John McGraw told The New York Mail before the 1911 season that only larger pitchers would succeed moving forward:
“You, Know, the time has come in baseball when the pitcher of small stature will have little chance of making the big league. The constant use of the arm in pitching has a wearing effect upon the system and only the big man can stand it. Whenever you see a small pitcher who is a success you will find that he is abnormally developed.”
McGraw made the comment when it was announced that Ed Hendricks and Jeff Tesreau would join the Giants in the spring in Marlin, Texas.
“Tessereau [sic] is a right-hander, who gives promise of being a wonder, and Hendricks, who is a left-hander and pitched two or three games [sic, four] late in the season, showed that he had in him the element of a good slabman. Both of these men are over six-feet tall and when in condition will weigh close to 200 pounds.”
Tesreau
The paper noted both were, “(L)arger than Mathewson, and Matty is a big fellow himself.”
McGraw said managers had “so many pitchers to look over these days,” that they “naturally look at the men of huge stature first.”
If two pitchers were of seemingly equal ability, he said, “the large man will always be given first chance.,” and that “not one small pitcher out of a hundred makes good.” So unlikely was a small pitcher to make good, McGraw said, “that it is not worthwhile to locate a star, in the future we must get our pitching material from big men.”
Neither the 6’ 2” Tesreau and 6’ 3” Hendricks went north with the Giants in 1911—three of the ten pitchers who appeared in games for New York that season were under six-feet tall.
Hendricks
The Benton Harbor Herald-Palladium said the Michigan native left the Giants in Marlin during the spring of 1911 for, “a business deal on which is responsible for him quitting league ball.”
Hendricks spent 1911 pitching for a Benton Harbor based club that barnstormed the West, and told The Butte Daily Post that he jumped the Giants after McGraw had assured him he would make the club, then later told him he was being sent to Joe McGinnity’s Newark Indians in the International League:
“I made good, according to his own words, and am told I am a fixture. Then McGraw, just to be a good fellow, wants to give me to McGinnity… McGinnity was hard up for and he said it would be only for a few months then he would jerk me back to the big show. Immediately I informed McGraw I would rather pitch for Benton Harbor and conduct some business.”
Hendricks assured the Butte reporter he was simply “on a vacation,” and would return to the Giants at some point; he never played another professional game.
Tesreau fared better. After spending 1911 with the Toronto Maple Leafs in the Eastern League, he joined the Giants in 1912 and won 119 games for the New York through 1918.
In January of 1938, the 78-year-old future Hall of Famer couldn’t believe Joe DiMaggio was seeking a raise to $35,000 for the coming season.
Current salaries were “scandalous,” he told The Associated Press, and having high-salaried players would be “damaging to team spirit,” by making the lesser players jealous.
“’Most I ever got in my life was $4,000 a year,’ he recalled, ‘and that was right at the end of my career. Believe me, I worked for it too. Days I wasn’t pitching I played center field, and in my first year in the National League (with the Troy Trojans in 1880) I had to be at the park an hour or so ahead of time to mind the ‘stile.’”
Welch
Besides taking tickets before games in Troy, Welch was joined on the team by another 20-year-old rookie who would also end up in Cooperstown. Welch spent his entire career as a teammate of Buck Ewing; the two played together for Welch’s entire career in Troy and New York.
“Buck Ewing was the greatest catcher who ever lived, was the highest paid man on the team at $3200,”
This was after, “the third year,” the were together in New York; before the 1886 season:
“Buck asked (New York manager Jim) Mutrie for #500, pointing out that he was captain and practically field manager of the team. Mutrie didn’t like it much, but he finally agreed to the raise providing Buck would catch 100 games, which he did.”
Ewing caught 73 games in 1886—he caught 103 in 1888, so Welch either got the number of games wrong, the year wrong, or simply exaggerated. The Spalding Guide said Ewing began earning $3500 in 1886, and then made $4500 in 1888.
Mutrie had just died, on January 24, 1938; and Welch said he couldn’t “imagine what would have happened to their friendship” had he ever held out on his “great pal.”
