Tag Archives: King Kelly

“A Trick Which is as Ancient as Baseball”

27 Sep

James Kennedy, the editor of The Alliance (OH) Daily Leader, in 1906, “contributed another to the growing fund of yarns about Mike ‘King’ Kelly.”

Unlike most Kelly stories of tricks sprung on the field, he was on the wrong end of this one.

Kelly

“It was a Fourth of July, back in the later 80s. Boston was playing in Cleveland, with the $20,000 pair, Clarkson and Kelly, in full bloom.”

Cleveland pounded Old Hoss Radbourn and held an 11-4 lead:

“Along about the seventh inning Kel smashed a double to left, just making second. (Cleveland second baseman) Cub (Stricker) held the ball a minute, after it was thrown in, then deliberately walked it up to the Cleveland pitcher and reached out the ball at arm’s length. The pitcher seemed to take it, walked back to the box, and began the usual series of contortions which preceded his delivery.

“Kelly took a good lead off second, Cub bringing a laugh to the fans by lock-stepping him until they were almost halfway to third. Then the little, diminutive, red-headed second baseman lifted his arm and dealt Kelly a resounding whack between the should with the ball.”

Kennedy said it took Kelly:

Cub Stricker

“(A)bout five minutes to realize that Cub had caught him on a trick which is as ancient as baseball.”

Kennedy said Kelly then, “went clear down to second to shake hands with Cub and admit that the horse was on him.”

Unlike so many stories told nearly three decades after the fact, Kennedy was right on nearly every detail.

The game did take place on the fourth of July, in 1889. The second game of a double header—Clarkson and Boston had shut out the Spiders in the first game.

In the bottom of the seventh, down seven runs, Kelly doubled, driving in Dick Johnston to make the score 11 to 5.

The Boston Globe described what happened next:

“While Mike was loafing off second, Stricker stole up to second and put his man out. The crowd yelled for a minute and Kelly then ran to the bench with his head down.”

 The Beaneaters lost the game 11 to 7.

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The Quiet Town of Hingham is in Turmoil”

28 Apr

The Boston Post said:

The quiet town of Hingham is in turmoil over a proposed addition to its population.

The Boston Globe said:

“Enveloped in a maze of spreading branches of beautiful elm and Rock Maple trees is a quiet corner of the quiet town of Hingham, stands the elegant residence to be presented to M. J. Kelly, the famous ballplayer.”

The New York World said:

“The great ballplayer and enthusiastic Brotherhood man was presented with a house and lot valued at $10,000 and containing furnishings and adjuncts worth at least $3500 more.”

King Kelly had been feted on August 12, 1890, “After being cheered to the echo,” that day at the Congress Street Grounds; Kelly’s Boston Reds lost to Ward’s Wonders but maintained a one and a half game lead in the Payers League pennant race.

Mike “King” Kelly

After the game:

“King took a train for Hingham. He was followed by about 50 of his personal friends in a special train.”

A dinner was held the Cushing House; a then more than 200-year-old home that is one of the town’s earliest and was added to the National Historic Register in 1973.

 After the dinner, speeches were made by Kelly, “General” Arthur Dixwell—the Boston super fan, Hugh Fullerton called ‘the greatest” “crank” of all-time. John Montgomery Ward, Arthur Irwin, Julian B. Hart, the director of the Boston club, and John Graham—of the Boston Athletic Club, who, seven years later, helped originate what became the Boston Marathon—also spoke.

“King, in the course of his speech, remarked that he was overpowered, thanked his friends in San Francisco, New York, New Orleans, Chicago, and Boston who had contributed to the gift, and promised a ‘small bottle on the ice’ to any and all who might call during the winter months. After the speech making, the entire party were conveyed to the new home.”

The House

The Philadelphia Times‘ Boston correspondent said, “this present has been arranged by his friends as a tribute to him not only as a brainy ballplayer, but an all-around good fellow, ever ready with his last dollar to aid a friend.”

