Search results for 'john clapp'

Nearly a Century before his Time

22 Oct

Baseball’s Reserve Clause was first instituted in September of 1879; the eight National League clubs agreed at a meeting in Buffalo, New York, that each team would be able to “reserve” five players for the following season.

In August of 1880, as it appeared the league would renew the agreement, Oliver Perry “O.P.” Caylor of The Cincinnati Enquirer wrote a scathing article about the practice; one that could have been written 10 years later by John Montgomery Ward during the creation of the Players League, or almost 90 years later by Curt Flood.

opcaylor11

O.P. Caylor

“It has frequently been urged in these columns that the so-called Buffalo agreement made by the league clubs last year…was a gross outrage and unworthy of the organization.  We did not believe until recently that the league would have gall enough to enact the disgrace.  But already there is log-rolling going on to bring it into existence for next season.”

Caylor said the only way to defeat the “five-men fraud” was for the players to stand up against it.

“What right has the league to say to any player where he shall play ball next year?  The days of slavery are over.  This system of Ku-Kluxism in ball-playing ought to be quashed.  A ballplayer has no better right than to place a price on his services in Cincinnati, and another for his services in Chicago.  It may be that he would rather play in Chicago for $100 less than in Cincinnati, or vice versa.  Let him name his price for each place.  Let the city which considers him worth the salary asked pay for it.  If he asks too much; that city need not engage him.  No man with common business sense would engage a clerk at a salary he could not earn”

Caylor did seem to miss the point that several owners did lack “common business sense” and that the Reserve Clause was instituted in large part to protect them from themselves.  He also overestimated the resolve of players to exercise their influence.

“It is time such outrageous policy was ended.  If the league will not do it, the players must.  It is a poor rule that will not work both ways.  Let the players then anticipate the fraud, and meet it half way.  Let every league player sign a solemn agreement with every other league player not to play ball next season for any club that shall attempt to coerce players in this manner.  The players command the field.  Clubs cannot do without them; but they can do without clubs.  If the league intends to repeat the fraud, it should deserve to have its existence ended.  Such men as George Wright, Jim (Deacon) White and John Clapp cannot afford to be driven out of the profession by such repeated outrages.  If the players, or, at least, the better part of them, will but demand their rights as men—freemen—they can have them.  If they go on supremely careless and do nothing until forty of them are under the yoke of despotism, they will richly deserve all that they suffer by it.  This is the time to act.  We warn players that the log is already rolling which is intended to pin them down again under the dictation of a despotic power.”

Tags: , , , , , ,

“Leather-Fisted Phil”

12 Apr

“Leather –Fisted Phil” is what Phillip J. Powers was called in his 1914 Associated Press obituary which said:

“(Powers) was famous for his ability to stop the swiftest throws of the league’s star pitchers.”

He most likely earned the nickname in 1877 when, like many other catchers of the era, he began using a small, leather pad on his hand while with the London Tecumsehs of the International Association.

After the London team disbanded in August of 1878 Powers joined the Chicago White Stockings.  According to The Chicago Inter Ocean:

“He is a tall young fellow…He is described as a good catcher, but liable to get hurt, fair at the bat, and a genial man on the grounds.”

Powers would spend parts of seven seasons and 155 games in the National League and American Association with the Boston Red Stockings, Cleveland Blues, Cincinnati Red Stockings and Baltimore Orioles, hitting .180.  In between his engagements as a player Powers was an umpire.

It was as an umpire that he made a name for himself, but it probably wasn’t what he had in mind.  Few umpires, even in an era when members of the “profession” were poorly trained and underpaid, were the target of as much criticism as Powers.

In 1881 he began the season as a National League umpire.  By July he had become a target in several cities,

The Detroit News said:

“Phil Powers has acquired reputation enough in the last two weeks to last him a lifetime.  The erroneous umpiring he did here, people were inclined to regard as errors of judgment, but to say the least his ‘mistakes’ have become so numerous that his utter unfitness for the position he holds is unquestioned.”

The Cleveland Plain Dealer took the criticism even further:

“Powers is said to have been offered $150 to play ball (for the Detroit Wolverines) for one month, but refused it.  As an umpire he cannot, if square, earn more than $15 or $20 a week and expenses; and must take the chance at that of being chosen an umpire.  He preferred to be an umpire.  Several of his decisions on Saturday were grossly unfair, and, what is worse, they bore heavily on Cleveland.  They were so one-sided that many of the spectators believed he deliberately purposed to give the game to Troy.”

