Information About the Greenbriar River

Photo Credit: https://www.railstotrails.org/trailblog/2012/june/01/greenbrier-river-trail-west-virginia/
Researched, compiled, and written by Carrie Birdsong

The Greenbriar River is a tributary of the New River, 162 miles long, in southeastern West Virginia.  Via the Kanawha and Ohio rivers, it is part of the Mississippi watershed, draining an area of 1,656 square miles, and is one of the longest rivers in West Virginia.

The Greenbriar is formed at Durbin in northern Pocahontas County by the confluence of the East Fork Greenbrier River and the West Fork Greenbriar River, both of which are short streams rising at elevations exceeding 3,300 feet and flowing for their entire lengths in northern Pocahontas County.  From Durbin, the Greenbriar flows generally southwest through Pocahontas, Greenbriar and Summers Counties, past several communities including Cass, Marlinton, Hillsboro, Roncerverte, Fort Spring, Alderson, and Hinton, where it flows into the New River.  The river in general flows between the Yew Mountains to the west and the Allegheny Mountains to the east.

Along most of its course, the Greenbriar accommodated the celebrated Indian warpath known as the Seneca Trail (Great Indian Warpath).  From the vicinity of present-day White Sulphur Springs, the Trail followed Anthony’s Creek down to the Greenbriar near the present Pocahontas-Greenbriar County line.  It then ascended the River to the vicinity of Hillsboro and Droop Mountain and made its way through present-day Pocahontas County by way of future Marlinton, Indian Draft Run, and Edray.

The first permanent white settlers west of the Alleghenies have traditionally been considered to have been two New Englanders: Jacob Marlin and Stephen Sewell, who arrived in the Greenbrier Valley in 1749.  They built a cabin together at what would become Marlinton, but after disputing over religion, Sewell moved into a nearby hollowed-out sycamore tree.  In 1751, surveyor John Lewis (father of Andrew Lewis) discovered the pair.  Sewell eventually settled on the eastern side of Sewell Mountain, near present-day Rainelle.  They may well have been the first to settle what was then called the “western waters” – i.e., in the regions where streams flowed westward to the Gulf of Mexico rather than eastward to the Atlantic.

Virginia settler (1749-1823), a Revolutionary War commander and pioneering western Virginia settler, surveyed the Greenbriar Valley and is known locally as “The Father of Greenbriar County”.  At the age of 20, Stuart was a member of the 1769 survey by citizens of Augusta County, Virginia, which explored the wilderness of the Greenbrier Valley to the west in preparation for European settlement.  The following year he built the first mill in present-day Greenbrier County, at Frankford.  In 1774, he led a company of Greenbriar troops in the Battle of Point Pleasant at the confluence of the Kanawha and Ohio Rivers.  He was among Lewisburg’s first trustees and in 1780 he became Greenbrier County’s first clerk, leaving many historic records behind.

Rube Waddell

This article was written by Dan O’Brien
https://sabr.org/bioproj/person/rube-waddell/

He entered this world on Friday the 13th and exited on April Fools Day.  In the 37 intervening years, Rube Waddell struck out more batters, frustrated more managers, and attracted more fans than any pitcher of his era.  An imposing physical specimen for his day, the 6-foot-1, 196-pound Waddell owned the intellectual and emotional maturity of a child – although a very precocious and engaging one at that.  “There was delicious humor in May of his vagaries, a vagabond impudence and ingenuousness that made them attractive to the public,” wrote the Columbus Dispatch.[1]  Waddell’s on- and off-field exploits became instant legends.

Known to occasionally miss a scheduled start because he was off fishing or playing marbles with street urchins, Waddell might disappear for days during spring training, only to be found leading a parade down the main street of Jacksonville, Florida, or wrestling an alligator in a nearby lagoon.  Despite these and other curious distractions, Waddell’s immense physical ability was undeniable.  He complemented a blazing fastball with a wicked curve and demonstrated excellent control with both.  His strikeout-to-walk ratio was nearly 3-to-1 for his career (almost 4-to-1 in his record-setting season of 1904.)

Connie Mack, who managed Waddell for six seasons in Philadelphia, believed that Waddell had “the best combination of speed and curves” of any pitcher who played the game.[2]  Without Mack’s patience and guidance, though, Rube Waddell might be nothing more than a numerous footnote in baseball history.  Mack was the only manager able to tolerate Rube for any extended period, and that was only six seasons.  But Waddell always stayed a Connie Mack favorite.  “Dad always had a gleam in his eye when he told stories about Rube Waddell,” said Connie’s daughter, Ruth Mack Clark.  “Dad really loved the Rube.”[3]

Waddell’s antics have become the stuff of legend, occasionally embroidered to make this larger-than-life character appear even more preposterous.  No, Waddell didn’t regularly bolt from the mound to chase a passing fire wagon.  But his fascination with fires was genuine.  He regularly aided firefighters, from a bucket brigade in Pewaukee, Wisconsin to large metropolitan departments in Philadelphia, Cleveland, Detroit, and Washington.  Yes, on occasion Waddell did direct his infielders to the sidelines and strike out the side in the final inning – but only in exhibitions, never in a regular-season game.

One of the great myths concerns Waddell’s background, which helped perpetuate the “rube” or hayseed image that adorned his career.  Contrary to popular presumption, his father was not a farmer.  John Waddell, a native Scotsman, labored in the Pennsylvania oil fields as an employee of the National Transit Company, a division of Standard Oil.  While living in Bradford, Pennsylvania – at one time the center of the world oil production – John’s wife, Mary Forbes Waddell, gave birth to their sixth child on October 13, 1876.  Christened “George Edward,” the future “Rube” Waddell was also known as “Ed” or “Eddie” in family circles.

In the early 1890s, the Waddells relocated to Butler County, Pennsylvania, and settled down in the town of Prospect.  In Butler County and the surrounding area, the reputation of a burgeoning pitching talent began to grow.  Teenager Ed Waddell swiftly advanced from the sandlots to play for several semipro baseball teams in the region.  In August 1896, newspapers in Titusville and Oil City made passing mentions of an Oil City pitcher named "Rube” Waddell, the first known reference to his famous nickname.

