James Paxton was amazing on May 8, 2018, throwing a no-hitter for the Seattle Mariners. I updated every one of those pages before 6 in the morning, including a nice “did you know” on the Big Maple online baseball card.
But, if you know Baseball Almanac, you know I LOVE the history of our National Pastime. So, once I noticed that Paxton was born in Canada, it made me wonder what other Canadian-born twirlers had a no-no on their resume.
A few seconds of research in the database, found just one (lucky for me), and his name was Dick Fowler. I had clearly done a little research on him before, his page had an “ok” quote and every contract in place, but nothing about his no-hitter.
I immediately added a much better quote from a 1945 newspaper, I put in a basic fact about his career so I could transition into a nice “did you know” about his no-hitter. From there I dug through a few dozen newspapers, found my favorite write-up, scanned and included it on his page. Bad news for me, I’ve never been able to acquire one of his autographs, so I needed a baseball card. Bought one on eBay, added it, then included a second fact about his induction into the Canadian Baseball Hall of Fame – a chart we added BEFORE they even built their own website!
His online baseball card was, IMO, officially a little better today, than it was yesterday. My goal every single day at Baseball Almanac. I used that newspaper clipping (above) on our Facebook page and moved on – it was time to help some of the 27 emails I received over the evening.
Sean
