond Joe” Rickert was born in London, Ohio. Joe played long and hard in the minors, toiling on baseball’s farm circuit from 1896-1915. Pittsburgh noticed him in 1898 when he was a 21-year-old with the nearby New Castle Quakers of the Interstate League and gave him a look, with Joe going 1-for-6 in two games. He didn’t impress the Bucs nor the Boston Beaneaters in a later 1901 audition of 16 games. Diamond Joe did put his years of baseball knowledge to use, managing the New Orleans Pelicans and the University of Tulane.
1899 – The Pirates sold OF’er Jack McCarthy to the Chicago Orphans for $2,000. McCarthy hit .276 for Cincy in his first two campaigns and .286 as a Pirate from 1898-99. After being sold, he put in eight more big league seasons, finishing his 12-year, six-team career with a .287 BA.

Ed Konetchy – Helmar Oasis

1913 – The Pirates traded LHP Hank Robinson, OF’ers Chief Wilson & Cozy Dolan and IF’ers Art Butler & Dots Miller to the St Louis Cardinals for RHP Bob Harmon, 1B Ed Konetchy and 3B Mike Mowrey. The Cards got two or three good seasons out of their new acquisitions, but the Bucs weren’t so lucky. Harmon was a keeper, tossing for four seasons and going 39-52/2.60. But Konetchy and Mowrey both had so-so 1914 seasons for the Pirates, then skipped to the outlaw Federal League’s Pittsburgh Rebels in 1915 and signed with different clubs in 1916. The deal was especially frustrating for the Bucs; they had been trying to get Konetchy for years, and it was said that manager Fred Clarke even dangled an aging Hans Wagner as bait to get him, but Ed ended up a one-and-done. The trigger was that Konetchy wanted a three-year, $7,500/season contract even after a sub-par .249 campaign (he did hit .285 in his remaining seven MLB years) and Barney Dreyfuss balked at those terms, leading to Konetchy’s Federal League leap.
1914 – C Hank Camelli (Comolli) was born in Gloucester, Massachusetts. Hank spent 1943-46 with the Bucs and during that time he got into 108 games, hitting .229. He finished his big-league time with the Boston Braves and then followed up with a spot of minor-league coaching.
1917 – C Clyde Kluttz was born in Rockwell, North Carolina. Clyde spent 1947-48 with the Pirates with a .258 BA, hitting well in his first season and not so well in the next. He had a nine-year career in the show, afterward becoming a longtime scout with the Kansas City Athletics and New York Yankees. He was later director of player development of the Baltimore Orioles, serving the Birds from 1976 until he passed away three years later.
1921 – OF Bill Howerton was born in Lompoc, California. He spent four years in the majors, joining the Pirates in 1951 as part of a big swap with the Cards. Bill hit .279 as a Bucco, leaving the club in May of 1952 to join the NY Giants. He closed out his big league career there and then spent a couple of seasons in the Pacific Coast League until retiring to become a trucker.

