Big Ed Walsh, Baseball's Iron Arm

Edward Augustine Walsh was born near here in Plains, Pennsylvania, on May fourteenth, eighteen eighty-one, and he grew up to pitch in a way no one had before or since. Playing for the Chicago White Sox from nineteen hundred and four through nineteen sixteen, Walsh anchored a staff with a workload modern pitchers would find unimaginable.

In nineteen oh eight alone he won forty games, threw eleven shutouts, and started both ends of a doubleheader, winning each time. He twice exceeded four hundred innings pitched in a single season. Over his career his earned run average settled at one point eight two, the lowest in major league history. The Baseball Hall of Fame inducted him in nineteen forty-six, recognizing that his brief brilliant peak represented something unrepeatable in the game.