In August of 1897, without so much as an inning in minor-league baseball, Waddell’s reputation earned him a tryout with the National League’s Pittsburgh Pirates.  His seating assignment at a team meal earned a release before he ever appeared in a game.  “Rube sat beside Manager (Patsy) Donovan,”  the Louisville Courier-Journal reported.  “Patsy heard him talk and released him as soon as breakfast was over.”[4]

The visiting Louisville colonels saw promise in the young left-hander and signed him.  Rube made his major league debut on September 8, 1897, in a 5-1 loss to Baltimore, the defending league champion.  A week later, he relieved in a lost cause against Pittsburg.

Louisville management believed Waddell needed more seasoning before evaluating the majors for a full season.  So, he began the 1898 campaign with Detroit of the Western League.  The relationship didn’t last long.  Waddell pitched in nine games for Detroit before he left the team after a squabble over a fine.  He pitched briefly in Chatham, Ontario, and finished the year in Homestead, Pennsylvania.  Waddell returned to the Western League in 1899 with Columbus, Ohio, where he enjoyed his first successful season in organized baseball, as he notched a 56-8 record for Columbus and Grand Rapids before rejoining Louisville in the final month of the season and winning seven of nine decisions.

Following the 1899 season, Rube made a brief return to Columbus, where he married Florence Dunning, the first of his three wives.  To no one’s surprise, Florence received a divorce from Rube in 1901 on the grounds of “gross neglect of duty.”[5]

Before the start of the 1900 season, the Louisville franchise was contracted from the National League, but Colonels owner Barney Dreyfuss purchased half-interest in the Pirates and arranged for the “trade” of 10 of his players to Pittsburg, including Waddell.  Pitching for Pittsburg, Waddell paced National League pitchers in 19900 in ERA (2.37) and was second in strikeouts (130), but also finished with a losing record (8-13) and missed nearly two months of the season.

Fred Clarke, the Pirates’ player-manager, was a strict disciplinarian and had little use for Waddell’s irresponsible nature.  In early July, Clarke suspended Waddell, who then hooked up with some semipro teams in western Pennsylvania, finally landing in Punxsutawney.  Connie Mack, then manager of Milwaukee’s American League team, needed pitching.  He received permission from Pittsburg to sign Waddell, with the stipulation that Waddell would return to the Pirates if they so desired.  Mack convinced Waddell to leave “Punxy” and the southpaw became an immediate sensation in Milwaukee.  He won 10 games in a little more than a month, including both halves of a 22-inning doubleheader at Chicago.  Impressed by Waddell’s work with the Brewer, the Pirates asked for his return.

Clarke and Rube survived the rest of the 1900 season without major eruptions, but more problems arose the following season.  In May 1901 Waddell’s contract was sold to the Chicago Orphans.  After winning 14 games (in 28 decisions) for the struggling Chicago team, Rube jumped ship again and landed with some semipro teams in Wisconsin.  In November Rube hooked on with a barnstorming team for a tour of California.  Extremely popular with the West Coast fans, Rube signed with the California League’s Los Angeles Looloos for the 1902 season.

Waddell stayed in Los Angeles for only a few months before Mack, now managing the Philadelphia Athletics, enticed him to leave California to bolster the A’s depleted pitching staff.  Waddell agreed, and Mack sent a pair on Pinkerton escorts to ensure Waddell made it east.

Only 87 games remained on the A’s schedule when Waddell pitched his first game on June 26, yet the left-hander finished the season with a 24-7 record.  Rube also led the league with 210 strikeouts, 50 more than runner-up Cy Young, who pitched 108 1/3 more innings.  The Athletics, only two games above .500 when Rube entered the fray, finished 30 games above the break-even mark and won their first American League pennant.

In little more than half a season Waddell had proved himself as one of the game’s premier pitchers and Philadelphia’s most bankable star.  The Athletics’ attendance doubled from the previous year to a league-leading 420,000.  Cigars, soap, and liquor were among the products named after Waddell.  The 1902 season also saw the emergence of Osee Schrecongost as Rube’s favorite catcher.  Waddell and Schreck (as his name was often truncated) soon became known as baseball’s wackiest battery mates, as famous for their off-the-field frolics as their on-field production.

The 1903 season was the most tumultuous in the erratic career of Rube Waddell.  In June he was married for the second time, this time to a Massachusetts girl named May Wynne Skinner whom he had met three days earlier.  It was the beginning of a very stormy relationship.  The marriage lasted nearly seven years, but the couple only infrequently lived together, and Mrs. Waddell often had her husband jailed for non-support.  In July, American League president Ban Johnson suspended Waddell for five days after he climbed into the stands to beat up a spectator, a known gambler who had baited the pitcher.[6]  Despite starting the season 13-3, Waddell limped home to a 21-16 record.  Still, he struck out a record 302 batters, even though his season ended prematurely on August 25 when he did not appear for his scheduled start in Cleveland.  Mack, weary of Rube’s frequent unexcused absences, suspended him for the rest of the season.  A week later, Waddell patched up his differences with Mack, and signed a contract for the following season with which agreed to “live up to the regular rules,” with “no favors allowed.”[7]

From September to December Waddell toured with a theatre company, performing as himself in a melodrama entitled The Stain of Guilt.  Baseball’s matinee idol was a big draw at the theatres as well.  Critics, though, were largely unimpressed with Waddell’s acting skills.  “He is let out only two minutes in each scene,” wrote the Chicago Journal, and the ensuing repair bills are pretty bulky for even those few minutes.”[8]

After numerous disagreements over advance pay, the company jettisoned Rube during its run in Philadelphia, unceremoniously dumping his bags in the alley.[9]  He immediately began tending a bar in nearby Camden, New Jersey.  His 1904 campaign progressed without serious incident.  Waddell won 25 games and registered a 1.62 ERA, the second-best of his career.  He also extended his post-1990 single-season strikeout record to 349, a major-league total unsurpassed until Sandy Koufax whiffed 382 in 1965.

