Tag Archives: National League

Salaries–1897

15 Nov

After Amos Rusie ended his year-long holdout, the issue of salaries was, as it has been throughout the history of the game, hotly debated—some thought ballplayers were grossly overpaid during a period when the average annual salary in the United States was just under $675.

Amos Rusie

The Fort Wayne Gazette published the following in an effort to address “much questioning as to the salaries paid young players at the present time.”

According to The Gazette National League players averaged $175 to $250 a month “all the way up to $5000 for veterans.”

Other league salaries:

Eastern League: $100-$150 for young players $200-$250 for stars

Western League: $75-$150, up to $300 for stars

Atlantic League: $75-$250

Western Association: $65-$115

Southern League: $75-$100

New England League: $75-$125

Interstate League: $65-$150

The Gazette came down on the side of the players:

“It is customary to speak of the high salaries and easy lives of National League players but the kickers seldom realize that the man who now supports his little family in comfort on $300 a month—probably had to slave two years for perhaps $75 a month, $450 a year…and a probable loss of salary whenever the little league he played with disbanded in arrears.”

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“A Star of the First Magnitude”

8 Nov

Huyler Westervelt was going to be the next big thing.

By January of 1894 the New York Giants had been trying to sign the 24-year-old Westervelt for more than two years.   Considered the best amateur pitcher on the East Coast, he pitched for a number of top teams including the Englewood Field Club, New Jersey Athletic Club, and Orange Athletic Club. Westervelt came from a prominent family in Tenafly, New Jersey and said repeatedly that he’d never play professionally.

Huyler Westervelt, standing second from right, with the Englewood Field Club team circa 1893

When Giants owner E.B. Talcott finally convinced Westervelt to play professionally he simply signed a piece of paper which said:

“I hereby agree to play with the New York Base Ball Club for the season of 1894 at a salary of $1800.”

Westervelt made his debut for the Giants on April 21, losing 4-3 to the Baltimore Orioles; but beat the Boston Beaneaters 5-2 on May 5, holding the defending champions to three hits and earning the fawning praise of New York Sporting Times columnist O.P. Caylor who said Westervelt was:

 “(A) newly discovered jewel who has flashed out in the baseball firmament as a star of the first magnitude.

“(On May 5) young Westervelt became famous, and his name flashed over thousands of miles of wires that night, while next day the whole country was reading about his triumph.”

Westervelt struggled for the remainder of the season; prone to wildness he finished with a 7-10 record and 5.04 ERA, but still figured into the Giants future plans.  He refused to sign a contract for 1895 which reduced his salary to $1500—Westervelt was added to Giants’ reserve list, where he would remain for several years.

Westervelt continued playing for amateur teams in New York and New Jersey, while working for the Overman Bicycle Company, and attempted to get the Giants to trade or release him.  He filed an appeal contending that he never signed a National League contract, only the piece of paper he signed with Talcott, and therefore the Giants had no right to put him on the reserve list.  He lost the appeal.

Huyler Westervelt

There were reports in early 1896 that Baltimore Orioles manager Ned Hanlon was trying to acquire the pitcher, they never panned out.  In April The Sporting Life said Westervelt was done with professional baseball, but later in the year he joined the Derby-Shelton Angels in the Naugatuck Valley League; no statistics survive other than a brief mention of a seemingly less than successful August game against the Torrington Tornadoes, “(Westervelt) received the warm reception of 16 hits.”

Westervelt returned to the amateur leagues, playing well into the first decade of the 20th Century, and went to work as a broker on Wall Street.  He remained on the reserve list of the New York Giants through the 1901 season, prompting The Sporting Life to say:

 “By the way, did you notice that New York still reserves Huyler Westervelt?  That is one of the standing jokes of each season.”

Westervelt made one more appearance in professional baseball; according to Baseball Reference he played 17 games for the Bradford Drillers in the Interstate League in 1905; while he is not listed on the roster of the Utica Pent-Ups in the New York-Penn League in 1905, he appeared in at least one game for that team, losing a 5-4 decision to the Troy Trojans on June 23.

