Last week I wrote about Buck Becker’s Major League debut with the 1911 Nationals, and his remarkable performance in holding the White Sox to only one run. Today, even as the 2014 Nationals teeter on the brink of elimination, we’ll continue to look at Becker’s career in baseball.
It looked good for Buck Becker in his second game when he faced the St. Louis Browns, a team for whom the epithet ‘hapless’ seemed to have been coined. The early going seemed to bear this out, with the Nationals scoring three runs in their first at-bat. The Washington Times noted that Becker ‘wasn’t exactly shining,’ though as he returned for the eighth inning, the Nationals were up two, a deficit that the Browns managed to erase, leaving the score all tied up. Fortunately, Doc Gessler unloaded a home run in the bottom of the inning, Becker held the Browns scoreless in the top of the ninth, and he thus prevailed.
Becker’s next game was against the New York Highlanders. While not the dominant team they would become as the Yankees, they were still well ahead of Washington in the standings. Nonetheless, Becker rose to the occasion, holding them scoreless in spite of allowing nine hits. Becker, whose ‘coolness’ the Times praised, even managed to get a hit of his own, as well as scoring a run, making him a standout performer in this 3-0 game. Becker therewith ensured a spot on the roster, and earned a trip to St. Louis.
The rookie’s luck ran out on August 20th. Facing, once again, the White Sox, Becker allowed 20 hits, which translated into 11 runs. Which was ten more than needed, as the Nationals managed exactly no runs. The rest of Becker’s season looked more like the last game than his first three: He appeared in seven more games, and lost five of them – and won exactly none. Nonetheless, he was hired back the next season, though after appearing in four games without any decisions, he was – along with Jerry Akers and Bill Cunningham – traded to the Montreal Royals of the International League.
The Nationals, in return, got Chick Gandil, a trade that they clearly got the better end of. Where Gandil (who would later achieve infamy for his ring-leader role in the Black Sox scandal) hit .305 while helping the Nationals reach the number two spot in the AL East, Cunningham and Akers both had mediocre seasons and would soon retire from baseball entirely.
Becker, for his part, did so poorly in Montreal that he was returned to the Nationals with the request that they would rather be paid in currency. The Nationals then found in the Atlanta Crackers a home for Becker, and he would end up with a perfectly decent 7-7 record with them over the rest of the 1912 season. He returned south for the 1913 season, but then purchased his release from the team and returned to D.C. – and amateur baseball, while earning his keep as a bartender.
Next: The bartender/ballplayer goes to war.