Stan Coveleski

Stan Coveleski

Stanley Anthony Coveleski was an American right-handed pitcher in Major League Baseball. He played for four American League teams between 1912 and 1928, primarily the Cleveland Indians. He specialized in throwing the spitball, where the pitcher alters the ball with a foreign substance such as chewing tobacco. In 450 career games, he pitched 3,082 innings and posted a record of 215–142. He was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1969.

About Stan Coveleski in brief

Summary Stan CoveleskiStanley Anthony Coveleski was an American right-handed pitcher in Major League Baseball. He played for four American League teams between 1912 and 1928, primarily the Cleveland Indians. The star of the 1920 World Series, he led the Indians to their first title with three complete-game victories. He specialized in throwing the spitball, where the pitcher alters the ball with a foreign substance such as chewing tobacco. In 450 career games, he pitched 3,082 innings and posted a record of 215–142, with 224 complete games, 38 shutouts, and a 2. 89 ERA. He was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1969. His older brother, Harry, also pitched in the major leagues between 1907 and 1918. His other brothers Frank and John also played professional baseball, but only in the minor leagues. He is the youngest of five baseball-playing brothers; his oldest brother Jacob died serving in the Spanish–American War. His father was Anthony Kowalewski, who had immigrated from Russian Poland in the early 1870s. They settled in Shamokin, where Anthony worked as a coal miner, in Northumberland County, east of the Susquehanna River and northeast of the state capital of Harrisburg. His brother Harry won 20 games in a season on three occasions during his 14-year major league career. He won 172 wins, ​2,502 1⁄3 innings and 305 starts, which were later broken by Mel Harder and Willis Hudlin.

His baseball career was short-lived; after five games, Covelski relocated to Lancaster, Pennsylvania. He originally changed his name to Covelkie, which he would remain throughout his professional career. In 1912 he pitched for the Lancaster Red Roses, a club affiliated with the Tri-State League. At that time, he only agreed to sign for the club if his older brother John also joined; at that time he anglicized his name, which would remain. He pitched 109 appearances for Lancaster through three seasons, earning a record of 53–38 in 1912, where he had a 20–14 record with a run average of 1–11 win–loss record. In 1924 he helped the Washington Senators to its second AL pennant in a row with 20 victories against only 5 losses, including a 13-game winning streak, while again leading the league in ERA. After the 1924 season, he played for the Atlantic City Lanks, and had a record 2–14 with a 1–14 win-loss record with an earned average of 95–14 in the rest of the season. He died in a car accident in 1975 in Lancaster, Pennsylvania; he was buried in a nearby town, Lancaster and was buried in the same cemetery as his brother Harry, who also played in the Tri-State League. He had a son, Stanley Jr., who was also a professional baseball player, and two daughters.