Rip Vowinkel

John Henry Vowinkel

• Bats Right, Throws Right
• Height 5' 10", Weight 195 lb.

• Debut September 5, 1905
• Final Game October 7, 1905
• Born November 18, 1884 in Oswego, NY USA
• Died July 13, 1966 in Oswego, NY USA

BR page

Biographical Information

Rip Vowinkel was a minor league pitcher who had a cup of coffee in 1905 with the Cincinnati Reds at age 20 (the third youngest in the League that year). He played for the New London Whalers in the Connecticut State League (1903), the Utica Pent-Ups in the New York State League (1903-1906) and the Buffalo Bisons in the Eastern League (1906-1910).

Overall in MLB, he was 3-3 with 4 complete games in 6 games started, 7 strikeouts, 10 walks and 0 shutouts in 45 ⅓ innings pitched with an ERA of 4.17 and a WHIP of 1.368 in 6 games.

His obituary claimed him to be the only man ever to pitch a no-hit game, bowl a 300 game and shoot a hole-in-one in golf, but there is no documentation to substantiate any of these claims. The Oswego County Coroner and manufacturer of patent medicines, he owned and operated the Chocolate Shop in Oswego, NY for many years. He died unexpectedly shorty after reporting to work at the Oswego County Highway Department at age 81 in Oswego on July 13, 1966 and is buried at St. Paul's Cemetery in Oswego.

Sources

Principal sources for Rip Vowinkel include newspaper obituaries (OB), government records (VA,CM,CW), Sporting Life (SL), Baseball Digest, The Sporting News (TSN), The Sports Encyclopedia:Baseball 2006 by David Neft & Richard Cohen (N&C), old Who's Who in Baseballs (none) (WW), old Baseball Registers (none) (BR), TSN's Daguerreotypes (none) (DAG), The Historical Register, The Baseball Necrology by Bill Lee (BN), Pat Doyle's Professional Ballplayer DataBase(PD), The Baseball Library (BL); various Encyclopediae including The Official Encyclopedia of Baseball by Turkin & Thompson (T&T), MacMillan Baseball Encyclopedia (Mac), Total Baseball (TB), The Bill James Historical Abstract (BJ) and The Encyclopedia of Minor League Baseball (LJ); Retrosheet (RS), The Baseball Chronology (BC), Baseball Page (BP), The Baseball Almanac (BA), Baseball Cube (B3); and obituaries at deadballera.com (DBE) as well as research by Reed Howard (RH), Pat Doyle (PD) and Frank Hamilton (FH).

Related Sites

• Rip Vowinkel at the SABR Bio Project
• Rip Vowinkel at the Baseball Almanac
• Rip Vowinkel at the Baseball Page
• and a full Bibliography from SABR's The Baseball Index (TBI)