Tag Archives: Joe Mulvey

Things I Learned on the way to Looking up Other Things: Ed Delahanty

27 Apr

Post Death Sighting

When Ed Delahanty died, Like Elvis and other icons, there were of course those who claimed to see him alive. The most publicized example involved a sighting at an establishment owned by two other players. The Associated Press reported:

“A traveling man named O’Brien, who is well acquainted with Edward Delehanty [sic], the famous Washington fielder whose body was said to be taken from the river at Buffalo, claims to have seen Delehanty about George (Nig) Cuppy and Lou Creiger’s [sic, Criger] cigar store at Elkhart, Indiana yesterday. O’Brien approached the man he is positive was Delehanty, but the latter conducted himself as if he did not want to be known. O’Brien heard of Delehanty’s reported suicide, and for that reason paid particular attention to the individual.”

delahanty

Delahanty

Delahanty’s “Mascot”

After Delahanty’s death, The New York Herald said Delahanty had a “mascot” who helped him make money at the racetrack:

“Felix Carr, the old-time negro jockey and trainer for (prominent thoroughbred breeder and owner) Barney Schreiber, was responsible for Delahanty’s success on the racetrack and during the winters of 1900 and 1901 the great batsman made as high as $10,000 a season playing the horses at the winter meetings. Felix Carr supplied him with all the stable information at his command and it was on Schreiber’s two-year-olds that Delahanty made his biggest killings.”

Carr was “in Delahanty’s company at the Commercial Hotel,” (now the Hotel Monteleone) in New Orleans “the night before he was killed.”

The paper said Carr, with $2500 in his pocket, left the hotel, disappeared and was later found “in the Bayou St. John, a stream that passes very close to the Fair Grounds racetrack at the Crescent City.” The Herald called it “a strange coincidence” that Carr and Delahanty met “death in the water.”

Delahanty was said to be “continually worrying” that his friend’s assailants were not captured and that “With Carr’s demise” so went Delahanty’s success betting on horses.

The story was correct that Delahanty’s “mascot” disappeared with $2500, but wrong that his body was found.

Carr went missing in March of 1902, but just three months after Delahanty’s death, the former jockey was located in Havana; the $2500 he disappeared with had belonged to his boss.

The Chicago Daily News said Schreiber was so happy to have found out that Carr was still alive, “he will not prosecute him, but will, on the contrary, give him a life position,” to continue training horses at Schreiber’s Missouri farm.

Delahanty’s signing

Two weeks after Delahanty’s body was discovered, The Louisville Courier Journal told the story of how he signed his first major league contract in 1888:

del

Delahanty

“(Charlie) Bastian, who was one of the best fielders in the business, was a weak batsman, and it was decided to secure a good sticker for second base.”

The club sent a James H. Randall to Wheeling, West Virginia to secure Delahanty’s release.

Randall was once described by The Philadelphia Inquirer as:

“Detective James H. Randall…known as an expert in base ball cases and has heretofore been in the employ of the League. He signed (Kid) Gleason, (Pop) Schriver, (Jack) Clements, and (Joe) Mulvey for the Philadelphia club.”

Randall was also said by The Inquirer to have been employed by the Players League in 1890 to help induce talent to jump to the Brotherhood, He also managed some Pennsylvania based minor league clubs in the early 1890s.

“When Randall arrived in Wheeling, he found William McGonigle [sic, McGunnigle], manager of the Brooklyn club and Billy Barnie of the Baltimore club, both of whom were there for the purchase of players, and Delehanty [sic] in particular.”

Randall was able to outmaneuver the competition and “purchased Delahanty’s release,” for $1800.

“He had been told not to pay over $1000 but was so impressed with what he learned about the player that when the other people bid, he raised the amount.”

The Wheeling club was playing a series in Kalamazoo, Michigan, and Randall headed there to sign Delahanty. When he arrived, Al Buckenberger, the Wheeling manager:

“(H)ad not been consulted about the sale and was very indignant when he was informed that Delehanty had been sold. He was also very anxious to beat Kalamazoo in the series, so Randall allowed Delehanty to play two games at Kalamazoo before he signed him.”

