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His name is John Coulson.

Well, that’s the man’s name.

You may not know the Cardinals’ name, either.

That’s the point of this.

“He’s a forgotten Cardinal,” Coulson said. “I just felt the story needed to be told to a whole new generation.”

Since the Cardinals franchise was founded in 1882, there have been hundreds and hundreds of hurlers.

Well, no left-handed pitcher won more games for the Cardinals than Bill Sherdel did.

The 51���� southpaw Sherdel, nicknamed “Wee Willie,” totaled 153 wins from 1918-30 with a 3.64 ERA. Only right-handers Bob Gibson (251 wins), Jesse Haines (250), Adam Wainwright (200) and Bob Forsch (163) won more games for the Cardinals.

“I think the biggest problem is that he played so long ago that nobody remembers him anymore,” Coulson said. “Nobody has any real true idea of his value to the Cardinals team. Rogers Hornsby said (of Sherdel’s change-up), ‘His slow ball is poison to sluggers.’”

And so, in a Pennsylvania area known for manufacturing potato chips, Coulson tries to manufacture momentum. The 74-year-old Coulson wrote a biography of Sherdel in 2018 and, a decade prior, a book on local baseball that included Sherdel. Coulson proudly gives presentations about Sherdel — in 2024, he went to Cooperstown and spoke at a symposium at the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum. Coulson has delivered his address at the Gettysberg Library, as well as at libraries and luncheons in numerous Pennsylvania towns (he was even on ABC 27’s “Good Day PA.”). If you’ve got a ear and a minute, he’ll tell you about Sherdel. And, as I can confirm, he passionately emails certain 51���� sportswriters. His dream is that Sherdel one day is enshrined in the Cardinals Hall of Fame.

But Coulson is not related to Sherdel. In fact, Coulson never got to meet Sherdel before Sherdel’s death in 1968. So, just why does he care this much about Bill Sherdel?

Coulson laughed in response over the phone Wednesday.

“OK, so first of all, there was the connection to our area, because it was a local celebrity that nobody knew about,” said Coulson, who previously worked a career in banking technology. “And the second piece of this, I just felt the story was lost because it happened so long ago. There are very few people around, if any, that remember him at all.”

Coulson has connected with Sherdel’s family to help share the family’s story. Sherdel’s daughter-in-law is still living at 102, Coulson said. Sherdel’s great-grandson still lives in Sherdel’s home in McSherrystown, which is 1.8 miles from Hanover (incidentally, Sherdel was born in a town called Midway, which was, sure enough, midway from Hanover to McSherrystown — as Hanover grew it essentially took over Midway).

And Sherdel’s grandson sometimes joins Coulson during his presentations and sets up, Coulson said, “maybe five to seven long tables” with memorabilia — old gloves, letters from Cardinals executive Branch Rickey and, yep, Sherdel’s 1926 World Series championship ring.

Indeed, Sherdel went 16-12 with a 3.49 ERA for the Cardinals’ first-ever title team. And in 1928, the Cards won the pennant again — and Sherdel had the team’s highest WAR, along with a 21-10 record and 2.86 ERA.

The Cardinals’ winningest lefty is also third in games pitched (465) and fifth in innings (2,450 2/3). Incidentally, he also has the fourth-most homers hit by a Cardinals pitcher, not bad for a fellow nicknamed “Wee Willie.”

“If you look at the baseball almanac, it says he was 5 foot 10, 160 pounds,” Coulson said. “But if you look at his draft card, he was listed as 5 foot 8. I think that was probably more realistic when you look at these pictures.”

Coulson has seen seemingly every picture of the pitcher — and read, literally, thousands of articles. Coulson is a baseball fanatic — “I held a bat before I held a pencil” — and his father was a local coach.

Coulson takes pride in researching and sharing Sherdel’s story. Before getting access to digitized newspapers online, “I’d go to Guthrie Memorial Library here in Hanover, and at that time, they had all these microfilmed newspaper pages. That’s the way I started, you know? I’d take my little roll of dimes along so I could print off all these pages and have this big tub with folders each year from all the pages that I printed out.”

In June of 1930, Sherdel was traded, along with Fred Frankhouse, to the Boston Braves for Burleigh Grimes. But in 1932, he rejoined the Cards, for three games, at age 35. After his retirement, Sherdel lived a quiet life in McSherrystown.

“In 1962,” Coulson said, “he received the 51���� Baseball Writers Association nostalgic award. This was a huge event in 51���� at that time. If I ever made a feature film, this would be one of the highlight scenes. Bill Sherdel came to that with his son, and he was on crutches because he had one leg amputated because of some problems with his circulation. He was never much of a speaker, but when he got up and started walking to the podium, he just broke down in tears.

“All he could say was ‘Thank you,’ and everybody stood up and gave him a standing ovation. It included people like Warren Spahn and Enos Slaughter and Stan Musial. And they all followed him into a back room after the event ended, and they’re all sitting around him and asking him questions about his time as a pitcher for the Cardinals. That’s how well thought of he was at that period of time.”