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.
In 1925, Frank Menke said in his King Features syndicated column:
“Rube Waddell sleeps his last long sleep, but the memory of him shall last through all the baseball years.”
Menke said Waddell was, “possessed of the mightiest arm the game has ever known,” but was, “handicapped by a brain eccentric to an extreme.”
Rube
Borrowing a phrase from Billy Murphy, the sports editor of The St. Louis Star, Menke called Waddell, “The Peter Pan of the National Game.”
Fred Clarke, Waddell’s first major league manager, told Menke his version of the story of the pitcher’s arrival in Washington D.C. to join the Louisville Colonels in August of 1897:
“’I climbed into bed about midnight, all in,’ related Clarke, ‘I was awakened out of sleep by a heavy pounding on my door. Striking a match, I looked at my watch and found it was 3:30 a.m.’
“’Who is it?’ I growled.’
“’Open up, it’s a friend,’ said a voice outside.
“’I opened the door—and a big, lanky fellow rushed at me, hand extended, and with a wide grin on his face.
‘’Hello, Freddie; hello, Freddie,’ he chuckled, ‘How are you old boy, how are you? Let me have $2 will you?
“’Doesn’t seem as if we’ve ever met before, ‘I said. ‘Would you mind telling me who you are.’”
“’Why, I’m your new pitcher—Rube Waddell; I’m surprised you don’t know me. Just got in town and I need $2.’
Clarke said he told Waddell he didn’t have the money, but “it is customary in the big leagues for a new player to visit all the older players on the team as soon as he arrives,” and sent Waddell to bother his new teammates.
Clarke said he “ducked my players” the next morning at breakfast because:
“(E)veryone had been visited by the Rube during the night and those fellows were intent upon murdering the man who had sicced the Rube onto them.”
Waddell appeared in just two games for Louisville in 1897 but returned to Clarke and the club in 1899 and then spent 1900 and part of the 1901 season playing for Clarke in Pittsburgh. Clarke told Menke that no player had ever caused him, “one tenth the trouble” that Waddell had:
“But some way, somehow, no matter what he did, it wasn’t possible to be mad at him for long.”
Clarke said Waddell, “wrecked the morale of my clubs to such an extent that I finally decided to get rid of him.”
The Pirates sold the pitcher’s contract to Chicago in May of 191, but Clarke said the Orphans were not the first club with which they had a deal for the sale:
“I sold him to Boston. The Boston club asked me to sign up Rube for them. The lefthander had been getting $1200 from us, Boston was willing to pay him more.”
Clarke said he presented Waddell with a $1500 contract:
“’No, I won’t do that,’ said Rube, ‘I’d rather play for you for $1200. I don’t want to go to Boston.”
Clarke said the offer was increased three times, to $1800, $2100, and finally $2400 but Waddell said:
“No, Freddie, I’d rather play for you for $1200.”
Clarke said:
“He flatly refused to go there, so the Boston deal was cancelled and a short time later we shipped Rube along to Chicago, which was a town he liked.”
Waddell was sent to Chicago in the midst of a eight game back to back home and road series between the two clubs—Waddell lost the first game of the game of the series pitching for Chicago and lost the fifth as a member of the Pirates.
Clarke said during that series Chicago manager Tom Loftus threatened Rube with a $25 if he ever fraternized with members of the opposing club on the field, and then told a story—the facts of which don’t square with any game played between the two clubs that season, but fits the pattern of the classic Rube Waddell story:
“When we made our next trip to Chicago we were fighting for a position near the top and every game counted. Chicago sent Rube in against us and he was pitching air-tight baseball. All during the game we tried in one way of another to talk to him, but Rube, remembering about the possible $25 fine, wouldn’t even look at us in a friendly way.
“Coming in from the field after the eighth, with the score 5 to 1 against us, I passed alongside Rube and said in a stage whisper:
“’Say, Honus Wagner, Sam Leever, and myself are going hunting for quail near your old town of Butler in the fall and when we do, we’ll let you know Rube, because we want you to come along with.’
The distraction worked. Clarke said:
“It is a matter of history we made six runs off Rube in that inning and won the game.”
In fact, Waddell lost three time to the Pirates in 1901—the 4 to 2 loss the day after Chicago acquired him, 6 to 1 on June 2 (Leever got the win), and 5 to 1 on August 11, but none of games match Clarke’s “matter of history.”
Incidentally, Waddell almost didn’t appear in the August 11 game. He was scheduled to pitch the day before—the game was rained out—but right before it was, The Chicago Tribune said he was detained by the police for some old debts incurred in Pittsburgh:
“After dodging constables for three days to avoid service, Manager Loftus was glad when two of the minions corralled Rube.”
Waddell told his manager he could “settle with them for $21.” Loftus paid the debt, and he was able to take the mound the following day.
