Tag Archives: Boston Red Sox

“Fellows Like Cy are Rather few”

27 Feb

In his nationally syndicated column on 1909, umpire Billy Evans said:

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Billy Evans

“If it were possible for the American League umpires to issue any special dispensation, they would give Cy Young the right to go on pitching forever.”

Evans said the leagues ball and strike callers liked Young so much:

“Did you ever hear of a bunch of umpires coming across with the cold cash and making a present to a ballplayer? No? Well that’s just what the American League staff did last year, and Cy was the recipient of the gift.”

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Cy Young

Evans said that when the Red Sox held a benefit day honoring Young in 1908 “and gifts galore were heaped on him,” he was working the game.

The decision to give Young a gift was made by the dean of American League umpires, Tim Hurst, who told Evans:

“Well, Billy, I’ve been umpiring about as long as Cy has been pitching, and I pride myself on having a pretty good memory, but I’ll be blamed if I ever remember Cy kicking over a decision, no matter how rotten it may have been. Perhaps I’ve missed a thousand strikes on him in the last ten years, but never a protest has he uttered.

“Fellows like Cy are rather few in this strenuous game, and I tell you the umpires ought to give the old fellow some little token, just to show him that we appreciate the way he has always acted on the ballfield.”

Hurst suggested that each umpire “come across with a five-spot.”

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Tim Hurst

Evans said his colleagues were all on board:

“’I’m in on the deal. Go as far as you like with money,’ was Jack Sheridan’s reply.

‘”Count me in on anything that old Cy is connected with,’ was Tom Connolly’s answer.

“’Buy anything you like and send me my share of the bill; glad you thought of the stunt,’ was (Silk) O’Loughlin’s reply.

“’Sure, count me in on anything you want,’ wired Jack Egan.”

At the game, Evans said, “In a very humble” he presented the pitcher with “a swell traveling bag to old Cy as a little gift from the umpires.”

Young told Evans:

“Well, of all the gifts, I never did expect one from the umpires, but just tell the boys for me that I prize it more highly than anything ever given to me.”

Evans said he once heard Young explain to a fan why he never argued calls:

“What’s the use of kicking? The umpires, like me, are doing their level best, and doing it honestly. Of course, they make mistakes; lots of them; we all do. On the whole, however, I think the breaks of the year are about even. Often, I pitch a ball that I think is just over the corner of the plate and is a strike, but the umpire calls it a ball. Then again, I send one up to the batter, that I figure is an inch or two outside, but the judge of play calls it a strike. No real umpire has ever been known to change a decision of judgement, so it’s simply wasting time to kick.”

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“Baseball’s Case Against the Automobile”

9 Jan

Paul Purman wrote for the Newspaper Enterprise Association, a Scripps-Howard syndicate, from 1916 through 1918; best known for naming the college All-American Football Team during those years, he also wrote regularly about baseball.

Shortly before the 1917 season, he wrote about Clarence “Pants” Rowland’s plan to make the Chicago White Sox pitching staff more effective that season:

“Rowland is the latest pilot to take a hand in the life of his players off the field. He has issued an order that his pitchers be forbidden from driving automobiles during the playing season.”

pants

Purman said “Baseball’s case against the automobile,” had been a issue that “occupied managers’ minds for many years.”

He said that more than half of current players “own cars and drive them daily” during the season.

“In Cleveland (in 1914) it was charged that the poor showing of the team was due mainly to players paying more attention to their machines than they did to their baseball.”

Purman said despite the concern, Cleveland manager Joe Birmingham “issued no orders against motoring,” and the Naps “finished a poor eighth (51-102).”

Golf, said Purman, was “another thorn in the sides of managers.” He said Bill Carrigan had “issued a blanket order against his men playing golf.” Carrigan’s order, he said, was the result “two or three players who had been warned repeatedly against thinking more of golf than they did their baseball,” and after the Red Sox won the pennant, Purman said:

“It is rumored other managers will fall in line this year.”

After issuing the ban, Rowland told The Chicago Daily News:

“Physicians declare that the strain of handling a steering wheel is injurious to the muscles used in pitching. There is no doubt that a pitcher cannot do himself justice on the mound after several hours as a gasoline pilot. The eyesight also is put to severe test.”

