Tag Archives: Chick Gandil

Things I Learned on the Way to Looking Up Other Things: Ty Cobb Edition

25 Jul

“I didn’t make any bets but we won the Game”

After Swede Risberg and Chick Gandil alleged in late 1926 that the Detroit Tigers had thrown four games to the Chicago White Sox late in the 1917 season—a story that was contradicted by more than two dozen former Tigers and White Sox players—Ty Cobb told Bert Walker of The Detroit Times that the St. Louis Browns likely threw the final three games of the season against the Tigers in 1923.

cobb

Cobb

Walker said before the first game of the series on October 1, Browns players approached Cobb and said:

“’You are going to win today’s game.  We will not try to take it.  Those damned —–, meaning the Indians, have insulted us all season and we hope you beat them out.’”

Cobb told Walker:

“’I was in uniform at the time, and went to the office of (Tigers President Frank) Navin and told him the whole thing.  There was still more than an hour in which to get down bets on a sure thing.  I do not know if any bets were made or not.  I didn’t make any bets but we won the game.’”

The Tigers swept the season-ending series three game series with the Browns while the Indians split a four-game series with the Chicago White Sox, resulting in Detroit finishing a half game ahead of Cleveland.

“The Percentage of Those Whom I Have Spiked”

Cobb talked to The Dayton Herald in 1915 about why baseball was not a profession for everyone:

“It is hard to succeed in baseball, not because the game is hard in itself, but because of the rebuffs that a player receives from all sides…Several years ago when I broke into the big show, I was a target for all the remarks sport writers could not fire at anyone else.

cobb3

“It was simply because when I slid into a base and would put all the force I possessed into my slide, they said I was a rowdy and that I was trying my best to spike the other fellow.

“Well, if the records were kept, it would be shown that the percentage of those whom I have spiked would be no higher than that of any other major leaguer in the game.”

“Sure, I’ll hit, Watch me”

In 1925, Frank G. Menke of The New York Daily News marveled that Cobb was, at age 38, still one of the game’s best hitters—he was hitting above .400 when the article appeared in June and ended up fourth in the American League with a .378 average:

“No man can think of Ty Cobb without gasping over his bewildering ability as a ballplayer.

“There never was a player like him—none remotely approached.  And so long as the game endures there shall not be another like him because Cobb is superlative, peerless, and alone.”

Cobb hit 12 home runs that season, tying his highest career output.  Menke told the story behind Cobb’s biggest power outburst of the season:

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Ty Cobb

“Out in St. Louis (on May 5) some rabid fans proceeded to ‘bait’ Cobb.  They jeered him, called him a ‘has-been’—and dared him to do some hitting.  Scoffing and sneers take the fight and the heart out of some men; they serve merely as spurs to greater endeavor within others.  And Cobb is the latter type.

“’Want me to hit, hey’ sneered back Cobb at the hooting throng.  ‘Sure, I’ll hit.  Watch me.’

“And within two playing days Cobb banged out five home runs.”

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Lost Advertisements–“Oh! You ‘Dave’ Robertson!”

24 Jun

1917ws

An advertisement for Hart, Schaffner & Marx which appeared after game three of the 1917 World Series.  After losing two games in Chicago, the New York Giants won 2 to 0; the Giants scored both runs in the fourth inning of Eddie Cicotte; Dave Robertson tripled and scored on Walter Holke‘s double, Holke scored on a single by George Burns.

The advertisement after game two, a 7 to 2 White Sox victory, featured Chicago first baseman Chick Gandil, who:

“Makes a wonderful catch on (Bennie) Kauff‘s foul ball in (the) third inning.  Running over to the Giants bench he leaped in the air and with his left hand ‘speared the pill.'”

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And, one more after game six, won by Urban “Red” Faber and the White Sox:

Long Live The King!

“Sox take final game, score 4 to 2.  Chicago now boasts two world’s champions ‘White Sox.'”

