Tag Archives: Henry Chadwick

Chadwick’s Changes

14 May

Before the 1895 season, Henry Chadwick proposed “eight changes” to baseball in The New York Clipper:

“First: The doing away with ‘hoodlumism,’ as shown in the form of dirty ball playing and blackguard bickering.

“Second: Abolishing the bullying coaching business.

“Third: Prohibiting the wearing of the large mittens by any player on the field except the catcher.

“Fourth: A rewording of the balk rule so as to prohibit the feint to throw to the bases. At present the rule, in this respect is a dead letter.”

His frustration with balks not being called, was a regular subject for Chadwick That same season, he wrote in a different column:

“It will be seen, too, that, whenever the pitcher ‘feigns’ to throw the ball to first base he must do it while standing with ‘both feet on the ground.’ If he raises one foot in making the feint he commits a balk. Has anyone seen a balk called by any umpire when the pitcher has openly violated the rule by raising his foot and taking a sidestep to throw to a base?…The balk rule is more plainly written that many other rules in the game, and yet umpires make it a dead-letter law.”

Chadwick

Chadwick continued

“Fifth: The overrunning of all the bases, as recommended by George Wright at the convention of 1869.”

The “Spalding Guide,” edited by Chadwick, said that Wright had only proposed the rule that was adopted—overrunning first base–but that, “When the amendment was presented at the convention of 1869, (another) delegate wanted the rule applied to all bases, but the majority preferred to test the experiment as proposed at first base.”

The Guide did, however, during Chadwick’s tenure as editor, advocate for the overrunning of all bases:

“The most irritating disputes caused by questions involved in sliding to bases and in running up against base players are also due to the same cause. Why not put a stop to these injuries and these disputes by giving the base runner the same privileges in overrunning second (and) third…that he now has in overrunning first base? In every way will the adoption of the rule suggested be an improvement, and not the least of its advantages will be its gain to base running, which is, next to fielding, the most attractive feature of our game.”

His final three:

“Sixth: I would neither increase nor decrease the distance between the pitcher’s box and the home plate.

“Seventh: In regard to the ‘trap ball’ rule, I would make it applicable in every case wherein a batting base runner reaches first base unless by a clean base hit; but even then, only when the ‘force’ hit ball touches the hand of an infielder, not an outfielder. I think if a runner reaches first base by a clean base hit, it is not just that he shall be punished by an out incurred through the weak hitting of his successor at the bat, as he is under the rule of purposely dropping an infield fly ball.”

“Eighth: I think these catches on flytip balls sharp off the bat and fouled to the catcher and caught on the fly should be outs. Every such ball is generally over the plate and within due range.”

The “father of Baseball” had at least one supporter for his plan for “flytip balls,” to be outs regardless of the number of strikes on the batter. O.P. Caylor said in The New York Herald:

“Henry Chadwick thinks—and there is nothing wonderful about that, for he thinks correctly—that foil tips caught by the catcher right off the bat should be out.”

Tags: ,

“Keister was Bogus”

5 Apr

In March of 1901, second baseman Bill Keister jumped the St. Louis Cardinals for the Baltimore Orioles; St. Louis signed Dick Padden a week later to replace him.

Patsy Tebeau, who had managed the Cardinals to a 42-50 record before being let go in August, had no shortage of vitriol for his former player. He told The St. Louis Globe-Democrat:

“Padden has Keister beaten in every department of the game, and when it comes to ‘inside play’ the Baltimorean is entirely lost sight of.”

Keister had been purchased by the Cardinals with John McGraw and Wilbert Robinson before the 1900 season. The purchase of Keister had, said Tebeau, cost St. Louis “a good round chunk. And while not “Knocking any, it was illy spent.”

Tebeau

Then more knocking:

“Keister was bogus, a gold brick, a nonentity or what you will, and much of our ill-success in the early part of the race was due to his bobbling.”

Keister was not just bad, but historically bad, he said:

“If I live to be as old as Henry Chadwick, I never will forget a play Keister made in Philadelphia. We were playing a red-hot game with the Phillies, with a score of 2 to 1 in our favor along about the seventh inning. (Roy) Thomas and (Jimmy) Slagle both began by getting on base and (Ed) Delahanty sacrificed them along. (Napoleon) Lajoie followed with a stinging bounder straight at Keister. It came to him quick as a flash and on the first bound.  Fast as Thomas is, he was a goner at the plate had Billy slapped the ball home.

“But he didn’t, nor did he play it safe and shoot to (first baseman Dan) McGann. He balked for a moment and then slammed the sphere to the third corner. McGraw wasn’t within 15 feet of the sack but seeing the throw he ran over best he could. Biff came the ball, McGraw, and Slagle all in a heap.

“Slagle was safe, McGraw had his ankle turned, and the sphere kept on to the fence. All three runners scored, we were beaten, and McGraw, besides, was laid up for several weeks.”

Keister

Tebeau called it, “the worst play that was ever made by a professional.”

The play in question happened on May 25, and he got most of the details correct; except the score was 2 to 0 and it happened in the sixth inning. The Globe-Democrat described the play less dramatically the previous spring:

“Lajoie hit fast and high to Keister. The little second-sacker threw to McGraw at third, in an attempt to head off Slagle. The ball and runner reached ‘Muggsy’ at the same time. In the collision McGraw was spiked in the foot and the leather rolled to the fence, giving the Quakers their lone three runs in the contest.”