Ray Kremer – 1933 Goudey Big League

1923 – The Pirates traded IF Spencer Adams, along with pitchers Earl Kunz and George Boehler plus $20K, to the Oakland Oaks of the Pacific Coast League in exchange for RHP Remy “Ray” Kremer. Kremer had been a PCL ace for several years, and the Cubs and Bucs were in a battle for his services, even though he would be 31 for the 1924 campaign. The start was bumpy as the player and team disputed if the sale cost went to the seller only or should be shared. But after that was settled, Kremer became a Pirate lifer, pitching from 1924-33 with a 143-85-9/3.76 line. The workhorse went 200+ IP and won double-digit games (hitting 20 wins twice) for eight straight years (1921-34) while finishing as the National League’s ERA leader twice. The Frenchman went 2-2 with a 3.12 ERA in 1925 & 1927 World Series games and was the hero in ‘25, winning games six and seven, the former as a starter and then claiming the finale with 4-1/3 scoreless IP from the pen. He spent much of 1933-34 with Oakland before retiring; then he became a mailman. Fun fact: Kremer spent eight years in the PCL (1916-23) before getting his MLB shot because he was considered by the east coast/heartland-based big league clubs to be a warm weather pitcher (he often had problems with rheumatism, making California a better clime for him). As for his nicknames, the newspapers called him the “Frenchman” because of his ancestry, and he also went by “Wiz”/”Bush Wiz” due to his long and impressive minor-league career.
1928 – The Pirates bought LHP Larry French, 20, from Portland of the Pacific Coast League despite so-so numbers (31-36/4.65 in three minor league years) on the advice of scout Joe Devine. Joe’s eye was good – from 1929-34, the knuckleballer put up a line of 87-83-9/3.50 for Pittsburgh and won 197 games in a 14-year MLB career. French, like a lot of players, joined the Navy in 1942. Unlike most, he became a career swabbie, retiring in 1969 with the rank of Captain.
1932 – Giant CF Freddie Lindstrom ended up a Bucco in a three-way deal. New York sent CF Chick Fullis to the Phillies, Pittsburgh sent RHP Glenn Spencer to the Giants and OF Gus Dugas to Philadelphia, who shipped OF Kiddo Davis to New York. Lindstrom hit .302 in two seasons at Pittsburgh, playing with the Waners. For the cost of two reserves, the Bucs got two years of a Hall-of-Famer.
1934 – The Pirates sent RHP Leon Chagnon to the New York Giants for 21-year-old RHP Jack Salveson. Salveson never developed and was flipped to the White Sox after five so-so outings; following the ‘35 campaign, he reappeared in the majors for two more seasons during the war years. Chagnon had worked five years for the Bucs (19-14-2/4.61), but 1935 would be his last MLB hurrah.

Pete Coscarart – 1940 Play Ball

1941 – The Bucs traded SS Arky Vaughan to the Brooklyn Dodgers for IF Pete Coscarart, RHP Luke Hamlin, C Babe Phelps and OF/1B Jimmy Wasdell. Only reserve infielder Coscarart stuck with the team past 1942. In 10 seasons, Hall of Famer Vaughan hit .324 for Pittsburgh. He later had a couple of strong seasons for Brooklyn, then left the team and worked his ranch for three years because of, according to baseball lore, a dispute with manager Leo Durocher (although his family said he ran the spread because his brother Glenn was drafted and there was no one else to do the job.) Both probably weighed in the decision, and he didn’t return to baseball until 1947 – the year Durocher was suspended by the Commissioner for loafing with gamblers.
1950 – The Korean War put a stop to a Branch Rickey fishing expedition after he had placed 10 players on waivers, including RHP Murry Dickson, C Clyde McCullough, SS Stan Rojek and 3B Bob Dillinger. The UPI article said that “All were players generally past their peak and whom Rickey had placed on the waiver lists with the idea of getting ‘nibbles’ for deals…” but with the draft threatening to cut into his youth movement, he opted to keep some warm albeit creaky bodies available. It was a good decision by The Mahatma – Dickson won 20 times and McCullough played 92 games in ‘51.
1959 – Vern Law became the first Bucco to sign a 1960 contract, agreeing to a deal that jumped his salary from $22,000 to an estimated $30K. Law had a breakout campaign in 1959, slashing 18-9/2.98 in 33 starts, then posted 20 victories in 1960 while winning the Cy Young and an All-Star spot.
1961 – The Pirates shipped minor league OF/1B Tom Burgess to the Los Angeles Angels for C Don Leppert. Leppert spent two seasons as a backup in Pittsburgh, while the persistent Burgess, whose only prior MLB action was in 1954 with the Cards (he signed with them as an 18-year-old in 1946), got to swing it off the bench for the Angelinos in 1962-’63. Sadly, he didn’t bat his way above the Mendoza Line either season and hung ‘em up after a final year in the minors.

Source: https://oldbucs.blogspot.com/2024/12/1212-through-1960s-adams-kremer-arky-to.html

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