Elmer Ponder

(1893-1974)

American baseball player

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Charles Elmer Ponder (June 26, 1893 – April 20, 1974) was a professional baseball player. Known as "Elmer Ponder", he was a right-handed major league pitcher (1917, 1919–21) with the Pittsburgh Pirates and Chicago Cubs. With the Pittsburgh Pirates, he pitched a perfect 5 2/3 innings of relief in his first outing of the year, against the Philadelphia Phillies in the first game of a doubleheader on July 23rd; it would be 94 years until another member of the Pirates, Vin Mazzaro, threw as many as 5 perfect innings of relief, in 2013. In 1920, Ponder appeared in 33 games, with a record of 11-15. His ERA of 2.62, while not the best on the squad, was better than the team ERA of 2.89. He was an aviator and airplane mechanic in World War I in 1917 until the end of the war, and he returned to the Pirates a war hero.