1939

Monte Weaver was born in Helton, North Carolina on June 15, 1906. In 1923 he entered Emory & Henry College, a small Methodist school in Emory, Virginia, about 40 miles from home. He pitched for the baseball team, played center on the basketball team, and joined the track team as a high jumper and pole vaulter. He graduated with honors in 1927, and a major in mathematics. He went on to graduate school at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville and taught geometry while earning an M.S. degree in Mathematics in 1929.

He began pitching for pay in the summer of 1925, with a coal company team in Jenkins, Kentucky. While pitching semipro ball, he impressed former major leaguer Possum Whitted, the Duke University baseball coach, who also managed the Durham club in the Piedmont League.

Monte pitched for Durham in 1928 and 1929, and moved up to the Baltimore Orioles of the International League, in 1930. In 1931 he was named to the league’s all-star team.

The Washington Senators paid the Orioles for his contract, and his first appearance for Washington was in September 1931. At the time, Monte said he could make more money in the majors than teaching, but he would quit playing baseball rather than go back to the minors. 

He was the rookie sensation of 1932, winning 22 games. Starting July 4th, he won eight straight decisions and finished fifth in "The Sporting News" Most Valuable Player poll of writers.

The revamped Nats won the 1933 pennant, the last for a Washington team and Monte pitched even better than in his rookie season. He missed more than a month with a sore right shoulder, but when he recovered, he contributed six wins to the club’s successful stretch drive.

He started strongly in 1934 and had won nine games by mid-July. But the Nats lost 11 of his last 13 starts and sank to seventh place. Monte was a vegetarian and a loner, who spent most of his free time walking on the beach or reading the Bible in his hotel room, rather than hanging out with his teammates. His quirks were blamed for his 11-15 record with a 4.79 ERA. 

Whatever the merits of greens, peas and carrots, he was hammered in his first two starts of 1935. In May he was waived and sent down to Albany in the International League. 

He returned to the Senators in 1936, insisting that he felt fine, and made the team. But he was the “forgotten man” until July, when the pitching staff was struggling. He ended up pitching only 91 innings.

He bounced back in 1937. As the Senators finished sixth, his 12-9 record was the best on the team and his 4.19 ERA was better than average. But he could not repeat his success in 1938, starting only 18 times, winning seven games and saw his ERA swell to 5.20.

The Senators then sold him to the Red Sox and he started the first game of a doubleheader on Memorial Day in 1939, beating the Yankees. It was the last of his big-league victories. He spent the ’39 and ’40 seasons with Louisville before being released.

In 1941 he paid his own way to the Baltimore Orioles’ training camp in Haines City, Florida, and was signed. Pitching in relief for the Orioles, he was hailed as the International League’s top comeback player.

Monte had worked for the United States Army at Fort Belvoir, Virginia, as a civilian logistics specialist in the winter of 1940-41. After Pearl Harbor he enlisted in the Army Air Force and was commissioned a second lieutenant. By 1943 he was managing the Eighth Air Force baseball team in England.

He was discharged as a captain and when he came home from military service, the 39-year-old moved to his wife's hometown, Orlando, Florida. He first had an awning business, a good investment in the days before air conditioning was common, then bought orange groves.

Monte Weaver died on June 14, 1994, in Orlando at age 87.