Good evening. This is Dead Legends. The daily newsletter that loves baseball as much as George Steinbrenner loved firing Billy Martin.

Let’s dive in.

Today’s story is about one Hall of Famer who beat another Hall of Famer using nothing but horse shit.

From 1906-1912, Big Ed Walsh was a huge problem for pretty much everyone he pitched against.

During that time, his ERA averaged 1.71 (over 2526 innings) and he developed a devastating spitball which was basically unhittable.

In 1908, it helped him win 40 games for the White Sox.

Ed was dominating, but he was also pitching an average of 375 innings a year, and the overuse started to take its toll after a while.

Following the 1912 season, he asked Charles Comiskey if he could take a year off to rest his arm.

If you know anything about Charles Comiskey, you can probably guess his answer.

Connie Mack, who has more wins than any manager in baseball history, did not take kindly to losing, and honestly, he was tired of being on the wrong end of close games when the A’s faced Walsh.

So he came up with a diabolical plan to beat Big Ed by taking out his best weapon, the spitball.

Ed liked to lick the baseballs himself, and that turned out to be his achilles heel.

Back in those days, the home team provided all the baseballs, so Mack had one of his ballboys go down to a local stable and grab a bucket of manure.

He proceeded to rub every baseball with horse shit, and then the inevitable happened.

As Walsh took the ball against the A’s, he did what he always did, and once he got a taste of Mack’s baseballs, he immediately threw up on the mound.

Walsh proceeded to have a melt down and beaned every A’s player that stepped in the box, and the Athletics beat the Sox.

Unfortunately, the exact date/game that this supposedly happened is unknown, and there’s not that much information about the incident aside from being mentioned in a few blogs and old baseball books.

But that makes it even more awesome in some ways.

After 1913, Big Ed Walsh only won a handful of games throughout the rest of his career.

Some people think he was eternally rattled by the taste of poop-covered baseballs, but the reality is, his arm probably just hurt like hell from throwing all those innings.

Either way, he still made it into the Hall of Fame.

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BASEBALL TRIVIA

WHAT TO WATCH

Streams on: YouTube

Why it’s awesome: Last Comiskey is a three-part documentary about the final season at Comiskey Park.

Comiskey Park was known as the “Baseball Palace of the World” and it was the setting for some unforgettable moments over its 80-year history.

Even if you’re not a White Sox fan, you’ll be able to appreciate this doc.

The White Sox started the season as complete underdogs, and ended up winning over 90 games that year.

It brings you back to a golden era of baseball, when a beer at the ballpark costed less than $5, and Oakland A’s looked like WWE wrestlers.

One other thing that I love is the fact that the movie was made for the love of the game as a non-profit project; just to memorialize a special season in baseball history - I think you’ll really enjoy it.

STRANGE NAMES

If you're just joining us, we play this game every day where we try to find the weirdest names throughout baseball history.

Why? Don't ask us, it's just something we like to do.

If you've been rocking with us for awhile now, you know what time it is.

Today's winner is:

Pop-boy’s real name was Clarence.

He got his nickname while working for his local minor-league team, the Barons, selling peanuts and sodas.

While he was working for the team, he caught the attention of one of their pitchers, Earl Fleharty, who taught him the game.

Clarence continued to rise through the ranks and ended up pitching 26 games in the big leagues.

Although his career in the show was relatively short, he faced off against some of the best pitchers of that time (Babe Ruth and Walter Johnson), and people had good things to say about him.

Unfortunately, Smith died at age 31 of tuberculosis.

THE DEAD LEGENDS ARCHIVE

If you like this story, check out some of our past favorites:

• The Ice Game: Baseball on skates?

• The Streak: Minor leaguers make baseball history

• The Firecracker: Vince Coleman injures three fans