Stan Coveleski ✝

Coveleski followed in the footsteps of his brother Harry as a major league pitcher. But after making his debut with the Philadelphia Athletics in 1912, he was sidetracked by three more seasons in the minor leagues before joining the Indians in 1916, and won only thirteen major league games before turning 27. Coveleski specialized in throwing the spitball, where the pitcher alters the ball with a foreign substance such as chewing tobacco. It was legal when his career began but prohibited in 1920, with Coveleski being one of 17 pitchers permitted to continue throwing the pitch. In 450 career games, Coveleski pitched 3,082 innings and posted a record of 215–142, with 224 complete games, 38 shutouts, and a 2.89 ERA. He set Cleveland records of 172 wins, 2,502⅓ innings and 305 starts, which were later broken by Mel Harder and Willis Hudlin. He was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1969.\n', ' Stanislaus Anthony Kowalewski was born in Shamokin, Pennsylvania, one of eight children of Anthony (1845–1929) and Ann (Racicz) Kowalewski (1850–1919), who had immigrated from Russian Poland in the early 1870s. They settled in Shamokin, where Anthony worked as a coal miner, in Northumberland County, east of the Susquehanna River and northeast of the state capital of Harrisburg. Stanley was the youngest of five baseball-playing brothers; his oldest brother Jacob died serving in the Spanish–American War (1898). In addition to his older brother, Harry (1886–1950), who pitched in the major leagues between 1907 and 1918, their other brothers Frank and John also played professional baseball, but only in the minor leagues. Harry won 20 games in a season on three occasions during his 14 years major league career.\n', ' Like many his age in the Shamokin area, Coveleski began work as a "breaker boy" at a local colliery at the age of 12. In return for 72 hours of labor per week, Coveleski received $3.75, or about five cents an hour. "There was nothing strange in those days about a twelve-year-old Polish kid working in the mines for 72 hours a week at a nickel an hour", he later recalled. "What was strange is that I ever got out of there". Coveleski was rarely able to play baseball as a child due to his work schedule.\n', '