Robert Gustave Troy was born on August 27, 1888 in Bad Wurzach, Baden-Württemberg, Germany. As a boy, he moved with his family to McDonald, Pennsylvania, outside Pittsburgh. I can find no record of why he was nicknamed "Bun."
A pitcher, he played in the minor leagues from 1910 to 1914. He appeared in only 1 major league game, pitching for the Detroit Tigers, on September 15, 1912. He started the game, against the Washington Senators, at the new Navin Field in Detroit. (It would be renamed Briggs Stadium in 1938, and Tiger Stadium in 1961.) The opposing pitcher was the best pitcher in the American League at the time, Walter Johnson. For 6 innings, they both pitched shutout ball. But the Senators scored 6 runs in the 7th inning, and ended up winning, 6-3.
It's not clear why he never pitched in the major leagues again, especially since the Federal League opened up major league jobs in 1914 and 1915. But when America got into World War I, he enlisted in the U.S. Army. He was probably safer at an Army base than in civilian life, as discrimination against people of German descent got very nasty.
He was a Sergeant in the Army's 80th Infantry Division, a.k.a. the Blue Ridge Division, when he was shot in the chest outside Verdun, France, just 35 days before the Armistice ended the war.
There is no mention of this single-day Tiger's service, in baseball or in the Army, at Comerica Park.
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October 7, 1918 was a Monday. The War Department had ordered that the baseball season end a month early, in September, and that all players obey the "work or fight order": Enlist, or get a job in an industry essential to the war effort, or get an otherwise necessary job (like police or firemen), or be subject to the military draft. Hockey season hadn't started yet. Professional basketball barely existed. And football was in midweek. So there were no scores on this historic day.
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