[Eckstein 4 Prez]

Since Jim Devlin has hit well in the first couple games of the season, it's a good time to tell his rather sad story. As Nemec says,

It is possible to see Jim Devlin as the nineteenth-century equivalent of Joe Jackson, but with the critical difference that an era perhaps less cynical and more sentimental than ours turned him into a figure of pathos and an exemplar of the wages of wrongdoing instead of one of innocence victimized by conspiracy.

Devlin was born in Philadelphia in 1849 and came to the attention of the top clubs in the city when he played well for a top amateur team in Easton. He began as an infielder and utility player, but learned to pitch in the 1874-75 offseason. He started 24 games for Chicago in 1875 then moved to Louisville at the start of the National League and was the team's primary pitcher in 1876 and 1877.

Devlin took to pitching immediately. Nemec again:

He proved to be effective with what was variously called a drop ball, a vertically breaking curve ball, or a "ground shoot, the ball after leaving his hand taking a slanting course toward the ground." His forte, however, was a level of sheer velocity the old straight-arm pitchers could not match. In February 1875 the New York Clipper reported, "Devlin has made his debut as a pitchist, and the Chicago scribes think him the 'red-hottestist.'" The one problem, according to the Clipper, was finding a catcher who could hold him.

After the release of George Zettlein the following August, Devlin took over as Chicago's ace. Although his stats were not particularly impressive, he was signed for 1876 by the newly formed Louisville team. He then pitched effectively for a light-hitting outfit that finished fifth in the NL despite being outscored by six of the other seven teams. His relations with club management were nonetheless tense. Devlin served a while as team captain, but temper flare-ups made him wrong for the job. The club's officials regarded Devlin as a prima donna, while the pitcher for his part complained that Louisville had fallen behind in salary payments. After signing to play for the Grays again in 1877, he got a better offer from St. Louis and tried in vain to persuade the NL to nullify his Louisville contract.

These were all the necessary ingredients for the Louisville scandal. There was a star player who wasn't getting paid on time and who felt underappreciated by the team in any event. It got worse when they started out the 1877 season strongly and took over first place in the summer. It was a problem waiting to happen.

When Louisville headed east to play Boston and Hartford they suddenly started losing games in very suspicious ways. Two of Louisville's top players - George Hall and Devlin - were pressured into confessing having thrown games. Oddly, this seems to have little to do with "suspicious" losses back east - the games thrown seem to have been mostly exhibition games. In fact, Boston and Hartford were quite a bit better than teams like St. Louis and Cincinnati that Louisville had been beating, and it is entirely plausible that they would have had trouble against the top teams.

However, confessions in hand, Devlin was banned from the National League for life. From this point, Devlin became a tragic figure. He spent the rest of his brief life hanging around the National League offices and its officials, begging to be reinstated. This is the way Al Spalding described a meeting between Devlin and NL president William Hulbert decades later:

Devlin was in tears, Hulbert was in tears also. I heard Devlin's plea to have the stigma removed from his name. I heard him entreat, not on his own account (he acknowledged himself unworthy of consideration) but for the sake of his wife and child. I beheld the agony of humiliation depicted on his features as he confessed his guilt and begged for mercy.

I saw the great bulk of Hulbert's frame tremble with the emotion he vainly sought to stifle. I saw the president's hand steal into his pocket as if seeking to conceal his intended act from the other hand. I saw him take a $50 bill and press it into the palm of the prostrate player. And then I heard him say, as he fairly writhed with the pain his own words caused him, "That's what I think of you personally; but damn you, Devlin, you are dishonest; you have sold a game, and I can't trust you. Now go, and let me never see your face again; for your act will not be condoned so long as I live."

Devlin spent his post-ban years looking for work and traveling far away from the National League to try to get it by pitching. The International Association wanted to sign him, but the National League threatened not to play any further exhibition games against IA clubs if they did so, and they relented. Devlin did some pitching in San Francisco and New Orleans - America's two largest cities outside the NL's radius. Eventually, in the early 1880s he found work as a Philadelphia policeman, but it was short-lived. Devlin contracted tuberculosis in the summer of 1883, and he died of it that October at the age of 34.

In my league, Devlin has never been anything other than an emergency pitcher - in part because he is quite effective as a hitter. He hit .299 as a rookie first baseman with the Philadelphia Whites in 1873, then joined Chicago in 1874 but did not get a lot of playing time there. He was put into the lineup midway through 1875 and ended up hitting .344 in part-time duty, then joined Louisville and batted .313 in their first season in 1876. He continues to be one of the club's best hitters and is in the absolute prime of his career - he'll turn 28 later in 1877. He hasn't been one of baseball's top-tier stars but is a solid above-average player.