Jack Stivetts

Jack Stivetts could beat you two ways, with his arm and with his bat, one of the genuine two way stars of the 1890s. A big, cheerful coal miner's son they called Happy Jack, he won 203 games on the mound, pitched the first hitless game in Boston's history, and hit so well that the Beaneaters played him in the outfield on his days off. He held the record for home runs by a pitcher for forty years and batted close to .300 for his career, numbers that would make a fine hitter, let alone an ace. He pitched for one of the great dynasties of the decade alongside three Hall of Famers. Of the four of them, he's the one the Hall left out.

Happy Jack

Stivetts was born John Elmer Stivetts on March 31, 1868, in Ashland, Pennsylvania, a coal town in the anthracite country, and he worked in the mines as a boy before baseball carried him out. He was big and strong and cheerful, a wide grin and an easy laugh earning him the nickname Happy Jack, though a temper showed when he drank. He reached the major leagues with the St. Louis Browns of the American Association in 1889 and made an immediate mark, leading the league in earned run average as a rookie. The mines had given him a powerful build and a hard worker's habits, and he brought both to the mound. From his first season, he was a force.

The Two Way Star

What made Stivetts rare was that the bat was nearly as good as the arm. He won 203 games against 132 losses with a 3.74 earned run average, a front line starter for a decade, and he batted close to .298 with real power, good enough that his teams stuck him in the outfield or at first base when he wasn't pitching. He hit 35 home runs in a career spent mostly on the mound, a startling total for a pitcher of his time. The two skills made him a double weapon, a man who could win a game from the box or break it open at the plate. Few players in the history of the game have carried both gifts at once.

The Hitless Afternoon

Stivetts had his finest season in 1892, his first in Boston, and it ran 35 wins deep. The high point came on August 6, when he held the Brooklyn Grooms without a hit, winning 11 to nothing for the first hitless game in the history of the Boston franchise. He was overpowering that year, a 35 game winner on a pennant club, as good as any pitcher in the National League. The hitless game was the jewel of it, a performance that put his name in the record books for good. For one season, Happy Jack was the best pitcher in baseball, and he could hit too.

The Pitcher Who Hit Home Runs

In 1890, pitching for St. Louis, Stivetts hit seven home runs, the most any pitcher had ever hit in a season, a record that would stand for more than forty years until Wes Ferrell broke it in 1931. The mark captured what made him special, a man who did the pitcher's job and the slugger's both and did each well enough to lead a league. He kept hitting all through his career, often batting up in the order rather than at the bottom where pitchers hid. The home runs were no accident and no novelty. They were the work of a real hitter who happened to spend most of his days on the mound.

The Beaneaters Dynasty

Stivetts spent the heart of his career with the Boston Beaneaters, the best team of the 1890s, and he won everywhere he turned. He pitched on Boston's pennant winners of 1892, 1893, 1897, and 1898, a front line arm on a club stacked with stars under the manager Frank Selee. His rotation mate Kid Nichols and the outfielder Hugh Duffy both reached Cooperstown, as did the earlier Boston ace John Clarkson, while Stivetts, nearly their equal in his best years, didn't. Four pennants in seven seasons is a record most pitchers would trade for. He helped win them with his arm and his bat alike.

Ashland

Stivetts pitched until 1899 and then went home to Ashland, back to the coal country he had come from. He worked as a carpenter and drove a beer wagon, played and managed and umpired semipro ball around the local towns, and survived a bout of smallpox that might have killed a smaller man. He stayed in Ashland the rest of his life, a hometown hero who had pitched and hit his way to the top of the game and come back down to earth. He died there in 1930 at 62, after a fall. The two way star of the great Boston teams had ended where he began, among the miners and the coal.