Myles Lewis Thomas was born on October 22, 1897 in State College, Pa. His mother, the former Sallie P. Bowman, and his father, Dicen Blanchard Thomas, lived on a farm in Bellefonte, 12 miles east of State College. They had four children in this order: Wynona, Ralph, Myles and Kenneth.

With only census records as a guide, and without a formal family history, it’s difficult to retrace the path Myles took from childhood to his enrollment at nearby Penn State. But he did register for the draft in September of 1918 — he was described as tall and slender with blue eyes and brown hair — and his listed occupation was farm laborer.

Centre County was renowned for both its agriculture and baseball products. Bellefonte was the home of John Montgomery Ward, one of the game’s first great pitchers, and Bucknell College in Lewisburg was the proving ground for Christy Mathewson. So it’s easy to imagine Myles playing on a town team or two when his farm chores were done.

And he must’ve been pretty good if Penn State coach Hugo Bezdek wanted him. In 1919, the Czech-American dynamo managed the Pittsburgh Pirates (who included Casey Stengel) to a 71–68 record, then turned around and coached the Penn State football team to a 7–1 season. (He would later become the Cleveland Rams’ first coach, thus becoming the first man to manage a club in both major league baseball and one in the NFL.)

In 1920, Bezdek took over a Penn State baseball team that had two of his All-American football players, outfielder Hinkey Haines and second baseman Glenn Killinger. Myles, who was also known as “Tommy,” wasn’t as big on campus as they were, but that only helped prepare him for his future role in the shadows of men like Ruth and Gehrig, Hoyt and Combs.

There are no official statistics dating back that far. On May 19, 1920, though, Myles made the front page of the campus newspaper, The Collegian. Under the headline, Thomas Pitches No-Hit Game Against Presidents, the story about the May 12 13–0 win over Washington & Jefferson reads: “Thomas pitches a pretty game for the varsity and was the first twirler to achieve a hitless, runless victory… The Nittany Lion moundsman was in complete control and struck out 14.”

With 10 wins to end the 1920 season, and 20 to start the 1921 campaign, the Lions won a collegiate record 30 games in a row. That brought them to the attention of scouts, one of whom was Paul Krichell of the Yankees. In the review of the 1921 season in La Vie, the Penn State yearbook, there was this nugget:

“This spring three men from our team will be trying to score berths on the New York American League team. Killinger, Haines and Thomas will all be taken South for tryouts, and if they make good, we may be hearing more about them later in the sporting world.”

As it turned out, Haines would become the first and only man ever to win both a World Series and an NFL championship: he had one at bat for the Yankees in the ’23 Series and was the star tailback of the New York Giants when they won their first NFL title in 1927. Killinger never made the majors, but he did play tailback for the Canton Bulldogs and New York Giants before becoming a highly respected college football and baseball coach. Myles, who reported to Hartford after the tryout, was the only one who would stick around in the big leagues.

On July 5, 1921, Thomas did the most amazing thing. In his very first professional game, he threw a no-hitter as Hartford beat the Springfield Hampdens, who had three ex-major leaguers: Marty Becker, John Flynn and Danny Silva, and his old friend from Happy Valley, Hinkey Haines.

Lou Gehrig.

In Hartford, Myles’s manager was the infamous bigamist, Arthur Irwin, and just missed being a Hartford teammate of Lou Lewis, an 18-year-old, hard-hitting first baseman from New York. That would have been Lou Gehrig, playing professionally for the Senators under an assumed name (“Lou Lewis”), so as not to jeopardize his collegiate standing.

(Just a week before Myles arrived in Hartford, Lou’s true identity was discovered and he was pulled off the Hartford team by his Columbia University coach, and had to forfeit his first year of eligibility.)

Myles would go 9–13 for the Senators that season, but his ERA of 2.41 belied his record. Indeed, he was considered something of a star. In November of ’21, a writer from the Hartford Courant caught up with Myles in an article headlined, Myles Thomas Hunting Game in Penn. Wilds: “The right-handed flinger… is tromping in the wilds of the northern part of Pennsylvania hunting bear… Thomas was popular with Hartford fandom, but none will miss him more than Owner Jim Clarkin, who declares he was one of the best-liked players connected with the club in his long baseball career.”