The Rube also demonstrated his more compassionate side when Athletics' center fielder Danny Hoffman was knocked unconscious by a fastball to the temple.  “Someone went for an ambulance, and the layers crowded around in aimless bewilderment,” wrote Connie Mack.  “Somebody said that Danny might live until the doctor got there.  Then the man they had called the playboy and clown went into action.  Pushing everybody to one side, he gently placed Danny over his shoulder and actually ran across the field.”  Rube flagged down a carriage, which carted the pair to the nearest hospital.  Rube, still in uniform, sat as Hoffman’s bedside for most of the night and held ice to Hoffman’s head.[10]

The 1905 season was even better for Waddell, at least statistically.  He led the AL in strikeouts (287) games pitched (46), ERA (1.48), and wins (27).  His most spectacular victory was a 20-inning contest against Boston’s Cy Young on July 4, 1905.  Both future Hall of Famers went the distance and Rube performed cartwheels off the mound once more the A’s secured the 4-2 victory.  According to legend, Rube bartered free drinks with the ball he used to defeat Young in the game.  Before long, dozens of bartenders had this “genuine” souvenir in their possession.

Despite this success, the 1905 season ended on a sour note for Waddell.  Again, he missed most of the season’s final month.  After Waddell's victory over Young at Boston on September 8, the A’s headed back home to Philadelphia.  While changing trains in Providence, Waddell and teammate Andy Coakley engaged in a friendly scuffle over a straw hat.  Rube fell and injured his shoulder.[11]  His season was over, except for two ineffective appearances in the last two days of the regular season, and he did not appear in the Athletics’ five-game defeat to the New York Giants in that year’s World Series.  Not everybody believed the straw hat tale, however.  Rumors were rampant that gamblers had paid Waddell to sit out the series.

Mack believed Waddell was never quite the same after the straw hat incident.  in 1906 Waddell’s ledger sagged to 15-17.  Despite his losing record, Waddell ranked among the league leaders with eight shutouts, including a one-hitter over the Detroit Tigers.  Waddell’s drinking problem escalated during the season, and a rift developed between Waddell and Schrecongost, who had sworn off the bottle.  In 1907, Rube improved his record to 19-13 but he was ineffective down the stretch as the A’s fought tooth-and-nail with Detroit for the AL pennant.  In a key game against the Tigers on September 30, Waddell came on in relief of Jimmy Dygert and did not hold a three-run lead.  Although the game ended in a 17-inning deadlock, the Athletics’ collapse was a crushing blow to their pennant hopes and proved to be Waddell’s death knell in Philadelphia.  In the “interest of team harmony,” Mack sold Waddell to the St. Louis Browns on February 7, 1908 – a week after Waddell’s wife sued his for divorce.  Shortly afterward, Waddell was accused of assault and battery on both his parents-in-law.[12]  The resulting legal difficulties prevented him from pitching in Massachusetts, where a warrant for his arrest awaited, during the 1908 and 1909 seasons.

Waddell responded with another 19-win season in 1908, helping the much-improved Browns to stay in the pennant race, though the club faded to fourth place by season's end.  Not quite the dominant force he once was, Rube was still a box office bonanza.  “He paid for himself in three games after he was bought,” wrote St. Louis Post Dispatch columnist John L. Wray.  “He had added many thousands to the exchequer [sic] since that time-paid admission that would never have arrived at the gate but for the fact that Rube was scheduled to work.”[13]  The Browns enjoyed a 48 percent boost in home attendance to more than 618,000, second in the American League, while the Athletics, tying the American League single-game record.

In 1909, Waddell’s record slipped to 11-14 with only 141 strikeouts, as his skills started to show obvious decline.  His 2.37 ERA was barely better than the league average.  On April 4, 1910, after his ugly divorce from wife no. 2 was completed, Rube married wife no. 3, 19-year-old Madge Maguire.  Another tempestuous marriage followed.  Rube’s major-league days were also numbered.  He appeared in only 10 games, all but two in relief.  The Browns released him in August, leaving him to finish out the year with Newark in the Eastern League.

In 1911, Waddell won 20 games for Joe Cantillon’s Minneapolis Millers, helping the Millers to another American Association championship.  The following winter, Waddell lived in Cantillon at the manager’s farm in Hickman, Kentucky, a small village situated on a bend of the Mississippi River.  When flood waters threatened to swallow the town, Rube stood in icy water for hours helping stack sandbags for the levee.  As a result, he contracted a severe case of pneumonia.  His system weakened; Waddell soon became a victim of tuberculosis.  He pitched one more season for Minneapolis and a part of another with two teams in the Northern League but by November of 1913, his health had reached the critical stage.

Cantillon paid Waddell’s way to a sanitarium in San Antonio to be close to his parents, who had moved in with Rube’s younger sister in nearby Boerne, Texas.  Connie Mack and Athletics’ partner Ben Shibe paid for Waddell’s medical care, with orders that “Waddell should have the best of medical attention and nursing, and that no expenses should be spared to either help the once might Rube regain his health, or to ease his sufferings if his battle is to be a losing one,”[14]

The once powerful Waddell, now down to 130 pounds, passed away on April 1, 1914, a few months shy of his 38^th birthday.  “He was the greatest pitcher in the game, and although widely known for his eccentricities, was more sinned against than sinner,” said Mack.  “He may have failed us at times but to him, I, and other owners of the Athletics ball club, we owe much.”[15]  He was laid to rest in Mission Burial Park South, in San Antonio.

An earlier version of this biography originally appeared in “Deadball Stars of the American League” (Potomac Books, 2006), edited by David Jones. It also appeared in “From Spring Training to Screen Test: Baseball Players Turned Actors“ (SABR, 2018), edited by Rob Edelman and Bill Nowlin.

