First Moment in Spectacles: Will White, Deacon White

Will White was — and in some senses, still is — this man:

You, dear reader — likely bespectacled and alone in a little gray cubicle of life — will notice a strange tingling sensation in the anterior chambers of your eyeballs as you look at yonder picturegraph. This is the feeling of MAJESTY enrapturing your ocular cavities. Do not be alarmed, but do know you will likely require the visitation of a physician and/or mortician at some point today.

For above we have featured:

THE VERY FIRST EVER
GREAT MOMENT IN SPECTACLES HISTORY.

Yes, the faint, white circles around the honorable Will White’s eyes are nothing less than Baseball’s First Glasses (according to this spurious site). And couched appropriately beneath those darling rounds — why, the curled mustache of king.

Also he’s bald.

That, in the biz, is what we call, “A Grand Slamming.”

Will White was a pitcher for Red Caps, Reds, Wolverines, and Red Stockings, and pitched as old as age-31, which in modern years, is about 65 years old.

White’s career reached an obvious down-slope, however, when in 1885 he twirled a scant 293.1 innings of 3.53 ERA ball. A clearly broken man at that point, he pitched only three more games before presumably spending the rest of his days crawling through the depths of some grimy coal mine, drowning the sorrows of his ever-failing vision on cocaine-laced, alcohol-rich Coca-Cola.

The brother of this man, Deacon White, obviously got the first hit in the first inning of the first professional game in history.

And, unsurprisingly as Science has led us to understand that the Mustachioed Gent is in every wear Superior to the Smooth Lipped Ninny, the good Deacon White sports a lip fur salaried not only to catch soups, but fast- and curve-balls as well:

Why of course Deacon played for the Forest Citys, Bisons, and Alleghenys. What else would you expect?