Dode Criss (March 12, 1885 – September 8, 1955) was a right-handed

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), ...

pitcher In baseball, the pitcher is the player who throws ("pitches") the baseball from the pitcher's mound toward the catcher to begin each play, with the goal of retiring a batter, who attempts to either make contact with the pitched ball or draw ...

and

pinch hitter In baseball, a pinch hitter is a substitute Batting (baseball), batter. Batters can be substituted at any time while the dead ball (baseball), ball is dead (not in active play); the manager (baseball), manager may use any player who has not yet ...

who played his entire career from

1908 Events January * January 1 – The British ''Nimrod'' Expedition led by Ernest Shackleton sets sail from New Zealand on the ''Nimrod'' for Antarctica. * January 3 – A total solar eclipse is visible in the Pacific Ocean, and is the 46 ...

1911 A notable ongoing event was the Comparison of the Amundsen and Scott Expeditions, race for the South Pole. Events January * January 1 – A decade after federation, the Northern Territory and the Australian Capital Territory ...

with the

St. Louis Browns The St. Louis Browns were a Major League Baseball team that originated in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, as the Milwaukee Brewers. A charter member of the American League (AL), the Brewers moved to St. Louis, Missouri, after the 1901 season, where they ...

of the

American League The American League of Professional Baseball Clubs, known simply as the American League (AL), is one of two leagues that make up Major League Baseball (MLB) in the United States and Canada. It developed from the Western League, a minor league ...

. He is considered by historian

Bill James George William James (born October 5, 1949) is an American baseball writer, historian, and statistician whose work has been widely influential. Since 1977, James has written more than two dozen books devoted to baseball history and statistics. ...

as the first player to be used as a pinch hitter regularly. Criss was born in

Sherman, Mississippi Sherman is a town which straddles Lee, Pontotoc, and Union counties in Mississippi. The population was 600 at the 2020 census. History In 1840 Reuben Jones and John Witt settled what is now the Sherman community fourteen miles northeast of Pon ...

. Criss started out in the

Texas League The Texas League is a Minor League Baseball league which has operated in the South Central United States since 1902. It is classified as a Double-A league. Despite the league's name, only its five South Division teams are actually based in the ...

where he was a key player for the

Cleburne Railroaders The Cleburne Railroaders are a professional baseball team based in Cleburne, Texas, that plays in the American Association of Professional Baseball, an official Partner League of Major League Baseball. The team, which began play in 2017, plays i ...

championship team in 1906. On June 28 of that season, Criss pitched a

no-hitter In baseball, a no-hitter is a game in which a team was not able to record a hit. Major League Baseball (MLB) officially defines a no-hitter as a completed game in which a team that batted in at least nine innings recorded no hits. A pitcher wh ...

against the

Temple Boll Weevils The Temple Boll Weevils were a minor league baseball team which played their home games at Woodson Field in Temple, Texas as a member of the Texas League from 1905 to 1907. Local newspapers took to calling them the "Cotton Bugs," a nickname coined ...

. Criss signed with the Browns in the beginning of the 1908 season, where his father told Criss not to sign for them for less than a dollar a day. In his first season on the big leagues, Criss became the first player to pinch hit at least 40 times in a season, with 41 out of 82 at-bats, making 12 pinch hits, (28 overall) for a .341 batting average, higher than the league leader,

Ty Cobb Tyrus Raymond Cobb (December 18, 1886 – July 17, 1961), nicknamed "the Georgia Peach", was an American Major League Baseball (MLB) center fielder. He was born in rural Narrows, Georgia. Cobb spent 22 seasons with the Detroit Tigers, the las ...

. A minor controversy ensued as St. Louis fans were outraged that the then Commissioner of Baseball,

Ban Johnson Byron Bancroft Johnson (January 5, 1864 – March 28, 1931) was an American executive in professional baseball who served as the founder and first president of the American League (AL). Johnson developed the AL—a descendant of the mino ...

, declared Cobb as the batting average winner instead of Criss. He led the American League in pinch at-bats and hits in every season of his four-year career. After his career with the Browns, Criss went back to the Texas League, where he led the league in batting three times, and pitched three no-hitters for

Houston Houston (; ) is the most populous city in Texas, the most populous city in the Southern United States, the fourth-most populous city in the United States, and the sixth-most populous city in North America, with a population of 2,304,580 in ...

.Texas League Hall of Fame
Retrieved on July 20, 2007. Overall, Criss played in 227 games, getting 304 at-bats with 84 hits, for a .276 lifetime average. Pitching wise, Criss had three wins and nine losses in his career with a 4.38

earned run average In baseball statistics, earned run average (ERA) is the average of earned runs allowed by a pitcher per nine innings pitched (i.e. the traditional length of a game). It is determined by dividing the number of earned runs allowed by the number ...

and 70

strikeout In baseball or softball, a strikeout (or strike-out) occurs when a batter accumulates three strikes during a time at bat. It usually means that the batter is out. A strikeout is a statistic recorded for both pitchers and batters, and is deno ...

s. Criss died in Sherman in 1955. He is a member of the

Texas League Hall of Fame The Texas League Hall of Fame is an American baseball hall of fame which honors Baseball player, players, Manager (baseball), managers, and executives of the Double-A (baseball), Double-A Texas League of Minor League Baseball for their accomplishme ...

References

External links

{{DEFAULTSORT:Criss, Dode 1885 births 1955 deaths St. Louis Browns players Major League Baseball pitchers Major League Baseball first basemen Cleburne Railroaders players St. Paul Saints (AA) players Houston Buffaloes players Louisville Colonels (minor league) players Baseball players from Mississippi