In today’s edition of the Appalachian Moments, we follow a youngster from Helton, North Carolina, who once struck out the mighty Babe Ruth.
How many other sons of the North Carolina mountains can claim that they struck out the Sultan of Swat? An athletic, but brainy kid named Monte Weaver.
Weaver was born in 1906 near the tracks of the famous Virginia Creeper railroad train.
He left the farming life of his father, and entered Emory & Henry college in 1923. In the days before strict NCAA rules, Weaver paid his college tuition by pitching in the summer for a coal company team and the making $10 a day!
After graduating with honors in mathematics, Weaver pitched for the Durham Bulls. In the off seasons, Weaver went to the University of Virginia earning a master’s in Mathematics and thereafter known as The Professor. A heady hurler in a world of tobacco chewing brawn.
Weaver pitched well enough in the minors to be invited to Spring Training with the Baltimore Orioles, where he caught the eye of Washington Senator’s owner Clark Griffith. He paid the Orioles the princely sum of $25,000 to sign Weaver, calling him the “best minor league pitcher available.”
He was a rookie sensation winning 22 games in 1932 and striking out Yankees slugger Babe Ruth in their first meeting. His manager, Walter “Big Train” Johnson said Weaver had, “a great curve ball and enough speed to bust ‘em by the batters.”
Weaver began the next season even better, but his reputation for being a hypochondriac began to catch up with him.
The baseball press stated that Weaver worried about every ailment from hang nail to toe nail. Worse yet, Weaver’s personal physician convinced him to become a vegetarian. He lost weight from his already spindly 170-pound frame, and was ridiculed as being out in left field for his addiction to greens.
As Weaver’s career sputtered, a sportswriter concluded that you can’t throw strikes on collards. Home run king Ruth had his revenge knocking home runs 624, 644 and number 699 off of Weaver.
Sent down the minors, he threw out the veggie diet. Weaver started knocking back steaks, gained ten pounds, his fastball and made it back to the majors. After a trade to the Boston Red Sox, he beat Ruth and the Yankees one last time while recording his 71st and final major league win.
After serving in World War II, Weaver moved to Florida and owned and operated orange groves among other business interests. However, North Carolina called him home every year to enjoy the cool mountain evenings where he loved to stay up reliving his big times in the big leagues.
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