Edward F. Ballinger of The Pittsburgh Post described Bill Byron thusly:
“(He) is looked upon among the players as the man who rendered more peculiar decisions than any other official in diamond history.”
Honus Wagner singled out Byron for rendering “the worst decision I ever saw.”
Wagner included the incident in his 1924 series of articles about his career for The North American Newspaper Alliance. He said he was stealing third in a game against the Giants:
“The catcher threw the ball into my feet making it impossible for Devlin—I think it was Devlin— [Note: It was Milt Stock] to pick it up. We both got in a tangle as I slid through a cloud of dust. The ball was bound under my arm where nobody could find it.”
Byron
While the Giants looked for the ball, Wagner headed towards the plate:
“About ten feet from home the ball dropped on the baseline. Now here’s where McGraw got in his fine work. He rushed up to umpire Byron, who had run down to third base to make the decision and told him I carried the ball to the bench in my hand.
“’If you don’t believe it, go to the bench and make them give it to you,’ he urged Byron.
“About this time McGraw’s attention was called to the ball lying on the base path.”
McGraw then told Byron, “That proves it. See! Wagner just rolled it out.”
Wagner said a confused Byron called him out for, “Carrying the ball to the bench with your hand.”
Wagner’s recollection was a bit faulty, in addition to forgetting who was playing third base. The incident happened on July 17, 1914, during the sixth inning of what would turn out to be a 21-inning 3 to 1 victory for the Giants. The game was, to that point, baseball’s longest game and both pitchers, Babe Adams and Rube Marquard pitched complete games.
As for the play, Wagner was not attempting to steal; he was advancing to third from first on a hit by Jim Viox and the throw came from center fielder Bob Bescher.
Contemporaneous accounts in The Pittsburgh Press, The Dispatch, and The Post all said that when the ball fell from Wagner’s uniform, it was immediately picked up by Marquard who threw to third trying to retire Viox who was called safe, rather than Wagner’s version where McGraw called Byron’s attention to the ball.
McGraw, said The Press, came out on the field at that point, “and told Byron Wagner was out.” The umpire agreed and also sent Viox back to second The Post said:
“The Pirates gathered around the umpire and raised a hubbub. (Fred) Clarke read the riot act and was motioned off the lot by umpire Byron.”
Pittsburgh protested the game, but Byron’s ruling was upheld.
Fred Mitchell, manager of the Cubs, was also not a Byron fan, and told Billy Evans in 1920:
“He hasn’t improved much since the summer (1917) he gave a decision that cost me $100 and the game. We were playing in St. Louis and big Mule (Milt) Watson was on the rubber. Art Wilson was at the plate. Watson, as he started to pitch, stubbed his toe and in trying to hold back on the ball threw it wildly and hit Wilson in the back of the neck. Byron would not let him take his base, saying it was a slow ball. I protested and consequently was chased and later fined $100.”
Mitchell’s details of the September 3 game were all correct, except for the outcome of the game. The Cubs beat the Cardinals and Watson 6 to 5. Mitchell had also, “had a mix-up” with Byron the previous day, according to The Chicago Tribune, when the umpire had initially called Tom Long of St. Louis out on a play at the plate, “then called him safe, although (catcher Rowdy) Elliott held the ball.”
Cardinals owner John C. Jones held the same opinion Mitchell did off Byron. Earlier that same season, Byron made another questionable call on another play involving Tom Long. The Cardinals outfielder hit a ball off Eppa Rixey that appeared to be fair for a double. Byron, despite “the fact that a gap in the whitewash marked the spot,” where the ball hit called it foul.
Long was called out on strikes on the next pitch The Cardinals lost 3 to 2 to the Phillies.
So incensed was Jones at the umpire, whom The St. Louis Star called, “a good plumber’s helper but an inferior umpire,” that he wrote an open letter to fans that appeared in St. Louis papers. He told fans who were present, “The good of the game demands,” that they wire league president John Tener about “Byron’s judgment.”
Jones’ message resulted in bottles and other items being thrown at Byron the following day. Two fans were injured. Cardinal President Branch Rickey disavowed Jones’ comments:
“I strongly advised against it. In fact, both (manager) Miller Huggins and myself wired President Tener that the message did not officially express the club’s sentiments.”
Despite his comment that he did not support the club owners’ position, Rickey was more critical of the umpire in his telegram to Tener than Jones had been in his message to the fans:
“(His) attitude and manners generally were extremely antagonistic to the crowd…If Byron will keep his face to the filed and not parade about in front of the stands, he will have no trouble.”
The previous season, Byron “wrote” an article for The Pittsburgh Press. He said he became an umpire in 1896 only because he couldn’t find enough work in his “first love, steamfitting.” Over two decades he worked his way from the Michigan State League to the National League.
