Bob Smith (pitcher, born 1928)
professional baseball player, born 1928
Robert Walkup Smith (May 13, 1928 – June 23, 2003), nicknamed "Riverboat", was an American professional baseball player. He was a left-handed pitcher who appeared in 30 games in the Major Leagues over parts of 1958 and 1959 for the Boston Red Sox, Chicago Cubs and Cleveland Indians. He was listed as 6 feet (1.8 m) tall and 185 pounds (84 kg), and attended the University of Missouri.
Smith fashioned a 13-season (1951–63) professional career and won 94 games in minor league baseball. He earned his nickname from San Francisco baseball writer Bob Stevens for his coolness and finesse under fire—not unlike a riverboat gambler—while he was a member of 1956–57 San Francisco Seals of the Pacific Coast League.
One-third of Smith's 30 MLB appearances came as a starting pitcher. He earned his only complete game victory as a rookie with the Red Sox on May 20, 1958, at Cleveland Stadium, throwing a three-hitter but walking nine Indians' batters in a 6–1 triumph. Smith won three other games for Boston that season, all in relief, as he posted a 4–3 mark and 3.78 earned run average in 17 games. But the Red Sox traded him to the Cubs the following spring for outfielder Chuck Tanner, and after just one ineffective outing against the Cincinnati Reds on April 29 for the 1959 Cubbies, he was dealt to the Indians for veteran third baseman and ex-Cub Randy Jackson. He worked in 12 mid- and late-season games for Cleveland, dropping his only decision.
“Bob Smith (pitcher, born 1928)” enters the record as professional baseball player, born 1928. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Smith, pitcher and born can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Biographical claims are most persuasive when dates, appointments and relationships can be traced to records created close to the events described. The source revision retrieved here is dated Mar 1, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q4934027. VIAF identifies the subject as 250142325. The Library of Congress control number is no2012064680. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1928, 2003, 1958 and 1959.
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This entry incorporates text from “Bob Smith (pitcher, born 1928)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.