Flame Delhi: Arizona’s First Native-Born Major League Baseball Player
By Marshall Trimble, Arizona State Historian
On April 15, 1912, the same day that the Titanic sank in the north Atlantic, Arizona had its first native-born major league baseball player. Lee “Flame” Delhi took the mound in the seventh inning for the Chicago White Sox against the rival Detroit Tigers. The Tigers won the game 10–1. It would be Flame Delhi’s first and last appearance in the major leagues.
Delhi, the son of a hard-rock miner, was born in Harqua Hala, a gold-mining town twelve miles south of present-day Salome. Spring training in Florida was the first time he’d been east of Prescott. Soon, he earned the reputation as the best pitcher in the PCL, winning twenty-seven games for the Angels during the 1911 season. That winter, several major league teams held a bidding war for his services. The Chicago White Sox won the bid, purchasing his contract for $5,000. In those days, the money went to the team owner instead of the player.
Delhi’s nickname, describing both his blazing fastball and his shock of flaming red hair, was given to him by a reporter during the 1910 season while pitching for the Los Angeles Angels in the Pacific Coast League. His April 1912 performance wasn’t all that bad, but for reasons known only to baseball managers, Flame Delhi never pitched another major league game. His contract was resold to the minors the next week.
But Delhi’s days as a professional ballplayer were far from over. He was about to accept a generous offer to return to Los Angeles when he got an interesting offer from a mining town in his native Arizona: in exchange for pitching for the Ray Copper Mine team in the Copper Belt League, the company would teach him civil engineering.
In 1920, Delhi returned to Los Angeles, his ball-playing days behind him. Within a few years, he was vice president of Western Pipe and Steel, in charge of shipbuilding operations. During the Great Depression, long after his baseball career had ended, Delhi was earning $80,000 a year—the same salary as Babe Ruth’s!
“Flame Delhi” became one of the leading proponents of arc welding, building all-welded ships with no riveting. Under his leadership during World War II, the company built more than forty ships. The San Francisco Chronicle called him a “titan of western steel” in his obituary after his passing in 1966. But we Arizonans will always remember him as our first major league baseball player.