Before steamfitting and umpiring, Byron had briefly played minor league ball:
“As for myself, I am frank to admit that I was the worst ball player that ever broke into the Texas League. I managed to hold my job with the Dallas club for a while, but the race was too fast. It nearly ruined a good steamfitter. Afterward I played semi-professional ball occasionally in Michigan but gave up the game—and what was baseball’s loss was the plumbing trade’s game.”
After four seasons in the Michigan State League, he worked his way up to South Atlantic League, then the Virgina League, followed by International League and finally the Eastern League before his big-league career began.
He became well known—and versions of the story were told for the next two decades—for a call he made on August 31, 1909. In an Eastern League pitchers duel between the second place Newark Indians, with manager Joe McGinnity on the mound and Big Jeff Pfeffer pitching for the fourth place Toronto Maple Leafs.
The game was scoreless in the sixth inning with Newark batting:
The Detroit News said:
“Two were out and the batter (Joe Crisp) raised a high foul within the easy reach of both the Toronto catcher and third baseman.”
Toronto Third baseman Jimmy Frick and catcher Fred Mitchell both stopped when Newark “coacher” Benny Meyer yelled “I’ll take it.”
“The catcher backed away and the ball fell on the Dominion of Canada. Great glee broke out among the Newark contingent, who seemed apparently to conclude that the strategy of the coacher had won the batsman another chance to connect. But they reckoned without Mr. Byron.
“’Batter out!’ yelled the ump.”
McGinnity and “his entire team” came out on the field.:
Byron told the Newark manager:
“’He’s out on interference.’
“This set McGinnity fairly crazy and he frothed at the mouth, ‘But there wasn’t a man within 10 feet of Mitchell when he backed away,’ he screamed.
‘”He’s out on vocal interference; get into the field and finish the game.’ And Byron pulled his watch.”
Pfeffer and McGinnity both went the distance in a 13-inning game won by Toronto 1 to 0. McGinnity filed a protest with the league, but Byron’s decision was upheld.
Byron said the “secret of umpiring” was that “The umpire must keep his head and let the other man lose his.”
The umpire retired before the 1920 season saying he could make more money at his first love. Evans said of his seven seasons in the National League:
“Like the rest of the umpires, he had his faults. No umpire is infallible, so Bill made mistakes like the rest of us, but they were always honest mistakes.”
He said Byron “always looked trouble in the eye,” and “no gamer fellow” ever wore a mask.
Despite his contentious relationship with McGraw, Evans told a story about a game in New York. The previous day while making a ruling on a play involving fan interference, “the umpires were criticized” by reporters for their long deliberation. The following day:
“At an amusement park near the Polo Grounds, it was customary for an aviator to do a series of stunts. Usually the aviator paid the Polo Grounds a visit before landing. On this occasion, he flew unusually low over the grounds, so that it was easily possible to see him greet the big crowd with a wave of the hand. Evidently Bill Byron had given some thought of the criticism of the day previous unjustly heaped on the arbitrators for what was called a needless delay.
“Calling time and turning toward the New York bench, he addressed manager McGraw of the Giants thusly.
“If the ball hits the airplane, John, while it is flying over fair territory, it is good for two bases. If it lands in some part of the machine and stays there while flying over fait territory, the runners shall stop at the base last touched when such thing occurs. If the ball lands in some part of the machine while the machine is outside playing territory, it will be good for a home run. Play.”
Evans said McGraw “was shaking with laughter.
The press box was as well:
“Byron’s retort courteous to their slam had not gone over their heads.”
L. C. Davis of The St. Louis Post-Dispatch said of Byron’s retirement:
“It will always be a moot question whether Lord Byron was greater as a singer or an umpire. But whether singing or umpiring the fans agree that he displayed all the earmarks of a good plumber.”
“The whole secret of winning is contained in those two words.”
So said Pittsburgh Pirates manager Fred Clarke, as part of a series of syndicated articles which asked some of baseball’s biggest stars to talk about “How I Win,” Joseph B. Bowles, a Chicago journalist, interviewed Clarke before the 1910 season.
Clarke
Clarke said:
“There is less difference between the ability of players to perform than most persons think. The great difference is in their courage, nerve and determination to win.
“I believe in hitting and in hitting to help the team, for after all the work of the individual player is not worth much unless he directs every effort to helping the other players on the club. The thing that makes (Honus) Wagner the greatest hitter in the world is his willingness to help baserunners, combined with his ability to help them. He is the best man playing the hit and run game, either on the bases or when at bat, in the world, and his willingness to spoil his own record to win for the team shows the difference between him and some others.”
Clarke told Bowles that style of play is how his team won the 1909 World Series and “is the way every winning team I ever have played with or against has won.”
A team was like a machine, he said, and “One might as well throw a wrench into the engine as to put a discordant player into a good club.”