Randall said at the close of the series he met with Delahanty at the team’s hotel in Kalamazoo:

“I asked him how he’d like to play in the big league. He said: ‘All right, but I can’t get away.’ When asked how much he salary he would want in case he could get away, he replied that he ought to have about $225 per month to start with.”

Randall said he signed Delahanty for $250 a month and the two left for Chicago where Delahanty made his major league debut on May 22.

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“I’ll Break your Head if I ever get out Again”

8 Dec

Before a game against the Philadelphia Quakers in 1883, Providence Grays outfielder Samuel “Cliff” Carroll was drinking from a hose.  He then turned the hose on a Providence fan named Jimmy Murphy.

After the game, an 8 to 4 Grays victory, Murphy returned to the Messer Street Grounds with a gun.

Cliff Carroll

Cliff Carroll

The Providence Evening Press said:

“Shortly after the ball game, Wednesday afternoon, the neighborhood of Messer Street was thrown into a state of great excitement by the announcement that a member of the Providence baseball club had been shot.”

The paper said the initial hysteria included reports that the player had been killed.

“A well-known baseball crank named “Jimmy” Murphy, has been in the habit, for some time past, of frequenting the ball grounds during the hours of practice, and imagining himself to me a player of extraordinary merit.  Owing to his eccentricities he was a source of great amusement to the players, and was made by them the butt of many practical jokes.  ‘Jimmy,’ who is said to be slightly ‘off’ mentally speaking, occasionally resented his treatment, but never until Wednesday did he report to violent means.”

The Evening Press said after Carroll “thoroughly drenched” Murphy with the hose:

“Murphy immediately departed, nursing his wrath, and in the afternoon returned, and waited outside the grounds until the players issued, after the game.  Carroll came out with a number of men, among whom was (Joe) Mulvey, the change shortstop, and ‘Jimmy’ at once drew a pistol and deliberately fired at Carroll, but owing no doubt to his excitement, he missed his man, and the bullet struck Mulvey in the right shoulder, inflicting a painful, though not dangerous wound.”

Murphy, the shooter, fled from the scene, and was pursued by police, citizens, and Grays second baseman Jack Farrell.  He managed to escape, but was arrested later in the evening.  Neighbors told the paper “Murphy is a ‘crank’ in other matters besides baseball, and is not considered responsible for his actions.”

It was later learned that the wound to Mulvey was superficial, the ball never penetrating his skin:

“Mr. Mulvey quietly walked to his home on Crary Street, congratulating himself upon his narrow escape.”

The following day in court, Murphy was found “probably guilty in the justice court,” and “bound over to the court of common pleas.”  While being led out of the courtroom, Murphy spotted Carroll and said:

“I will get even with you yet, I’ll break your head if I ever get out again.”

The eventual adjudication of Murphy’s case is lost to history.

Carroll was part of the 1884 “World Champion” Grays team, and remained with Providence until the club folded at the end of the 1885 season. He played with five more National League teams through 1893; although he sat out the 1889 season to operate a farm in Bloomington, Illinois.

There is no record of Murphy having ever having the opportunity to “get even.”

Carroll died in 1923 in Portland, Oregon.  The Oregonian said:

“One of the greatest baseball players of the game died in Portland recently, but so modest was he that few even knew he had been spending his last years here.”

The Providence Morning Star reported on the day of the shooting that Grays Manager Harry Wright had agreed to “loan” Mulvey to the Quakers.    Mulvey joined Philadelphia in early July.  He was switched to third base, and was a member of the Quakers through 1889, he played until 1895

Joe Mulvey

Joe Mulvey

Mulvey remained in Philadelphia after his playing days and worked as a watchman at Shibe Park.  The Associated Press said on August 20, 1928, the man who had a brush with death at a ballpark in 1883, “attended a boxing show at the ballpark,” and “was found dead of heart failure in the club locker room,” the following morning.

