Episode 1418
Lewis (baseball)
Tue, 2021-Mar-23 00:05 UTC
Length - 3:42
Direct Link
Welcome to featured Wiki of the Day where we read the summary of the featured Wikipedia article every day.
The featured article for Tuesday, 23 March 2021 is Lewis (baseball).
Lewis (first name unknown; fl. 1890) was an American professional baseball player who played in one career game with the Buffalo Bisons of the Players' League (PL) on July 12, 1890. After asking the Bisons manager for a tryout and pitching three innings, his earned run average (ERA) of 60.00 and walks plus hits per inning pitched (WHIP) rate of 6.667 became the highest in the history of the PL. As of August 2020, Lewis's first name, date of birth, and batting and pitching stances are unknown.
The PL was formed by the Brotherhood of Professional Base Ball Players in November 1889, after a dispute over pay with the National League (NL) and American Association (AA). The NL had implemented a reserve clause in 1879, which limited the ability of players to negotiate across teams for their salaries, and both the AA and NL had passed a salary cap of US$2,000 per player in 1885, equivalent to $50,156 in 2019; the owners of the NL had agreed to remove the salary cap in 1887 but failed to do so. Major League Baseball (MLB) considers the PL a "major" league for official statistical purposes.
On July 11, 1890, the Bisons's record stood at 17 wins and 42 losses, a poor performance that was attributed to the team's weak pitching. The following day the Bisons played against the Brooklyn Ward's Wonders in Brooklyn, and Lewis, a "local boy" born in Brooklyn, New York who stated he was a pitcher, asked Bisons player–manager Jack Rowe for a tryout. Rowe agreed, and Lewis was the starting pitcher for the game. In the three innings he pitched, Lewis allowed twenty earned runs for an earned run average (ERA) of 60.00 before he moved to left field, where he played for the remainder of the game. The Bisons lost, 28–16; the total of 44 runs set a record for most runs scored in an MLB game that stood until 1922. In the third inning Lewis allowed two home runs to Lou Bierbauer: this was only the second time a batter in a major league game had hit two home runs in a single inning. Newspaper accounts described Lewis as a "failure", "unfortunate", and a "much disgusted ball tosser" by the time he moved to left field.
Lewis's statistics do not qualify for rate comparison among players on the baseball statistics reference site Baseball-Reference. After the season, the PL folded and teams either merged with the NL, joined the AA, or folded outright. Baseball-Reference does not list Lewis as having played any other major or minor-league games.
This recording reflects the Wikipedia text as of 00:05 UTC on Tuesday, 23 March 2021.
For the full current version of the article, see Lewis (baseball) on Wikipedia.
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