Sources

In addition to the sources cited in the Notes, the author also consulted several dozen newspapers and other publications, and the following books:

1.     Honig, Donald. Baseball America (New York:
        Touchstone, 2001).

2.     Mack, Connie. My 66 Years in the Big Leagues
        (Philadelphia: John Winston Co., 1950).
3.     McGraw, John. My Thirty Years in Baseball
        (New York: Boni & Liveright, 1923).
4.     Okkonen, Mark. Baseball Memories, 1900-1909
        (New York; Sterling, 1992).

5.     Ritter, Lawrence S. The Glory of Their Times
        (New York: Harper Perennial, 2010).
6.     Spink, Alfred H. The National Game
        (Carbondale, Illinois: Southern Illinois
        University Press, 2000).
7.     The Sporting News, Cooperstown, Where
        the Legends Live Forever (New York:
        Random House, 1988).
8.     Interview Bill Waddell, great-nephew of
        Rube Waddell, ca. 2005-06.

Notes:

1.     Columbus (Ohio) Sunday Dispatch, April 5,
        1914:14. Repeated in The Literary Digest,
        April 18, 1914.
2.     Grantland Rice, “Spotlight,” Indianapolis
        Star, October 18, 1944: 15.

3.     Personal conversation with Ruth Mack
        Clark, ca. 2005-06.
4.     Louisville Courier-Journal, September
        16, 1897: 6.
5.     “Rube Waddell’s Wife Obtains A Divorce,”
        Springfield (Ohio) Sun, April 6, 1902.
6.     Washington Post, July 19, 1903: H10.
7.     Philadelphia Evening Bulletin,
        September 1, 1903: 11.
8.     Chicago Journal, October 12, 1903.
9.     F.C. Richter, “PHILADELPHIA NEWS
       /The Erratic Waddell’s Theatrical Career
        End,” Sporting Life, December 26, 1903: 5.
10.   Connie Mack, “The One and Only Rube,”
        Saturday Evening Post, March 14, 1936,
        Vol. 208 Issue 37: 12-110.
11.   J. G. Taylor Spink, ed., “Rube Waddell/His
        Life, Laughs and Laurels,” Baseball
        Register, St. Louis: The Sporting News,
        1944), 16.

12.   Lynn (Massachusetts) Daily Item,
        February 9, 1905: 1.

13.   John L. Wray, “Wray’s Column,” St.
        Louis Post Dispatch, August 15, 1909: 29.

14.   “Shibe And Mack Will Look After Rube
        Waddell,” San Antonio Express,
        February 20, 1914.

15.   Philadelphia North American, April 2, 1944.

Full Name:  George Edward Waddell.

Born:  October 13, 1876, at Bradford, PA (USA).

Died:  April 1, 1914, at San Antonio, TX (USA).

A Breif History Of The Monongahela River

Photo Credit: https://www.doorsopenpgh.org/benebby-blog/whats-with-those-piers-on-the-
                        monongahela-river

State: Pennsylvania and West Virginia.
Counties: Marion WV, Monongahela WV,
                Greene PA, Fayette PA,
                Washington PA, Westmoreland
                PA, Allegheny PA.
Source: Tygart Valley River
     1.     Location: Pocahontas County, WV.
     2.     Elevation: 4,540 ft. (1,380 m).
Second Source: West Fork River.
     1.     Location: Upshur County, WV.
     2.     Elevation: 1,309 ft. (399 m).
Source Confluence:
     1.     Location: Fairmont, WV.
     2.     Elevation: 863 ft (263 m).
Mouth: Ohio River.
     1.     Location: Pittsburgh, PA.
     2.     Elevation: 709 ft. (216 m).
Length: 130 mi (210 km).
Basin Size: 7,340 sq mi (19,000 km2).
Discharge:
     1.     Location: Braddock, PA.
     2.     Average: 12,650 cu ft/s (358 m3/s).
     3.     Maximum: 81,000 cu ft/s (2,300 m3/s).
Discharge:
     1.     Location: Masontown, PA.
     2.     Average: 8,433 cu ft/s (238.8 m3/s).
Tributaries:
Left: West Fork, Coal Run, Buffalo Creek, Hawkinburg
         Run, Paw Paw Creek, Pharoah Run, Parker Run,
         Indian Creek, Birchfield Run, Meadow Run, Broad
         Run, Dents Run, Scotts Run, Courtney Run,
         Robinson Run, Crooked Run, Dunkard Creek,
         Whitely Creek, Little Whiteley Creek, Pegs Run,
         Muddy Creek, Noel Run, Pumpkin Run, Rush Run,
         Tenmile Creek, Fishpot Run, Barney’s Run,
         Twomile Run, Lilly Run, Pike Run, Wood Run,
         Hooders Run, Maple Creek, Pigeon Creek, Dry
         Run, Mingo Creek, Huston Run, Lobbs Run,
         Peters Run, Thompson Run, Homestead Run,
         West Run, Streets Run, Becks Run.

Right: Tygart River, Prickett Creek, Little Creek,
           Whitedog Creek, Joes Run, Toms Run, Booths
           Run, Cobun Creek, Deekers Run, West Run,
           Laurel Run, Camp Run, Cheat River, George’s
           Run, Jacobs Creek, Cats Run, Browns Run,
           Middle Run, Antram Run, Wallace Run, Hereford
           Hollow, Bates Run, Meadow Run, Kelley Run,
           Rush Run, Dunlap Creek, Redstone Creek,
           Lamb Lick Run, Downers Run, Speers Run,
           Turkey Hollow, Beckers Run, Sunfish Run,
           Bunola Run, Kelly Run, Mill Run, Smiths Run,
           Fallen Timber Run, Wylie Run, Youghiogheny
           River, Crooked Run, Turtle Creek, Ninemile
           Run.

The Monongahela River valley was the site of a famous battle that was one of the first in the French and Indian War – the Braddock Expedition (May- July 1755). The end result was a sharp one for the two thousand British and Colonial forces against those of the French and their Native American allies.

