On September 8, 2012 — The Nationals announce that they are shutting down 24 year old ace pitcher Stephen Strasburg in order to limit his innings on the mound in his first full season since undergoing Tommy John surgery in 2010. While other teams have taken similar decisions in the past, it is the first time a team involved in a pennant race has deliberately taken one of its top pitchers out of action of its own volition. Strasburg is 15-6, 3.16, with 197 strikeouts in 159 1/3 innings. His absence will be sorely felt when the Nats drop a five-game NLDS series to the Cardinals next month, in large part because of a lack of pitching depth after compiling the best record in major league baseball.
1900 – The New York Times publishes a letter to the editor from Joseph Mann regarding Cap Anson’s book A Ballplayers’s Career‚ reviewed a week earlier. Anson’s is the first autobiography by a major league player. According to Mann‚ Anson’s book credits him‚ while a pitcher at Princeton‚ as the first pitcher to throw the curve ball‚ and the pitcher writes to expand on that. He says it was he who should receive credit‚ not Candy Cummings or Charles Avery of Yale‚ who he beat 3 – 0 on May 29‚ 1875‚ allowing no hits. He relates that in 1874 the Philadelphia team played at Princeton and‚ before the game and between innings Candy Cummings would stand at home plate and throw overhand down to second base curving the ball. Cummings also pitched that day and Mann says that Candy’s catcher said that sometimes Candy’s pitches curved‚ but not always. Mann says that day he got “two base hits and three singles against Cummings” and that he saw no curves‚ but was intrigued by the throws to second base. Mann says he worked on the curve that fall and over the winter unveiling it that spring. Mann ends his letter with: “I think I’ve said enough to establish the fact that I was the one who initiated the movement and revolutionized the pitching department of baseball.” A Mr. Rankin will answer Mann’s claims with a September 26 letter citing newspaper accounts of Alphonse Martinand Candy Cummings throwing curves in 1870.
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June 10, 1900
