Original article written by Jan Finkel
https://sabr.org/bioproj/person/Eddie-Plank/
researched and compiled by Carrie Birdsong
Eddie Plank fidgeted. On every pitch, Plank went through a seemingly endless ritual: Get the sign from his catcher, fix his cap just so, readjust his shirt and sleeve, hitch up his pants, ask for a new ball, rub it up, start at a base runner if there was one, ask for a new sign and start the process all over again. As if that wasn’t enough, he would begin to talk to himself and the ball out loud from the seventh inning on: “Nine to go, eight to go…” and so on until he had retired the last batter. Frustrated hitters would swing at anything just to have something to do. His fielders would grow antsy. Fans, not wanting to be late for supper, would stay away when he was pitching. Writers, fearful of missing deadlines, roasted him.
Plank rarely threw to a base to hold a runner
close. Sad Sam Jones, good enough
to win 299 games over a long career, told Lawrence Ritter, “I once hear Eddie
Plank say, ‘There are only so many pitches in this old arm, and I don’t believe
in wasting them throwing to first base.’
And he rarely did. Made sense to
me. I was just a young punk, and I
figured if it was good enough for plank it should be good enough for me.”
Somebody that annoying can hang around only for one
reason – if he’s a winner. Plank was
exactly that, winning 326 games, the most be any lefthander until Warren
Spahn and Steve Carlton came along.
His 69 shoutouts remain the standard for southpaws. Despite all his accomplishments, however, it
was Eddie Plank’s fate to be the second banana.
He had some great seasons and many good ones, but there always seemed to
be someone having a better one. Usually, it was Walter Johnson, but there would occasionally be someone like Jack Chesbro, Ed Walsh, or Joe Wood,
whose overall career wasn’t the equal of Plank’s. accordingly, in no season was he considered
the top pitcher in the American League; he had to be satisfied with being one
of the top four or five, but he was in that position year after year, and while
other pitchers came and went, Plank persevered, helping the Philadelphia
Athletics to five American League pennants and three world championships. "Plank was not the fastest,” teammate Eddie
Collins once observed.” He was not
the trickiest and not the possessor of the most stuff. He was just the greatest.”
Edward Stewart Plank was born in Gettysburg,
Pennsylvania, on August 31, 1875, the fourth of seven children of David L.
Plank and the former Martha E. McCreary.
Growing up on the family farm, Eddie never played baseball until a
neighbor organized a team when Eddie was 17.
From the start, the young lefthander threw with a natural cross-fire
motion he called a “slant ball.” Landing his right leg on the first base side
of the pitcher's mound and throwing across his body. This off-balance method of throwing usually
resulted in wildness, nut in time Plank became perhaps the greatest cross-fire
control pitcher in history. Eddie
pitched for town teams and, at the age of 22, enrolled in Gettysburg Academy, a
prep school under the auspices of Gettysburg College.
Frank Foreman,
a fair to middling pitcher in the 1880s and 1890s, was the coach of the
Gettysburg College team. When Foreman
saw Plank’s unorthodox delivery, he promised Plank, “If you follow my
instructions closely, I’ll make you one of the greatest southpaws in the
country.”
Plank never attended the college but played on the
team, a common practice in an era of lax eligibility requirements. Nonetheless, Plank learned his lessons well,
coming out of the academy with but one weakness: a poor move toward first, at
least in the view of Ty Cobb.
Foreman had turned Plank into that rarest of creatures, a cross-firing
southpaw with outstanding control of his curve and fastball.
Plank signed with a minor league team in Richmond in
1900, but the Virginia League folded a few days later, so he never pitched in
the minor leagues. In the spring of
1901, Foreman told his friend Connie Mack he ought to sign Plank. Mack telegraphed Plank, inviting him to join
the Athletics in Baltimore.
Plank debuted on May 13, 1901, finishing up a
14-5 loss at Baltimore, then returned to Gettysburg to pitch one last
game. He went on to a fine rookie year:
17-13 with 28 complete games in 32 starts, a 3.31 ERA, and the first of his 69
shutouts. The 1902 season, in which the
Athletics won the American League pennant, marked a first and a last for the
southpaw; he won 20 games for the first time and his 3.30 ERA was his last trip
north of 3.00. He also led the league in
hit batters with 18 despite giving up only 1.83 walks per 9 innings. Appeared shorter and slighter than his
listed 5’11” and 175 pounds not surprising in that his mentor, Foreman, had a
reputation as a headhunter.
Plank would work in relative anonymity from 1902
through 1907, living in the shadow of Rube Waddell. Playing the tortoise to Waddell’s hare, Plank
won 23 games and led the league in games started in 1903, while Waddell, the
prototypical screwball lefthander, struck out batters at an unprecedented rate
when he wasn’t chasing fire engines or drinking himself blind. Rube finished the season with a 2.44 ERA;
Plank at a 2.38. Seven years later Rube
would be out of the majors and Plank would be posting even better ERAs.