In 1817, the Pennsylvania legislature authorized the Monongahela Navigation Company to build 16 dams with bypass locks to create a river transportation system between Pittsburgh and the area that would later become West Virginia. Originally planned to run as far south as the Cheat River, the system was extended to Fairmont, and bituminous coal from West Virginia was the chief product transported downstream. After a canal tunnel through Grant’s Hill in Pittsburgh was completed in 1832, boats could travel between the Monongahela River and the Western Division Canal of Pennsylvania’s principal east-west canal and railroad system, the Main Line of Public Works. In 1897, the federal government took possession of the Monongahela Navigation through condemnation proceedings. Later, the dam-lock combinations were increased in size and reduced in number.

Briefly linked to the Monongahela Navigation was the Youghiogheny Navigation, a slack water system of 18.5 miles between McKeesport and West Newton. It had two dam-locks overcoming a change in elevation of about 27 feet, and was opened in 1850, but was destroyed by a flood in 1865.

During the 19th century and well into the 20th, the Monongahela was heavily used by industry, and several U.S. Steel plants, including the Homestead Works, site of the Homestead Strike of 1892, were built along its banks. Other mills included the Edgar Thomson Works in Braddock, the first steelworks in the area, the Duquesne Works, and the Jones and Laughlin steel works on the south side of Pittsburgh. Only the Edgar Thomson works remain to produce steel along the river.

Despite the closure of many of the mills in the 1980s and 90s, the Monongahela is still an important waterway for industry. The Mon Valley Works of U.S. Steel operates three plants, including the Edgar Thomson plant for basic steel making, the Irvin plant for steel finishing, and the Clairton plant for coke production. Coal barges are a common sight on the river, and the railways that line either side are heavily used by freight. Other industries include power generation, chemicals, and recycling.

Three ships in the United States Navy have been named Monongahela after the river (USS Monongahela (1862) was launched in 1862 and served during the American Civil War, USS Monongahela (AO-42), was an oiler acquired by the US Navy in July 1942 and decommissioned August 1957, USS Monongahela (AO-178), was an oiler launched in 1979 and decommissioned in 1999). In October 1930, severe drought caused the river flow to drop below 10 cu ft/s, and in some places, it was possible to walk across the river floor.

The river was the site of a famous airplane crash that has become the subject of urban legends and conspiracy theories. Early on the morning of January 31, 1956, a B-25 bomber en route from Nellis Air Force Base in Nevada to Olmstead Air Force Base in Pennsylvania crashed into the river near the Glenwood Bridge in Homestead, Pennsylvania. The six crewmen survived the initial crash, but two of them succumbed in the cold water and drowned. Despite the relatively shallow water, the aircraft was never recovered and became known as the “ghost bomber”. The Pittsburgh Post Gazette published a graphical representation of the flight path and flight details in 1999, and as of 2018, the bomber has not been found.

Robert 'Lefty' Grove

This article was written by Jim Kaplan
https://sabr.org/bioproj/person/Lefty-Grove/

Lefty Grove may have been baseball’s greatest all-time pitcher.  He was certainly its most dominant.  No one matched his nine ERA titles, and his .680 winning percentage (300-141) is the highest among 300 game-winners (eighth best overall).  After winning 111 games in a minor-league career that delayed his major-league debut until he was 25, Grove led the American League in strikeouts his first seven years, pitched effectively in hitters’ parks (Shibe Park, Fenway Park) and starred in three World Series.  Few if any pitchers threw tantrums on a par with the 6’3”, 190-pound Lefty, who did everything big.  He even led all pitchers by striking out 593 times as a batter.

Robert Moses Grove was born to John and Emma Grove on March 6, 1900, in the bituminous mining town of Lonaconing, Maryland.  His father and older brothers preceded him into the mines, but Lefty quit after two weeks, saying, “Dad, I didn’t put that coal in here, and I don’t have to take no more of her out.”

Lefty drifted into other jobs: as a “bobbin boy” working spinning spools to make silk thread, as an apprentice glass blower and needle etcher in a glass factory, and as a railroad worker laying rails and driving spikes.  In his spare time, he played a kind of baseball using cork stoppers in wool socks wrapped in black tape, and fence pickets when bats weren’t available.  he did not play genuine baseball until 17, nor genuinely organized baseball until 19, when Dick Stakem, proprietor of a general store in nearby Midland, began using him in town games on a field sandwiched between a forest and train tracks.  “Bobby never pitched a game [for Midland] until Memorial Day, 1919,” Stakem told the Philadelphia Bulletin’s John J. Nolan.  “He pitched a seven-inning game which was ended by rain.  He fanned 15 batters, walked two men, hit two, and made a wild pitch.”

“Here’s the scorebook to prove it.”

“Bob’s best games was a postseason series against [the Baltimore & Ohio railroad team in] Cumberland, the big team around here…. We went down there with Bobby, and he held them hitless, fanned 18 batters, and the only man to reach first eventually got around to third.  The reason he got there was because Bobby told me he let him steal second and third as he was so sure he could fan the next batters and the runner wouldn’t steal home.  The score was 1 to 0, the other pitcher allowing just one hit.”

The B & O manager supposedly wanted Grove, and the next year Bob was cleaning cylinder heads of steam engines for B & O in Cumberland, Maryland.  Before he could put in a baseball season there, a local garage manager named Bill Louden, who managed the Martinsburg, West Virginia, team of the Class D Blue Ridge League, offered him a princely $125 a month, a good $50 more than his father and brothers were making.  With his parents’ blessing, Lefty took a 30-day leave from his job, signed a contract on May 5, got a roundtrip rail pass from his master mechanic, and was driven across the mountains in a large car supplied by the Midland team.  While Grove was going 3-3, with 60 strikeouts in 59 innings, word reached Jack Dunn, owner of the International League (Double-A) Baltimore Orioles.  Dunn sent his son Jack Jr. to watch Grove.  As it happened, the Martinsburg team had started the season on the road because it lacked a fence around the home field.  Dunn bought Grove for a price in the $3,00 - $3,500 range that satisfied Louden.  “I was the only player,” Grove said later, “ever traded for a fence.”