Clarke addressed “much talk” of the importance of intelligence players:
“Of course, a player must have intelligence and be able to think and remember, but I think the greater part of baseball ‘brains’ consists of close attention to the game every instant, and both on and off the field. The worst mistakes made by players are not those that come from lack of brains so much as from lack of attention to what his own team or members of the other team are doing or trying to do.”
As for his managerial style:
“My players think I am something of a crank on discipline, and on keeping in condition. Perhaps that is so. I believe in careful training in the spring, and still more careful training and conditioning during the entire season.
‘The modern player must study himself if he is to succeed and continue to succeed. He must know his own condition and avoid either growing stale or indulging himself too much either in eating or drinking. I think cigarettes are the worst things possible for a player, both for his wind and for his eyes. If a player takes a drink of ale or beer, he ought to do it after a hard game, or when he feels himself in danger of going stale.”
Clarke with a different take on smoking, three years later
Finally, of what it takes to win; Clarke said:
“Also, a winning team ought to fight for every point; claim it and go after it; not rowdyism, but aggressiveness is the point. It makes the other side less confident and helps get an ‘even break’ which is all any team should ask.”
Clarke’s defending World Series champions slipped to an 86-67 record and third place finish in 1910.
J.G. Taylor Spinks said, “The names of Connie Mack and Rube Waddell are synonymous in baseball…It was Mack who was the first and the last to tolerate Rube, the one man who understood his foibles and frivolities.”
I
Mack
n 1942, Mack told The Sporting News editor about acquiring Waddell for the first time in 1900, after Waddell had been suspended by the Pittsburgh Pirates.
“I was managing Milwaukee in the newly formed American League…We were in a pennant fight with the Chicago White Stockings—now the Sox—managed by Charles Comiskey. I needed pitchers badly. I had a good club, except that I was weak in the box. I remembered the Rube—no one could forget him—after he shut out my club in Grand Rapids with two hits the year before.”
Mack said he knew Waddell was “hard to handle,” and did not get along with Pirates manager Fred Clarke:
“(B)ut I knew that Clarke was a bad disciplinarian and hot-headed to boot. I had an idea I might be able to handle the Rube.”
Mack said he traveled to Pittsburgh to meet with Pirates owner Barney Dreyfuss and asked, “if it was all right if I tried to get Rube.”
Dreyfuss consented and said, “We can’t do anything with him maybe you can.”
Mack called Waddell who was playing for a semi-pro team in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania:
“’Hello,’ he growled.
“’Hello, is this you, Rube?’ I asked.
“’Who in the hell are you?’ he roared.
“I knew I had made a mistake. I remembered I had heard he did not like the name Rube, so I started again.
“’Hello Eddie, how are you? This is Connie Mack of Milwaukee. I’d like to have you pitch for my club.’
“I’m satisfied here,’ he said.
“’I’ll give you good money. A great pitcher like you can win the pennant for me. You’d like it in Milwaukee, and the people will like you, too.’
“’No, I’ll stay here,’ Rube replied. ‘They like me here. They do everything for me, and I couldn’t let ‘em down. I’m not going to run out on ‘em.’ Then Waddell hung up the receiver.”
Rube
Mack said:
“I guess I should have spent my time talking about beer.”
He returned to Milwaukee but continued to send Waddell “a telegram every day and bombarded him with letters.”
Two weeks later, Mack received a wire:
“Come and get me.”
Mack said he traveled to Punxsutawney and met Waddell at his hotel:
“We went downstairs and had breakfast, and how he ate—four eggs, a stack of cakes, coffee and home-fried potatoes.”
Waddell told Mack he had “a few odds and ends” to take care of before they left for Milwaukee.
Mack said:
“’Wait until I get my hat,’ I was thinking I’d better not let him out of my sight.
“We walked down the main street and into a dry good store. ‘How much do I owe you?’ asked Rube. ‘Ten dollars and a quarter,’ said the owner and handed me the bill.
“I paid it. Rube then took me into a hardware store. ‘How much was that fishing rod, line and rest of the stuff I bought a month ago?’ ‘Twelve dollars and 35 cents,’ said the clerk. I paid that.”
Next said Mack, they stopped at a saloon to settle up a tab, then a dozen more stops at various businesses, finally arriving at the Adams Express Company:
“He owed $8 there. A friend had shipped him a dog C.O.D. I don’t know how he ever got the dog without paying for it.”
He told Waddell he was running out of money, but Rube assured him he only had one stop left—Mack paid $25 at “one of those three-ball places” to get Waddell’s watch back.
Mack told Spink he was concerned some local fans might be upset about losing the great pitcher, so he and Waddell stayed in the hotel room the rest of day and left 15 minutes before they were due to board the train for Milwaukee. When they arrived at the station:
“I saw a group of men coming up the platform—six or seven of them, big fellows, too. They stopped about 20 feet away and beckoned Rube.
