Clyde Shoun
Left-hander
Clyde Shoun played for the Braves near the end of a long 14-year career
in the majors that saw him make all but the last 16 of his 454
appearances in the National League. Typically used in relief, he started
just 85 contests and posted a 73-59 lifetime record with a career 3.91
ERA. Shoun threw 34 complete games, three of them shutouts -- and one of
those was a no-hitter, just missing a perfect game by the smallest of
margins (one base on balls). Above all else, he was a gamer, rebounding
several times when it appeared his career was washed out.
At first glance, Shoun’s birth and death data look as if they must be wrong. He’s listed as being born on March 20, 1912, in
Mountain City, Tennessee,
but is listed as dying on the same day -- and in Mountain Home,
Tennessee. And yet he is buried at Sunset Cemetery in Mountain City.
This is indeed all correct. Shoun did indeed die on his birthday, at age
56 on March 20, 1968. He actually passed away in Johnson City, but it
was at a Veterans Affairs Medical Center named Mountain Home. The
hospital maintains its own ZIP code and mailing address, and it is
indeed Mountain Home, TN 37684.
Shoun’s family originated in the Alsace-Lorraine region of the
Volunteer State, but the oldest ancestor today’s family has traced
actually arrived in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania by ship in the late
1600s. These forbearers settled in Loudoun County, Virginia, but moved
to the east Tennessee county now known as Johnson County when Leonard
Shoun was given a land grant. Leonard and his wife, Barbara, arrived in
1792, Barbara pregnant at age 17 and Leonard toting an ax, a pick, and a
bundle of clothing. He was 19. They had a large homestead at Shoun’s
Cross Roads where they farmed -- and raised 17 children. When he died,
Leonard was said to be one of the most well-to-do men in the county,
maybe the wealthiest.
It was good farmland and the Shouns worked the land, with the help of
“several slaves” that he owned. Leonard also owned a country store and
an iron forge at Shoun’s. A Shoun family history written by Carl Neal
reports that Leonard’s store hauled goods in from Baltimore, and that
the pig (or raw) iron came from Lynchburg. Despite being illiterate, he
devised a system of symbols to keep his mercantile accounts. He
apparently once charged a customer for a cheese when the man had
purchased a grindstone, and a bitter argument ensued until the parties
realized it was simply that Leonard had neglected to draw a hole in the
center of the circular symbol he used to denote the commodities.
Clyde Shoun’s father, Leonard’s grandson, was a farmer and a logger,
working both the fields and the forest on the land. Clyde himself, his
niece Dane Brooks remembers, was always known as Hardrock: “They worked
hard. It was a different time. Uncle Hardrock was the fifth child of
nine living children. There were four that died as infants. There would
have been 13. Twelve siblings of Hardrock’s, had they all lived.
Everybody called him Hardrock. That’s all anyone around here ever said.
No one ever called him Clyde.”
Some interest in sports ran in the family. Clyde’s brother Miles
played professional basketball for the Firestone Rubber Company team
before World War II and the emergence of the NBA. Hardrock, of course,
played baseball. “The story is that he could throw a ball so hard that
they just called him Hardrock,” said his niece. “Before he went there
[to the major leagues], he played with some of the local teams here.
They were ball players; that’s what they did.”
Shoun was a southpaw, standing 6’ 1” and with a playing weight of 188
pounds. He first turns up playing semipro ball in South Carolina’s
Textile Baseball Leagues at Chester, S.C., in 1934, and was signed by
Bill Pierre of the Birmingham ball club. Working in the Southern
Association during his first year in the pros (1935), he performed very
well, with a record of 12-8 and a 3.83 earned run average in 169 innings
of work -- excellent numbers considering that Birmingham finished
seventh in the eight-team Southern Association. He led his team in
victories, and the pennant-contending Chicago Cubs purchased Shoun’s
contract for the stretch drive (a contemporary column in the Chicago
Tribune said he was nicknamed “Duster”).
In his August 7, 1935 debut he threw the last two innings of a game
the Cubs lost 6-0 to the visiting Pittsburgh Pirates; Shoun allowed one
hit and struck out two. He got his first start on August 19, facing the
Phillies in Philadelphia. He gave up a run in the bottom of the first,
but then pitched scoreless ball through the next six innings. Philly’s
Joe Bowman had a no-hitter through six, but began to falter in the
seventh. Ken O’Dea batted for Shoun in the top of the eighth and
doubled. Billy Herman drove in two, the Cubs took (and held) the lead,
and Shoun got the win. Overall, he worked 13 innings during the
remainder of the season, and finished with a 1-0 record and a 2.84 ERA.
The Cubs won the pennant, and Shoun was eligible to play in the World
Series. He did not see action, however, in the six-game showdown with
the Detroit Tigers -- which the Cubs lost.