Urban “Red” Faber, Joe Benz, and Eddie Cicotte were said to be the three pitchers who would be most upset with the ban.

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Eddie Cicotte

The Chicago papers were silent about whether Rowland’s “ban” was enforced throughout 1917, but Cicotte had his finest season, 28-12, 1.53, and Faber and Benz made significant contributions to the World Champion White Sox.

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“He’d Deliberately do Something to Rile a Hostile Crowd”

9 Aug

Edgar Munzel covered baseball for Chicago Newspapers from 1929 until 1973; he, along with Gordon Cobbledick, from The Cleveland Plain Dealer, received The J.G. Taylor Spink award in 1977.

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Munzel

While writing for The Chicago Sun in 1943, Munzel was in a French Lick, Indiana hotel, “seated in a circle on lobby chairs.” With Harry Heilmann, then a Tigers broadcaster, Jimmie Wilson and Kiki Cuyler, Cubs manager and coach, and Tigers pitcher Dizzy Trout.

Munzel said Trout was there “only as a sideline agitator to keep Heilmann in a reminiscent vein,” while the three former players told stories about players fighting with fans after Wilson said how a group of soldiers in the stands “were really on me, Must’ve been from Philadelphia.”

Wilson said:

“Boy, how they used to give it to you there, even when you were the home team. Did you ever have them hollering at you Harry?”

Heilmann said:

“I’ll never forget those Philadelphia fans as long as I live…Ty Cobb had injured his hand in a fight with some butcher in Detroit and I had to play centerfield for the Tigers. Well, those Philly fans had paid to see Cobb and they took it out on me—called me every variety of busher they could think of.”

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Heilmann

Wilson, a Philadelphia native who spent 11 seasons with the Phillies, said the city’s fans loved watching Cobb play the Athletics:

“I think they got half their enjoyment trying to get him mad. I still remember watching a game as a kid when Cobb got so hot, he charged right into the stands and challenged everybody.”

Heilmann, who played with and for Cobb, said:

“(He) was always doing something and quite often it was with an eye towards the gate. He actually considered it a personal affront if only a few thousand turned out and he’d deliberately do something to rile a hostile crowd on the road so the next day there’s be 40,000.”

He said is Boston, Cobb “threw a bat at Carl Mays’ head

“He did it in his usual clever way. Mays always looked at the ground during one point in his underhanded delivery just before he let go of the ball. Cobb started heading for the pitcher’s mound just at the split-second Mays turned his eyes toward the ground. Thus, he was able to take a half dozen steps forward before Mays looked up again. By that time, he had let fly with the bat and it missed Mays’ head by inches.

“That day we had to have a police escort get us out of the park.”

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Cobb

Heilmann also recalled a fight he participated in:

“(O)ne day a couple guys in the stands were giving us a brutal riding. Right after the game Cobb charged after one of them underneath the stands and I was right behind him.

“He swung at his man and I tried to reach over his shoulder at the other fellow. But it turned out our two annoyers were just a small part of a gang of about a dozen. What a going over they gave us. We wore adhesive from head to foot when it was over. But I always remember when they knocked Cobb down, he tackled his man around the legs as he was falling. He hauled him down with him and battled there underneath the pile, oblivious of everything else going on around him. He had the man he was after.”

Wilson said when he was managing the Phillies, he “got my man once, too.”

He said he had “been telling my players all year,” to ignore the heckling from their hometown fans:

“But there was one particularly obnoxious guy one day and I walked out towards the stands to bark back at him after the game. And when I did, he leaned over the railing and spit in my face.

“That infuriated me, so I ran into the stands and grabbed him by the lapels.”

But, Wilson said, he took pity on the man and let him go, despite fans “hollering for me to ‘let him have it.’”

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Wilson

Cuyler then told the story of the “funniest thing” he recalled about a player fighting a fan:

“(It) happened to Hack Wilson in Wrigley Field. Somebody was riding him unmercifully one day from a front row box. Hack went over to the grandstand rail at that point and put his legs up to climb over and –wham—the heckler knocked him back onto the field. Hack tried it again but before he could get his short legs over, he was smacked down once more. I think it happened a third time before somebody hauled the befuddled Hack away.”

