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CREIGHTON PASSES THE 100-STRIKEOUT BARRIER!
SPORT’S MOST DOMINANT PITCHER ADDS MAJOR MILESTONE TO LIST OF ACCOMPLISHMENTS

BROOKLYN (July 22, 1865) – Saturday afternoon’s contest in Carroll Park pitted the two teams tied for the Brooklyn Championship lead – Continental & Excelsior – against one another. The occasion demanded big performances and the teams did not disappoint, as the game needed extra innings to decide the winner.

The pitching matchup was a classic: Continental’s Grover Wright versus Excelsior’s Jim Creighton – the only two pitchers to win New York League M.V.P. – and the game itself was a classic. Both pitchers went all ten innings, with Wright getting the better of Creighton in Continental’s 3-2 win thanks to Wright himself driving in the game-winning run in the top of the 10th.

In a losing effort, Jim Creighton made major history by becoming the first pitcher to strike out 100 batters in a single season, doing so by striking out the very first batter of the game: Continental’s Frank McPherson. Creighton would go on to sit down half a dozen batsmen over his ten innings of work, bringing his total number of strikeouts for the 1865 season to 105 with just over two weeks left to play. It is possible that Creighton will have struck down 120 before the season is done.

In addition to Creighton’s strikeout milestone, he has only been responsible for five bases on balls, making for a seemingly impossible K/BB ratio of exactly 21/1, which will break the existing record of roughly 3.3/1 exponentially. He has also surpassed his own Pitching W.A.R. record of 7.4 that he set last season, as he is currently at 7.6 and on a pace for 8.9.

This will be the third season in a row that Jim Creighton has set new N.B.B.O. records thanks to his pitching proficiency. The frightening thing is that he is still only 24 years of age and thus hypothetically has 3-4 years of improvement left before he hits his peak.

If this is the kind of pitching from Jim Creighton that the world of base ball can expect to see for the next decade or more, one really must wonder how opponents will deal with him. Maybe someone will try to bring an oar to the plate? Or a table leg? What about bunting in every at-bat? Teams may need to adjust the way they play the game just to face him, and that will make Excelsior, or any team that he plays for, automatic contenders every year.