And, as for the Yankees current holdout:
“This DiMaggio, now, he’s no super player. He’s a low-ball hitter and we would have pitched to him in my day. He never would have seen a ball like that one he knocked out of the park on Cliff Melton.”
DiMaggio hit a home run in game five of the 1937 World Series off of Gants pitcher Melton to give the Yankees a 2 to 0 lead in the third inning—they won the game 4 to 2 and won the series.
Welch summed up his opinion of DiMaggio:
“He’s not half the player that Buck Ewing was.”
Ewing
As for Ewing:
“Now all I want to see is Buck Ewing in this baseball Hall of Fame. There’s a man who was 100 years ahead of his time.”
Eddie Collins said of teammate Charles “Chief” Bender:
“I rate Bender among the first five American League hurlers, and he gets this place because he made pitching a fine art. He mastered every natural form of delivery but never bothered with spitters or other trick styles. Both (Joe) Wood and (Walter) Johnson had far more speed, (Jack) Coombs and (Jim) Scott better curves, and (Addie) Joss and (Doc) White more deceptive ‘slow balls,’ but I never saw anyone who could toss all styles with the skill that ‘Chief’ exhibited.”
Collins was “writing” a series of syndicated articles for The North American Newspaper Alliance in 1927:
Collins
Bender’s mechanics made him great, but were “only a part” of his success as “anchor” of Connie Mack’s Philadelphia Athletics pitching staff fir 12 seasons:
“He knew the strength and weakness of every batter; his control was superb, and he possessed such a wealth of courage that facing the strongest teams afforded him his greatest pleasure.”
Collins—who like Mack usually called the pitcher by his middle name, Albert–said Mack favored Bender as his choice in “a single all-important game,” over any other pitcher—born out, he said because Bender pitched the opener in four World Series. Bender was 2-2 in those games, but one loss was a 2-1 loss to Christy Mathewson and the Giants in a game Bender struck out 11. Of the other, against the Brave in 1914, Collins noted:
“The Braves batted him off the slab. Everything went wrong for us in that series anyway.”
Mack also relied on Bender when an exhibition game suddenly became a matter of American League pride.
“After the close of our season in the Fall of ’09 we made an exhibition tour to the coast. On the way we stopped to play the famous Cubs in Chicago. Reaching there we found that this game assumed more importance than attached to an ordinary exhibition. Chicago had always been a good American League territory, but (Frank) Chance had a great team and the White Sox had not done well that season, and the American League supporters were very anxious that we win.”
Mack addressed Bender in front of his teammates:
“Albert, you know you are to pitch. Now Albert, I have asked you to win some important games for me and you never failed. I want you to bring me this game.”
The Athletics beat the Cubs 2 to 0. Ring Lardner of The Chicago Tribune Said:
Bender
“The Cubs lost because Big Chief Bender wouldn’t let them hit.”
Bender held Chicago to two singles in the victory.
Bender did, said Collins, have weaknesses:
“He was not as strong as (Ed) Walsh, (Jack) Chesbro, Coombs and other great pitchers, and for that reason, and also because any time any batter, however great, made a hit off his delivery he thought the batter was lucky; he never wanted to waste a ball. His system was to throw all strikes, if possible…Occasionally after having the batter 2-0 he would throw one in the groove and get away with it. Then he would return to the bench and grin with great satisfaction.”
His penchant to “grove one” could be costly, Collins said. In game four of the 1913 World Series, Bender was cruising to a victory with a 6-0 lead heading into the seventh inning:
“Two men got on with two out when Fred Merkle came up. ‘Chief’ had just whiffed catcher (Art) Wilson, and was bent on showing up Merkle, who was a corking good hitter, as everyone knew, but who could do little with Bender when the ‘Chief” was careful.”
After getting two strikes on Merkle, and despite “the protests of (catcher) Ira Thomas,” Bender threw:
“A pitch that came across the letters on his shirt Merkle could hit a mile. He just naturally lost that ball and the Giants had three runs.”