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“Ruthian and Splendid”

12 Apr

When Babe Ruth went to spring training with the Boston Braves in 1935, that it was wrong for the Yankees and the American League let him go to the National League was a subject of disagreement among two of baseball’s most famous personalities.

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Babe Ruth

Harry Grayson, the longtime sports editor for the Newspaper Enterprise Association, spoke to both in Florida:

“Rogers Hornsby says Babe Ruth was driven out of the American League by self-protecting business managers.

‘”I tried to save Ruth for the league at the minor league meeting in Louisville,’ explains the outspoken Hornsby.”

Hornsby, then manager of the Saint Louis Browns, said he and the Carle McEvoy, the team’s vice president asked American League President Will Harridge to help arrange for Ruth to come to St. Louis as Hornsby’s “assistant.”

Hornsby felt after a year working under him, Ruth would be ready to manage a team in 1936.

“’We could not pay his salary and asked that the league look after part of it, but nothing came of the proposition.”

Hornsby said after his effort failed, he couldn’t “understand why he didn’t and the Yankee job, and why the Red Sox, Indians, and White Sox passed him up.”

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Rogers Hornsby

Hornsby was just getting started:

“Business managers taking care of their own interests sent Ruth the National League, after a score of phenomenal and faithful years of service in the American.”

“The “business managers” he said, would have to take a back seat to Ruth as manager.

“’I suspect that is why Eddie Collins didn’t grab Ruth for the Red Sox, where he would have been the idol he will be with the Braves. Only a man of Tom Yawkey’s millions could have kept pace with Collins’ expenditures, which have failed to put the Red Sox anywhere in particular.’

“’I ask you: Which would have been a better deal—Ruth free gratis, and for nothing, or Joe Cronin for $250,000 [sic, $225,000]”

Hornsby would have probably altered his opinion after Cronin spent the next decade in Boston.

Philadelphia Athletics manager Connie Mack took “an altogether different view,” of the Ruth situation:

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Connie Mack

“’Because Ruth was a great instinctive ballplayer it does not necessarily follow that he would be a good manager,’ elucidates Mack.

‘”Ruth was not forced out of the American League. He could have continued with the Yankees or gone to most any other club and played as often as he cared to.’

“’Ruth wasn’t satisfied with that, however. During the World Series he announced he would not sign another players’ contract. He wanted Joe McCarthy’s position as manager of the Yankees. If he came to Philadelphia, for example, he wanted my job. Well, it just happens that I need my job, and I have an idea McCarthy needs his.’”

Yawkey made no apologies for the money he spent to obtain Cronin, but said:

“I wish Ruth all the luck in the world. I hope the Babe has a tremendous season. He has the people of Boston talking baseball, which will react to the advantage of the Red Sox as well as the Braves. Boston needed someone like Ruth to offset the inroads made by (thoroughbred) racing in New England last year.”

Ruth lasted just until the end of May, hitting just .181 and embroiled in an ongoing disagreement with team owner Emil Fuchs over Ruth’s alleged roles as a club vice president and “assistant manager” to Bill McKechnie.

Ruth was presented with a signed ball by his Braves teammates and presented a parting shot at Fuchs that Paul Gallico of The New York Daily News called, “Ruthian and splendid.”

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Ruth said:

“Judge Fuchs is a double-crosser. His word is no good. He doesn’t keep his promises. I don’t want another damn thing from him—the dirty double-crosser.”

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Things I Learned on the way to Looking up Other Things: Lost Quotes

11 Feb

Hughie Jennings on Ossie Vitt, 1915

Hughey Jennings told The Detroit News in 1915:

“Vitt is the most valuable player in the American League.  He is the most valuable because he can play three positions in the infield.  He is also an excellent outfielder and can field with the best of them.  Vitt lacks the class to gain a regular position because he cannot hit.”

