Tag Archives: Buck Ewing

“Not Half the Player that Buck Ewing was”

11 Oct

Mickey Welch was not happy

In January of 1938, the 78-year-old future Hall of Famer couldn’t believe Joe DiMaggio was seeking a raise to $35,000 for the coming season.

Current salaries were “scandalous,” he told The Associated Press, and having high-salaried players would be “damaging to team spirit,” by making the lesser players jealous.

“’Most I ever got in my life was $4,000 a year,’ he recalled, ‘and that was right at the end of my career. Believe me, I worked for it too. Days I wasn’t pitching I played center field, and in my first year in the National League (with the Troy Trojans in 1880) I had to be at the park an hour or so ahead of time to mind the ‘stile.’”

Welch

Besides taking tickets before games in Troy, Welch was joined on the team by another 20-year-old rookie who would also end up in Cooperstown.  Welch spent his entire career as a teammate of Buck Ewing; the two played together for Welch’s entire career in Troy and New York.

 “Buck Ewing was the greatest catcher who ever lived, was the highest paid man on the team at $3200,”

This was after, “the third year,” the were together in New York; before the 1886 season:

“Buck asked (New York manager Jim) Mutrie for #500, pointing out that he was captain and practically field manager of the team. Mutrie didn’t like it much, but he finally agreed to the raise providing Buck would catch 100 games, which he did.”

Ewing caught 73 games in 1886—he caught 103 in 1888, so Welch either got the number of games wrong, the year wrong, or simply exaggerated. The Spalding Guide said Ewing began earning $3500 in 1886, and then made $4500 in 1888.

Mutrie had just died, on January 24, 1938; and Welch said he couldn’t “imagine what would have happened to their friendship” had he ever held out on his “great pal.”

And, as for the Yankees current holdout:

“This DiMaggio, now, he’s no super player. He’s a low-ball hitter and we would have pitched to him in my day. He never would have seen a ball like that one he knocked out of the park on Cliff Melton.”

DiMaggio hit a home run in game five of the 1937 World Series off of Gants pitcher Melton to give the Yankees a 2 to 0 lead in the third inning—they won the game 4 to 2 and won the series.

Welch summed up his opinion of DiMaggio:

“He’s not half the player that Buck Ewing was.”

Ewing

As for Ewing:

“Now all I want to see is Buck Ewing in this baseball Hall of Fame. There’s a man who was 100 years ahead of his time.”

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Ewing’s “Study of the Science of Batting”

6 Oct

Buck Ewing, during his final season managing the Cincinnati Reds in 1899, “wrote” a syndicated article regarding his, “study of the science of batting.”

The article introduction said, “young players would do well to study,” Ewing’s conclusions and promised, “many an old League player could better his stick work,” by following Ewing’s advice:

“Footwork has as much to do with successful batting as it has to pugilism. A player who steps away from the plate as he swings at the ball can be put down as an easy victim for an ‘out’ curve, and it is a pitcher with a very poor heads who does not serve up ‘out’ curves in profusion to such a batter.”

Buck “at the Bat”

The Reds manager said even “good batters” and veterans needed to relearn to “overcome this fault,” but said the worst were “college players” who Ewing dismissed as “notoriously weak batters.”

He said when he worked with players to break this habit, he had, “a box built the size of the regular batter’s box with the sides raised high enough to prevent the player form stepping outside.”

Ewing claimed the box was “an original plan” of his and recommended that “college coachers’ adopt its use.

“Just meet it my boy,” was Ewing’s advice. Too many players under his management made the “great mistake” to “swing fiercely.”

Ewing used a player more than a decade removed from professional baseball as the example of the perfect approach to hitting.
 

“A quick, snappy movement is often better than a swing. ‘Lip’ Pike, one of the best batters who ever lived, had this quick wrist movement and, although he apparently made little effort, he made some of th longest hits on record.

“By just meeting the ball, too, a player can master the art of placing the ball with much greater ease than by a terrific blind swing.”

He said pitchers “were always on to the free swingers,” and “put up a slow one (so the batter) cannot get a good smash at sphere.”

Ewing concluded with the promise, that a batter following those two pieces of advice, “will become a 300 percent batter before you know it.”

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“Brain Counts More Than Slugging”

6 Sep

Amos Rusie’s return to the Seattle area to purchase a farm in 1929 made his briefly as interesting to West Coast baseball writers and his arrival at the Polo Grounds eight years earlier had briefly made his reminiscences of great interest to the New York scribes.

There is some disagreement about whether Rusie enjoyed his time in New York. What’s certain is his eight years caused him to retract his opinion from 1921 that the game had not substantially changed.

Rusie

When he arrived in Washington, The Associated Press asked the former pitcher/ballpark superintendent turned farmer for his views on the game and  to select his all-time team.

Rusie said he couldn’t understand how modern pitchers “don’t pitch to sluggers,” enough:

“None of the pitchers in my day were afraid to pitch to the best of them. You didn’t find us walking the slugger almost every time he came to bat, as they do nowadays. We figured we would either make him hit the ball or sit down. That’s what he was up there for.”

Rusie said “brain counts more than slugging,” and selected an all-time team that included just one (barely)  active player:

Pitchers: Christy Mathewson, Kid Nichols, Cy Young

Catchers: Buck Ewing, Roger Bresnahan, John Kling

First base: Dan Brouthers, Fred Tenney

Second base: Napoleon Lajoie, Eddie Collins

Third base: Jimmy Collins, John McGraw

Shortstop: Honus Wagner, Hughie Jennings

Left field: Ed Delahanty, Joe Kelley

Center field: Ty Cobb, Tris Speaker

Right Field: Willie Keeler, Fred Clarke

Eddie Collins appeared in just nine games in 1929 and three in 1930 while coaching for the Athletics. Babe Ruth, who made such an impression on Rusie when eight years earlier he watched major league baseball for the first time in two decades, didn’t make the cut.

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“And so Buck Ewing is Dead.”

12 Mar

“And so Buck Ewing is Dead.”

The New York Telegram eulogized in 1906, and pronounced him:

“The greatest ball player of them all, when all that makes a great ball player is taken into consideration.

“There was nothing that Buck Ewing could do on a ballfield without doing it well. Before he became a catcher, he was a fine infielder. After he was a catcher, he was a fine outfielder. When he was a catcher, he was a good pitcher, and there was no time in his life that he was not one of the most intelligent, if not the most intelligent right-hand batters in the history of the game.”

Ewing

It was acknowledged that “There were others who were greater sluggers,” and players with higher averages, “but there was only one Ewing, whom every pitcher feared when there were men on base.”

In addition, The Telegram said, “No ball player lived who knew more about the inside of baseball,’ and when he threw a ball it was as if:

 “He simply handed it to the baseman, with a snap which many a catcher had tried and none has equalled.”

Tom Loftus told the paper when he was managing, he was asked “why his players did not try to steal” against Ewing:

“Steal bases, what’s the use? If you give them two rods handicap for a start the second baseman would be waiting for them before they within twenty feet of the base.

“You could rob a bank easier than you can steal on this man Ewing.”

The eulogy also said, “as a matter of baseball history,” Ewing “probably made” the longest hit on record, in an 1889 game with the Cleveland Spiders. 

“Cleveland’s left field fence was so far away from home plate that no one had ever batted the ball over it, and no one expected that a hit would go over it. ‘Darby’ O’Brien, long since dead, was pitching for Cleveland. He tried to fool Ewing with a low curve on the outside corner of the platter.”

The pitcher was not Darby O’Brien, but John “Cinders” O’Brien:

“Buck swung with all his weight on the ball, and when it cleared the top board of that far away left field fence by so many feet that there was enough daylight to have prolonged the afternoon for another hour or so. The crowd in spite of its partisanship stood up and roared.

“The ball was found in the garden of a Cleveland millionaire hundreds of feet from the fence…The measures are in existence to this day, but there is little doubt that it wa the longest hit ever made in the history of professional baseball. Also, New York won because of the hit.”

In addition to identifying the wrong “O’Brien” as pitcher, The Telegram erred in the outcome of the game. Cleveland beat New York eight to six.

The game was June 22, 1889. The New York World described the moment; the Giants loaded the bases in the third inning:

“Then Buck Ewing, captain of the champions of all creation, came to bat and made the longest hit ever made on these grounds.”

The Cleveland Press said:

“(Ewing) drove it high over the left field fence, which is 478 feet from the home plate.”

The Telegram insisted in 1906 that Ewing’s homerun was “the longest hit ever made in the history of professional baseball.”

The 1922 “Spalding Guide” said of Ewing’s home run:

“(W)here the ball went after that (clearing the fence, 478 feet from home plate) never was ascertained, although it was a standing joke in Cleveland that it turned up in the repletion room of a Euclid Avenue mansion, which would not have been wholly impossible if it rolled to the corner of what was once Case Avenue.”

The 1906 eulogy concluded:

“(A) gamer man with a more magnetic personality never played professional baseball. There are thousands to whom Buck Ewing’s death will bring a feeling of sorrow that a personal friend has been taken away.”

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“Harsh Language has Done More to Ruin Prospective Players”

3 Mar

In 1898, Buck Ewing, in his first season as a full-time manager told The San Antonio Light his philosophy for preparing players while his Reds trained in the Texas city:

“The regime that the Cincinnati players go through is not half as severe as the training of the pugilist. I make it a rule not to work out my men over three hours a day when we are training. With a pugilist it is the aim of his trainer to get him at his best for a certain day. To have him on edge, so as to be at his very best just as he enters the ring, the pugilist has to prepare for the event…In training a ball team you must bear in mind that there is a long siege of playing ahead of them. It won’t do to bring them to their very best to get them ‘on edge.’

“On the contrary, you must aim to have them robust and fast, and down to weight without getting them so fine that a continuous siege of playing may cause them to fall off weak.”

Buck Ewing

Ewing said he “trained hard every season since I have been in the business,” and because of that his players “do not feel that they are imposed upon.”

He said of his team:

“We have been very fortunate in having a collection of sensible, honest players. I have not found any bad feelings at any time. I have made it a practice to make every player feel that he is just as much a factor in the Cincinnatis as the oldest man.”

He said he didn’t just prepare his players physically:

“The baseball world must know that it is pretty hard for players even with years of experience to withstand the influence of the taunts of the crowd. It is one of the first lessons, I believe should be taught players, to turn a deaf ear to shouts of the attendance. Our players are especially strong in this point, although occasionally rooters do get them unbalanced.”

The Reds manager said, “No captain or manager, be him ever so great, can make a team win ball when there is lack of harmony.”

“If there are two or three men who are not speaking to each other, and who are continually talking about shirks and grumbling and muttering, it is impossible for them to play good ball. They may capture a game now and then, but for steady, reliable work they cannot be depended upon. Every man in the team should stand ready at any moment to do his best to make his nine win.”

And what was the biggest danger for the harmony of a team?

“Harsh language has done more to ruin prospective players than any other cause.”

Ewing said his club “kept uppermost in their mind,” that “there should be but one head and that he should do the ordering and they the obeying.”

That “idea” he said, portended good things for Cincinnati’s prospects in 1898:

“I have never been in a team where the players carried out this idea and were as harmonious in their work as the present one.”

The 1898 season was Ewing’s most successful as a manager—his Reds won 92 games –but finished third in the National League.

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“Every one of Them has Some Eccentric Method”

10 Feb

“The players of the New York league club are the most superstitious set of men in the country.”

That was the opinion of a “well-known and veratious [sic] sporting man,” quoted by The New York Sun in 1887:

“Every one of them has some eccentric method of insuring good luck in a game.”

The “Sporting man” said he was in Philadelphia with the Giants and “happened to walk across the field,” and saw on the ground where Patrick Gillespie played:

“Signs traced on the earth apparently with a small stick. The first was a simple angle with a dot in the middle, followed by a long straight line, at the other end of which was another dot and a straight line running in a direction at right angles to the long one. I studied these hieroglyphics for some time and concluded that the perpendicular line and the one beside it meant the bat and ball and the straight line meant the course of the ball after it was hit. The angle represented Gillespie and hands in the act of gobbling up the ball. It was drawn with the view of illustrating just what the left fielder hoped would happen. I am told Gillespie never plays a game without this little symbol marked at his feet.”

The area around where Buck Ewing played was “covered with fragments of toothpicks” because Ewing thought “runners’ trip over these in coming to his base.” With a left-handed hitter at the plate, John Montgomery Ward “put his left foot forward” at short.

Ward

Pitcher Tim Keefe, when taking “possession of his box he carefully expectorates at all four corners and makes with the toe of his right boot first a dot then a long wavy line and then a final dot.” The dots and line “approximated” his curve ball.

Danny Richardson would make a mark “straight across” the infield “as if to bar the progress of runners. Every time a run gets in Richardson rubs out his mark and makes a fresh one longer and thicker.”

Roger Connor would “never stand perfectly still for fear his luck would go to sleep” while playing first base. Connor was also said to “stealthily apply this mark with chalk on the back of the first man that reaches his base: Z X 0-0. By some occult reasoning holds that the Z being the final letter in the alphabet that the player has reached the end of run-getting” and that the zeros somehow represented the number of runs the opponents would score:

“Nobody ever understood this but Connor, whose faith in the device is so great that he actually turns pale if the first runner goes by his base on a two-base hit, thus preventing him from writing his inscription.”

Connor

Center fielder Mike Tiernan would stand on his left foot and say “’I will never tell a lie,’ and then change to the right foot and add ‘if I catch the next fly.’” While right fielder Mike Dorgan, when he came to the plate, “pulls his hat over his eyes, rubs his hands together, and strikes the ground three times with the stick.”

After dropping his mask once and later in the game tearing a finger and spraining an ankle, Jim O’Rourke, if he “were to drop his mask before putting it on he would not play the game.”

The superstitions and hoodoos did not appear to work, the Giants finished fourth, 10 ½ games back in 1887.

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“An Awkward Bunch of Monkeys”

24 Dec

Arlie Latham was the oldest living former major leaguer in 1951—the 91-year-old made his major league debut 71 years earlier.

Will Grimsley of The Associated Press tracked down “The Freshest Man of Earth” and had him pick his all-time all-star team:

“(Latham) has seen them all from Cap Anson right down to Joe DiMaggio and Stan Musial.

“’It is tough picking this team,’ said the thin, bent old infielder of baseball’s cradle days, whose memory is still razor-sharp. ‘There are so many good players—so many, especially today.”

Unlike many 19th Century veterans, Latham only selected three players whose careers began before 1900. He said:

“I think the players today are far better than back in the old times. Why, on the whole there is no comparison. Where we had one or two stars on a team back then today every man has to be standout to hold his position.”

Latham at 91

Latham’s team:

P: Cy Young, Rube Waddell, Carl Hubbell, Christy Mathewson

C: Bill Dickey

1B: Bill Terry

2B; Frankie Frisch

#B: Pie Traynor

SS: Honus Wagner

OF Babe Ruth, Ty Cobb, Joe DiMaggio

Latham called Cobb, “the greatest all-around player there was.”

He gave Terry the nod over Lou Gehrig because “he was a smoother fielder.”

Buck Ewing was the only catcher “he’d mention in the same breath” as Dickey.

He said “it was hard” to keep Walter Johnson off.

Of his own career, Latham said:

“I was the best man of my day at getting out of the way of a hard-hit ball.”

Arlie Latham

He called the players of his era, “an awkward bunch of monkeys.”

Latham died the following year at age 92.

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“Fifty bucks, Buck”

10 Feb

Hugh Fullerton of The Chicago Tribune called Buck Ewing “the greatest of them all,” after Ewing died in 1906.

Fullerton said, “Ewing stories will be told for generations,” and shared one about a bet with Mike “King” Kelly.

”It happened back in the days when the players of the different clubs were friendly and met at night to discuss and argue over their games instead of sulking separately and discussing their woes.”

ewing

Ewing

He said that day, Kelly had stolen two bases “off the king of catchers,” and Kelly, “kept harping on it until Buck was a bit nettled.”

Ewing told Kelly:

“Well Mike, if Danny Richardson plays second tomorrow, I’ll bet you $50 you don’t steal a base.”

Kelly took the bet, and Fullerton said the following day “three or four of us who knew of the bet sat together in the stands.”

 

kelly

Kelly

Kelly singled in the third inning:

“(O)n the first ball pitched; he tore for second with a fair start. Buck threw. The ball went like a shot, straight towards the bag, perhaps three feet up the line towards first, a perfect throw to catch any runner—except Kelly. Richardson got the ball five feet ahead of the runner. He was stooped over and swung his body quickly to tag Mike, he expecting the King to make one of his famous twisting slides. Instead, Kelly leaped, jumped clear over Richardson, and lighted flat on his back on top of second base.

“Above the roar of the crowd arose Kelly’s voice, and what he said was this:

“Fifty bucks, Buck.”

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Things I Learned on the way to Looking up Other Things: Clark Griffith

3 Feb

Griff out West

Griffith loved to tell stories about his time playing in Montana, one story the “truthfulness” of he “vouched” he told The Cleveland Leader in 1912:

leetgriffith

Griffith

“The scene was at Butte, back in the nineties (1892), and the story resulted from a baseball game between Missoula and Butte at the latter town. There were a lot of gamblers in Butte who wanted to back the team, so about $5000 was bet on the game.”

Griffith was on the mound for Missoula:

“Everything went along nicely for a while, with a monster crowd on hand hollering for everything it was worth for Butte to win.

“In the ninth inning Missoula was leading by one run, but after two were out Butte got a man on third and then the catcher let the ball get away from him. It rolled a short distance, but when the catcher went to retrieve it one bug leaned over the stand with a six-shooter in his hand. ‘Touch that ball and you are dead,’ he shouted. And the catcher stood stock still in his tracks.”

Griffith said the players “were scared stiff” and watched the tying run cross the plate. He claimed Missoula scored in the 10th and won the game 5 to 4.

Griff on Lajoie

In 1900, Griffith and Hugh Fullerton of The Chicago Tribune were watching Napoleon Lajoie take ground balls during practice:

“He looks less like a ballplayer, handles himself less like an infielder, goes at a ball in the strangest style, and gets them more regularly than any fellow I ever watched. He fights every ball he picks up, scoops them with without looking, and keeps me nervous all the time.

lajoie

Napoleon Lajoie

“Every time a grounder goes down to him, I want to bet about three to one he will fumble, but he always gets them. He has some system for making the ball hit his hands which I don’t understand. And I’ll tell you a secret: He has a system of making his bat hit a ball which drives pitchers to drink.”

Griff’s All-Time Team

In “Outing Magazine” in 1914, Griffith presented his all-time team:

P: Amos Rusie

P: Walter Johnson

P: Cy Young

P: Christy Mathewson

C: Buck Ewing

1B: Charles Comiskey

2B: Eddie Collins

3B: Jimmy Collins

SS: Herman Long

LF: Bill Lange

CF: Tris Speaker

RF: Ty Cobb

Griffith’s most surprising pick was choosing Comiskey over his former teammate and manager Cap Anson. He told the magazine:

“(Comiskey) was the first man to see the possibilities of the position. Before his day a first baseman was only a basket. He stood glued to the bag, received the balls thrown to him, but never moved away.”

Charles Comiskey

Charles Comiskey

He said Anson, “Although a great player, was not Comiskey’s equal.”

He chose Long over Honus Wagner he said, because “Hans has a barrel of ability, but he’s not such a foxy player as many persons think, but he is a wonderful batter.”

Griffith called Jimmy Collins, “The most graceful fielding third baseman the game has ever seen,” and said Tris Speaker ”is the most remarkable outfielder that ever lived.”

As for his chosen catcher, Griffith said:

“Buck Ewing never has known an equal as a catcher. I call him the best ballplayer the world ever has known. The only man who approached him was Mike Kelly of the old Chicago White Sox, Kelly too, was a wonder, but not quite equal to Ewing.”

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Things I Learned on the way to Looking up Other Things #39

15 Jan

A Useful Skill

Vernon Deck hit .297 over parts of seven seasons for eight teams in the low minors from 1927 to 1938.

deck.jpg

Deck

His one particular talent allowed him to be a featured member of the House of David club; barnstorming with the religious sect in the mid-1930s, and again briefly in the early 40s.

Deck’s talent was described in the HODs press materials as:

“The only man who can put a regulation baseball in his mouth.”

vernondeck.jpg

Deck demonstrating his skill

Advice for Baseballists

In 1884, The St. Louis Critic shared a list of “Advice for Baseballists.”

Among their suggestions:

“Try to hit the ball before it passes beyond the range of your bat.”

“If it hits you on the end of the nose do not try to knock it off.  Have a little patience and it will fall off.”

“If it should become embedded in your brain, go on with the game as if nothing had happened.”

“Don’t let the bat slip from your hands when you miss the ball unless you are certain it will hit the umpire.”

“Never knock a ball out of the catcher’s hands. Most catchers don’t like it.”

“If you can manage it, try to send the ball among the spectators. They like to be noticed.”

“Always sneer at the pitcher of a rival club. It makes him feel good. If he plugs you in the eye, you must take it as a joke.”

“When you make a good strike, throw your bat in the air, look at the spectators, appear perfectly cool, and get put out.”

Baseball has Peaked, 1885 Version

In 1885, “An old baseballist,” told The Rochester Post-Express:

“(T)the game has lost interest to spectators.”

The reason?

“(B)y reason of the fact that it has become a mere battle of the pitchers.”

The “old baseballist” predicted:

“The American game of the future will be base ball with no pitcher. The ball will be sprung from a ground trap, and the best batters and fielders will win on a uniformly delivered ball for both sides. This will reawaken the old-time interest in the game.”

Another Useful Skill

In 1896, The Cincinnati Post reported that a local resident named Alvin Pietz had a sent a letter to Reds manager Buck Ewing requesting that Ewing get him appointed to the National League umpire staff—citing a particular skill”

ewing

Ewing

“I am very familiar with the rules and I am noted for the way I enforce discipline. I should like to tackle the Cleveland team the first day, and if I don’t control the game something will drop. I am a hypnotist, like Billy Earle, so you can see I can control most of the bullies.”

billyearle1905

Billy Earle

The paper concluded Pietz’ chance of being appointed remained “decidedly slim.”

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