The St. Louis Post-Dispatch and The Republican both wrote that McGraw was on the bag awaiting Keister’s throw, contrary to Tebeau’s recollection.

All three papers agreed that McGraw was badly injured beyond having his “ankle turned.” In addition to the collision, the Cardinals captain was spiked in the foot. The Post-Dispatch said the game was delayed 10 minutes before McGraw returned to the field—he was removed from the game after the end of the inning. The Republic said his toe was “badly split” and that he, “dropped like a poppy cut down by a cane twirled in the hands of a careless stroller.”

With McGraw in and out of the lineup over the next several weeks, the Cardinals went from 3 ½ games back to 11 games back after a disastrous 5-15 June.

Tebeau held a grudge:

“I consider that Keister was a star in Oysterville in 1899, but out in Missouri, where the ‘fans’ have got to be shown, he was about the worst I ever saw.”

“The worst” Tebeau ever saw played three more seasons in the major leagues; Keister was playing outfield and hitting .320 for the Phillies in August of 1903 when he tore a ligament before the August 26 game in Brooklyn. He never played in the major leagues again but played eight more seasons in the minors.

Tebeau never managed in the big leagues again. He killed himself 18 years later; Louis Dougher of The Washington Times said Tebeau wrote in a suicide note:

“I am a very unhappy and miserable man.”

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

“It was not only Disgraceful, but Cowardly”

8 Feb

“Tuesday saw the finish of Norman Elberfeld as a Western League baseball player for this season, at least, and there is no one to blame but himself.”

“Kid” Elberfeld had just punched himself out of the league, said The Detroit Free Press.

Kid Elberfeld

The shortstop for the Detroit Tigers in the Western league, “The Tabasco Kid” was popular with fans but frequently at odds with umpires. The final straw in Detroit was August 1, 1899.

In the first inning, Elberfeld argued with umpire Jack Haskell after Haskell called Ollie Pickering safe at first, He continued to argue after being ejected:

“Elberfeld made a quick move and planted both right and left on Haskell’s face…at a time when Haskell was not looking and entirely unprepared for such action. It was not only disgraceful, but cowardly in the extreme as well.”

Just over a month earlier, The Free Press had chided Elberfeld after he “nearly precipitated a riot,” after umpire Jack Sheridan did not allow him take first base on a hit by pitch in the ninth inning with two runners one. Elberfeld then grounded out to end the game.”

Sheridan was confronted by “a few wild-eyed fanatics made a run in the direction” of the umpire who was escorted from the field.

The Detroit Journal said that Tigers owner George Vanderbeck told manager George Stallings “the next time (Elberfeld) kicks himself out of a game it will cost him $25. The hazarding of games through dirty play and rowdyism will do longer me tolerated.”

Henry Chadwick opined in his syndicated “Chadwick Chat” column:

“The manager in question should have started the season with this rule, and then he would have had no difficulty.”

Then, a week later, The Free Press reported, Elberfeld boasted that he would make trouble for the official, knowing the rooters would take his part,” after another ejection.

The paper called him “a fine ball player, a valuable man’ and “one of the hardest workers that ever appeared on any field,” but said his act was getting old in Detroit. “Clean baseball is what the public was given in the days of major league baseball in this city, and clean baseball is what they want now.”

And, “while no one is blamed but Elberfeld for the cowardly act…(if he had) been compelled, by the management, to hold his tongue and keep away from umpires from the opening of the season, he would still be playing ball.”

Elberfeld returned home to Ohio.

Harry Weldon of The Cincinnati Enquirer said, “the Kid expressed regret,” and suggested that the Reds purchase his contract “providing the suspension can be raised.”

Three weeks after the incident, Elberfeld was sold to the Reds for $2500:

The Free Press complained that the Kid “has really profited by the punishment if he is allowed to jump into the game at once,”

Elberfeld’s purchase was too much for Henry Chadwick. The Cincinnati Commercial Tribune said “the aged baseball authority” wrote a letter to Reds President John T. Brush. Chadwick asked Brush to explain how he could acquire Elberfeld after the attack; he also questioned why Brush had acquired players like Jack Taylor and Bill Hill (Hill was traded for Taylor after the 1898 season) given “their reputations.” Chadwick was concerned about those players as well as Danny Friend and Bad Bill Eagan, both of whom had been arrested for violent crimes.

Henry Chadwick

Chadwick asked Brush if “the employment of players of this caliber benefitted the game?”

Brush responded:

“You state that ‘Pitcher Friend was suspended for cutting a man with a knife, that Bad Bill Egan [sic Eagan] is just out of prison for attempting to cut his wife to death, also that Elberfeld…You say Taylor, of the Cincinnati team, and Hill, of the Brooklyn team, offer more samples of the neglect of character in engaging players for league teams.”

Brush said he had “nothing whatever” to do with Friend and Eagan.

He said the purchase of Elberfeld had been completed “sometime before” the incident and ‘the fact that he was suspended, laid off without pay for several weeks, ad fined $100, would be evidence that in his case proper action had been taken.”

Brush claimed Elberfeld regretted his actions, was not “an evil-minded ballplayer,” and that there were “extenuating circumstances” but did not disclose what those might have been.