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Ossie Vitt

Over ten seasons with the Tigers and Red Sox, Vitt hit just .238

A White Stockings Player on George Washington Bradley, 1876

After winning their first four games of the National League’s inaugural season—and scoring 40 runs–the Chicago White Stockings were shut out by St. Louis pitcher George Washington Bradley on May 5, 1876; Bradley yielded just two hits in the 1-0 win.  An unnamed Chicago player was quoted by The St. Louis Post-Dispatch:

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Bradley

 “A man might just as well try to successfully strike his mother-in-law as one of his balls.”

Bill Terry on John McGraw, 1934

Despite their often-strained relationship—they once went two years without speaking, Bill Terry, speaking to The Associated Press, said of John McGraw after the man who managed him and whom he replaced as manager, died in 1934:

“I don’t think there ever will be another manager as great as McGraw.  I had my little arguments with him but there was always a soft spot in my heart.  He was the only man I ever played big league ball for, and to hear that a man who has spent his whole life in baseball has gone makes me feel humble.  We will call off practice on the day of his funeral.”

Hal Schumacher on John McGraw, 1934

Hal Schumacher played for John McGraw as a 20-year-old rookie in 1931, and for part of 1932 before McGraw was replaced by Bill Terry.  When McGraw died in 1934, Schumacher told The Associated Press:

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McGraw

“I never could understand his reputation as an iron-fisted ruler.  I never heard him bawl out a rookie.”

Harry Wright on fans and winning, 1888

Harry Wright, told The Pittsburgh Press about the difference between how fans treated winning clubs in 1888 versus his time with the Red Stockings in the 1870s:

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 Wright

“I won the championship six times, and the most we ever got was an oyster supper.  Now the whole town turns out to meet the boys when they return from a fairly successful trip.  They are learning how to appreciate pennant winners nowadays.”

Dick Hoblitzel on his “X-Ray Eye,” 1911

Dick Hoblitzel told The Cincinnati Times-Star in the spring of 1911 he was “training his batting eye,” and:

“(B)elieves he will soon be able to count the stitches on a ball before it leaves the pitcher’s hand.  ‘It’s the X-ray eye that does this,’ he avers, and he has made a bet of a suit of clothes that he will finish in the .275 class or better.”

Hoblitzel, perhaps as a result of his “X-ray eye,” hit.289 in 1911.

Tommy Corcoran on Umpiring, 1897

Tommy Corcoran told a Sporting Life correspondent in 1897:

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Corcoran

I believe I’d rather carry scrap iron for the same money than umpire a ball game.  There is no vocation in which there is less sympathy or charity than in baseball.  It must be awful for an old player to listen to the abuse he has to stand from those he once chummed with.  There is an illustration of the heartlessness of some players.  That umpire’s playing days are over, or he wouldn’t be an umpire.  He is trying to earn a living and his old comrades won’t let him.”

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“Ball Players of Today are More Sensitive”

7 Jan

When Lee Fohl took over the reigns of the Cleveland Indians in 1915—his first major league managerial job which Indians owner Charles Somers said was a temporary appointment—the syndicated News Enterprise Association presented Fohl as a new kind of manager:

“The baseball manager who wants to make a success of it these days will forget that John McGraw and Frank Chance won pennants by driving players.

“Such is the philosophy of Lee Fohl, temporary manager…who most likely will start the 1916 campaign as their regular manager.”

Fohl said:

“Ball players of today are more sensitive than those of 10 years ago.  You can’t get anywhere by driving them.  Hammer team work into them, let each one work out his own problems most of the time and correct their mistakes without handing around ‘bawl outs.”

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Fohl

Fohl said he studied “his player’s faces,” and determined the best way to handle each individual while never “riding any of them.”

Fohl also shared some of his managerial philosophy:

“A manager should not send a batter up to the plate with definite orders.  Any time you put a batter under orders you are taking something away from him for, in following instructions he may be forced to let a grand opportunity pass.”

Fohl was also critical of managers who worked their pitchers too much before the season:

“Pitchers should not be worked too hard in the spring training camp.  That’s when their arms are the weakest, but custom is to make them do more than twice as much labor as they will be called to perform later when their arms are strong.”

