J. Tetro: Epilogue To The “Curve Ball” Article

To the Editor,

I have read the article about Williams “Candy” Cummings and because I have been researching this off and on for about 20 years, I would like to add some additional information I gathered.

I became intrigued with this story after being told about it from my late brother Tom. I started researching old newspaper clippings and read many of them, also read a retelling of the story from a writer on the old Fulton Patriot, kind of like your author’s story but early Fulton History.

What I learned was Oswego had a semi-pro Baseball team and challenged Fulton to this game, while Oswego was organized with uniforms, they even had a band and fans that rode the train to Fulton on the day of the game. The team put together in Fulton was just a group of lads who got together to take Oswego on for this game.

Apparently they asked this young student named William Cummings from Falley to join their rag tag team as the pitcher. Back in early baseball the pitchers job was to deliver the ball for the batter to hit it and then run the bases, but these boys became frustrated because they couldn’t hit the ball like they expected. The uniform-less Fulton boys beat the semi-pros from Oswego in front of the towns people and sent them on their way.

The local Grange paid for and bronzed a ball with the players names on them marking the event. I understand that for a while it was in the Falley building trophy case and ended up in the Fulton High School when they took it over. Eventually it was offered by a Mr. Trepasso (I think) to the Baseball Hall of Fame and I verified with the HOF they have it in their archives.

As far as the pitch that Mr. Cummings was throwing, the information states when he went to play in Professional Baseball’s Brooklyn Excelsior team, their catcher was one of the first that positioned himself close to the batter and allowed the pitcher to throw the Curve ball with some force. His teamates nicknamed him “Candy” because of the ease of how he threw the ball. “Candy’s” record in Baseball was not that spectacular, but I believe the HOF put him in after his death because he brought the pitch that changed the game of baseball.
I believe that a marker should be placed in Voorhees Park (donated circa 1853) stating that this is the location where the first curve ball was thrown in an officially historically recorded baseball game.

– J. Tetro

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