Bender held on to win 6 to 5, and as a result, Collins said:
After several retirements and returns to the game, Dan Brouthers appeared in his final professional game at age 48, then worked for several years as a scout for the New York Giants.
In 1911, The American Press Association asked him to answer the question, “What does a scout do?”
Brouthers said:
“Within the last few years scouting has become a business. Every club in the major organizations has a man employed whose business is to keep close tabs on a young ball tosser who gives promise of developing into a crack. In fact, the scout plays an important part in a wining ball team. It is on his judgment that the major league club owners buy up the cream before the drafting period comes around.”
And how did scouts like Brouthers spend their time?
“Well, one day he may be watching a minor league player and the next may be looking over some semi professional player on the lots who never has played with a league, but who has so much baseball ability that somebody has seen him and reported him to the scout’s employer or to the scout himself. The following day he may be with some Class B league, and a week from then he my be in some other part of the country getting a line on the material in that section.”
Brouthers
Brouthers told readers his job was, “not an easy one by any means.” He said:
“First of all, he must be a good judge of what there is in a young ball tosser. If the presumably future great star has a bad arm, is slow on his feet or can do nothing but bat, the scout must be able to tell whether he is worth a trial or not. If he sees a youngster who can field like a big leaguer, he must be able to make up his mind whether the youngster will ever be able to do anything with the bat against the pitchers of fame.”
Brouthers told a story of scouting a player “in one of the trolley leagues,” several years earlier:
“A youngster had been recommended to me as a future great. For weeks this fellow had been doing wonders with the willow and in the field. One day I decided to take a peep at him.”
Someone tipped the prospect that Dan Brouthers was in the stands scouting him:
“I could see by his actions that he was nervous. The first time up he fanned. He repeated this in the second attempt. The third time, however, he managed to work the pitcher for a base on balls”
The walk loaded the bases:
“The youngster began prancing around first trying hard to get the pitcher rattled…Then Mr. Bonehead started for second base at full speed, and, thinking that it would close the shave, he slid for the base. After he picked himself up and was informed that his bonehead steal had retired his side he quit the game and made for the clubhouse.”
Brouthers concluded:
“Perhaps if someone had not informed him of the presence of a scout from the major leagues in the grandstand he would not have made such a bonehead play.
“But, nevertheless it proved that he lacked brains.”
John McGraw, when reminiscing about his “thirty years in baseball” for a series of articles syndicated by The North American Newspaper Alliance in 1923, called Arthur “Bugs” Raymond, “one of the greatest natural pitchers who ever lived.”
Bugs
He recalled the first time Chief Myers caught Raymond:
“’Say Mc,’ (he said), ‘that fellow can do more tricks with a baseball than any man in the world.’”
McGraw said, “Raymond’s long suit” was the spit ball and, “He could make that ball do the querist of stunts and never did he hesitate to pull one of these tricks when the team was in a hole.”
McGraw blamed Raymond’s “fondness for companionship” for continually leading him astray, no matter how many times he pledged to stop drinking. Even when McGraw tried to keep people from loaning Raymond money, the pitcher would always find a way to get some and continue drinking.
On one occasion, with his starter struggling on the mound, McGraw sent the bat boy to the bullpen to get Raymond. Not being able to locate him, the team’s trainer then looked and eventually found Raymond drinking in a nearby tavern:
“He had taken the new ball that I had given him for warming up and had sold it to the saloon keeper.”
“Bugs was very proud of his term in the Keeley Institute. He even wore a class button and very proudly exhibited an album with photographs and other souvenirs of his schoolmates.”
As the papers in New York were filled with stories of Raymond’s “wonderful reform “while the club trained in Texas, McGraw was seeing “ominous signs.”
The team stayed in the Oriental Hotel on a trip to Dallas where “they always served cocktails,” with Sunday night dinner service.:
“Knowing the head steward, Bugs decided to visit him. He left the dining room and started to the kitchen. As he stepped through the swinging doors his eye lighted on the long rows of cocktails—hundreds of them all lined in rows. Promptly, Raymond started right down the first row, drinking one after another until he had consumed more than a dozen.”
