Silver King (baseball)

American baseball player (1868–1938)

Silver King (January 11, 1868 – May 21, 1938), born Charles Frederick Koenig, was an American Major League Baseball player from 1886 through 1897. During his ten year career, spent primarily as a pitcher, King played for the Kansas City Cowboys (1886), St. Louis Browns (1887–1889), Chicago Pirates (1890), Pittsburgh Pirates (1891), New York Giants (1892–93), Cincinnati Reds (1893), and Washington Senators (1896–97). Newspapers in St. Louis, Missouri, gave him the nickname Silver King, referring to his prematurely gray hair and shortening his German surname.

A native of St. Louis, Koenig broke into baseball at age 18, playing for St. Joseph in the Western League.

King was an unusual pitcher for his time. Gripping the ball with unusually large hands, he delivered the ball without a windup. He was also one of the first pitchers in major league history to employ a sidearm delivery. The unconventional methods worked, as he went on to pitch 3,1902/3 innings, winning 203 games with 1229 strikeouts and a 3.18 earned run average in 397 games. His strong fastball enabled him to become a notable strikeout artist; he finished among the league's top 10 in that category six times. King's best season came in 1888, when he led the Browns to their fourth consecutive American Association championship. That year, King led the league with 5852/3 innings pitched in 66 games, 45 wins, and a 1.64 ERA. In 1890, he jumped to Chicago of the Players' League and added another ERA title while winning 30 games. On June 21, 1890, King threw a no hitter for Chicago, the only one in the league's one year history. (King lost 1–0, and pitched only eight innings in the loss, so this game is not officially recognized by MLB as a no hitter.)

After baseball, King returned to St. Louis. and went to work for his father's business. He died in 1938, at age 70, and was buried at New St. Marcus Cemetery in St. Louis.