John T. Brush

As for the other two players mentioned by Chadwick—both of whom spent time with the Reds—Brush said:

“Bill Hill was with the Reds one season. We let him go. That ended the responsibility of the Cincinnati Club. He was the only player on the Cincinnati team who violated the rule of 1898. He was fined twice, $25 each time, for disputing the decision of the umpire… Taylor had a bad reputation…He promised, so far as promises go, absolute reformation.

“Taylor’s contract allowed the Reds to hold back $600 of his salary, which was to be forfeited to the club in case he violated Section 6 of the league contract. He broke his pledge, he forfeited the temperance clause of his contract, was suspended for a month, and was restored as an act of justice or mercy to his wife, who was not in fault.”

In closing Brush told Chadwick:

“If you could point out to me a way which seems better or easier to travel, I would be very glad to have you do so, I get wrong on many things, no doubt, but it is not from preference.”

Elberfeld was injured for much of his time in Cincinnati, hit .261 and was returned to Detroit before the 1900 season. He made it back to the major leagues as a member of the Tigers in 1901. He remained in the big leagues for 12 seasons.

Elberfeld never lost his contentious nature as a player, or later as a long-time minor league manager.

Bozeman Bulger of The New York World said:

“To this day Elberfeld is just as rabid in his enmity to umpires as when he fought them in the big leagues. He got into several difficulties last year.”

Bulger said “he happened to be present” when Elberfeld and John McGraw were discussing umpires.

“’Kid,’ said the Giants manager, ‘it took me a long time, but I’ve learned that nobody can get anything by continually fighting those umpires. Why don’t you lay off them? It’s the only way.’

“’Maybe it is,’ said the Kid with finality. ‘But, Mac, I intend to fight ‘em as long as I live.”

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

“The Brilliant Ignoramus of The Sun.”

1 Feb

The New York Sun took up the issue of “Scientific batting” in 1884. The paper said:

“(O)f course scientific play at the bat is not to be learned in a day, as hard hitting can be. Take a muscular man and place him at the bat for the first time, and the chances are five to one that he will make a home run the first hit he makes. But the skill to face for position in batting and to place a ball is an art that requires practice, and no novice can get into it at a jump as he can in home-run hitting.”

The Chicago Tribune was having none of it and suggested that “Somebody—probably “old Chad,” Henry Chadwick—was writing a “column of foolishness on the subject of scientific batting.”

The Tribune wasn’t done, and said, “It is hard to believe that the person who wrote this ever saw a professional game of ball,” and set out to correct “the brilliant ignoramus of The Sun.”

A first-time batter, no matter how “muscular” facing “the delivery of (Larry) Corcoran or (Old Hoss) Radbourn,” could not “hit clean for four bases once in 200 ties trying.”

The paper cited “a friendly dispute” between Corcoran and Cap Anson.

 “Anson, who is considered to be the most skillful batsman in American as regards ability to control the direction of the ball when hit, and whose average of right-field hitting is probably greater than that of any right-hand batsman, asserted that if he chose, he could place the ball in the direction of the right field any time.”

Cap Anson

Corcoran bet Anson he couldn’t do it half the time and offered to bet. Anson refused the bet but said he would prove his point the next day against Stump Weidman of the Detroit Wolverines.

“Out of five times at bat Anson went out on a fly twice in left-center and once in right field, was once thrown out at first base by the second baseman, and once popped on an easy foul fly. The result of the special effort to ‘place the ball’ was that he made not a single clean hit in five times at bat.”

Over the next fifteen games the White Stockings played in Chicago, the paper said Anson had fourteen hits in 65 at bats for a .215 average; he had six hits to right, three to center, and five to left and of his 51 other at bats, three were fly balls to left field, and 13 were ground balls to the right side. The conclusion was that Anson’s hitting suffered when he made a “systematic effort” to hit to right.

The Tribune said the current “swift curve throwing” that batters faced forced batters to focus on having “the judgement and patience to wait for a good ball, the skill to get it on his bat, and the strength to hit it hard.” This differed from when the “old-fashioned straight-arm pitching was in vogue it was quite possible for a skillful batsman to govern in a measure both the direction and force of the ball.”

The paper concluded that “Hard, clean hitting is what is wanted, and, as a rule, direction is of far less consequence than force.”

Henry Chadwick

The “ignoramus of The Sun” did not respond.

Tags: , , , , ,

“The ‘Deacon’ Seemed to Have Been Entirely Overlooked”

6 Sep

Deacon White died on July 7, 1939, just after being snubbed for inclusion in the Hall of Fame—a move that The Sporting News, among others, had campaigned for.

The Associated Press said, “By strange coincidence,” they had sent a reporter to interview the 91-year-old on “the eve of his death.”

deaconwhite

Deacon White

White was living on his daughter’s summer home, 45 miles west of Chicago:

“The gentle tapping of a cane on the stairs became more distinct.

“In the living room doorway, presently, appeared a bent, aging figure—James ‘Deacon’ White, 92 years old [sic], and the oldest living player of baseball, which this year is celebrating its centennial.  The ‘Deacon’ seemed to have been entirely overlooked in the hullabaloo.

“Slowly, the bespectacled old gentleman lowered himself into his favorite chair.  Almost as old as the game itself, the ‘Deacon’ was hard of hearing, his memory was uncertain, but he loved to talk about the game he learned from a union soldier, just returned from the Civil War.”

The reporter, Charles Dunkley, said, “White’s gnarled fingers—he was a barehanded catcher—bore trademarks of the game.”