The Indians improved as a result of Fohl’s philosophy—after riding out the horrible 1915 season when they were 45-79 under Fohl–they finished 77-77 in 1916 and improved to 88-66 and 73-54 in 1917 and ’18, third and second place finishes.  Cleveland was 44-34 in third place on July 19, 1919, when Fohl resigned and was replaced by Tris Speaker. He managed six more seasons—1921-23 with the St. Louis Browns and 1924-26 with the Boston Red Sox; he finished with a 713-792 managerial record.

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Spending World Series Shares, 1915

24 Dec

Frank Menke, in his national syndicated reports from Philadelphia and Boston, polled the 1915 World Champion Boston Red Sox who received a winner’s share of $3,779.98 for each player, to find out how their windfall would be spent:

“Whatcha gonna do with it?

‘”Now that you asked,’ spoke up George Foster, a Boston pitching person, ‘I believe I will join J. Pierpont (Morgan) and some of my other fellow millionaires in making that loan to the allies.’

“’I’ll slip mine into an old rock,’ said catcher (Forest ‘Hick’) Cady.  ‘I don’t trust banks.  I knew a banker once who borrowed $10 from me.  He still owes in.’

“’Cady’s experience doesn’t alter my trust in bank,’ said Tris Speaker.  ‘I’ll drag this roll back to Texas with me and put it where I’ve got some more.”’

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Speaker

Dick Hoblitzel and Jack Barry both said they were buying cars.

“Duffy Lewis will use his $3,779.98 in the purchase of a few more orange groves in California, his home state.

“Harry Hooper, also a Californian, will do likewise.”

Menke said Hal Janvrin and Mike McNally “the substitute kid infielders” declined to answer.

“’I’ve been reading so much about how a guy with three thousand copecks can run it up to a million in the stock market.  I’m going to take a chance with an investment—and I may not.’ Said Babe Ruth, the southpaw flinger.”

Heinie Wagner, Ray Collins, and manager Bill Carrigan all said they were buying land; Wagner was purchasing real estate in the Bronx, while Collins and Carrigan were investing in farm land.

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Carrigan, right

“Vean Gregg, who was a plasterer before he became a pitcher, told about a prosperous plastering business somewhere out on the Pacific Coast he wanted to buy.”

Del Gainer, Pinch Thomas, Olaf Henricksen, Carl Mays, Everett Scott, and Ernie Shore all planned to bank their money.

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Babe Ruth and Ernie Shore

“And when we approached Dutch Leonard, the portside flinger, and the last Red Hosed person in the roundup.

“’How about you?’”

“’Well, I’m gonna spend part of it taking a few more boxing lessons.  Then, when I’m fully conversant with the art of self-defense I’m going out and bust the noses of about two dozen of these ‘sure thing birds’ who want me to invest my money in wild cat schemes.  After that I’ll stow the money in a bank and watch it grow.”’

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Things I Learned on the Way to Looking up Other Things #26

5 Nov

Val Haltren’s Off-Season

Despite having hit .331, .340, and .351 in the three seasons since the New York Giants bought him, The New York Telegraph said one of his teammates did not approve of George Van Haltern returning home to California to play winter ball:

“One of the members of the New York team said the other day if Van Haltren would stay one winter where the weather was cold enough to brace him up , it would do him more good than a spring trip to get him is condition.”

National League President Nick Young told the paper, no player should play winter ball:

“Ball players should have the benefit of six months’ rest in the year. The strain of the long championship games is a severe tax, though few players realize it. They ought to save enough money to last through the winter, and take things easy.”

Van Haltren hit .301 or better for the next five years, even though he spent each winter in California—until he broke his ankle sliding during a game in 1902 all but ended his career.

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George Van Haltren

The Color Line, 1932

When the New York Yankees swept the Cubs four games to none in the 1932 World Series, Dizzy Dismukes, writing in The Pittsburgh Courier, said the series reignited talk of baseball integration:

“With the World Series over in four straight wins, fans who think little of the playing abilities of race ballplayers are now prophesying as how the Grays, the Crawfords, Black Yankees, Black Sox and any number of race clubs would have made a better showing against the Yankees.”

