Was Hammond Avery the first to actually throw the curveball in a game? Connie Mack asserted this to be true in his book, My 66 Years in the Big Leagues (Philadelphia: Winston, 1950). Mack recalls, “The first man to pitch a curve-ball game was Charles Hammond Avery, Yale 1871-75, popularly called Ham Avery, and the first curve-pitched college game was played between Yale and Harvard at Saratoga, New York, June 14, 1874, the week of the college boat races. Avery pitched for Yale and won by the score of 4-0, the first shutout ever scored against Harvard.”
In the collection is this exceeding rare handwritten letter from Avery dated March 10, 1910. The letter is on the letterhead of Avery’s law offices.