Kelly’s generous nature, even towards rivals, was the subject of a story that same month in The Cleveland News. Patsy Tebeau was badly injured by a batted ball during a July game with Kelly’s Reds:

“In the game in which Pat met with the accident in Boston, which laid him up for a couple weeks, Kelly was playing, and, as Kelly often does, he was chafing Tebeau all through the game.

“When Tebeau dropped senseless, after being struck by the ball, Kelly, thinking it one of Tebeau’s tricks, called out ‘Never touched him.’ When the third baseman failed to rise, however, he hurried to where he was lying on the ground and helped carry him to the carriage.”

Tebeau was confined to bed for five days.

“Naturally enough, he was blue and almost heartbroken at not being able to play. No one had been near him all morning, and in his own language he was ‘all broken up.’ He had hardly time to think over the situation when there was a knock on the door and in walked King Kelly. He carried in his hands a big basket of fruit of all sorts, and after leaving it within Tebeau’s reach he left with a few words of cheer.

“’I’ll tell you,’ says Pat, ‘the way that man treated me brought tears to my eyes.’”

Not to be outdone, friends of heavyweight champion John J. Sullivan decided to buy him a home in Hingham. 

That was a bridge too far for the residents. The Boston Post said:

“The inhabitants of the puritanical old town, who swear by their lineage and recognize only blue blood, being as conservative as any people on the New England coast, are much disturbed over the prospect of having a pugilist in their midst, and they freely give vent to their indignation. They swallowed Kelly with a grimace, but Sullivan is too much for them, they say, and steps are being taken to purchase the property and any other that Sullivan’s friends have in view.”

John L. Sullivan

Sullivan never got his home in Hingham, Kelly, who he called, “the greatest ball player in world,” didn’t spend a lot of time in his.

In April of 1893, The Boston Globe said the home, which also included a stable and a two acre lot, was sold for back taxes of $123.

Kelly died of pneumonia the following year; he died like lived, broke; primarily because, as The Fall River (MA) Daily Herald said:

“His many kindly acts to his fellows in want or illness endeared him to the baseball world, and hosts of friends will mourn his loss.”

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Things I Learned on the way to Looking up Other Things #44

7 Jan

Flint’s Hands

In 1896, Hugh Fullerton said in The Chicago Record:

“It is not hard to tell ‘Old Silver’ (Flint) is a ballplayer.”

Silver Flint

Fullerton told a story about how a train carrying the catcher and the rest of the White Stockings had derailed during their “Southern tour” the previous season:

“The train jumped the track and several of the passengers were injured. Silver stood near the scene of the wreck watching the proceedings, when one of the surgeons who had tendered his services caught sight of Silver’s fists.

“’Too bad, my man, too bad,’ said the man with the scalpel, ‘but both those hands will have to come off.’”

King Kelly told Fullerton that Flint “had to shake hands with the doctor before the latter would believe that Silver’s hands were not knocked out in the wreck.”

Young’s Perfect Game

In 1910, The Boston Post said Napoleon Lajoie asked Cy Young about his 1904 perfect game while the Naps were playing a series in Boston.

Cy Young

“’Oh,’ remarked Cy in that native natural dialect that six years’ residence in Boston did not change, ‘there ain’t nothing to tell. Nothing much at any rate. They just ‘em right at somebody all the time that was all. Two or three drives would have been good, long hits if Buck (Freeman) and Chick (Stahl) hadn’t been laying for ‘em. I didn’t know nobody reached first until we were going to the clubhouse. Then Jim (Collins) told me.’”

Young beat the Philadelphia Athletics and Rube Waddell 3 to 0 on May 5, 1904; the third perfect game in MLB history; the previous two had both taken place 24 years earlier during the 1880 season–making it the first one thrown under modern rules.

The box score

Cobb’s Base Stealing

 Before the 1912 season, Joe Birmingham, manager of the Cleveland Naps told The Cleveland News that Sam Crawford was the reason Ty Cobb was a successful base stealer.

“I haven’t made such a statement without considering the matter.”