1917ws3

 

 

 

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Lost Advertisements–Anheuser-Busch, Washington Senators

5 Feb

 

ab1910sox

In 1910, a series of Anheuser-Busch ads  appeared in several Washington D.C. papers. The ad above appeared when the Chicago White Sox faced the Senators in early May:

Comiskey’s New White Sox are in Town

The headline referred to Charles Comiskey‘s shakeup of his team, which included the appointment of Hugh Duffy as manager, and a new starting infield; first baseman Chick Gandil, second baseman Rollie Zeider, and shortstop Lena Blackburne, and Billy Purtell at third.

An advertisement later that week featured caricatures of Napoleon Lajoie and Hughie Jennings, and described Rube Waddell as “The only wild animal of his kind in captivity:”

ab1910nap

The ads were similar in style and content to those for Old Underoof Whiskey that appeared in Chicago papers during the same period–all advertised upcoming games, commented on the behavior of fans and players, and chronicled the year’s pennant races–with one exception.

A July ad featured the full text, with illustrations, of Ernest Thayer’s “Casey at the Bat:”

ab1910casey

They only appeared for one season.

 

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“Out of the Game”

2 Nov

ripley

A September 1920 cartoon in The New York Globe, “Cleaning Up” by Robert Ripley–later famous for “Ripley’s Believe it or Not” which he began drawing two years earlier–calling on organized baseball to banish  Hal Chase, Heinie Zimmerman, and six members of the Chicago White Sox: Swede Risberg, Joe Jackson, Eddie Cicotte, Buck Weaver. Happy Felsh [sic, Felsch] and Lefty Williams–Ripley left out Chick Gandil and Fred McMullin.

Ripley continued to draw baseball cartoons as “Believe it or Not” gained popularity, including the one below from 1921 winter meetings featuring Kenesaw Mountain Landis, Ban Johnson, Kid Gleason, Hooks Wiltse, Charles Ebbets, John McGraw, and Wilbert Robinson.  After The Globe folded in 1923, Ripley moved to The New York Evening News.

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“Demmitt!!”

20 Jul

Arthur “Bugs” Baer was a humorist and sportswriter—widely credited with coining the nickname “Sultan of Swat” for Babe Ruth—who often included his own cartoons with his articles.

Baer worked for The Philadelphia Public Ledger, The Washington Times, and William Randolph Heart’s King Features Syndicate, before moving to Hollywood where he wrote several film scripts, including the titles for “Headin’ Home,” the first movie Babe Ruth appeared in.

An example of Baer’s newspaper work; after a May 1914, 1-0 Washington Senators victory over the Chicago White Sox in 10 innings–Sox pitcher Jim Scott took a no-hitter into the 10th before allowing a single to Chick Gandil:

“Demmitt!!

“That’s the word.

“Oh! No!  We don’t mean what you mean.  (Ray) Demmitt is the right fielder on the Chicago White Sox, although we admit that it sounds as if he wasn’t.  He is the lad who made a brilliant one-legged stop of (Howie) Shanks’ drive in the tenth yesterday, allowing the ball to bruise our perfectly good right field wall and Jim Scott’s heart at the same time.  He came racing to snag the ball just like one of these pictures you see in the “Police Gazette.”  Just like a regular ball player, same as they have in big cities.  You’ve heard about those kind.

Demmitt!!

Demmitt!!

[…]

“The old pill went through him just like the Congressional Limited goes through Elkton, Maryland.  And Chick Gandil flat wheeled around the bases same as the Fourteenth Street car does around Thomas Circle…What we wanted to ask is did you notice how everything moved in cycles of one?

“One run won the game.  Demmitt’s one-legged stop allowed that one run to score and win one ballgame.  (Clyde) Zeb Milan (who made a bare handed stab of Demmitt’s sixth-inning single, and caught threw him out attempting to stretch it to a double) one-hooked stab saved the bacon, and Gandil’s one tentacled clutches chopped off many an error.

“Hal Chase’s one-clawed catches of wide throws kept the Sox in the running and (Yancey) Doc Ayers’ great one-armed pitching put them out of it.  In fact, everybody acted as if they only had one arm.

“Tommy Connolly did some fine one-cylindered umpiring.

“And Jim Scott gave a one-lunged cheer when Demmitt—there goes that word again—blew the game.”

Baer's cartoon that accompanied the article

The Baer cartoon that accompanied the article

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Lost Advertisements–Fit for a King

1 May

fitAn ad for Old Underoof Whiskey from April of 1910.  Chicago White Sox owner Charles Comiskey–and Chicago fans–had great expectations for the club.  After a disappointing 78-74 record and a fourth-place finish in 1909, Hugh Duffy was hired to replace Billy Sullivan as manager.

Comiskey also replaced his entire starting infield, purchasing the contracts of three minor leaguers: first baseman Chick Gandil, second baseman Rollie Zeider, and shortstop Lena Blackburne, and installing utility infielder Billy Purtell at third.

The new 1910 White Sox infield.

The new 1910 White Sox infield.

The Chicago Tribune said the Sox were now:

“Resplendent with brand new darns where were worn the biggest holes last year.”

Comiskey was confident enough to tell reporters the team “(W)ill lose their name of hitless wonders this year. I am confident we will be as strong as any club in the league in this department.”

He also maintained that Ed Walsh, Doc White, Jim Scott, and Frank Smith, who would start the opener on April 14, comprised “(T)he strongest staff of pitchers in any league.”

The Sox did not disappoint on opening day.  Behind Smith’s one-hitter, the Sox defeated the St. Louis Browns 3 to 0.

The Chicago Inter Ocean said the “New Sox lived up to every inch of the reputation they have gained this spring.” The Tribune dubbed the team “Commy’s Comets,” and said:

“When the dazzling display was over Comiskey’s face resembled the noonday sun wreathed in an aureole of smiles, which extended beyond the rings of Saturn and half the distance to the milky way.”

Old Underoof commemorated the victory with a new ad:

commy1910

The Sox quickly returned to earth and lost their next four games.  Things never got much better.  A month into the season they were 10 games out of first place; they finished 68-85, in sixth-place 35.5 games behind the Philadelphia Athletics.

With a league-worst .211 batting average, the they failed to ” lose their name of hitless wonders,” as Comiskey predicted.

As for “the strongest staff of pitchers in any league,” they could not overcome the horrible support they received all season.  Despite a 2.03 team ERA, second only to Philadelphia’s 1.79, only Doc White (15-13) had a winning record.

Walsh, who led the league with a 1.27 ERA,  was 18-20, and Scott was 8-18 with a 2.43 ERA.

Frank Smith, the 30-year-old hero of the opener, who had won 25 games with a 1.80 ERA in 1909, was 4-9, despite a 2.03 ERA and three shutouts, when he was traded with Billy Purtell to the Boston Red Sox in August.

 

 

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The Occidentals

14 May

Billed as the “Colored World Champions” during their barnstorming tours of the West, The Salt Lake City-based Occidentals were also members of the otherwise all-white Utah State League.  Despite being forced to play additional road games, the team was very competitive.  In 1908 The Deseret News said:

“The colored boys have paid no attention to handicaps under which they had to enter the league; they have played good, earnest ball and provide the fans with their money’s worth every time they play.”

The paper acknowledged that the team’s manager Frank Black was correct when he said the team could “make more money by traveling throughout the inter-mountain region on a pick-up schedule than he will make in the league,” and made a “plea for fair play to all men, no matter who they may be.”

In 1909, the Occidentals won the Utah State League and then headed west.

The team arrived in Los Angeles in late October.  The Los Angeles Herald said:

“The Occidentals are a colored team, and after cleaning up everything in sight in the Mormon state decided that Southern California would afford new fields to conquer.”

Among the players on the Occidentals’ roster were second baseman/manager Black and pitcher/outfielder Louis “Ad” Lankford (contemporaneous accounts, including coverage of his brief boxing career in Salt Lake City, usually call him “Langford”)—in December catcher/first baseman Bill Pettus joined the team.

The Occidentals--Frank Black is standing far left, Ad Lankford is seated second from left.

The Occidentals–Frank Black is standing far left, Ad Lankford is seated second from left.

The team opened their tour with a series with the Los Angeles Giants billed as the “Colored Championship of the Pacific Coast.”  The Occidentals swept the best of five series with 9 to 2, 7 to 1 and 4 to 2 victories.

After winning the series, the team from Salt Lake City played a team dubbed as the “Japanese All-Stars of Los Angeles,” organized by Los Angeles Angels catcher Jesse Orndorff—the team was all Japanese except for the battery which consisted of Orndorff and Angels’ pitcher Bill Tozer.  The Herald said, “The game was fast and witnessed by a crowd of 1500.” The Occidentals won 7 to 3.

Jesse Orndorff

Jesse Orndorff

Two days later the barnstormers lost 6 to 1 to the Angels (the team was billed as the Los Angeles Angels, but was more accurately a current and former Pacific Coast League all-star team), with St. Louis Cardinals pitcher John Raleigh on the mound.

The Occidentals spent another six weeks in Los Angeles and had three well-publicized games with  McCormick’s Shamrocks, managed by local pool hall operator and promoter Jim McCormick.  The teams met for the first time on Thanksgiving and were tied 0-0 after five innings when the game was called.  The two teams met again at Chutes Park on Christmas.

The two managers tried to build attendance with quotes in The Herald, and The Los Angeles Times.  Black said:

“If you want to be a few beans ahead when the sun goes down on Christmas day, put a few cartwheels on the colored boys to win from the Winter League aggregation.”

McCormick countered:

“Nothing to it but shouting, and we will win in a walk.”

McCormick promised to get the “Occidental’s goat.”

When the sun set on Christmas The Herald said: And Manager Black’s goat is still grazing unmolested at Chutes Park.”  The Occidentals won 3 to 2.

Frank Black poses at Chutes Park with Jim McCormick's "goat" after the victory.

Frank Black poses at Chutes Park with Jim McCormick’s “goat” after the victory.

After a New Year’s Day rain out, the teams met again on January 8.  The McCormick’s recruited Tozer from the Angels to pitch; the game was tied 1 to 1 when called after twelve innings.

The following day the Occidentals played another twelve inning game, this one a 0-0 tie against an all-star team composed of Pacific Coast League, California League and major league players, including William “Brick” Devereaux, Eli Cates, Ed McDonough, Charles “Truck” Eagan and Elmer Rieger.

According to The Herald the team was 14-2-2 on the California tour when they departed for San Diego on January 22, where they lost 1-0 in 10 innings.

The final game of the trip was played against the Santa Ana Winter League Team—the Yellow Sox– which was made up of Pacific Coast League players including Arnold “Chick” Gandil—then a second baseman, as well as St. Louis Cardinals outfielder George “Rube” Ellis and future Hall of Famer Walter Johnson on the mound.

Johnson shut out the Occidentals 2 to 0, striking out 15 (The Times said he finished the winter league season 9-0—with nine complete games, giving up just 21 hits and 5 runs in 81 innings) The Herald said the team “did not take very lovingly to the slants of the mighty Walter, who had them well in hand throughout the contest.”

The team was generally well received by fans on the coast—notwithstanding The Herald’s habit of referring to them as “the dinges.”

Black and the Occidentals returned to Salt Lake City and rejoined the Utah State League for the 1910 season, finishing in second place.

The following year Frank Leland’s Chicago Giants entered the California Winter League, posting a 10-7-2 record.

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“The Great Baseball Question has been what will Capt. Comiskey do next Season”

3 Dec

In January of 1890 The St. Louis Globe-Democrat said what was on the minds of every baseball executive, writer, and fan:  “The great baseball question has been what will Capt. Comiskey do next Season”

For weeks there was speculation about whether Charles Comiskey, captain and manager of the St. Louis Browns, would remain in the American Association or join the Players’ National League of Professional Baseball Clubs (Players League), the league borne out of baseball’s first union the Brotherhood of Professional Base-Ball Players.

Charles Comiskey, against slang in baseball stories.

Charles Comiskey

On January 15, in a letter to The Sporting News, Comiskey announced his decision:

“During the past few weeks many interviews have appeared with me in different newspapers of the country relative to my having signed a contract with the St. Louis and Chicago Brotherhood clubs.  Up to this writing I am mind and fancy free.  But before Saturday night, January 18, I will have signed a contract to play at first base for the Chicago Brotherhood team.  I take this step for the reason that I am in sympathy with the Brotherhood.

“I believe its aims are for the best welfare and interest of the professional players.  I believe that if the players do not this time stand true to their colors and maintain their organization they will from this day forward be at the mercy of the corporations who have been running the game, who drafted the reserve rule and give birth to the obnoxious classification system.

“I have taken all the chances of success and failure into consideration, and I believe that if the players stand true to themselves they will score the grandest success ever achieved in the baseball world.

“But besides having the welfare of the players at heart I have other reasons for wanting to play in Chicago.  My parents and all my relatives reside there, and the all the property I own is located in the city.  I was raised there and have a natural liking for the place.  But, outside of all these reasons, my relations with the management of the St. Louis club have, during the past year been so unpleasant I do not care to renew them.  I have many friends in St. Louis, and for their sake I hate to leave here, but the other reasons out-balance this friendship, so I will cast my lines with the Chicago club.

“This is the first letter I have written on the subject which seems to have interested the baseball world throughout the whole of the present winter.

“Yours respectfully, Chas. Comiskey”

A week before the season began The Chicago Tribune said Comiskey’s new club “on paper, is the greatest team ever organized.”   Despite the hype, Comiskey’s Chicago Pirates finished in fourth place.  The Players League lasted only one season and dissolved in November of 1890.

Comiskey’s backing of the Brotherhood against “the corporations who have been running the game” would probably have come as a surprise to many of those who played for him when he owned the Chicago White Sox.  Arnold “Chick” Gandil, banned from baseball for his role in the 1919 Black Sox scandal said of Comiskey in a 1956 article in “Sports Illustrated:”

“ He was a sarcastic, belittling man who was the tightest owner in baseball. If a player objected to his miserly terms, Comiskey told him: “You can take it or leave it.” Under baseball’s slave laws, what could a fellow do but take it? I recall only one act of generosity on Comiskey’s part. After we won the World Series in 1917, he splurged with a case of champagne.”

Chick Gandil

Chick Gandil

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“We are beginning to have a Very Active Doubt as to the Value of Professional Baseball in American Life”

29 Aug

Coming on the heels of the fallout from the Black Sox scandal, The Chicago Tribune announced a change in editorial policy three weeks after “Shoeless” Joe Jackson, Eddie Cicotte, Oscar “Happy” Felsch., Claude “Lefty” Williams, Arnold “Chick” Gandil, George “Buck” Weaver, Fred McMullin, and Charles “Swede” Risberg were acquitted of conspiring to fix the 1919 World Series.

Buck Weaver and Swede Risberg during the trial

Buck Weaver and Swede Risberg during the trial

The paper said:

“The Tribune has begun to use the compressor on professional baseball stories. The baseball reporters write them well, but we are getting a little tired of the subject. We are beginning to have a very active doubt as to the value of professional baseball in American life.”

The paper said baseball received a “black eye which jury verdicts did not whiten.”

The Tribune said they would place a greater emphasis on coverage of amateur sports which “produce sound citizenry.”  Professional baseball was also making Americans soft:

“The majority of spectators get only eye and mouth exercise.  We have conceded that the professional game stimulated the youngsters and that they played with more earnestness on the lots because they admired Babe Ruth.  We still admit that professional baseball is a stimulus to boys, but journalism has overfed it with space.  The Tribune is down to about a half column now for games in which the home teams play, which is justified parochialism, and to a bare statement of vital statistics regarding the other clubs.  That is enough.”

Other newspapers applauded the policy; surprisingly most didn’t cite corruption in baseball as the reason, but the rather, as The Baltimore Sun said because professional sports only provide “vicarious exercise.”  The Louisville Courier-Journal said watching baseball was even a threat to manhood:

“Two hours of inactivity in the grand stand or bleachers is not productive of muscle or sinew.  The same amount of time spent in tennis, golf, swimming or any number of games would be infinitely better for American manhood.”

Others found the new policy foolish.  The Portland Oregonian said:

“The Chicago Tribune, which is regarded by its management, and doubtless by many of its readers, as the world’s greatest newspaper, has decided to blue-pencil professional baseball…The theory on which the sport page is built is that the public is entitled to what it wants…Telling the readers of sports that they should want something else, and will be given that something, is a decided innovation.”

The Duluth News-Tribune said facetiously:

“The fact that both teams (the Cubs and White Sox) are near tail-enders may not have anything to do with it.”

Then there was The Idaho Statesman which said The Tribune’s policy was a “meritorious undertaking,” but didn’t go far enough:

“There are a world of other professional sports not half as white as the Black Sox, that might come under the publicity axe with resulting good to the public…Horseracing is professional and it has produced a fine crop of crooks—more than baseball in its blackest days could possibly yield.  Our own so-called wild west sports have been placed in the professional class and everybody knows they are largely fake.  Wrestling hasn’t the whitest record in the world and prize fighting is anything but a Sunday school game.  Nobody ever got very much exercise out of any of these sports, except the participants and we are not sure that our citizenship is any sounder for having witnessed them.  The Tribune isn’t through with its job as we view the situation.”

The most prescient response was from The Montgomery (AL) Advertiser:

“We expect to see The Tribune gradually slipping back to its old ways.”

Ten days after the original policy was announced The Tribune declared victory, and revealed their real motive:

“An encouraging sign is the changing attitude of the press toward highly commercialized sport. The papers are coming to the conclusion they have been giving away millions of dollars’ worth of advertising to boost box office receipts for promoters who have no special regard for the public.”

But within weeks the “The World’s Greatest Newspaper” had, as The Advertiser predicted, begun “slipping back” to the way baseball had previously been covered.  By the beginning of the 1922 season, notwithstanding the lingering effects of the game’s greatest scandal, or no indication that Americans were getting any more exercise, baseball stories in The Tribune looked no different than stories that appeared before August of 1921.

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Lost Advertisements–“Baseball Players won $10,550 for ‘Hitting the Bull’ Last Season”

19 Jul

bd1913

 

A 1913 advertisement for Bull Durham Smoking Tobacco.

“The Immense Cut-out ‘Bull’ Durham Sign is a familiar sight in the outfield of Baseball Parks!

“Hitting this ‘Bull’ Sign with a fairly-batted fly-ball for a $50.00 prize is a feature of the National Game!”

In 1912 the Bull Durham signs were hit 211 times, among the players who collected $50 that season were: Chick Gandil, Walter Johnson, Ping Bodie, Red Murray, Harl Maggert, Hans Lobert, Gavvy Cravath and Ben Houser.

Bull Durham also gave “72 sacks of ‘Bull’ Durham,” for every home run hit in a ballpark with one of their signs.

“Last year, baseball players won 257,400 sacks ($12,870 worth) of ‘Bull’ Durham by batting out 3575 home runs!”

Chick Gandil hit the Bull Durham sign in 1912

Chick Gandil hit the Bull Durham sign in 1912

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