Paul LaPalme

Paul Edmore LaPalme
(Lefty)

• Bats Left, Throws Left
• Height 5' 10", Weight 184 lb.

• Debut May 28, 1951
• Final Game August 28, 1957
• Born December 14, 1923 in Springfield, MA USA
• Died February 7, 2010 in Leominster, MA USA

BR page

Biographical Information

Paul LaPalme pitched 16 seasons from 1941 to 1959, seven in the major leagues (1951-1957) and 12 in the minors, losing three years to the military. He served in the United States Armed Forces for three years during World War II (1943-1945) (GB). He played for the Pittsburgh Pirates (1951-1954), the St. Louis Cardinals (1955-1956), the Cincinnati Redlegs (1956) and the Chicago White Sox (1956-1957). He married Bettye Hurt on January 16, 1947. His hobbies included making gunstocks.

LaPalme was 20-2 with 181 strikeouts and an ERA of 3.16 with Bristol in the Appalachian League in 1946 and he led the Eastern League with 162 strikeouts in 1949. He pitched a shutout in his first major league game but suffered for much of his career with some of baseball's worst teams, the 1952-1954 Pirates. The knuckleballer led the National League with eight wild pitches in 1954. Despite his wildness, he had seven saves for the White Sox in 1957. (ME)

Highlights

• June 5, 1951: The Pirates' rookie knuckler Paul LaPalme hurls a 8–0 shutout against the Boston Braves in his first major-league start.
• January 11, 1955: The Cards trade P Ben Wade to Pittsburgh for P Paul LaPalme.
• May 18, 1957: Seconds before the 10:20 p.m. curfew will end the White Sox-Baltimore Orioles game, the Birds' Dick Williams cracks a game-tying homer off Paul LaPalme. The game ends 4 – 4.

Sources

Principal sources for Paul LaPalme include newspaper obituaries (OB), government Veteran records (VA,CM,CW), Stars & Stripes (S&S), Sporting Life (SL), The Sporting News (TSN), The Sports Encyclopedia:Baseball 2006 by David Neft & Richard Cohen (N&C), old Who's Who in Baseballs {{{WW}}} (WW), old Baseball Registers {{{BR}}} (BR) , old Daguerreotypes by TSN {{{DAG}}} (DAG), Stars&Stripes (S&S), The Baseball Necrology by Bill Lee (BN), Pat Doyle's Professional Ballplayer DataBase (PD), The Baseball Library (BL), Baseball in World War II Europe by Gary Bedingfield (GB) {{{MORE}}} and independent research by Walter Kephart (WK) and Frank Russo (FR) and others.