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The Civil War provides a host of baseball-related mysteries pertaining to pitcher James Creighton. By the time of his death at age 21 in 1862, Creighton had compiled a ledger of accomplishments, starring for one of America’s top teams at the time, the Brooklyn Excelsiors. His grave became a shrine to the player and the sport he dominated. Then the clouds came in – over the circumstances of his death, over the achievements of his career. He is not in the Hall of Fame, but baseball historian Thomas Gilbert makes a convincing case for his inclusion in a new book, Death in the Strike Zone: The Mystery of America’s First Baseball Hero.

“One hundred years ago, his impact was clear,” Gilbert says. “Until the turn of the 20th century, he was remembered and talked about … When Albert Spalding wrote his book on baseball in 1911, he said: ‘Obviously Creighton was the greatest, fastest pitcher ever.’”

And, possibly, one of the most consequential. Gilbert believes Creighton threw the first curveball, ahead of the man long credited with that milestone – William Arthur “Candy” Cummings.

“There’s a longstanding debate over who threw the first curveball,” Gilbert says. “All candidates did it 10 years after Creighton did. I was doing research into what he was doing, and I firmly believe it was him.”

Gilbert turned detective for the book – which also posits that Creighton was the game’s first star, and was possibly its first paid player.

The author analyzed rare photos of Creighton and parsed newspaper accounts of the Excelsiors’ games. He sat down with the late MLB pitcher Tom Browning to assess how fast Creighton threw. And he examined the role of Brooklyn Excelsiors catcher Joe Leggett in the development of Creighton and other curveball specialists. Leggett, in a groundbreaking move at the time, encouraged Creighton to train with weights. After Creighton’s death, Leggett went on to work with two other curveballers: Cummings and Asa Brainard.

Cummings spun a mesmerizing origin story about the curveball: he was inspired by lobbing clamshells along the Gowanus canal. It’s a catchy story, but a curious Gilbert delved deeper into history.

Gilbert explains that in mid-19th-century baseball, pitchers lobbed balls underhand, softball-style. Instead of toeing a rubber, pitchers ran up to a line 45ft from home plate. They threw with a straight-arm delivery. The term “pitching” comes from pitching horseshoes, Gilbert says, adding that multiple factors inhibited faster velocities. Whipping motions were illegal, fielders did not wear gloves, and catchers had no equipment.

Creighton brought unprecedented power – and a way to get the ball to the plate, in a curving motion, that worked around the rulebook.

“In July 1859, murmurings were going on that Creighton was up in a game and took one stride [to his pitching position] – not running,” Gilbert says. “I think that’s a very important clue … You cannot throw a curveball running forward. You have to break it off and stop your forward momentum.

“It’s based on a conceptual breakthrough. The idea of closing your hips and shoulder … there’s a lot more power [there] than in running forward … Not only is there more speed, but you can break off a curve … Creighton did not exactly find a loophole in the rules; more that he transcended the rules. The rules did not say you had to run up to a line.”

Gilbert found further evidence in the past and present. He tracked down one of three known photos of Creighton. It showed the pitching ace looking for all the world like he was about to spin clockwise and unleash a speedy curve. Then, Gilbert connected with a veteran softball player who played according to rules stipulating that curveballs had to be thrown without snapping one’s wrist.

“It’s really, really difficult,” Gilbert says, “Creighton was able to achieve something like a 12-6 curveball from Sandy Koufax or Roger Clemens but upside down, that is, breaking upward.”

And, apparently, it worked. In a best-of-three championship series against an elite opponent, the Brooklyn Atlantics – there were a lot of good teams in Brooklyn back then – Creighton pitched the Excelsiors to a win in game one. It seemed the Excelsiors’ moment was at hand. Creighton was undone in game two by some ill-timed mistakes from his normally reliable catcher, Leggett. Then came a murky forfeit loss in the decisive game, resulting from another questionable decision from Leggett. (The book goes into Leggett’s ill-starred life post-Creighton and what may have caused the catcher’s spotty performance in that series.) Other teams couldn’t rely on luck to beat such power pitching in the future. In the years after Creighton’s death, Gilbert sees a through line from the late star’s unprecedented power to the development of the strike zone.

“He pounded nearly unhittable balls in the strike zone,” Gilbert says. “It was so transformative that it upset the whole applecart.”

Gilbert explains that players then could opt not to swing at fast but hittable deliveries, racking up pitch counts and everyone’s patience, leading to umpires to start calling balls and strikes.

“It led to, step by step over time, the development of the strike zone,” Gilbert says.

Gilbert asks whether Creighton was denied recognition for throwing the first curveball due to accusations that the pitch was illegal at the time. He found that in Creighton’s playing days, there were no such accusations; they began surfacing a decade or so after Creighton’s death. Prominent individuals in baseball changed their views over this span, including Henry Chadwick, the future chair of the sport’s Rules Committee. As Gilbert explains, Chadwick had heard so much about Creighton’s curveball that he decided to see it for himself. This he did, in 1860, pronouncing it legal. Pete O’Brien, captain of the Atlantics, declared Creighton’s pitch unhittable but legal.

“Ten years later, both of them were literally saying the opposite,” Gilbert says. “They act as though they never said it was legal sometime in 1860. They changed conclusions … What Creighton did was legal, but it was really, really hard to do. Most people could not do it.”

As Gilbert researched the story, he wondered about accounts of Creighton’s death in October 1862 – which included one tall tale that he had died hitting a home run. Creighton was a two-sport standout, playing baseball and cricket at a time when the sports vied for popularity in the US. It was claimed that Creighton was fatally injured during either a baseball game or a cricket match. Gilbert doubts both claims, stating instead that the culprit stemmed from a previous medical condition: an inguinal hernia.

Twisting of the body can worsen the condition, says Gilbert, who adds that such twisting wouldn’t happen in cricket but it would in baseball, especially given the powerful style of Creighton’s pitching. He believes the Excelsiors, who happened to have quite a few doctors in their ranks, knew about Creighton’s condition yet kept bringing him out anyway. He does not place blame for Creighton’s death on the Excelsiors, but still feels the team managed their star irresponsibly.

“You cannot escape the conclusion that the people running the team intentionally overworked him,” Gilbert says. “Eventually part of the intestine gets caught in the gap in the muscle wall. He gets gangrene. It’s not a nice death.”

At the time, the author notes, “there was a big fuss about his death and martyrdom, and a beautiful monument. But you can’t help thinking it was partially inspired by guilt.”

That’s one more mystery involving the brief but supernova-like career of James Creighton. Yet it’s no mystery where Gilbert thinks the long-forgotten pitcher should end up: the Hall of Fame.

“The guy that called for a proper Hall of Fame … Alexander Cleland, starts by acknowledging greats of the early game, the pioneers,” Gilbert says. “In his first sentence, he wrote, ‘people like Creighton’ … Obviously, he should be in.”