totally random

Someone asked recently about details from the career of Jim Joe Edwards, a little-known pitcher from Banner who played in the majors in the 1920s. There is a fantastic website, baseball-almanac.com, that can take you at the click of a button to a box score from the debut of any MLB player. With a little imagination, you’re almost there for Edwards’ first game. It’s May 14, 1922, at Griffith Stadium in Washington, D.C. The 27-year-old Edwards, a 6-foot-2 left-hander, starts for Cleveland against a Senators lineup that includes some familiar names: Donie Bush, Bucky Harris, Sam Rice, Joe Judge, Goose Goslin and Roger Peckinpaugh. Taking the field behind Edwards are the likes of Joe “Doc” Evans (a Meridian native), Tris Speaker, Stuffy McInnis, Joe Sewell and Bill Wambsganss. Edwards gives up a couple of runs in the second inning and leaves after five, trailing 4-0. He allowed nine hits and a walk and took the loss in a 4-3 game. Edwards, a Mississippi College alum, went on to have a decent career, going 26-37 with a 4.37 ERA over six seasons in the big leagues. He won 10 games for the Indians in 1923 and pitched his last game in 1928 for Cincinnati. He died 50 years ago this month. P.S. Came across a Howard Farmer baseball card (Donruss 1992) in one of those odd-ball assortment packages. Remember him? Farmer was a star at Jackson State (and at Utica Junior College before that) and a promising prospect in the minors whose brief fling in the big leagues didn’t go so well. Farmer, a seventh-round draftee in 1987 by Montreal, pitched in six games for the 1990 Expos and went 0-3 with a 7.04 ERA. He never got another shot, though his minor league numbers were good: 59-43, 3.33 ERA. He was out of the game by 1996.