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.
Walter Johnson rated Rube Waddell the greatest pitcher he saw in a 1925 syndicated article. He listed Grover Cleveland Alexander, Christy Mathewson, and Ed Walsh as his next three.
Cy Young came next.
Johnson acknowledged he had not seen Young at his best, “His greatest three years were back in 1891 to 1893…Yet 15 years later I worked many games with the grand old veteran when he was still effective against the best batters in the American League.”
Johnson said like Young, he, “had to use more curves,” later in his career, and:
“His work was always smooth and pleasure to watch. He seldom did the sensational thing on the diamond. But one thing he did that will always live—he won 508 [sic, 511] victories.”
Cy Young
Next was Eddie Plank who Johnson said had “The best cross-fire I ever saw,” and “He was simply a wonder on doping out the other club.”
Johnson said during the 1924 World Series, “(Plank) told me some things about (Frank) Frisch and (Ross) Youngs that helped a lot.”
Johnson said Bender was “always deliberate when pithing, “wasted few balls,” and threw “an inside ball,” that “The leading batters in the league couldn’t solve.”
Chief Bender had, “a good curve and wonderful fastball. Added to these qualities he was smart as a whip.”
Chief Bender
Johnson said his temper was as much as a detriment as his intelligence was a benefit though:
“I’ve seen him throw a ball out of the park in a spell of anger.”
Johnson said umpire Tommy Connolly told a friend Bender was capable of throwing as hard as Johnson, “but he would only let himself out once or twice during a game. Usually in a tight place with men on bases and two strikes on the batter.”
Johnson’s final three were Mordecai Brown, Jack Chesbro, and Bill Donovan.
Brown, owing to the injury that cost him parts of two fingers and earned him his nickname, made it, “possible for him to get a peculiar hold on the ball that produced a deceiving curve.”
Mordecai Brown
He also rated Brown and Bender the two best fielding pitchers.
Chesbro, who served as a coach early in the season for Johnson’s World Series Champion Senators in 1924.
Johnson said of Chesbro, “I don’t believe he has ever outlived the sting of disappointment,” over missing out on a championship in 1904—Chesbro took the loss in two of the three straight games the Highlanders dropped to the Americans on October 8 and 10, giving Boston the pennant.
Johnson said he admired Wild Bill Donovan’s side arm fast ball but admired more the fact that he wore an “eternal smile.”
“He was peeved and Hughey Jennings, then Detroit’s manager, was walking by and tried to get him sore with a bit of joshing.
‘Hell, (Donovan) ain’t got nothing on the ball.’
“’No,’ was Hughey’s reply, ‘but he’s got a smile on his face.”’
Johnson said that smile, “made the batter feel there wasn’t any use trying.”
Just misses from Johnson’s ten were Smoky Joe Wood, Rube Marquard, Addie Joss, Urban Shocker, Babe Ruth, and Stan Coveleski.
On June 4, 1913, Joe Jackson hit a home run in the second inning of a game at the Polo Grounds with the New York Highlanders.
The New York Tribune said the blast, off a Russel Ford Spitball that cleared the roof of the rightfield grandstand was:
“(S)et down immediately as the longest hit on record at the grounds.”
Jackson
The ball ended up in Manhattan Field—the previous Polo Grounds which was sold and renamed when the new stadium was opened in 1890
The New York Sun said it was “the longest hit ever made in New York.”
The New York Times was more measured:
“The hit, while perhaps not the longest ever made at the field, has not been approached in this section of the Polo Grounds since the new stands were built.”
The discussion of the longest home runs hit was taken up by infielder turned sportswriter Sam Crane in The New York Journal, who declared Jackson’s:
“(The) longest hit ever secured in a ball game.”
He also reported that the “small boy” who retrieved the ball from Manhattan Field was rewarded with a “$10 bill.”
The Baltimore Sun and a previous generation of fans and players were not going to accept Jackson’s homerun as the longest:
“(T)he present generation, cocksure that everything exceptional happening on the diamond nowadays could not have been eclipsed in the good old days, is wrong again.”
The paper said the longest hit ever made, “happened in 1894” off the bat of Dan Brouthers and lined up five witnesses; Brouthers, his Baltimore Orioles teammates John McGraw and Hughie Jennings, Tom Murphy, the groundskeeper at Oriole Park, and “Abe Marks, scorecard man.”
Brouthers said of his home run:
“I remember distinctly hitting a ball over the right field fence at Baltimore…This hit was a line drive clearing the fence by about 15 feet…I have talked to groundskeeper Murphy regarding this matter, and he says the fence was fully 500 feet from the home plate.”
