Oliver Wendell "Patsy" Tebeau (December 5, 1864 – May 16, 1918) was an American
first baseman
A first baseman, abbreviated 1B, is the player on a baseball or softball team who fields the area nearest first base, the first of four bases a baserunner must touch in succession to score a run. The first baseman is responsible for the majori ...
,
third baseman
A third baseman, abbreviated 3B, is the player in baseball or softball whose responsibility is to defend the area nearest to third base — the third of four bases a baserunner must touch in succession to score a run. In the scoring system us ...
, and
manager
Management (or managing) is the administration of an organization, whether it is a business, a nonprofit organization, or a government body. It is the art and science of managing resources of the business.
Management includes the activities ...
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), ...
.
["Patsy Tebeau Statistics and History"](_blank)
baseball-reference.com. Retrieved February 23, 2016.
Career
Tebeau was born in
St. Louis
St. Louis () is the second-largest city in Missouri, United States. It sits near the confluence of the Mississippi and the Missouri Rivers. In 2020, the city proper had a population of 301,578, while the bi-state metropolitan area, which e ...
, Missouri, in 1864. His brother,
George Tebeau, was also an MLB player.
Patsy started his professional baseball career with the
Western League's St. Joseph Reds in 1886. The following season, while playing for Denver of the WL, he had a .424
batting average
Batting average is a statistic in cricket, baseball, and softball that measures the performance of batters. The development of the baseball statistic was influenced by the cricket statistic.
Cricket
In cricket, a player's batting average is ...
in 94 games.
["Patsy Tebeau Register Statistics & History"](_blank)
baseball-reference.com. Retrieved February 23, 2016. Tebeau made his major league debut with 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
Chicago White Stockings in September of that year. In 20 games with Chicago, he batted .162.
He then played in the
Western Association
The Western Association was the name of five different leagues formed in American minor league baseball during the 19th and 20th centuries.
The oldest league, originally established as the Northwestern League in 1883, was refounded as the Weste ...
in 1888.
In 1889, Tebeau joined the NL's
Cleveland Spiders
The Cleveland Spiders were an American professional baseball team based in Cleveland, Ohio. The team competed at the major league level from 1887 to 1899, first for two seasons as a member of the now-defunct American Association (AA), followed ...
and batted .282.
The following year, he was a player-manager for the
Cleveland Infants
The Cleveland Infants were a one-year baseball team in the Players' League, a short-lived Major League that existed only for the 1890 season. Owned by Al Johnson, the Infants finished , their lone season, with 55 wins and 75 losses. Their home ...
of the
Players' League. In 1891, Tebeau returned to the Spiders and was a player-manager for the team until 1898.
["Patsy Tebeau Managerial Record"](_blank)
baseball-reference.com. Retrieved February 23, 2016. His lowest batting average with the Spiders was .244 in 1892, and his highest was .329 in 1893.
The Spiders never finished a full season in first place in the National League, but Tebeau's team benefited from the season structure in 1892, 1895 and 1896; the 1892 season was a split-season that found Cleveland as the winner of the second half and the right to play in the World's Championship Series (the pre-modern postseason before the
World Series
The World Series is the annual championship series of Major League Baseball (MLB) in the United States and Canada, contested since 1903 between the champion teams of the American League (AL) and the National League (NL). The winner of the World ...
). They would compete in the next rendition of postseason play in the League with 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 ...
that matched the first and second place teams, and Cleveland would win once.
In March 1899, the Spiders assigned Tebeau to the
St. Louis Perfectos.
He managed the team before quitting in the middle of the 1900 season.
[Scheinin, Richard (1994). ]
Field of Screams
'. W. W. Norton & Company. pp. 75–79. Tebeau is one of just over a dozen managers to have won at least 400 games in the 19th century.
In his 13-year MLB career, Tebeau played 1,167 games and batted .279 with 27
home run
In baseball, a home run (abbreviated HR) is scored when the ball is hit in such a way that the batter is able to circle the bases and reach home plate safely in one play without any errors being committed by the defensive team. A home run i ...
s and 735
runs batted in
A run batted in (RBI; plural RBIs ) is a statistic in baseball and softball that credits a batter for making a play that allows a run to be scored (except in certain situations such as when an error is made on the play). For example, if the ba ...
.
His managing record was 726–583–30.
He was known for verbally abusing umpires and opposing players, for which he was criticized by journalists.
After retiring from baseball, Tebeau ran a saloon in St. Louis. His wife left him, and in 1918, he committed suicide by shooting himself in the head.
Managerial record
See also
*
List of Major League Baseball player-managers
Major League Baseball (MLB) is the highest level of play in North American professional baseball. Founded in 1869, it is composed of 30 teams. Each team in the league has a manager, who is responsible for team strategy and leadership on and off ...
References
Notes
External links
Retrosheet*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Tebeau, Patsy
1864 births
1918 suicides
19th-century baseball players
Major League Baseball first basemen
Major League Baseball third basemen
Major League Baseball player-managers
Chicago White Stockings players
Cleveland Spiders players
Cleveland Infants players
St. Louis Perfectos players
St. Louis Cardinals players
Cleveland Spiders managers
St. Louis Cardinals managers
St. Joseph Reds players
Denver (minor league baseball) players
Omaha Omahogs players
Omaha Lambs players
Minneapolis Millers (baseball) players
Baseball players from St. Louis
Suicides by firearm in Missouri
1918 deaths
Sportspeople from St. Louis