The First Closer

Part I — The Birth of the Fireman

In 1926, before anyone had ever heard of “saves,” before the term “bullpen” meant strategy instead of desperation, the Washington Senators were quietly experimenting with something revolutionary — a relief ace. They didn’t call him a closer. They called him Firpo Marberry, and he was baseball’s first true fireman.

Manager Bucky Harris and owner Clark Griffith knew exactly what they were doing. They weren’t just using a tired starter’s backup arm — they were grooming Marberry for a specific job: to come in when the game was tight and hold it right there.

Washington writers at the time mostly misunderstood. They kept framing it as a stepping-stone — the idea that if Marberry did well enough in relief, surely the club would be forced to move him into the rotation. The local papers treated his success as proof that he deserved to start, not that he’d invented something new. But Harris and Griffith knew better.

Part II — Marberry Time

Marberry was a thick-shouldered Texan with a boxer’s glare, and reporters quickly tagged him with the nickname “Firpo,” after Argentine heavyweight Luis Firpo, the “Wild Bull of the Pampas.” The resemblance — all scowl and power — was close enough that the name stuck, even though he never liked it much.

By midsummer, the Washington crowd had their own shorthand for it: “Marberry Time.” Around 5:30 or 6 p.m., when the game got late and dicey, he’d come striding in from the bullpen with that high leg kick, and the whole park understood what it meant — the stopper was here.

He was built for short bursts. Unlike most starters of the day, who rationed their effort until they got in trouble, Marberry went right to full throttle — what one writer called his “smoke ball.” Opponents said he was almost unhittable after the seventh inning.

One example: July 18, 1926, the Cleveland Indians “loaded the cushions” late in the game. The starter was fading. Marberry jogged in, “put on plenty of steam,” and shut it down. The next morning’s paper crowed that “Firpo saved the day.” That’s as close as 1920s language got to calling something a save.

Sometimes the timing could backfire. Washington beat writer Frank Young lamented that Harris sometimes waited too long — the same debate managers still face a century later: bring your reliever in early, or wait until it’s already burning? Especially when it was Walter Johnson who had to be pulled, Firpo would sometimes be called in too late.

Part III — The Strategy Experiment

But Harris and Griffith weren’t improvising; they were running a real-time strategy experiment. They understood the value of using their best arm in the game’s tightest spots.

If Billy Beane and Bill James later argued that modern managers should deploy their closers whenever the game is closest — not just to “protect a save” — then the 1926 Senators were already living that idea.

The press kept predicting that Harris would eventually “make him a regular starter,” especially once injuries hit the staff. But that didn’t happen — at least not yet. For several more seasons, Marberry remained Washington’s late-inning weapon, piling up appearances of one or two innings and leading the league in what would later be called saves.

It wasn’t until 1929 that the Senators finally moved him into the rotation full-time — the year he proved he could handle starter’s innings, though at the cost of the bullpen role he’d practically invented. When he later joined the Detroit Tigers, he continued as a reliable starter — the league’s first great reliever-turned-workhorse.

Part IV — Legacy of the First Closer

Historians retroactively credited Marberry with roughly 100 saves (some sources list 101, others 99), making him the first major-league hurler to approach or surpass the century mark in the “save” category.

But what matters more is how he changed the way a dugout could think. He didn’t invent relief pitching — he made it deliberate. He didn’t revolutionize baseball — he previewed it.

And every time a closer jogs in with the tying run on base and the sun slipping low over the bleachers, that’s still Marberry Time.

— AI Baseball Guy | Human perspective. AI precision. Baseball reimagined.