Home > Baseball > MLB Hall of Famers > Burleigh Grimes

Burleigh Grimes

Baseball is an outdoor sport in which a pitcher pitches a hard, fist sized ball to the hitting area of a batter. The batter hits the hard ball with a tapered, smooth, cylindrical bat made up of wood or metal. The batsman scores by running counter-clockwise within the four markers called the bases arranged at the corners of a diamond. Baseball is sometimes called hardball to differentiate it from similar games such as softball.

Burleigh Arland Grimes was born on August 18, 1893, in Emerald, Wisconsin and died in Clear Lake, Wisconsin at age of 92. He was an American professional baseball player, and the last pitcher officially permitted to throw the spitball. He made his major league debut on September 10, 1916 for the Pittsburgh Pirates and in 1920, when the spitball was banned, he was named as one of the 17 established pitchers who would be allowed to continue to throw the pitch. The 26 year old Grimes made the most of this advantage and over the course of his 19-year career, won 270 games and pitched in four World Series.

During the 1920s, Grimes was a standout, twice leading the league in victories and five times topping the 20 win mark. He was durable, leading the league four times in starts and three times in innings pitched. After five straight winning seasons for Brooklyn, his 19 losses in 1925 topped the NL. Following a 12-13 mark in 1926, he was traded to the Giants and was 19-8 in his one season for New York. He peaked as a 25-game winner for Pittsburgh in 1928.

Grimes carried his cantankerous ways with him as manager of the Dodgers, though the team was rarely in a game long enough to make battling tactics pay off. He took over a bedraggled club that had frustrated Casey Stengel in 1937. His chances of developing a winner were undermined when new boss Larry McPhail brought shortstop Leo Durocher to the team. Grimes and Durocher were both battlers, but Durocher was brash and charming, while Grimes was simply pugnacious.

A decade of minor league managing followed for Grimes, during which he never ceased his aggressive baseball behavior. Although he was a genial companion off the field, he raged at every close decision against his team. Burleigh Grimes was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1964.

Back to MLB Hall of Famers