Birmingham said:

“Put Sam Crawford up behind any one of a half dozen players in this league and their base stealing records would increase immensely…In the first place, every catcher is handicapped almost five feet in throwing to second when Sam is up. You know Sam lays way back of that home plate.

“A catcher would take his life in his hands if he dared get in the customary position behind the plate, for Sam takes such an awful wallop. Five feet doesn’t seem like a great distance, but when it is taken into consideration that a vast number of base stealers are checked by the merest margin of seconds, five feet looms up as considerable distance.”

Cobb

Then there was Crawford’s bat:

“(He) wields a young telegraph pole. There are few players in baseball who could handle such a club. And Sam spreads that club all over an immense amount of air. It’s usually in the way or thereabouts. At least it’s a factor with which the catcher must always reckon. Finally, Sam is a left-handed batter. Any time a pitcher hurls a pitchout to catch Cobb stealing the catcher is thrown into an awkward position. He can’t possibly be set for a throw. There’s another portion of a second lost.”

Cobb and Crawford were teammates from 1905 through 1917; Cobb led the league in steals six times during that period.

Sam Crawford

Birmingham’s overall point was to suggest that Joe Jackson, of the Naps, would be a better base stealer than Cobb:

“Joe has shown more natural ability during his first (full) year in the league than Cobb did.”

Birmingham said Jackson was as fast going from home to first as Cobb and “No one can convince me to the contrary.”

While he said Jackson did not get the same lead off the base as Cobb, he said:

“When that is acquired you’ll find little Joey leading the parade or just a trifle behind the leader.”

In 24 season Cobb stole 897 bases; Jackson stole 202 in 13 seasons.

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“Spalding Should Never Permit a Chicago Audience to be so Insulted Again”

20 Mar

George Van Haltren didn’t instantly live up to his billing.

The 21-year-old, then pitcher, had finally decided to leave California in June, after the death of his mother—he had refused to come East for more than a year while his mother was ill. His refusal to come to Chicago had resulted in threats of being blacklisted from White Stockings’ owner A. G. Spaulding.

The Oakland Tribune said Van Haltren’s current club, the Greenhood and Morans had offered him $300 a month to stay in California.

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Van Haltren

The impending arrival of Van Haltren was big new in the Chicago papers.  With the team struggling in fourth place, The Chicago Daily Journal said Van Haltren was “depended upon to help (John) Clarkson and (Mark) Baldwin boost the club.’ The paper left readers with high expectations:

“Two years ago he commenced playing ball as a catcher, but after a year at the receiving end of the battery, he decided it was better to give than to receive…In his first four games he struck out 55 men; in a game a little later he struck out three consecutive batters on nine pitched balls, and in another game he made a record of 19 strike outs in a nine inning game.”

Van Haltren’s arrival for his start, against Boston, was greeted with fanfare and received as much coverage in West Coast newspapers as in Chicago.  The scene, described by The Oakland Tribune:

“Eight thousand people witnessed the game.  The Chicagos marched on the diamond with Van Haltren and Captain Anson in the lead, then followed by the band and th other players of the club.  When they arrived at the home plate Anson and Van Haltren took off their caps, and the latter was loudly cheered.”

The Chicago Tribune said Van Haltren was sharp for four innings, striking out the first batter he faced:

“(He) retired Joe Hornung on strikes and the crowd manifested its pleasure.”

The Beaneaters scored two unearned runs in the first, but the White Stockings responded with five in the first and scored two more runs in the third.  Through four innings Van Haltren allowed just one hit.

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Van Haltren

The Boston Globe said what came next:

“Spalding’s wonder, the famous left-handed pitcher Van Haltren, the terror of the Pacific slope, made his debut as a league pitcher and for four innings he was a king with the crowd. After that he lost all control of the ball and all the Bostons had to do to get to first was to wait for five balls.”

Beginning in the fifth, Van Haltren “sent 14 men to first on balls, besides hitting four with the ball, and (Tom) Daly, who caught him for the first time, saved him about 10 wild pitches.”

