Jim Creighton
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James Creighton, Jr. (April 15, 1841-October 18, 1862) was a pitcher in baseball's earliest era. Among his many accomplishments, he was in all likelihood the first professional ballplayer, threw the first fastball, completed the first recorded triple play, and is considered by baseball historians to be the game's first superstar.
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[edit] Personal life
Little is known about Jim Creighton's life before his meteoric baseball career. Born in New York City, New York, he and his family soon moved to 307 Henry Street in Brooklyn, which is where he would spend his last days.
[edit] Early career
Before the formation of organized baseball leagues, a career in the sport was a far different proposition than it is today. Amateur ballclubs would form and spend much of the time playing intrasquad matches, holding exhibitions with other clubs. Much of baseball prior to the Civil War was centered in New York. In 1857, at the age of sixteen, Creighton helped to form his first club, the Young America Base Ball Club. It lasted only through the year, at which point Creighton and a friend, George Flanley, founded the Niagara Club.
[edit] Discovered by the Stars
In 1859 Creighton and the Niagaras were losing a match to the well-established Stars when Creighton, who had to this point been used primarily in the infield, came into the game as a relief pitcher and proceeded to throw the ball unthinkably hard for the time; the Star batsmen claimed that he used a snap of the wrist to deliver the speedball, as he called it. (At the time, the rules of baseball stated that a pitcher must deliver the ball underhanded, locked straight at the elbow and the wrist.)
Regardless of the legality of his pitch, the Stars immediately snapped Creighton and Flanley up, and the two finished the season with them.
[edit] The greatest of them all
The Stars were unable to keep Creighton, either, and before 1860 he joined one of the highest-profile clubs in the game at the time, Excelsior of Brooklyn, which considered themselves the champions of America. In 1860 and 1861, with Creighton fast becoming a national sensation, they backed up that claim by going on the first national tour, down the eastern coast of the United States. Creighton defeated the hometown teams wherever the Excelsiors went, and gained such popularity that many youth teams in the areas they played named themselves the Creightons in his honor.
Such was his dominance that after he held the famed Brooklyn Atlantics to five runs, an extraordinarily low total for the era, the Brooklyn Eagle dispatched a reporter to determine whether or not his pitch was legal; in the end, it was determined he was throwing a "fair square pitch", rather than a "jerk" or an "underhand throw."
[edit] Glory days, final days
The year 1862 was business as usual for the 21-year-old Creighton, who had become the game's greatest player as a hitter and a pitcher. During that year, it is said, he was not put out a single time at the plate, and only four times overall. (At the time, players out on the basepaths were charged with the out, instead of the batter as today.) His pitching, which had also spawned the first change-up (he called it his 'dew-drop') out of necessity, continued to be exceptional.
However, in October of 1862, in the midst of his greatest season, he died. Such was his fame at the time of his death, and such was the grief the baseball community felt, that a 12-foot-tall marble obelisk, topped with a large baseball, was erected at his gravesite. For the next several years, the Excelsiors' programs had a portrait of their fallen star, shrouded in black, featured prominently in the center.
[edit] Cause of death
There are several explanations for his death; the canonical one, which has existed from the time of his death, is that he fatally injured himself while playing baseball. At the time, players swung massive bats almost entirely with their upper body; it is said that a particularly hard swing from Creighton – some tellings of the story have it as a home run swing – caused an internal injury. Remarking to everpresent teammate George Flanley that he had perhaps snapped a belt, he continued playing but was in extreme pain hours later. A few days later, he died at his parents' house.
There is some evidence supporting this; the story developed so quickly that one would think it would have been refuted, had it been totally fabricated. In an 1887 issue of early sports newspaper The Sporting Life, a letter-writer, who signed only as "Old Timer", sent in his account of the event.
Others who consider such an event apocryphal assume that it was some already-present injury or disease, or that his appendix or spleen had burst after the game. Regardless of what actually happened, baseball's first superstar was dead. Had he survived, he would have been thirty when baseball's first professional league, the National Association, was founded.
