Kid Elberfeld

Norman Arthur "Kid" Elberfeld (April 13, 1875 – January 13, 1944) was a professional baseball player. Elberfeld played shortstop in Major League Baseball for the Philadelphia Phillies (1898), Cincinnati Reds (1899), Detroit Tigers (1901–1903), New York Highlanders (1903–1909), Washington Senators (1910–1911), and Brooklyn Robins (1914). Elberfled also managed the New York Highlanders for the last half of the 1908 season.

Elberfeld was given the nickname "The Tabasco Kid" because of his fiery temper. He was known for his ferocious verbal, and sometimes physical, assaults on umpires. On one occasion, while in the minors, Elberfeld threw a lump of mud into the umpire's open mouth. Later in his career, Elberfeld assaulted umpire Silk O'Loughlin and had to be forcibly removed by police; Elberfeld was suspended for just 8 games. Although records were not kept, it was said that Elberfeld was thrown out of more games than any other player of his era.

Early career

Elberfeld broke into organized baseball in 1892 in Clarkson, Tennessee. He was so highly regarded as a prospect that a scout for the Philadelphia Phillies recommended signing him over another shortstop prospect, Honus Wagner. Elberfeld played only 14 games for the Phillies in 1898 before being sent to the Detroit Tigers, then a minor league team in the Western Conference. A year later, Elberfeld was purchased from Detroit by the Cincinnati Reds. Elberfeld lasted only 41 games in Cincinnati.

Elberfeld

Elberfeld is a municipal subdivision of the German city of Wuppertal; it was an independent town until 1929.

History

The first official mentioning of the geographic area on the banks of today's Wupper River as "elverfelde" was in a document of 1161. Etymologically, elver is derived from the old Low German word for "river." (See etymology of the name of the German Elbe River; cf. North Germanic älv.) Therefore the original meaning of "elverfelde" can be understood as "field on the river." Elverfelde received its town charter in 1610.

In 1726 Elias Eller and the pastor Daniel Schleyermacher founded a Philadelphian society. They later moved to Ronsdorf in the Duchy of Berg, becoming the Zionites, a fringe sect.

The 1820s saw the commencement of the Plymouth Brethren in Dublin, Ireland and Georgetown, British Guyana. This evangelical religious movement spread to the Continent and emerged in Germany chiefly out of Pietist groups through the work of Julius Anton von Poseck, William Henry Darby and Carl Brockhaus. By the 1850s the resultant group had a focal point in Elberfeld and are known to the present as the Elberfelder Brethren. They have branches throughout Germany and Switzerland and beyond. A translation of the Darby Bible into German was produced by this group and is known as the Elberfelder Bibel.