While Westervelt never achieved the stardom Caylor predicted for him, he remained an important figure in amateur baseball circles until his death in 1949 at the age of 80.

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Sammy Strang

5 Nov

Samuel Strang Nicklin, “The Dixie Thrush,” was one of baseball’s great renaissance men.

Born in Tennessee in 1876, he was the scion of one of Chattanooga’s most prominent families.  His father John Bailey Nicklin served in the Union Army during the Civil War, moved to Chattanooga in 1866, and served as mayor from 1887-1889.

Sammy Strang

Samuel Nicklin spent one year at the University of Tennessee where he starred on the football and baseball teams. He also had two short stints in professional baseball 1893 and 1896, which included 14 games with the Louisville Colonels in the National League when he was 19.  Late in 1896, he enlisted as a private in the Tennessee Volunteers, served in Spanish-American War and rose to the rank of captain.

After leaving the service, Nicklin signed a contract with Cedar Rapids Bunnies in the Western Association and dropped his last name; he was known as Sammy Strang for the rest of his career.

The Milwaukee Journal said of the name change:

“(Strang) came of a rich southern family with deep prejudices against professional ball.”

This “prejudice” likely had nothing to do with it given that in addition to serving as Chattanooga mayor, the elder Nicklin was active in professional baseball, serving as president of the Southern Association in the 1890s.

A career .269 hitter, Strang was best known for being one of baseball’s first regular pinch-hitters while playing for John McGraw’s New York Giants from 1905 until June of 1908.  According to The Associated Press:

“McGraw noted the regularity with which he hit in pinches.  So he called him a ‘pinch hitter’—and the term stuck.”

During the 1909 season, Strang began coaching the baseball team at West Point.  He retired from baseball after playing from 1908-1910 with the Baltimore Orioles in the Eastern League, to study opera.

Sammy Strang

During his baseball career, Strang was known for writing songs and singing but decided to seriously pursue a music career in 1910.  He traveled to Paris where he trained under Jean De Reszke, one of the greatest male opera stars of the 1890s.

Upon returning from Paris, he chose not to accept an offer to join an opera company and instead returned to West Point, where he continued as coach until 1917.

Strang returned Tennessee shortly before his father’s death in 1919 to manage and take over ownership of the struggling Chattanooga Lookouts in the Southern League.  While the Lookouts did not win a league championship during Strang’s tenure, he was credited with turning the franchise around and sold the team, for which he paid nothing 1919, for a reported $75,000 in 1927, while retaining ownership of the stadium, Andrews Field.

Unfortunately, Strang’s most ambitious plan–to sign Satchel Paige in 1926–never materialized.

According to Larry Tye’s book “Satchel Paige: The Life and Times of an American Legend,”   Strang failed in an attempt to sign Paige for $500 to pitch a game against the Atlanta Crackers. Paige said of the deal:

“I just had to let him paint me white.”

Samuel Strang Nicklin died in Chattanooga in 1932.

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Fall from Grace

24 Oct

Grayson S. “Gracie” Pierce played parts of three seasons in the major leagues and was a National League umpire selected to preside over the final game of the 1886 championship series.  It went downhill from there.

Pierce was born in New York City in 1860.  Nearly every contemporaneous newspaper account referred to him as “Grace,” not “Gracie.”

Grayson Pierce

Pierce hit .186 playing for five different teams in the American Association and National League during his brief big league career; he was only slightly more successful during his single minor league season playing with the Hartford Babies and Binghamton Bingoes in 1885.

During his playing career there are references to Pierce occasionally serving as an umpire in college and professional games, and according to The Cincinnati Commercial he worked as a longshoreman in New Orleans each winter; he became a National League umpire in 1886,

In October of 1886, The Chicago White Stockings of the National League met the St. Louis Browns in the 1886 World Series.  Pierce was selected to serve as umpire in game 5, but according to The St. Louis Globe- Democrat, “(H)e was not on the grounds, as a long search revealed.”

Pierce got his chance the following day—with St. Louis leading the series 3-2, he was again selected to serve as umpire.  It didn’t go well for the White Stockings or Pierce.