According to some accounts, the Orioles signed Grove just ahead of the Giants, Dodgers, and Tigers overtures.  It will forever be debated how many major-league games Grove would have won if he hadn’t spent five seasons with the Orioles.  We’ll never know the answer, but we do know that Grove enjoyed playing for the Orioles.  Starting at $175 a month, he won his debut, 9-3, over Jersey City, prompting owner Dunn to say he wouldn’t sell Lefty for $10,000.  In 1920-24, Grove was 108-36 and struck out 1,108 batters for a minor-league record, though he was often wild and went 3-8 in postseason play.  By his last season in Baltimore, however, Grove was certainly pitching like a major leaguer.  He went 26-6 despite missing six weeks with a wrist injury, struck out 231 batters in 236 innings, and reduced his walks from 186 to 108.  Moreover, Grove routinely struck out between 10 and 14 major leaguers in exhibition games (they may have been reluctant to dig in against him), told Babe Ruth “I’m not afraid of you,” and made good his boast by whiffing the Bambino in nine of 11 exhibition at-bats.

With no minor league draft in the 1920s, Dunn could wait for the best offer before selling Grove to the majors.  By the 1924-25 offseason, he couldn’t resist.  The Cubs and Dodgers offered $100,000, according to the Philadelphia Evening Ledger, but Dunn sold Grove to an old friend, Philadelphia owner/manager Connie Mack, for $100,600.  The extra $600 supposedly made it a higher price than the Yankees paid the Red Sox for Babe Ruth after the 1919 season – higher if you discount notes, interest on notes, and a $300,000 loan that swelled the Yankees’ cost to more than $400,000.

The much-ballyhooed sale backfired on Grove, who was called the “$100,600 Lemon” when he went 10-12 in 1925 and led the American League in both walks (131) and strikeouts (116).  He was too pumped up and overthrowing as he had in the postseason with Baltimore.  “Catching him was like catching bullets from a rifleman with bad aim,” the Athletics’ catcher Mickey Cochrane told sportswriter Frank Graham years later.  Nonetheless, Mack stuck with him, and Grove, taciturn and sullen during the season, returned home with a mission.  “Huh, so I’m the wild guy of the league?” Grove said to the Evening Bulletin’s Nolan, who had taken an 11-hour train ride from Philadelphia.  “I’ll show’em something next year.  See that chalk mark on the barn door.  I measured off sixty feet.  I reckon it is, and at six o’clock every morning I hit the chalk mark twenty times before I quit.  Then I tramp the hills hunting and cover about twenty miles a day.”

Up at 5:30 AM, asleep by 9 PM, Grove was rested and ready for spring training.  Though he was only 13-13 in 1926, his ERA dropped from 4.75 to a league-best 2.51, his walks dropped from 131 to 101 and his strikeouts climbed from 116 to an AL-best 194.  A victim of non-support, he was shut out four times in the season’s first two months.  To Yankees manager Miller Huggins, Grove was night-and-day improved over 1925: “Now he has wide bending curves, better control, is mentally fit, has a lot of confidence and plenty of natural ability,” Huggins said.  “He mixes his speed and curves and he’s the speediest pitcher in baseball.”  Huggins could afford to be generous because Grove did not beat the Yankees when they pulled away from the pack in September.  It was a pattern that would repeat.

Grove led the league in strikeouts for the next five years and won 20 or more games for the next seven.  Alas, there was no catching the 1927 Yankees, and Grove lost six of his last seven decisions to them in a heartbreaking 1928.  A Babe Ruth homer in a decisive September tilt especially victimized Grove.  However, both he and the Philadelphia club, 2 ½ games back of the Yankees at 98-55, were poised for greatness.

In 1929, the Athletics broke through.  Grove was 2-1, with one save, against the Yankees, 20-6 overall, and the A’s won the pennant.  Apparently fearing the Cubs’ right-handed hitters, Mack declined to start either Grove or fellow lefty Rube Walberg in the World Series, but Grove made his mark in relief.  After Howard Ehmke won the opener, 3-1, Grove replaced a struggling George Earnshaw in Game Two with two outs in the fifth, two men on base, and the A’s leading 6-3.  Grove fanned Gabby Hartnett on five pitches and finished with six strikeouts, three hits, one walk, and no runs allowed over 4 1/3 innings.  For some reason, Earnshaw was given the win; Grove had to enjoy the greatest long-relief save in Series history.  “How can you hit the guy,” Hartnett asked, “when you can’t see him?”

In historic Game Four, when the A’s rallied from an 8-0 deficit to win, 10-8, Grove pitched the last two innings in relief.  The A’s took the Series, four games to one, and Grove struck out 10 batters in 6 1/3 innings.  “When danger beckoned thickest,”  Heywood Broun wrote, “it was always Grove who stood towering on the mound, whipping over strikes against the luckless Chicago batters.”

Thanks to Mack, who had convinced Grove to move some of his money to a bank that wasn’t later closed down, Lefty survived the stock market crash.  Indeed, he spent $5,700 to build Lefty’s Place, a Lonaconing establishment with three bowling alleys, a pool table, and a counter filled with cigar cases, candy, cigarettes, and soft drinks.  Terse at tributes his honor, Grove quietly employed his brother, Dewey, out of work since the glass factory burned down, and his physically challenged brother-in-law, Bob Mathews.  Lefty was always more comfortable with the homefolk than city dwellers.

