October 26 Happy Birthday to Former Tigers or Detroit Wolverines

Hugh Shelley started in the Tigers organization in 1932 playing in class D and then B ball.  He started with the Class D Moline Plowboys of the Mississippi Valley League and moved up to the Decatur Commodores by the end of the season.  He was an outfielder who hit .275 in his minor league time.  He continued to move up and in 1935 was hitting .284 for the Beaumont Explorers when he got that call up to the Tigers and made his debut as a pinch hitter against the Senators in Detroit.  He replaced Schoolboy Rowe who was not having a good day.  Hugh came in and got a single off of Leon Pettit but would not get any further than first base.  That would be his first of two hits in his career.  He got an RBI on his second hit.  He played with the Tigers from the end of June until his last appearance which was the last game of the season, after the Tigers had clinched the pennant.  In those months Hugh rode the bench most of the time.  He only got in 7 games and had only 8 at bats.  In 1936 he was back in Texas with the Fort Worth Cats and then up to the Toledo Mud Hens.  He continued to play in the minors until 1946 when he was again with the Beaumont Explorers.  But this time he was the property of the Yankees.  He died in Beaumont in 1978. 

Roy Moore joined the Tigers partway thru the 1922 season.  He was a left handed pitcher who pitched for the Philadelphia Athletics for two and a half years before coming to Detroit.  His best season was 1921 when he was 10-10 with Philly with a 4.51 ERA.  However, Roy was a bit wild.  He led the league that year in wild pitches and was second in the league in walks.  After going 0-3 for the Athletics and hitting three batters in 15 games, he was sold to the Tiges in July of 1922. For Detroit he went 0-0 in 9 games and 19.2 innings.  He posted a 5.95 ERA but continued to be wild at an alarming rate.  He hit 5 batters in the 19.2 innings with Detroit.  This put him tied for 10^th.  Detroit had the top three pitchers hitting batters and the number five and Moore.  You would expect no less for a club managed by the great intimidator himself, Ty Cobb.   However, the pitchers ahead of Roy did it many more innings.  Roy led the league in hit batters per inning.  Roy played part of 1923 with the Tiges.  Three games in fact.  He did not win a game and did not hit a batter in the 12 innings he pitched for the Tiges.  Roy was done in the majors after 1923 but stuck around in the minors for a couple more years and tried his hand at managing in the minors as well.

“Lefty” Ed High surprisingly, was a left handed pitcher for the inaugural 1901 American League Tigers first.  He was pitching in Hampton, VA in 1900.  In 1901 he was pitching for the Newport News Shipbuilders.  Then he went to the New Orleans Pelicans before getting call to the Tigers.   He debuted for the Tigers on the Fourth of July against the Milwaukee Brewers at the Lloyd Street Grounds in Milwaukee.  Milwaukee was one of the original American League teams in 1901.  But they finished a poor 8^th place at 48-89.  The next year they moved to St. Louis and became the Browns.  Ed pitched in four games for the Tiges and won one game.  He posted a 3.50 ERA in 18 innings pitched.  He gave up 21 hits in those innings and walked six.  Less than ten days after his last appearance the Tigers released Ed.  Ed would never pitch in the majors again and was done in baseball after playing again for the New Orleans Pelicans in 1902.

Kid Gleason played on the 1901 Tiger team with Ed High.   Kid had been in the National League since 1888 playing with the Phils, St. Louis Browns, the famed Baltimore Orioles and the New York Giants before jumping from the Giants to the Tiges.  Kid started his playing career as a pitcher and in 1890 was 38-17 for the Phils and occasionally played the outfield.  When he got the Orioles under Ned Hanlon he started playing second base.  This was because the pitchers mound was moved back and this ended Kid’s pitching career.   A successful second baseman, Kid was the starting second baseman for the first two years of the Tigers as a major league team.  He anchored the middle infield with Kid Elberfeld who was at short.  The two of them led the team in RBI’s.  Elberfeld with 76 and Gleason with 75.  He was traded by the Tigers after the 1902 season to the Giants but did not play for them.   Instead he found himself playing for the Phils again.  He stayed there thru 1908.  He started coaching for the White Sox in 1911 and played one in 1912 with the Sox becoming one of the few players to play in four decades.  Kid took over as manager of the Sox in 1919.  1919 was the year of the Black Scandal.  Kid was done managing in 1923 and became a coach for the Philadelphia Athletics and stayed there until his death in 1933.