Louis Van Zelst
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Louis Van Zelst
Louis Van Zelst (1895–1915) was an American batboy, mascot, and good luck charm for the Philadelphia Athletics from 1910 to 1914. Due to an illness sustained at the age of eight, Van Zelst was a hunchback, and was not in the least self-conscious about it, urging Athletics players to rub his hump for good luck. Van Zelst had originally been a mascot for teams at the University of Pennsylvania, but Athletics players lived in the West Philadelphia neighborhood, and he got to know them. Connie Mack hired him as batboy beginning in 1910, and he attended all home games in that capacity. He made some road trips with the team, and invariably was brought to each World Series game, during a period of success for the Athletics during which they won four pennants and three World Series in five years. Van Zelst had never enjoyed robust health, and he fell ill of Bright's Disease in the winter of 1915. He died in March at the age of 20. Childhood Van Zelst was born in Philadelphia. At t ...
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Batboy
In baseball, a batboy or batgirl is an individual who carries baseball bats to the players on a baseball team. Duties of a batboy may also include handling and preparing players’ equipment and bringing baseballs to the umpire during the game. During games, a batboy remains in or near a team's dugout and the area around home plate. A batboy should not be confused with ball boys, who are stationed down the foul lines to retrieve foul balls. As batboys are stationed on the field, albeit in foul territory, they can occasionally interfere with play; such events are governed by Rule 6.01(d), the main point of which is that if the interference is unintentional, any live ball remains alive and in play. History Mascots and batboys had both been part of baseball since the 1880s. Perhaps the most famous mascot/batboy was Eddie Bennett, who was supposedly hired as a mascot by the Chicago White Sox at the urging of Happy Felsch in 1919, a tale Eddie told often but no White Sox player ...
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Shibe Park
Shibe Park, known later as Connie Mack Stadium, was a ballpark located in Philadelphia. It was the home of the Philadelphia Athletics of the American League (AL) and the Philadelphia Phillies of the National League (NL). When it opened April 12, 1909, it became baseball's first reinforced concrete, steel-and-concrete stadium. In different eras it was home to $100,000 infield, "The $100,000 Infield", Whiz Kids (baseball), "The Whiz Kids", and 1964 Philadelphia Phillies season, "The 1964 Phold". The venue's two home teams won both the first and last games at the stadium: the Athletics beat the Boston Red Sox 8–1 on opening day 1909, while the Phillies beat the Montreal Expos 2–1 on October 1, 1970, in the park's final contest. Shibe Park stood on the block bounded by Lehigh Avenue, 20th Street, Somerset Street and 21st Street. It was five blocks west, corner-to-corner, from the Baker Bowl, the Phillies' home from 1887 to 1938. The stadium hosted eight World Series and two Major L ...
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People From Philadelphia
A person ( : people) is a being that has certain capacities or attributes such as reason, morality, consciousness or self-consciousness, and being a part of a culturally established form of social relations such as kinship, ownership of property, or legal responsibility. The defining features of personhood and, consequently, what makes a person count as a person, differ widely among cultures and contexts. In addition to the question of personhood, of what makes a being count as a person to begin with, there are further questions about personal identity and self: both about what makes any particular person that particular person instead of another, and about what makes a person at one time the same person as they were or will be at another time despite any intervening changes. The plural form "people" is often used to refer to an entire nation or ethnic group (as in "a people"), and this was the original meaning of the word; it subsequently acquired its use as a plural form of per ...
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Burials At Holy Cross Cemetery (Yeadon, Pennsylvania)
Burial, also known as interment or inhumation, is a method of final disposition whereby a dead body is placed into the ground, sometimes with objects. This is usually accomplished by excavating a pit or trench, placing the deceased and objects in it, and covering it over. A funeral is a ceremony that accompanies the final disposition. Humans have been burying their dead since shortly after the origin of the species. Burial is often seen as indicating respect for the dead. It has been used to prevent the odor of decay, to give family members closure and prevent them from witnessing the decomposition of their loved ones, and in many cultures it has been seen as a necessary step for the deceased to enter the afterlife or to give back to the cycle of life. Methods of burial may be heavily ritualized and can include natural burial (sometimes called "green burial"); embalming or mummification; and the use of containers for the dead, such as shrouds, coffins, grave liners, and ...
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1915 Deaths
Events Below, the events of World War I have the "WWI" prefix. January *January – British physicist Sir Joseph Larmor publishes his observations on "The Influence of Local Atmospheric Cooling on Astronomical Refraction". *January 1 ** WWI: British Royal Navy battleship HMS ''Formidable'' is sunk off Lyme Regis, Dorset, England, by an Imperial German Navy U-boat, with the loss of 547 crew. ** Battle of Broken Hill: A train ambush near Broken Hill, New South Wales, Australia, is carried out by two men (claiming to be in support of the Ottoman Empire) who are killed, together with 4 civilians. * January 5 – Joseph E. Carberry sets an altitude record of , carrying Capt. Benjamin Delahauf Foulois as a passenger, in a fixed-wing aircraft. * January 12 ** The United States House of Representatives rejects a proposal to give women the right to vote. ** '' A Fool There Was'' premières in the United States, starring Theda Bara as a ''femme fatale''; she quickly becomes one o ...
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1895 Births
Events January–March * January 5 – Dreyfus affair: French officer Alfred Dreyfus is stripped of his army rank, and sentenced to life imprisonment on Devil's Island. * January 12 – The National Trust for Places of Historic Interest or Natural Beauty is founded in England by Octavia Hill, Robert Hunter and Canon Hardwicke Rawnsley. * January 13 – First Italo-Ethiopian War: Battle of Coatit – Italian forces defeat the Ethiopians. * January 17 – Félix Faure is elected President of the French Republic, after the resignation of Jean Casimir-Perier. * February 9 – Mintonette, later known as volleyball, is created by William G. Morgan at Holyoke, Massachusetts. * February 11 – The lowest ever UK temperature of is recorded at Braemar, in Aberdeenshire. This record is equalled in 1982, and again in 1995. * February 14 – Oscar Wilde's last play, the comedy ''The Importance of Being Earnest'', is first shown at St Jam ...
