John McGraw Kept a Man on the Giants Who Couldn't Play Baseball
Baseball Stories Nobody Tells
39,536 views
In July of 1911, a thirty-year-old farmer from Marion, Kansas walked up to the manager of the New York Giants and announced that a fortune teller had sent him to win the pennant.
He had never played professional baseball. He never learned to. And over the next ten weeks, with Charles Victor Faust standing in their bullpen, the Giants went 36-2.
This is the story of the strangest roster spot in baseball history — how a man with no ability talked his way onto a pennant winner, became the most written-about figure in New York sports, got two innings in a major league game, and was forgotten within a year of his death.
I spent about a week digging through SABR's biographical research, contemporary newspaper coverage from 1911, and Baseball-Reference's game logs to separate what actually happened from what got embellished in the retelling. A few of the famous Faust stories didn't survive that process, and I've left them out. The ones that did are stranger than the legends.
Six years before Charlie Faust walked into the Giants' camp, John McGraw sent a rookie doctor out to right field for one game. He never got to bat, and Field of Dreams got the rest of his story wrong. Watch the real story of Moonlight Graham:
Field of Dreams Got Moonlight Graham Wrong...
Written, researched, and narrated by me. All photographs are public domain, primarily from the George Grantham Bain Collection at the Library of Congress.
CHAPTERS
0:00 — The Tryout
1:02 — A Farm Outside Marion, Kansas
2:15 — "He Runs Like an Ice Wagon"
3:19 — The Most Famous Man in Baseball
5:12 — Out-Jinxed
7:05 — What He Was
SOURCES
Gabriel Schechter, "Charlie Faust," SABR Biography Project Noel Busch, "The Ballad of Charles Victory Faust," SABR Baseball-Reference.com career and game logs Chronicling America digitized newspaper archive, Library of Congress Fred Snodgrass in "The Glory of Their Times," Lawrence Ritter (1966)
CORRECTIONS
If I got something wrong, tell me in the comments and I'll pin the correction. I've done it before and I'd rather be accurate than look right.
10 Comments
John McGraw Kept a Man on the Giants Who Couldn't Play Baseball
Baseball Stories Nobody Tells
39,536 views
In July of 1911, a thirty-year-old farmer from Marion, Kansas walked up to the manager of the New York Giants and announced that a fortune teller had sent him to win the pennant.
He had never played professional baseball. He never learned to. And over the next ten weeks, with Charles Victor Faust standing in their bullpen, the Giants went 36-2.
This is the story of the strangest roster spot in baseball history — how a man with no ability talked his way onto a pennant winner, became the most written-about figure in New York sports, got two innings in a major league game, and was forgotten within a year of his death.
I spent about a week digging through SABR's biographical research, contemporary newspaper coverage from 1911, and Baseball-Reference's game logs to separate what actually happened from what got embellished in the retelling. A few of the famous Faust stories didn't survive that process, and I've left them out. The ones that did are stranger than the legends.
Six years before Charlie Faust walked into the Giants' camp, John McGraw sent a rookie doctor out to right field for one game. He never got to bat, and Field of Dreams got the rest of his story wrong. Watch the real story of Moonlight Graham:
Field of Dreams Got Moonlight Graham Wrong...
Written, researched, and narrated by me. All photographs are public domain, primarily from the George Grantham Bain Collection at the Library of Congress.
CHAPTERS
0:00 — The Tryout
1:02 — A Farm Outside Marion, Kansas
2:15 — "He Runs Like an Ice Wagon"
3:19 — The Most Famous Man in Baseball
5:12 — Out-Jinxed
7:05 — What He Was
SOURCES
Gabriel Schechter, "Charlie Faust," SABR Biography Project Noel Busch, "The Ballad of Charles Victory Faust," SABR Baseball-Reference.com career and game logs Chronicling America digitized newspaper archive, Library of Congress Fred Snodgrass in "The Glory of Their Times," Lawrence Ritter (1966)
CORRECTIONS
If I got something wrong, tell me in the comments and I'll pin the correction. I've done it before and I'd rather be accurate than look right.
Who's the strangest person who ever ended up on a major league roster? I've got a list and I'd like to make it longer.
Part two of McGraw's strange Giants is up: Moonlight Graham https://youtu.be/ajUp2sq8tFc