Curt Davis, 30-year-old rookie pitcher for the 1934 Philadelphia Phillies, may have left his heart in San Francisco, but fortunately he took his sidearm fastball with him to Philadelphia. Davis may be the best Phillies pitcher you never heard of. Over 2+ seasons with the Phillies, Davis went 37-35 with a 3.42 ERA for the perennially undermanned Phillies of the mid 1930s. He was the best player on those teams, compiling a gaudy 16.3 WAR in that short span. Traded to the Chicago Cubs for cash and an aging Chuck Klein by the parsimonious Phillies owner William Baker, he went on to win an additional 131 games with the Cubs, Brooklyn Dodgers, and St. Louis Cardinals in a 13-year major league career. He pitched in the World Series for Dodgers in 1941 and was an All-Star in 1936, his best season, during which he won 22 games.
Curt Davis was born in 1903 in Greenfield, Missouri and grew up on a farm near Salem, Oregon. It was there he developed his side-armed throwing style, skimming rocks in the river near his home. He never gave much thought to baseball, however, until one day, while he was working as a logger in Cloverdale, California, he was sitting in the stands watching a semi-pro game and watching the pitcher get knocked around. "I could do better than that,” he loudly remarked. The manager of the team heard him and invited Davis to go ahead and try. Davis marched out to the mound in his dungarees and work boots and pitched very well indeed. Thus discovered, he spent several seasons playing for semi-professional industrial league teams on the west coast before being offered a contract by the San Francisco Seals of the Pacific Coast League.
On that San Francisco team Davis was teammates with future Hall of Famer, Lefty Gomez. Davis could only watch as the younger Gomez was sold to the Yankees for $45,000. Many Major League teams were similarly interested in Davis, but the Seals ownership would not part with him unless they got money similar to what they got for Gomez. So Curt Davis remained stuck in the minor leagues for six seasons, compiling 92 wins. Finally, in 1934, Davis was eligible for the Rule 5 draft, and the pitching starved Phillies grabbed him for the bargain price of $7,500.
Phillies manager, Jimmie Wilson, was enthusiastic about his new pitching recruit. He told the Inquirer's Stan Baumgartner that Davis, "has one of those fastballs that takes off and keeps going." Early in spring training, Wilson was thinking that Davis would make a great relief man. "And how I need one. He'll be as welcome as mustard to a hot dog. Do you know he led the Coast League in earned runs [last year]? [Phillies scout} Patsy O'Rourke has been after him for two years, but the Seals wanted too much for him. We were lucky to get him."
Lucky indeed. By the end of spring training, Wilson realized that Davis was the best pitcher he had. He used Davis as a starter and reliever and he used him often. Davis appeared in a league leading 51 games in 1934, including 31 starts and 274.1 innings. After a so-so start to the year. Davis found his stride and went 12-5 for the months of June and July. Only a six game slide in August and September, during which he often pitched well, but got little run support, prevented him from being the first Phillies pitcher to win 20 games since Pete Alexander won 30 in 1917. As it was, he finished 19-17 with a 2.45 ERA for a Phillies team that won only 58 games.
Davis, who got the nickname "Old Coonskin" because he was a crack shot with a rifle, reminding his teammates of the legendary frontiersman, Daniel Boone, pitched several remarkable games in his rookie season. On Thursday, May 25, he set the Cincinnati Reds down on three hits and no walks, striking out six, winning 5-0. Good control and low strikeout rates would be a hallmark of Davis' pitching throughout his career. He averaged fewer than two walks per game for his career.
By the middle of July, Davis was garnering comparisons to the Great Alexander himself. In the story of Davis' July 17 shutout of those same Reds, the Inquirer's Baumgartner said, "Not since the days of Grover Cleveland Alexander have the Phillies had as promising a young hurler as Curt Davis. Yesterday, the tall. slim youngster, who resembles the immortal "Pete" of two decades ago in build as well as delivery, blanked the Reds by a score of 7-0." In this game Davis would also contribute his first major league home run. An above average hitter for a pitcher, he would hit 11 dingers in his career.
Davis pitched his third and final shutout of the season on September 26, four hitting the defending champion New York Giants and helping grease the skids on the Giants fading pennant hopes. Davis finished eighth in the Most Valuable Player voting that year. He was third in ERA in the league behind only Dizzy Dean (who was named MVP) and Carl Hubbell, very exclusive company indeed for the rookie.
In 1935, Davis was the opening day starter for the Phillies. He continued to pitch well, compiling a 16-14 record as the Phillies again finished in seventh place. Davis became a highly valued commodity in the National League and finally, at the beginning of the 1936 season, the Phillies traded away their best player and in return brought their fading former superstar, Chuck Klein, back to the Baker Bowl. Davis continued to find pitching success wherever he went, while the Phillies continued to founder in the bottom of the National League's second division.
There seems little question that if Davis had not been forced to stay in the minor leagues by baseball's reserve clause, he would have been a 200 game winner in the major leagues. If he had, then, like his former San Francisco Seals teammate Lefty Gomez, "Old Coonskin" Curt Davis would have had a legitimate shot at being elected to the Hall of Fame.
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