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Young Davies’ Stupendous Season.

It is rare when a boy of eighteen can come into any profession, especially one as difficult and physically demanding as that of professional sport, and dominate the opposition in the way Joel Davies did this season.

This axiom is truer of baseball than of many other sports, such as Association football. In football, the most valued attribute among forwards, midfielders and defenders is speed, and so there are many short, slim, even skinny players whose charge, in the service of scoring goals, is to outrun the opponent. Not true of baseball: the speed needed is of a different type: running yes, but also throwing, and especially pitching. Strength in the torso, arms and shoulders are much valued in baseball, and the very best players, on the mound and at the bat, have that in spades.

Not Davies. He is tall, an even six feet, but he is lanky at 11 stone seven. No one can accuse him of being muscle-bound, and his fastest pitch is not exceptionally speedy even by Second Division standards. But Davies’ secret weapons are movement and control, as well as the ability to throw four different types of pitches, including the new-fangled "nickel curve", recently imported from America, a pitch which breaks towards the side and away from the batsman, rather than straight down as a traditional curve would.

Davies was signed directly out of secondary school in Gateshead by Clapton Orient, right under the noses of the South Shields club, actually, and was put straight to work on the O's reserve squad for the second half of 1929. He impressed greatly there and, even after a rough April in Portugal, started this season as the season's opening match starter, and he paid a great dividend immediately. Davies won his first six starts and never slowed down, also winning twelve straight between mid-June and mid-August, at the end of which he had notched his twentieth victory against only two losses, almost single-handedly leading Clapton to their runaway division championship. It was absolutely certain he would win the Newcomer of the Year award, and nearly certain he would win Pitcher of the Year. The astonishing question being asked was, could a player who has only just recently emerged from childhood win the Baseballer of the Year honour as well?

This was never a controversial question in the dressing room, however. Davies is an unusually poised young man, certain of his talents, and has a commanding presence both on the mound and off. The baseball writers of Britain, recognising his value to his club's promotion, nearly unanimously awarded him the highest accolade a player can achieve.

Having turned nineteen by the close of the season did not influence their decision—he was no less a leader then than he is now. Joel Davies is unquestionably the leader of the Clapton Orient baseball team, the Baseballer of the Year in the Second Division for 1930, and will likely be a force for batsmen to reckon with throughout the 1930’s and quite probably the 1940’s as well.