Chicago blew a 3-0 lead in the eighth inning and lost the game in the tenth.  Pierce’s performance was universally panned.  The Globe-Democrat said:

 “For Umpire Grace Pierce of the League staff had been selected.  His judgment was weak and his decisions throughout the game gave rather poor satisfaction.”

The Globe-Democrat’s assessment was echoed elsewhere as well.  The Chicago Inter Ocean said that among the crowd:

“There was much loud talking and opinions of Pierce were quite freely expressed.”

Pierce was not a member of the National League staff the following year and instead worked in the International Association.  In September, a variety of charges were made against Pierce by the owner of the Syracuse Stars.  The complaint, filed with the league, said Pierce was drunk at games in Syracuse and Newark, and also claimed as reported by The Rochester Post-Express:

 “(Pierce) had forced Con. Murphy (Cornelius Murphy) to drink against the latter’s will and that he took (Tom) Lynch out of bed at 10 o’clock at night and started out ‘to do the town’  both returning in the morning ‘boiling drunk.’”

Pierce denied the charges saying Murphy concocted the story after Pierce had ejected him from a game and fined him $3 in Newark.  The Post-Express sided with Pierce and said:

“Grace is not a total abstainer, but in his long career on the ball field he has never been charged with drunkenness.  So far as Con. Murphy is concerned it has never been known before that he would have to be forced to take a drink.”

As for the charges regarding the drinking binge with Lynch, Pierce said:

“I was going home I found Lynch drunk in the street, I took him home and put him to bed.”

There is no record of what became of the charges, but Pierce did continue working as an umpire on the East Coast through the 1891 season.

The Sporting Life reported that Pierce did not have a position with a league for the 1892 season.

He disappeared for two years and  was not heard from again until July of 1894 when The New York Times reported:

“(Pierce) formerly a baseball player and umpire, was arraigned before Justice Burke in the Harlem Police Court yesterday morning charged by Barney Brogan a liquor saloon keeper…with stealing $35 from his cash drawer after the saloon was closed.”

Pierce, who The Brooklyn Daily Eagle described as being “in a half-dazed condition” in court,   denied the charges but was unable to post the $1000 bond.  He was sent to Blackwell’s Island (the prison located on what is now Roosevelt Island). He became ill and died at City Hospital on Blackwell’s Island six weeks after his arrest.

City Hospital, Blackwell’s Island

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A Really Bad Idea II

23 Oct

Last week I told you about Chicago Colts President Al Hart’s connection with the proposed rule to change the shape of the diamond.  He wasn’t the only baseball pioneer who considered adopting rule changes which would have completely changed the game.

William Henry “Harry” Wright, called by many “The Father of Baseball,” was among the most respected figures of baseball’s first two decades.  The Philadelphia Record described his importance:

 “Harry Wright has done more than any other man to bring baseball to its present high standing.”

Wright’s story has been told many times and in many places.  This lesser known story focuses on two rules changes he championed.

Harry Wright

After the 1893 season Wright’s contract was not renewed as manager of the Philadelphia Phillies he accepted the position of “Chief of Umpires” of the National League.  The Philadelphia Record reported on a number of rule changes he advocated, including this:

 “Harry Wright thinks that players should not be allowed to question an umpire’s decision during the progress of a game, or to speak to him while the ball is in play, and that he should have the power of taking out of the contest any player (or manager) who breaks the rule.”

While not necessarily a bad idea, if adopted Wright’s idea would have drastically changed the game for several generations of famous umpire baiters.

One other rule change Wright promoted, as reported by The Sporting Life, would certainly have been a bad idea:

 “(A)llowing a base runner to run on a fly ball instead of returning and registering at the base.”

While Wright’s idea never was seriously considered for incorporation into the rule book, it had advocates as late as 1899, four years after his death.

