Lewis (baseball)

Professional baseball had existed in America since at least 1871, when the National Association of Professional Base Ball Players (NA) formed; two years earlier the Cincinnati Red Stockings of the National Association of Base Ball Players paid salaries to ten of their players. In 1876, the National League (NL) was formed, adopting six of the best teams from the NA, which then folded. In September 1879, in a secret meeting, the NL established a reserve clause by which teams could "reserve" five players per year that could not sign or negotiate with other teams without permission from the owner of the team on which the reserved player was signed.[1][2] This was an effort to limit player's salaries to reduce club losses.[3] By the mid-1880s, the reserve clause had been expanded to eleven players per team,[1] and after the 1885 season the NL and the American Association passed a salary limit of US$2,000 per player,[4] equivalent to $50,156 in 2019.[5] After the change, the Brotherhood of Professional Base Ball Players, an organization once focused on issues such as helping former players' widows, turned to labor issues.[6] The club owners agreed to remove the salary cap in 1887, but reneged on their promise, and instead instituted a "classification system" which limited players' salaries based on their classification on a scale from A–E, "A" players being the highest-paid.[7] The Brotherhood, which had 107 players in 1886,[8] announced its intention to leave the NL on November 4, 1889.[9] After being advised by Brotherhood lawyers not to incorporate before each individual team incorporated,[10] the Players' League (PL) was launched on December 16, 1889, with clubs from Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Brooklyn, Buffalo, Chicago, Cleveland, and Pittsburgh.[9] Salary for the players for the 1890 season was set to the salary they had received in 1889, except that those affected by the classification system received their 1888 salary. The salaries were paid by gate receipts.[10] In 1968, the MLB's Special Baseball Records Committee determined the PL was a "major league" for official statistical purposes.[11]

Despite defeating the Cleveland Infants 23–2 on Opening Day and starting the season with four consecutive wins, Buffalo had fallen to last place in the league by May 17 and, after a brief stint in seventh place, returned to last place on June 2.[12] Author and baseball historian Norman L. Macht attributed Buffalo's poor record to the performance of their pitchers,[13] and author and baseball historian Ed Koszarek stated the Bisons still needed pitchers by the time John Buckley made his debut for the team on July 15;[14] by July 11, the day before Lewis made his debut, the team had a record of 17–42, the worst in the PL.[12]

A Sporting Life clip that describes Lewis as a "much disgusted ball tosser"; taken from an article dated July 19, 1890[15]

Born in Brooklyn, New York,[16] Lewis, according to Macht, was a "local boy" who stated he was a pitcher and asked for a tryout when Buffalo played against the Brooklyn Ward's Wonders on July 12, 1890, at Eastern Park in Brooklyn.[13][17][18] Bisons player–manager Jack Rowe started Lewis on the mound.[13]

Lewis probably[note 1] pitched in the top of the first, second, and third innings of the Bisons' game on July 12, during which he allowed 20 earned runs over three innings pitched for an ERA of 60.00.[note 2] After the third inning, he moved to left field and left fielder Ed Beecher switched to pitcher.[13][16][17] In the third inning Lou Bierbauer hit two home runs off Lewis's pitching;[22] this was only the second time a batter in a major league game had hit two home runs in a single inning.[11][23] Lewis did manage to record at least one strikeout as a pitcher.[16][20] Defensively, Lewis recorded two putouts and three assists on five total chances as a pitcher, with no putouts or assists on no chances as a left fielder. As a batter, Lewis recorded one hit over five at bats for a batting average of .200, and scored a run.[16] Baseball-Reference credits Lewis with only two innings played in the outfield,[16] though several box scores[17][15][24] only list nine players as having played for Buffalo in the game, the game as lasting nine innings, and Lewis as having played only in left field and as a pitcher. A July 13, 1890 article in the Brooklyn Daily Eagle described Beecher as an "improvement" over Lewis as a pitcher, but Sporting Life's notes on the game say Beecher "fared but little better".[15][25]