“As rube left me, a fellow walked over. ‘You Connie Mack? He asked brusquely. ‘Yes,’ I replied. ‘Well, I want to shake your hand. My friends and myself have come down here to thank you. You are doing us a great favor. Waddell is a great pitcher, but we feel that Punxsutawney will be better off without him.’”
Mack and Waddell went to Milwaukee, and a trade was completed with Pittsburgh for a player to be named later (Bert Husting), with the stipulation that Mack would have to return Waddell to the Pirates before the end of the season, if requested.
Mack said of Waddell’s stay in Milwaukee:
“He became a sensation. He had everything—color, ability, and an innate sense of what to do. He made the fans laugh, he made them cheer.”
Waddell spent just more than a month in Milwaukee—he won ten games; two of which came on August 19. After beating Chicago 3 to 2 in 17 innings in the first game, Mack asked him to pitch the second game—Mack and Chicago captain Dick Padden had agreed the 2nd game would only be five innings so the Brewers could make their train:
“’Say, Eddie, how would you like to go fishing at Pewaukee for three days instead of going to Kansas City?’ I knew Pewaukee was Rube’s favorite spot. He cut loose with a big grin, ‘All you have to do is pitch the second game,’ I said. ‘Give me the ball,’ said Rube. He pitched the five innings and won by shutout.”
The Chicago Tribune said of Waddell’s performance that day:
“(H)is feat of pitching both games and allowing Comiskey’s men only two runs in the whole twenty-two innings captivated the fans so completely that he had the whole 10,000 of them rooting for him before it was over.”
The next day, Mack said he received a telegram from Dreyfuss requested that Waddell be returned to Pittsburgh.
Mack, in Kansas City, wired Waddell in Wisconsin to tell him he was going back:
“Rube wired right back, ‘I’ll quit baseball before I play for the Pirates again. Will join you in Indianapolis.”
Mack said he knew the move would cost him the pennant but “played fair with Dreyfuss.”
He wrote a letter to the Pittsburgh owner explaining the situation and suggesting someone be sent to Indianapolis to get the pitcher.
“Dreyfuss sent his veteran catcher, Chief Zimmer, and Zimmer came to me. ‘There’s only one way to get Rube to go back with you,’ I told him. ‘You have to take him out, buy him a suit of clothes, some shirts and some ties—even some fishing stuff if he wants it.
“Zimmer took the tip. Rube got a new suit—and I lost a pitcher who won ten and lost three and fanned 75 men in 15 games.”
Waddell’s time in Pittsburgh ended the following May when he was sold to the Chicago Orphans. Mack said:
“Clarke and Rube were unable to get along…they were in constant arguments.”
On the occasion of the sale of the land which once stood “the old major league ball grounds at Broadway and Twenty-Eight Street,” in Louisville, James Jerpe of The Pittsburgh Gazette-Times reminisced and Fred Clarke bringing “the foundation of those habitual tail-enders to Pittsburgh.”
Jerpe said:
“Louisville is proud of Fred Clarke-maybe prouder than Pittsburgh or Winfield, Kansas, or Madison County, Iowa, where he was born. It was in Louisville that he won his spurs as a player and showed the qualifications that made him a great leader.”
He said future Louisville residents of the homes built on the ballpark site, “may point with pride to the fact that on their home sites great men like Clarke and Honus Wagner reached their prime.”
Clarke
Twenty-one-year-old Clarke joined Louisville in June of 1894:
“They called him the freshest busher of the period. He had cost Barney Dreyfuss the munificent sum of $100. With him the little recruit brought a little red bat that was the butt of derisive jokes from veteran players.”
Jerpe said Clarke’s “little red bat” caught the attention of the opponents when he made his debut in a game with Philadelphia:
“’Why, kid, these pitchers will knock that toothpick out of your hands,’ exclaimed Billy Hamilton.”
Years later, Jerpe said Hamilton told Clarke:
“Do you remember how you got four hits in that game and then topped it off with a home run that made me run like mad to the clubhouse?”
Clarke—still so unfamiliar that The Louisville Courier Journal left the “e” off his last name—had five hits in his debut, but did not hit a home run as Hamilton recalled; he had four singles and a triple off Gus Weyhing, but the Colonels lost 13 to 6.
Three years later, Clarke, just 24, became manager of the Colonels; he told Jerpe about the wire he received from club president Harry Pulliam in June of 1897 informing him of the move:
“I didn’t know what to make of that telegram. I thought some of the other players had faked up a message to kid me. You know they always roasted me about being fresh and I thought that they wanted to get my goat. But I talked with several of them and found out that the message was on the level. A fellow named Rodgers [sic, Jim Rogers] had been acting in the capacity of manager. He advised me to accept the job. I was younger than any of the men playing regularly on the Pittsburgh club today, and I couldn’t hardly realize that Pulliam had picked me for a boss job.”
Jerpe said the Colonels under Clarke were “a rough and ready crowd,” and Clarke himself was “a tough nut.”