The Chicago and California papers saw Van Haltren’s implosion differently—they blamed umpire Herm Doscher.  The Chicago Tribune said:

“Not only was his judgment on balls and strikes miserable, but he lacks a knowledge of the rules of the game.”

The Chicago Inter Ocean (which estimated the crowd at 7,000, not 8,000) said fans “witnessed the rankest case of robbery by an umpire that has ever taken place in the city. President Spalding should never permit a Chicago audience to be so insulted again.”

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Doescher

The Oakland Tribune called Doscher “Incredibly unfair and incorrect,” and The San Francisco Examiner claimed Doscher was confused by Van Haltern’s curve ball:

“Doescher’s [sic] decisions of balls were drawn from the direction of the ball when at least three feet away from the plate, losing all sight of the ultimate course of the curves at the vital spot.”

Even The Boston Post agreed that Doscher’s umpiring was “erratic” and that he participated in “bad discrimination against Van Haltren.”

Despite his meltdown—or Doscher’s incompetence—Van Haltren entered the ninth with the game tied at 11.

The Beaneaters scored six runs in the ninth after three walks—The Chicago Daily News said, “fully one-half the balls called on Van Haltren should have been strikes.”  Van Haltren was also rattled by second baseman Fred Pfeffer’s second error of the game and two hits—or as The Chicago Tribune put it:

“(Edward ‘Pop’) Tate got his base on balls after Van Haltren had struck him out fairly; (Michael ‘Kid’) Madden was hit by the ball and given his base; Pfeffer’s error gave (King) Kelly first and filled the bases.  Then (Bobby) Wheelock was given his base on balls after about six strikes.”

Having given up the lead, Van Haltren then gave up a triple to Boston’s Bill Nash, Nash scored on a single by Ezra Sutton and the Chicago went down in order in the ninth.

The phenom left-hander from California lost his first game 17-11, walked 16 and hit three batters.

The Oakland Tribune said:

“A correspondent saw Captain Anson and was informed the management of the White Stockings were perfectly satisfied with the new pitcher, who, considering all circumstances, made a good showing as a National League player.”

Anson started Van Haltren in right field the following day and thought enough of him to use him in relief of John Clarkson in the seventh inning, The Chicago Daily News said of his second stint on the mound:

“(He) did remarkably well, staking out such batsmen as Hornung, Nash and Johnson.  The general opinion here is that when he becomes used to Eastern ways, he will prove the best pitcher of the year.”

Van Haltren did not prove to be “pitcher of the year,” he finished 11-7 with a 3.86 ERA, but walked just 50 batters in 152 innings after walking 16 in his first nine.

But he was treated like the “pitcher of the year” when he returned home.

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Van Haltren

The San Francisco Examiner said:

“George Van Haltren is, beyond all question entitles to rank as the premier pitcher of California, and the most invidious of our Eastern friends will not begrudge us the right to boast a little about the stalwart young fellow who has done so much in the East to puzzle the crack batsmen beyond the Rockies, and at the same time prove to the older but not more progressive East what kind of products we raise here in California…It is believed that The Examiner’s readers will agree that a finer specimen of young America, of Californian or any other growth, than George Van Haltren would be hard to find.”

Van Haltren never excelled as a pitcher but became one of the best leadoff men of the 19th Century.

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“The Twenty Greatest Fever”

2 Oct

In November of 1911, an interviewer asked industrialist Andrew Carnegie to name the 20 greatest men of all time.  Within days, Carnegie’s list was parsed and picked apart, and led to what The Chicago Daily News called “The twenty greatest fever.”

Lists of the twenty greatest everything appeared in papers across the country for the next year.  Of course, the question was put to many baseball figures and led to a number of interesting lists and quotes.