Eddie reached his career high with 26 wins (against 17
losses) in 1904, coming in a distant second to Jack Chesbro’s post-1900 record of 41 wins. The highlight of the year came
on September 10 as Plank beat Boston’s Cy Young, 1-0, in 13
innings, the shutout was one of Plank’s
four wins in ten decisions against the old master.
The Athletics captured the pennant in 1905, thanks in
large part to Plank’s 24 wins and 346 ½ innings pitched, both second in the
league, and 2.26 ERA, which didn’t crack the top ten in a strong pitcher’s
year. In his two starts against the
Giants in that year’s World Series, Eddie pitched 17 innings and allowed only
three earned runs, but lost both games to Christy Mathewson and Joe
McGinnity, respectively. Plank’s
1905 performance, in which his teammates scored zero runs for him, foreshadowed
his fate in World Series play, as he would often pitch just brilliantly enough
to lose heartbreakingly.
In 1906 Mack worked Plank hard over the first
two-thirds of the season, but the pitcher developed a sore arm and could
start only once in the season’s final 50 games.
He was productive, however, going 19-6 with a 2.25 ERA; his .760 winning
percentage led the American League, although his 211 2/3
innings
pitched were 135 fewer than the earlier season.
Appearing in a league-leading 43 games in 1907, the
southpaw went back to his usual chores, pitching 343 2/3
innings
and returning to the 20-win club, going 24-16 with a 2.20 ERA and a league-high
eight shutouts. in addition, he was
third in the league with 183 strikeouts.
The year would be his last venture into 300 or more innings, as he would
never pitch more than 268 1/3 innings in any season,
and that would be in the Federal League in 1915.
The Athletics weren’t a factor in the wild pennant
race of 1908, dropping to sixth place with a 68-85 slate, just a half-game
ahead of Washington. Plank’s won-lost
record slid with the teams although not as far; he endured his first losing
season with a 14-16 mark despite a fine ERA of 2.17. The game of September 20 shows the kind of
year it was. Frank Smith of the
White Sox threw the second no-hitter of his career, beating Plank 1-0. The run scored in the bottom of the ninth
when Plank was trying to walk Freddy Parent intentionally; Parent
crossed things up by reaching and swatting a sacrifice fly to short right
field. As a testimony of his consistency,
Plank would finish with a losing record only one more time in his long career.
In 1909, Philadelphia rebounded to second place, 3.5
games behind Detroit, and Plank came back with them. He finished the year 19-10 with his
career-best ERA, a tine 1.76. He had the
honor of pitching the game dedicated to Shibe Park on Monday, April 12,
and responded by beating Boston 8-1, giving up just six hits. The game had a tragic ending, however. A’s catcher Doc Powers caught all nine
innings in agonizing pain due to suspected food poisoning and was taken to a
local hospital afterward. Two weeks
later he was dead, with “strangulation of the intestines” listed as the
official cause. Powers, who was also a
physician, starved to death because he could not eat. His intestines were mangled due to a hernia,
which some believed he had suffered when he collided with the new park’s
concrete wall while chasing a foul popup in the seventh inning.
The Athletics team of 1910-14 was the first of Mack’s
two masterpieces, a powerful unit that would win four pennants and three World
Series over those five years. Plank was
basically the third or fourth pitcher in the rotation behind Jack Coombs
(who would go 31-9 with a 1.30 ERA and 13 shutouts, an AL record that still
stands). Chief Bender (23-5 with
a 1.58 ERA, easily his best season), and Cy Morgan )18-12 with an ERA of
1.55). Next to that assemblage, Plank
almost looked like an underachiever with his 16-10 mark and 2.01 ERA. Suffering from a sore arm by the end of the
season, he didn’t even pitch in the Athletics’ five-game World Series win over
the Cubs, as Mack used only Coombs and Bender.
Plank bounced back in 1911, going 23-8 with a 2.10 ERA
and a co-league-leading six shutouts.
His luck in the World Series improved as he hosted his first win, a
complete-came 3-1 victory over the Giants’ Rube Marquard in Game
Two. With Game Five tied 3-3 after nine
innings, Mack brought in Plank to relieve Coombs. Plank could have closed out the series with a
win but lasted only two-thirds of the tenth inning before surrendering the
winning run.
Plank enjoyed another terrific year in 1912, posting a
26-6 record with a fine 2.22 ERA.
However, the Athletics fell to 90-62, one game behind second-place
Washington and 15 behind the powerful Red Sox.
