There are no birthdays today of Tigers or Wolverines. But there is a player whose story I really like. I know some of you know him. The player is Charles "Victory" Faust. The below is lifted from his "bullpen" tab in baseball-reference.com". The bottom paragraph is from Faust's player page under the "bull pen" tab. http://www.baseball-reference.com/players/f/faustch01.shtml. If you have not been to that websight I highly recomend it. I can get lost in it for hours. From his player page you can also read his SABR bio which is much more in depth. In there it explains how the Giants won 80% of their games while Faust was around and that Faust dissapeared from baseball history until Lawrence Ritter found out about him in the Fred Snodgrass chapter of his book "The Glory of Their Times". If I was stranded on a dessert isle "Glory" would be one of my five books. I can not praise it enough. But here is a flavor of who Charlie "Victory" Faust was.
Charlie "Victory" Faust was a mascot for John McGraw's New York Giants. Faust, who appears to have been delusional, came to McGraw during 1911 season and claimed that a fortune teller had predicted that the Giants would win the pennant if Faust pitched for them. McGraw, who was very superstitious, kept Faust on the team for the remainder of the season. With Faust as a mascot, the Giants went on a tear, winning 40 of their last 53 games and valuting from 3 1/2 games back to win the pennant by 7 1/2 games. After the flag was secured, Faust was allowed to appear in two meaningless games, where he allowed 1 run in 2 innings and scored twice. He continued as mascot, though not in uniform, in the 1912 season and then was cut loose.
Faust died of tuburculosis in an insane asylum in Washington in 1915.
He is one of only three pitchers to get hit in his first and only career plate appearance. The others are John Rheinecker and Cy Malis.
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