Originally published on Nov. 13, 2021
By Zane Miller
Earning 20 wins in a single Major League Baseball
season is an accomplishment to be proud of for any MLB starting pitcher. Reaching
this achievement could be yet another addition for a Hall of Fame career, or
could be among the best pitching performances of the season. In either case, getting
to 20 wins in a season almost always means that the pitcher had an amazing season,
although that isn’t necessarily what happened in this instance.
Norman “Bobo” Newsom was born on Sunday, August 11th,
1907 in Hartsville, South Carolina, and made his major league debut during the
1929 season. By 1938, Newsom had already solidified his reputation as a
journeyman starter, having played on five different teams with his longest
tenure being with the Washington Senators from 1935 to 1937. At this point in
his career, Newsom was struggling in the MLB, having an overall record of 60-70
and his career best ERA of 4.01 coming in 1934, during his first of three
stints with the St. Louis Browns.
The Browns themselves were also having a rough time, as
the 1937 St. Louis Browns finished dead last in the standings at 46-108, as it
was also the first time the team had lost over 100 games in a season since 1912.
Looking desperately to help pull themselves out from the bottom of the league,
the team signed Newsom for a second time prior to the 1938 season, in hopes
that he would be able to turn around his performance and have a late-career
resurgence. Was he able to accomplish this feat for St. Louis? Well, yes and
no.
Unfortunately for St. Louis, the Browns would still be
very bad in 1938, coming in third-to-last with a record of 55-97. Despite the
offense being above average, finishing sixth out of the league’s 16 teams at
the time with 755 runs scored and being led by third baseman Harlond Clift with
34 home runs and 118 RBIs, the lack of defense torpedoed all of that positivity.
As the team allowed 962 runs, which was the most in the MLB, the collective ERA
was also the league-worst at 5.80. However, out of the atrocious numbers for
the pitching staff, Bobo Newsom emerged with a winning record- and a 20-win
season.
Newsom was the only Browns pitcher to take a winning
record that year at 20-16, allowing 30 home runs, 186 earned runs and 334 hits
over the course of 329 and two-thirds innings pitched for an ERA of 5.08. To
put this in perspective, the ERA leader amongst qualified starting pitchers in
1938 was the Chicago Cubs’ Bill Lee with a 2.66 ERA, and Newsom’s two closest equivalents
in ERA were Vern Kennedy of the Detroit Tigers at 5.06 and the Senators’ Harry
Kelley at 5.12, who took 12 wins and nine wins respectively.
As you might have already guessed, Newsom was
incredibly lucky with run support during his starts. While the Browns were far
from setting the world on fire offensively, they were at least serviceable over
the course of the year. However, when Newsom was on the mound, they were outright
dominant. In the 20 games where Newsom was credited with the win, the Browns
never scored less than four runs, as well as scoring a total of 144 runs or 7.2
runs per game, more than enough to make up for Newsom’s pedestrian pitching
stats. Newsom himself also contributed to benefit his own cause, knocking in 16
RBIs, 31 hits and batting .250 in his 124 at-bats. Despite this, the team as a
whole continued to struggle going into 1939.
The 1939 St. Louis Browns would have yet another
terrible showing, finishing 43-111 and last in the MLB standings. Although Newsom
would be traded early on in the season to the Tigers, he still posted his
second straight 20-win season with a much-improved 3.58 ERA, helping Detroit to
an 81-73 record.
The second half of Newsom’s career would see far more
success than the first half, as the trade to Detroit paid off big time in 1940.
After going 21-5 with a 2.83 ERA, the Tigers claimed a 90-64 record to reach
the World Series, facing the Cincinnati Reds. This would be Newsom’s first
official postseason appearance, as he was a member of the Cubs roster which
made the World Series in 1932, but did not take part as he had already been
sent back down to the minor leagues.
Newsom got the start for Detroit in games one, five
and seven, but the Reds would take the series victory in seven games. Still, Newsom
continued to impress on the mound by leading the American League in strikeouts
in 1942 with the Senators, despite being traded to the National League’s
Brooklyn Dodgers in August of that year. He would even get his first and only
World Series ring with the New York Yankees in 1947. Despite these
accomplishments, he continued to bounce around from team to team, even coming
back to the Browns for a third time in 1943, and returned to the Senators for a
fourth time in 1946, as well as a fifth time in 1952 following a three-year
stint in the minor leagues.
During that same 1952 season, Newsom signed with his
final MLB team in the Philadelphia Athletics and retired following the 1953
season. Coincidentally, the Browns also had their final season in St. Louis in
1953, before relocating to Baltimore to become the current-day Orioles in 1954.
Tragically, on Friday, December 7th, 1962, Newsom passed away due to liver
cirrhosis at age 55.
Newsom grabbed a final career record of 211-222, putting
him in 96th on the list of career wins in MLB history, along with pitching
3,759.1 innings, good for 55th all time, with a career ERA of 3.98. While it
would be hard to make a Hall of Fame case for him, he still had a very good
career nonetheless and it’s safe to say that, all things considered, he decided
to make his own luck.
List of sources:
https://www.baseball-reference.com/leagues/majors/1938-standard-pitching.shtml
https://www.baseball-reference.com/teams/SLB/1938.shtml
https://www.baseball-reference.com/players/n/newsobo01.shtml
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