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Posted February 13, 2007
Urban “Red” Faber may be one of the state’s greatest forgotten athletes, a Cascade native who survived one of baseball’s most notorious scandals to win a place in the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, N.Y.
Faber was one of a handful of pitchers who was allowed to continue throwing a spitball after baseball officials outlawed the pitch, grandfathered in to an exclusive club because it was the tool that brought him national fame. Faber, a right-hander, played for the Chicago White Sox for 20 years and won 254 games.
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Red Faber, baseball's last spitballer
It probably would have been more but after the famed “Black Sox Scandal” many of the team’s most talented players were purged and the Sox didn’t have the skills to win as many games.
(Faber wasn’t directly involved in the scandal, in which eight players were paid by gamblers to intentionally lose games. But after the misdeeds were exposed following the 1919 season, the players who were involved were banned from the game for life.)
Faber began throwing his spitball in the minor leagues after suffering a career-threatening arm injury. His spitball was so effective that one player once said, "A batter cannot guess with Faber. His only chance is to close the eyes and hope bat meets ball."
Urban Charles Faber was born on a farm near Cascade on September 6, 1888. When Faber was four, In 1893, the family moved into Cascade, where his father operated a tavern and then opened
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the Hotel Faber. The family was one of Cascade’s most affluent and Faber attended boarding school in Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin, and then in Dubuque, although his baseball skills were said to be still developing and he was only an average player. But after high school, he attended what is now known as Loras College in Dubuque and impressed classmates and coaches with his pitching prowess, once striking out 22 batters in a game against St. Ambrose.
Faber signed with the Dubuque Miners, a minor league team with a loose affiliation with the White Sox and pitched impressively for one and a half years, prompting the Pittsburgh Pirates to buy his contract. He was on Pittsburgh’s major league roster for a time in 1911 but never played and spent most of the season at a minor league team in Minnesota. It was there that he learned to throw a spitball, still a legal pitch in baseball. After being transferred to Pueblo, he developed the pitch and when he was transferred to Des Moines, he became on of the most consistent players on the old Western League.
In 1914, the White Sox bought his contract and traveled with the squad in an around-the-world exhibition tour, although he was too sick from travel to play as much as expected.
His first season of baseball in the major leagues was nothing spectacular, although he did finish with a respectable 10-9 record and a 2.68 ERA. The next year, Dubuque native Clarence Rowland was hired to manage the White Sox, although he had never managed a major league baseball team in his life, and nurtured Faber’s skills. Faber finished he year with a 24-14 record.
Faber had a reputation as a gentleman; Babe Ruth once called him “the nicest man in the world.” But he was also a competitor who clocked Ty Cobb with three consecutive pitchers when the legendary batter wouldn’t stop crowding the plate. He was extremely popular with fans and White Sox promoters even held a Red Faber Day for him at Comiskey Park in 1929.
In 1917, when the Sox won their first pennant in 11 years, Faber won 16 games during the regular season and then picked up three victories on the mound during the World Series against the Giants.
In 1918, with a World War raging, Faber, then 29 and single, enlisted in the Navy, but remained stateside for the year he served. His main duty was running the recreation program at the Great Lakes Naval Base.
He returned to baseball in 1919 in time for the Black Sox scandal to erupt and struggled through an 11-9 season marked with illness. In fact, some sports historians contend that it was Faber’s illness, which lead to problems on the mound, which ultimately resulted in the Chicago 8 to conspire to throw games.
Faber’s best three seasons of baseball occurred from 1920 to 1922 when he won 69 games against 45 losses. But by 1923, it was becoming clear that Faber’s days of dominance were over and in 1924 he suffered his first losing season. He pitched for another nine years and was baseball’s oldest player at 45. When his pay was cut by the team in 1934, he retired. He ran a bowling alley near Chicago for several years and then joined the county highway department, working on a survey crew until he was 79.
Red Faber was inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame in 1964, exactly 50 years after his rookie season. He died 12 years later, on September 25, 1976, at age 88 and is buried in Chicago's Acacia Park Cemetery.
Urban "Red" Faber