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Ted Lyons

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.

Ted Lyons was born on Friday, December 28, 1900 in Lake Charles, Louisiana. Lyons was 22 years old when he broke into the big leagues on July 2, 1923 with the Chicago White Sox. His height is 5 feet 11 inches and weight is 200 pounds. He had played his first game in 1923 and the last game in 1946. He bats both sides and throws with left.

He never pitched in the minor leagues and never pitched in a World Series, but 21 seasons of yeoman work for the seldom-contending White Sox earned his 1955 election by the BBWAA, Baseball Writers Association of America to the Hall of Fame. He attended the Baylor University with plans for a law career, but his college pitching made him a sought-after prospect. He had joined the team in Saint Louis on July 2 and relieved in the first Major League game he ever saw, retiring the three Browns he faced.

By the next season he was a regular starter, and in 1925 he led the American League in 21 victories for a fifth-place team. He repeated as American League win leader in 1927 and won 22 in 1930. In 1925-1930, he averaged nearly 19 wins a season, although the White Sox never finished in the first division. His most important weapon was excellent control. Never a strikeout pitcher, he walked only 1,121 batters in 4,161 innings pitched over his career and at one point in 1939 he hurled 42 consecutive innings without issuing a base on balls.

In the fall of 1942, the 41-year-old lifelong bachelor joined the United States Marines, spending part of his three-year hitch in combat. In 1946 he returned to the White Sox and pitched five more complete games, winning only one, his 260th. Thirty games into the season he replaced Dykes as White Sox manager. His managerial record through 1948 was 185-245, with the main criticism being that he was too easy-going to enforce discipline.

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