The Youngest player in MLB history
There have never been any 15-year-old NFL players, nor NBAers or NHLers. MLB has worn the ‘we had the youngest player ever in the major pro sports’ with pride for more than 80 years and it’s not because MLB was violating child labor laws! I acknowledge that Freddy Adu played professional soccer at age 14 which is a story in and of itself!
Joe Nuxhall will always be MLB’s youngest player
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Joe Nuxhall of the Cincinnati Reds first pitched in MLB when he was 15 years old. On June 10, 1944, Nuxhall was called in by Reds manager Bill McKechnie in the top of the ninth inning. Nuxhall was just 15 and would not turn 16 until a little over a month later on July 30th. He’s also famous for having been a longtime Reds announcer working 31 years with the famed Marty Brennaman.
It’s not as if the Reds were a bad team that season as they would finish third in the National League which was won by the Cardinals. The Cards won 105 games and would win the ‘Streetcar’ World Series vs. the St. Louis Browns that fall. On the day that Nuxhall debuted, the Cardinals were the opponent, and Nuxhall was cuffed around and treated like the raw rookie he was.
Ryan Borgamenke in his great short SABR article noted:
“Nuxhall was so anxious that he tripped on the top step of the dugout on his way out to the mound. Controlling his emotions the best that a 15-year-old could, he was actually able to retire two of the first three batters he faced, walking the second. “I almost drowned. . . suddenly it dawned on me where I was,” he explained years later. “I started to shake all over.” He gave up a walk, which included a wild pitch, and then a single to future Hall of Famer Musial. Three more walks and a single by All-Star second baseman Emil Verban followed. “Then McKechnie came out to lead me away.”
With World War II still going on, there were players in MLB who would not have typically been playing, Nuxhall being one of them, as was one-armed outfielder Pete Gray of the Browns who would play his only MLB season the next year in 1945. Due to his age, Joe Nuxhall was too young for the draft, and as a 6-foot 2-inch left-hander, he was the largest kid in his ninth-grade class!
The Reds scouts who first saw Joe at age 14 while he was pitching in a Sunday baseball league north of Cincinnati, were there to scout his father. But Joe’s dad Orville or “Ox’ as he was known did not want to give up his stable job with GM.
A check on the youngest players in MLB history aside from Joe Nuxhall turns up four who played before the modern era in 1901, all of whom played at 16 years old. Frank Pearce (Louisville) 1876, Leonidas Lee (St. Louis) 1877, Piggy Ward (Philadelphia) 1883, and Joe Stanley (old Washington Senators) 1897. I didn’t know any of these players.
I HAD to look up ‘Piggy’ Ward who at age 16, played one game, in 1883, went 0–5 with two strikeouts and did not return to play in the NL until 1889. His real name was Frank Gray Ward. Piggy is much better.
Piggy Ward looks like what you think he’d look like.
Piggy Ward
Back to Joe Nuxhall. After his ill-fated first appearance it would be eight years before Nuxhall returned to the major leagues. But he reclaimed his right to be a major-leaguer, pitching 16 MLB seasons going 135–117 and totaling a very respectable 26.8 career bWAR.
Youngest future HOFer
In the modern era Giants HOFer Mel Ott debuted at age 17, but he is the only HOFer who began playing MLB prior to his 18th birthday. And whenever we think of young players in New York, we think of the recently departed Ed Kranepool who was a rookie at age 17 for the inaugural 1962 season for the Casey Stengel-led Amazin’ Mets. Catcher and HOF broadcaster Tim McCarver played in four decades debuting at age 17 for the Cardinals in 1959.
Bryce Harper who is a future HOFer, was on the cover of Sports Illustrated at 16, but did not make his first MLB appearance until he turned 19.
Negro League(s) stats are now included by Baseball-Reference.com and the work to update the data continues. The youngest Negro League players is reputedly Dennis Biddle who pitched for the Chicago American Giants in 1953 (six years after Jackie Robinson’s first season with the Dodgers), at age 17. B-R does not include this in their database. There’s a teeny bit of wonder on my part about that. Biddle later was signed by the Cubs but never pitched in MLB.
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MLB rules on player ages
MLB stipulates that players must be at least 16 years of age to participate in a tryout, 17 years old and a high school graduate to be drafted. What happens with international players is different as they are not subject to the MLB draft and there have been too many forged birth certificates and untruths to know if the youngest player in MLB history was reported to be 18 or 19 but was younger than that! But there will never be another Joe Nuxhall, and he was also was known to be one of the nicest people you could meet in baseball or otherwise!
About the Author: Mark Kolier along with his son Gordon co-hosts a baseball podcast called ‘Almost Cooperstown’. He also has written baseball-related articles that can be accessed on Medium.com and Substack.com. Mark can be reached on x @almostcoop and almostcooperstown@gmail.com
