“Women have been the cause of Ruin of more Good Clubs than Anything Else”

In 1907 Hugh Fullerton wrote in The Chicago Herald about the outside influences that he felt did the most damage to a ballclub:

Hugh Fullerton

“There are dozens of things that happen to keep a team from landing a pennant about which the general public is entirely ignorant and which never can be explained clearly.

“For instance, one of the mysteries of baseball was the breaking up of the famous White Stockings team.

“Hundreds and thousands of people cursed the management of the Chicagos for selling off star players and wrecking the club—and few ever knew why it was.  The management felt worse over it than the fans possibly could feel—but it was inevitable.  A scandal in the club concerning two members and the wife of one of them started the trouble.  Threats to kill each other were made—and the disruption of the club became absolutely necessary.  The sale of (Mike “King”) Kelly (1887) and (John) Clarkson (1888) was the beginning –and after a time all parties to the scandal were let out—and Chicago was given a decade of losing clubs.”

Mike “King” Kelly

He claimed the reason for the breakup of the White Stockings was a common one.

“Women have been the cause of ruin of more good clubs than anything else.  They need not necessarily be bad women.  There was one club in the old twelve-club National League which, for two years, was knocked out of all chances of winning merely because the wife of one of the players was an inveterate gossip.  She knew everything that went on in the club and retained it until she had half the players up in arms against each other.

“One of the best manager s in the country today frowns upon all women and his players, under his direction, forbid their wives to mention the subject of baseball to each other.  The result is that there is the best feeling in the club.  Almost every member of the team is married, their wives meet socially at all times—and baseball is tabooed by common consent.

“I know a catcher, one of the toughest, hardiest fellows in the business, who nearly was ruined as a catcher by the women of the club.  He was so strong and tough that you couldn’t have dented him with an ax, but one day he split his hand a little bit.  He thought nothing of it, and was ready to catch the next day when the women got to pitying him and telling him he ought to take good care of it.  When he left the grounds he had tied up the injured place with a rag—and was all right.  By the next morning he was ready to go to the hospital—and he did lay off for two weeks, all because the women made a martyr of him.”

But, according to Fullerton, there was something almost as bad for a baseball team as women:

“Horse racing, however, has ruined almost as many clubs as women have.  Once a team gets interested in horse racing, and so far as winning goes, it might as well disband.

“One of the greatest troubles in the present New York National League team is the devotion of some of the players to the racing game.  (John) McGraw himself has been so successful at it that baseball has become sort of a side issue.  Many of his players have followed his example, and the result is they think more of horse racing than of baseball.

“Racing did more to wreck (Ned) Hanlon’s championship Brooklyn team than any other thing.  The Washington Park grounds are so close to the Brighton and Sheepshead tracks that players could see two or three races before the game.  Eventually baseball was forgotten and the conversation in the clubhouse dwelt only on horse racing.

“(Cap) Anson had a crowd of horse race fans for several years, and the result on the work of the team was something frightful.  They talked horse racing even on the field, and had the telegraph operators throwing out messages telling what horses had won.”

And, he said, gambling in general had been detrimental to the Giants during the years Andrew Freedman owned the club (1895-1902):

“There always was a crap game or a poker game in the clubhouse, and the stakes were so high that bitter feeling was endangered.”

While Fullerton, for the most part, avoided naming names, he did single out one former Chicago manager, who had died five years earlier, for presiding over teams that were “ruined” by gambling:

“The Chicago team the second year under Tom Burns (1899) was wrecked by the same sort of deal, the manager setting a bad example in that respect.  Burns also was charged by the Pittsburgh owners with ruining their club, when he was manager (1892), by permitting and encouraging gambling.”

Tom Burns

Tags: Cap Anson, Chicago White Stockings, John Clarkson, John McGraw, Mike "King" Kelly, National League, Ned Hanlon, New York Giants, Pittsburgh Pirates, Tom Burns