William Thomas "Bill" Burns (January 27, 1880 – June 6, 1953), nicknamed "Sleepy Bill," was an American baseball player who played as a pitcher in Major League Baseball for five different teams from 1908 to 1912. Burns earned his nickname for his noticeable lack of intensity on the mound.
Burns is best known for his involvement in the alleged fixing of the 1919 Chicago White Sox World Series, dubbed the Black Sox Scandal.
In his five-year career, Burns played for the Washington Senators, Chicago White Sox, Cincinnati Reds, Philadelphia Phillies, and Detroit Tigers. In his rookie season, 1908, Burns had a 1.69 earned run average (ERA) which was sixth best in the American League. However, he had a career record of 30–52 as a pitcher and never won more than eight games in a season.
Pitching against the Tigers on May 21, 1908, Burns' bid for a no-hitter ended after 8 2/3 innings when Germany Schaefer singled to drive in the game's only run. On July 31, 1909, now pitching for the White Sox against Walter Johnson and the Senators, Burns again was one out from a no-hitter when it was broken up. This made him the first pitcher in baseball history to suffer this fate twice, a feat not repeated until Dave Stieb lost no-hitters with two outs in the ninth inning in consecutive starts on September 24 and 30, 1988. Yu Darvish would have become the third on May 9, 2014 , but a seventh-inning error was officially re-scored as a hit five days later after an appeal by David Ortiz . Stieb would go on to break Burns's record on August 4, 1989, this time losing a perfect game with one out to go.
Bill Burns may refer to:
William Burns (born 1952–1953) is a retired English football referee who officiated in the Football League.
Born in Scarborough, Burns refereed the 1996 Football League Third Division play-off Final, and the 2001 Football League Trophy Final. Having officiated since 1985, he retired as a Football League referee at the end of the 2000–01 season, at the age of 48. In 2002, he bought a pub in Scarborough with his wife, Jenny. In later life, he underwent a successful liver transplant at Leeds General Infirmary.
William M. "Bill" Burns (April 10, 1913 – September 16, 1997) was an American journalist and television news anchor.
Burns anchored the news for over three decades (1953–1989) in Pittsburgh for KDKA, which was the largest station in the market.
Burns was a native of Houtzdale, PA. After serving in World War II, where he earned a Purple Heart medal, Burns came to Pittsburgh in 1946 to work for radio station KQV. He settled in Pittsburgh with his wife, and the couple subsequently had two children, Michael and Patti.
He reported for KQV until 1953, when he went to work for what was then WDTV, Channel 3. WDTV was originally identified as a DuMont Television Network affiliate but became a CBS affiliate and changed its call letters to KDKA and its frequency to Channel 2 in 1955.
Burns was a familiar face to Pittsburghers; for much of the time he was at KDKA, he anchored the noon and 11 p.m. newscasts. Burns became a part of news history when in 1976, he began to share anchor duties with daughter and fellow journalist Patti Burns, who had become an anchor in her own right. Their pairing, initially derided as "The Patti and Daddy Show" garnered high ratings.