Washington Senators Manager Arthur Irwin endorsed the rule with this colorful description:

 “Uncertainty is the life of the game, and the more uncertain the uncertainty the higher does the interest key itself…for instance (John) McGraw, one of the most daring base runners in the league Is on first base with two men out, and a run needed to win the game (Wilbert) Robinson follows with a fly to center field, and at the stroke of the bat away scuds Mac. His get-away is the cue that brings the spectators to their feet.  ‘Will he score?  Can (Joe) Kelley field that ball home to cut him off at the plate?’ Around the runway fly the twinkling feet of the little Napoleon of the Orioles.   It’s a chase of life and death between Mac and the ball. Kelley swings the sphere on two bounds to Duke Farrell at the plate.  Mac slides into the rubber, and beats the throw by an abbreviated whisker.

“Can you imagine a more intense climax to a game of ball? Why, the game would be full of such play if the idea of running on a fly ball became a rule.  It would increase the base running, produce more plays in the field, and keep the outfielders almost as busy as the inner circle, when the bases were occupied.”

Of course Irwin failed to consider the scenario where the winning run is on third base and scores on a routine fly ball with two outs.

Arthur Irwin

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Cooney Snyder

22 Oct

“Cooney” Snyder‘s Major League career lasted only 17 games for the 1898 Louisville Colonels in the National League.

Born in Canada in 1873, Abraham Conrad Snyder was most frequently identified as “Frank” Snyder during his career.

Snyder played in the Western Association in 1884 and he is mentioned frequently in contemporaneous news stories as a member of the 1885 Guelph Maple Leafs in the Canadian League, although no records survive.

Snyder earned his shot in the Major Leagues after hitting .333 for the London Cockneys in the Canadian League and .340 for the Toronto Canucks in the Eastern League in 1897.

The Sporting Life said, “Snyder is credited with an extraordinary throwing arm as well as a strong swing as a batsman,” and attributed his strength to the job he held before playing professional ball:

 “Snyder acquired this strength in a peculiar way.  Before he became proficient in base ball “Cooney” was a keeper in a Canadian insane asylum. His daily task was to wrestle with the patients who showed a desire to buck against the rules of the institution.”

Snyder was Drafted by the Washington Senators, then sold to the Colonels before the 1898 season.  After hitting a disappointing .164, Snyder was released by Louisville and returned to the Canucks, then finished the season with the St. Thomas Saints in the Canadian League.

Snyder finished his career with the Reading Coal Heavers in the Atlantic League in 1899.

“Cooney” Snyder, 1899

After the 1899 season, it was reported by The Reading Eagle that Snyder had accepted a job at a hotel owned by former major leaguer, and Reading resident Larry Ressler.  The article said Snyder was “Considering offers from several Eastern League teams,” but it appears he never played again.

Snyder made the news one more time before eventually returning to Canada and passing away there in 1917; in December of 1899 when The Reading Herald reported on Snyder’s heroic actions during a factory fire at the Nolde and Horst Hosiery Mill:

 “For nearly an hour he stood under a burning building breaking the fifteen-foot fall of many factory girls, who were penned in the blazing structure like rats in a trap. His position was one of the greatest peril, as red hot brick and burning embers were failing all around him.”

The Reading Times said he caught at least six women in this manner.

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A Really Bad Idea

19 Oct

James Aristotle Hart (his middle name is incorrectly listed as Abner on Baseball Reference) was an influential figure in shaping baseball’s rules.

Hart managed the Louisville Colonels in 1885 and ’86.  He then purchased the Milwaukee franchise in the Western League, and helped A.G. Spalding organize the first baseball teams to go on world tours.  He returned to the National League to manage the Boston Beaneaters in 1889.

James Hart, 1886

In 1890 he went to England and Scotland to help launch a professional baseball league, and upon his return he became secretary of the Chicago Colts and served as an intermediary in the 1890 fight between the National League the nascent Players League.  He became president of the Chicago club the following year, succeeding Spalding, and served in that capacity until 1905.

The New York Times said:

“Many rules now deemed indispensable were championed by Hart.  The foul strike rule, one of the most important, was his final effort in the rule making.  He was largely responsible for…defining the coachers’ box, changing the pitchers’ box and substituting the slab, altering the shape of the home plate, requiring the catcher to play close up to the plate all the time, abolishing the foul tip and covering the players’ bench.”