Despite the ill feelings in Cleveland, Powers joined the Blues in August and caught five games for the team after Michael “Doc” Kennedy was injured and John Clapp was “called away by an illness in his family.”   He finished the season with the New York Metropolitans in the Eastern Championship Association.

Powers again became a full-time player from 1882-1885, and was part of the Red Stockings American Association championship team in 1882.  He was released by Cincinnati in July of 1885, signed with the Baltimore Orioles and was again released the following month.

1882reds

1882 Cincinnati Red Stockings, Phil Powers standing 2nd from left

Powers was signed by the St. Louis Browns in the spring of 1886, but released before the beginning of the season, and was added to the National League umpiring staff in August.  He again worked as an umpire through the 1887 season, left to return to London, Ontario to manage the Tecumsehs in the International Association, but again returned to the National League as an umpire in August of 1888.   He came back just in time to find himself in the middle of a controversy involving two Hall of Famers.

New York Giants catcher/captain William “Buck” Ewing was hit on the wrist by a ball during a game with the White Stockings in Chicago.  In 1888 the opposing team’s captain had to agree that an injury was serious to necessitate a substitution; Chicago’s “Cap” Anson said he did not agree to a substitution when backup catcher “Big Bill” Brown entered the game in the 6th inning.  Anson appealed to the umpire, and according to The Chicago Inter Ocean, “(Powers) said that Captain Ewing was not so badly hurt that he could not play.”

After a heated argument, during which The Inter Ocean said Ewing acted “in a childish and fatuous manner,” Powers declared the game “forfeited to Chicago by a score of 9 to 0.”

Buck Ewing acted “in a childish and fatuous manner”

Buck Ewing acted “in a childish and fatuous manner”

Powers had been involved in a similar situation in 1886, refusing to allow Philadelphia Quakers catcher “Deacon” McGuire to leave a game after an injury.  The Chicago Tribune said Quakers captain Arthur Irwin “told McGuire to catch ‘away back’ (from the plate).” The Tribune said Irwin’s actions created a “scene” and “pandemonium reigned,” until Anson agreed to allow Philadelphia to replace McGuire.  White Stockings President A.G. Spalding “preferred charges against umpire Powers” for losing control of the game.

The substitution rule was changed in 1891, putting an end to controversies regarding the replacement of injured players.

But controversies involving Powers continued.  More on Monday.

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

“One of the Saddest Spectacles I have Seen”

30 Mar

King Kelly made his New York stage debut at the Imperial Music Hall in January of 1893.

The Brooklyn Citizen said he was being paid $250 a week “to succumb to the fever of the theatrical stage.”

The New York Herald described the moment Kelly took the stage:

“He was hailed with cheers the instant he stepped before the footlights…It was the first time the Gotham baseball cranks had heard the former king of the right field sing, and they clapped their hands and stamped their feet in jubilation…His friends said that his first dip into the uncertain sea of theatrical life was a success.”

thingskellystage

A less generous syndicated review appeared in newspapers across the Midwest and West under the headline:

“King Kelly As A Star”

The article said:

“Kelly is a very handsome man and that particular has a very good stage presence.”

The “principal event” of Kelly’s performance was to recite Ernest Thayer’s “Casey at the Bat.”

kellyvaudvillead

Ad for Kelly’s New York appearances 

His delivery of Thayer’s poem was not a hit with the nameless author of the piece:

“Kelly is probably as near to being king of the national game as any man, but he has thus far failed to solve theatrical curves.

“As an elocutionist Kelly undoubtedly fans the air as successfully as Casey did when he left no joy in Mudville by striking out.”

By the time Kelly took to the stage, Actor DeWolf Hopper had made “Casey” a well-known poem, having performed it throughout the country on vaudeville stages:

“When one has heard Hopper describe Casey’s unfortunate adventure, comparison between Hopper’s effort and that of Kelly naturally follows. Hopper’s performance is a work of art. One can almost see Casey as the comedian describes how he rubbed his hands with dust and wiped them on his baseball shirt preparatory to knocking out a 3-bagger. Kelly’s effort is without spirit, and the umpire says, ‘strike two’ as calmly as if there were several dozen left before Casey could possibly succeed in striking out.”

The writer allowed that Kelly was better in the portion of the show where he sang with his stage partner Billy Jerome.

A reporter for The New York World provided a more positive take:

“Kelly, the king of the ball-tossers, made a three-bagger. He hit one or two staccato notes so hard that he drove them through the skylights. The bleachers up in gallery shouted and howled until they grew red in the face. The cohorts down in the grandstand applauded. In the meantime, the umpire down in the orchestra waved his baton frantically and called Kelly safe. Mike was not a thing of beauty, but he made the hit of the season. Of course, Mike has not the voice of (Italian Tenor Francesco) Tamagno. Neither has Tamagno the make-up of Kelly.”