White, who appeared in his final game in 1890, said:

“’Batters of my day would have little success with present day pitching, but by golly, you haven’t got any better fielders now than we had in the first days of the game.  We fielded bare handed and that took a lot more skill than the present day fielders need with their gloves.’

“’The science of batting and pitching have advanced a long way in 70 years.  When the game was first originated, we never had fast ball pitching as the pitchers do today, when they wind up or throw overhand or sidearm.’”

White also weighed in on the origins of the curve ball:

“’(Arthur “Candy” Cummings) was one of our first great pitchers and I know that he used to curve a ball as early as 1868, but not in regulation games because the rules prohibited them.’”

White dismissed the suggestion that Fred Goldsmith introduced the curve ball:

“’I knew Goldsmith as an infielder and later as a pitcher,’ recalled the old-timer, ‘and if he threw curves before Cummings, he must have kept it a secret.  But in my day, all the young pitchers were learning to throw curves two years before the rules permitted them.”’ (and presumably before Goldsmith demonstrated the pitch to Henry Chadwick in 1870).

White, who said he hadn’t attended a major league game “in several years,” was scheduled to attend a “a celebration in his honor and in honor of other old time stars,” in Aurora, Illinois.  But died just two days before the event.

white.jpg

White

White closed his final interview attributing “his longevity to the fact he never smoke or drank,” and:

“(White) always practiced clean, simple living.

“To the present crop of young players, he gave this advice.

“’Live a clean life and keep in condition.  You’ll never regret it.”

 

Tags: , , ,

Lost Advertisements–Spalding’s 1908

20 Jun

asspaldingguide1908

“Spalding’s Official Base Ball Guide,” 1908 advertisement.

“Edited by Henry Chadwick, the ‘Father of Baseball.’

“The best Guide Ever Published

“Containing the New Rules; pictures of all the leading teams in the major and minor leagues, as well as individual action pictures of prominent players.  The World’s Championship, 1907; complete review of the year in the National, American and all minor leagues.  All-American selections;  schedules; averages and interesting baseball data, found only in Spalding’s Guide.”

The 1908 Spalding Guide

The 1908 Spalding Guide

The 1908 edition also promised:

“The origin of base ball settled” with the guide’s “exclusive” publication of the Mills Commission report.

The guide also included interviews with the members of the 1907 Chicago Cubs, on “How we Won the World’s Championship.”

The ad featured part of the interview with right fielder Frank Schulte, who used his World Series money to buy a racehorse:

“I was far from pleased with my own work, but there were spots that seemed bright, and so I have no misgivings about spending my share of the winnings for a great piece of horse-flesh…”

Frank Schulte

Frank Schulte

Other comments from members of the Cubs that appeared in the guide included:

Joe Tinker—“We failed to see that brilliancy that the American League boasted of, and when the good old West side machine got under way, it seldom failed.”

Orval Overall—“I expected a harder time with the Tigers.”

Orville Overall

Orville Overall

Mordecai  Brown—“Never more confident of victory in my life.  I almost made a hit in my three times at bat.

Jack Pfiester (who won game two 3 to 1 while giving up 10 hits)—“After the two base hits in the first inning, I knew by some overpowering sense that I could not explain that I would be successful.”

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Things I Learned on the Way to Looking up other Things–Sunday Baseball Edition

4 Feb

What type of Sunday Ball? 1863

In 1863, The Brooklyn Eagle—there was no byline on the story, but it was likely written by Henry Chadwick—wanted the police department to make a clarification:

“We see by the police records that a party of forty or fifty persons was arrested for playing ball in Sunday, at the ‘ball alley’ corner of Green Lane and York Street.”

Henry Chadwick

Henry Chadwick

The paper’s complaint was that the notice from the police lacked “any description…of the character of ball playing indulged in,” which left a mistaken impression.

“We beg to state, for the benefit of ignorant outsiders, that any base ball club belonging to the National Association is yet to be disgraced by the stigma of playing base ball on the Sabbath.  Not a club in the community can be charged with such a things and this fact should be understood.

“The game the parties were engaged in who were arrested is that known as ‘house ball,’ where the players knock the ball up against the side of a wall with their hands.  No responsible base ball player engages in a game on Sunday, and we trust the police reporters will in future bear this fact in mind and state the kind of game those arrested were engaged in.”

John L. Sullivan and Sunday Baseball, 1885

Heavyweight Champion John L. Sullivan, arrived in Cleveland, Ohio on Friday, September 11, 1885.  The Cleveland Press said he would be pitching on Sunday for a local semi-pro club, the Forest Cities—the Western League team of the same name had folded in June–in an exhibition game against a team from Sandusky.  The scheduling of a game on Sunday had raised the ire of the local “Law and Order League,” who the paper said “were up in arms,’ and attempted to get the game canceled.

John L. Sullivan

John L. Sullivan

Despite the protests, the game, at Cleveland’s Brooklyn Park, went ahead as scheduled.  Sullivan was paid $900 for his appearance and pitched well—he gave up just five hits in nine innings, a fifth inning error allowed Sandusky to score two runs, and Sullivan and the Forest Cities lost 2 to 0.

The Press said as soon as the game ended Sullivan was placed under arrest by “a meek constable” named Jones, who “feared to arrest (him) during the game.”

The move was roundly criticized as simply a publicity stunt, given that the Law and Order League failed to swear out warrants against the other seventeen players or the game’s organizers.

