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Tommy Corcoran

American baseball player (1869-1960)

Correspondence, annotated notebooks and portrait silhouettes prepared for research
People and ideasInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionJul 28, 2026
Entity authorityQ7819323 ↗
Source-derived summary

Thomas William Corcoran (January 4, 1869 – June 25, 1960) was an American professional baseball player. He played in Major League Baseball as a shortstop from 1890 to 1907 for the Pittsburgh Burghers (1890), Philadelphia Athletics (1891), Brooklyn Grooms/Brooklyn Bridegrooms (1892–1896), Cincinnati Reds (1897–1906) and the New York Giants (1907). The 5 ft 9 in (1.75 m) Connecticut native occasionally played second base later in his career. He batted and threw right-handed.

Career

Born in New Haven, Connecticut, Corcoran gained the nicknames Corky and Tommy the Cork. He was considered a hard-working, supple-handed shortstop. His fielding style was compared with Hall of Famer Bid McPhee.

Corcoran batted .300 in a season just once (1894). He was a barehanded fielder early in his career when gloves were gradually becoming standard equipment, and made the transition to a glove without difficulty. He became adept at going to his right to field ground balls backhanded.

Editorial summary

“Tommy Corcoran” enters the record as american baseball player (1869-1960). Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Tommy, Corcoran and American can confirm, complicate or overturn.

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—1869, 1960, 1890, 1907—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1869-01-04. Its strongest next move is a source search built around Tommy, Corcoran and American.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

“Tommy Corcoran” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Tommy, Corcoran and American provides the most credible route into that argument.

Evidence profile

The entry’s evidential value lies in the named roles, institutions and publications that can be tested against primary documentation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 28, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q7819323. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1869, 1960, 1890 and 1907.

Critical limits

Later biographies can compress uncertainty and repeat inherited reputations, so apparently settled claims may still require comparison. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. 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 “Tommy Corcoran”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Tommy Corcoran primary sources, Tommy Corcoran archive and Tommy 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 “Tommy Corcoran”?
  2. How has the subject’s reputation changed across later accounts?
  3. Which claims depend on a single source or contested interpretation?
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Tommy Corcoran” 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.