Frederick Augustus "Duke" Klobedanz (June 13, 1871 – April 12, 1940) was a

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 ...

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), ...

. He played for the Boston Beaneaters in five seasons and had a lifetime major league

win–loss record In sports, a winning percentage is the fraction of games or matches a team or individual has won. The statistic is commonly used in standings or rankings to compare teams or individuals. It is defined as wins divided by the total number of matc ...

of 53–25.

Career

Klobedanz, a "hard throwing, wild lefty," began playing semi-professional baseball in 1889,Prichard, Sarah Johnson.
The Town and City of Waterbury, Connecticut, Volume 3
' (The Price and Lee company, 1896), p. 1107. around the age of 17, and then started his professional baseball career in 1892. He played in the

New England League The New England League was a mid-level league in American minor league baseball that played intermittently in five of the six New England states (Vermont excepted) between 1886 and 1949. After 1901, it existed in the shadow of two Major League B ...

for the next few years, mostly with the Fall River Indians and

New Bedford Whalers New Bedford Whalers was the name of three American soccer teams based in New Bedford, Massachusetts. The first Whalers played in the Southern New England Soccer League between 1914 and 1918. The second Whalers played in the American Soccer League ...

. During the 1895 season, Klobedanz married the former Annie L. Durfee of Fall River. If married life hurt his pitching, then it is not evident from the statistics because that season he won a career-high 28 games,'
Nineteenth Century Stars
' (Society for American Baseball Research, 1989), p. 73. batted a robust .377, and led the Indians to their third consecutive pennant. In 1896, Klobedanz had another good season, going 25–6 with a 2.38

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 ...

,"Fred Klobedanz Minor League Statistics & History"
''baseball-reference.com''. Retrieved 2010-11-22. leading the league in wins and batting .353. He was then purchased by the

National League The National League of Professional Baseball Clubs, known simply as the National League (NL), is the older of two leagues constituting Major League Baseball (MLB) in the United States and Canada, and the world's oldest extant professional team ...

's Beaneaters that August and pitched well in his first MLB action during the last several weeks of the season. In 1897, Klobedanz went 26–7 to lead the majors in

winning percentage In sports, a winning percentage is the fraction of games or matches a team or individual has won. The statistic is commonly used in standings or rankings to compare teams or individuals. It is defined as wins divided by the total number of match ...

."Fred Klobedanz Statistics and History"
''baseball-reference.com''. Retrieved 2010-11-22. At one point, he won 14 consecutive games. His ERA was mediocre, but he was aided by the powerful Boston offense which provided league-leading run support; Klobedanz himself batted .324 that season. The Beaneaters won the pennant by two games, however they lost the

Temple Cup The Temple Cup was a cup awarded to the winner of an annual best-of-seven postseason championship series for American professional baseball from 1894 to 1897. Competing teams were exclusively from the National League, which had been founded in 1 ...

series in five games to the second place

Baltimore Orioles The Baltimore Orioles are an American professional baseball team based in Baltimore. The Orioles compete in Major League Baseball (MLB) as a member club of the American League (AL) East division. As one of the American League's eight charter ...

. In 2004, baseball analyst Bill James wrote that Klobedanz had the second-luckiest pitcher season of all-time. According to James, Klobedanz actually "deserved" a win–loss record of 16–17. In 1898, Klobedanz had a record of 19–10, helping the team to another championship. He started off slow in 1899, however, and was sold to the Eastern League in May. Besides another short stint with Boston in 1902, he remained in the minor leagues from 1900 to 1908. In 1902, he went 26–10 with a 1.29 ERA for the New England League's Lawrence Colts. His last winning season was 1906, when he went 18–10. In 1909, he pitched for Hyannis in what is now the Cape Cod Baseball League. At age 38, Klobedanz was still pitching complete games and it was reported that, "to one who remembers him nine or ten years ago,...he seems as fit as ever." Overall, Klobedanz won 234 games in the minor leagues to go along with his 53 major league victories. He died in 1940, in his hometown of

Waterbury, Connecticut Waterbury is a city in the U.S. state of Connecticut on the Naugatuck River, southwest of Hartford and northeast of New York City. Waterbury is the second-largest city in New Haven County, Connecticut. According to the 2020 US Census, in 20 ...

References

External links

{{DEFAULTSORT:Klobedanz, Fred 1871 births 1940 deaths Sportspeople from Waterbury, Connecticut Major League Baseball pitchers Boston Beaneaters players Fall River Indians players Worcester Farmers players Worcester Quakers players Lawrence Colts players New Bedford Whalers (baseball) players Brockton Tigers players Hyannis Harbor Hawks players Cape Cod Baseball League players (pre-modern era) 19th-century baseball players Baseball players from Connecticut