Bond was posted for Sullivan and the fighter left town that evening.  The following day an attorney pleaded guilty on Sullivan’s behalf that he had “engaged in a game of ball on Sunday.”

The attorney for the “Law and Order League” asked the judge to “uphold the sacred day of rest by assessing a fine of such proportions as would teach the law-breakers and Sabbath-desecrators a wholesome lesson.”

The judge fined Sullivan $1 plus costs “amounting in all to $15.90”

Sunday Baseball in Chicago, 1894

During the spring of 1894 a man named William W. Clark met with Chicago Mayor John Patrick Hopkins.

The Chicago Inter Ocean said Clark was “Secretary of the International Sunday Observance League,” The Chicago Eagle called him as “a blue-nosed individual in clerical garb.”

Chicago Mayor John P. Hopkins

Chicago Mayor John P. Hopkins

Clark presented the mayor with a resolution requesting a ban on Sunday games in Chicago.

The Eagle described the meeting:

“He was accorded a courteous hearing, in the course of which the clerical gentleman expatiated upon the enormity of ‘catching men out,’ of making ‘home runs’ on Sunday.  Such practices he said were wrong and highly immoral.  Mayor Hopkins listened in mild surprise.  When the gentleman got through His Honor announced that he used to play ball on Sunday’s himself, and sometimes attended a game even yet, and saw nothing immoral about it.

“The cleric was unable to specify any particular enormities growing out of the game, but proceeded to hold out threats.  Then Mayor Hopkins announced that he had been elected by the liberal-minded people of Chicago, and as they appeared to be in the majority here, he, Mr. Hopkins, intended to be governed by their wishes.”

The Eagle editorialized that the mayor had “made another of his famous home run strikes on the particular occasion.”  And, “As for the clerical visitor, the poor man struck out.”

The International Sunday Observance League abandoned their effort to make Sunday baseball illegal in Chicago.

Tags: , , , , ,

Sam Crane on International Baseball

30 Jul

Samuel Newhall “Sam” Crane, like Tim Murnane, turned to sports writing after his career on the field ended.  His involvement in a scandal might have contributed to his departure from the diamond—but contrary to oft-repeated stories it was not the direct result.

Sam Crane

Sam Crane

Crane was named as a respondent in a Scranton, Pennsylvania divorce in 1889—a prominent Scranton businessman named Edwin Fraunfelter (some contemporary newspapers incorrectly said “Travenfelter”) charged that Crane had stolen his wife, and $1500.  Crane had played for the Scranton Miners in 1887 and ’88 and departed the city with Fraunfelter’s wife Hattie in 1889, relocating to New York.  Crane and Hattie Fraunfelter were returned to Scranton to face trial for the theft.

In October of 1889, they were acquitted.  The Philadelphia Times said the two were released and Mr. Fraunfelter was ordered to pay the court costs, and “The congratulations which were showered on the second baseman and the woman made a scene in the courtroom.”

Despite the scandal the New York Giants (twice) and the Pittsburgh Alleghenys were happy to sign Crane in 1890.  The end of his career was more of a result of the 36-year-old’s .179 batting average and diminishing fielding skills—twelve errors in 103 total chances at second base–and, of course, he probably wouldn’t have found himself in Scranton in 1887 and ’88 had his career not already been on a downward trajectory.

Crane immediately went to work for The New York Press upon his retirement and remained one of the most respected sports writers in the country.  He edited the “Reach Guide” from 1902 until his death in 1926.

In 1905 Crane, then with The New York Journal, wrote about the boom in International baseball on the eve of the visit of the Waseda University baseball team:

“The Japanese are nothing if not progressive, and even with their country in the throes of a disastrous war (The Russo-Japanese War) they have found time to devote attention to our national game.”

Crane said the Waseda visit would:

“(M)ark a red letter day in the history of the game,  It will be a sensational era in the life of the sport, and in fact, that of all athletic sports.”

Japan was not alone in embracing the game:

“Baseball is also flourishing in South Africa.  The Transvaal Leader, a progressive newspaper, has taken up the sport and publishes full scores of the games and the records of the players.

“There is a South African baseball association and the players of the different teams can hit the ball, even if they have not yet attained the accuracy and agility in fielding their American cousins have reached.  According to The Leader, out of thirty-seven batsmen who figure in the official  record from July 1 to October 8, twenty-three of them batted over .300…A batter named Suter of the Wanderers was the Lajoie of the league, and he made our own ‘Larruping Larry’s’ record of .381 look like a bush league mark.  Suter’s batting percentage was .535.

“The second batter to Suter was Hotchkiss, also of the Wanderers, who walloped out a base hit every other time at bat, making his average .500…Wonder what the Africans would do with ‘Rube’ Waddell and the Chesbro ‘spit ball?’”

As evidence that the South Africans had “grasped the American style of reporting games” Crane gave an example from a recent edition of The Leader:

“’The diamond was very hard, and, as a consequence, the ball frequently wore whiskers, as some infielders can testify.’”

Crane expressed surprise that baseball had taken such a “stronghold” in an “English possession”  like South Africa:

“Britons, wherever found, look upon the great American game as a direct infringement on the sporting rights as established by cricket.

“’It is only an offshoot of our rounders,’ they are wont to say, and that ancient game is about on the level of ‘one old cat’ and ‘barnball.’

