Mickey Welch

Michael Francis Welch won 307 games, pitched the first game in New York Giants franchise history, once struck out the first nine batters he faced, and won 44 games in a single season. He did most of it with a smile so constant that a cartoonist named him for it. He was called "Smiling Mickey" throughout his career and afterward, and the bemused grin that seemed plastered on his face became as defining as his changeup, which he threw before anyone called it that. He was not an overpowering pitcher. He studied hitters, varied his speeds, and beat them with intelligence. "I had a pretty good fastball," he said, "but I depended chiefly on a change of pace and an assortment of curve balls."

Brooklyn

His name at birth was Michael Francis Walsh. He was born on July 4, 1859, in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn to John Joseph Walsh and Bridget Guinan Walsh, Irish Catholic immigrants from Tipperary. His father was a horseshoer. By the 1865 New York State Census, the family had adopted the surname Welch, possibly after a sportswriter's misspelling in a box score, possibly to distinguish the boy from the many Michael Walshes in Brooklyn. The change was never formalized. Off the field, he used Walsh his entire life, and his gravestone in Calvary Cemetery in Queens reads Walsh.

He married Mary Whelihan on November 16, 1879, at St. Jerome Church in Holyoke, Massachusetts. They had nine children and stayed married for 56 years until Mary's death in October 1935.

Troy and New York

Welch pitched for the Poughkeepsie Volunteers at 18 and joined the Holyoke Shamrocks before the Troy Trojans of the National League signed him in 1880. He debuted on May 1 at 20 and won 34 games as a rookie while pitching 574 innings. When the Troy franchise folded after 1882, the players transferred to the new New York Gothams (soon renamed the Giants), and Welch went with them.

On May 1, 1883, he pitched the first game in the franchise's history, beating Boston 7-5 before 15,000 fans, the largest crowd for a baseball game in New York City to that point. Ulysses S. Grant was in attendance. His battery mate was Buck Ewing.

He and Tim Keefe formed one of the great pitching tandems of the 19th century. They had been together at Troy and stayed together in New York for a full decade. Keefe was quiet, serious, and aloof with a handlebar mustache. Welch was outgoing, cheerful, and clean-shaven. Despite opposite temperaments they worked well together, and their friendship lasted the rest of their lives. When Keefe died in April 1933, Welch served as a pallbearer.

Keefe was the higher-paid and more celebrated of the two. In 1885, Keefe earned $3,000 and Welch earned roughly half that, though it was Welch who had the historic season. He went 44-11 with a 1.66 ERA, 258 strikeouts, seven shutouts, and 55 complete games in 55 starts. His 17-game winning streak from July 18 through September 4 included four shutouts and four one-run victories. The 44 wins remain the all-time franchise record. The Giants finished 85-27 but came in second to Chicago's 87-25.

On August 28, 1884, he struck out the first nine Cleveland batters in order, a feat that went unrecognized until historian Harry Simmons documented it around 1941. He finished the game with 14 strikeouts. The record stood for 137 years until Pablo Lopez matched it in 2021.

He adapted to every major rules change of the 1880s as the game evolved from underhand delivery to legalized overhand pitching. Beginning in 1884, he negotiated a clause in his contract preventing the team from pitching him more than every other day, an early act of workload protection that was ahead of its time.

Pennants

In 1888, Welch and Keefe combined for 61 of the Giants' wins and carried the franchise to its first pennant. The Giants defeated the St. Louis Browns in the World Series in 10 games, with Keefe going 4-0. They won again in 1889 over the Brooklyn Bridegrooms, though Welch struggled in his starts.

When the Brotherhood of Professional Base Ball Players launched the rival Players League in 1890, Keefe jumped. Welch stayed. He signed a guaranteed three-year contract with the Giants at $4,000 per season and resigned from the Brotherhood, which he had helped found. "I am in the business for dollars and cents," he said, "and as the offer made by the old League was the better one, I accepted it." The pragmatism drew criticism from union colleagues, including Jim O'Rourke.

Welch won his 300th game during the 1890 season, becoming the third pitcher to reach the milestone after Pud Galvin and Keefe. The date is disputed across sources, with SABR citing August 29, the Baseball Hall of Fame citing August 11, and other references citing July 28. Regardless, no newspaper noticed. The milestone passed in silence.

By 1891 the Giants rostered both Welch and Keefe, two 300-game winners on the same staff. Welch's arm was fading. He pitched 22 games that year, went 5-9, and was released in May 1892 after a five-inning outing against Baltimore. He was 32.

Holyoke and the Polo Grounds

Welch returned to Holyoke, where he ran a hotel-saloon, a cigar shop, and eventually a dairy business with his sons. He was a member of the Elks Lodge for more than 50 years and a fixture in the community. Despite reportedly abstaining from hard liquor and tobacco, he was described as a "fabled beer drinker" who composed impromptu poems about beer and recited them to sportswriters in an Irish tenor voice.

In 1912, he visited the Polo Grounds for a game and encountered John McGraw, who hired him on the spot as the night watchman. He eventually worked as gatekeeper and press box attendant at both the Polo Grounds and Yankee Stadium, spending his summers in Manhattan with Mary at the Broadway Central Hotel and telling stories nobody else alive could verify. He insisted the players of his era were the equal of modern ones and selected an all-time team for the New York Sunday News in 1939 that omitted Babe Ruth and picked Jack Doyle over Lou Gehrig at first base.

Mary died in October 1935. Welch relocated to his grandson's home in Nashua, New Hampshire, and developed heart disease and gangrene of the left foot. He died on July 30, 1941, at New Hampshire State Hospital in Concord, at 82. His funeral returned him to Brooklyn. He was interred under the name Michael Walsh.

In 13 seasons he accumulated 307 wins, 210 losses, a 2.71 ERA, 525 complete games, 41 shutouts, and 1,850 strikeouts across 4,802 innings. He won 20 or more games nine times, seven of them in a row. The Veterans Committee elected him to the Hall of Fame in 1973, more than 80 years after his final major league appearance. His daughter Julia Welch Weiss, 84 years old, accepted on his behalf. He was the last surviving member of the original 1883 New York Giants.