That popularity extended to a certain 22-year-old Hartford woman named Helen Belcher. They married the next year. “She must have been quite the looker,” says Joe. “She was glamorous even to us.”

Myles Thomas with his wife Helen.

By then, Myles had been assigned to Reading. He had auditioned for Miller Huggins in January, but the Yankee manager didn’t think he was ready. Huggins was probably right. Thomas had an awful year with the Aces, going 2–8 with a 5.37 ERA. Still, he was one of the players featured on a souvenir pin series sponsored by Kolb’s Mother’s Bread.

One of the wonderful things about baseball is that the past often dresses with the future in the clubhouse. Playing for Reading that year was the Aces’ pitcher-manager, Chief Bender, who was in his sunset at 38 but would one day go into the Baseball Hall of Fame. Also on the staff was Al Schacht, who had mediocre stuff but a bright future as The Clown Prince of Baseball. The catcher was the washed-up Justin Clarke, who once hit eight homers in a game for the Corsicana Oil Citys. Oh, and the kid over there in the corner? That was Babe Herman, who eight years later would bat .393 for the Brooklyn Robins, with 35 homers and 130 RBIs.

In March of 1923, Myles’s contract was sold to the Toronto Maple Leafs of the International League. One newspaper article stated, “Wildness is his fault and Manager Dan Howley of Toronto thinks he can cure it.” Also known as “Howling Dan,” Howley would go on to manage the St. Louis Browns and Cincinnati Reds for three seasons apiece. And he did help Myles, who he thought was short-arming the ball.

Myles Thomas with the Toronto Maple Leafs.

Myles turned around his career in Canada, winning 57 games in his three seasons there. He enriched his life in Toronto, as well: Helen gave birth to a daughter, Myrtice Ann, on July 25, 1923. (Myrtice, pronounced “Mir-tiss,” was a fairly popular name at the time.)

Following the 1925 season, in which he went 28–8 with a 2.52 ERA — thanks in part to the hitting and fielding of young second baseman Charlie Gehringer — Thomas was sold to the Yankees for $25,000. According to an article in the Jan. 6 Reading Eagle, Myles was the first Yankee to sign that year, joining three others who were already under contract: Wally Pipp, Herb Pennock and Babe Ruth.

Thomas made his major league debut on April 18, against the host Senators, relieving Bob Shawkey in the eighth. He kept Washington at bay until the 11th, when rookie second baseman Tony Lazzeri made an error that led to a victory for the Senators and a loss for Myles.

But that performance must’ve gotten Huggins to thinking that Thomas might make a starting pitcher. On May 14 he outdueled Dutch Levsen of the Indians over nine innings, winning 2–1 thanks to the two-run homer that the Babe hit in the first inning.

Thomas had a decent fastball, but his out pitches were a nasty curve and a forkball, the precursor to the modern changeup. Over the next month, “Duck Eye” — the name Ruth gave him because of his close-set peepers — would throw three more gems, one against the Browns and two against the Red Sox. On June 19, Thomas earned his sixth win, against the White Sox, nearly 14% of the first-place Yankees’ 43 victories.

But that would be his last win for the year. Huggins was notoriously mercurial when it came to selecting his pitchers, and after a few bad outings, Thomas was placed back on the shelf. He finished the regular season at 6–6 with a 4.23 ERA and three complete games.

Huggins did use him in the World Series against the Cardinals, though. In Game 3, Myles entered in the eighth inning with the Yankees trailing 4–0, gave up a single to Jim Bottomley, then got Les Bell to hit into a 6–4–3 double play and Chick Hafey to ground out to third. In Game 6, a 10–2 loss, he was asked to clean up the mess, which he did by allowing just one run in two innings of work.