“Englishmen are extremely conservative about their sports, especially of cricket, which is considered their national game, and in their own stanch little island they have always pooh-poohed baseball.  But when the Briton gets away from home influences he becomes an ardent admirer of the American game and is loud in his praise of the sharp fielding it develops.

“In Canada, South Africa and Australia, where there is more hustling, and time is more valuable than in the staid old mother country, the quick action, liveliness and all around hustling of baseball that give a result in a couple of hours, is fast becoming more popular with the colonials than cricket, that requires as many days to arrive at a decision.

“Great strides have been made in baseball in the Sandwich (Hawaiian) Islands.  Honolulu is the headquarters just now, but the game is fast spreading to other localities.  The game has been played in the Sandwich Islands for many years, but it was not until the United States was given possession that it flourished.”

Crane mentioned that his late brother Charles–who died in 1900, and incidentally, married his brother Sam’s ex-wife who Sam divorced before leaving Scranton with Mrs. Fraunfelter) had been the catcher on the team representing the naval vessel the USS Vandalia and frequently played games against teams in Hawaii and Samoa during the 1880s:

“The natives took to the game very quickly and soon learned to enjoy it.  They welcomed every arrival of the Vandalia with loud demonstrations of joy, and there was a general holiday whenever a game was to be played.”

Crane predicted that baseball would continue to flourish in the islands, and throughout Asia, noting that a Chinese player “plays third base on the leading club, and has the reputation of being the best player in the whole league.”

He was likely referring to 20-year-old Charles En Sue Pung, a teammate of Barney Joy’s on the Honolulu Athletic Club team who was also one of Hawaii’s best track athletes.  Pung was rumored to be joining Joy when the pitcher signed with the San Francisco Seals in the Pacific Coast League in 1907, and in 1908 there were brief rumors in the press that Chicago Cubs Manager Frank Chance wanted to sign the Chinese third baseman—neither materialized, and he remained in Hawaii.

Charles En Sue Pung

Charles En Sue Pung

Crane said the growth of the game internationally would be endless; he said the introduction of the game in the Philippines was a prime example:

“(T)here are several enclosed grounds in Manila to which are attracted big crowds…I know they can learn to play the game, for when the (New York) Giants were in Savannah (Georgia) for practice last spring a team of soldiers from a nearby fort played an exhibition game with the Giants.”

Crane said the team was accompanied by “a young Filipino, who, while he did not play on the soldier team, practiced with them and showed surprising proficiency… (The) youth knew all the points of the game as well as Henry Chadwick.”

For Crane, that was enough to declare that “in short order” the Philippines would adopt the game as had, and would, “all people that are blessed with real red blood and progressive.”

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Origin Stories

9 Apr

Timothy Paul “Ted” Sullivan was a player, manager, executive, and the lifelong friend and confidant of Charles Comiskey.

Al Spink, in his 1911 book “The National Game,” said Sullivan was “the best judge of a ball player in America, the man of widest vision in the baseball world, who predicted much for the National game years ago, and whose predictions have all come true.”

Comiskey said of his friend:

“Ted Sullivan’s standing in the profession of baseball cannot be measured by modern standards.   He is in a class all by himself.  He is ever and always ahead of his time, with a knowledge of the game and a versatility that no other baseball man of my acquaintance has ever possessed.”

Ted Sullivan

Ted Sullivan

Sullivan, given his reputation, was a favorite among reporters who sought his opinion about everything related to baseball.

In December of 1904, months before the Mills Commission was organized to determine baseball’s origin, Sullivan was asked by The Cincinnati Enquirer to weigh-in on the subject.  A month earlier Albert Spalding had given a speech at the YMCA training school in Springfield, Massachusetts claiming that baseball “is distinctively an American sport.”  The commission was formed in reaction to Henry Chadwick’s 1903 essay which said baseball was derived from British game rounders—after Spalding’s response, the two agreed to appoint the commission to settle the question.

Henry Chadwick

Henry Chadwick

The Enquirer said;

 “Of all the old-timers in harness Ted Sullivan is as good as the best, or a trifle better, when it comes to reviewing the history of diamond doings of the hoary past.  His memory goes back to year one of baseball and his story of the origin of the game makes a good bit of fan literature for the off season.

“’The origin of baseball may be the evolution of townball, barnball, two-old-cat or yet it may be the suggestion of the three named,’ says Ted.  ‘At any rate, the game is the product of American genius and temperament, and not an offshoot of English rounders, as our English cousins would have us believe.  Of the many times I have been in England and the subject of baseball came up, one Englishman would say to the other: ‘Why, that blooming American game of baseball is nothing but our old game of rounders, you know.’ I have nothing but the highest regard for an Englishman’s love of sport—for it is inherent in a Briton from the present King down, and should an Englishman have only his last sixpence, and should the alternative arise whether he should eat or see a field sport—he would undoubtedly decide in favor of the latter.  I must totally disagree, however, with my British cousins that their primitive and plebian game of rounders is the mother of our national game.  Oh, no dear cousins; chase that idea out of your heads.

“’To say rounders is baseball would be the same as claiming that a palace was a hut because it had a door, or a wheelbarrow a carriage because it had a wheel…From the time that the game was regularly played by the knickerbockers of New York until it became a profession, change after change has been made in the rules, to make the game as perfect as possible in its machinery.  The game is about fifty-five years of age, that is to say, before it became national, as it was played in New York and New England up to 1861, but did not reach the limits of our country until 1865 and 1866.  The most important changes in the rules after the structure of the game was put up was first eliminating a put out on the first bound by an outfielder.”