In 1936, Shoun began the year with the NL champs, but was released
back to Birmingham in mid-May. He had appeared in four games and thrown
just 4 1/3 innings for Chicago, giving up three hits, six walks, and six
earned runs. In the Southern Association he got back on track, and was
able to get in 17 complete games and over 200 innings of work for
manager Riggs Stephenson, post a 15-11 record, and establish an earned
run average of 3.44. Birmingham made it to the Dixie Series finals but
was eliminated by Tulsa, which scored five runs off Shoun in the first
two innings of the deciding game.
For the next 11-plus years, though, Hardrock remained in major league
ball. The 1937 season saw him post a 7-7 record and a dismal 5.61 ERA
(worst on the staff) for second-place Chicago.
Then came 1938, and things weren’t looking that good when Cubs
manager Charley Grimm left Shoun in to be pounded for 11 runs on 15 hits
in five innings during a March 21, 1938, spring training game against
the Pirates. It was a sign of what was to come. Just before the season
opened, the Cubs made a play for former 30-game winner Dizzy Dean of the
Cardinals, sending Shoun to St. Louis, along with Curt Davis, Tuck
Stainback and -- oh, yes -- $185,000, one of the largest cash sums in a
baseball transaction at the time.
The Cubs won the pennant; the Cardinals finished sixth. St. Louis,
however, got the best of the deal. A sore-armed Dean went 7-1 that year
in limited duty, but his career was essentially over after that. Shoun,
meanwhile, became a dependable workhorse for the Cards. His record in
1938 was balanced again, at 6-6, but with a considerably improved 4.14
ERA. He started in just 12 of his 40 games, increasingly being used in
relief. And in ’39, he was used almost exclusively out of the bullpen,
appearing in a league-leading 53 games and earning a league-leading nine
saves. He was 3-1, 3.76, and the 53 outings set a new major league
record for pitchers, and helped the Cardinals to a strong second-place
standing in the NL just 4.5 games behind the pennant-winning Reds.
It was apparently at some point in this second year with the Cards
that Shoun made an impression on a future sports broadcaster, Art Rust,
Jr. A young boy at the time, Rust approached him for an autograph at the
Polo Grounds and was called a “black bastard.” In 1976, Rust wrote
about this and a couple of other incidents, “These humiliations really
shook up this 11-year-old.”
Hardrock got a lot of work in 1940, leading the league in appearances
again with a record 54, but also earning 19 starts and throwing 13
complete games for third-place St. Louis. He won 13 games and lost 11,
with a 3.92 ERA, not bad considering the inconsistency of his use as a
starter on some days and a reliever on others. August was the most
interesting month. On the 13
th, he threw a seven-hitter,
holding his former Cubs to one run, while he drove in two at the plate.
On August 26, he committed a balk without even touching the baseball.
The Cardinals were hoping to pull off a hidden ball trick at second
base, with the shortstop holding the ball. Shoun took the mound -- and
was immediately called for a balk for taking his position without the
ball in his possession.
For reasons unclear to us today, Shoun was unsigned as late as
February 1941. He lost three weeks to a sprained ankle that year, and
was never fully effective, though he still made it into 26 games. His
record was 3-5, with only 70 innings pitched, compared with 197 1/3 in
1940. His earned run average had shot up, too, to 5.66. His off-year
came at a most inopportune time, as the Cardinals seemed finally poised
to win a pennant and held first much of the season before finishing just
2.5 games behind the champion Dodgers.
He faced only seven batters for St. Louis in 1942 before being sold
to Cincinnati. There, once again, he rebounded in a major way, putting
up a sterling 2.23 ERA over 36 games and 72 2/3 innings despite an
uninspiring record of 1-3.
The next year -- 1943 -- was most unusual. Shoun started only five
games, but won 14 while losing just five. This gave him the league lead
in winning percentage among pitchers with 15 or more decisions (.737).
Hardrock appeared in 45 games and his ERA was a good 3.06. He also
helped himself at the plate by batting .310, his second straight year
over .300. The only drawback was that his old teammates in St. Louis
went to the World Series in this and three of the next four years
through 1946, while Shoun and Cincinnati were never really in
contention.
With World War II well under way, Shoun was accepted for service into
the Navy after passing his physical in March 1944, but he was not
called for duty until after the season -- which was a good one. He was
13-10, with an ERA of 3.02 in 202 2/3 innings of work, starting 21 games
in his most active season ever. In addition, he entered a very
exclusive club by throwing a no-hitter against the Boston Braves on May
15 in Cincinnati. He faced just one more than the minimum, a perfect
game spoiled only by a third-inning walk to Boston pitcher Jim Tobin
(who himself had pitched a no-hitter just 18 days earlier). Shoun struck
out only one batter in a 1-0 game won by third baseman Chuck Aleno’s
home run in the fifth inning; Tobin scattered just five hits himself.