Clarke told him in 1912:
“You know they had the outfielders pegged as bad men, reckless base runners, vicious spikers and so on. But we were not as bad as they tried to paint us. Managers had a fashion of expecting the outfielders to run bases that way and to intimidate the infielders for the opposition. If one of their men spiked or bumped into one of our men the order always went out to get back at them. Of course, an outfielder was picked to bump the offending player on the other team because the outfielder covered no bases and therefore there would be no chance for them to come back at us again. If the third baseman on the opposing team blocked or bumped our shortstop the manager very promptly tipped his outfielders to get back at the third baseman.”
In 1912, Clarke also told Jerpe about the first time Honus Wagner worked out with his team; less than a month after Clarke became manager in 1897:
Wagner 1897
“We called him the luckiest, dumbest, and most awkward Dutchman we ever saw, but we later learned how badly mistaken we were. He was neither lucky, dumb, nor awkward.
“He played in most every position during his first few days at practice. I was one of the loudest shouters about his blind luck and awkwardness. The way he broke down his hits, fielded anything hit above him or around him and the way he handled himself in general had us all guessing. He stood awkwardly at the bat but hit like a fiend. He ran bases, it seemed, very awkwardly, but he got there. After watching him about two weeks I turned toward a fellow named O’Brien and said, ‘That Dutchman isn’t lucky. He is a wonder. He knows what he is doing, and he can do it better than any of us. I want to take it all back.’”
Wagner, Clarke said, fifteen years after his debut:
“(H)as never changed. He is playing ball the same way he played it during his first week with Louisville. He didn’t seem any more awkward then than he does now. So you fellows might take from this that it is not always the best policy to figure that your first impression of a young ball player is correct. It takes a couple weeks sometimes to see a real good man and often it takes much longer.”
The New York Herald lamented in August of 1897 about New York manager Bill Joyce:
Joyce
“Scrappy’s Giants are doing less sacrificing than any team in the major league. Mike Tiernan has but one sacrifice to his credit. Scrappy, like Ed Hanlon, regards sacrificing as a necessary evil—a last resort.”
The paper wanted him to follow the example of Fred Clarke:
“(T)he captain of the Colonels in a firm believer in sacrificing early in the game for one run, as well as late in the contest, when a tally is of more importance than at an early stage of the game.”
Joyce’s third-place Giants sacrificed just 45 times in 1897; Clarke’s 11th-place Colonels were fourth with 101.
Cy’s Arm
During spring training in 1905, Naps pitcher Bill Bernhard told The Cleveland News:
“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 deceiving arms of ours were made of glass and humor them accordingly. But not so with old Cy. The very day he 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.”
Young
That season, the 38-year-old Young was 18-19 with a 1.83 ERA for the Boston Americans.
Johnson’s “Destiny”
Grantland Rice’s lede in The New York Herald Tribune on the final game of the 1924 World Series:
Rice
“Destiny, waiting for the final curtain, stepped from the wings today and handed the king his crown.
“In the latest and most dramatic moment of baseball’s 60 years of history the wall-eyed goddess known as Fate decided that old ‘Barney’ had waited long enough for his diadem of gold and glory. So, after waiting 18 years, Walter Johnson found at last the pot of shining gold that waits at the end of the rainbow.
“For it was Johnson at last, the old Johnson brought back from other years with his blazing fastball singing across he plate for the last four rounds, who stopped the Giant attack from the ninth inning through the 12th and gave Washington’s fighting ballclub its World’s Series victory, 4 to 3.
Washington won just at the edge of darkness, and it was Johnson’s great right arm that turned the trick. As (Earl) McNeely doubled and (Muddy) Ruel galloped over the plate with the winning run in the last of the 12th, some 32,000 fans rushed upon the field with a roar of triumph never known before, as for more than 30 minutes, packed in one vast, serried mass around the bench, they paid Johnson and his mates a tribute that no one present will ever forget.”
Johnson
Rice’s account of the game was recognized as the best “major league baseball story of the year” by the Baseball Writers Association of America.
In the 19th Century, conversations about baseball in hotel lobbies
The Chicago Daily News shared one such discussion in 1896:
“’Who’s the greatest ballplayer that ever lived?’ Demanded the old ball crank of the gathering at the hotel. And there were, straightaway, almost as many opinions as there were gentlemen in the party.”
A man in town on business said:
“To my mind, Anson outranks them all. When you consider the wonderful grip which Anse has retained on the sport for all these twenty-five tears, when you take into consideration his qualifications as a player and as a man, his work as a leader and a general, the great batting he has always done every little point that can be recalled about both uncle and the game, I can’t see where any other player, living or dead, ranks with Anson.”
Anson
The paper said there were murmurs, then the night clerk weighed in:
“Mike Kelly was his ideal.
