Who Was Harvey Cushman?

Exploring a 1902 Pirates Mystery

Background

I was sick with a bad cold this weekend.

While I lay down on my bed in an anacetaminophen-induced stupor, looking aimlessly at my iPad internet browser, I found myself doing what any sane middle-aged man would do in such a situation.

I started investigating the 1902 Pittsburgh Pirates roster.

Now, we’ll talk about the 1902 Pirates in a bit more detail in the future. For the purposes of this brief article, I want to take a quick look at the bullpen:

We can play one of those “one of these things is not like the other” songs here. No, I’m not interested in talking about Honus Wagner’s 5 innings of shutout pitching — not today, at least. Instead, I want to talk about the one anomaly, the one player who looks like he doesn’t belong.

Let’s talk about Harvey Cushman.

Now, I know what you’re thinking. We can just look at his Baseball Reference Bullpen biography. And we can — but it doesn’t tell us much:

We can do better than that.

Harvey’s Debut

Harvey Cushman had one of the craziest debuts in Major League pitching history.

You can tell that just by looking at the boxscore.

For one thing, the game was called after 7 innings, presumably due to darkness.

For another, Cushman threw a complete game, despite giving up 9 runs in the 3rd inning. It’s not clear how he pitched in the other 6 innings

Cushman’s line in the game wasn’t too bad:

5 walks in your debut isn’t great, especially in 1902. However, 4 strikeouts showed that he had some talent, and giving up only 12 hits to major league pitching wasn’t exactly a failure. Pittsburgh managed to get 13 hits, mind you.

There is a little bit here that you might have missed, by the way. The real story of this game, aside from Cushman’s debut, is the attendance figure.

Played Inside Human Walls

Here’s a headline for you:

From The Enquirer (Cincinnati), August 25, 1902, page 3

Now, to those who do research for Retrosheet, Baseball Reference, and any similar statistical websites in the future: you should consider using the Cincinnati Enquirer as a primary resource.

The attendance wasn’t quite 25,000, according to the text of its report:

From The Enquirer (Cincinnati), August 25, 1902, page 3

It’s a bit faded, but the text clearly says the attendance was 24,597. And I’m not certain exactly how they fit so many people into that old wooden League Park back then.

Our rookie pitcher apparently made his debut in front of a record crowd in Cincinnati:

From The Enquirer (Cincinnati), August 25, 1902, page 3

I’m guessing that the 25,000 number probably comes from the somewhat more legible Pittsburgh papers:

From The Pittsburg Post, August 25, 1902, page 6

Where Did Cushman Come From?

All of this brings up the question that Baseball Reference apparently doesn’t have the answer to.

Where did Cushman come from?

In theory, we can see his minor league statistics:

However, as you can see, we have no minor league or independent ball records for Cushman before his debut with Pittsburgh.

Now, what happened here is an outdated practice that was once somewhat common in the baseball world. Connie Mack did it quite a bit, actually. The practice was to take a young local semipro player in and give him a trial — sometimes as little as one game, sometimes, as in this case, for as much as two weeks.

In this case, Cushman played for a team from the borough of Millvale, not far at all from where Exposition Park stood:

From The Pittsburg Post, August 25, 1902, page 6

Now, we obviously don’t have the records of how the amateur Millvale team played in 1902. We do have a few boxscores, though, that give us an indication of what kind of pitcher Cushman was.

Take this, for example, from May 11:

From The Pittsburg Press, May 11, 1902, page 23

Note that Cushman struck out 9, despite giving up 7 runs.

Here’s one from a week later:

From The Pittsburg Press, May 18, 1902, page 21

Cushman struck out 12 in this one. Notice a pattern?

From The Pittsburg Press, May 25, 1902, page 22

Cushman struck out 12 in this one as well, and Millvale were undefeated. I’m not certain that Millvale played on any day aside from Saturday.

We could go on. I think, though, that this is the game that finally got the attention of the big club:

From The Pittsburg Daily Post, August 17, 1902, page 10

This appeared in the papers just a week later:

From The Pittsburg Press, August 24, 1902, page 19

And, the next day, Cushman made his professional debut, in front of a bigger crowd than he’d likely ever seen in his life.

It’s not surprising that the Pirates wanted to take a chance on the kid. Cushman had shown the ability to strike out batters at a torrid rate, and seemed to play well when faced with all sorts of opposition. There’s nothing better than giving a local sandlot star a chance to make good, after all.

Des Moines

After four games, the Pirates decided that Cushman wasn’t ready for the big show after all.

Cushman wound up playing for Des Moines in 1903, as we saw above. Unfortunately, this is the earliest mention of him in 1903 I could manage to find, due to incomplete archives:

From The Register and Leader (Des Moines), April 5, 1903, page 10

I believe this was his first start:

From The Register and Leader (Des Moines), May 1, 1903, page 7

However, whatever good cheer there was in 1903 apparently died away in early 1904.

From The Register and Leader (Des Moines), March 28, 1904, page 2

Notice that he was referred to as a “star pitcher” at this time.

From The Register and Leader (Des Moines), April 7, 1904, page 7

Cushman did eventually have a change of heart — and the reason given publicly for the dispute was pretty typical of minor league baseball in those days:

From The Register and Leader (Des Moines), April 15, 1904, page 7

Sadly for Harvey, his time in Des Moines wound up being limited. The same day he was shelled out of the box with 7 runs by St. Joseph in the first inning, this was printed:

From The Register and Leader (Des Moines), August 18, 1904, page 7

The end was nigh.

The End

We can spot bits and pieces of the end of Cushman’s career by fast forwarding a few years. He wound up playing for Braddock, PA, in a variety of midwestern leagues.

As usual, he could steamroll over amateur teams:

From The Pittsburg Daily Post, May 20, 1906, page 17

Cushman also apparently eventually wound up with an even more obscure team in West Newton-Bellevernon that season:

From The Daily Republican (Monongahela, PA), July 23, 1906, page 4

That’s the last I could find of him, though. He seems to have left the game and what talent he had aside in 1906.

It’s a bit morbid, but I was able to find a death notice. It was very brief, and made no mention of his erstwhile baseball career:

From The Pittsburgh Post, December 28, 1920, page 7

Maine

But what about Maine? Remember — Cushman was originally from Maine, and apparently attended the University of Maine.

Well, there is a mention of Cushman in the Maine papers, though you’ve got to go a bit into the future to find it.

From Portland Press Herald (Maine), March 27, 1948, page 10

For whatever reason, the Portland Press Herald decided to look back 51 years in the past at the University of Maine team of 1897. I couldn’t easily find any newspaper accounts of this team, and am a bit puzzled as to why this was deemed so important.

Thankfully, though, it provides us with a somewhat grainy version of what is probably the best picture of Cushman I’ve seen:

From Portland Press Herald (Maine), March 27, 1948, page 10

If my count is correct, Cushman is dead center in this photo, his left arm wrapped around shortstop Henry Pretto’s shoulder.

Anyway, I could go on, but you get the drift.

All of this goes to show you that you shouldn’t think of those random players who only played a game or four as useless or absolute failures. Sometimes their stories are more interesting than you think. And sometimes, perhaps, you’ll find stories and photos that really make you interested.