Freeman Ossee “Schreck” Schrecongost’s was most famous for being Rube Waddell’s catcher with the Philadelphia Athletics.
Ossee Schrecongost
Years later, Connie Mack told Harry Grayson of the Newspaper Enterprise Association that Schrecongost was “the fizz powder in the pinwheel that was Waddell.” He also told the reporter that Waddell’s catcher “was the wilder of the two in many respects.”
Schrecongost lived at least as hard as Waddell and caused his manager as many headaches, but more than 30 years after his final game, Mack said he did “more with gloved hand than any other catcher who has come along.”
Allan Gould, the long-time sports editor for The Associated Press said of the catcher:
“Schreck had the eccentric habit of doing as much of his backstopping as possible with his gloved hand only. This worried Mack, who considered it careless workmanship until Schreck convinced his manager he could do a better job one-handed than with two.”
His teammates felt the same.
Three years after Schrecongost’s final major league game, Harry Davis told Gordon Mackay of The Philadelphia Times:
“Walter Johnson is some grand pitcher with a barrel of speed. But I’ll tell you one old boy who would sit on a chair and catch the big fellow. That’s old Schreck. He’d catch Walter with that big glove on his fin, and then after he had eaten up the old smoke to the limit he’d yell to the big chap to put something on the ball.
“I’ve seen Rube Waddell cross Ossee six or seven times, and Schreck wouldn’t pay the least bit of attention to it. Suddenly Schreck would go out to the box and tell the Rube with a bunch of billingsgate trimmings that would make your hair curl that he stop crossing him.
Rube Waddell
“There never was a backstop like old Ossee. He could catch all the speed merchants in our league with one hand, and then only use the other one to throw with. He was the greatest receiving catcher, receiving alone, I mean, who ever tripped down the pike. He was a wonder, that old boy.”
Davis wasn’t Schreck’s only teammate who claimed he was a “wonder,” Tully “Topsy” Hartsell told The Philadelphia Press he saw the catcher perform “the greatest stunt” he had ever seen in 1904:
“Schreck had a bad finger, and the other catcher (Michael) Doc Powers, was also laid up. The third catcher, who was Pete Noonan, was doing all the backstopping. He got hurt one day and Schreck had to go in in the first inning. He couldn’t let the ball strike his wounded and uncovered hand, and Topsy says he caught the whole game only using his gloved hand.
“’Not only did he (only) use the glove to catch them,’ said Topsy, “’ but there wasn’t a stolen base or passed ball by him. That’s the greatest catching feat I ever saw.”
Forever tied to Waddell, who died at age 37 on April 1, 1914, Schrecongost died just three months later, on July 9, at age 39.
The Associated Press said in his obituary:
“Grief over the death of the brilliant but eccentric Waddell…probably had much to do with hastening the end of the former great catcher. Schreck told friends at the time that he ‘did not care to live now. The Rube is gone and I am all in. I might as well join him.’”
Baseball History Daily 