Like Spalding, Sullivan didn’t provide any specific evidence, and instead made a case that baseball must be an American invention because of “the originality of the American in the line of invention,” and by his logic, baseball was just one in a great line of American innovations:

“America to-day is the inventive torch of the world, and has been for the last fifty years.  The first seed of America’s inventive genius took root in Robert Fulton’s brain when he advocated steam as a motive power.  The next in line was Prof. Morse’s advocacy of the use of telegraph wire as a transmitter of sound.  This invention was followed by the sewing machine that relieved the weary housemaid of her burden.  On its heels came Cyrus McCormick with his farming implements that taught the world how to reap their harvest in one-tenth the time and with a fraction of the labor of former days.  The last of the greatest of America’s inventive thinkers is Tom Edison, the Wizard of Electricity, who has electrified ad illuminated the world by his inventions.”

Sullivan said this demonstrated “the originality of the American in the line of invention—whether it be a pastime or a beneficiary to the commercial world.”

There was no doubt Sullivan was influenced by Spalding’s speech.  Both claimed the game was “natural evolution” of earlier American games, and Sullivan refers to baseball as “the product of American genius and temperament; Spalding said baseball was “peculiarly adapted to the temperament and character of the American people.”

A.G. Spalding

Albert Spalding

Spalding’s speech was reprinted in many newspapers as well as the 1905 edition of “Spalding’s Official Baseball Guide.”

When the formation of the Mills Commission was announced in the spring of 1905 The Washington Post said:

“Inquiries are to be made throughout the United States, Great Britain, Canada, Australia and other English-speaking communities, with a view of ascertaining whether baseball is an evolution of the old English game of rounders, or of the classic American game of one-old-cat.”

The Post ridiculed the effort:

“Those ‘youngsters,’ Father Chadwick and A.G. Spalding, are playing extra innings to decide the origin of baseball.  The general public doesn’t seem to care when or how the game originated.”

The seven-member commission was composed of members sympathetic to the American origin version of Spalding and Sullivan.  Commission members Abraham Mills, Morgan Bulkeley, Arthur Gorman, Nick Young, Al Reach, George Wright and John Edward Sullivan accepted the story of a mining engineer from Denver named Abner Graves, and thus was born the Doubleday myth.  Spalding and Sullivan started with a conclusion and Spalding put together a commission that made it so.

—

The full text of the Graves’ first  letter to the commission as reprinted in The Sporting Life in august of 1905:

“The American game of base ball was invented by Abner Doubleday, of Cooperstown, N. Y., either the spring prior or following the ‘Log Cabin and Hard Cider’ campaign of General William H. Harrison for the presidency.  Doubleday was then a boy pupil of Green’s Select School in Cooperstown, and the same, who as General Doubleday, won honor at the battle of Gettysburg in the Civil War: The pupils of Otsego Academy and of Green’s Select School were then playing the old game of Town Ball in the following manner:

“A tosser stood close to the home goal and tossed the ball straight upward about six feet for the batsman to strike at on its fall, the latter using a four-inch flat-board bat. All others wanting to play were scattered about the Held, far and near, to catch the ball when hit. The lucky catcher took his innings at the bat. When a batsman struck the ball he ran for a goal fifty feet distant and returned.   If the ball was not caught or if he was not plunked by a thrown ball, while running, he retained his innings, as in Old Cat.

“Doubleday then improved Town Ball, to limit the number of players, as many were hurt in collisions. From twenty to fifty boys took part in the game I have described. He also designed the game to be played by definite teams or sides. Doubleday called the game Base Ball, for there were four bases in it.  Three were places where the runner could rest free from being put out, provided he kept his feet on the 1 flat stone base. The pitcher stood in a six-foot ring. There were eleven players on a side. The ball had a rubber center overwound with yarn to a size somewhat larger than the present day sphere and was covered with leather or buckskin. Anyone getting the ball was entitled to throw it at a runner between the bases and put him out by hitting him with it.

“I well remember some of the best players of sixty years ago. They were Abner Doubleday, Elilin Phinney, Nels C. Brewer. John. C. Graves. Joseph Chaffee. John Starkweather, John Doubleday, Tom Bingham and others who played on the Otsego Academy campus; although a favorite place was o the Phinney farm, on the west shore of Otsego Lake.”

Graves’ recollection would place the first game in 1839 when he was five, and “boy pupil” Doubleday was 20.

 

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , ,

“What Earnest, Active and Capable Team Workers those Cuban Giants are”

19 Feb

The Middle States League lasted just one season, 1889.  Not part of the National Agreement, and intended as an eight-team league, the circuit included, at various times, thirteen teams representing cities in Pennsylvania, Delaware, Connecticut, and New Jersey.

The league became integrated with the inclusion of the Cuban Giants of Trenton, who had become the first salaried African-American team four years earlier, and later their biggest rivals, the New York Gorhams (the Gorhams joined the league late, and were expelled in August—they played their home games in Easton, Pennsylvania and Hoboken, New Jersey).

Despite their membership in the league, and the Gorhams’ calling Easton their part-time “home,” both black teams were refused hotel accommodations in Easton during the season.