Brooklyn won the game 28–16. The total of 44 runs set a record for the most combined runs scored in a single MLB game which stood until 1922.[26] Lewis recorded a loss for his pitching performance.[16] According to a box score in The New York Times, 600 people attended the game,[17] compared to attendances of 2,156 for a PL game in Boston, 2,508 for a PL game in Philadelphia, and 4,304 for a PL game in New York.[27] The game in which Lewis played lasted two hours and three minutes, according to The New York Times; Lon Knight and Charley Jones served as umpires.[17] The wind during the game was described as "chilly",[28] with "awfully stiff" winds blowing in from Jamaica Bay and fans "shiveringly [clinging] to their seats".[21]

Several articles recounted Lewis's performance in the game. A contemporary writer for The Pittsburgh Press described Lewis's tryout as a "disastrous experiment" and called the game "one of the greatest slugging matches ever seen since curve pitching came into vogue,"[24] while Sporting Life reported that "[t]he Buffalos tried a new pitcher named Lewis in the box, but after three innings he retired to left field, a much disgusted ball tosser".[15] The Brooklyn Daily Eagle said that "the way [Ward's Wonders] pounded Lewis' delivery must have convinced that aspirant for fame that the [P]layers' [L]eague [was] above his class", and described him as "unfortunate".[25] Other contemporary papers covered the game: the Buffalo Courier said Lewis was "slaughtered";[29] the New-York Tribune called him a "failure";[30] and the St. Louis Post-Dispatch said the game was "full of accidents", though "Lewis was used worse than all the rest, as he was knocked completely out of the box".[28] A 1963 article in Baseball Digest described Lewis as a "neophyte" whose "first name has been lost to posterity",[31] and as of 2007, Lewis’s first name remained "mercifully unknown", according to Macht.[13]

Lewis did not make another appearance for the Bisons during the rest of the season, and his first name, date of birth, and batting and pitching stances are unknown as of August 2020,[13][16] though a writer for The Pittsburgh Press described Lewis as a "young man" when he played for the team.[24] The Brooklyn Daily Eagle used the performance to argue that Buffalo should ask other clubs to borrow pitchers for the team.[25] Lewis's ERA of 60.00 and WHIP rate of 6.667 were both the highest on the Bisons and the highest in the history of the PL, though his statistics do not qualify for rate comparison amongst players on Baseball-Reference because he did not meet the minimum threshold of one inning pitched per team game for the season that the site requires for ERA and WHIP comparisons across players.[32][33][34] Lewis does not hold the MLB single-season highest ERA record among non-qualifiers, which is infinity.[35] Baseball-Reference does not list Lewis as having played in any other major or minor-league games.[16]

Buffalo finished the season with a 36–96 record, last in the PL and ​46 ¹⁄₂ games behind the Boston Reds, who had the best record in the league;[36] the PL itself would fold after the 1890 season, due to a combination of lacking funds, poor leadership, inadequate playing fields, and a poor governance structure,[37] despite having future Hall-of-Fame players Hugh Duffy, Buck Ewing, Ed Delahanty, and King Kelly on club rosters and, according to one estimate, having better attendance numbers than the NL, though neither league kept accurate attendance data.[38] After the season, the Chicago Pirates, Ward's Wonders, the New York Giants, and the Pittsburgh Burghers merged with their respective teams in the NL, the Reds and Philadelphia Athletics joined the AA,[39] the Infants' players were released after owner Al Johnson purchased the Cincinnati Reds, and the Bisons folded.[14] According to Devine, most PL ballplayers were allowed to return to their former NL or AA teams, the NL still under the reserve system.[40]

• List of Major League Baseball players with unidentified given names

• Devine, James R. (1994). "Baseball's Labor Wars in Historical Context: The 1919 Chicago White Sox as a Case-Study in Owner-Player Relations". Marquette Sports Law Review. Marquette University Law School. 5 (1).