Tag: Davidson College

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Fetzer, Bill

Primary Position: Pinch hitter
Birthplace: Concord

First, Middle Names:  William McKinnon
Date of Birth:  June 24, 1884  Date and Place of Death: May 3, 1959, Butner, NC
Burial: Oakwood Cemetery, Concord, NC

High School: Concord High School, Concord, NC
College: Davidson College, Davidson, NC

Bats: L Throws: R        Height and Weight: 5-10, 180
Debut Year: 1906        Final Year: 1906          Years Played: 1
Team and Year: Philadelphia Athletics, 1906

Career Summary
G          AB       H          R          RBI       HR       BA.      OBP.    SLG.     WAR
1          1            0          0          0          0          .000     .000     .000     0.0

In college and down in the minors, Bill Fetzer was known for prodigious drives that bounced off church steeples. Though he stood only five-foot-ten inches and weighed no more than 180 pounds, he was called Big Bill because of his big blasts. It figures, then, that a slugger like that would appear in one major-league game as a pinch hitter and strike out.

He had much more success after baseball as a winning football and baseball coach at three, major North Carolina colleges.

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Anderson, Fred

Primary Position: Starting pitcher
Birthplace: Calahaln

Full Name: John Frederick
Date of Birth:  Dec. 11, 1885  Date and Place of Death: Nov. 8, 1957, Winston-Salem
Burial: Salem Cemetery, Winston-Salem

High School: Oak Ridge Academy, Oak Ridge, NC
College: Davidson College, Davidson, NC; University of Maryland-Baltimore

Bats: R             Throws: R        Height and Weight: 6-2, 180
Debut Year: 1909       Final Year: 1918          Years Played: 7
Teams and Years: Boston Red Sox, 1909, 1913; Buffalo Buffeds, 1914-15; N.Y. Giants, 1916-18

Career Summary
G         W        L          Sv        ERA     IP         SO       WAR
178      53     57      8          2.86     986.1   514      3.4

Dr. Fred Anderson was a spit-balling dentist, certainly the only one in the history of baseball. For parts of seven seasons during the second decade of the 20th century, Anderson made baseballs do funny things by legally lathering them with his saliva. In the off season, he reached into patients’ mouths to practice his other craft.  

That made Anderson unusual in another way. Unlike most players of his era, he wasn’t a slave to autocratic team owners wielding contracts that gave them complete control over their hires’ careers. He could afford to be independent. If he didn’t like the money an owner offered for his services, Anderson had the option of being a fulltime dentist or a collegiate baseball manager instead or even jumping to another major league.

He actually did all of those things before retiring from baseball with a 2.86 earned-run average, or ERA, third-best among North Carolina pitchers with more than 500 major-league innings. Anderson settled in Winston-Salem, not too far from his ancestral home, where he practiced dentistry for almost 30 years.

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Booe, Everett

Primary Position: Outfield
Birthplace: Mocksville

First, last Names: Everett Little       
Date of Birth:  Sept. 28, 1891    Date and Place of Death: June 21, 1969. Kenedy, Texas
Burial: Kenedy City Cemetery, Kenedy, Texas

High School: Undetermined
College: Davidson College, Davidson, NC

Bats: L             Throws: R        Height and Weight: 5-8, 165
Debut Year: 1913       Final Year: 1914          Years Played: 2
Teams and Years: Pittsburgh Pirates, 1913; Indianapolis Hoosiers, Buffalo Buffeds, 1914

Career Summary
G         AB       H         R          RBI      HR       BA.      OBP.    SLG.     WAR
125    352    77       43        22        0         219      .289     .210     -2.0

The “e” in Everett Booe’s last name is silent, and he played baseball in a time before public-address equipment and names printed on the back of jerseys. To introduce players to fans, umpires bellowed out their names when they stepped to home plate for the first time.

Those were the circumstances under which Everett Booe met Bill Klem. The year was 1913. Booe was a 21-year-old rookie who was warming the bench for the Pittsburgh Pirates. He had been born in Mocksville, but his family had moved to Davidson, North Carolina, where his father owned a market and his mother ran a boarding house.

Klem was about a quarter of the way through an almost 40-year career that would make him one of the most-respected umpires of all time and one of the first inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame. He would introduce several innovations, such as hand signals that allowed fans even out in the bleachers to know the umpires’ decisions. Calling balls and strikes was a serious matter to Klem and he instructed other umpires how to position themselves to best judge the strike zone. They still stand in Klem’s “slot” between the batter and catcher to get the best view of home plate. Most importantly, Klem injected much-needed professionalism into a job that had known more than its share of drunks and rowdies.

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