Clyde Hetrick "Lefty" Smoll (April 17, 1914 – August 31, 1985) was a

professional baseball Professional baseball is organized baseball in which players are selected for their talents and are paid to play for a specific team or club system. It is played in leagues and associated farm teams throughout the world. Modern professional ...

pitcher who played in

Major League Baseball Major League Baseball (MLB) is a professional baseball organization and the oldest major professional sports league in the world. MLB is composed of 30 total teams, divided equally between the National League (NL) and the American League (AL), ...

(MLB) for the 1940 Philadelphia Phillies.

Biography

On April 26, 1940, Smoll made his major league debut, starting against the Brooklyn Dodgers, whose starting pitcher was

Freddie Fitzsimmons Frederick Landis Fitzsimmons (July 28, 1901 – November 18, 1979) was an American professional baseball right-handed pitcher, manager, and coach, who played in Major League Baseball (MLB) from to with the New York Giants and Brooklyn Dodgers. ...

. Smoll allowed four runs, two earned, in six innings of work, saddling him with the loss. Smoll made 33 appearances in 1940, starting nine games and going 2–8 with a 5.37 ERA. In 109 innings, he allowed 145 hits and 36 walks while striking out 31 batters. He played his final big league game on September 12. Smoll also spent 10 seasons pitching in the minor leagues, going 79–94 in 337 games. He pitched in the minors until 1946. He managed in the minor leagues from 1948 to 1950, skippering the Rome Colonels the first two years and the

West Palm Beach Indians The West Palm Beach Indians were a minor league baseball team based in West Palm Beach, Florida. The team played its home games at Connie Mack Field. History Through its existence, the Indians were mostly an independent team playing in the Flori ...

in the last. Smoll died in the city of his birth,

Quakertown, Pennsylvania Quakertown is a borough in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, United States. As of 2020, it had a population of 9,359. The borough is south of Allentown and Bethlehem and north of Philadelphia, making Quakertown a border town of both the Delaware Va ...

, on August 31, 1985. A son, Clyde Jr., bought the minor league Elmira Pioneers in 1986, and owned the team for a decade.

References

External links

1914 births 1985 deaths People from Quakertown, Pennsylvania Baseball players from Pennsylvania Minor league baseball managers Philadelphia Phillies players {{US-baseball-pitcher-1910s-stub