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“It will be a Local Patriotic Game for Blood”

4 Aug

In 1902, John Montgomery Ward was asked to predict the future.  He wrote about what baseball would look like in 1922 in an article that appeared in a number of East Coast and Midwest newspapers:

“What will the game of baseball be two decades hence?  Frankly I don’t know.  But believe me if it has withstood what it has during the last few years it will still be here.  I believe it is going through the fire now, but it will come out whole in the end…No other game has the same hold on the public from a spectator point of view, and that is why I am confident that it will last.”

John Montgomery Ward

John Montgomery Ward

Ward envisioned a system in which all the players on each team would be natives of the area the teams represented:

“Two decades from now it may be no longer a mere exhibition—for that is all it is now—an exhibition of the ability of a clever manager, with more money and more tact in managerial council to get together the best players in the market—it will be a locally patriotic game for blood.

“The time is coming when the players instead of being bought to play in any team that calls them, irrespective of where they live and whence the team is located, will belong to the locality from which the team hails.

“There is a tendency in that direction already.

“The Brooklyn management is an instance of one that appreciates the value of a player who has a local following.  They have retained (Wee Willie) Keeler, though the offers of other clubs have forced them to pay him a very large salary.  But they have their reward in his great popularity with the Brooklyn patrons of the game.  He was born there.  The people know him, know his history and they feel that he is always doing his best for his town and their town.

"Wee Willie" Keeler

“Wee Willie” Keeler

“Not only is this state of affairs characteristic of this team, but it is to be seen in one or two other teams in both leagues.  The managers appreciate the money value of a ‘local attraction,’ as they call it, and they want more men of the same kind.  They can’t find them but that is due to the mistaken system of buying and selling players for their worth as players, which has killed the local end of the game and stunted the development of the town boy on the town lot.  As soon as the new system of localizing the players comes into vogue there will be a revival of general interest in the game among the ‘town boys’ and players will be made to meet the demand.

“This revitalization of the game must come, and come it will in the next twenty years because baseball as an exhibition has reached it height.  It can be developed no further, and something must be done to advance or there will be a deterioration.

“Of course, if this is done, there will be some work for the Rules Committee to do.  It will be necessary to have some sort of legislation to apportion the territory fairly among the teams.  New York being the largest city in the United States will have the advantage of a smaller city, like Boston or Baltimore, and to even up matters it would be necessary for the committee to give the smaller town enough territory to make all available population the same.  The details must be decided by the events of the future.  But I believe that something like that is about to come and will be a feature of the game of baseball in 1922.”

Ward, who engaged in, and encouraged contract jumping in order to establish the Players League just more than decade earlier, now, because of the changes in the economics of baseball, saw the practice as the greatest threat to the game:

“There will be no ‘contract jumping’ which has given the national pastime such a setback in the last two years.  And much depends upon the decision of the courts.  This contract jumping is a two-edged sword.  It will someday cut back at the American League when their players start to jump.

“Every successful game nowadays and in the future must have money invested in it. Look at the progress the game of baseball has made in the last twenty years and that will give you an idea of what we might expect.

“Twenty years ago each team had about $1,000 invested in it to put it on a working basis.  Some did not have even that much.  To-day, in Philadelphia, there is a plant which is values at about $350,000.  They own a lot in the residence section of the town and the ground is daily growing more valuable for building purposes.  In twenty years it will have tripled in value.  There is also a substantial brick wall around it and a valuable iron grand stand.

“Twenty years from now we may expect to find the conditions in Philadelphia existing all over the country, and there will be a hundred million dollars invested in the sport.  All this if the contract-jumping business is made impossible for the future.

“Take it as a fair business proposition.  Would any sane man invest his money in an enterprise which could be ruined at any moment by the failure of any outside party to fulfill his end of the contract?

