As August heat turns into September’s promise of autumn,
as we approach the head-on playoff clashes of 2025,
we recognize the winding down of future Hall of Famer
Justin Verlander and applaud him as the active pitcher
with the most career complete games – – – 26! He’s been
dependable, reliable, a kind of bridge between the starters
of today (with their 100 mph mentality as part-timers)
and hurlers of more than a century ago. To study baseball
history is to study frequent changes (in the ball, the glove,
the conditioning, the fields, the make-up of the players).
To truly accept the game the Majors play is to be part-time
historian, part-time sociologist, part-time aficionado of the
arts. It even involves archaeology, and in this metaphor,
the need sometimes arises to perform the baseball
equivalent of the archaeological dig. Behold one recent
personal unearthing:
In the pioneering days of the sport . . . specifically from
1890 to 1906 . . . there was a pitcher named Charles “Kid”
Nichols. Dust off his story and discover that he started for
the Boston Beaneaters of the National League and he won
20 or more games each of his first 10 seasons, including
years in which he won 30, 31 and 35. Interestingly, as a
rookie, he finished 47 games. (Remember Verlander’s
26 in his career?) Oh, and his Boston team won pennants
in 5 of his first 7 seasons. By the time he was finished, in
1906, a career that saw him pitch for Boston, the Cardinals
and the Phillies, he had won 362 contests . . . and he
completed 532 complete. He finished 94.7% of the games
he started!! The man pitched more than 400 innings five
seasons in his pro career. He retired with a total E.R.A. of
2.96. Here’s a footnote to “Kid’s” history: Ironically, he had
trouble being voted into the Hall of Fame because he’d
played in the sport’s Holocene Epoch, and recall can be
brief. (After all, how many recall the original Brooklyn
first baseman, even before Gil Hodges, the memorable
Ozymandias himself?) Credit Ty Cobb with pushing for
the balloted entrance of Nichols to the Golden Fraternity
. . . which finally occurred in 1949, four years before he
passed. That vote solidified the longest complete game
of Charles Augustus Nichols’ 15-year career.