Tag Archives: Abner Dalrymple

“I am not Fool Enough to Give $25,000 for one man”

12 Jul

A.G. Spalding sold Abner Dalrymple, George Gore and King Kelly before the 1887 season. Having sent the message that no player on the Chicago roster was untouchable, William Albert Nimick, owner of the Pittsburgh Alleghenys approached the White Stockings owner with an offer on September 23.  In a letter to Spalding, printed in The Pittsburgh Post, Nimick wrote:

“Dear Sir—If there is any truth in the rumors that A.C. Anson’s release can be obtained, the Pittsburgh baseball club, knowing his ability as manager, captain and player, is willing to pay for his release, the largest sum ever offered for a single player, viz: $15,000. Be kind enough to let me know at once if you will consider this offer.”

nimick

Nimick

Spalding responded to Nimick:

“Dear Sir—Yours of the 23rd inst. Containing the unprecedented offer for the release of Captain Anson just received. I confess to some surprise at the amount named and if we seriously thought of releasing Anson it would prove a very tempting proposition. My personal relations with him have always been of such a satisfactory nature that I would hate to lose him. About all that I can say at present in reply to your offer is that should we decide to release him you will be advised of that fact before anything is done.”

anson

 Anson

Nimick told The Post he took Spalding’s letter as an indication that “There is still some hope of our getting Anson.” He said if he could not get Anson, he would be able to acquire either second baseman Fred Pfeffer or shortstop Ned Williamson. The Post said:

“The prevailing opinion in Chicago is that the three players named cannot all remain in the Chicago club harmoniously, and that one or more of them must be transferred.”

The Chicago Tribune asked Anson about the potential of his playing elsewhere in 1888:

“I know the offer has been made and am surprised that such a sum should be offered for a baseball player. I am, of course, sorry that baseball men are sold by the different managers as so much material, without considering what they have to say in the matter, but it gives me satisfaction to know I am worth so much as a baseball player. If Nimick should buy my release from Spalding for that sum he would have to settle with me afterwards before I would play with the Alleghenys. I never expect to play with any other than the Chicago club. As long as I remain in the baseball world I hope to be where I am at.”

One month after the original offer was made, The Post reported that the Pittsburgh owner was not giving up and had made “the most sensational offer for a player on record.”

The paper said Nimick increased the price to $25,000, but the Pittsburgh magnate denied the story the following day. He told The Pittsburgh Leader:

“I am not fool enough to give $25,000 for one man.”

Nimick also denied a rumor that he had offered $10,000 for Chicago pitcher John Clarkson, who would be sold to Boston for that price six months later. He told the paper Pittsburgh was, “fixed as well if not better than any other club” for pitching.

The Pittsburgh papers and Nimick held out hope of acquiring at least one of the three Chicago stars until November, when Spalding was quoted in The Press putting an end to the speculation:

“(Nimick) offered $15,000 for Anson and would have given more if he could have been bought. He won’t leave Chicago, however. I have 16 players signed or it least equal to it.”

Anson, Williamson, and Pfeffer all remained in Chicago.  Nimick bought Fred Dunlap from Detroit, Al Maul from Philadelphia, and Billy Sunday from Chicago—the three were secured for roughly half of what was offered for Anson.

The Alleghenys were 62-72 and finished sixth for the second straight season; Anson guided Chicago to a 77-58 second place finish.

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Frank Bancroft

14 Jul

When Frank Carter Bancroft died in 1921 at age 74, “Spalding’s Official Baseball Guide” said:

“His executive ability and Knowledge of Base Ball, combined with the fact that he was for sport first and the show element of Base Ball secondarily, rendered him one of the most competent of men to handle the affairs of a professional team.”

Frank Bancroft

Frank Bancroft

While working in the front office of the Reds in 1892, Bancroft talked with Harry Weldon, sports editor of The Cincinnati Enquirer about some of the players who got their start with his teams.  He also didn’t seem to mind taking a swipe at a couple former players:

“Probably no man now before the public except Harry Wright or Adrian C. Anson have had a longer or more varied experience with the intricacies of the great National Game than Frank C. Bancroft.  He never wore the spangles, like a great many other managers, but he has been connected with the game in a managerial capacity since the early seventies.  ‘Bannie’ is one of the wittiest men in the profession and he has a fund of anecdotes about players and plays that are well worth hearing.  Many of the great baseball stars now before the public made their debut under Mr. Bancroft’s management.  Many of them who are now drawing $4,000 or $5,000 a season worked under Bannie for about one-tenth that amount and were glad to get it.  Bancroft was one of the leading lights in the original New England League, which graduated a great many of the stars of today.

