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Fred Clarke

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.

Fred Clarke was born on Thursday, October 3, 1872, in Winterset, Iowa. He was 21 years old when he broke into the big leagues on June 30, 1894, with the Louisville Colonels. His height was 5 feet 10 inches with weight 165 pounds. He was the first successful boy manager. Discovered by Louisville owner Barney Dreyfuss in the minors, the left-handed batter quickly dominated pitching to become one of the game's early stars. Clarke went 5-for-5 in his first game. The leftfielder's playing style was compared to Ty Cobb's. Fearless and dynamic, he considered each season a war and each game a battle. In 1897 Clarke was made Louisville's manager. Despite the added responsibility, he batted a career-high 0.406.

After the 1899 season, Clarke was one of the 14 players who went to Pittsburgh when Dreyfuss virtually merged the Pirates and Colonels. With the best players from both teams, Clarke's powerhouse won 859 games in 1901-1909 with 0.634 winning percentage. He had accounted for three straight pennants, culminating with the first World Series in 1903, which the Pirates lost to the Boston Pilgrims. In 1909 Clarke guided Pittsburgh to a club-record 110 wins and hit two homers against Detroit in the World Series, which the Pirates won in seven games. Pushing sore, aging legs, Cap hit 0.324 in 1911 and then virtually stopped playing, though he appeared in 12 games in 1913-1915. After the 1915 season, he quit baseball and returned to his Kansas ranch.

Unfortunately he died on 14 Aug 1960 in Winfield, Kansas. He was one of baseball's toughest competitors, a top hitter and daring base runner. He had qualities of strong leadership, potent bat, and a star-studded lineup.

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