The Curious Case of Lou Proctor

In a remote and distant corner of baseball history is the story of Lou Proctor, which was originally documented in The Baseball Encyclopedia.  In the case of the latter, it is the story of a publication that no longer exists and in the person of Lou Proctor it is the tale of a ball player that never was.

Let us start out this post by noting that The Baseball Encyclopedia was a reference book published ten times between 1969 and 1996, which listed statistics for all baseball position players and pitchers dating back to 1876.  As popular as The Baseball Encyclopedia was during its time, the advent of the internet diminished the need for such publications, which led to it ceasing publication in the mid 90’s.  Although The Baseball Encyclopedia is long gone, such sites as Baseball Reference and Retrosheet are now considered by some to be the internet descendants of that original hard copy publication. 

This brings us to the case of Lou Proctor, whom The Baseball Encyclopedia listed as appearing in one game.  The game that Mr. Proctor appeared in per The Baseball Encyclopedia was on May 13, 1912, between “his” St. Louis Browns against the Boston Red Sox in Boston, where he walked in his one ever career at bat.   The Red Sox won this game 14-9 and it would have faded into history as just a meaningless blip in the annals of baseball time, except for the inclusion of Lou Proctor in the box score.

The reality is that there was not a Lou Proctor on the St. Louis Browns team, nor has there ever been a baseball player in the Major Leagues named Lou Proctor.  Then who was Lou Proctor? 

The likely answer is that we will never know.  The legend has it that Proctor was a Western Union telegraph operator and as a gag, entered his name as a pinch hitter into the St. Louis Browns — Boston Red Sox box score (with no hits in one at bat). Initially, the forgery was not noticed and appeared both as a published box score in The Sporting News and in the first editions of The Baseball Encyclopedia.

Note that our reference above that lists Proctor is from the fourth edition of The Baseball Encyclopedia, published in 1979.

The record was later corrected in the 1980’s by crediting Pete Compton of the Browns with the pinch hit, but ultimately it took about 70 years to determine that Proctor was not only not the batter, but actually never existed, since some even question the telegraph operator story.

What is interesting is that the legend of Lou Proctor will forever be connected to Pete Compton and is noted in his Wikipedia page, which gave some heightened interest to a player who never received much attention based on his rather short and pedestrian playing career.

The Baseball Encyclopedia did correct the record before it ceased publication, and the online references to that box score from that game as Pete Compton’s career statistics now reflect his at bat and walk from that May game from 1912.  In the baseball world there is no longer any official reference to Lou Proctor. 

References to phantom players are quite rare and a deep dive of these instances can be found here.  What is interesting about the other cases is that they are more so related to misunderstandings by crediting an at bat to an actual player who may or may not have been in the game, but the player credited was a real baseball player.  In the case of Lou Proctor this situation is unique, because we know that Lou Proctor the baseball player never existed and perhaps neither did the person.