“At the present time Mr. Bancroft is business manager of the Cincinnati Reds.  He has nothing whatever to do with the players. All of that part of the club’s affairs being under the supervision of Captain (Charlie) Comiskey.  All Bannie has to do is look after the gate, railroad rates and dates.  The other evening the veteran manager was in The Enquirer office and grew reminiscent.  His recital of the details of the debut of some of the stars is worth reproducing.

“Harry Stovey, one of the greatest ballplayers today, began his professional career under Manager Bancroft.  He began his career in the pitcher’s box and graduated out of the ranks of a Philadelphia amateur team called the Defiance in 1877 (the Philadelphia Defiance were a professional team, part of the league Alliance).  Manager Bancroft heard of him, and in 1878 engaged him as a change pitcher for the New Bedfords.  G. Washington ‘Grin’ Bradley was the regular pitcher of the team, and as he was an every-day pitcher Stovey was never allowed an opportunity of displaying his pitching abilities on the New Bedford team.  He had to be content with warming the bench until fate was kind and he had a chance.

Stovey

Harry Stovey

“‘Stovey played his first game with our team at Baltimore,’ said Mr. Bancroft.  ‘we were making an exhibition tour when John Piggot, the first baseman, was taken ill, and as we only carried ten men, Stovey was called on to make an attempt to play first base.  His maiden effort was a brilliant one—so brilliant that it lost Piggott his job and made Stovey a fixture on first.  He had at least twenty putouts, no errors and several cracking hits to his credit that day.  He played the season with us, and his fame spread so that he was signed by the Worcester (Ruby Legs) League team and afterward with the Athletics Stovey’s salary the first season in New Bedford for $50 a month.  Now he is paid nearly that much a game.’

“George Gore, the crack center-fieder of the New Yorks is another player who came into prominence with the New Bedfords that year.  Gore’s home was in Maine, at a little town called Saccarappa…Gore was about as green a specimen as ever stepped into the business.  He played a few games with the Fall Rivers, and then the New Bedfords got him.  He was a big, awkward country boy then, but he could run like a deer and hit the ball like a trip hammer.  Gore signed with the New Bedfords under Manager Bancroft for $50 a month, but he did not stay with them long.  His terrific batting attracted the attention of the whole baseball world, and soon the more prominent clubs were after him.  While the Chicagos were in Boston the late lamented (William) Hulbert, President of the National League, who was with them, ran up to New Bedford to have a talk with Gore.  Luck was with big George.  He had his eye with him, and made three home runs in the game.  That feat settled his fate.  Before Hulbert left New Bedford he had Gore’s name to a contract to play in Chicago in 1879 at $150 a month.  His career since that time is well known.  Today he is yet a great hitter, and reached first base as frequently as any player in the business, by either hits, errors or bases on balls.  His ability to reach first causes him to be selected to head the battery list of the New Yorks.

“Arthur Irwin is another player whom Manager Bancroft put in the business. ‘He made a grand impression in his opening game with me,” said Manager Bancroft.  ‘I was then manager of the Worcester League team, and we were on the hog train for a while, owing to Charlie Bennett’s glass arm and Buck (William “Farmer”) Weaver’s faint heart.  Matters were so bad that a crisis was at hand.  A meeting of the stockholders of the club was called, and it was voted to place the team in my hands for one month, and if no improvement was shown at the end of that time I was to be given the chase.  It was a dying chance for me, and you could gamble that I had my eyes and ears open for a savior of some kind.  Arthur Irwin was then playing with an amateur team called the Aetnas, of South Boston, and I engaged him to play short with the Worcester.  (J. Lee) Richmond, the once famous left-handed pitcher, who played here with the Reds in 1886, was then with the Brown University team and he was telegraphed to come for a trial.  We played the Chicagos that day, and we shut them out, only one man getting first base.  Irwin made a great hit at short, and Richmond was a wizard.  Irwin was a fifty-dollar-a-month man, and that was the start of his professional career.  Richmond is now a physician at Geneva, Ohio.’”

The game Bancroft referred to was an exhibition between Worcester (a member of the National Association) and the National League’s Chicago White Stockings played on June 2 in Worcester. Richmond walked the first batter, Abner Dalrymple, and then retired the next twenty-one before the game was called after seven innings.  The Chicago Tribune said Richmond struck out 8.  Worcester tagged Frank Hankinson for 12 hits and 11 runs (Chicago also committed 11 errors).  Bancroft was correct that Richmond became a physician, but by 1892, he was no longer practicing and was working as a teacher in Toledo, Ohio.