One rule that Hart considered seriously enough to release to the press “with earnest request for publication and comment,” would have completely changed the game as we know it.

The idea, proposed by a man from Rollo, Missouri named Cliff Spencer and submitted to Hart, called for a redesign of the baseball diamond.

The Sporting Life said of the design:

“The proposed new diamond is a startling innovation, but the more it is studied the more favorably it impresses.”

The new diamond would increase the number of bases from three to four and while the distance between the bases would remain 90 feet:

“(T)he new base lines would throw first and fourth bases about ten feet further out than the present base lines. Thus making a very much larger area for fair balls.”

After several more paragraphs espousing the virtues of the new design, The Sporting Life concluded:

“No decided disadvantages are apparent in this proposed new diamond except that it may operate to the extreme in batting, base running and run-scoring.  (The) objection, could however be easily overcome by deadening the ball somewhat more should the batting become too heavy.”

The article concluded:

“The proposed new diamond, if adopted, would be a radical innovation.  But it maybe that a radical remedy is requisite to restore the base ball patient to entire health and vigor. It is generally conceded that some changes in the game are urgently needed in order to make it more attractive, to lift it out of the rut of pitcher-domination.”

Diagram of the proposed new diamond laid over traditional diamond–home plate is at the top.

Even the glowing review of the proposed plan in The Sporting Life stopped short of absolutely endorsing the idea:  “It is not intended here to advocate, either reservedly or unreservedly, the adoption of this radical innovation,” because it was conceded that there were much less radical measures that could be adopted to increase run production.

Within a week The Sporting Life, and every other newspaper who had published a story about the new diamond concept, had concluded that the idea would never be adopted.

Hart, a long time advocate of increasing run production, was not known to have ever again commented on the new diamond.

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Rooney Sweeney

18 Oct

John “Rooney” Sweeney was better known for his unpredictability and for making  good copy for the 19th Century press than for anything he did on the baseball field.  He remains one of the few Major League players for which a date of death is unknown.

Born in New York City in 1858, Sweeney’s first professional experience was in 1881 in the Eastern Championship Association, a league which only lasted one season.  Like many of the short-lived leagues of baseball’s first 30 years, the ECA had no fixed schedules and no control over player movement making it impossible to keep full rosters.  Sweeney played with four teams in the league: The Brooklyn Atlantics, New York Mets, New York Quick Steps and New York New Yorks.

There’s no record of where Sweeney played the following season, but in 1883 he played for Camden Merritts in the Interstate Association and made his Major League debut with the Baltimore Orioles in the American Association.

Although there is no other source for the claim, a 1910 article on the origin of catcher’s equipment in The Freeman claims that Sweeney was playing on the West Coast in Oakland for part of 1883 and was one of the first catchers to wear a mask, “The day he placed it on his head and went up behind the bat he was ‘Booed’ until he took it off in disgust.  Later the fans began to see the benefits of the wire covering.”

John “Rooney” Sweeney”

Sweeney then played with the Baltimore Monumentals in the Union Association in 1884.  He appeared in three games for the St. Louis Maroons in the National League in 1885 before being released.

According to The Sporting Life:

“When Rooney Sweeney was recently released by (Maroons owner Henry) Lucas he had quite a roll. So before leaving St. Louis, just to blow in a dollar or two, Rooney… hired a fine team of grays and a park wagon from a livery stable.  This was at ten o’clock Thursday morning.  At three o’clock Friday morning, eleven hours behind time, a messenger boy drove the team into the stable. Both the grays looked ready for the bone-yard and the owner at that moment would have sold them for a song. Their whole appearance showed that they had been driven nearly to death.

“Several men in the stable armed themselves with clubs and horsewhips and started out in search of Rooney. He must have been told of their coming, however, for before daybreak he took a train. It was lucky for him that the train started out before the livery men caught him.”

