This is the sixth in a series of examinations of baseball-related legends and whether they are true or false. Click here to view an archive of all the previous baseball legends.

Let’s begin!

BASEBALL LEGEND: Joe Nuxhall was the youngest player to play in the Major Leagues.

STATUS: Appears to be True

During World War II, baseball teams had to get quite desperate at times to find talent for the Major League rosters as multitudes of healthy talent were drafted into the military (or enlisted themselves). Late 1943/Early 1944 was particularly brutal, as teams were already low on manpower when the next waves of drafted players were taken.

Stuck with the task of finding players who could even remotely play, the Cincinnati Reds sent scouts to look up Orville Nuxhall, a semi-professional ballplayer. But Nuxhall told them he was not interested in taking a job as a ballplayer because he had five kids to look after. It was at this point that the Reds noticed Nuxhall’s son, Joe, who was only 14 years old at the time, but was a striking six foot two and weighed over two hundred pounds!

The Reds signed Joe in February of 1944 – he had since turned 15 years old. They were originally planning on taking him after the school year ended in June, but another wave of drafted players forced their hand, so Nuxhall ended up making the Major League roster. However, he did not play the first two months of the season.

Finally, though, on June 10, 1944, Nuxhall was called in to pitch the last inning of a game the Reds were trailing 13-0. He gave up five runs, and after the game, he was sent down to the minors.

He was a little more than a month shy of his 16th birthday (interestingly enough, in the 1944 season, Carl Scheib also made his Major League debut – Scheib had just barely turned 16 himself).

Nuxhall had better luck than many players brought in just for the war – he went on to have a long and prosperous career pitching for the Reds.

He finished his career 135-117 with a 3.90 ERA – he made two All Star games as a Red.

However, for years Nuxhall was NOT given credit for being the youngest player to ever play in a Major League baseball game.

That honor went to Fred Chapman, who supposedly pitched five innings for the Philadelphia Athletics in 1887, four months shy of his fifteenth birthday!

However, as helpful commenter “Looking In” notes:

Fred Chapman was found to be Frank Chapman who was a 25 year old minor league pitcher who went on to pitch a single major league game for the Philadelphia Athletics.

So the record DOES belong to Nuxhall!

BASEBALL LEGEND: Dock Ellis was banned from wearing hair curlers on the field.

STATUS: True

Dock Ellis was a strange star baseball player.

As a member of the Pittsburgh Pirates from 1968-1975, Ellis had a lot of highs, but also a lot of lows.

One of his highs was winning 19 games for the Pirates in 1971, in a season that the Pirates won the World Series and Ellis was the starting pitcher for the National League in the All Star Game.

Another high was in 1970, when Ellis throw a no-hitter against the Padres (Ellis later claimed he was on LSD during the game).

But Ellis had his low points, too, like the 1974 game against the Cincinnati Reds, where Ellis attempted to hit every batter in the Reds lineup (he hit the first three, tried to hit the fourth, Tony Perez, who managed to avoid the pitches and draw a walk, and after the first pitch went past Johnny Bench’s head, Ellis was removed from the game).

Or when he was maced by a Reds security guard in 1972 after failing to give identification and for making “menacing gestures” with his fist (Ellis later pointed out that he was trying to show his World Series ring to show he was a member of the Pirates).

However, perhaps the oddest low point in Ellis’ career was when he was banned from wearing hair curlers on the field!

You see, there was a piece in a magazine about Ellis’ various hair styles, so he began wearing hair curlers on the field and, well, that was not taken very well by the baseball higher-ups, and Commissioner Bowie Kuhn actually specifically forbade Ellis from wearing the curlers on the field.

Ellis was an interesting ballplayer.

He sadly passed away in December 2008 of liver disease.

BASEBALL LEGEND: Joel Youngblood got a hit for two different baseball teams in two different cities all in a single day!

STATUS: True

Joel Youngblood was a popular member of the New York Mets in the early 1980s, when the team was pretty dreadful.

A Jack-of-all-trades, Youngblood began his career as a sort of super substitute, as he could play many different positions, including catcher! As he went on, though, he became more of an everyday player.

In fact, in 1981, he was actually leading the National League in Batting Average when the season was cut short in June due to a player’s strike. When the season picked up again in August with the All-Star Game, Youngblood was a member of the team. Sadly for him, even though he actually RAISED his average in the days following the return to play, an injury took the rest of the season from him and he was not even eligible for the batting title (and had he been eligible, he WOULD have had the highest batting average in the league).

The next year, though, after his return from the injury, the Mets traded him to the Montreal Expos on August 4, 1984.

He was traded after the Mets defeated the Chicago Cubs in an afternoon game at Wrigley Field, 7-4. Youngblood batted 3rd, played center field and got a hit and drove in what proved to be the go-ahead runs for the Mets in the third.

After the game, Youngblood decided to join his new team, the Expos, who were playing the Philadelphia Phillies in Philadelphia later that night. Youngblood flew to Philadelphia and arrived to the Stadium midway through the game.

The new addition asked to be let into play, and before the bottom of the 6th, he took over from rightfielder Jerry White and batted second in the lineup. He came up in the 7th inning and hit a single (his new team would lose, however, 5-4).

So Joel Youngblood managed to get a hit for two different teams in two different cities all on the same day!!

Pretty darn cool, huh?

Youngblood would sign with the San Francisco Giants after the season, and he would spent about six more seasons as a super sub in San Francisco.

An amusing sidenote to Youngblood’s adventures is WHO he got the hits off of – both the Cubs pitcher, Ferguson Jenkins, and the Phillies pitcher, Steve Carlton, are Hall of Famers!

So Joel Youngblood managed to get a hit for two different teams in two different cities off of two different Hall of Fame pitchers all on the same day!!

Hard to beat that…

Okay, that’s it for this week!

Feel free (heck, I implore you!) to write in with your suggestions for future installments! My e-mail address is bcronin@legendsrevealed.com

Tags: All-Star Game, Baseball Hall of Fame, Bowie Kuhn, Carl Scheib, Chicago Cubs, Cincinnati Reds, Dock Ellis, Ferguson Jenkins, Fred Chapman, hair curlers, Jerry White, Joe Nuxhall, Joel Youngblood, Johnny Bench, LSD, Montreal Expos, New York Mets, Orville Nuxhall, Philadelphia Athletics, Philadelphia Phillies, Pittsburgh Pirates, San Diegoe Padres, San Francisco Giants, Steve Carlton, Tony Perez, Veterans Stadium, World Series, Wrigley Field