Nope

When the New York Yankees lost their first game of the 1938 season, in the midst of Joe DiMaggio’s holdout—he did not return until the 13th game—a reporter from The Associated Press tracked him down at his restaurant, Joe DiMaggio’s Grotto, on Fisherman’s Wharf in San Francisco:

“Joe ‘was sorry’ to hear that the Yankees lost…but covered the holdout situation in eight flowing words…

“Have you contacted (Yankees owner Jacob) Rupert? He was asked.

“’Nope,’ was the reply.

“Will you accept $25,000?

“’Nope.’

“Will you appeal to Judge Landis?

“’Nope.’

“Will you play for anybody?

“’Nope.’

“Has Rupert contacted you recently?

“’Nope.’

“Is any settlement looming?

“’Nope.’

“Are you doing anything about the situation?

“’Nope.’

With that, DiMaggio returned to “selling fish dinners.”

DiMaggio appeared in his first game for the 6-6 Yankees on April 30. They went 93-57 the rest of the way, he hit .324 with 32 home runs and 140 RBI.

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With Ed Barrow looking on, Joe DiMaggio ends his holdout and shakes hands with Jacob Rupert

Cobb’s Stolen Bats

A small item in The Detroit Times in December of 1915 said the home of Frank J. Brady, the “property man” of the Detroit Tigers had been robbed.

Among the haul:

“(T)wo of Ty Cobb’s favorite bats, Catcher (Oscar) Stanage and shortstop (Donie) Bush also lost equipment which they valued highly.”

Also stolen was “the glove worn by George Mullin” when he pitched his no hitter. There was no record of the items being recovered. The paper valued the loss at “several hundred dollars.”

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“No Game I Ever Pitched Meant Half as Much to me”

10 Aug

Shortly after his son’s major league debut on the 4th of July, 1928, The Chicago Daily News said:

“This is a story of Ed Walsh Jr., but it is also the story of Ed Walsh.”

The paper said Walsh Jr. “fulfilled an ambition the father had nurtured for 23 years.”

The older Walsh, who had just joined the team as a coach, told the paper:

“As soon as he was able to toddle around he wanted to play ball…He always wanted to be a pitcher too.  I guess most boys do, but if they can’t pitch they‘ll play somewhere else.  Not this boy though.  He wanted to pitch all the time.”

Walsh talked about what he taught his son:

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Jr.

“I’ve drummed three things into him—control, so he can lay the ball in there where he wanted it; studying the hitters, so he could always be ahead of him, and fielding his position, so he could help himself in a lot of plays where he’d be lost if he wasn’t a good fielder.  And I told him, too, never to forget there were seven men out in the field behind him, and not to try to throw every ball past the hitters.”

The younger Walsh was signed by the Sox in June, after pitching at Notre Dame, where his father was also his pitching coach.  Big Ed said:

“I never had to tell him to practice or to hustle.  He loves baseball too much for that He played ball every minute he could and as he grew up he improved until I don’t think there was a better pitcher in any of the colleges as he was at Notre Dame.”

Walsh said his son was 25-3 during his college career and “won twenty-five games and lost six” for a semi-pro team in the Massachusetts/Rhode Island based Blackstone Valley League between the end of Notre Dame’s season and before he joined Chicago.

One feature of Walsh’s first start was that manager Ray Schalk, started the game behind the plate—one of only two games he appeared in and his only start, The Chicago Tribune said;

“(Schalk) made his first start of the year in his old place so that he might boast of having caught two generations of the Walsh family.”

Walsh Jr. lasted just four innings, giving up five runs in fourth after walking three straight batters.

Regarding his son’s first game, Walsh told The Daily News:

“He pitched his first game for the Sox against the Browns…got off to a good start and then got into a jam and had to be taken out.  Maybe he was overanxious and was missing the plate, though Cracker Schalk who caught him, told me afterward that he really had struck out the three men who got bases on balls.  Anyway, it doesn’t matter now, though naturally I would have liked to see him win his first game.”

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Sr.

Schalk resigned as Sox manager the same day.

Ten days after his debut, Walsh won his first game.  His father said:

“Then, last Saturday in Boston, he beat the Red Sox.  Gave them only six hits and the two runs they got came in the first inning before a man was out.  When he settled down he was great and three of the hits they got off him were scratches.”

