American baseball player
Baseball player
Rufus Frazier "Shirt" Smith (January 24, 1905 – August 21, 1984) was a Major League Baseball pitcher. He played in one game for the Detroit Tigers on October 2, 1927.
Smith played college baseball at Guilford College where he formed a battery with catcher Rick Ferrell. While pitching at Guilford, he caught the attention of a New England millionaire who signed Smith to one of his semi-pro teams in Massachusetts. At the end of the summer, he enrolled at Brown University. While pitching for a team in East Douglas, Massachusetts in 1927, he caught the attention of a Tigers scout, signed a contract and received a signing bonus of $5,000 (equivalent to $87,700 in 2023).[1]
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