THE HISTORY OF CHARGING THE MOUND, EPISODE 3: BRUCE KISON. (Patreon)

Hello! It's 2026, I'm Jon, and I'm back with another episode of The History Of Charging The Mound, a documentary series about the history of charging the mound.

Upon scooping up this arbitrary sample of baseball players who have either charged a mound or been charged, I was banking on the likelihood that I'd stumble into some killer stories involving guys I was barely familiar with. Bruce Kison is Exhibit A of this phenomenon. This is a dude who played most of his career before I was born, never appeared in an All-Star Game, and never came close to winning a Cy Young Award. But if you happened to poke around in the mound-charging database, you might have noticed that Kison's name appears more than almost anybody else's.

I knew virtually nothing about Kison beyond his name, so I knew I had some digging to do. What I found was the story of a snakebitten yet relentlessly tough pitcher who played with as much fearlessness and resolve as any other ballplayer I can remember. Kison's mound-charging adventures in particular have fallen into such obscurity that I couldn't even find footage of most of them, which made this episode a little more challenging to produce than most. By the end of it, though, I was enamored with the guy's story, and I hope you will be too.

A very sincere thanks as always for throwing us your hard-earned dough. We hope projects like this give you your money's worth. The next episode, on Kison's partner in fate George Bell, will drop on Monday, February 2nd. If you just signed up or would just like to catch up, Episode 1 of this series is here, and Episode 2 is here.