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Li'l Rastus
Ulysses Simon Harrison (born ), known as Li'l Rastus and Rastus Simon, was an African American teenager who served as a mascot of the Detroit Tigers baseball team from 1908 to 1910. Tigers mascot In the early 1900s, it was not unusual for Major League Baseball teams to casually retain one or more Street children, urchins to act as mascots or Batboy, batboys. Their employment might only last as long as a team's winning streak, and often their only wages were food and shelter. On July 4, 1908, the ''Detroit Free Press'' reported that the Tigers had begun traveling with a new mascot, "Rastus," who had been "picked up by Germany Schaefer, [Germany] Schaefer" during the team's recent road trip to Chicago. "He will have a home as long as the present streak lasts," the report added. Harrison served as a mascot for the next three months for the pennant-winning Tigers, who would rub the youth's head for good luck. He traveled with team and even warmed up Tigers pitchers from time to time ...
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Bright's Disease
Bright's disease is a historical classification of kidney diseases that are described in modern medicine as acute or chronic nephritis. It was characterized by swelling and the presence of albumin in the urine, and was frequently accompanied by high blood pressure and heart disease. Signs and symptoms The symptoms and signs of Bright's disease were first described in 1827 by the English physician Richard Bright, after whom the disease was named. In his ''Reports of Medical Cases'', he described 25 cases of dropsy ( edema) which he attributed to kidney disease. Symptoms and signs included: inflammation of serous membranes, hemorrhages, apoplexy, convulsions, blindness and coma. Many of these cases were found to have albumin in their urine (detected by the spoon and candle-heat coagulation), and showed striking morbid changes of the kidneys at autopsy. The triad of dropsy, albumin in the urine, and kidney disease came to be regarded as characteristic of Bright's disease. Sub ...
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Eddie Plank
Edward Stewart Plank (August 31, 1875 – February 24, 1926), nicknamed "Gettysburg Eddie", was an American professional baseball player. A pitcher, Plank played in Major League Baseball for the Philadelphia Athletics from 1901 through 1914, the St. Louis Terriers in 1915, and the St. Louis Browns in 1916 and 1917. Plank was the first left-handed pitcher to win 200 games and then 300 games, and now ranks third in all-time wins among left-handers with 326 career victories ( 13th all time) and first all-time in career shutouts by a left-handed pitcher with 66. Philadelphia went to the World Series five times while Plank played there, but he sat out the 1910 World Series due to an injury. Plank had only a 1.32 earned run average (ERA) in his World Series career, but he was unlucky, with a 2–5 win–loss record in those games. Plank died of a stroke in 1926. He was posthumously elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1946 by the Veterans Committee. Early life Plank grew up on a ...
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Baseball Writers' Association Of America
The Baseball Writers' Association of America (BBWAA) is a professional association for journalists writing about Major League Baseball for daily newspapers, magazines and qualifying websites. The organization was founded in 1908, and is known for its annual awards and voting on membership in the Baseball Hall of Fame. Early years The BBWAA was founded on October 14, 1908, to improve working conditions for sportswriters in the early part of the 20th century; It also sought to promote uniformity of scoring methods, and to professionalize the press box, such that access was limited only to working reporters, telegraphers, and others who had a reason to be there. The organization began with 43 founding members. They included Joe S. Jackson, who became the association's first president. At that time, Jackson was the sporting editor (today called ''sports editor'') of the ''Detroit Free Press''. Also selected as officers were Irving E. Sanborn of the ''Chicago Tribune'', syndicate ...
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Eddie Collins
Edward Trowbridge Collins Sr. (May 2, 1887 – March 25, 1951), nicknamed "Cocky", was an American professional baseball player, manager and executive. He played as a second baseman in Major League Baseball from to for the Philadelphia Athletics and Chicago White Sox. A graduate of Columbia University, Collins holds major league career records in several categories and is among the top few players in several other categories. In 1925, Collins became just the sixth person to join the 3,000 hit club – and the last for the next 17 seasons. His 47 career home runs are the fewest of anyone in it. Collins is the only non-Yankee to win five or more World Series titles with the same club as a player. Collins coached and managed in the major leagues after retiring as a player. He also served as general manager of the Boston Red Sox. He was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1939. Early life Born in Millerton, a 384-acre village in Dutchess County, New York, Collins was uniq ...
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Rube Oldring
Reuben Henry "Rube" Oldring (May 30, 1884 – September 9, 1961) was a professional baseball player who played outfield in the major leagues from 1905 to 1918. He played for the Philadelphia Athletics and New York Yankees. Early life Oldring was born in New York City and attended Bridgeton High School in Bridgeton, New Jersey. He started his professional baseball career in the Southern Association in 1905. That October, he was drafted by the Philadelphia Athletics in the Rule 5 draft. Baseball career From 1907 to 1915, Oldring was a regular outfielder on the A's. He played in three World Series with them. He hit .194 (12-for-62) with 7 runs, 1 home run and 3 RBI in 15 postseason games. Oldring and three other stars from the 1911 World Series champion Athletics — Chief Bender, Cy Morgan and Jack Coombs — were featured in the Thanhouser Company film called '' The Baseball Bug''. In 1913, the Athletics won another World Series, and Oldring won a Cadillac after being vote ...
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