J. Lee Richmond

J. Lee Richmond

“Big Roger Connor of last season’s New Yorks, but now of Philadelphia, received his professional introduction under Manager Bancroft.  ‘It sounds queer to say that such a cracking hitter as Roger Connor was ever released for poor batting, but such was the case’ said Manager Bancroft

“’I had him with the New Bedfords in 1878, but he was hitting so poorly that I released him.  He afterward signed with the New Havens the same season, but the disbanded.  Roger left New Haven and went to Waterbury, his home, where he joined an amateur team in that city called the Monitors.  Up to that time he had batted right-handed, but he decided to turn around and try it left-handed.  The change saved his life.  He blossomed out as a great slugger, and his reputation has been growing ever since.

“Connor, like Stovey, began his professional career at $50 a month, and has since climbed to the top rung of high salaried players.  Many young players of today should look upon these as examples for honest and temperate habits have enabled them to remain at the head of the profession, while the path is strewn with a multitude of others who might have been where they are if they had not thought this world was a continuous round of gaiety and fun and discovered their mistake when it was too late.”

 

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Alternate Uniforms, Circa 1879

14 Feb

On the eve of the 1879 season The Chicago Times endorsed an innovation about to be introduced by the Chicago White Stockings:

“The management of the Chicago Club has very wisely decided that the skinny white uniform with tips of blue, in which it has dressed its men from time immemorial, is not the best of its kind; that good taste dictates higher colors for the field, something that will bring out, instead of dwarfing the muscular development of its wearer.  The result of the consultations over the matter has been the adoption of something which has merit of novelty about it, at least, and, at the first blush, there seems to be no reason why it should not produce a pretty effect on the field.”

The Times noted that three years earlier, the White Stockings had worn individually colored caps in order to make it either for fans to identify the players.  The move “for some unknown reason was discarded” at the end of the 1876 season.

“The present change is in the same line, except that it goes further and applies the principle to the entire uniform.  The customary white flannel will be used for the body of the dress.  In this respect they will all be alike; but each man will be furnished with an individual color to finish it with, including cap, neck-tie, belt and a band some three inches wide around the thickest part of the calf.  The colors have been selected, and Spalding Bros. are now at work upon the uniforms.”

The 1879 Chicago roster by color:

Silver Flint:  Blue

Terry Larkin: Brown

“Cap” Anson: Grey

Joe Quest: Black and yellow

John Peters: Green

Frank Hankinson: Scarlet

Abner Dalrymple: White

George “Orator” Shafer: Red and black

George Gore: Blue and white

Bill Harbridge: Red and white

Frank Hankinson--wore scarlet in 1879

Frank Hankinson–wore scarlet in 1879

The move was taunted in at least one National League city–The Syracuse Courier derisively referred to the team as the “Chicago Rainbows.”

The Times said “Cap” Anson was in favor of the new uniforms and “says there’s luck in it.”

The paper agreed with Anson’s assessment:

“The individual caps won in 1876.  Since then they have been discarded, and Chicago hasn’t been able to win anything.”

Anson’s “luck” didn’t hold in 1879.  The White Stockings were in first place from Opening Day until August 1, then Anson became ill in July and eventually left the team which went 5-12  the rest of the season under Silver Flint, and finished in fourth place.

The uniforms disappeared and Anson returned for the 1880 season. When the team took the field for the opener The Chicago Tribune said:

“The Chicagos appeared for the first time in their regular League uniform for this year, with all-white stockings that are a marked improvement over the many-colored rings of last year.”

The 1880 White Stockings

The 1880 White Stockings “with all-white stockings”

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Albert Spalding on Superstitions

18 Dec

During a game in September of 1882 against the Worcester Ruby Legs, Albert Spalding, Chicago White Stockings President, sat “in the reporters’ stand” at Lakefront Park with a sportswriter from The Chicago Herald:

“The Worcesters had gained a run in the fourth inning, but the home team had been successfully retired for five straight innings.  The Chicagos were playing their best, but ‘luck was dead against them.’”

At that point Chicago outfielder Abner Dalrymple came to where the White Stockings’ president was seated and said:

“’Mr. Spalding, will you move other in some other chair?  That was the seat Harry Wright occupied during the games we had with his club.’  Spalding laughed, but hurried out of his place to a chair further down the line.  The home team made three runs in that inning and won—five to one.”

Abner Dalrymple

Abner Dalrymple

The reporter later asked Spalding about whether all players were superstitious:

“(A)nd he proceeded to explain some of the incidents and conditions supposed to influence the play.

“The players as surely believe that ducks or geese on the home ground presage defeat for that team as they do that an umpire can materially add to the discomfort of a nine,  Dalrymple had great belief that Spalding in Harry Wright’s seat would throw all the bad luck imaginable on the Chicago side.”

The Herald said when the second place Providence Grays came to Chicago that same month, the White Stockings “thought that by donning their old tri-colored caps…they would defeat them, and sure enough, they won three straight games.”

