Born in Columbia, Tennessee, in 1902, Charles “Red” Lucas had a proud professional baseball career which lasted for over twenty-five seasons. And by the end of that career, he would become the man who hit safely as a pinch hitter more times than any other major leaguer in over a century of baseball. In fifteen major league seasons, most of them with Cincinnati and Pittsburgh, Lucas won 157 games as a pitcher and had 114 pinch hits as a left-handed batter, a record which would not be broken until the 1960s. Although he was most famous as a pinch hitter, he also threw an amazing 250 innings without being relieved between August 13, 1931 and July 15, 1932 while pitching for Cincinnati. This is still a major league record and one that may never be broken. In 1938 with his batting average sagging, Lucas went back to the minors. A baseball player who simply loved the game, he spent the next decade pitching, pinch hitting, and coaching for teams such as the Nashville Vols, the Decatur (Illinois) team in the Three-I League, and the Lumberton (North Carolina) Auctioneers in the Tobacco State League. He finally put away his bat and glove in 1949 to work for Tennessee’s Motor Vehicle Division until his retirement in 1968. Charles “Red” Lucas passed away in 1986 at the age of 84, the last of the pitcher/hitters from the old school of baseball.