Brouthers
Brouthers also said he had, “made several other hits that I know equaled the one made by Jackson, particularly one in Boston, one in Columbus, one in Springfield, and one in Raleigh.”
And while Brouthers insisted he did not “wish to detract in any way from the credit due Jackson,” he said he was present at the Polo Grounds when Jackson hit his home run and told an entirely different story about where the ball landed–and who recovered it:
“I saw the hit, and the ball did not go entirely over the grandstand but landed on the top. I had a man go up and get the ball and bring it to Jackson, who gave him 50 cents for it.”
McGraw conceded that he didn’t see Jackson’s hit, but said:
“I have never seen a hit to equal the one made by Brouthers in Baltimore.”
Jennings said, “Jackson’s (hit) isn’t in it at all,” compared to Brouthers.
Jennings also said the Baltimore home run was not Brouthers’ longest; he said the one Brouthers mentioned in Raleigh—also in 1894 on the Orioles “training trip.”
The Sun’s comparison of Brouthers’ homerun versus Jackson’s–also shown is the landing spot of Frank Baker’s homerun in the 1911 World Series
The scorecard vendor, Abe Marks, declared Brouthers’ hit “has never been equaled.” He claimed the ball, after clearing the right field fence, “never stopped until it hit something sticking up in Guilford Avenue.”
All agreed that the ball rolled a long way after it landed and ended up resting from 1300 to 1500 feet from home plate.
While Jackson received his home run ball (or two of them) on the day he hit his long drive, it took Brouthers more than a decade to get his.
When a reunion was held for the 1894 National League Champion Orioles in Baltimore in 1907,
The Sun said the ball had been in the possession of “S.C. Appleby…who is one of the hottest of Oriole fans,” Appleby gave a speech at the reunion held at the Eutaw House, one of Baltimore’s finest hotels, and “toss(ed) it back to Dan Brouthers across the dining table.”
Brouthers said of the presentation:
“This ball went so far that I never expected to see it again. Now that it has been given to me, I shall ever keep it as a memento of my connection with the champion Orioles.”
In the spring of 1913, John McGraw told a reporter from The New York Daily News that he had resolved that he and his players would “not to question the umpires’ decisions this season.”
John McGraw
McGraw’s former teammate, Detroit manager Hughie Jennings told The Detroit News in response:
“McGraw may have given his men those instructions, but an Irishman always has the right of expressing a second thought.
“The Tigers will be one team this year that will not stand for incorrect decisions on the part of the umpires. When an umpire makes a mistake the fans of the American League can depend on it that my players will display their displeasure. I wouldn’t give a cancelled stamp for a man who would not assert his rights.”
Hughie Jennings
Jennings said he liked having a certain type of player on his team:
“I want players who will fight their way through a league race. I want a band of scrappers, not a collection of faltering youths. I do not believe in starting a riot on the ballfield or anything or anything that pertains to rowdyism, but I certainly do believe in having the spectators know that we will display vim and ambition when our position is trampled upon.”
Jennings said that’s why his teams won:
“The Tigers fought their way to three pennants, and while I am leading the team, they will fight their way to others. If they fail to win it will be because a better team was out ahead. It will not be because we are out gamed.
“There isn’t any question in my mind but that umpires in the major leagues give their rulings as we see them, but we are all wrong at times, and when we are wrong others immediately interested have the right to correct us. So, it is with umpires.”
McGraw was ejected just three times in 1913—he had 132 career ejections as a manager and won his fifth National League pennant: Jennings was ejected just once that season. His fighting teams failed to win another pennant.
After the 1910 season, Hugh Fullerton, writing in “The American Magazine” said baseball had no universal language.
“Each team has its different system of coaching, its different language of signs, motions, cipher words, or phrases, and no one man can hope to learn them all.”
Fullerton said the “worst of trying to study” the signs of various clubs was trying to track when they changed:
“If Arlie Latham jumps into the air and screams ‘Hold your base!’ it may mean ‘Steal second,’ today and tomorrow it may mean ‘Hit and run.’ One never can tell what a sign means. Hughie Jennings hoists his right knee as high as his shoulder, pulls six blades of grass and Jim Delahanty bunts. You are certain that Jennings signaled him to sacrifice, so the next day when Ty Cobb is bat and Jennings goes through the same motions, you creep forward and Cobb hits the ball past you so fast you can’t see it.
“If Connie Mack tilts his hat over his eyes and Eddie Collins steals second as the next ball is pitched, naturally you watch the hat, and lo, Jack Barry plays hit and run. You hear Clark Griffith yelp ‘Watch his foot!’ and see two of his players start a double steal. The next time he yells ‘Watch his foot!’ you break your neck to cover the base, and both players stand still.”
