The Cal 100: No. 17 -- Orval Overall
We count down the top 100 individuals associated with Cal athletics, based on their impact in sports or in the world at large – a wide-open category. See if you agree.
No. 17: Orval Overall
Cal Sports Connection: Overall was a star on the Cal football and baseball teams in 1901, '02 and '03.
Claim to Fame: The right-handed pitcher became the Bears' first major leaguer in 1905 and he was superb in the 1907 and '08 World Series, holding Ty Cobb to a .125 batting average.
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Orval “Orvie” Overall was a star guard and kicker on Cal football teams that went 23-1-3 his final three seasons. He was at his best in the Big Game, blocking a kick for a safety in a 2-0 victory in 1901, kicking two field goals in a 16-0 rout the next before converting two more kicks as the Bears tied Stanford 6-6 in 1903.
He was so extraordinary in the Big Game that one of the headlines above his 1947 obituary in the San Francisco Chronicle read, “He was the dread of Stanford.”
Orval Overall at Cal
Photo courtesy of Cal Athletics
But Overall’s enduring legacy is as Cal’s first major league baseball player. He made his debut in 1905, when Babe Ruth was 10 years old and baseball was preparing to conduct just its second World Series.
Yes, a long time ago.
A 6-foot-2, 214-pound right-handed pitcher, Overall was 18-23 with a 2.86 earned run average in his rookie season of ’05 with the Cincinnati Reds. He struck out 173 batters in 318 innings, but he walked 147, hit 18 batters and threw 18 wild pitches.
After starting the 1906 season with a 4-5 record, Overall was traded, along with $2,000, to the Chicago Cubs for another another right-hander, Bob Wicker.
Turned out to be a bad deal for Cincinnati as Wicker went 6-11 the rest of the season, then retired. Some baseball historians consider it to be the worst trade the Reds made until they shipped Frank Robinson to Baltimore for Milt Pappas in 1966.
Overall was about to blossom into one of baseball’s best pitchers of his time in the Deadball Era.
Don’t believe it?
Ask Ty Cobb.
We’ll get to that. First, consider these facts:
Orval Overall
Library of Congress
— Cubs manager Frank Chance was convinced that Overall had been overworked in Cincinnati, where he threw 400 innings from the start of 1905 until early June in ’06. With his work load reduced in Chicago, Overall was 12-3 with a 1.88 ERA the rest of 1906.
— He improved to 23-7 with a 1.68 ERA and a league-leading eight shutouts in ’07 as the Cubs went 107-45-3 and beat the Detroit Tigers 4-0-1 in the World Series. He had a better season than future Hall of Famer Christy Mathewson, who was 24-12 with a 2.00 ERA.
— Overall assembled a modest 15-11 for the 99-win Cubs in 1908 but he delivered in the postseason. Chicago beat the Tigers 4-1 in the World Series and Overall won the clincher, pitching a complete-game 3-hitter in a 2-0 victory. In the first inning that day he became the only pitcher in World Series history to strike out four hitters in one inning.
The Cubs did not win another World Series for 108 years, until 2016.
— Chicago won 104 games in 2009 but fell short of reaching the World Series for a third straight season. It was no fault of Overall, who was 20-11 with a 1.42 ERA and led the National League with 9 shutouts and 205 strikeouts. He might have won the Cy Young Award . . . except that Young still was an active player.
Plagued by a sore arm late in his career, Overall retired after the 2013 season with a career record of 108-71, including 30 shutouts, and a 2.26 ERA, which ranks as the 15th-best all-time. He pitched Opening Day for five straight seasons through 1910. And From 1907 through ’10, he was dynamite: 70-35 with a 1.81 ERA, 25 shutouts and just nine home runs allowed in 923 innings.
Equipped with a great curveball, Overall became known as the Big Groundhog because his birthday was on Feb. 2.
But the Fall Classic truly was his stage.
In the 1907 and 1908 World Series, Overall was 3-0 in five appearances, with a 1.00 ERA over 36.1 innings.
Orval Overall's 1911 T-205 baseball card
He was particularly tough on Cobb, Detroit’s young star outfielder, who won the first two of his 12 batting titles in 1907 and ’08. The man whose .366 career batting average remains the best of all-time managed to hit just .125 (2 for 16) in four games against Overall in those two Series.
Raised in the community of Farmersville, near the California Central Valley town of Visalia, Overall was the son of a wealthy businessman who owned the Palace Hotel and a citrus farm.
He studied agriculture at Cal and was elected freshman class president, according to an article written by Brian Marshall for SABR, the baseball research group.
Besides his work on the Bears’ football team, Overall pitched, played first base, left field and catcher for the baseball team.
After retiring from professional baseball, Overall worked for a brewery then took over the family’s citrus farm when his father became ill. His father died in 1921 and Overall became a wealthy man after selling the farm.
He worked in banking the rest of his career, ultimately rising to vice president and branch manager in Fresno.
A member of the Chicago Cubs Hall of Fame and Cal’s Athletic Hall of Fame, Overall died following a heart attack in 1947 at the age of 66.
Cover photo of Orval Overall
Follow Jeff Faraudo of Cal Sports Report on Twitter: @jefffaraudo