Walsh said of the experience watching his son’s first victory:

“I can’t tell you how much of a kick I got out of that game.  No game I ever pitched meant half as much to me.  I wasn’t nervous.  I’d seen him pitch against some pretty good hitters and I had confidence in him, but every inning had a thrill for me.  There he was at last, winning a game in the American League.  At that moment I didn’t care if ever won another one—and I’d been waiting for it for twenty-three years.

“He’s got a fast ball, a curve ball and a knuckle ball, and the Boston players told me after the game his fast ball was very deceptive.”

The Daily News predicted great things for the younger Walsh:

“(He is) a magnificent looking young man, slightly more than six feet tall and weighing about 190 pounds, apparently has the stuff, the poise, and the judgment he needs.  If he has a heart as stout as his father’s he’ll be a great pitcher, too.”

Walsh could not match his father’s success.  He pitched parts of four seasons with the White Sox posting an 11-24 record and 5.57 ERA in 79 major league appearances.

Ed Walsh was just 32 years old when he died in 1937 of a heart ailment.

His father was elected to the Hall of Fame in 1946.

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Things I Learned on the Way to Looking Up Other Things #22

24 Apr

Ty Cobb Rates American League Fans

In 1907, The Washington Evening Star asked Ty Cobb was asked how he was treated by fans in all of the American League cities:

“All ballplayers coming in sometimes for a little guying, but that is what makes the game.  If the fans did not do this it would show they had lost interest and baseball would soon die.  The fact that I am a Southern man has never made any difference in the way I have been treated by the public in the North.  The fans all over the American League have always been kind to me.”

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Cobb

However, Cobb said, fans in some cities were tougher on visiting players:

“Take Philadelphia, for instance, old Philly is sometimes rough with the visiting clubs, and we have been treated to a little warm reception once or twice.

“Chicago is not as kind to visiting players as some of the other cities. They are so loyal to their city and their clubs that sometimes a go too far with the guying.

“In New York the people are fair and clever, and so is Cleveland, Pittsburgh, and Boston.  St. Louis is somewhat like Chicago.

“I am sure that the fact that I am from the South has never influenced the fans in the slightest.  If it has, it has been in my favor.”

The not as Smart Coveleski

Billy Murray managed Harry Coveleski during the pitcher’s three years with the Philadelphia Phillies from 1907-1909.  Years later, he told Bozeman Bulger of The New York World, that Harry was not as bright as his brother, Hall of Famer Stan Coveleski, who was “Smart as a whip” according to Bulger.

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Harry Coveleski

“Coveleski got out of a tight predicament mostly by luck and came back to the bench to face an enrages Murray.

“’What do you mean by taking that wind up with men on bases, especially on first and second?’

“’I didn’t know there were any men on the bases. Nobody told me,’ Coveleski replied

“’Now listen men,’ Murray turned to the players on the bench, don’t let this happen again.  When there are runners on the bases you go out and tell ‘Covvie’—you hear me?  We’ll have no more secrets on this club.’

“’That’s right, Billy,’ agreed the unperturbed Coveleski, oblivious to Murray’s biting sarcasm.  ‘Keeping secrets always hurts a ballclub.’”

An Umpire’s dilemma

The Associated Press reported in 1912 about an umpire’s dilemma during a game played in an unincorporated town near Boulder, Colorado called Canfield:

“Albert Billings kicked his cork leg across the home plate yesterday afternoon in the ninth inning, the score a 5 to 5 tie, the umpire called the runner safe.  Then the last baseball game of the season broke up in a row.  However, umpire Jerry Carter consulted the rule book, declared that there was no precedent, and held to his decision.

“Billings had knocked a beautiful two-bagger.  He stole third and started home when the batter tapped one to the infield.  The ball was thrown to the catcher in time to get Billings out by at least ten feet.  Billings cork leg flew off, however, and hit the plate.  The catcher tagged Billings as he lay on the ground ten feet from the plate.  The umpire ruled that the foot at the end of the cork leg touched the home base first.  Billings was therefore called safe with the winning run.”

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