Arlie Latham
Fullerton said most fans gave up trying to figure out signs but they “mustn’t do that. Someday right in the middle of a game, you’ll strike the key to the language and read through clear to the ninth inning.”
He compared that moment to getting “away one good drive,” in golf, “forever afterward you are a victim,” and can’t stop.
“Did you ever watch Hugh Jennings on the coaching line near first base during a hard-fought game? He doubles his fists, lifts one leg and shakes his foot, screams ‘E-yah’ in piercing tomes and stooping suddenly plucks at the grass, pecking at it like a hen. It looks foolish. I have heard spectators express wonder that a man of ability and nearing middle age could act so childishly. Yet hidden somewhere in the fantastic contortions and gestures of the Tigers’ leader there is a meaning, a code word, or signal that tells his warriors what he expects them to do.”
Jennings said of his signs:
“I change almost every day. I change every time I suspect there is a danger of the meanings being read. I am a believer in as few signals as possible and of giving them when they count, and I find that a lot of antics are effective in covering up the signals.”
Fullerton said Mack was “one of the most successful men” at “interpreting” opponents’ signs:
“Before the Chicago Cubs went into their disastrous series against the Athletics they were warned that if such a thing were possible Mack would have their signals. At the end of the game they called a meeting to revise signals, changing entirely, being certain the Athletics knew almost every kind of ball that was going to be pitched.”
Fullerton allowed that the Cubs instead might be tipping their pitches, because he was sitting with Ty Cobb during the series, and:
“(He) repeatedly called the turn on the ball that would be pitched before it was thrown, judging from the pitcher’s motion, and the Athletics may have been doing the same thing.”
Fullerton also said of the Cubs, that although they were “the cleverest baseball team in America, composed of smart men and a great manager, for years paid less attention to active coaching on the baselines,” than other teams.
“Possibly the reason was the confidence in their own judgment and their continued success, Frank Chance’s men made few blunders and the neglect was not noticeable, except to constant observers until 1908. Any player who happened to be idle went to the coaching lines and most of the time inexperienced substitutes did line duty. In 1908 during their fierce fight for the pennant, the realization of their carelessness was brought home to them and since then Chance has employed quick-thinking, clever men on the base lines, principally relying on (Ginger) Beaumont and (John) Kane.”
John Kane
Fullerton dated Chance’s new appreciation for competent coaching to July 17, 1908; that day the Cubs beat Christy Mathewson and the Giants 1 to 0 on an inside the park home run by Joe Tinker. Heinie Zimmerman was coaching third base for the Cubs.
The Chicago Inter Ocean described the play:
“Joe, the first man up in the fifth, hit one of Matty’s best as far as any ball could be hit in the grounds without going into the stands. Where the center field bleachers join the right field 25 cent seats is a V-shaped inclosure. Joe drove the ball away into this dent, and it took Cy Seymour some time to gather the elusive sphere. When Cy finally retrieved the ball, Tinker was rounding third.
“Zimmerman grasped this as the psychological moment to perpetrate one of the most blockheaded plays ever pulled off. He ran out onto the line and seized Joe, trying to hold him on third, when the ball was just starting to the diamond from deep center field. Joe struggled to get away, as his judgment told him he could get home, but Heinie held on with a grip of death. Finally, Tink wriggled away and started for the plate.”
Zimmerman
The paper said Tinker would have been thrown out had Al Bridwell’s throw to the plate been on target:
“Had Tinker been caught at the plate the 10,000 frenzied fans would have torn Zim limb from limb. Chance immediately sent Evers out to coach at third base and retired Zim to the dark confines of the Cubs’ bench.”
Thus, said Fullerton:
“Chance began to develop scientific coaching, and discovering its full value, took the lead in the matter, employing skilled coachers.”
Tigers coach Jimmy Burke told The Detroit News in 1915:
“The good poker players on a ball club are generally the brainiest and best ball players.”
Burke
Burke said he was opposed to gambling but nevertheless:
“The snap judgment, the taking of quick advantage of openings, and the continual head work required in the great indoor sport is the same type that makes a good ball player great on the diamond. There are a lot of good ball payers who do not play much poker, but the good poker players on a team usually are the smartest and most brilliant players.”
The News assured readers that poker games among the Detroit players all ended “at 11 PM and never exceed a five or 10 cent limit.”
Cobb on Dean
In 1937, Ty Cobb told Grantland Rice of The New York Herald Tribune that he was an “admirer” of Dizzy Dean:
Dean
“I saw him work in an exhibition last fall. Dizzy was using a change of pace and a side-arm delivery. I asked him to show me a few overhands. The next inning, he used nothing but an overhand delivery, and he had plenty on it. He proved to me that he had about everything a good pitcher needs—including smartness and control.”
