Jim O'Rourke

James Henry O'Rourke recorded the first base hit in National League history, a single off Lon Knight on April 22, 1876, in the opening game of the league's first season. Twenty-eight years later, at age fifty-four, he caught a full nine-inning game for the New York Giants. Between those two events he compiled a .310 career batting average, earned a law degree from Yale, helped found baseball's first players' union, served as a fire commissioner in Bridgeport, Connecticut, and delivered every conversation in a style so elaborate that his teammates called him Orator Jim.

Bridgeport

O'Rourke was born on September 1, 1850, in East Bridgeport, Connecticut, the son of Hugh and Catherine O'Rourke, Irish Catholic immigrants from County Mayo. His father died in 1868. His older brother John also reached the major leagues. O'Rourke married Anna Kehoe in 1872 and eventually had eight children.

He began playing professionally in 1872 with the Middletown Mansfields of the National Association, then joined the Boston Red Stockings, where he played under Harry Wright and won pennants in 1873, 1874, and 1875. In 1874, the team toured England and Ireland; O'Rourke won a distance-throwing exhibition with a heave of 369 feet.

When the National League replaced the National Association in 1876, O'Rourke was in the Boston lineup on opening day. His first-inning single off Lon Knight put the first hit in the new league's record book. He batted .327 that first season and .362 the next, leading the league in runs with 68.

The Orator

The nickname arose from O'Rourke's characteristic grandiloquence. Unlike the stereotypical ballplayer of the era, he was sober, well-educated, and dignified, with an elaborate vocabulary that both amused and bewildered his contemporaries. When a player asked him for a salary advance, he reportedly replied, "I'm sorry, but the exigencies of the occasion and the condition of our exchequer will not permit anything of the sort at this period of our existence." His obituary noted that "words of great length and thunderous sound simply flowed out of his mouth."

He enrolled at Yale Law School in 1885, with his New York Giants contract stipulating that the team would pay his tuition. He graduated with a law degree in June 1887 and passed the Connecticut bar that November, all while playing a full major league schedule.

Buffalo, New York, and the Players League

O'Rourke moved to the Buffalo Bisons in 1881, where he served as captain and manager alongside teammates including Dan Brouthers. In 1884 he led the National League in hits (162) and batting average (.347) and hit for the cycle against Cap Anson's Chicago White Stockings on June 16.

He joined the New York Giants in 1885 and helped them win World Series titles in 1888 and 1889. At age thirty-eight, he batted .321 with 33 stolen bases in 1889 and hit .389 with 2 home runs and 7 RBI in the World Series against Brooklyn.

In 1890, O'Rourke joined the Players League, the labor revolt organized by John Montgomery Ward against the reserve clause. His Yale law degree made him especially valuable to the cause. He, Ward, Tim Keefe, and Buck Ewing were all named in an injunction filed by Giants owner John B. Day and prevailed in court. O'Rourke posted career-best numbers in the Players League at age thirty-nine, batting .360 with 172 hits, 115 RBI, and a .515 slugging percentage.

The 1904 Game

O'Rourke returned to Bridgeport after the 1893 season and spent the next decade running minor league teams in the Connecticut State League, practicing law, and serving as Bridgeport's fire commissioner. He helped found the National Association of Professional Baseball Leagues, the governing body of the minor leagues, in 1902. He continued playing in the minors well into his fifties.

On September 22, 1904, John McGraw invited his old friend to catch the Giants' pennant-clinching game against Cincinnati at the Polo Grounds. O'Rourke was fifty-four years and twenty-one days old. He caught all nine innings from Joe McGinnity, went 1-for-4 with a single and a run scored, and committed one error. He became the oldest player to appear in a National League game.

He told a reporter in January 1910 that the secret to his vitality was "baseball. It is the real elixir of life." He described himself as a lifelong teetotaler who never touched liquor or tobacco.

O'Rourke died of pneumonia on January 8, 1919, in Bridgeport, at sixty-eight. He had contracted a severe cold on New Year's Day while braving a blizzard to consult a client. He was elected to the Hall of Fame in 1945 by the Old Timers Committee. His career spanned the entire history of organized professional baseball in America, from the National Association's founding through the dead-ball era, and his single off Lon Knight remains the first line in the National League's record book.