Grove returned to spring training in 1930 as truculent as ever.  When a rookie named Doc Cramer doubled against him in an intra-squad game, Grove whacked him in the ribs the next time Cramer batted.  While the first-place A’s went 102-52, Grove won the Triple Crown of pitching by leading the league in wins (28), strikeouts (209), and ERA (2.54), the latter an incredible 0.77 ahead of the next-best pitcher.  He also led the league with nine saves, though the stat wasn’t tabulated until years later.  He was excelling in clutch, not just rolling up big numbers.  In what the Philadelphia Inquirer called “a copyrighted situation” – the A’s up 3-2, two outs, two on, and Babe Ruth at the plate in the ninth – he fanned Ruth on a 2-2 pitch, hushing the crowd in Yankee Stadium on September 1,

In the World Series, the A’s faced the National League champion St. Louis Cardinals, who had batted .314.  The entire NL batted .303 for the 1930 season with the Cardinals’ .314 only third best (the Cards scored the most runs/game).  Only two of the six NL teams didn’t hit at least .300 and they each hit .281 for the season.  Grove won the opener, 5-2, while throwing 70 strikes and just 39 balls, fanning five and allowing nine hits.  After George Earnshaw, Lefty’s polar opposite (right-handed, sharper breaking curve, slower fastball, a party boy), throttled the Cards, 6-1, in Game Two, St. Louis beat Rube Walberg, 5-0, and got by Grove, 3-1, on two unearned runs.  Lefty relieved George in the eighth inning of a scoreless Game Five and won it, 2-0, on Jimmie Foxx’s two-run homer.  At which point Earnshaw returned on one day’s rest to end the series in Game Six, 7-1.  For the series, MVP Earnshaw was 2-0, with 19 strikeouts in 25 innings and a 0.72 ERA, while Grove was 2-1, with 10 strikeouts in 19 innings and a 1.42 ERA.

Grove still had not had his best year.  By August 23, 1931, he was 25-2 for the season and tied for the American League record with 16 straight wins.  The first-place A’s 84-32.  Their opponent: the hapless St. Louis Browns.  It didn’t seem to matter that the A’s were a little nicked up. Among other things, left fielder Al Simmons was treated for a sprained, blistered, and infected left ankle in Milwaukee.  A rookie named Handsome Jimmy Moore replaced him.  With 20,000 sweltering fans creating an unusually large crowd at Sportsman Park, Grove faces Dick Coffman, who, with his 5-9 record, was nearly released three weeks earlier but had saved his job by winning three straight.

Grove and Coffman kept the game scoreless through two innings.  Then came an event for which Grove would forever be remembered.  After Fritz Schulte’s two-out bloop single in the third mildly annoyed Grove, Oscar (Ski) Melillo unnerved him.  Melillo hit what appeared to be a routine liner to the left.  Partially blinded by the sun, Moore raced in, realized he had misjudged the ball, and reversed course.  The shot nicked his glove and rolled to the fence, with Schulte scoring on the double.

Grove slapped his glove against his side in disgust, got out of the inning, and returned to the dugout in muttering retreat.  He righted himself to finish the game, a neat seven-hitter with sixs K’s and no walks.  Unfortunately, Coffman was even better, getting his usually problematic curve over and yielding just three hits.  In a stark reversal of his season-long fortunes, Grove lost, 1-0, in only an hour and 25 minutes.

Moore never used the sun as an excuse.  “If I’d stood still, I’d have caught it,” he told the Boston Globe’s Harold Kaese 34 later.  Grove didn’t blame Moore.  Instead, he raged at the absent Simmons for a good 20 minutes.  In what was probably an unprecedented display of postgame pique, Grove tried to tear off the clubhouse door, shredding the wooden partition between lockers, banging up the lockers, breaking chairs, and ripping off his shirt, buttons flying.  “Threw everything I could get my hands on – bats, balls, shoes, gloves, benches, water buckets, whatever was handy,” he told author Donald Honig.  If Grove couldn’t break one record, he might as well break another.

Quickly enough, Lefty righted himself.  Responding to Yankee bench-jockeying (“kicked over ant water pails lately?”) on August 29, he struck out eight of the first 10 batters he faced.  By season’s end, he was 31-4; only three innings of grooving the ball in a final-day Series warmup cost him an ERA under 2.00 (he finished at 2.06).  winning his second straight Triple Crown with 175 strikeouts, he was named the American League’s Most Valuable Player.  The Athletics won the pennant again, this time a walk.  At 107-45, the A’s were 13 ½ games better than second-place New York.

With a blister on a throwing finger, Grove yielded 12 hits in the Series opener but got good fielding support and won, 6-2.  “Nah the blister didn’t hurt,” said Grove, who had to rely on curves and slowballs, “but them dinky hits they made got me mad.  I started thinking my control was too good.  You know I was putting them right over the plate.

“I started thinking, and you know what happens when a lefthander gets to thinking.  Well, I began to chuck up slow one and a little curve.  Every time I tossed one the Cards got ahold of it.  From now on, they won’t see nuthin’ but fastball pitching.”

The Cardinals won Game Two, and a rain delay gave Grove several days to heal his blister.  He still wasn’t sharp.  Allowing 11 hits and four earned runs in eight innings, he lost Game Three, 5-2.  Earnshaw evened the Series, but then Pepper Martin got three hits and drove in four runs, the Cardinals winning Game Five, 5-1.  With the A’s on the brink of elimination, Grove won, 8-1, on five hits and one walk.  In this, his last Series appearance, he was “pitching at the very peak of his form for the first time in this intersectional warfare,” wrote the AP’s Alan Gould.  Grove was poised for another outing, warming up on the sidelines, when a ninth-inning A’s rally fell short in Game Seven and the Cardinals took the clincher, 4-2.

In his three World Series (1929 through 1931), Grove went 4-2, with a 1.75 ERA, 36 strikeouts in 51 1/3 innings and two saves.  In these same seasons, he was 79-15 in regular-season play.  It was the high-water mark for both Grove and the Philadelphia Athletics, though neither seemed to be drowning in 1932 when the second-place A’s won 94 games and Grove went 25-10.  Used extensively in relief the next season and totaling an exhausting 275 1/3 innings, Grove still had a 24-8 record and led the league with a .750 percentage and 21 complete games, but his strikeouts declined from 188 to 114.  As the A’s finished third in 1933 with a 79-72 record, the word went around the league that Grove’s arm had gone south on him.



Soon Grove was headed north.  Stung by poor attendance in the Depression, Mack began unloading his roster and traded Grove to the Boston Red Sox.  Years later, summing up Lefty’s performance with his club, Mack said Grove had been a “thrower” and never really learned how to pitch until later.  Others praised him but as a one-pitch pitcher.  “When planes take off from a ship, they say catapult,” Yankee shortstop Frankie Crosetti said.  “That’s what his fastball did halfway to the plate.  He threw just plain fastballs – he didn’t need anything else.”

