19th Century Star Pitcher Jim McCormick Remembers Baseball’s Best Tricks And Cheats
The MLB hurler played during the earliest days of the professional game and saw a lot of strange things
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A common joke, if not refrain, in sports is that if you aren’t cheating, you aren’t trying. This was especially true in the earlier days of professional baseball, when rules were still developing and players didn’t hesitate to take an advantage if they could see one. This was confirmed by 19th century star pitcher Jim McCormick, who discussed some of the best tricks and other things he saw during a stand-out playing career.
McCormick was born in Glasgow Scotland, eventually becoming the first Scottish-born player to appear in the major leagues. A right-hander, he was a powerful squat man (5'10" and 215 pounds), turning in one of the most dominant pitching careers in baseball history. In 10 seasons (1878–1887) he pitched for six different teams, but the bulk of his best years (1879–1884) were spent with the Cleveland Blues. In total, he combined to go 265–214 with a 2.43 ERA. He led the league in wins and ERA twice, with his best season coming in 1880 when he went 45–28 with a 1.85 ERA in 74 starts (including 72 complete games) that spanned 657.2 innings.
Occasionally appearing in the outfield, he was also a fair hitter, combining for a batting average of .236 with four home runs and 178 RBIs in 534 games. Unfortunately, his playing career was over at the age of 30 due to his wife dying and leaving him with their young child, on top of a successful saloon he operated in New Jersey that needed his attention. However, 30 years after he retired from playing, he admitted that an injured arm was the real reason for the cessation of his career. Even so, he has some of the most dominant stats of any pitcher who has not yet been enshrined in the Baseball Hall of Fame. With his career having ended nearly 150 years ago, he is relatively unknown except to the most diehard of baseball fans, and if he is to be inducted in the future that honor will need to be bestowed by the Veterans Committee.
McCormick passed away in 1918, but up until that time was a wonderful raconteur drawing on his days in baseball. In an article that appeared in the September 10…
