In 1995, Expos reliever Greg Harris pitched with both hands, becoming the first pitcher in the major leagues to “switch-pitch” in over one hundred years. According to the Baseball Library web site, only four pitchers in baseball history have ever pitched ambidextrously and the first man to have ever done it is also the only man to have done it more than once, Anthony “Tony” Mullane. Nicknamed “The Apollo of the Box” as well as “The Count”, Tony Mullane played between 1881 and 1894 and had a fascinating life and career.

His bio, also from the Baseball Library site, is quite colorful:

Mullane was a multi-talented marvel, baseball's first ambidextrous pitcher. He played without a glove, facing the batter with both hands on the ball before throwing it with either one. Handsome and muscular, with a reputation as a dandy, Mullane was also a skilled boxer, skater, and musician, as well as one of the better pitchers of his day. He twice led his league in shutouts, once in strikeouts, and once in winning percentage while regularly pitching over 400 innings. Despite his sober demeanor off the field (he did not drink, smoke, or gamble), Mullane was a free spirit who routinely ignored the game's reserve clause. He jumped to the Union Association and then to Toledo after winning 35 games for the Browns in 1883 without stopping to play in the UA. He was suspended for all of 1885 when he signed with Cincinnati after Toledo had resold him to the Browns. And in 1892 he sat out half the season to protest the NL's pay cuts. When he wasn't pitching, Mullane played every position except catcher, and switch-hit his way to a .243 batting average in 2,720 at-bats.

In terms of ignominy, Mullane holds another record, for having once given up 16 runs in the first inning (!) of an outing in 1894, a very bad year for pitchers all around.

According to his 1944 obituaries (complements of the Dead Ball Era web site), Tony Mullane was born in Cork County in Ireland and came over to the U.S. at the age of five. He is one of 39 major league players to have actually been born in Ireland and was the product of an age when baseball was as synonymous with the Irish as hockey is with Canadians or as basketball is with African-Americans today. Reputed to have had a nasty temper, he would live to be 85, serving as a member of the Chicago Police Department after his playing days.

I recall Mullane’s name, and players like him, from having played all kinds of baseball simulation games like “Pursue the Pennant” when I was a kid. Mullane spent part of his final season on the 1894 Baltimore Orioles, one of baseball’s all-time most potent offenses and all-around colorful teams, featuring Hall of Famers like John McGraw, Wee Willie Keeler, Hughie Jennings and Dan Brouthers. I always remembered seeing Mullane listed on that roster as a “switch-pitcher” and wanted to know more about him. It is a tribute to the Internet that it is so easy to reconstruct the fascinating exploits and lives of players like him more than a century after their careers have come and gone.

UPDATE: There is an unflattering quote about Mullane in this bio of Moses Fleetwood Walker, one of the first (if not the first) black players in major league history. This is consistent with the times in which he lived, but nonetheless stands as a blemish against Mullane.