Aleno saw no action in the field, not an assist and not a putout, while
first baseman McCormick made eight putouts. The win pulled the Reds into
second place, but Cincinnati eventually finished third.
On January 9, 1945, Hardrock was sworn into the Navy at Fort
Oglethorpe, Georgia. Not surprisingly, Shoun quickly wound up at the
Great Lakes Naval Station playing for the training center baseball team
under coach Bob Feller. He was sent to the Pacific, to join Bill
Dickey’s Navy ballteam in Hawaii. This squad of servicemen athletes
featured the likes of Yankee star Joe Gordon at short, future A’s
standout Ferris Fain at first, and Cards 20-game winner Johnny Beazley
on the mound. But despite his inclusion on such a team, which routinely
routed other military clubs, Shoun would initially have a tough time
regaining his old form after the war.
Back with the Reds after his discharge, Hardrock had a difficult year
in 1946. His record was just 1-6, with an ERA of 4.10. He had only five
starts and threw just 79 innings. He saw almost no action in the early
weeks of 1947, and was sold to the Boston Braves in a cash deal on June
7. He was 5-3, 4.40 with third-place Boston, his best game an 8-0
shutout against his old Cincinnati mates on September 10. When Hardrock
arrived in Boston, he was reunited with manager Billy Southworth, for
whom he had played in 1940 until he was sold to Cincinnati during the
1942 season. Shoun was certainly not the only Braves player in this
boat; so many of Southworth’s former St. Louis players joined the Braves
during this period, they came to be known as the “Cape Cod Cardinals.”
In the pennant-winning year of 1948, wearing number 26, Shoun ran up a
5-1 record primarily in relief (he started just three games) with an
ERA of 4.01. His first start came on June 18, and he pitched a complete
game against the Reds, winning 5-4. He later beat the Red again in late
September, and also notched four saves for the NL champs. Though
eligible for the 1948 World Series, he was not called upon in the
six-game loss to Cleveland.
On May 11, 1949, it was back to Chicago for Shoun, this time to the
White Sox in a cash deal. It was the first time he’d pitched in the
American League, and his stay there wouldn’t last long -- just 23 1/3
innings over 16 contests. Shoun compiled a lackluster 5.79 ERA for the
Pale Hose, but his final big league game on July 19, 1949 proved
memorable. He entered as a left-hand specialist to face Ted Williams in
the top of the ninth in a 3-3 game. Two men were on base and nobody out,
but Hardrock got Ted to hit a high pop fly to short leftfield. The Red
Sox got lucky, though, as Steve Souchock tried to one-hand the ball and
missed it entirely. The bases were now loaded with Vern Stephens due up,
so Shoun was taken out for a righty, Max Surkont. He promptly gave up a
game-winning two-run single.
A week later, when the White Sox left Chicago to travel to Boston,
Hardrock was left behind. According to a news story, Sox GM Frank Lane
said that Shoun would “remain in Chicago pending disposition of his
contract.” A few days later, it was announced that he had signed with
the Indianapolis Indians as a free agent. The AP dispatch assigned him a
third nickname: the predictable “Lefty.”
Overall Shoun was 1-1 in major league play in 1949, with a 5.55 ERA,
and finished out the year in Indianapolis with an identical 1-1 record
(though with a more respectable 3.15 earned run average.) And while his
big-league days were gone, he had one more comeback in him. In 1950 and
1951, he pitched for Oakland in the competitive Pacific Coast League,
getting a major amount of work the first year (233 innings, 16-10, 4.56
ERA.) Playing for the Oaks under Charlie Dressen, he helped the team to a
first-place finish in the PCL. In 1951, though, he just didn’t have it.
He started the season 2-4 with a 5.49 ERA, and decided to call it a
day. By late May, he’d returned home to Mountain City.
Shoun had a first wife, Anna Mary (her surname was Mary), and they
had two daughters -- Anna Mary and Linda. Shoun worked the family farm,
largely raising tobacco, and owned and operated a commercial dog kennel.
The Shouns later divorced and Hardrock married a woman named Pearl.
Niece Dane Brooks recalls her father, Leonard, taking her to a few
local exhibition ball games and seeing Uncle Hardrock pitch. Clyde Shoun
also served as a city councilman in Johnson City, but he died early of
liver problems, after eight months of illness, at the age of 56.
Note
This biography originally appeared in the book
Spahn, Sain, and Teddy Ballgame: Boston's (almost) Perfect Baseball Summer of 1948, edited by Bill Nowlin and published by Rounder Books in 2008.
Sources
Interview with Dane Brooks by Bill Nowlin, December 11, 2006.
The Art Rust quotation comes from the
New York Times, May 9, 1976.
Thanks to Matt Hill.
Vespasian Shoun, another Slimp
