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Date
4-23-2025
Abstract
Carl Mays was a successful submarine (underhand) pitcher in the major leagues from 1915 through 1929 with the Boston Red Sox, New York Yankees, Cincinnati Reds, and New York Giants. He pitched in four World Series. He had 207 wins and 126 losses, with an earned run average of 2.92. His on-field credentials place him among the best pitchers of the time, yet Mays has not been enshrined with his peers in the National Baseball Hall of Fame. Mays had a reputation for pitching inside when batters crowded the plate, and he consequently hit 89 men during his 15-year major league career. Sadly, one of the batters he hit remains the focus of his professional baseball legacy. In 1920, a pitch thrown by Mays hit Cleveland Indians shortstop Ray Chapman in the head. Chapman died at the hospital the following morning, the only major league player to die from an injury received during a game. Other authors have described this tragedy in detail, along with other events in the major league career of Carl Mays. What has been missing is a fuller account of his early days in baseball, when Mays was a dominant overhand pitcher as a teenager for semiprofessional town teams in Oklahoma, Kansas, and Utah. This study focuses on his experiences during this formative period, including his participation in the “flat bat game” in Kansas and his stint as a pitcher in Utah after he was caught riding freight trains west to pursue his baseball career. This essay was originally published in 2019 and has undergone revisions and corrections for its release in 2025 as part of the five-volume anthology Peeking through the Knothole. The open-access, digital version of this essay is available through the “Download” button on this webpage. The print-on-demand version is available through the “Buy this Book” button for volume two of the anthology (Baseball Biographies with Kansas Connections).
Keywords
Carl Mays, Sub Mays, Mansfield Missouri, Kingfisher Oklahoma, Hennessey Oklahoma, Mulvane Kansas, Protection Kansas, Price Utah, baseball
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 International License.
Rights
© The Author (s)
Recommended Citation
Eberle, Mark E., "Early Baseball Career of Carl Mays in Oklahoma, Kansas, and Utah, Revised" (2025). Monographs. 5.
DOI: 10.58809/BWYH7752
Available at:
https://scholars.fhsu.edu/all_monographs/5
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Originally Published 2019
Revised Edition 2025