Eddie Plank - A Favorite Son of Gettysburg - NYTimes.com GETTYSBURG, Pa. - This week's commemoration of the 150th anniversary of the Battle of Gettysburg, the turning point in the Civil War, might also bring renewed attention to Eddie Plank, a relatively unappreciated baseball star in the early 20th century who spent most of his life here. The battle, fought on the first three days of July in 1863, stamped Little Round Top, Seminary Ridge and Pickett's Charge into America's military lexicon. Plank's pitching legacy is far less monumental. He never led the American League in victories, earned run average or strikeouts, his critics say, and he did not have the presence on the mound of his Philadelphia Athletics teammates Rube Waddell and Chief Bender. "He wasn't really colorful, but he got the job done," said David Jordan, a former president of the Philadelphia Athletics Historical Society. And he did it on a consistent basis. Plank had eight 20-win seasons. With 326 victories, he ranks 13th on the career list and 3rd among left-handers, after Warren Spahn and Steve Carlton. He also threw 69 shutouts (fifth on the career list), completed 410 games (16th) and posted a 2.35 E.R.A. (21st). So tied was Plank to his hometown that he was nicknamed Gettysburg Eddie for much of his 17-year major league career, nearly all with the Athletics, who won three World Series titles and five American League pennants from 1905 to 1914. He is buried in Evergreen Cemetery, across the street from a restaurant called Gettysburg Eddie's that displays photographs of Plank, many of them donated by Brian Kennell, the cemetery's superintendent. "Certainly he's a big part of our history here," Carl Whitehill, a spokesman for the Gettysburg Convention and Visitors Bureau, said of Plank. The Civil War is the big draw, but people who visit are very history-minded, so learning about things other than the battle is very attractive. A number of Gettysburg buildings linked to Plank offer opportunities for baseball tourism along with military tribute. A state historical marker stands opposite the three-story brick home with a white portico at 343 Carlisle Street, where Plank lived and where he died of a stroke at age 50 in 1926. It is now a fraternity house at Gettysburg College, for which Plank pitched in 1900 and 1901, although he was not enrolled there. Plank's widow, Anna Cora Plank, and their son, Edward Jr., moved around the corner, to 42 Lincoln Avenue, after his death. A vacant white brick building at the corner of York and Stratton Streets was the Buick dealership and garage that Plank owned. One block up York Street is a Chinese restaurant that was once the Ford dealership of his brother Ira, Gettysburg College's longtime baseball coach. Eddie Plank is also remembered on the college's campus. A stately building that opened in 1927, Plank Gymnasium was home to many of the college's teams. Now, it is used for activities like pickup games and swing dance classes, said Emily Hauck, a student who works in the recreation department. Plank has also been honored with a plaque in the Hall of Athletic Honor at the college's new athletic center. In 2011, the borough presented an award named for Plank to the college women's lacrosse team for winning the Division III championship. Although Plank was born in 1875, 10 years after the Civil War ended, his family has ties to the fighting at Gettysburg. His grandson Edward Plank III, 68, said that a cannonball in his living room in Harrisburg, about 40 miles north, once rested in a bucket in the hearth of Anna Cora Plank's Gettysburg home. "When I was a kid, we used to throw it in the backyard as a shot-put," he said. He said that according to family lore, the cannonball, and musket balls he also owns, came from the farm just north of Gettysburg where Plank was born. "When you grow up in a town like Gettysburg, you see these artifacts all your life," he added. Part of the farm is now a housing development called both Plank's Field and HOF Estates, a nod to Plank's election to the Hall of Fame in 1946. Cars traveling north on Old Harrisburg Pike turn left onto the property at Double Play Drive after passing the former home of his baseball coach at the Good Intent Country School, Robert Major. Union and Confederate troops once marched past various Plank family homes. Coming from northeast of Gettysburg on July 1, 1863, Maj. Gen. Jubal Early led a Confederate division toward Cashtown, where he had been ordered to assemble. At 1 or 2 in the afternoon, Early's division passed the farm where Plank was eventually born, said John Heiser, a historian at Gettysburg National Military Park. The next afternoon, Brig. Gen. George Armstrong Custer's Michigan cavalry brigade pursued the rear guard of a Confederate division commanded by Maj. Gen. J. E. B. Stuart. The forces clashed near Hunterstown, and Custer was nearly bludgeoned after being trapped under his horse, which had been shot. From the home where she grew up, Plank's mother, Martha McReary, probably witnessed the Confederates" advance west along Hunterstown Road. "They would have seen the first Confederates coming by in that column: 3,000 officers and men," Heiser said of the McRearys. They'd have been marveling at it. The first thing they'd have seen were the dust clouds kicked up by the horses. The farmhouse near Willoughby Run Road where Plank's father, David, was raised was used briefly as a Confederate hospital, said Linda Cleveland, an amateur historian. Plank was known to take visiting teammates on tours of the battlefield. On Nov. 6, 1913, less than a month after he pitched a two-hitter that clinched the team's World Series victory over the New York Giants, Plank was photographed with Connie Mack, the A's manager, and three other men in an automobile alongside a boulder. The photograph was snapped at Devil's Den, where on July 2, 1863, the Confederates seized Union-held high ground. Oddly, the vehicle in which they sat, displaying the team's championship banner, was a 1914 Oakland. Nearly a century later and 2,500 miles away, the Athletics" successors now call Oakland, Calif., home.