Jim Creighton

Biography

James Creighton Jr. (April 15, 1841 – October 18, 1862) was an American baseball player during the game's amateur era, and is considered by historians to be the sport's first superstar and one of its earliest paid competitors. In 1860 and 1862 he played for one of the most dominant clubs of the era, the Excelsior of Brooklyn. He was also a superb cricketer, playing in both amateur and professional matches. During the early, pre-professional period of baseball's evolution, Creighton's pitching technique transformed the sport from a game that showcased hitting, running, and fielding into a confrontation between the pitcher and batter. Under game rules of the 1850s, a pitcher was required to toss the ball in an underhand motion with a stiff arm/stiff wrist movement. The intention was to induce the batter to swing and put the ball in play, thus initiating action around the diamond. The pitcher was essentially just another position player, a "fielder" once the ball was struck by the hitter. Creighton's swift delivery confounded opposing batters, who were accustomed to balls being lobbed slowly over the plate and easy to hit. Historian Thomas Gilbert, in his 2015 book Playing First: Early Baseball Lives at Brooklyn's Green-Wood Cemetery, which includes a chapter on Creighton and his family, referred to Creighton's pitching style as "weaponizing the ball." Gilbert wrote Creighton "was the first pitcher in the modern sense of the word." On October 14, 1862, at the height of his popularity, Creighton collapsed at a game from severe abdominal pain. It was later determined that he had suffered from a chronic inguinal hernia, a condition possibly caused and exacerbated by his unorthodox pitching motion and high per-game pitch counts. Creighton died at home four days later. The cause of death was a strangulated intestine.

Bio from Wikipedia