Rooney’s never again appeared in the Majors, but was said to have joined a team in Troy, New York after leaving St. Louis.  In 1887 and ’88 he played in the New England League, and then dropped out of sight, and apparently out of baseball, again.

In 1890, Sweeney signed with the London Tecumsehs in the International Association.

Official records indicate that he only appeared in one game—The Chicago Tribune, on May 12 reported on his debut:

 “Rooney Sweeney’s return to the diamond was not a success.  In his opening game nine bases were stolen on him and he had three errors.”

Things went downhill from there.  Sweeney was released in mid-May but apparently remained in London.  In June, it was reported that he had been arrested for stealing $40 from London pitcher James Maguire.

He received four months in jail and as the judge handed down the sentence The Sporting Life said, “Sweeney wept copiously.”

It was reported that Sweeney spent his time in jail writing letters to friends, one of which found its way into several newspapers.  Regarding the crime he was convicted of, Sweeney wrote:

 “We were all playing poker in a room up here and there was a big pot on the table.   Just then somebody flung a big black cat square on the table.  Of course the cat was scared and in her hurry to get away scattered the chips every which way and knocked down the stacks that were standing in front of the players.   Well, I just grabbed what I thought was my share, the same as any man would do, and it got me into jail, that’s all.”

After his release from jail, there are no records that indicate he ever again played in a professional game, but nearly every article written about him mentions that “He is not averse to playing baseball again.”

In 1892, Sweeney became involved in boxing, claiming he was going to manage fighters.  Just weeks later he was reported he was through with boxing and said:

 “I thought ballplayers was (sic) the ungreatfullest (sic) lot on earth, but they ain’t in it with fighters.”

And of course, the articles said, “Rooney is going to try his hand again at catching.”

Within a year of Sweeney’s foray into the boxing world both of his parents and his brother, New York City police officer Jeremiah Sweeney, died, and it was reported that he had inherited a great deal of property in New York and New Jersey, but of course in between collecting rents he said he’d like to play baseball again.

Sweeney was next heard from in September of 1897 when The Sporting Life said:

 “John Sweeney, a once famous base ball player, more popularly known as “Rooney” Sweeney  is dying in the Hudson Street Hospital as the result of injuries sustained by a fall in Battery Park last night.

“For some past Sweeney has been assisting the boatmen at the Battery…last night, while seated on the excursion pier, he was seized with an epileptic fit, and fell heavily to the ground, sustaining a concussion of the brain. An ambulance was rung up, and he was hurried to the hospital.  Sweeney has played with many of the principal base ball clubs both in the East and West, being at one time a member of the famous Metropolitan nine. He was also identified during his career with the St. Louis and Indianapolis.”

But that might not have been the end for Sweeney.  Three years later it was reported that he was working as a “Fireman on a tug boat.”

Sadly, that’s the last bit of information about the enigmatic Sweeney.  Whether he had succumbed to his illness in 1897 or he recovered and ended up aboard that tug boat we may never know.  No records of his death are available.

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George Treadway

16 Oct

A small item in the Louisville Courier-Journal near the end of the 1893 season created a major stir.  And while the story was almost immediately shown to be untrue, several books and articles over the years have tried to imply that it’s still an open question.

The story about George Treadway was written by Courier-Journal Baseball Editor Sam McKee who was traveling with the Baltimore Orioles of the National League:

“There can be little doubt that Treadway, Baltimore’s right fielder is a Negro…all the players say he is.”

Treadway attributed the story to a former teammate he refused to name, and told The Baltimore News:

“The story is the result of a piece of spite work on the part of a former member of the Baltimore team, and knowing the man as I do, I am not surprised that such a thing could emanate from him.”

Treadway went on to say that he had information about the player which would “Kill him eternally, as far as the baseball profession is concerned, but I prefer not to act in that underhanded way.”

Treadway said the story about him came out of an incident when he was playing with Denver in the Western Association when an opposing player had directed a racist epitaph at Treadway.

