Pretzels Getzien
Major League Baseball pitcher (1868-1932)
Charles H. "Pretzels" Getzien (surname sometimes spelled as Getzein; February 14, 1864 – June 19, 1932) was a German-born American professional pitcher in Major League Baseball (MLB). He played all or parts of nine seasons with five different National League teams from 1884 to 1892. He was the first German-born regular player in the National League.
Sources conflict as to whether the nickname was derived from his German ethnicity or from the belief that he was able to throw a "double curve" following "the curves of a pretzel." During his major league career, Getzien compiled a 145–139 win–loss record and a 3.46 earned run average (ERA). He threw 277 complete games, a total that ranks 58th in major league history. Only three pitchers threw more complete games in major league careers shorter than Getzien's nine-year career.
Getzien had his most extensive playing time with the Detroit Wolverines, compiling records of 30–11 and 29–13 in 1886 and 1887, respectively. In the 1887 World Series (which Detroit won, 10 games to 5), Getzien pitched six complete games and compiled a 4–2 record with a 2.48 ERA. He also won 23 games for the Boston Beaneaters in 1890.
Early years
Getzien was born in 1864; present-day baseball references list his place of birth as Germany, and while an 1887 article in Sporting Life stated that he was born in Chicago, his entry in the 1900 United States census lists his birth country as Germany and that he immigrated to the United States in 1865. Getzien began playing baseball as a boy in Chicago.
“Pretzels Getzien” enters the record as major League Baseball pitcher (1868-1932). Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Pretzels, Getzien and Major can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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This entry incorporates text from “Pretzels Getzien” 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.