In G. H. Fleming’s Murderers’ Row, an extraordinary collection of newspaper stories from the ’27 campaign, the vicissitudes of Myles’s season are revealed. He didn’t appear in a game until May 4, when he was called in to stop the bleeding after Dutch Ruether and Bob Shawkey gave up seven runs in the first inning to the Senators. Wrote Pat Robinson of the New York Telegraph: “Thomas turned in a beautiful seven innings, and Huggins again found solace in the work of a second-string pitcher.”

Huggins gave him a start in a May 23 game in Washington, and though he lost 3–2, Charles Segar of the Daily Mirror wrote, “Thomas did not pitch a bad game. Had he been given good support, he probably would have registered his first victory of the season.”

Myles’s first win in ’27 came on May 29 in Yankee Stadium. He was summoned in the third inning after Fred Haney of the Red Sox, who would later cross paths with Thomas, homered off Ruether to give Boston a 4–0 lead. The Yankees rallied to win 15–7, and Myles went the last seven innings.

He might have been the Yankees’ best pitcher in June, winning five and losing one in six starts and three relief appearances. In a 9–8 victory over the Athletics on June 28, Urban Shocker got the win and Thomas would have gotten the save had it been an official stat. But he did earn this acknowledgement from Fred Lieb of the New York Post: “The Penn Stater made quick work of the Athletic rally and got two of the toughest men on the A’s, Simmons and Cochrane.”

Shocker and Thomas were friends and roommates, but their relationship had at least one rocky moment. In Babe Ruth’s Own Book of Baseball, a breezy guide actually written by Ruth’s ghost writer, Ford Frick, the chapter on baseball superstitions contains this anecdote:

“Urban Shocker believes that throwing a hat on a bed is bad luck. He used to room with Tommy Thomas, the kid pitcher, and one night Tommy came into the room, and threw his hat on the bed. Shocker was scheduled to pitch the next day. And he was furious. The things he said to Tommy wouldn’t look good, even if printed in Yiddish. It’s a wonder Tommy came out alive. And it’s a certain cinch he has never thrown his hat on the bed since then. The following afternoon Shocker pitched a beautiful game but lost by one run.”

“Professor” Myles Thomas with his daughter Myrtice.

The Yankees also called Thomas “Professor” because, well, he looked more like a scholar than an athlete (5’9”, 170). That made made him a natural companion for Shocker, who would often study the box scores from out-of-town newspapers to try to get an edge on future opponents. (Shocker was one of the last pitchers to legally throw a spitball since he was using it before the pitch was banned prior to the 1920 season.)

After a few bad outings in July, Thomas again fell into disfavor. Huggins did give him a start on September 15 in Yankee Stadium against the Indians. He pitched fairly well, but took the 3–2 loss to fall to 7–4 on the season. Had he won, he would have gotten credit for the Yankees’ 100th victory in ’27.

He didn’t pitch in the World Series against the Pirates, but then, there wasn’t much of a chance since the Yankees swept the Series as Huggins employed only four pitchers — Wilcy Moore pitched twice. It was hard to complain, though: Myles’s World Series share came to $5,592. That, combined with the $6,500 contract he had signed, helped Myles and Helen buy a $4,000 house on Jaggard Street in Altoona, just down the road from State College.

There is a story, probably apocryphal, involving Myles and Ruth, who was notorious for forgetting people’s names. According to Billy Werber, a third baseman who played briefly for the Yankees before finding stardom elsewhere, Tony Lazzeri decided to play a joke at the Boston train station by introducing Myles to the Babe as a new pitcher who had just joined the ball club from Yale. Babe stuck out his hand and said, “Hi, Keed. Glad to have you on the club,” even though Myles had been on the team for a few years.

The reason that tale seems doubtful is a photograph that Joe Happer has of his mother and another child standing with the Babe during spring training. He also has a striking photo of Myrtice being held up by a smiling Adonis — Lou Gehrig. Myles was very much a part of the team, and despite his lack of work, he was still on Huggins’s mind.