Cribbed from THIS article on SABR Bio by Brian McKenna.
Here in Australia, we don’t have baseball cards, we have football cards. Our two main codes are Rugby Union in the northern states and Australian Rules in the southern part of the country (although both are now more national in nature). When I was a kid, Scanlans was the only card brand that mattered. They were to boys of the 1970s and 80s what Barbie dolls were to girls.
Now, I’m not sure if the same phenomenon exists for baseball cards when buying them by the pack (the only way you could buy them back then, never as a complete set unless someone had collected it and were selling it as such), but there were always certain football players whose cards were far more common than others when you unwrapped that oily paper, stuck the piece of gum in your mouth and scoured the contents you’d just spent your pocket money on.
Got it, need it, need it, got it was like a mantra for the card-collecting kid.
OOTP’s selection process for Random Debuts and Rookies from All Eras seems to operate on the same principle. Some players seem to be in EVERY save you start up. Fred Glade, for me at least, is one of those players who falls into this category. Not just in saves such as this, where – given he played in this era IRL – one would expect him to, but modern ones as well. So, like George Stone and Harry Lumley before him, my interest was piqued.
Fred Glade was born into a wealthy industrial family of German origin in Dubuque Iowa on January 25, 1876, before moving to Nebraska as a young boy, where his father Henry bought his first mill. When not working at the family business, Fred and his five brothers loved to play baseball, and all six Glade boys were quite talented at the sport. Fred, however, was the best of them, and he would leave the mill for months at a time to indulge his baseball passion.
Fred played for various professional teams between 1898 and 1901, ending up at Des Moines of the Western League. His 1901 performance, in which he led the league with 196 strikeouts, sparked the attention of some major league clubs, and in early 1902 Des Moines sold him to the Chicago Cubs for $500. After joining the squad late and then impressing Chicago manager Frank Selee in his first few games, Fred promptly went home without telling the club or even his teammates. This would be a recurring theme throughout his career: Fred pitched when Fred wanted to.
After serving out a suspension, Fred re-joined the club and on May 27 he made his major league debut at age 26. In a far from auspicious start to his career in the bigs, Fred gave up eleven runs, eight earned, thirteen hits, walked three and hit a batter, immediately putting an end to his career in Chicago. Selee, no longer impressed, sold him to St. Joseph, Missouri. Glade made his first start for his new club on June 4 and finished the year there, pitching in 24 games for the Western League club. He played the entire 1903 season as well, with his brother Phil also on the roster, pitching in 32 games and batting .279 in 104 at bats.
That September, he was drafted by the St. Louis Browns.
Glade turned in a stellar rookie season in 1904 with an 18-15 record in 35 games, the most by a Browns rookie in club history. He and fellow rookie pitcher Barney Pelty posted 33 combined wins, more than half the club’s total victories, and his 15-strikeout effort against the Senators on June 19 set the American League record until Rube Waddell broke it in 1908. Glade posted a 2.27 ERA in 1904 and tossed six shutouts, three in September. So pleased were the Browns with their new find that they turned down an offer of $5,000 for him from the pennant-winning Red Sox.
Perhaps they should have offloaded him, because 1905 was no banner year for the club or Fred individually, as he went 6-25 and the Browns finished in the cellar. That said, Fred’s 2.81 ERA was only marginally above the league average of 2.65, and 11 of his losses were by one run. He rebounded somewhat in ’06, going 15-14 with a 2.36 ERA, but then – after getting married in the offseason – went on another one of his sabbaticals. After not making his first start until a month into the 1907 season, Fred ended up going 13-9. But he was no longer happy at St. Louis, and pushed for a trade to Clark Griffith’s Highlanders club in New York. The Browns eventually relented and Fred started the ’08 season with his new club in fine spirits, even reporting on time for once.
But it wasn’t to be, as an unclarified stomach ailment – reports put it down to causes as varied as malaria,the lingering effects of Bright’s disease, or the result of drinking tainted milk. In total he started only five games for the Highlanders, losing four, before falling out magnificently with his manager and going AWOL. Not long after, Griffith himself resigned.
Despite numerous assurances to new skipper Kid Elberfeld that he would soon return to the club, he never did. After signing a contract with the Highlanders in February 1909, Glade simply never fronted. A purportedcomeback in 1910 never eventuated. Reports suggest that the Highlanders continued to offer Glade a roster spot for years to come, despite the fact that he was in his late thirties.
Fred returned to the family business, and became the company’s President after the death of his father in 1910. The company still exists today, and prosperously so, with such popular brands as Banquet, Chef Boyardee, Healthy Choice, Hunt’s and Libby’s, to name a few. Fred, sadly, does not. He passed away in November 1934 after a long illness. He was just 53.
In the Footnote League, Fred is reborn. He joined the Philadelphia Athletics upon joining the league in 1901 and is still there. After a brief stint at the club’s PSL side at Shreveport, Fred was promoted to the bigs and is putting together a fine career indeed, with 61 wins against 49 losses and an ERA of 2.91. 1906 has been his best season yet, as he has already amassed 19 wins while losing only 6 and his 1.86 ERA is second in the AL behind fellow Spotlight Player Dickey Kerr. He will undoubtedly be a key member of the A’s who are right in the middle of a torrid battle for the American League Pennant.
Tempus effulgeo to you Fred, may you continue to shine as brightly as you have so far!
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