“‘Poor old Mike,’ said he, ‘had baseball genius and brilliancy to an extent never paralleled. He had the mind to originate, the ability to execute. He was, in the hearts of the masses, what John L. Sullivan was to pugilism. Remember the tricks he worked, the batting and the base running he did, and the way in which he filled every position—remember only his methods of play, if you will, and then see if any one can compare with poor dead King Kel!’
Kelly
The “theatrical man” in the group said:
“’Bill Lange is the best that ever came down the road. Who is there who does not like to see Lange play ball? What other player in the league, taking batting, base running and fielding into account, is as of as much value as Lange? What club would not eagerly give him the best position and the best salary it could command? Bill Lange is destined to leave a mark in baseball history as deep as that Mike Kelly made, and future generations will speak of him as they do of Kelly now.’”
Then the “Old baseball crank” spoke up:
“’To my mind gentlemen, the greatest player of them all was Charlie Ferguson of Philadelphia. There was a man who never realized how good he was. When it came to effective playing, in any position, Ferguson was the man who could step into the gap so well that the regular man would never be even missed. He could kill the ball, he was fast on the bases, and we all know he could pitch. And the head that Charlie Ferguson wore was as good a head as ever decorated any player’s shoulders. I saw hundreds of great players before Ferguson came, I have seen hundreds since he died, but I never to my mind at least, have seen his equal.’”
Ferguson
The assembled men said the paper, “remembered the time of Ferguson,” with “nods and mutterings of assent,” thinking of Ferguson’s four seasons in Philadelphia—he died just 12 days after his 25th birthday in 1888.
“Jim Hart, who ought to be a good judge of players, thinks Ferguson the greatest that the world has ever known. A canvass of ball cranks would probably show sentiments about equally divided between Ferguson and Mike Kelly.”
The paper concluded that there were, and would be, “few such popular idols” as Kelly and Ferguson:
“The increased batting has, queer as it may seem, done away with hero worship. In the old days hits were few and the man who could step up and kill the ball was a popular king. Nowadays the fact that nearly everybody is apt to hit takes away the individuality and accompanying romance of the great isolated sluggers.”
The paper said Lange was one of the few contemporary players who “comes as near being the subject of hero worship,” as players in previous years and that there were only players who had that impact in their own cities:
Lange
“(Jesse) Burkett might be worshipped in Cleveland for his grand batting, but is handicapped by morose, unsociable ways.
‘(Jimmy) McAleer’s fielding would make him an idol, but his batting is pitifully light. Baltimore’s great hero is Hughey Jennings, and the cranks treat him as though he owned the town. Brooklyn has no heroes. There is nobody on the Boston nine whom the crowd raves over, even Hugh Duffy having lost his grip.”
“Eddie Burke and Charlie (Dusty) Miller have great followings in Cincinnati. Louisville dotes on (Charlie) Dexter and Fred Clarke. New York is idolless. Philadelphia gives ovations to the whole team as a matter of principle but singles out no player. Pittsburgh is the same way. There is nobody at St. Louis or Washington whom the crowds adore.”
The Louisville Courier-Journal caught up with Colonels Captain John O’Brien “in a talkative mood” before the 1896 season, and the 29-year-old second baseman shared his philosophy on spring training:
“I don’t think all the men should be worked hard. Some of them are down to weight already. As for myself, I will work off about seven pounds and then I will be down to a good playing weight. I have looked over the players who have arrived in the city and find that most of them are already trained down.”
John O’Brien
O’Brien said Fred Clarke, Tom Morrison, and Herm McFarland “don’t look like they need a bit of training.”
O’Brien cautioned against “too much training,” and cited the example of William “Yale” Murphy, the Ivy League graduate who spent the two previous seasons with the New York Giants:
”He was trained down until he was a mere shadow and was so weak he could not play good ball.”
O’Brien said when Jack Doyle took over as manager of the Giants in June of 1895, he tried to undo the damage to Murphy:
“Doyle made him drink Bass Ale, and that was wonderfully strengthening. In fact, I think an occasional glass of beer after a hard day’s training helps a man wonderfully. Don’t understand me to mean by that I believe in ‘lushing.’ A player who drinks whiskey or who drinks so much beer that he can feel the effects of it, is no man for a ball team. I have tried a glass of beer after a game, when I was hot and worn out, and I tell you it did me good.”
Doyle’s plan appears to have not worked; Murphy who hit .272 as a rookie in 1894, ended the 1895 season with a .202 average, and the remainder of his major league career consisted of just eight hitless at bats in 1897.
Yale Murphy
O’Brien predicted big things for the Colonels:
“I believe we will have a winning team…I know there is good material in the team, not counting the new men. The newly signed players all look like ‘top-notchers.’ My private opinion of the outfield (expected to be Clarke, McFarland, and Ducky Holmes) is that it will prove to be the best in the League. There is no fear on that score. The pitching department seems good, and I know the backstops are strong.”
