Ham Avery
Born
Charles Hammond Avery

April 8, 1854
Cincinnati
DiedJanuary 3, 1927
Clearwater, Florida
OccupationUmpire
Years active1874–1875
EmployerNational Association

Charles Hammond Avery (April 8, 1854 – January 3, 1927) was an American lawyer, in his youth a college baseball pitcher, and a professional baseball umpire.

Avery, son of Charles L'Hommedieu Avery and Martha (Bakewell) Avery,[1] was a prep school student in Cincinnati in 1870; the next year he enrolled at Yale, where he joined the baseball team in the spring of his sophomore year in 1873.[2] He was called (by Frank Blair) "the first man to pitch a curve-ball game", using the new pitch with success against Harvard.[3] When he graduated in 1875, he was offered the very large salary of $3,400 by Harry Wright to pitch for the Boston Red Stockings, an offer matched by the Hartford Dark Blues, but "Avery, a Skull & Bones Society blueblood, thought professional baseball beneath him, and demurred."[4] He went on to study at the Cincinnati Law School and in the office of Judge Alphonso Taft and was admitted to the Cincinnati bar in 1878, where he had a successful legal practice, representing "various well-known corporations." He married Nettie Barker in 1882; she died the following year, and in 1890 he married Alice Aiken, with whom he had a daughter and a son.[5]

Avery umpired 9 total National Association games in 1874 and 1875. all of them as the home plate umpire.[6]

References

  1. ↑ Joshua L. Chamberlain (ed.), Universities and Their Sons: History, Influence and Characteristics of American Universities, Vol. 5 (R. Herndon, 1900), p. 412.
  2. ↑ Chip Malafronte, "New Haven man had claim to baseball history", New Haven Register, July 26, 2009.
  3. ↑ Connie Mack, My 66 Years in the Big Leagues (Dover Publications, 2009; ISBN 0486471845), p. 152.
  4. ↑ John Thorn, Baseball in the Garden of Eden: The Secret History of the Early Game (Simon and Schuster, 2012; ISBN 0743294041), p. 174.
  5. ↑ Chamberlain, Universities and Their Sons, Vol. 5, p. 412.
  6. ↑ Retrosheet


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