Books and articles about Ossee Schreckengost

Image provided by Matthew Fulling

SHOPPING » Look for Ossee Schreckengost books at BN.com » Look for Ossee Schreckengost books at Amazon.com Your purchases keep BaseballLibrary.com online. Thank you!

RELATED LINKS Around the Web » Ossee Schreckengost from baseball-reference.com Jump directly to Library content from any website!

Highly rated by Connie Mack as a defensive catcher and handler of pitchers, Schreckengost and Hall of Famer Rube Waddell formed a devastating battery for the early Athletics. Off the field, the two were cohorts in mischief; Mack later called the catcher "the Harpo Marx of his time." When they roomed together on road trips, Schreckengost had written into Waddell's contract that he was not to eat crackers in bed. Schreckengost disdained shin guards (invented near the end of his career), and used a one-handed catching style over fifty years before it became an accepted technique. (JK)

FROM THE BASEBALL CHRONOLOGY » July 24, 1901: Milwaukee's Pink Hawley beats Boston, 4-3, and beans C Lou Criger with a pitch. Criger is unconsncious for five minutes before being taken away. Ossee Schreckengost moves from 1B to C and Dowd moves to 1B. » July 1, 1902: Rube Waddell wins his first game for the Athletics, blanking Baltimore on two hits 2–0. He fans the side three times, once on nine pitches in the 3rd, and faces only 27 batters, as C Ossee Schreckengost throws out the two base runners. In fanning the side in the 3rd, 6th, and 9th, Waddell strikes out the same three men each time: Billy Gilbert, Harry Howell, and John Cronin. » July 4, 1905: In an a.m.-p.m, doubleheader between Boston and Philadelphia, the A's take the morning game 5-2, using pitchers Eddie Plank, Andy Coakley and Rube Waddell on the mound to beat Jesse Tannehill. The afternoon contest proves a classic as Philadelphia's Rube Waddell bests Cy Young in a 20-inning marathon, when the Athletics prevail, 4-2. Boston outhits the A's, 15 to 13, but the 38-year-old Young loses on an error, hit batsman and two hits. Young walks nobody in the 20 innings, while 1B Bob Unglaub records 31 putouts. Philadelphia C Ossee Schreckengost works 28 innings in one day, a ML record. » October 2, 1908: In a great pitching duel, Ed Walsh is almost perfect, giving up four hits and striking out 15 in eight innings, but Cleveland's Addie Joss is perfect, setting down 27 straight White Sox for a 1–0 victory. The only run scores on a passed ball by Ossee Schreckengost. It is the high point of Joss's career. He will finish 24–12 with a 1.16 ERA. » July 9, 1914: Ossee Schreckengost, 39, peripatetic catcher (7 teams) best known as battery and roommate of Rube Waddell while with the Athletics, dies of uremia at Philadelphia. Skilled defensively on the field, Schreckengost was an eccentric off. He had it written into his contract that Waddell could not eat crackers in bed.