Cobb had one criticism of Dean:
“I still think Dizzy would be better off if he worked more in the general interest of the team, and his manager, Frank Frisch. You might call this color and like it—but baseball is supposed to be a team game, and the manager is supposed to be the boss. I know. I felt that way about Hughie Jennings when he ran the Tigers.”
Rickey’s Priorities
Nine games into the University of Michigan’s 1913 season, George Sisler was hitting .528 in 36 at bats and was the team’s top pitcher—in a late April game against Kentucky State University Sisler worked five innings, and according to The Associated Press (AP), “He struck out 14 batters, and caught a pop fly sent up by the fifteenth man.”
Sisler
On the same trip through the South, the wire service said Sisler was called in to pitch the final inning of a game when the club needed to catch a train and needed a quick finish:
“This he did by pitching nine balls, striking out the last three batters, who only heard the ball whizz past.”
Despite his success, The AP said that his coach Branch Rickey, “is worried about Sisler,” because his star player had other priorities.
“Rickey claims he has to all but kidnap Sisler to get him away from his books to practice…Sisler’s ambition is to shine in his class work and Rickey is afraid his studious disposition will ruin his ‘batting eye.’”
The Beaneaters were just a half game ahead of the Orioles when they began a three game series in Baltimore on September 24 1897; Boston took two out three games and left town up a game and a half with just three to play, and held on to win the pennant.
Boston won the first and third games by scores of 6 to 4 and 19 to 10; the Orioles won the second game 6 to 3; The Baltimore Sun said:
“It has been a fair and square fight, and they have lost to the Bostons, not through luck, but because they have been outplayed. If Captain (Hugh) Duffy’s men win the pennant they will have won it fairly, squarely, and deservedly, and Baltimore will congratulate them on their great achievement in beating her own great Orioles.”
Hughie Jennings told The Baltimore American:
Hughie Jennings
“A few more games like those with Boston in the last series at Baltimore would drive me to an asylum.”
The Sun said there was so much interest in the series that:
“Never perhaps in the history of baseball was there such a vast amount of telegraphic matter sent out from Union Park (during the first game of the series) Fifteen skilled operators were required to send off the great mass of written matter.”
Both The American and The Sun estimated that nearly 65,000 fans attended the series, which made it a boon to the local ticket scalpers, who had to think creatively
The Chicago Inter Ocean said:
“The Baltimore ticket scalpers played a very neat trick at the downtown headquarters, where tickets were on sale during the closing series between the Bostons and Orioles. While a long line of purchasers were in line at the counter, half a dozen fashionably dressed ladies came in and the crowd courteously gave way to them. It was later learned that the women were in the employ of speculators.”
The Detroit News recorded an off season “fanning bee” between Browns manager Jimmy McAleer and Tigers manager Hughie Jennings in 1907:
“’Those were the days when we really hated each other, said Jimmy. ‘Weren’t they Hughie? There was no sitting on the home bench when you went into a town, and there was no handshaking. If the other fellow got cut you were glad, and if you got cut you vowed vengeance. They kind of thought more about winning and less about pay then, didn’t they? Seems that way anyway.’”
Jimmy McAleer
McAleer then moved on to Jennings’ days with the Baltimore Orioles in the 1890s:
“I can remember you fellows to this day coming into the park. And what the crowd used to call you, Chesty? Why, there never lived a crowd more swelled on themselves; you and (John) McGraw and (Willie) Keeler and that bunch. We would give our eye teeth to give you a beating and take the enthusiasm out of you.”
Back to how the game had changed, McAleer talked about Jesse Burkett’s reaction when he joined the Browns after 12 seasons in the National League:
“He sat on the bench beside me. Suddenly he began growling and kicking the dirt.
‘”What in the thunder’s the matter with you?’ I asked
“’Look at ‘um, look at ‘um, he kept saying, ‘handshaking league. Handshaking, look at ‘um.
“He was wild with rage because some of the boys were shaking hands with the visitors.”
Ernest Lanigan, writing in The Cleveland Leader in 1918 said:
“One way a team could be assured a victory in every stop on a trip, would be to lose its uniforms.”
Lanigan said it happened twice in the last four seasons:
“Last season, on their way East, the Saint Louis Cardinals lost their baggage and had to meet the Superbas in clothing for which Charles Hercules Ebbets had paid. The result was a 9 to 2 victory for Jack (manager Jack) Hendrick’s team.”
