El Paso Herald · El Paso, Texas · 1913

Charles M. Tesreau, the Biggest Pitcher in the World

Days before the 1913 World's Series, a syndicated panel sizes up the Giants' big spitballer: they call him the Ozark bear hunter because the only bear he ever saw was in a circus, he depends upon moisture for his pitching success, and he is not yet married but he has an automobile so he should be soon.

With the 1913 World’s Series days away, the El Paso Herald carried a syndicated series called Men Who Will Fight For the World’s Championship, and this installment introduces Jeff Tesreau of the Giants under the finest job title the paper could bestow: “Charles M. Tesreau, the Biggest Pitcher In the World.” He is drawn accordingly, a head the size of a watermelon on a windmilling body, flinging a baseball that leaves a trail of spray.

The spray is the point. “Charles M. Tesreau,” the caption explains, “depends upon moisture for his pitching success.” That is the polite way a family newspaper describes a spitball, and in 1913 it was an honest living. The biographical notes fill in the rest: “They call him the Ozark bear hunter because the only bear he ever saw was in a circus,” illustrated with a boy gawking at a bear cage, and, in the corner, a personal item of real actuarial insight: “He is not yet married but he has an automobile so he should be soon.”

Two credits ride on this panel. The printed line beneath it reads “(By Sloane Gordon),” and the signature inked into the grass at Tesreau’s feet reads Scar, the same mark that signs the How Great Men Play the Game panels running that same season. Wire features often carried both a writer and an artist, which would account for two names on one drawing. Between them they had the essentials down: big man, wet ball, dry wit.