Indeed, the 1912 season is emblematic of a tendency to underestimate
Plank’s greatness. His 26-6 record jumps
out as of today, but it was only the fourth-highest win total in the American
League, behind Joe Wood’s 34-5, Walter Johnson’s 33-12 (and league-best 1.39
ERA), and Ed Walsh’s 27-17. In addition,
Wood and Johnson each strung together league-record winning streaks of sixteen
games, and Marquard won a major-league record nineteen straight games in the
National League. So, Plank’s solid
performance was lost in the shuffle of one of baseball’s great pitching seasons.
Still, the season had its moments. He dropped a 4-3 beating on Joe Wood to
celebrate the Fourth of July. (Wood’s
next start four days later would be the first of his sixteen-game winning
streak.) On September 27 Plank went the
distance in a 19-inning loss to Washington’s Bob Groom and Johnson. Collins’ wild throw let in the winning run as
Johnson got the win with 10 innings of scoreless relief.
Plank slipped to 18-10 with an unusually high 2.60 ERA
in 1913, but the Athletics roared back to the American League throne room. The Giants were back in the Series for the
third straight year, having lost to the Athletics in 1911 and the Red Sox in
1912. Plank faced Mathewson in Game
Two. The two aces threw shutout balls
for nine innings. In a much-criticized
move, Mack allowed Eddie to bat for himself with the bases loaded and nobody
out in the bottom of the ninth. Plank
hit into a fielder's choice, the A’s failed to score, and it all came apart for
Plank in the tenth as he gave up three runs, including the go-ahead single to
Mathewson. Everything changed in Game
Five, with Mathewson and Plank once again squaring off. This time around, the southpaw threw a
two-hitter and beat his nemesis, 3-1, to take the Series and send John
McGraw to his third consecutive Series defeat. The game was Plank’s greatest career win; the
only Giant run was unearned, scoring due to Plank’s own error.
The Athletics remained apparently unstoppable in 1914,
winning 99 games and heading back to the Series, this time against Boston’s
Miracle Braves. Plank contributed a 15-7
mark, the wins being good for fourth best on the team, as Chief Bender won 17
while Bob Shawkey and Joe Bush each chipped in with 16. Plank’s mark was accompanied by a 2.87 ERA,
higher than the league and by far his highest since 1902. He could still pitch brilliantly, then as
his Game Two effort showed, a 1-0 loss (the run scored in the ninth inning)
to Bill James as the mighty Athletics were swept in a major Series
upset. It was the final game of Plank’s
World Series career and left him with a career 2-5 record in the Fall Classic
despite a 1.32 ERA.
Through good times and bad, winning or losing,
pitching well or not, Plank did everything the same way – quietly. He didn’t talk much, generally speaking only
when he had something to say. And when
he did talk, his only grandson (Edward Stewart Plank III, born much too late to
know him except by reputation and memory in the family) points out, people
listened. Moreover, he and his more
outgoing teammate Chief Bender seem to have been patient and kind with rookies
who wanted to learn. Rube Bressler
made the point clearly to Lawrence Ritter: “I used to try to get near [Bender
and Plank] and listen to what they were talking about, and every question I’d
ask they’d pay attention and tell me what they thought. I used to put sticks behind my ears, so
they’d stand out further. Boy, I wanted
to hear what those guys had to say.”
At 39 years of age following the 1914 season, Plank
had been talking about quitting baseball for several years. His workload had diminished and Mack nursed
him along for the last two years, using him primarily against clubs he was most
likely to dominate. Mack knew that
Bender and Plank were talking to Federal League agents. He asked for waivers on them and Coombs and
released all three pitchers. Coombs
signed with Brooklyn of the National League.
Bender went to the Baltimore Terrapins of the Federal League, and Plank to
the new league’s St. Louis Terriers.
Plank had a good year with the Terriers, who wound up
in a virtual tie for first place with the Chicago Whales, contributing a 21-11
record and 2.08 ERA. He reached a major
milestone on September 11 with a 12-5 win over Newark, making him the first
southpaw to reach three hundred victories.
When the Federal League folded after the 1915 season,
Terriers Phil Ball bought control of the St. Louis Browns and kept
Plank. He went 16-15 with a 2.33 ERA in
1916 for a fifth-place team (albeit with a winning record of 79-75). He could only go 5-6 – just his second losing
record – in 1917 despite his second-best ERA, a glittering 1.79. On August 6, at age 41, he hooked up with
Walter Johnson, going down 1-0 in 11 innings, his seventh loss against three
wins in match-ups with the Washington ace.
It was Plank’s last game; noting some stomach problems, he announced his
retirement the next week.