O’Brien was mistaken, the ’96 Colonels were even worse than they were the previous season. When O’Brien was traded to the Washington Senators on July 3, the team was 11-44, and finished the season 38-93.
O’Brien apparently got himself into shape, he was hitting .339 on the day of the trade, eight-five points above his career average; he hit just .267 after the trade.
In November of 1911, an interviewer asked industrialist Andrew Carnegie to name the 20 greatest men of all time. Within days, Carnegie’s list was parsed and picked apart, and led to what The Chicago Daily News called “The twenty greatest fever.”
Lists of the twenty greatest everything appeared in papers across the country for the next year. Of course, the question was put to many baseball figures and led to a number of interesting lists and quotes.
One of the first to weigh in was Chicago White Sox owner Charles Comiskey, in The Daily News:
Buck Ewing
King Kelly
Cap Anson
Charlie Ferguson
Fred Pfeffer
Eddie Collins
Honus Wagner
Jack Glasscock
Harry Lord
Ty Cobb
Fred Clarke
Willie Keeler
Tom McCarthy
Napoleon Lajoie
Charles Radbourn
Bobby Caruthers
Christy Mathewson
Clark Griffith
Ed Walsh
Charles Comiskey
Comiskey said Eddie Collins, who would acquire for $50,000 three years later, was the best current player:
“He’s got it on all the others in the game today. I don’t know that a good lawyer went to waste, but do know that a mighty good ballplayer was found when Eddie decided to give up the technicalities of Blackstone for the intricacies of baseball. There isn’t much use saying anything about Connie Mack’s star, everybody knows he is a wonder as well as I do.”
Cy Young was asked by The Cleveland News to name his 20 greatest:
“I guess we’d have to make a place for old Amos Rusie, ‘Kid’ Nichols should be placed on the list too, ‘Kid’ forgot more baseball than 90 percent of us ever knew. And there was Bill Hutchinson, just about one of the greatest that ever lived. You can’t overlook Walter Johnson, and, by all means Ed Walsh must be there. The same applies to Mathewson. Then comes my old side partner, Bill Dinneen. Bill never was given half enough credit.”
Amos Rusie
Young rounded out the battery:
“I’d pick old Lou Criger first of all the catchers. George Gibson of the Pittsburgh team, to my way of thinking, stands with the leaders. Give the third place to Oscar Stanage of Detroit, and I feel safe in saying that I have chosen a really great catcher.”
Young said:
“Doping out the infields is comparatively easy. Without hesitation I would name Hal Chase, Eddie Collins, Nap Lajoie, Hans Wagner, Bobby Wallace, Jimmy Collins, Herman Long, and Charlie Wagner.”
Young said of his infield choices:
“You can’t get away from Bobby Wallace for a general all round gentlemanly player, he has never had a superior at shortstop unless that man was Honus Wagner. Maybe Johnny Evers is entitles to consideration, but I never say him play.”
As for his outfielders, Young said:
“Ty Cobb’s equal never lived, according to my way of thinking, and I doubt if we will ever have his superior. Say what they will about Cobb, but one who is true to himself must acknowledge his right to rank above all other players.
“I chose Cobb, Fred Clarke of Pittsburgh, Tris Speaker of Boston and Bill Lange for the outfield, and regret that the limitations prevent me from choosing Jim McAleer. McAleer was the best fielder I have ever seen. I say that with all due respect to Cobb and other competitors.
“Tris Speaker is a marvel, and only because of his playing at the same time as Cobb is he deprived of the honor of being the greatest outfielder…Many fans of today probably don’t remember Bill Lange. Take my word for it, he was a marvel. He could field, bat, and run bases with wonderful skill. No man ever had the fade-away slide better than Lange.”
The reporter from The News noticed that Young had, “chosen his twenty greatest players without mentioning his own great deeds,” and asked Young whether her felt he belonged on the list. Young said:
“Oh, I’ve heard a whole lot of stuff about myself as a player, but I was but ordinary when compared to the men I name as the greatest in the game.”
Cy Young
When Ty Cobb presented his list of the 20 greatest current American League players to The Detroit News, the paper noted his “Very becoming modesty” in leaving himself off of his list. Cobb’s picks were:
Ed Walsh
Bill Donovan
Walter Johnson
Jack Coombs
Vean Gregg
George Mullin
Billy Sullivan
Oscar Stanage
Ira Thomas
Hal Chase
Napoleon Lajoie
Eddie Collins
Jack Berry
Owen Bush
Frank Baker
Harry Lord
Sam Crawford
Clyde Milan
Joe Jackson
Tris Speaker
Ty Cobb
Cobb included Bobby Wallace, Russ Ford, and Heinie Wagner as honorable mentions.
More of the lists and quotes from “The twenty greatest fever,” on Thursday
Baseball History Daily 