By Speece
American baseball player (1897-1974)

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.
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.
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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 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.
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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.