The World noted Kelly was “deluged” with floral arrangements from the likes of Tammany Hall boss and former Congressman “Honest” John Kelly and racetrack owner Phil Dwyer who sent “a sleigh of roses and carnations,” to former Giants owners John B. Day and Edward Talcott, who presented Kelly with “a floral wreath with ‘king’ in big letters woven around it,” to “Teddy Foley and the Bowery House Chowder Club,” who sent six “floral baseball bats.”

Kelly’s most scathing review came the week before he opened in New York; the “Boston Correspondent” for The Fall River Daily Herald, caught Kelly when he appeared at Boston’s Howard Athenaeum:

kellyv2

Ad for Kelly’s Boston run

“One of the saddest spectacles I have seen for some time I beheld in a theater here one evening this week. M.J. Kelley, the $10,000 beauty, engaged in making a show of himself, trying to be an actor, inflicting the public with a sample of his vocal powers, was a sight calculated to make men weep. What on earth Kelly is doing on the stage I cannot see. What excuse he has for the act is beyond imagination. As a ballplayer he was a success, but as an actor is is as dismal a failure as it is possible to conceive…He stands up awkwardly as a manikin and moves with the grace of a wooden Indian”

Tags: , , , , , , , ,

“When Wilson wanted to Play he was a Star”

10 Oct

When campaigning for Woodrow Wilson in 1912, former North Carolina Governor Robert Broadnax Glenn would tell crowds about the year he spent as Wilson’s teammate on the Davidson College baseball team.

Governor Glenn

Governor Glenn

The Baltimore American said, while stumping for Wilson in Maryland, Glenn told supporters that the candidate had an “(A)rm like iron and the speed of the wind,” and could have been a great player:

“Woodrow Wilson was a fine baseball player but too darn wrapped up in reading to come out for practice…(he) was a good player but he was too confounded lazy to make a star. When the team would be called out for practice, we’d have to go to his room and drag him away from a book.

Wilson

Wilson

“But when Wilson wanted to play he was a star. He played left field and while he had an awkward way of running, he covered a lot of ground and was the best pinch hitter on the team.  His only trouble was he cared more for history than for Spalding’s rule.”

Wilson withdrew from Davidson in 1874 when he became ill, Glenn said:  “After that, Wilson went to Princeton and I went back to the plow.”

Not much else was said about Wilson’s interest in the game, and after he was elected, some questioned if the new president would support baseball the way his predecessor William Howard Taft had.  The Associated Press said:

“Washington fans have wondered whether or not the new administration, of which a former college president is the head, would give as much support to the great game as did President Taft, an irrepressible fan.”

The question was answered April 11, 1913, when Wilson threw out the first pitch for the Washington Senators’ home opener:

The Washington Star said:

“Wind, weather, and press of duties permitting, President Wilson is believed likely to be a frequent attendant at the American League Baseball Park…The belief is based on the interest shown by the president in the first game of the season and his applause when the bird of victory which had shown itself exceedingly coy, finally decided to perch on the shoulders of the Nationals.”

The paper noted that excitement overtook the chief executive on one occasion:

“President Wilson at one point in the game arose to his feet in his enthusiasm.  Official dignity prevented his yelling.  A cheer arose in his throat, but did not pass his lips. He could and did applaud frantically, however, by clapping his hands.”

The American Press Association said:

“There is no doubt about it—President Wilson is a real baseball fan.  He knows all about the game, and he is going to be seen often at the ballpark here.  At the opening game of the season between the Washingtons and the Yankees the president was given a new ball in a box by Clark Griffith, manager of the Senators, and he threw it—not tossed it, mind you—with speed and precision into the hands of pitcher Walter Johnson…For a few hours he forgot all about the intricacies of the tariff situation and gave himself up to enjoyment.

Woodrow Wilson at the 1912 Opener--"Catching new ball in Box from Clark Griffith" and "Wilson the fan."

Woodrow Wilson at the 1912 Opener–“Catching new ball in Box from Clark Griffith” and “Wilson the fan.”

And Wilson did appear often, attending five Washington games during the first six weeks of the 1913 season.  He would attend just one more that season and a total of six more during his presidency.

Wilson, program in hand, after throwing first pitch to umpire Billy Evans in 1915.

Wilson, program in hand, after throwing first pitch to umpire Billy Evans in 1915.

Tags: , , , , ,


%d bloggers like this: