Tag Archives: Frank Baker

“The Longest hit ever Secured in a Ball Game”

3 Feb

On June 4, 1913, Joe Jackson hit a home run in the second inning of a game at the Polo Grounds with the New York Highlanders.

The New York Tribune said the blast, off a Russel Ford Spitball that cleared the roof of the rightfield grandstand was:

“(S)et down immediately as the longest hit on record at the grounds.”

Jackson

The ball ended up in Manhattan Field—the previous Polo Grounds which was sold and renamed when the new stadium was opened in 1890

The New York Sun said it was “the longest hit ever made in New York.”

The New York Times was more measured:

“The hit, while perhaps not the longest ever made at the field, has not been approached in this section of the Polo Grounds since the new stands were built.”

The discussion of the longest home runs hit was taken up by infielder turned sportswriter Sam Crane in The New York Journal, who declared Jackson’s:

“(The) longest hit ever secured in a ball game.”

He also reported that the “small boy” who retrieved the ball from Manhattan Field was rewarded with a “$10 bill.”

The Baltimore Sun and a previous generation of fans and players were not going to accept Jackson’s homerun as the longest:

“(T)he present generation, cocksure that everything exceptional happening on the diamond nowadays could not have been eclipsed in the good old days, is wrong again.”

The paper said the longest hit ever made, “happened in 1894” off the bat of Dan Brouthers and lined up five witnesses; Brouthers, his Baltimore Orioles teammates John McGraw and Hughie Jennings, Tom Murphy, the groundskeeper at Oriole Park, and “Abe Marks, scorecard man.”

Brouthers said of his home run:

“I remember distinctly hitting a ball over the right field fence at Baltimore…This hit was a line drive clearing the fence by about 15 feet…I have talked to groundskeeper Murphy regarding this matter, and he says the fence was fully 500 feet from the home plate.”

Brouthers

Brouthers also said he had, “made several other hits that I know equaled the one made by Jackson, particularly one in Boston, one in Columbus, one in Springfield, and one in Raleigh.”

And while Brouthers insisted he did not “wish to detract in any way from the credit due Jackson,” he said he was present at the Polo Grounds when Jackson hit his home run and told an entirely different story about where the ball landed–and who recovered it:

“I saw the hit, and the ball did not go entirely over the grandstand but landed on the top. I had a man go up and get the ball and bring it to Jackson, who gave him 50 cents for it.”

McGraw conceded that he didn’t see Jackson’s hit, but said:

“I have never seen a hit to equal the one made by Brouthers in Baltimore.”

Jennings said, “Jackson’s (hit) isn’t in it at all,” compared to Brouthers.

Jennings also said the Baltimore home run was not Brouthers’ longest; he said the one Brouthers mentioned in Raleigh—also in 1894 on the Orioles “training trip.”

The Sun’s comparison of Brouthers’ homerun versus Jackson’s–also shown is the landing spot of Frank Baker’s homerun in the 1911 World Series

The scorecard vendor, Abe Marks, declared Brouthers’ hit “has never been equaled.” He claimed the ball, after clearing the right field fence, “never stopped until it hit something sticking up in Guilford Avenue.”

All agreed that the ball rolled a long way after it landed and ended up resting from 1300 to 1500 feet from home plate.

While Jackson received his home run ball (or two of them) on the day he hit his long drive, it took Brouthers more than a decade to get his.

When a reunion was held for the 1894 National League Champion Orioles in Baltimore in 1907,

The Sun said the ball had been in the possession of “S.C. Appleby…who is one of the hottest of Oriole fans,” Appleby gave a speech at the reunion held at the Eutaw House, one of Baltimore’s finest hotels, and “toss(ed) it back to Dan Brouthers across the dining table.”

Brouthers said of the presentation:

“This ball went so far that I never expected to see it again. Now that it has been given to me, I shall ever keep it as a memento of my connection with the champion Orioles.”

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“They say I ran wild”

6 Apr

In 1937, Grantland Rice of The New York Herald Tribune met Ty Cobb for a round of golf at Pebble Beach:

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Grantland Rice

“His hair was a trifle thinner and he had put on a few pounds in weight since the big years of his career. But he still looked fit—life had given him a better break than any other retired major league star in history…The legs that carried him at a headlong pace around the bases for 24 years still had enough left to take home through the wilds of Montana, Oregon or Wyoming after quail, deer, or mountain lions—day after day on extended hikes.”

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Cobb

Rice asked Cobb what he thought about the current state of baseball:

“I haven’t seen much baseball or followed it closely, for two reasons. One is that 24 years of hard competition in more than 3000 ballgames burns away most of the lure. The other is that the introduction of the rabbit ball took away most of the science from the game I knew and loved so well. It has been a different game.

“In those years we had to battle for a run. I used to lay plans days or weeks ahead to use against some club to get that run. They say I ran wild. I did it with a purpose—but only when we had a good lead and I could afford to waste a play. I wanted them to think I was a crazy runner—in order to hurry the play of either infield or outfield—to upset what you might call their mental balance. Today, in the main, they wait around for someone to hit a home run. A single run rarely means anything.”

Cobb said he understood he had a reputation “as a rough rider around the bases,” but:

“I recall only three men I spiked in 24 years. I don’t believe the total would be over six or seven”

He told Rice the famous 1909 spiking of Frank “Hone Run” Baker:

“I barely scratched his arm…The Baker incident gave me a reputation I never deserved.”

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Cobb slides into Baker, 1909

Later, Rice asked Cobb about the best pitchers he faced:

 “My number one pitcher would be Cy Young. Cy won more than 500 ballgames in two big leagues. He was still a fine pitcher after more than 20 years…Ate the age of 65, in the veterans’ game, old Cy pitched three run less innings. He had a world of stuff—he had a game heart and he had control.

“Next to Cy, I’d name (Walter) Johnson who led them all in shutouts and strikeouts. That’s the main answer”

Cobb called Big Ed Walsh:

 “The most valuable five-year pitcher I ever saw. In one season (1908)  he worked 66 games, won 40 and saved 12 others [sic, 6]. Right after this he stepped in and pitched almost every game in the Chicago City series. Big Ed was the star workhorse of them all for about five years before the arm gave out.

Cobb told Rice his “Biggest day, I suppose was that afternoon against the Yankees just after a ball pitched by Carl Mays killed Ray Chapman.”

The New York Tribune said the fans were “in an uproar” over comments Cobb had allegedly made to Associated Press (AP) reporters. On the day of Chapman’s death, The AP reported:

“Ty Cobb, the Detroit star asserted that summary measures should be taken against Mays immediately.”

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Mays

The AP also said in a separate article:

“After the funeral of Roy Chapman has been held, Ty Cobb will have a few things to say regarding Carl Mays…’I am too upset over the death of Chapman to say anything now,’ he said. Cobb, however, added

That he had his own experiences with Mays’ bean-ball and that he would be willing to give some of his opinions about the Yankees submarine pitcher when he does talk.”

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Chapman

It was also reported that Cobb was among a group of players who would refuse to play against Mays.

Describing the scene at the Polo Grounds nearly 17 years late, Cobb told Rice:

“I had been misquoted and when I came into the park there was the loudest chorus of boos and hisses, I ever heard.

“Naturally I felt bitter about this. It isn’t a pleasant feeling to be booed and hissed by 35,000 of your fellow citizens, I went out to show them up I happened to have one of my best days.”

Cobb’s “Biggest game” was actually the second game of the series. During the first game of the series on August 21, The Tribune said:

“(T)he booing and hissing were violent every time Cobb came to bat. This roused Cobb’s belligerency and he exchanged some sharp repartee with the crowd by the Detroit dugout. He was surrounded by a growling mob as he left the field, but Cobb, who rather enjoys being a storm center, walked off the field slowly and deliberately”

Cobb, who went 1 for 4 with a stolen base, told reporters after Detroit’s 10 to 3 win:

“Some Boston people who have a grudge against Carl Mays used me as a smoke screen. I did not say a word against Mays, and I attended no meeting to boycott him.”

The following day, August 22, with 37,000 fans in the Polo Grounds was the “Biggest day,” Cobb was 5 for 6 with a double and three stolen bases and scored two runs in an 11 to 9 victory.

Back to the game at Pebble Beach, Rice said of Cobb:

 “Golf is one game that has left him baffled. Once in awhile he breaks 80, but his average score is around 82 or 83. He hits a long ball and he is a first-class putter but is still erratic on the in between shots. Always full of tension…If he could relax more, there would soon be a great improvement in his game. But the mental habit of a lifetime isn’t so easily overcome. The more delicate shots give Ty his greatest trouble. This is where tension nearly always takes its toll. The mental factors that make a great ballplayer or football player may be ruinous for golf.”

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“A Perfect Infield Machine”

8 Jul

In his column in Collier’s Magazine, Grantland Rice said their was a “heated argument” among experts as to whether the current infield of the Philadelphia Athletics—Stuffy McInnes, Eddie Collins, Jack Barry, and Frank Baker—or the recently broken up infield of the Chicago Cubs—Frank Chance, Johnny Evers, Joe Tinker, and Harry Steinfeldt—was  “the greatest infield that ever played.”

Rice took the question to Dan Brouthers, who:

“(H)as been a good bit closer to ringside and who should know.

“Daniel has been on some fair infields himself…He has played on the best and has seen the others pass in parade before him year after year.”

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Brouthers

Brouthers told Rice:

“Why, a choice between Cubs and Athletics for greatest infield? They were both good and the Athletics are still in business. But neither ranks as the best—not for me when I think of that Boston infield of 1897, with Fred Tenney at first, Bobby Lowe at second, Herman Long at short, and Jimmy Collins at third.”

Brouthers said the Beaneaters infield was:

“(T)he best combination of batting and fielding power, brains, speed, and smoothness. It has them all beaten, and I doubt if its equal will ever be gathered together again. There wasn’t an angle of the game at which they were not stars. They may have no more power than the Athletics four and but little more smoothness than the Cubs, but in the combination of all things that go to make up a perfect infield machine they must be set out in front of the others with something to spare.”

Brouthers said of the question of whether the Chicago or Philadelphia infield was better:

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Steinfeldt, Tinker, Evers, and Chance

“As between the old Cub infield, now scattered to the eternal winds, and the Athletics quartet, the former was a smoother-running machine, but it lacked the crushing wallop which has always graced the Mackian avalanche. One had the edge in alertness, the other leads with the punch. Between these rival qualities the competition in the way of supremacy is still a matter for open debate.”

 

 

 

 

 

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Things I Learned on the Way to Looking up Other Things #30

30 Jan

Reddy’s Last Words

When Tom “Reddy” Miller, the catcher for the 1875 St. Louis Brown Stockings, died in May of 1876 (he was, depending on the source, somewhere between 24 and 26 years old at the time of his death), The St. Louis Globe-Democrat noted his handling of pitcher George Bradley:

“The brilliant manner in which the plucky little fellow supported Bradley last season is a matter of record.”

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Bradley

Apparently, according to The Chicago Tribune, catching Bradley was the last thing Miller thought about before his death:

“In his last moments he was delirious, and fancied he was at his place in the ball-field, facing his old pitcher, Bradley. His last words were ‘Two out, Brad—steady, now—he wants a high ball—steady, brad—there, I knew it; that settles it.’”

Altrock on Alexander, 1928

On June 11, 1928, 41-year-old Grover Cleveland Alexander held the Boston Braves to one run on nine hits in an 8 to 1 complete game victory. Nick Altrock, Washington Senators coach, told The Cleveland News:

“Boston got nine hits off Grover Alexander Monday, but got one run, which is why I claim Alex is the world’s greatest pitcher. He is as easy to hit as a punching bag, but you can’t knock him off the rope. Alex pitches like a busted chewing gum slot machine. You keep dropping your nickels in it but no chewing come comes out.”

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Alexander

Alexander was 16-9 with a 3.36 ERA for the pennant winning St. Louis Cardinals.

Baker’s Homerun Ball, 1911

Frank Baker’s game-tying ninth inning home run off Christy Mathewson in game three of the 1911 World Series quickly became legendary, and people began asking about the whereabouts of the ball.

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Baker

The New York Bureau of The St. Louis Post-Dispatch solved “The great mystery of what became of the ball” three days later:

“In the Brush stadium Tuesday, occupying a seat in the eighth row on the projecting line drawn through home and first, sat Mrs. Charles F. Hunt of 537 West 149th Street. Her husband Dr. Hunt, is a physician to the Yankees.”

According to the paper, just as Baker connected:

“(S)omeone got up in his seat just ahead of Mrs. Hunt and she could not follow the course of the ball. The man apparently tried to catch it.

“Then as Mrs. Hunt sat still the ball flattened the left side of her head with a blow on the left temple.”

Despite being dizzy, the paper said Hunt continued watching the game, “pluckily refusing medical attention.”

Hunt also refused to be taken out of the stands, telling her husband:

“I feel so hysterical that if I try to go out, I’m afraid I’ll create a scene.”

After the Athletics won 3 to 2 in 11 innings, Hunt remained in her seat for another hour, and when she finally returned home, the paper said she spent the next 24 hours ill in bed, and “the bump” remained on her head:

“What became of the ball? Oh, yes. Mrs. Hunt didn’t get it. The moment it fell from her head to the floor, a youth grabbed it.”

Gehrig on the Greatest “Team man, 1937

Dan Daniel of The New York World Telegram did his part to add to the Babe Ruth/ Lou Gehrig feud in February of 1937—just days after Ruth questioned Gehrig’s consecutive game streak, calling it “One of the worst mistake a ballplayer could make.”

Daniel visited with Gehrig in his New Rochelle home, and asked readers if their was a “War between” the two.

He said he asked Gehrig to name the all-time greatest player; Gehrig responded

“Honus Wagner the flying Dutchman…I say Wagner because there was a marvelous player who went along doing a grand job without any thought of himself. He was the team man of all time.”

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Gehrig

In addition to his snub of Ruth, Gehrig talked about his “greatest thrill” and the best pitcher he ever faced:

“’The greatest thrill of my baseball career?’ Gehrig furnished the reply without a moment’s hesitation. ‘It came when I hit that home run off Carl Hubbell in the third inning of the fourth game of the World Series last October…You don’t hit against very many pitchers like Hubbell in a lifetime and you don’t hit very many homers off the Hubbells in such situations.’ The Iron Horse continued.

“’But the greatest hurler I have seen was not Carl. My vote goes to Lefty Grove. When that bird was powdering them in at the top of his form, he was about as terrible a proposition for a hitter as you could imagine, even in a wild nightmare.’”

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Things I Learned on the way to Looking up Other Things–Quote Edition 2

22 Oct

More random quotes and observations that follow no theme or thread:

Cap Anson told The Chicago Daily News in 1904:

“I consider (Charles) Radbourn and John Clarkson the greatest pitchers I ever saw.  Buck Ewing was just about the best catcher that ever wore a mask.  He could catch, throw, bat and run and had a good head.”

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Cap Anson

After Frank Baker hit home runs off Christy Mathewson and Rube Marquard in the 1911 World Series, he told The Philadelphia American:

“There seems to be much speculation as to what sort of balls were thrown me when I made my home runs…Well, I hit them and I know what they were.  Matty threw me an inshoot, but what would have been an outshoot to a right handed batter, while the Rube threw a fast one between my shoulder and waist.

“Connie Mack told me when I went to the bat that I would not get a fast one, and he was right  I set myself and looked them over against Mathewson and when he tossed me that curve and I saw her starting to break, I busted her, that’s all.”

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Frank Baker

Thirty-four year old Bill Bernhard told The Cleveland News about seeing 38-year-old Cy Young in Hot Springs, Arkansas in spring of 1905:

“There is no use talking, there is only one Cy Young.  When the rest of us pitchers report in the spring, we act as if those alleged deceiving arms of ours were made of glass and humor them accordingly.  But not so with old Cy.  The very first day that Cy reached Hot Springs, a week or so ago, he cut loose as if he had been pitching all winter.  Great Scott, but he had speed to burn and the next day and the next it was just the same. And curve them? Well, you ought to have seen the old boy.”

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Cy Young

In 1915, The Chicago Daily News noted that Charles Comiskey “isn’t given to boosting players very often,” but that Catcher Ray Schalk was an exception:

“Schalk shows more life than any other player I have ever seen.  He is level headed and his thinking and natural ability stamp him as one of the greatest catchers in the world today, and he can claim equal distinction with the great and only Buck Ewing, considered in his day the peer of all backstops.

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Ray Schalk

Dave Landreth was a baseball promoter from Bristol, Pennsylvania who had a brief foray into professional baseball when he served as director of the Baltimore Terrapins in the Federal League.  He told a story to The Bristol Courier about Lew Richie—Richie was born in nearby Ambler, Pennsylvania, and pitched for Landreth in semi-pro leagues before making is pro debut in 1906 at age 22:

“Landreth hired Richie to pitch the morning game of a holiday twin bill for the county championship, and after winning and fanning 18 men, all for five dollars, Richie came back in the afternoon and insisted on hurling that game , too, for nothing.

“Somebody ‘kidded’  him about winning the morning game on a fluke, and Lew wanted to show them—and he did, winning that game as well.”

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Lew Richie

Tim Donahue had a reputation for being tough during his eight seasons in the major leagues.  The catcher told The Chicago Evening Post he had only encountered one man who made him back him down:

“I was never put down and out but once.  It was when I was playing semi-professional ball too, and was quite a young lad.  There was a big fellow named Sullivan on the other side and I tried to block him at the plate.  He swung on my jaw and I thought a load of bricks had dropped on my head.  I finally came to, but I didn’t block Sullivan any more.  That’s the only time I would ever clear out.”

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“It was Hard for me to get Used to Some of the Boneheads”

4 Oct

Most baseball writers and dozens of baseball figures caught the twenty greatest “fever” during 1911 and 1912.

After Frank Baker hit .375 with two home runs and five RBIs, leading the Philadelphia Athletics to their 1911 World Series victory over the New York Giants, Grantland Rice opined in The New York Mail:

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Frank Baker

“The twenty greatest ballplayers, picked exclusively for this column by John McGraw and the Giants—John Franklin Baker.”

The Washington Times said Germany Schaefer was asked to put his twenty greatest list together shortly after the end of his best season in 1911:

“Write ‘em out and send ‘em to me,’ the newspaperman suggested.

“Germany did.  The list read as follows: ‘Germany Schaefer, Germany Schaefer, Germany Schaefer, Germany Schaefer, Germany Schaefer, Germany Schaefer, Germany Schaefer, Germany Schaefer, Germany Schaefer, Germany Schaefer, Germany Schaefer, Germany Schaefer, Germany Schaefer, Germany Schaefer, Germany Schaefer, Germany Schaefer, Germany Schaefer, Germany Schaefer, Germany Schaefer, and Germany Schaefer.’”

Germany Schaefer

Schaefer

The Philadelphia Record asked Connie Mack for his twenty greatest list, Mack refused but told the paper “if his life depended on any game of ball,” he would start Chief Bender:

“Do you know, Bender has never yet failed me in a crisis?  Whenever there is a game that the fortunes of our club hinge on I’ve sent in the Chief and he has delivered every time.”

Billy Hamilton, who made a couple of the lists that circulated during 1911 and 1912, told The Boston Globe he was upset no one had named his former teammate Marty Bergen:

“Why, I can’t see how you can possibly leave him out…He and Buck Ewing were in a class by themselves among the men I have seen behind the bat.  I have never seen anything like that snap throw of Martin’s, with the ball always on the runner.”

Wild Bill Donovan then put Bergen on the list he chose for The Detroit News:

  • Ed Walsh
  • Jim Hughes
  • Christy Mathewson
  • Duke Farrell
  • Marty Bergen
  • Hal Chase
  • Fred Tenney
  • Napoleon Lajoie
  • Eddie Collins
  • Jimmy Collins
  • John McGraw
  • Hughie Jennings
  • Herman Long
  • Ty Cobb
  • Bill Lange
  • Ed Delahanty
  • Willie Keeler
  •  Fielder Jones
  • Fred Clarke
  • Bobby Wallace

Donovan told the paper of Ed Walsh:

“If Walsh were worked about once in four days, instead of being asked to go in three times a week as often is the case now, I believe that he would be unbeatable.”

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Ed Walsh

In lauding Farrell, his teammate in Brooklyn, Donovan took a swipe at many of the catchers he worked with during his career:

“The big Duke was a wonderfully heady man, and the only catcher who ever lived on whom it was impossible to work the hit and run game.  Any time Duke called for a waste ball, you could bet your next paycheck that the runner was going to go down.  After pitching to man of his intelligence it was hard for me to get used to some of the boneheads that I encountered later.”

One more list—attributed to several papers and sportswriters at the time—appeared first in The Pittsburgh Gazette-Times, and chronicled the “Twenty greatest blunders in baseball:”

20blunders

As the craze was dying down, The Chicago Tribune said Ted Sullivan, the man who I credited with discovering Charles Comiskey—and Comiskey’s favorite scout, would put together “a list of the twenty greatest baseball actuaries of all time were he not a bit doubtful about the other nineteen.”

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Things I Learned on the way to Looking Up Other Things #24

1 Aug

Pitching to Ruth

According to the International News Service, during a discussion before a game in 1919, Frank Baker was talking to his Yankees teammates about “the days when batters demanded the sort of delivery they could hit best.”

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Babe Ruth

The players agreed:

“If that rule were in force in the present day the outfielders would have to be mounted on motorcycles, and Muddy Ruel said that the playing field would have to be as big as the parade grounds at old Camp Pike, where he was at officers training camp.

Just imagine Babe Ruth coming up with the bases filled and a hit needed if he had the privilege of demanding a fastball waist high.  The question of how to pitch to him under such conditions was placed in open discussion.  Ping Bodie solved it.  ‘I’d get back on second base, throw the ball and then duck,’ said Ping.”

Negotiating with Murphy

When it was first rumored that Fred Mitchell would step down as president of the Chicago Cubs in the summer of 1919, there was speculation that Charles Webb Murphy might return to the club as president (Bill Veeck Sr. was ultimately given the position)

Hearing word of Murphy’s possible return, Johnny Evers told The Sporting News what it was like to negotiate a contract with Murphy after the team’s back to back World Series wins in 1907 and 1908:

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Charles Webb Murphy

“We had made lots of money for the Cubs and certainly expected owner Murphy to give us a big boost in salary.  I received my contract, gave it the once over and returned it to C.W. with the curt reply that I thought I deserved more money for my labors.

“It was not a big salary,  In fact, the sum mentioned was so small that if I were to tell you the amount it would shock you.  Mr. Murphy was shrewd enough to get around my request for a raise.  His reply was to the effect that I might deserve more money, but should be satisfied to work for the amount he mentioned in view of the fact that I had such wonderful stars to help me as Frank Chance on my left and Joe Tinker on my right.

“Joe Tinker also protested against the figures mentioned in his contract that year and the crafty Mr. Murphy’s reply to him was that he should be satisfied to play for almost anything since he was teamed up with such stars as (Harry) Steinfeldt on his right, Evers on his left and Frank Chance at first base.  There was no way to get around an argument like that, and when the season opened Tinker and I were playing at the original figures offered by chubby Charley.”

Arguing with Browning

The Louisville Courier-Journal recalled in 1908 an incident “When Pete Browning played with the Louisville club.”

Browning, said the paper, was “no prize beauty…still he was sensitive regarding his un-Apollo like appearance and would get angry in a moment if any allusion was made to his lack of pulchritude.”

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Pete Browning

During a game in Cincinnati, umpire John Gaffney called Browning out on strikes.

 “The big fellow rushed up the umpire roaring like a toreador stuck bull.  But John Gaffney was afraid of no living man, and he ruled the field with a rod of iron, but he was also a reasonable man and would explain his decisions.  However, Pete would listen to no explanations.  Finally, Gaffney became angry, and walking up to Browning, he shook his finger in his face and said:

“’I would like to have a photograph of your face, Browning.’

