The MMOB Daily Quote - Tommy Corcoran

Thomas William Corcoran (January 4, 1869 - June 25, 1960)

The subject of today's MMOB Daily Quote had an 18-year professional baseball career spanning the late 1800s and early 20th century including stints in the Players' League, the American Association and Major League Baseball. For obvious reasons, he held the nicknames Corky or Tommy the Cork throughout his career. As a shortstop, he spent many of those years with the Cincinnati Reds, but also played for teams in Pittsburg, Philadelphia, Brooklyn and New York. Purportedly a better fielder than a hitter, he was one of the early players who made the leap from barehanded play to using a leather glove. Sounds to me like that was a pretty good idea.

I couldn't find a single quote from Mr. Corcoran to include here, so instead I've pulled a couple of items I could find.

The first is a puff article from the NY Times entitled "Tommy Corcoran a Shooter: Famous Baseball Player Breaks Targets at the Wykagyl Traps"

The second is a mention in the New Bill James Historical Abstract:

"In 1899 the Philadelphia Phillies had set up an underground wire system to steal the catcher's signs from center field, relaying them to the third base coach by way of a buzzer buried near third base...I'm sure most of you know this story. Arlie Latham and Tommy Corcoran are the men who uncovered the ruse. Latham noticed that Cupid Childs, coaching at third, was standing with his foot in a puddle of water. He got curious about why, talked about it with Corcoran, and Corcoran dug up the buzzer."

Cheers! - Jason