These evaluations didn’t quite describe Grove’s pitching.  Though he relied on his fastball, he moved it around smartly, and his curve was strong enough to spot.  As he showed in the ’31 Series, he could even win when his fastball wasn’t working.

Grove arrived in Sarasota, the 1934 Red Sox training camp, and was anointed team savior.  They had won 43 and 63 games in the earlier two seasons, but newsmen called them contenders.  Grove promptly announced he wouldn’t train on Sundays – why not when young owner Tom Yawkey was in thrall to him?  Indeed, alone among the Red Sox, he got a single room on the road.  Unfortunately, Lefty developed a sore arm in mid-March, struggled all season, and went 8-8 with a 6.50 ERA while the Sox limped to a fourth at 76-76.  The improvement of 13 games and the record 610,640 home attendance didn’t satisfy the naysayers, too many of whom blame Grove.  Once again, he was a lemon.

Yet he didn’t sour.  As wily and ingenious as ever, Grove spent three weeks at Hot Springs, Arkansas during the offseason, playing 36 holes of golf a day or using a rowing machine when it rained.  He pitched only four innings against major leaguers in spring training and proclaimed himself fully recovered for 1935.  With a new approach of “curve and control,” Grove, now 35, went 20-12 with a league-leading 2.70 ERA.  The curve became his major out pitch, Grove explained because he had lost his fastball.  “I was actually too fast to carve the ball while in Baltimore and Philadelphia,” he said.  “The ball didn’t have enough time to break because I threw what passed for a curve as fast as I threw my fastball.  I couldn’t get enough twist on it. …Now that I’m not fast, I can really break one off and my fastball looks faster than it is because it’s faster than the other stuff I throw.”  He paused and added, “A pitcher has time enough to get smarter after he loses his speed.”

Grove won three more ERA titles in the next four years while winning 17, 17, 14, and 15 games and mellowing in his behavior.  That is not to say he was a model citizen.  Grove had no respect for Red Sox manager Joe Cronin and wasn’t above saying so.  In one unforgettable instance, Cronin ordered Grove to walk Hank Greenberg with two outs, a man on second, and the Sox leading the Tigers 4-3, in the top of the ninth.  After grudgingly complying, Grove gave up three straight singles to trail, 6-4, at inning’s end.  Leaving the field, Grove threw his glove into the stands, ripped off his uniform, and smashed one of Cronin’s bats before heading into the clubhouse.  Amazingly, Boston won when Wes Ferrell, pinch-hitting for Grove, hit a three-run homer.  When the happy winners told the steaming Grove the news, he silently rolled a bottle of wine over to Ferrell.

He slipped to 7-6 in 1940, but he had won 293 games, and no one doubted he'd reach 300 in 1941.  Oh, what a strange season it was!  In April, all baseball eyes were on Grove, but they refocused on the pennant races and Joe DiMaggio’s 56-game hitting streak before watching in awe as Ted Williams went 6-for-8 on the last Sunday to hit .406.  All this while Americans were awaiting the latest word on approaching war clouds.

Meanwhile, Grove labored to get the big one.  He had six wins by midseason.  On July 25, Red Sox manager Joe Cronin told Grove, “Pop, this is a nine-inning game.  I’m not coming out to get you.”  Cronin didn’t, and Grove survived a rock-‘em, sock-‘em slugfest to beat the Indians on 12 hits, 10-6, with his best friend in baseball, Jimmie Foxx, getting the decisive two-run triple.  His final win was no pathetic last gasp, some descriptions notwithstanding.  Grove threw only 38 balls and walked just one batter.  The 12^th 300-game winner, the first since Pete Alexander in 1926 and the last until Warren Spahn in 1961, earned his place in history.  He was roundly toasted at a champagne dinner party he threw for teammates that night.

All too soon, Grove lost his last three decisions while Boston writers told him to quit.  “A nice lesson in irony these days is to see reporters, photographers and feature writers stumbling over such fading stars as Foxx, Cronin, and Lefty Grove in the haste to get a Ted Williams,” Harold Kaese wrote in mid-September.  While the Sox played the A’s on the last day of the season, Grove was honored between games of a doubleheader.  “Well, he’s a better guy now,” said an unnamed Athletic.  “All he used to have was a fastball and a mean disposition.”  Connie Mack said, “I took more from Grove than I would from any man living.  He said things and did things – but he’s changed.  I’ve seen it year by year by year.  He’s got to be a great fellow.”

Grove quietly told owner Yawkey that he was retiring while they walked through Yawkey’s hunting preserve in South Carolina in early December.  The news was upstaged by the bombing of Pearl Harbor.  Though he suffered reverses in retirement that would have soured many – getting divorced, outliving his only son, needing financial help from baseball – Grove nurtured the kinder, gentler side of his character long suppressed.  He outfitted Philadelphia sandlotters, sent two youngsters through college, and coached kid teams around Lonaconing.  He was chosen to the Hall of Fame in 1947, his first year of eligibility.

Grove was a boisterous presence in his appearances at Cooperstown.  “When he saw the other old players, like Joe Cronin, he would just haul off and sock them,” says Grove’s friend David Schild.  “If he considered you a friend, he would punch you in the stomach or slap you on the back.  If he really liked you, he’d hit you both ways.”

After his ex-wife Ethel died in 1960, Grove moved to his daughter-in-law’s home in Norwalk, Ohio.  He died there on May 22, 1975, at the age of 75.  He is buried at Frostburg Memorial Park in Frostburg, MD about nine miles from his hometown.

Sources:

Kaplan, Jim. Lefty Grove: American Original by Jim Kaplan (Cleveland: Society for American Baseball Research, 2000).

1.     www.baseball-almanac.com
2.     www.retrosheet.org
3.     www.baseballlibrary.com

Full Name:  Robert Moses Grove
Born:  March 6, 1900, at Lonaconing, MD (USA).
Died:  May 22, 1975, at Norwalk, OH (USA).

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