“’And for why,’ shot back Pete, who was taken wholly by surprise, and began to color up when allusion was made to his face.

“’Why, I have a chicken farm back home,’ said Gaffney, ‘and I would like to put your picture in the coop so as to frighten eggs out of the hens.’”

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“The Draft is Worrying the Baseball Players a lot.” 

28 Jun

John Brinsley “J.B.” Sheridan of The St. Louis Globe-Democrat said the war in Europe was on every ballplayer’s mind in the summer of 1917:

“The draft is worrying the baseball players a lot.  They do not want, as a whole, to go into the army. Not that they are afraid.  Not at all.  But every baseball player knows that one month’s absence from the game is very liable to end his playing career.  A baseball player must keep training all the time, never miss a day if he can, or get out of the game.”

Cardinals’ pitcher Bill Doak agreed:

“Ballplayers are all fearful of the draft, not because they are cowards or do not want to serve their country, but because they feel if they miss one week of training or play, catch cold, are stiffened up or even slightly wounded they are done as athletes.

“I may say that ballplayers do not worry about death or wounds.  If they are taken into the army and miss one month of spring practice they are practically done.  What may happen thereafter won’t worry them much.  They will know they are through with baseball when they miss training in March 1918.”

 

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Bill Doak

 

Doak said when he had “salary differences” with the Cardinals in 1917, he was scared to miss any time with the team:

“I know that I was worried sick about missing training.  In fact, I was so much worried that I packed up and joined the team in Texas a few days after I got there, and took the chance of settling my differences with the manager afterwards.  I did not want to miss that spring training.”

Doak cited examples of players he had spoken to about missing time:

“Hans Wagner told me this summer that missing the spring training had slowed him up 30 percent…Frank Baker, the great slugger of the New York Yankees, missed training and daily play in 1915…Baker told me that the loss of training and regular daily play in 1915 had done him a great deal of harm and that when he missed training or regular season again he would quit for good.

“That is the way most ballplayers look at it.  They feel that if they miss a training season they are done.”

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Honus Wagner

Of his own training regimen, Doak said:

“For myself, I may say that I do not smoke or drink or stay up late and am always taking a little exercise, walking gymnasium work, etc…That won’t help any.  If you want to stay in baseball you must be in the game every minute of the season.  You must go out with the team in the spring, first day, and stick with the team until the last ball is pitched, hit and caught.”

Doak noted that given the small window of time for a ballplayer to earn a living as a professional, they were particularly vulnerable to the impact of military service:

“The young player of 25 or 26 is in a quandary under the draft.  He has spent seven or eight years fitting himself for the position he has, after tremendous effort, obtained.  He may reasonably expect three to seven years more of high salary.  Then comes the draft and he sees his profession swept away from him.

“The moment the ballplayer misses the training season or playing season or gets a cold in his arm or is slightly wounded it is all off with him.

“In other words, the ballplayer kisses his business goodbye when he misses March in the training camps.”

But he concluded:

“Of course, ballplayers owe more to the country than most other men.  They are a fortunate class, well paid, pampered, made much of, given many valuable opportunities.  They owe it to their country, to the game and to themselves to set a good example to the youth of the nation, which looks to them with admiration and respect.  The ballplayers will go.”

Doak, who claimed a dependent family exemption, and who was hampered by a bad back throughout his career, was not drafted during World War I.

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“Baseball will Never be a Science”

2 Sep

By 1912, Ed Remley of The Fort Worth Star-Telegram had had enough of talk of “scientific” and “inside” baseball, which he called a “Figment  of writers’ too active brains:”

“This ‘Inside baseball’ stuff and statistical dope that is being given so much space in the low-priced magazines, makes us tired.  Yesterday we read a story in which an attempt was made to prove that when ‘Good Night’ (Frank) Baker came to bat against (Christy) Mathewson (in game 3 of the 1911 World Series) the chances were 367 and 2/5 to 1 against his making a home run.  Once we read a story by (Hugh) Fullerton and Johnny Evers in which those gentlemen attempted to prove that there were just three places, six inches each in width, where a ground hit ball could pass safely through the infield.

