Fred Toney set two records as a professional baseball pitcher which will never be broken. Perhaps a bold statement, but in this age of $100 million baseball contracts, where pitchers’ arms are treated like gold, what Toney did in 1909 and 1917 will never occur again because no baseball manager will ever let it happen. The first record occurred on May 10, 1909 when Toney pitched a seventeen-inning, no-hit game for Winchester, Kentucky, in the Blue Grass League. He accomplished an even more impressive feat on July 1, 1917 when pitching for the Cincinnati Reds. That day Toney beat Pittsburgh in both games of a double-header! When he allowed only three hits in each game, it set a National League record that stands today. Imagine pitching two games on the same day. Toney’s best year in the majors was also in 1917, when he won twenty-four games, pitching 340 innings. He was with the Chicago Cubs from 1911 to 1913, the Cincinnati Reds from 1914 to 1918, the New York Giants from 1918 to 1922, and the St. Louis Cardinals in 1923. He closed out his career, which included a major league record of 139-102, with the Nashville Vols in 1925, winning three and losing four. Fred Toney died in 1953 at the age of sixty-five. His iron arm, grit, and triumphs on the baseball diamond remind us of the days when baseball was truly “America’s Sport.”