“In baseball the ruin may come at any time, for if a man can ‘jump’ in March he can jump in May or June, just when his help is needed most, and there is no redress for the man who invests.  The courts, for the most part, claim that, if there is any damage done, the laws are open for redress and the manager can sue the player for damages.  But whom can he sue and from whom get redress?  Yhe contract-jumper has nothing and is generally irresponsible.  If a coal company contracts to deliver so many tons of coal to you in so many months, and you, in turn contract to deliver so many tons to other parties in so many months, and you are made to lose money because the coal company breaks the contract and fails to deliver the goods, you can get legal redress in an action for damages.  But not so with the baseball manager.

“If contract-jumping is allowed, the future of baseball is a future full of small things and a lack of progress.  But contract-jumping will not be heard of twenty years hence.  Already one state in the Union has declared against it legally—the state of Pennsylvania.  They have good lawyers down there, and they know what they are talking about.  And the crucial test and the future of baseball—a future full of big things as yet undreamed of, is now in the hands of the Circuit Court of the United States.

“If the Circuit Court of the United States falls in line with the Pennsylvania decision (Philadelphia Ball Club v. (Napoleon) Lajoie) there will be no more contract-jumping, and the manager, after signing his contracts with his players, can invest his whole fortune, safe in the belief that he will not risk it subject to loss at the whim of his players or through the wiles of a rival organization.

“Then the game will take on a luxury which has not heretofore been possible, and the game of twenty years from now will see as much improvement as it saw in the last twenty years.”

Ward predicted no major rule changes, saying they “seem to have reached perfection” but conceded “Still, there is a Rules Committee, created to make rules, and it naturally feels it must do something to earn its salary.”  Ward said he endorsed two major rule changes during the past decade; the rule to “move the catcher up under the bat,” (adopted in 1901 in the National League and ’02 in the American), and the 1893 change that increased the pitching distance to 60’ 6”.

“It gives the batter a better chance to fix his attention on hitting the ball, because he does not need to be afraid of an inshoot or know when he takes the bat in his hand that he is also taking his life in his hand.  I tell you it was a serious matter in those days to get hit by a ball from the strong arm of one of those fast pitchers, as my own experience can testify.”

As with every era of baseball, Ward said some of his contemporaries thought the game had already changed so much as to no longer resemble the game they played twenty years earlier:

“I was talking to one the other day in Philadelphia (Arthur Irwin).  He is of the old school you know (and said) ‘Oh, it’s not like the old days, when I played on the Philadelphia team for four years without men being changed.  All we had were (Jack) Clements and (Deacon) McGuire as catchers, (Charlie) Ferguson, (Charlie) Buffington and (Dan) Casey as pitchers, (Joe) Mulvey, (Charlie) Bastian, (Sid) Farrar and myself in the infield and (George) Wood and (Jim) Fogarty in the outfield.

Arthur Irwin

Arthur Irwin

“’We didn’t need to be nervous every time we made an error, and look to have one or more of a half dozen substitutes take our place.  And we played ball, we did, and no mistake, for we knew our jobs were safe.’”

Irwin’s recollection was fuzzy—the lineup as he described was only in place in 1887  (but even that season Barney McLaughlin played more games at second than Bastian) –but he insisted the lack of competition for a roster spot made players better:

“’We could give these boys who are playing now cards and spades on lots of things, inside work and out, and best them.  We had the hit and run, and we didn’t bunt as much as they do now.  I can’t see how runs can be made by so much bunting.  Oh, for the good old time back again when the swatting game was the thing.  I believe the public would rather see the boys slug the ball and run.  Shades of Roger Connor, ‘Buck’ Ewing and Jim O’Rourke!  What would they think of this bunting business?  It makes me sick to think of it.’”

Buck Ewing

Buck Ewing

Ward said Irwin was one of many “old-style players who feel the same way,” but he was more optimistic, but still managed to take a shot at current, and future,  players:

“I have great hopes for the future of the game, and I believe that all that has been done in the past to make it take the place it occupies to-day will not be a circumstance to what will be done in the next twenty years to make it take the place in the heart of the nation which has not been dreamed of heretofore.

“The players may not be as good as the players of the past, and this especially true of the local player idea becoming a fact, but the interest will be great, and after all, the interest in the game is the fountain source of its life.”

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