George Treadway

Both The Baltimore Afro-American and baseball columnist O.P. Taylor reported that the story was investigated and was untrue.  At the same time it came to light that Baltimore owner Harry Vonderhorst and manager Ned Hanlon had heard similar rumors and conducted an investigation before signing Treadway, The Sporting Life said:

“Manager Hanlon felt satisfied the report was without truth and Treadway was made a member of the team.”

The story quickly went away, but in recent years has been revived, and mostly in the absence of the facts.  For example:

“. . . the writers . . . compared Joe (Jackson) to Treadway . . . but they did not mention that Treadway had been driven out of baseball by opposing players and fans who bombarded him with taunts and slurs about his alleged or real Negro blood.” – From Say It Ain’t So, Joe!: The True Story of Shoeless Joe Jackson

This reference to Treadway, like most, ignores critical facts.  The taunts and slurs must not have been very effective—Treadway remained in the Major Leagues for two full seasons, and part of a third after the story broke, and he was “driven out of baseball” a full 11 years later at the age of 37.

Had there been any evidence that Treadway was African-American his tenure in professional baseball would have been similar in length to that of William Clarence Matthews a decade later.

As the starting shortstop for Harvard University, Matthews faced four years of racial tension and boycotts—when the Crimson faced Georgetown in 1903 Georgetown’s manager,  and the team’s catcher, Samuel H. Apperious (Baseball Reference lists him as “William”) refused to participate in the game.

After graduating Matthews attempted to play professional baseball, signing with the Burlington team in the Vermont-based “outlaw” Northern League.  Upon arriving in Burlington Matthews was faced with another player boycott led by the same Sam Apperious, who was playing for the Montpelier-Barre team in the lead.  While there were rumors that Matthews might play Major League ball it never rose beyond speculation.

Matthews was, in effect,  “driven out of baseball.”

William Clarence Matthews with Harvard Baseball Team

George Treadway was in and out of professional baseball until 1904, but his absences were about the economics of early baseball and not questions about his race: from 1899-1901 Treadway played baseball for various teams in the Chicago area, including the White Rocks in the Chicago City League, while working for the Pullman Palace Car Company.

After leaving Chicago, Treadway played in the Pacific Northwest League and Pacific Coast League.  He stayed on the West Coast and settled in California until his death in 1928.

Matthews became an attorney, was actively involved in politics and served as legal counsel for Black Nationalist leader Marcus Garvey.  He also passed away in 1928.

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“The Greatest Play Ever Made”

2 Aug

Most fans know that the first confirmed major league unassisted triple play was turned by Neal Ball of the Cleveland Naps July 19, 1909, and that one credited to Paul Hines of the Providence Grays against the Boston Red Caps May 8, 1878 has been disputed.

What most don’t know is that the first confirmed unassisted triple play in professional baseball was turned on August 18, 1902 by Hal O’Hagan of Rochester in an Eastern League game in Jersey city, New Jersey.  The New York Times called it “The Greatest Play Ever Made in Baseball.”

Patrick Henry “Hal” O’Hagan had two brief stays in the major leagues.  He played in one game as a twenty-two-year-old rookie with Washington in 1892, and trials with Chicago and New York in the National League and Cleveland in the American League in 1902.

After being released by the Giants in mid-July, O’Hagan was signed by Rochester to manage and play first base.

John Butler was batting for Jersey City with George Shoch on second and “Mack” on first (every contemporary newspaper account identified the runner on first this way, it was probably catcher/1st baseman Frank McManus).  Butler attempted a sacrifice bunt as The Times reported “O’Hagan ran in and caught the ball within a few inches of the ground, a seemingly impossible catch.”

According to the glowing account: “Having in his quick-thinking mind the possibility of a triple play, O’Hagan, with the coolness and agility which are part of a baseball player’s earning capacity, ran back and placed his foot on the initial bag thus completing a double play.”  O’Hagan then ran to second as Shoch returned from third, “It was a hot race, but O’Hagan, ball in hand, reached the bag first, thus dismissing the side.”

Diagram of the play published in The New York Times and several newspapers across the country

O’Hagan continued playing until 1908, finishing his career with Lynn in the New England League.  He passed away on January 14, 1913 in Newark, New Jersey at 43 years old.

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