Irvin Wilhelm

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Irvin Key "Kaiser" Wilhelm (born January 26, 1877 in Wooster, Ohio; died May 22, 1936 in Rochester, New York) was a pitcher, manager and scout in major and minor league baseball. His streak of 72 consecutive scoreless innings, set between 1907 and 1911, remains an unbroken minor league record.

Irvin Wilhelm was the son of Joseph H. and Celia P. (DeMiller) Wilhelm whose parents had both settled in Wayne County, Ohio from Pennsylvania. He graduated from Wooster High School and played baseball with various town teams in the area. He signed his first professional contract with the Mansfield Kids of the Interstate League in 1895, making his debut alongside teammate Honus Wagner. He walked 11 batters in his first start and left the team during the summer to attend the College of Wooster.

Wilhelm returned to baseball with the 1901 Birmingham Base Ball Club, playing in the first year of the Class B Southern Assosication. He was signed by Birmingham manager Sam Mills on the recommendation of fellow Ohio native and veteran catcher Charley Zimmer. Wilhelm was one of the few bright spots playing for Birmingham over the next two seasons when the team went 45-70 and 39-80. He went 15-18 and 14-9 in his starts those two years and in June 1902 he took over for Frank Haller as player-manager.

Haller went on to work as a scout for the Pittsburgh Pirates and he suggested Wilhelm to owner Barney Dreyfuss, who was trying to fill the huge void left when Jack Chesbro and Jesse Tannehill left the Pirates' rotation for the New York Highlanders. He attended spring training in 1903 and appeared in 12 games that year for the Pirates, finishing with a 5–3 record. The highlight of his season was a 4-0 shutout of the Boston Beaneaters on June 4. Despite his solid performance, manager Fred Clarke released Wilhelm in August. Sportswriters speculated that Clarke didn't like the way Wilhelm covered first base and his tendency to issue walks.

The Beaneaters picked up Wilhelm's contract and placed him in the starting rotation of a miserable 51-103 team. He went 3-23 and gave up 122 earned runs, second worst in the league. It may have been during his opening day start against New York at the Polo Grounds on April 14, 1905 that opposing fans took to taunting the pitcher with the nickname "the Kaiser", referring to the hated German emperor, Wilhelm II. In any case, it was during that season that the nickname, which he never liked, became ubiquitous in the press.

After the 1905 season, Boston sold Wilhelm's contract to the Eastern League's Rochester Bronchos and they shipped him back to Birmingham. Wilhelm flourished in the Southern League, going 22-13 with a perfect game against the Montgomery Senators on July 9 as the 1906 Barons won the pennant. The 1907 club fell to fifth place, but Wilhelm's 23-14 record provided the bright spot, including a 15-inning complete game outing against the Memphis Egyptians on July 15.


Playing for the Barons in 1906, Wilhelm pitched the team's first perfect game since its founding in 1884. The 1906 Barons won the team's first title since joining the Southern Association in 1901. His record that year was 22–13. He had similar success the following year, finishing 23–14.

Wilhelm returned to the major leagues with the Brooklyn Superbas from 1908 to 1910. His most notable game from that period may have been a three-hit, thirteen-inning win on Opening Day 1909; opposing pitcher Red Ames had a no-hitter going into the tenth inning. In his three seasons with Brooklyn, he registered a 22–42 record.

Wilhelm was back in the minor leagues with Rochester in 1911. In three seasons with Rochester, he won 48 games and lost 24 games. Before the 1914 baseball season, Wilhelm was signed by the Baltimore Terrapins of the Federal League. In 1915, the new Colonial League emerged with backing from the FL. An agreement between the leagues provided each Colonial League team with six FL players; the FL received $200 per month for each player sent to the new league. When ordered to the new league by FL officials, Wilhelm refused to report. Instead, he was made an FL umpire.

In 1916, Wilhelm sued the Terrapins on the grounds that he had signed a three-year contract in 1914 worth $10,500 and that he was not allowed to continue with the team after July 1, 1915. Wilhelm spent the 1916 and 1917 seasons with the Elmira Colonels of the New York State League. In those two seasons, he finished 14–19 and 17–16 respectively. Wilhelm pitched for the Jersey City Skeeters of the International League in 1920. That year he was the winning pitcher of both games of a doubleheader, leading the team to 7–3 and 10–0 wins.

Wilhelm became manager of the Philadelphia Phillies during the 1921 season. In early September, The New York Times criticized Wilhelm's team after losing both games of a doubleheader, saying that "Every day is Labor Day for the Phillies... The Quakers were in perfect stride during both contests and demonstrated that they can lose as easily and dexterously on a holiday as on any other occasion." Wilhelm had become the interim manager earlier in the season after Wild Bill Donovan was called as a witness in the trial surrounding the Black Sox Scandal. Wilhelm was discharged from his position in late 1922. Wilhelm's managerial record was 83–137 in Philadelphia, which included 96 losses in 1922.

In 1923, Wilhelm made his final professional appearance as a player, taking part in a single game for the Rochester Tribe. In the summer of 1928, Wilhelm took a position as scout for the Montreal Royals. Wilhelm died in 1936 and a benefit minor league game was held in Rochester to assist his widow.

Scoreless innings streak

While playing in the minor leagues in 1907, Wilhelm pitched a long streak of consecutive innings without giving up a run. In May 2004, pitcher Brad Thompson was approaching the minor league record for this statistical category, by this time thought by the National Association of Professional Baseball Leagues (NAPBL) to belong to Urban Shocker. Shocker threw 54 consecutive scoreless innings in 1916. A May 16 Associated Press article said that the NAPBL took a further look at its records and recognized that Wilhelm held the record, having thrown 56 consecutive scoreless innings in 1907.

Two days after Thompson was thought to break the record, The New York Times published an article indicating that three innings had been previously left off of Wilhelm's scoreless innings streak, meaning that Wilhelm should still hold the record for the longest such streak in the minor leagues — 59 innings. The omitted innings had been discovered by Dave Chase, who was a baseball historian and a minor league general manager for the Memphis Redbirds. Baseball researcher Ray Nemec later found that Wilhelm had come up to the major leagues with his streak intact, then returned to the minor leagues in 1911 and pitched 13 more consecutive scoreless innings. This took Wilhelm's minor league consecutive scoreless innings streak to 72.

Preceded by:
Charles Moss 		Birmingham Barons manager
1902 		Succeeded by:
Frank Haller

References

External links

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