Shortly after his son’s major league debut on the 4th of July, 1928, The Chicago Daily News said:
“This is a story of Ed Walsh Jr., but it is also the story of Ed Walsh.”
The paper said Walsh Jr. “fulfilled an ambition the father had nurtured for 23 years.”
The older Walsh, who had just joined the team as a coach, told the paper:
“As soon as he was able to toddle around he wanted to play ball…He always wanted to be a pitcher too. I guess most boys do, but if they can’t pitch they‘ll play somewhere else. Not this boy though. He wanted to pitch all the time.”
Walsh talked about what he taught his son:
Jr.
“I’ve drummed three things into him—control, so he can lay the ball in there where he wanted it; studying the hitters, so he could always be ahead of him, and fielding his position, so he could help himself in a lot of plays where he’d be lost if he wasn’t a good fielder. And I told him, too, never to forget there were seven men out in the field behind him, and not to try to throw every ball past the hitters.”
The younger Walsh was signed by the Sox in June, after pitching at Notre Dame, where his father was also his pitching coach. Big Ed said:
“I never had to tell him to practice or to hustle. He loves baseball too much for that He played ball every minute he could and as he grew up he improved until I don’t think there was a better pitcher in any of the colleges as he was at Notre Dame.”
Walsh said his son was 25-3 during his college career and “won twenty-five games and lost six” for a semi-pro team in the Massachusetts/Rhode Island based Blackstone Valley League between the end of Notre Dame’s season and before he joined Chicago.
One feature of Walsh’s first start was that manager Ray Schalk, started the game behind the plate—one of only two games he appeared in and his only start, The Chicago Tribune said;
“(Schalk) made his first start of the year in his old place so that he might boast of having caught two generations of the Walsh family.”
Walsh Jr. lasted just four innings, giving up five runs in fourth after walking three straight batters.
Regarding his son’s first game, Walsh told The Daily News:
“He pitched his first game for the Sox against the Browns…got off to a good start and then got into a jam and had to be taken out. Maybe he was overanxious and was missing the plate, though Cracker Schalk who caught him, told me afterward that he really had struck out the three men who got bases on balls. Anyway, it doesn’t matter now, though naturally I would have liked to see him win his first game.”
Sr.
Schalk resigned as Sox manager the same day.
Ten days after his debut, Walsh won his first game. His father said:
“Then, last Saturday in Boston, he beat the Red Sox. Gave them only six hits and the two runs they got came in the first inning before a man was out. When he settled down he was great and three of the hits they got off him were scratches.”
Walsh said of the experience watching his son’s first victory:
“I can’t tell you how much of a kick I got out of that game. No game I ever pitched meant half as much to me. I wasn’t nervous. I’d seen him pitch against some pretty good hitters and I had confidence in him, but every inning had a thrill for me. There he was at last, winning a game in the American League. At that moment I didn’t care if ever won another one—and I’d been waiting for it for twenty-three years.
“He’s got a fast ball, a curve ball and a knuckle ball, and the Boston players told me after the game his fast ball was very deceptive.”
The Daily News predicted great things for the younger Walsh:
“(He is) a magnificent looking young man, slightly more than six feet tall and weighing about 190 pounds, apparently has the stuff, the poise, and the judgment he needs. If he has a heart as stout as his father’s he’ll be a great pitcher, too.”
Walsh could not match his father’s success. He pitched parts of four seasons with the White Sox posting an 11-24 record and 5.57 ERA in 79 major league appearances.
Ed Walsh was just 32 years old when he died in 1937 of a heart ailment.
His father was elected to the Hall of Fame in 1946.
Baseball History Daily 
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