Tag Archives: Hack Wilson

Lost Advertisements: Ball Players Know

6 Mar

 

ballplayersknow

A 1929 Mail Pouch Tobacco advertisement featuring Bubbles Hargrave, Hack Wilson, and Goose Goslin

“Ball Players Know!”

“Any Mail Pouch chewer will tell you that here is one tobacco that does not cause indigestion or heartburn no matter how often you chew it”

Hargrave, who spent of his career in Cincinnati, settled in that city, owning a tavern for a time and was a frequent source for local reporters to reminisce about his career and opine on the current state of the game.  In 1956, he was asked by The Enquirer if the game had improved in the last 30 years. Hargrave said it had, for the most part, but pointed out that it could still be improved:

“There’s too much delay–too much changing of pitchers and running out to the mound every time a pitcher gets into a jam. I’d stop all consultation between pitcher and manager out on the rubber.

“When we were going to make a change, the manager announced to the umpire who was coming in to pitch and that was it, except for a short session between pitcher and catcher to make sure of the signs.

“In my years under Pat Moran he would ask me about a pitcher with, ‘How is he?’ If I replied, ‘Not so hot,’ he’s just pitch somebody else.”

 

 

 

 

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

9 Aug

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

munzel

Munzel

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

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

Wilson said:

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

Heilmann said:

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

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Heilmann

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

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

Heilmann, who played with and for Cobb, said:

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

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

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

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

cobb

Cobb

Heilmann also recalled a fight he participated in:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Wilson

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

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

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Lost Advertisements: Hack Wilson for Mail Pouch

3 Aug

hack

A 1930 advertisement or Mail Pouch Tobacco featuring Lewis “Hack” Wilson of the Chicago Cubs:

“The fellow that invented Mail Pouch sure knew what he was doing.”

Wilson was broke four months before his death (in 1948, at age 48). In an effort to help him, he was promoted by the city of Baltimore from laborer to swimming pool manager; he told a reporter from the Associated Press:

“I guess getting back into baseball is all I think about now, but so far I haven’t had much success. I’ve written to almost all the important men I know, but the answer is always the same—‘sorry, we’re all filled up.'”

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Wilson talks with Baltimore children at the municipal pool he managed, July 1948

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“There’s one thing you mustn’t do when you get to New York”

26 Oct

“Sinister Dick” Kinsella is primarily known as John McGraw’s equally pugnacious right-hand man and scout.  He was at McGraw’s side for one of the manager’s most famous brawls; a battle with Giants catcher Larry McLean in the lobby of the Buckingham Hotel in St. Louis, he also boasted an impressive list of “finds” including Carl Hubbell, Chief Meyers, Hack Wilson and Larry Doyle.

"Sinister Dick" Kinsella

              “Sinister Dick” Kinsella

Kinsella credited a career minor league player and manager for his discovery of Doyle, who he sold to the New York Giants in July of 1907.  After Doyle hit .310 in 1911, a syndicated Newspaper Enterprise Association told the story of how he acquired Doyle after the 1906 season from the Mattoon Canaries of the Kitty League, having never seen him play:

“Mattoon was in need of a pitcher and appealed to President Dick Kinsella of the Springfield Three-Eye League team for aid…Kinsella saw a chance to make a bargain when Mattoon hoisted the distress sign and struck one.  ‘I’ll let you have a pitcher for the pick of your team at the end of the season,’ Kinsella told the Mattoon people.  His offer was accepted and pitcher (John) Jokerst was sent  to the Kitty League team by Springfield.

“Doyle didn’t do well with Mattoon (.225 in 91 games) that season.  Kinsella had not even considered him in deciding what player to pick.  He had almost made up his mind to take a veteran pitcher.”

Fate intervened when Kinsella mentioned the Mattoon deal to Frank Belt, manager of the Kitty League’s Jacksonville Jacks.  Belt asked Kinsella if he had ever seen Doyle:

“’No,’ answered Kinsella.

‘”Well, don’t pick anyone until you do, and then pick him.  He’s the coming ballplayer of that club.  He hasn’t looked good in the box scores, but he’s ‘there’ any way you take him.  He’ll bring you more money inside of a year than you ever got for a player.”

Larry Doyle

                  Larry Doyle

Sight unseen, Kinsella took Belt’s advice.  Doyle played third base and hit .290 in 66 games for Kinsella’s Springfield Senators.  He became the subject of a bidding war with the Giants winning out over the Detroit Tigers and Washington Senators for his services on July 16.

Kinsella was paid a then-record $4500 for Doyle—a record eclipsed the following year when Kinsella sold Rube Marquard to the Giants for $11,000.

The $4500 check to Kinsella for the sale of Doyle

                              The $4500 check to Kinsella for the sale of Doyle

According to The Springfield Journal Kinsella sent Doyle off to New York with just one piece of advice:

“There’s one thing you mustn’t do when you get to New York.  You must quit sliding to bases on your head.  If you don’t, they will think you’re from the brush.”

Doyle was moved to second base, hit .290 over a 14-year big league career, and presumably took Kinsella’s advice about sliding head first.

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