Spalding said it wasn’t limited to his own team:

“(Worcester) Captain (Arthur) Irwin always spits on the coin he tosses up for a choice of position in a game.  Jack Rowe (of the Buffalo Bisons) pulls the little finger of his right hand for luck, and all sorts of chance omens are seized upon by a club for indications of the great triumph they would like to win…(Terry) Larkin, now of the ‘Mets’ (the New York Metropolitans of the League Alliance), had an idea that he would get hurt some time for playing on Friday, and sure enough, in a game one year ago with a college team, he was struck with a ball in the stomach nd was so badly injured that his life was despaired of for a time.”

A.G. Spalding

A.G. Spalding

The 1882 White Stockings, due more to talent than superstition, won their third straight National League pennant beating Providence by three games.

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“Baseball by Electricity”

11 Jul

In 1886, The Electrical Review told the story of the first attempts at “reproducing almost instantly a vivid view of the exact situations and plays in a game of baseball.”

The original plan was hatched by three telegraph operators in Nashville, Tennessee who “turned their enthusiasm for baseball to good account.”   J. U Rust, E.W. Morgan, and A.H Stewart made the first attempt to transmit a game between Chattanooga and Nashville in 1884:

“To do this they leased a wire from Nashville to Chattanooga, one end of which was on the ball field, with an expert operator, who was accurately informed in baseball playing, seated watching the game and immediately telegraphing each play as it progressed.  At the Nashville end of the wire were two other telegraphic and baseball experts.  As they received the record from their partner, one man reproduced it verbally to the audience, while the other man manipulated cards bearing the names of the players, around a painted view of the ball field which was placed in full view of the audience.”

The following season Southern League games were transmitted to opera houses in several of the league cities by Morgan & Co. “the ingenious firm” created by the three telegraph operators.

On July 9, 1886 Morgan & Co. transmitted the game between the Detroit Wolverines and the Chicago White Stockings from Chicago’s West Side Park to the Detroit Opera House. The “unique entertainment before a crowd of 600 persons,” was described by The Electrical Review:

“On the stage was a huge landscape—it would have done well as a drop curtain—having a well-painted perspective view of a baseball diamond and outfield.  At the points on the picture representing the positions of batsman, pitcher catcher and basemen, are openings into which may be shoved cards bearing the names of the players, and into which these names are placed as the telegraph operator seated at his instrument reads to the audience the progress of the game, even to the smallest details.”

The crowd at the Opera House “was wrought up to a very high pitch of enthusiasm.  For instance, when the operator read—with (Abner) Dalrymple’s name appearing as batsman—“foul fly to left,” the audience fairly held its breath, and when the next instant the operator called out, ‘and out to (James “Deacon”) White,’ there came a storm of applause, just such as heard on a veritable ball field…the excitement was intense.”

The Chicago White Stockings defeated the Detroit Wolverines 8-2 on July 9, on there way to the 1886 National League championship

The Chicago White Stockings defeated the Detroit Wolverines 8-2 on July 9, on their way to the 1886 National League championship

By the end of the 1886 season, games were presented in opera houses in Chicago, Boston, New York and Cincinnati.  By the end of the decade the practice would become commonplace in all big league cities.

By the mid 1890s the system for presenting games to the public had become much more advanced.

The Baltimore Morning Herald said in September of 1894:

“The ball game today between the Baltimore (Orioles) and Louisville (Colonels) clubs will be given as usual from the stage at Ford’s Grand Opera House at 4 o’clock by electricity.  The system utilized for the first game in the city is ‘The Compton Electric Baseball Game Impersonator.’   It has been used in New York and elsewhere with unbounded success.  It is a contrivance so ingenious that the slightest move of the players is visible, and the anxiety and interest of those present is just as great as though they had been occupying the grandstand.  Every strike is recorded and illustrated, and, whether at the bat, running the bases or in the field, all the players are known and watched…a visible reproduction of the game is given to the minutest detail.”

By the end of that season the Compton system was used to transmit games to fans in New York, Chicago, Philadelphia and Washington, and it, and numerous systems developed by competitors would become commonplace over the next four decades.

The Chicago Examiner sponsored the "automatic Baseball Playograph" exhibition of the 1913 World Series between the New York Giants and Philadelphia Athletics.

The Chicago Examiner sponsored the “automatic Baseball Playograph” exhibition of the 1913 World Series between the New York Giants and Philadelphia Athletics.

Usually sponsored by local newspapers, the exhibitions were an especially popular method for following the World Series in real-time.   It was not until 1938 (when the New York Yankees, New York Giants, and Brooklyn Dodgers became the last teams to have their games broadcast on radio) that the technological descendants of Morgan & Co. became completely obsolete.

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