"Touching Second," Evers' and Fullerton's collaboration on "Inside Baseball."

“Touching Second,” Evers’ and Fullerton’s collaboration on “Inside Baseball.”

“This line of bunk listens well to the public who attend all their baseball games through the newspapers—we sometimes think they are a majority of the fans—but to the close follower of the game they look like far-fetched attempts to make a story where no story is.  Some of this stuff is so thin that even a schoolboy athlete will snort when he reads, but the magazine editors but it up and illustrate it with cuts borrowed from the sporting page.”

Fullerton

Fullerton

Remley said it wasn’t about baseball, but selling magazines:

“Five years ago about one baseball story in three years drifted into the covers of the big 10-cent monthlies.  Now scarce an issue of any of the popular ones is without its baseball yarn of some character.  It can betoken one of two things, either there is  a stronger interest in baseball  or else the magazine editors are just beginning to wake  up and see its possibilities as a feature.

“If baseball has become a magazine subject because of a natural public demand for that species of pabulum, well and good, and the more of it the public gets the better…On the other hand, if this writing all around the subject of baseball is a result of an exaggerated view of its value on the part of the editors it is going to do the game no good, for the public will soon tire of that kind of hysteria just as it does of anything else that is boomed too much—towns, religions, etc…”

The emphasis on statistics bothered Remley more than anything:

“Meanwhile the fact remains that you can’t reduce the game to figures.  Not even the most skillful statistician can make out the story of a game from the box score.  The figures are an interesting commentary, sometimes, but the real story of baseball will not fit within the box.

“Analyzing the factors which go up to make a successful baseball team, the following ratio is discovered: physical fitness, 20 percent; skill, 60 percent; chance, 20 percent.  That’s mere opinion, too, for the exact ratio never can be determined, but it is evident that some such ratio must obtain.  It is the existence of this large percent of chance in baseball which makes it impossible to reduce the probabilities of the game to figures.  By tossing a dime in the air 2000 times it will be discovered the coin will fall heads up approximately half the time.  Just so, by taking a large enough number of cases generalizations may be arrived at in baseball, but when the attempt is made to apply these generalizations to concrete  cases, the theory falls down. “

Remley concluded:

Baseball will never be a science, therefore, and the attempts to make it appear so are bound to be discredited sooner or later.  It is about time for the magazines to can this statistical dope from their pages.”

The following year, Remley left Fort Worth and joined the staff of The Chicago Inter-Ocean.  Tne Inter-Ocean and The Chicago Record-Herald were consolidated into The Chicago Herald in 1914, and Remley for a time–until his death from pneumonia in 1915–became a co-worker of Hugh Fullerton, whose “inside baseball” he so abhorred.

 

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Lost Advertisements–“Come on, Boys!”

10 Jun

holmes

A 1916 advertisement for Holmes’ Milk-Made Bread featuring Walter Johnson.

“Come on, Boys!

“Get a Baseball Outfit for the whole team, Free!

“In order to promote the wholesome habit of eating Holmes’ Milk-Made Bread among the baseball Fans of Washington we have introduced a Great Baseball Outfit Contest.”

In order to win the contest, all 200 of the cards (one in each 10 cent loaf) would have to be collected and returned to the company.

The first prize was a complete set of 10 uniforms, second prize was 10 gloves, third prize was a complete set of catcher’s gear, and fourth prize was a framed sheet of the 200 cards.

The company encouraged kids to:

“Get busy–go around your home folks and friends, and tell them to buy Holmes’ Milk-Made Wrapped Bread every day and save the baseball pictures for you .  With a little hustling on your part, you will soon get the complete collection of pictures and cop out one of the prizes.”

Another ad included pictures of some of the cards–Hughie Jennings, Frank Baker, Johnson, Honus Wagner and Eddie Collins:

holmes'bread

There is no evidence that anyone actually collected 200 cards and won any of the prizes.

The Jim Thorpe card from the set

The Jim Thorpe card from the set

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