Charles Benjamin Adams, nicknamed “Babe”, was born May 18, 1882 in Tipton, Indiana.
Best remembered for pitching three complete-game victories as a rookie to help the Pittsburgh Pirates win the 1909 World Series, Babe Adams was one of the Deadball Era’s greatest control pitchers.
Welcome to the Baseball History Podcast: Featuring This Week in Baseball History, baseball dictionary and a tour of baseball cities. I’m your game announcer Bob Wright.
This is game 29 of the 2010 baseball season
In the first inning let’s take a look at This Week in Baseball History for the 3 week of July.
July 17
1914 Against the Giants, control artist Babe Adams of the Pittsburgh Pirates pitches an entire 21-inning game without issuing a single walk. The contest, which is the longest game in big league history without a base-on-balls, is decided by Larry Doyle’s home run in the top of giving Rube Marquard, who also goes the distance, the 3-1 victory.
Charles Benjamin Adams, nicknamed “Babe”, was born May 18, 1882 in Tipton, Indiana.
Best remembered for pitching three complete-game victories as a rookie to help the Pittsburgh Pirates win the 1909 World Series, Babe Adams was one of the Deadball Era’s greatest control pitchers.
His career average of 1.29 walks per 9 innings pitched was the second lowest of the 20th century; his 1920 mark of 1 walk per 14.6 innings was a modern record until 2005
Adams was actually born left-handed, but he developed his right hand by throwing stones at tree stumps and rabbits after a childhood accident nearly severed the little finger of his left hand.
In 1905 a local scout recommended him to the Class C team from Parsons, Kansas. He went on to win 30 games for Parsons, prompting the St. Louis Cardinals to purchase his contract.
Adams opened the season with the big league club, making his major league debut on April 18, 1906. He started and lost what turned out to be his only outing for St. Louis, going four innings and giving up six runs to the Chicago Cubs. Ten days later the Cards sent Adams to Louisville of the Class AA American Association, which immediately released him to the Denver Grizzlies of the Class A Western League. He remained with Denver through 1907, the year he led the Western League with 23 wins.
The Pittsburgh Pirates purchased Adams’ contract at the tail end of that season and pitched him in four games, not enough for him to shake his rookie status. Loaned back to Louisville for 1908, he went 22-12 and walked only 40 batters in 312 innings.
By that point Adams had been tagged with the nickname “Babe,” though its precise origin remains uncertain. According to one story, his Denver teammates pinned it on him in 1907 after a woman asking for his autograph told him he had a nice round face like a baby’s. But James Skipper, Jr., in his book Baseball Nicknames, states that Adams earned the nickname during his 1908 Louisville stint because female fans hollered “Oh, you babe!” whenever he took the mound. Either way, Adams apparently was popular with the ladies.
As a 27 year-old rookie, Adams pitched mostly in relief and helped the Pirates win the pennant by pitching 130 innings and compiling a 12-3 record with a stunning 1.11 Earned Run Average, a record for rookies that still stands.
Nonetheless he was still a relatively unheralded member of a pitching staff that included Vic Willis, Howie Camnitz, Lefty Leifield, Deacon Phillippe, and Sam Leever, so Fred Clarke’s decision to start him in Game One of the World Series against the Detroit Tigers came as a shock.
According to legend, National League president John Heydler had seen Washington pitcher Dolly Gray hold Detroit scoreless for 18 innings in a game earlier that season and suggested to Clarke that Adams and Gray were similar in style; although ignoring the fact that Babe was a righthander and Gray a lefty!. But Honus Wagner biographers Dennis and Jeanne DeValeria contend that it was simply Adams’ extraordinary composure and terrific final two months of the season (when he went 7-2) that led Clarke to his decision.
Surviving a ragged first inning in which the Tigers scored their only run of the game, and with the assistance of a great defensive play by center-fielder Tommy Leach in the seventh, Adams fed the Tigers a steady diet of low curves and pitched a complete game six-hitter, winning 4-1.
In Game Five he was as sharp as he had to be, giving up four runs but striking out eight in a six-hit, 8-4 victory that gave the Pirates a 3-2 lead in the Series. In the seventh and final game at Detroit’s Bennett Park, Adams again yielded just six hits in an 8-0 shutout. The rookie had won three games in a World Series, a feat that no rookie has duplicated to this day. Adams became the first rookie in World Series history to start and win Game 7, which has only been repeated once in baseball history by John Lackey in 2002.
Adams followed up his 1909 heroics with an 18-9 season in 1910 and back-to-back 20-win seasons in 1911 and 1912, establishing himself as one of the National League’s best pitchers.
Perhaps his greatest performance came on July 17, 1914, against the Giants and Rube Marquard, when he pitched 21 innings, walked none, and still lost a 3-1 decision. The game may have had negative consequences for both pitchers; Marquard lost 22 games that year while Babe’s record slipped to 13-16. The following year Adams rebounded to 14-14, but in 1916 he developed a sore shoulder and started off the season with a 2-9 record.
On August 3 the Pirates released him to St. Joseph, Missouri, of the Class A Western League. He decided not to report.
When his shoulder gained strength over the winter, Adams reported to St. Joseph and put together a stellar 1917 season, going 20-13 with a 1.75 Earned Run Average and just 34 walks in 308 innings. The team moved to Hutchinson, Kansas, in mid-season, providing the added benefit of being close enough to Mount Moriah to go home between starts.
Hutchinson transferred Babe’s contract to Kansas City of the American Association for the 1918 campaign, but players like Adams who were exempt from the draft because they were over age 35 suddenly became attractive to major league clubs. Babe re-joined the Pirates and made three late-season appearances.
The Babe Adams of old had returned, his control even better than before his shoulder injury. Adams was never a hard thrower and his sore arm cost him what speed he had, but he could put the ball exactly where he wanted to. Despite being the National League’s oldest pitcher in 1920, he led the league in shutouts and allowed just 18 walks in 263 innings, the fewest ever for a pitcher with more than 250 innings.
During Babe Adams Day at Forbes Field in June 1923, Babe sounded a little like Satchel Paige: “I cannot explain my lasting much longer than many other pitchers on any other theory than this: I always take things easy, and I never worry.”
At age 43 he was still effective enough to toss a shutout inning in the 1925 World Series. Adams remained with the Pirates through August 1926, finally being waived out of the league with a career record of 194-140 and a 2.76 Earned Run Average.
He dabbled one more season in the minors, then returned to his farm in Mount Moriah in 1928.
A failed Florida land deal and the Great Depression took their toll on Adams’ finances. He continued to farm and in the 1930s became a newspaper reporter, covering local sports.
In 1958 he and and his wife moved to Silver Spring, Maryland, to live with a daughter.
Babe Adams died July 27, 1968 at age 86 in Silver Spring, Maryland.
In 2002 the Missouri General Assembly renamed U.S. 136 the Babe Adams Highway.
A large part of this biography comes from the SABR Baseball Biography Project written by Brian Stevens. It can be found online at http://bioproj.sabr.org
In this inning we’ll open up the Baseball Dictionary
Under the letter: M
M&M Boys Roger Maris and Mickey Mantle when they were members of the New York Yankees from 1960 through 1966, “chasing the Babe’s home-run crown”.
The term clearly was inspired by the name of the popular M&M chocolate candy.
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