Burleigh Grimes: Ol’ Stubblebeard

125 years and one day ago (on August 18, 1893), Burleigh Grimes was born in Emerald, WI. Grimes would later spend 19 years as one of Major League Baseball’s last legal spit-ballers and would eventually become a member of the baseball Hall of Fame in 1964, voted in by the Veterans Committee 30 years after his retirement.

Grimes was one of the last legal spit-ballers, one whose craft was put at risk when, in February 1920, the joint rules committee for Major League Baseball outlawed the pitch, Initially, the committee declared that they would allow pitchers currently using it to continue for just one more season. Grimes and other spit-ballers protested, claiming that it took years to develop their craft. The pleas were well received; Grimes and 16 other hurlers were granted lifetime exemptions from the spit-ball ban, enabling Grimes to pitch in the majors until 1934.

“I used to chew slippery elm – the bark, right off the tree. Come spring the bark would get nice and loose and you could slice it free without any trouble. What I checked was the fiber from inside, and that’s what I put on the ball. The ball would break like hell, away from right-handers and in on lefties. You need slippery elm like a motor needs oil, to keep it running smoothly.”

— Burleigh Grimes (as reported by Bill Francis, National Baseball Hall of Fame)

The slippery elm juice that Grimes used irritated his skin and so he refused to shave on the day of or before his starts, giving him the nickname Ol’ Stubblebeard. Armed with the 1920’s version of “sticky stuff,” Grimes was one of the most menacing and effective starting pitchers in baseball from the late 1910s to the early 1920s. From 1918 to 1929, Grimes won 219 games, by far the most in Major League Baseball (Pete Alexander had the second most with 183 W’s).

“When he pitched, he always had a two-day black stubble on his face. He walked with a swagger that infuriated batters, and when he measured a hitter from the mound he would peel back his lips to show yellow teeth in a snarl. He often threw at the batters’ heads without the slightest hesitation.”

— New York Times (December 10, 1985), from Grimes’ SABR Bio

Cooperstown Cred: Burleigh Grimes

• Career: 270-212 (.560 WL%), 3.53 ERA
• Career: 46.7 pitching WAR (Wins Above Replacement), 108 ERA+
• Two times in the top 5 of the N.L. MVP voting
• Won 20 or more games 5 times
• Led N.L. in Complete Games 4 times
• Member of 1931 World Champion St. Louis Cardinals (2-0, 2.04 ERA, won Game 7)
• 6th all-time with 1,252 assists for pitchers (behind five Hall of Famers)

(cover photo: Society of American Baseball Research/Pittsburgh Post-Gazette)

In Burleigh Grimes’ official rookie season (1917 with the Pittsburgh Pirates), he pitched for a miserable team, one that went 51-103 and finished last in the National League. Grimes went 3-16 with a 3.53 ERA; the ERA doesn’t seem bad but it was the last year of the dead-ball era.

Burleigh Grimes with Brooklyn

A January 1918 trade sent Grimes to Wilbert Robinson’s Brooklyn Robins and the 24-year old right-hander became a star, going 19-9 with a 2.13 ERA. Grimes only started 21 games in 1919 due to the time he spent in the Navy.

Lord Burleigh was spectacular in 1920, going 23-11 with a 2.22 ERA, leading Brooklyn to the N.L. Pennant.

Grimes started 3 games in the World Series. In Game 2, he tossed a 7-hit shutout to defeat the Cleveland Indians 3-0. In Game 5, Grimes was shelled, giving up 7 runs in 3.1 innings of work. Grimes was brought back on a single day of rest to match up in Game 7 with Cleveland’s Stan Coveleski (one of the other 16 grandfathered spit-ballers and also a future Hall of Famer). Coveleski tossed a 5-hit shutout, defeating Grimes and Brooklyn by a 3-0 score.

Grimes won 20+ games in 3 of the next 4 seasons with Brooklyn, even as the team failed to return to the World Series. By WAR, Burleigh’s best season was in 1921, when he went 22-13 with a 2.83 (good enough for a 7.8 WAR).

The 1924 Dodgers fell one game shy of the N.L. Pennant, with Grimes going 22-13 (3.82 ERA) while 33-year-old Dazzy Vance won the N.L. MVP while going 28-6 with a 2.16 ERA.

1925 was a miserable year for Grimes and the Robins; Burleigh went 12-19 with a 5.04 ERA. After another mediocre campaign in 1926, Grimes was dealt to the New York Giants as part of a 3-team deal. After 9 years in Brooklyn, Grimes would never spend more than 2 seasons with any team in the final 7 campaigns of his career.

Renaissance for Burleigh Grimes

Burleigh Grimes spent one year (1927) with the Giants, going 19-8 with a 3.54 ERA. In February 1928, he was traded again, this time to the Pittsburgh Pirates. At 34. Grimes had a renaissance campaign, going 25-14 with a 2.99 ERA, leading the majors with 28 complete games and 4 shutouts which helped him finish 3rd in the N.L. MVP voting.

Grimes had another solid season with Pittsburgh in 1929 but was traded to the Boston Braves after a salary dispute. In the middle of the 1930 season, Grimes was traded again, this time to the St. Louis Cardinals. Grimes had been positively awful in Boston (going 3-5 with a 7.35 ERA) but, in St. Louis, he went 13-6 with a 3.01 ERA and helped the Redbirds win the N.L. Pennant.

The Cardinals’ new ace righty, now 36 years old, was tapped to start Game 1 of the World Series against the defending champion Philadelphia Athletics. Grimes’ opponent was Lefty Grove, who had led the majors with 28 wins and a 2.54 ERA during the regular season. Grove and the A’s defeated the Cards 5-2, with Grimes giving up five runs, including home runs to future Hall of Famers Al Simmons and Mickey Cochrane.

In Game 5, with the series tied at 2, Grimes and the Athletics’ George Earnshaw matched zeroes through 7 innings, with Grove coming out of the pen to pitch the 8th. In the top of the 9th, another future Hall of Famer (Jimmie Foxx) hit a 2-run blast off Grimes to give the A’s a 2-0 win. Two days later, the A’s clinched their second straight World Championship in Game 6.

The 1931 World Series: Philadelphia vs St. Louis

In 1931, Burleigh Grimes and the Cardinals got another shot at the mighty Athletics in the Fall Classic. In what was the last quality campaign of his career, Grimes went 17-9 with a 3.65 ERA in the regular season, helping the Redbirds to a 101-win season.

In the World Series, the teams split the first two games in St. Louis, with future Hall of Famer Lefty Grove winning Game 1 and the Cardinals’ top lefty, Bill Hallahan, winning Game 2 thanks to a 3-hit shutout.

In Game 3, the 31-year old Grove was back on the hill, facing the 37-year old Grimes. The Athletics’ ace left-hander, the A.L. MVP (who went 31-4 with a 2.06 ERA in the regular season), was pitching on 3 days rest, hardly unusual for any pitcher in the ’30’s. After being out-pitched by Grove twice in the 1930 World Series, Grimes finally got the best of him, out-dueling the 300-game winner for a 5-2 win in a complete-game victory.

With the Redbirds up 3 games to 2, Athletics manager Connie Mack used Grove again in Game 6 and the A’s won easily 8-1. This set up a Game 7 matchup between Ol’ Stubblebeard and Earnshaw, another ace for the Philadelphia who won 21 games and finished 11th in the MVP voting for his work during the regular season.

Although he needed to get bailed out with 2 outs in the 9th inning by Bill Hallahan, Grimes out-pitched Earnshaw; the Cardinals defeated the Athletics 4-2 to win the franchise’s 2nd World Championship.

In Charles F. Faber’s SABR Bio of Grimes, Faber called Lord Burleigh’s Game 7 performance one of “gutsiest performances in the history of baseball,” because he was pitching with an inflamed appendix. During Game 7, ice packs were applied throughout to help Grimes pitch through the pain and, after he gave up 2 runs and loaded the bases in the 9th inning, manager Gabby Street decided to summon Hallahan to get the final out.

At the time, MVPs for the Fall Classic were not conferred but, if they had been, Grimes would not have earned it despite going 2-0 with a 2.04 ERA. His teammate Hallahan, who won Games 2 and 5 and got the final out in Game 7, was the true star of the series, posting a 0.49 ERA in 18.1 innings with his work in his two complete-game wins and his relief work in the deciding 7th game.

Twilight Years for Burleigh Grimes

After the 1931 campaign, with the Cards wanting to make room for a young phenom named Dizzy Dean, Grimes was traded to the Chicago Cubs for pitcher Bud Teachout and future Hall of Fame outfielder Hack Wilson. In his last three seasons, bouncing from Chicago back to St. Louis to the New York Yankees and back to Pittsburgh, Grimes went 13-23 with a 4.73 ERA.

His playing career over after the 1934 season, Grimes spent a couple of years managing and coaching in the minor leagues before getting the opportunity to manage the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1937-38. The Dodgers weren’t very good during those seasons, a few years from the dynasty they would become. In two years, Grimes’ Dodgers went 62-91 and 69-80.

Hall of Famer Burleigh Grimes

Burleigh Grimes was first put on the Hall of Fame ballot in 1937, three years after his retirement. He got 0.5% of the vote. In his next 9 appearances on the ballot (from 1939 to 1955), Grimes never got more than 5.8% of the vote. In 1956, his vote total spiked to 13%. From there, he went to 27% in 1958 and 34% in 1960 before sagging slightly to 27% in 1962. Two years later, Grimes was inducted into the Hall of Fame by the Veterans Committee, which put four other players and former Yankees manager Miller Huggins into the Hall.

Many Hall of Fame commentators consider Grimes a borderline Hall of Fame candidate. Although he won 270 games, he also lost 212. Grimes is one of 28 pitchers in MLB history to log over 4,000 innings on the mound. His 270 wins are the 23rd most out of those 28 hurlers. He has fewer wins than Tommy John (288 wins) and Jim Kaat (283 wins), both of whom remain outside the Hall.

Burleigh Grimes, born just over 125 years ago, passed away at the age of 92 in 1985, 21 years after he was inducted into baseball’s Hall of Fame.

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