Ham Avery

{{Short description|American lawyer, baseball player, and umpire}}{{Verification|date=April 2024}}{{Infobox person

|name = Ham Avery

|image = Charles Hammond Avery Yale 1874.png

|caption = Ham Avery, Yale 1874

|birth_name = Charles Hammond Avery

|birth_date = April 8, 1854

|birth_place = Cincinnati

|death_date = January 3, 1927

|death_place = Clearwater, Florida

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|employer = National Association

|occupation = Umpire

|years_active = 1874–1875

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Charles Hammond Avery (April 8, 1854 – January 3, 1927) was an American lawyer, in his youth a college baseball pitcher, and a professional baseball umpire.

Avery, son of Charles L'Hommedieu Avery and Martha (Bakewell) Avery,Joshua L. Chamberlain (ed.), Universities and Their Sons: History, Influence and Characteristics of American Universities, Vol. 5 (R. Herndon, 1900), p. 412. was a prep school student in Cincinnati in 1870; the next year he enrolled at Yale, where he joined the baseball team in the spring of his sophomore year in 1873.Chip Malafronte, "[http://www.nhregister.com/articles/2009/07/26/sports/26_curveball_new_haven.txt?viewmode=fullstory New Haven man had claim to baseball history]", New Haven Register, July 26, 2009. He was called (by Frank Blair) "the first man to pitch a curve-ball game", using the new pitch with success against Harvard.Connie Mack, My 66 Years in the Big Leagues (Dover Publications, 2009; {{ISBN|0486471845}}), p. 152. When he graduated in 1875, he was offered the very large salary of $3,400 by Harry Wright to pitch for the Boston Red Stockings, an offer matched by the Hartford Dark Blues, but "Avery, a Skull & Bones Society blueblood, thought professional baseball beneath him, and demurred."John Thorn, Baseball in the Garden of Eden: The Secret History of the Early Game (Simon and Schuster, 2012; {{ISBN|0743294041}}), p. 174. He went on to study at the Cincinnati Law School and in the office of Judge Alphonso Taft and was admitted to the Cincinnati bar in 1878, where he had a successful legal practice, representing "various well-known corporations." He married Nettie Barker in 1882; she died the following year, and in 1890 he married Alice Aiken, with whom he had a daughter and a son.Chamberlain, Universities and Their Sons, Vol. 5, p. 412.

Avery umpired 9 total National Association games in {{baseball year|1874}} and {{baseball year|1875}}. all of them as the home plate umpire.[http://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/A/Paverh901.htm Retrosheet]