One of the first to weigh in was Chicago White Sox owner Charles Comiskey, in The Daily News:

  • Buck Ewing
  • King Kelly
  • Cap Anson
  • Charlie Ferguson
  • Fred Pfeffer
  • Eddie Collins
  • Honus Wagner
  • Jack Glasscock
  • Harry Lord
  • Ty Cobb
  • Fred Clarke
  • Willie Keeler
  • Tom McCarthy
  • Napoleon Lajoie
  • Charles Radbourn
  • Bobby Caruthers
  • Christy Mathewson
  •  Clark Griffith
  • Ed Walsh

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Charles Comiskey

Comiskey said Eddie Collins, who would acquire for $50,000 three years later, was the best current player:

“He’s got it on all the others in the game today.  I don’t know that a good lawyer went to waste, but do know that a mighty good ballplayer was found when Eddie decided to give up the technicalities of Blackstone for the intricacies of baseball.   There isn’t much use saying anything about Connie Mack’s star, everybody knows he is a wonder as well as I do.”

Cy Young was asked by The Cleveland News to name his 20 greatest:

“I guess we’d have to make a place for old Amos Rusie, ‘Kid’ Nichols should be placed on the list too, ‘Kid’ forgot more baseball than 90 percent of us ever knew.  And there was Bill Hutchinson, just about one of the greatest that ever lived.  You can’t overlook Walter Johnson, and, by all means Ed Walsh must be there.  The same applies to Mathewson.  Then comes my old side partner, Bill Dinneen.  Bill never was given half enough credit.”

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Amos Rusie

Young rounded out the battery:

“I’d pick old Lou Criger first of all the catchers.  George Gibson of the Pittsburgh team, to my way of thinking, stands with the leaders.  Give the third place to Oscar Stanage of Detroit, and I feel safe in saying that I have chosen a really great catcher.”

Young said:

“Doping out the infields is comparatively easy.  Without hesitation I would name Hal Chase, Eddie Collins, Nap Lajoie, Hans Wagner, Bobby Wallace, Jimmy Collins, Herman Long, and Charlie Wagner.”

Young said of his infield choices:

“You can’t get away from Bobby Wallace for a general all round gentlemanly player, he has never had a superior at shortstop unless that man was Honus Wagner.  Maybe Johnny Evers is entitles to consideration, but I never say him play.”

As for his outfielders, Young said:

“Ty Cobb’s equal never lived, according to my way of thinking, and I doubt if we will ever have his superior.  Say what they will about Cobb, but one who is true to himself must acknowledge his right to rank above all other players.

“I chose Cobb, Fred Clarke of Pittsburgh, Tris Speaker of Boston and Bill Lange for the outfield, and regret that the limitations prevent me from choosing Jim McAleer.  McAleer was the best fielder I have ever seen.  I say that with all due respect to Cobb and other competitors.

“Tris Speaker is a marvel, and only because of his playing at the same time as Cobb is he deprived of the honor of being the greatest outfielder…Many fans of today probably don’t remember Bill Lange.  Take my word for it, he was a marvel.  He could field, bat, and run bases with wonderful skill.  No man ever had the fade-away slide better than Lange.”

The reporter from The News noticed that Young had, “chosen his twenty greatest players without mentioning his own great deeds,” and asked Young whether her felt he belonged on the list.  Young said:

“Oh, I’ve heard a whole lot of stuff about myself as a player, but I was but ordinary when compared to the men I name as the greatest in the game.”

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Cy Young

When Ty Cobb presented his list of the 20 greatest current American League players to The Detroit News, the paper noted his “Very becoming modesty” in leaving himself off of his list.  Cobb’s picks were:

  • Ed Walsh
  • Bill Donovan
  • Walter Johnson
  • Jack Coombs
  • Vean Gregg
  • George Mullin
  • Billy Sullivan
  • Oscar Stanage
  • Ira Thomas
  • Hal Chase
  • Napoleon Lajoie
  • Eddie Collins
  • Jack Berry
  • Owen Bush
  • Frank Baker
  • Harry Lord
  • Sam Crawford
  • Clyde Milan
  • Joe Jackson
  • Tris Speaker

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Ty Cobb

Cobb included Bobby Wallace, Russ Ford, and Heinie Wagner as honorable mentions.

More of the lists and quotes from “The twenty greatest fever,” on Thursday

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