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By Speece

American baseball player (1897-1974)

Correspondence, annotated notebooks and portrait silhouettes prepared for research
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Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionSep 3, 2026
Entity authorityQ5003821 ↗
Source-derived summary

Byron Franklin Speece (January 6, 1897 – September 29, 1974) was an American Major League Baseball player. He was married to Helen Grace (née' Whittinghill) Speece; they had two children (Byron Jr. and Wilma Irene).

Baseball career

His minor league career stretched 20 years and he won 241 games.

Speece began as a pitcher with the Norfolk Elkhorns of the Nebraska State League in 1922. He went 14–9, helping Norfolk capture the league championship. His skill as a pitcher attracted the attention of Barney Burch, manager of the Omaha Buffaloes.

Speece pitched for Omaha in 1923 and managed a 26–14 record in 49 games. On May 2, he set a Western League record for pitchers by hitting two home runs in one game. According to the Omaha papers, he was sold for $15,000 to the Washington Senators.

Editorial summary

Begin with the source’s own compact description: “By Speece” is american baseball player (1897-1974). The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Speece, American and baseball, not as a finished interpretation.

Editorial reviewA productive starting point for separating a subject’s documented career from later reputation and commemoration. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1897, 1974, 1922, 1923—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1897-01-06. For this dossier, Speece, American and baseball is the immediate research focus.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The phrase “american baseball player (1897-1974)” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.

Evidence profile

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 Sep 3, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q5003821. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1897, 1974, 1922 and 1923.

Critical limits

Later biographies can compress uncertainty and repeat inherited reputations, so apparently settled claims may still require comparison. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Read biographical claims against dates, named institutions and the cited references. Distinguish a subject’s later reputation from evidence produced during their lifetime.

Best used for
  • Establishing names and roles
  • Building a first chronology
  • Locating cited institutions
Verify next

Personal papers, civil or court records, institutional files and the scholarship cited by the source.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “By Speece”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow By Speece primary sources, By Speece archive and Speece research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “By Speece”?
  2. Which primary records establish identity, chronology and institutional ties?
  3. How has the subject’s reputation changed across later accounts?
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “By Speece” 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.