Eddie Plank, Gettysburg, Adams County

As I mentioned when I wrote about the Pottsville Maroons, I am not the biggest sports fan in the world. I respect the athletes and everything; I just don't find it very entertaining to watch other people play a game. I support the Philadelphia teams more out of proximity than anything, though between the Phanatic and Gritty I also think we have the best mascots. 

Having said that, I can definitely appreciate that sports have had a role in the history of our country and our state, and when I was in Gettysburg for my birthday last year, I discovered the story that I'm sharing with you today. I'd never heard of Eddie Plank, but he's quite the legend in his hometown.

The marker stands at the intersection of Carlisle Street
and Lincoln Avenue, Gettysburg

He was born in Gettysburg on August 31, 1875. He was the middle of seven children born to David Plank, the Gettysburg tax collector, and the former Martha McCreary. In his late teens he began playing baseball on local teams, batting and throwing left, and as a young man attended Gettysburg Academy. He never went to Gettysburg College, a fact which often gets misstated in various sources, but he was allowed to play for the college's team. That's what he was doing during World War I, when Dwight Eisenhower was running Camp Colt on the Gettysburg battlefield; as I mentioned in this post, Eddie was among the college players who faced the soldiers in a friendly baseball game.

Eddie skipped right over the whole minor league business and went straight to the big leagues. This was partly due to the fact that someone recommended him to a guy in Philadelphia named Connie Mack, who has his own marker and will be the subject of a future blog post. Mack, the manager of the Philadelphia Athletics, took a liking to young Eddie and signed him to a contract in 1901. 

Eddie was regarded as a finesse pitcher; he had a special pitch known as the "cross-fire," which involved throwing the ball across his body so that it would reach home plate at an angle, and it was notoriously difficult to hit - especially for left-handed hitters. He was also known to be a bit eccentric, doing odd things on the mound such as talking to the ball before throwing it (which unnerved some of his opponents) and taking long pauses before delivering a pitch (which, some say, made the games drag out a bit longer). He was a consistent performer with a good work ethic, and Mack put him in the lineup often, leading to his arm being frequently sore.

Eddie Plank, circa 1911, photographed by Paul Thompson;
public domain image courtesy of WikiCommons

Eddie remained with the Athletics for 13 years, by which time he was the only team member remaining from his debut year; as a veteran ballplayer, he befriended and mentored young up-and-coming pitchers, and also Louis Van Zelst, the team's young batboy and 'good luck charm.' The Athletics went to the World Series three times while Eddie was among them, though he was unable to participate in the 1910 Series due to that sore arm. Mack was fond of his quiet pitcher and had no hard feelings when, in 1914, Eddie signed a contract to play in the short-lived Federal League on the St. Louis Terriers. The following year, Eddie and his wife, the former Anna Myers, welcomed their only child, a son also named Edward. 

After the Federal League folded in 1916, Eddie became a member of the St. Louis Browns. He was only with them until the end of the 1917 season, however. Although he retained his passion for the game and was still a talented pitcher, his arm problems continued to plague him; he also had a stomach complaint which he felt was brought on by the stress of his career, and this was the reason he gave for retiring in October 1917. 

He returned to his hometown of Gettysburg with his young family, where he purchased a Buick dealership. Still loving baseball as much as ever, Eddie played with the Steelton ball club, part of the Bethlehem Steel League, which was within easy distance of home and didn't interfere with his business. His sports legacy lent itself to the success of his dealership, as the place was frequently mobbed by fans, but his happy retirement didn't last long. He had a stroke in his sleep, and died a few days later on February 24, 1926, at just fifty years old; on being notified of his death, Connie Mack is said to have grieved like a father who lost a son. He's buried in Gettysburg's Evergreen Cemetery beside Anna, who outlived him by nearly thirty years but never remarried.

Eddie was posthumously elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1946. He was, and is, remembered as being one of the greatest of all pitchers; Babe Ruth complimented him as being the toughest pitcher he had ever personally faced, and Ty Cobb called him the best left-handed pitcher of the pre-WWII era. Ogden Nash included him in his famous 1949 baseball poem "Line-Up For Yesterday." As for his beloved hometown, Gettysburg has put a housing development on a portion of the farm where Eddie was raised, and calls it Plank's Field, while Gettysburg College established the Eddie Plank Memorial Gymnasium in his memory, and used it for indoor tournaments until 1962. In 1972, he was added to the Pennsylvania Sports Hall of Fame.

I'd really like to know what he said to the ball before he threw it, though. 

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Sources and Further Reading:

Knorr, Lawrence. Gettysburg Eddie: The Story of Eddie Plank. Sunbury Press, 2018.

Russo, Frank. The Cooperstown Chronicles: Baseball's Colorful Characters, Unusual Lives, and Strange Demises. Rowman & Littlefield, New York, 2014.

Eddie Plank at the National Baseball Hall of Fame

Eddie Plank at FindAGrave.com

Eddie Plank at the Historical Marker Database

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Except where indicated, all writing and photography on this blog is the intellectual property of Laura Klotz. This blog is written with permission of the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission. I am not employed by the PHMC. All rights reserved.