Despite his announcement, Plank was still in
demand. On January 22, 1918, the Yankees
traded pitchers Urban Shocker and Nick Cullop, infielder Fritz
Maisel, second baseman Joe Gedeon, catcher Les Nunamaker, and
cash to St. Louis for second baseman Del Pratt and Plank. Now 42, Plank would have been the oldest
active player in the game. Having
announced his retirement, he had no intention of changing his plans. “I will not go to New York next season,” he
said from his Gettysburg farm. “I am
through with baseball forever. I have my
farm and my home and enough to take care of me, so why should I work and worry
and longer?” according to The Historical
Register, in 1918 he pitched a bit for an industrial league team in Steelton,
Pennsylvania, posting a 4-2 record in 52 innings. The Bethlehem Steel Company owned all
six teams in the league and offered current and former major leaguers
including Plank, Dutch Leonard, and Joe Jackson an opportunity
while avoiding the draft.
Plank had taken pretty good care of himself throughout
his career, watching his money and investing it reasonably well. He spent his retirement farming, running a
Buick Shop, and leading tours of the Gettysburg battlefield. Since he was a taciturn man, it’s not likely
that most visitors to the battlefield knew they were in the presence of one of
the game’s great pitchers.
Plank had married Anna Myers in 1915; the couple had
one son, Edward Stewart Plank Jr. Having
left baseball, Plank spent his time handling his various interests, even
contemplating a run for public office before suffering a stroke on February 22,
1926. Plank died two days later at the
age of 50. He was buried in Evergreen
Cemetery in Gettysburg.
This biography originally appeared in David Jones, ed., Dead Ball Stars of the American League (Washington, D.C.: Potomac Books, Inc., 2006).
Sources:
1. Allen, Lee, and Tom Meany. Kings of the
Diamond. New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons,
1965. 2.
2. Baseball-Reference.com.
3. Eddie Plank files at the National Baseball Hall
of Fame and Museum in Cooperstown, New
York.
4. Enders, Eric. 100 Years of the World Series.
New York: Barnes & Noble Books, 2003.
5. Golden, Dave. “The Forgotten Games of Eddie
Plank.” The National Pastime. 24
(2004), 41-47.
6. Hoie, Bob, and Carlos Bauer, compilers. L
Robert Davids, Bob McConnell, Ray Nemec,
John Benesch Jr., and Bill Weiss, eds. The
Historical Register: The Major & Minor League
Records of Baseball’s Greatest Players. San
Diego and San Marino: Baseball Press Books,
1998.
7. Honig, Donald. The Greatest Pitchers of All
Time. New York: Crown Publishers, Inc., 1988.
8. James, Bill. The New Bill James Historical
Baseball Abstract. New York: The Free Press,
20010.
9. James, Bill, and Rob Neyer. The Neyer/James
Guide to Pitchers: An Historical Compendium
of Pitching, Pitchers, and Pitches. New York
and London: Simon & Schuster, 2004.
10. Leventhal, Josh. The World Series: An
Illustrated Encyclopedia of the Fall Classic
New York: Black Dog & Leventhal Publishers,
2001.
11. Mack, Connie. My 66 Years in the Big Leagues.
New York: John C. Winston Company, 1950.
12. MacKay, Joe. The Great Shutout Pitchers:
Twenty Profiles of a Vanishing Breed.
Jefferson, North Carolina, and London:
McFarland, 2004.
13. Meany, Tom. Baseball’s Greatest Pitchers.
New York: A. S. Barnes and Company, 1951.
World Series: Complete Play-by-Play of Every
Game 1903-1989. New York: St. Martin’s
Press, 1990.
15. Palmer, Pete, and Gary Gillette, eds. The
Baseball Encyclopedia. New York: Barnes
& Noble Books, 2004.
Retro sheet:
1. Sinins, Lee. Sabermetric Baseball
Encyclopedia.
2. Smith, Ira. Baseball’s Famous Pitchers:
Capers Cut and Records Made by
Fifty-three Pitching Greats. New York:
A. S. Barnes and Company, 1954.
3. Spatz, Lyle. Yankees Coming, Yankees
Going: New York Yankee Player
Transactions, 1903 Through 1999.
Jefferson, North Carolina, and London:
McFarland, 2000.
4. Thorn, John, Phil Birnbaum, Bill Deane,
et al. Total Baseball: The Ultimate
Baseball Encyclopedia. 8th ed. Wilmington,
Delaware: Sport Media Publishing Inc., 2004.
5. Westcott, Rich. Winningest Pitchers: Baseball’s
300-Game Winners. Philadelphia: Temple
University Press, 2002.
6. Wilbert, Warren N. What Makes an Elite
Pitcher? Young, Mathewson, Johnson,
Alexander, Grove, Spahn, Seaver, Clemens,
and Maddux. Jefferson, North Carolina, and
London: McFarland, 2003.
Full Name: Edward Stewart Plank
Born: August 31, 1875, at Gettysburg, PA (USA)
Died: February 24, 1926, at Gettysburg, PA (USA)
