Candy Cummings

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William Arthur "Candy" Cummings (October 18, 1848 - May 16, 1924) was a 19th-century professional baseball pitcher in the National Association and National League.

Cummings had a brief but influential career. During a career which lasted from 1872 until 1877, Cummings compiled a 145-94 career record and 2.49 ERA while playing for five different teams. He is often credited with being the first pitcher to throw a curveball, which he reportedly threw at a game in Worcester, Massachusetts, in 1867 while playing for the Brooklyn Excelsiors (some say the Brooklyn Stars).

Another pitcher to lay claim to inventing the curveball is New Haven, Connecticut-born Fred Goldsmith, who is credited for giving the first publicly recorded demonstration of the curveball (to legendary sportswriter-baseball historian Henry Chadwick) on August 16, 1870, at the Capitoline Grounds in Brooklyn, New York.

Legendary sportscaster Bill Stern also credits Goldsmith with inventing the curveball in his 1949 book, Bill Stern's Favourite Baseball Stories on page 87.

Candy Cummings is a member of the Baseball Hall of Fame

But it was Cummings who was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1939, the same year that former major-leaguer Goldsmith died in Berkley, Michigan.

Candy Cummings was born in Ware, Massachusetts, (close to Worcester, where he played his first game.) Cummings says that he discovered the idea of the curveball while studying the movement sea shells made when thrown. After noticing this movement, he began to attempt to make the same motion with a baseball, thus creating the curveball.

[edit] External links

• Baseball Hall of Fame biography
• Baseball-Reference.com - career statistics and analysis

[edit] References

• Bill Stern's Favourite Baseball Stories by Bil Stern (Blue Ribbon Books, Garden City, New York, 1949).
• * Fred Goldmsith Invented The Curve Ball by Howard Broughton, Assistant Sports Editor, The London Free Press, June 21, 1939.