The relationship between the Cuban Giants and the rest of the league was contentious.  In May, The Philadelphia Inquirer said the league’s board of directors charged Cuban Giants’ Manager Stanislaus Kostka (variously nicknamed Cos, S.K., Siki) Govern with violating the league’s $75 a month salary cap by using “players who have not signed regular contracts,” and not using league’s official ball in games.  The Inquirer said:

“It appears that the colored club has been running things to suit its own sweet will.”

The paper said after a two-hour meeting Govern promised “to do better in the future.”

govern

S. K. Govern

The following month the league denied rumors in The Inquirer that “the Cuban Giants were to be forced out on account of their color.”  The paper said the August league meeting “was long and mainly occupied by debates between Harrisburg and the Cuban Giants.”

Most of the teams were financially troubled from the outset—at one point  a York, Pennsylvania hotel proprietor confiscated the uniforms of the Shenandoah club after the team failed to pay their bill—Shenandoah lasted just 15 games, joining the league in mid July and disbanding August 6.

1889middlestates

Advertisement for August, 1889 games between the Lebanon Grays and the Cuban Giants, and Gorhams. The Gorhams were expelled from the league several days after these games were played.

The Harrisburg Ponies were the only team in the league that made money—the Gorhams, according to The Philadelphia Inquirer, had “few paying crowds” in Easton.  On August 21 The Inquirer said their “receipts did not amount to more than $20.”  The following day they were unable to pay the Hazelton team the guarantee for a scheduled game and were expelled from the league.  The Gorhams took to the road and barnstormed for the remainder of the year.

The Cuban Giants didn’t fare much better financially.  Owner John Bright, according to The Harrisburg Telegraph, needed to schedule his team for more than 60 exhibition games in addition to the 74 league games in order to turn a profit.

No one who followed the league, including Henry Chadwick, who watched the Cubans Giants play in August, had any doubt which team was the best in the Middle States League.  In The Brooklyn Eagle, Chadwick, “The Father of Baseball,” wrote:

“What earnest, active and capable team workers those Cuban Giants are.  In fact, I would rather see them play in a game where they had work to do to win than see half the (National) League or American Association teams play.  They are well up in the points and they play with a spirit and vigor, and with a good nature withal which makes their field work very attractive.  They have very intelligent and gentlemanly young official (manager) in Mr. McGovern [sic].  That catcher of theirs—(Arthur) Thomas—is a character, and they have an excellent strategic pitcher in (William) Seldon, and as for (Frank) Grant, he is at least a second (Fred) Dunlap on the field.  In fact, did not see a weak spot in the team in this game.”

Frank Grant

Frank Grant

Despite playing more than 60 extra games over the course of the season, the Cuban Giants managed to stay neck-and-neck with the Harrisburg Ponies all year.   In mid-September, with just four games remaining on the schedule, and with the league’s future in serious doubt, the Cuban Giants, just .001 behind the Ponies chose to cancel their last four games.  The Chambersburg Repository said the cancellations allowed “the colored club an opportunity to make a trip through New York State.”

The championship was awarded to the Ponies (who added two more victories after the Cuban Giants departed for New York).

The final official standings:

Harrisburg Ponies 64-19 .771

Cuban Giants 55-17 .764

Cuban Giants owner John Bright protested the final standings and took his case to the press.  In a long letter, published in The New York Sun, and other papers, Bright said his team “justly and honestly won” the pennant.  He claimed that Harrisburg was incorrectly awarded three victories for forfeited games–one against the Gorhams, when neither team showed up for the game, and two games against Wilmington after that team had disbanded.

Bright also charged that Harrisburg also lost a September game to Lebanon, and after the fact “Harrisburg turns it in as an exhibition game.”  He said his team was stripped of two victories in games where the official league ball was not used, while there were two games  they lost while playing with the wrong ball “but much to our amazement, only one game was not counted.”  Additionally, Bright claimed the league failed to award the Cuban Giants two games won against the Hazelton team.

Bright said the league standings should have been:

Cuban Giants 57-16 .780

Harrisburg Ponies 61-20 .753

Bright concluded:

“So any fair-minded person can see at a glance that the Cuban Giants are the real champions.”

The Philadelphia Inquirer initially seemed to side with the Cuban Giants.  They printed Bright’s charges and quoted an unnamed “prominent manager of the Middle States League” who said:

“The Giants are right in a number of their claims.  I never could see upon what grounds the Harrisburg club could claim a number of the games complained of, more than by the bulldogging tactics that they always employed throughout the season.”

The Philadelphia Press was squarely in the Harrisburg camp.  The paper referred to Bright’s “several foolish claims for the pennant,” and provided a forum for league president William Voltz-who was also the paper’s baseball editor–to respond.  Voltz called Bright’s charges “unwarranted and untrue.”  The league president/baseball editor also claimed the Cuban Giants still owed the league money and that the proper time for bright to protest the championship would be at the league meeting in December.

Newspaper reports of the December meeting make no mention of any representative of the Cuban Giants appealing the championship.

Harrisburg remains the official champion of the 1889 Middle States League

The league was reconstituted as the Eastern Interstate League for 1890.  The nucleus of the Cuban Giants jumped from Bright’s club and joined the league as the York Colored Monarchs—Frank Grant and Clarence Williams joined the previously all white Harrisburg Ponies.  The six-team league struggled, quickly became a four-team league, and folded all together in July.

Clarence Williams

Clarence Williams

York was leading the Eastern Interstate League when it disbanded.

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

← Older Entries

%d bloggers like this: