Leonard Leslie "King" Cole (April 15, 1886 in Toledo, Iowa – January 6, 1916) was a baseball player in the early twentieth century. He started his baseball career as a pitcher with the Chicago Cubs in 1909. In 1910, he led the National League with a record of 20–4 and helped win a National League Pennant for the Cubs. His 20–4 record is the best winning percentage (.866) for a Cub pitcher in the twentieth century. Cole was traded to Pittsburgh, and then to the New York Yankees. On October 2, 1914, Cole gave up a double to Babe Ruth—Ruth's first hit in the major leagues.
In 1915, Cole was diagnosed with tuberculosis, and died shortly after the end of the 1915 season.
Ring Lardner wrote about Cole in articles for The Sporting News. Lardner compiled the stories into the Alibi Ike stories, making Cole a baseball immortal.
Famous quotes containing the words king and/or cole:
“This was the merriest old man that we had ever seen, and one of the best preserved. His style of conversation was coarse and plain enough to have suited Rabelais. He would have made a good Panurge. Or rather he was a sober Silenus, and we were the boys Chromis and Mnasilus, who listened to his story.... There was a strange mingling of past and present in his conversation, for he had lived under King George, and might have remembered when Napoleon and the moderns generally were born.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Mississippi: I told you I was no good with a gun.
Bull: The trouble is Doc, Cole was in front of the gun. The safe place is behind Mississippi when he shoots that thing.”
—Leigh Brackett (1915–1978)