The Brooklyn Citizen described the June 1, 1918 game:
“The schedule called for a game between the Saint Louis Cardinals and the Robins. But if the fans were just going by the uniforms the players wore, then it was a combat between the HOME and the TRAVELING uniforms of the Brooklyn Baseball Club, for the Cardinals were arrayed in the traveling unies of the Robins.”
Fourteen trunks belonging to the Cardinals failed to make it from Pittsburgh with the team. The paper said the Cardinals did have to purchase shoes for the team from a local store:
“(Hendricks) had to order 15 pairs of new ones, which will set the club back $210.”
In a borrowed uniform and in new shoes, Red Ames allowed 10 hits, but just two runs, and the Cardinals chased Rube Marquard in the fifth inning—scoring six runs off the Brooklyn starter.
Red Ames
Lanigan said the previous time a team played in their opponents’ uniforms was 1915:
“The Saint Louis Browns reached Detroit minus uniforms and attired in Tiger togs they defeated the Junglemen, 1 to 0.”
Edward A. Batchelor of The Detroit Free Press said of the June 20th game:
“You see it was this way. The St. Louis club’s baggage went astray somewhere between Boston and Detroit and when the Browns arrived, they possessed nothing in the way of baseball equipment except the usual number of arms and legs. Some of them had heads, though this is not considered a requisite in big league ball anymore. They didn’t even have a manager, as Branch Rickey refused to come along. He won’t even look at Sunday ball.
“With true hospitality the Tigers took pity on the forlorn crew and outfitted them completely in the Detroit Road uniforms. They also loaned them gloves and shoes and otherwise contributed to their comfort and convenience.”
Dressed in Detroit uniforms, Batchelor said the Browns “forgot they are tail-enders and imagined they were really the Jungaleers.”
Carl Weilman pitched a four-hit shutout for the seventh place Browns.
Carl Weilman
Lanigan said one had to go back to 1912 to find a team losing in borrowed uniforms:
“A game which a visiting team did not win when it was compelled to play in the home club’s regalia because of the non-arrival of its baggage took place at the hilltop, in New York on August 12 [sic, August 13]. The Tigers and their baggage parted company in Syracuse and Jennings’ men played in the Yanks’ road uniforms, being beaten 3 to 2.”
Batchelor said in The Free Press:
“A most peculiar combination of circumstances thwarted the well laid plans of Hughie Jennings and kept the fiery siren dumb on the bench in civilian clothes. Detroit’s baggage was misplaced somewhere in Syracuse where an exhibition game was played yesterday. Only the artful hospitality of manager (Harry) Wolverton saved the Jungaleers from forfeit. Wolverton lent the visitors his road uniforms. But had no shoes of guaranteed fit.
“Consequently, the entire invading squad had to go out and purchase new kicks. Winning ballgames in unbroken brogans is no nice business.”
Harry Wolverton
Batchelor said the bats loaned to the Tigers were “so full of holes that Jennings’ heavy artillery were able to collect a measly bundle of three hits”
The Tigers scored two runs in the first inning of New York starter Ray Fisher, who was ejected along with Wolverton for arguing a call at first base. Jack Warhop pitched 8 ½ innings in relief, giving up just two hits in the 3 to 2 victory.
Cy Young managed the first six games for the 1907 Boston Americans; guiding the team to a 3-3 record after manager Chick Stahl’s suicide during spring training.
In 1910, The Cleveland News said, while “The grand old man” could have continued as a player-manager, “he did not feel like combining the two trades.”
Cy Young
The paper asked Young what qualities were needed to manage a team:
“It does not take a brainy man to to run a ball team. You’ll hear a lot of stuff handed out about the inside baseball knowledge that such and such a manager is supposed to possess. But baseball is not such a complicated game that the ordinary manager doesn’t understand pretty nearly all the wrinkles.”
Young said intelligence was overrated:
“You’ve often heard someone suggest the name of a certain ballplayer as one likely to make a clever and successful manager, but the chances are that the man mentioned might prove an utter failure. Some of the brainiest players in the game might make the worst fizzles in attempting to direct the fortunes of a big-league club. It isn’t baseball brains that count in managing. It’s the ability to lead and make the men under you fight.”
He described the perfect manager.
“You take the manager that can keep after his men. I don’t mean the bulldozer, but one who knows just what there is in each man, and who is capable of bringing it all out. Such a man is (Hughie) Jennings, who never lets up, no matter how gloomy the outlook may be.
Cy’s ideal, Hughie Jennings
“A fighting manager with a fighting team will win three times as many games as a brainy outfit with a brainy manager. Give me the fighter every time. That’s how Detroit has won so often. Jennings is the sort of a manager that does things—and wins, too.”
Baseball History Daily 