The List: Class of 1879, 2/2: James Whyte Davis

James Whyte Davis (1826-1899), Builder
Eligible: 1876
Contributions: Played with the Knickerbocker Club from 1850-1880, most of that infamous club's history. Synonymous with the club and the sport at the time.

In an excellent article on the matter, John Thorn tells the tale of 'Too Late' James Whyte Davis, a man who was so tied to the Knickerbocker Base Ball Club that he has the unique distinction of being buried in the club's original 1855 flag. While he was not an original member of the club, Davis was one of the most respected men in baseball for almost three decades.

Born in 1826, in New York to a shipmaster and liquor seller, Davis found gainful employment as a broker of produce and merchandise, ending up in stock brokerage. Like so many young professionals, Davis grew up on bat-and-ball games and drew an invitation to join the Knickerbockers through his fire house connections (Oceana No. 36) in September 1850. In one of his early games, he was a few minutes late to the match and was not allowed to play. He argued viciously, but repeatedly told, 'too late.' The name stuck.

Woodcut of Davis

'Too Late' was a well-regarded as a player and played center field for the New York 'All-Star' team against the Brooklyn clubs in the 1858 Fashion Course games. He had a penchant for landing on the wrong side of history: at an 1856 meeting of the Knickerbocker rules committee, he stuck by Duncan Curry when Curry's 'old-fogies' won a motion to bar non-Knicks from joining games and keep the minimum players and innings both at seven. The following year, 1857, fellow Knick Louis Wadsworth led a contingent of New York baseball men (under the guise of founding a city-wide rules commission) to overthrow Curry and set the number of players and innings at nine. Ten years later, Davis was one of three delegates at the 1867 NABBP convention who rejected the Philadelphia Pythians, a black club, membership into the Association. There is no evidence of his own racism, and Davis's intention seems to have been keeping politics out of baseball and avoid dividing the Association, but in doing so, Davis drew baseball's first color line.

In 1875 the Knickerbockers held an exhibition match celebrating 25 years of play from Davis featuring players from all of Knicks history, including founding member Duncan F Curry. He quit the club in 1880, and the club folded following the 1882 season, long passed over for the professional game. Davis's wife died in the late 1880s and he died, penniless, in 1899. He was buried in his Knickerbocker uniform and wrapped in the tattered old flag of the Knicks, which had flown at the Elysian Fields from 1855-1875 and had hung over Davis's desk until his death.

Davis was the subject of recent controversy, as the 2005 Thorn article pointed out that he was thrown in an unmarked grave and erroneously recorded as James 'White' Davis. Despite an 1893 letter requesting money from old ballplayers, not a dime was ever raised, and his grave went unmarked. In 2016, as part of their ongoing campaign to mark and maintain old baseball gravesites with the help of donors and a grant from MLB, SABR placed a new headstone on the grave, giving 'Too Late' the memorial he always asked for.

The List: Class of 1879, 1/2: Candy Cummings

William Arthur "Candy" Cummings (1848-1924), Player
Eligible: 1879
Contributions: One of the top pitchers of the NA and early NL, Cummings is an all-time great control pitcher, holding the record for BB/9 (0.5) more than 140 years later. Credited with inventing the curveball.

Candy Cummings was born in the nowhere of Ware, Massachusetts, in 1848, the son of William and Mary, a dry goods merchant and a homemaker. He was the second of twelve children, and his father must have done good business, because the family moved to Brooklyn in 1850 and Candy was educated at a boarding school in Fulton, NY.

One summer day in 1863, legend claims, Cummings, aged 14, and some of his friends were throwing clam shells into Gowanus Creek in Brooklyn. The boys were adept at spinning and flicking the shells in a way that made them curve and arc through the air, and it occurred to young Arthur that "it would be a good joke on the boys if I could make a baseball curve the same way." Cummings practiced regularly, trying to find a way to curve a pitched ball the way he had with the shells. A small boy (even as a grown man, Cummings would never weigh more than 120 pounds), Cummings needed the practice (and his trick pitch) if he hoped to catch on as a competitive ballplayer. What he couldn't have known in 1863 was how valuable his diligent practice would prove.

In 1865, just 16 years old, he made the Brooklyn Star Junior squad as the starting pitcher and went 37-2. By the end of the season, approaching his 17th birthday, he was invited to join the Excelsior, perhaps the best club assembled to that point in history. Almost immediately, he was named the club's starting pitcher, and his teammates dubbed him 'Candy', an old Civil War term for the best of something.

By 1867 Candy had perfected his trick pitch, settling on the supination and rolling release employed in the throwing of breaking balls still today. By this time he was already one of the nation's best pitchers thanks to his impeccable command. Adding the curveball made him unhittable. Remember, no hitter had seen a curveball yet; they'd never taken a swing at one. Jim Creighton, among others, had thrown trick pitches that would dip or fade, like today's changeups, but these were generally regarded as a 'change of pace,' a pitch to disrupt timing, not something that would actively evade a bat.

In 1868 he jumped back to the Brooklyn Stars, now billing themselves as the "Championship team of the United States and Canada." Cummings was widely regaled as baseball's best pitcher, going 50-28 against the top amateur talent of the National Association from 1869-71. While the NA produced an offshoot professional league in 1871 (NAPBBP), Cummings remained an 'amateur' for that season, though he was undoubtedly compensated by the Stars for his play, and much of the sport's top talent was in the amateur NA (NAABBP) still. In 1871 Henry Chadwick called him the best player in baseball in one of his annual guides. Though he stayed with the Stars, many pro clubs offered him contracts.

Cummings joined the (openly) professional ranks in 1872. He received offers from most clubs in the Association, signed three of them, and was awarded by the NA to the New York Mutuals. Cummings was never shy about leading teams on or jumping clubs ('revolving'). For the four years he played in the NA he played with the Mutuals, Baltimore Canaries, Philadelphia Whites, and Hartford Dark Blues. He pitched every inning the Mutuals played in 1872, went 33-20 and finished second in the league in strikeouts.

In Baltimore ('73) he split pitching duties with aging amateur-era legend Asa Brainard, and the rest seemed to do him well, as he went 28-14 with a 124 ERA+, finishing fourth in the league in K/BB and second in ERA. In '74, now with Philadelphia, he pitched every single inning again and finished third in the league in pitcher WAR.

1875 was Cummings's best season, lured by a newer, grander contract to Hartford. Because of the length of the recently expanded season Hartford brought in a protege for Cummings, 19-year-old Tommy Bond, to learn the curveball and play right field. Cummings pitched every game for the first two months of the season, and when he thought Bond ready, the two were a formidable 1-2 punch as the season wore on, lending some rest to both men. In the end Cummings threw 416 innings, won 35 games with a 1.60 ERA (146 ERA+), struck out 82 batters (a total bested only once in NA history) and walked just four. This was good for a 12.3 WAR. Hartford, like all teams in all years of NA play, finished a distant second to those dominant, star-studded Boston clubs.

In 1876 the NL was founded, and Hartford jumped to the new league. Ironically, for the first time in his pro career, Cummings stayed with the same team. While his effectiveness continued (144 ERA+), Cummings was beginning to be outshone by the young Tommy Bond, who had replaced him as the team's primary starter by season's end. Cummings made 24 starts while Bond made 45, with the younger man going 31-13. On September 9, Cummings was started in both ends of a double-header, and pitched two complete games, winning both.

An older and worn-down
Cummings in 1877

At season's end, Cummings turned down all offers from NL clubs, signing instead with the player-founded International Association. When he attended the new league's general meeting, he was elected president. This did not stop him from his team-hopping ways, and in June 1877 the president of the IA quit his team and signed on with the NL's Cincinnati Red Stockings. Unfortunately, Cummings was too shopworn at this point, and his curveball was no longer novel - now he was just a small man with a worn out arm. He put up a dreadful-for-the-time 4.34 ERA and went 5-14.

By this point, Cummings was no longer an attraction and as such was not really welcome in organized baseball. Long renowned for revolving and reneging on contracts, Cummings had walked out on Baltimore partway through 1873, and the team blacklisted him. When brought before the association before the 1874 season to determine if the ban would be association-wide, Cummings alleged that Baltimore owed him back pay, though Baltimore produced records showing that he'd been paid up front and actually owed the team money. Because he was one of the association's top draws at the time, he was not reprimanded, but that stain was still on his record and meant more now that he wasn't as good. 

 

Teams were wary of him for other reasons, as well. In one 1874 start he had given up 17 hits and 10 runs in a loss that was noteworthy because one of his teammates was investigated by the association for throwing the contest. Long associated with gambling and a lack of commitment, Cummings had no suitors now.

Cummings tried a comeback in the IA in 1878, but it was short-lived. He returned to Ware to learn the wallpapering and painting trade, playing semipro sporadically thereafter. In 1884 he moved to Athol, MA and opened his own painting service. He and his wife raised five children, and Cummings gradually retreated from the baseball world, returning only when challenged as the inventor of the curveball. He penned countless articles and letters on the subject, responding ferociously when another pitcher of the amateur age claimed to have been the first to make a ball curve.

He was ultimately successful - all the major baseball writers of the age, from Spalding and Chadwick to Tim Murnane and Alfred H Spink hailed him as the creator of the curveball, and it was listed on his plaque when he was inducted to Cooperstown in 1939. Cummings passed in 1924.

Ultimately we will never know if he was the fist to use a curve, but he was almost certainly the first to use in in professional league competition, and was the only one using it so effectively for several years. He was also a great teacher of the pitch, creating star pitchers in Tommy Bond and Bobby Mathews. He was a fine originator and character of the sport's history, but above all, Cummings was a fantastic player that deserves the highest recognition from baseball history.