There was a time, many years ago, when most pitchers finished what they began. Specialists were usually doctors, middle-relief was something that could be found at a drug store, and set-up men and closers pitched something other than baseballs. "Quality starts" were those that ended in victory, and "carrying it into the sixth" meant that they had just passed the half-way mark.

   One result of this philosophy was an abundance of 20-game winners. A contending major league team could be expected to have one or two on their staff, and the remaining starters weren't far behind. Occasionally, an exceptional team such as the 1931 Philadelphia A's and the Indians of the early 1950's would have three 20-game winners. Rarest of all, a staff from heaven would feature four starters with the talent and endurance to earn that honor. Earl Weaver's 1971 Orioles, featuring Mike Cuellar, Jim Palmer, Pat Dobson, and Dave McNally, were such a team.

   At the minor league level, similar feats were performed. In that very different era, mid-season promotions to the next level or to the major league team occurred on the rarest of occasions. Many teams were not affiliated, and those that were usually believed that a player should prosper for one (or more) season and earn a promotion during the following spring training. In addition, most minor leagues played a greater number of games than in today's schedules.

   As a result, 20-game winners were as common in minor league ball as in the majors. And, like the big leaguers, multiple twenty-game winners on one team were not a rarity. The 1971 Orioles were matched by the St. Paul Saints of 1923, a team which featured Tom Sheehan (31-9), Cliff Markle (25-12), Charley Hall (24-13) and John Howard Merritt (20-11). Surprisingly, they were not enough to overtake the Kansas City Blues and their 112 victories. A happier result accompanied the 1928 Houston Buffaloes staff of Jim Lindsey (25-10), Bill Hallahan (25-12), Ken Penner (20-8), and Frank Barnes (20-9).

   For a variety of reasons, only three of those pitchers (Hall, Lindsey, and Hallahan) would win more than twenty games during their major league careers. On the other hand, two (Barnes and Lindsey) would win over 100 minor league games and five (Hall, Markle, Merritt, Penner, and Sheehan) would each win more than 200 minor league games. Yes, it was a different day.

   So much for the big winners. On the other side of the coin, there is the reality of losing twenty games in a single season. That accomplishment is somewhat like being poor which, in the words of Fiddler on the Roof's Tevya, is no shame but it's no great honor either.

   In those days of complete games, longer seasons, and fewer in-season transactions, the fact of losing many games was not necessarily a tragedy. Some baseball folk, like Casey Stengel, considered a pitcher with a high number of losses someone who was good enough to get the ball every fourth day. Thus, the Yankees acquired people like Don Larsen, Bob Turley, and Art Ditmar, each of whom turned from losers into winners with the support of Yankee bats and gloves.

   At the major league level, the most recent cases of multiple 20-games losers were the 1973 Chicago White Sox with Wilbur Wood (24-20) and Stan Bahnsen (18-21) and the 1962 New York Mets with Al Jackson (8-20) and Roger Craig (10-24).

   In the minors, however, the feats get better. At least one team with two 20-game losers appeared almost every season between the two world wars. Several teams had three such hurlers, with the most recent being the 1943 Sacramento Solons of the Pacific Coast League. The three standouts were Eldred "Bud" Byerly (9-21), Clem Dreisewerd (9-20), and John Pintar (5-27). The last-place Solons, who were managed by the aforementioned Ken Penner, finished the season with a 41-114 record, only 69 games behind the pennant winning Los Angeles Angels. The Solons' accomplishment, however, received little local attention as an average of only 409 fans showed up to witness each game.

1931 Newark Bears Stock Certificate

   Could anyone do worse? Well, yes, they could and did. Specifically, the 1922 Newark Bears made the Solons' staff look almost respectable. On a team of wide-ranging ineptness, the most obvious victims were the four starters, who appeared in 144 of the scheduled 166 games. Their reward was the shared experience of losing twenty games.

   Those four unfortunates were, alphabetically:

   Dean Barnhardt (10-22). A career minor-leaguer, Barnhardt moved on to a higher level by leading the International League with 25 losses in 1924 with the Jersey City Skeeters.

   Luther Barnes (10-23). After an auspicious beginning as one of seven pitchers on the 1918 International League Binghamton Bingoes with an ERA of under 2.00, Barnes exemplified the offensive woes of the 1922 Bears by allowing a relatively spare 255 hits and 94 walks in 254 innings.

   Howard Baldwin (12-21). Despite the fact that the 1923 Bears were only slightly better than the 1922 version, Baldwin improved to 21-15 with that team and went on to pitch in eleven games with the New York Giants before leaving the game in 1925.

   Rudy Kneisch (6-20). Like Baldwin, a native and lifetime resident of Baltimore, lefty Kneisch stayed in the game until 1931, achieving varying degrees of success in the minors. Happily, his name is preserved thanks to two games with the 1926 Detroit Tigers.

   The 1922 Newark Bears staggered to a 54-112 finish, 60 ½ games out of first. An average of 805 suffering spectators witnessed the slaughter. Manager Bill Clymer, whose nickname was "Derby Day", must have known where his horse would finish long before the bell rang at Churchill Downs that spring.

   Individually, were the 1922 Bears the worst pitchers in the history of minor league baseball? Probably not, as records such as Ray Perechinsky (5-21, 7.14) with the 1951 Mountain States League Jenkins Cavaliers, Bunn Hearn (2-11, 12.00) with the 1911 Louisville Colonels, or Ray Gault (2-10, 10.75) with the 1978 Bakersfield Outlaws of the California League stand out.

   Collectively, were they the worst rotation? Equally unlikely, as a multitude of teams has escaped without so much as a ten-game loser but with a plethora of under-performing throwers who hung on just long enough to prove their incompetence. This was more of a team effort, as the Bears were saddled with an offense that would finish last or next-to last in every major statistical category. If the pitchers didn't hit, they didn't win.

   What the '22 Bears leave is a testimony to a different era. Independent minor league teams had few mid-season replacement sources for weak performers. Financially, nearly empty stands prevented teams from buying better players, and the presence of poorer players kept the stands nearly empty. Major league owners did not want to obtain minor league losers, and they didn't want to send their prospects to learn how to lose.

   The starting staff of the Bears — Dean Barnhardt, Luther Barnes, Howard Baldwin, Rudy Kneisch — remains less a symbol of ineptness than one of the way baseball was played in another day. The philosophies of keeping your team in the game and letting the specialist take over were unheard of and unacceptable options. Going all the way was the only way.

   The games were faster, the fans happier and, for those who delve into baseball history, the stories and the stats vastly superior.