McGraw had a detective follow Raymond for the next 24 hours—while papers continued to report on his “reform.” The Giants manager questioned the pitcher who denied drinking. McGraw said he faced a “dilemma:”
“I didn’t know whether to denounce him to the newspaper men who had tried so hard to help him, or to make one more attempt to bring about reform.”
McGraw
McGraw said he never knew a newspaper reporter who would “violate a confidence” and enlisted them to serve as a mock jury in a “trial: of the pitcher:
The jury was a who’s who of legendary New York baseball writers: Sam Crane, Sid Mercer, Boseman Bulger, Damon Runyon, and Charles Van Loan, “and one or two of the younger writers,” whose names the manager could no longer recall:
“Gentlemen, I have called upon you to sit as a jury on this man. He has promised all of you not drink and you have given him every help. You have praised him in the papers. He has violated that faith. He’s a big bum that’s laid down on his friends.”
McGraw presented the evidence and asked the reporters to decide whether to share it with their readers or to give Raymond another chance:
McGraw read the detective report to the assembled jury, in a back room the Turf Exchange bar in Dallas, Raymond “drank seven glasses of beer, ate a handful of pretzels, and two Bermuda onion,” on to the nearby Knight Saloon, Raymond had “drank nine glasses of beer, ate more pretzels, and two or three more onions.”
Raymond called the report “a dammed lie.”
His defense:
“Mac, of course I might’ve had a couple dozen glasses of beer, but I’m telling you it’s a lie—I ain’t eat an onion in seven months.”
In sympathy, the jury unanimously decided to give Raymond one more chance and not report his tumble from the wagon. Raymond, of course, vowed to stop drinking.
McGraw’s ploy bought him a stretch of several weeks when Raymond “partially straightened up,” unfortunately, like every other last chance Raymond was given, he eventually relapsed.
Raymond died less than 18 months after McGraw’s mock trial.
After taking in three Yankees games upon his arrival in New York—the first major league games he had seen in 20 years—New assistant Polo Grounds superintendent, Amos Rusie talked to Robert Boyd from The New York World, who asked “What impressed you the most,” after twenty years away.
“Babe Ruth.
“We had great hitters in my time, Napoleon Lajoie, (Honus) Wagner, and Ed Delahanty. But they didn’t hit the ball near as hard as this boy.”
Rusie, having seen the current baseball for three games, conceded it was livelier, and said, “I suppose the fans want hitting, and it looks like their getting it.”
Rusie
The Hoosier Thunderbolt also refused to say if pitchers of his era were better, telling Boyd he wanted to see a few more games before weighing in. He did share his general philosophy:
“I don’t approve of being too severe with pitchers. Do not curb their development. In my time we were not allowed to soil the ball. There were no freak deliveries. The spitter and shine were not heard of. We had to depend on speed and fast breaking curves, and we had a great advantage over the batsman. But today the batter has the edge. The livelier ball and the rules imposed on the pitcher are the cause of it.”
Rusie said he was pleased to see the large crowds at the Polo Grounds:
“Baseball has grown into a great national institution.”
He also said he felt the Black Sox scandal, “did not hurt the game much,’” and lauded the selection of Kennesaw Mountain Landis as commissioner, saying his presence would make the game “grow infinitely more powerful.”
Three weeks into his return to New York, the city’s baseball writers had not tired of talking baseball with Rusie.
John B. Foster of The Daily News walked the ground of Manhattan Field—the former Brotherhood Park built for the Players League in 1890 and the Giants home park beginning the following season, Rusie’s second with the Giants—with the former pitcher, who said
“Remember the old wooden stand after you got in, and the little old lake in left field and center field after every heavy rain and high tide?
“Sometimes there’d be a lake in right field too. Remember that old two-story shed for the visiting club, and how the players used to cuss (Giants owner Andrew) Freedman because he didn’t build a better place.
“The old wooden stand wasn’t an old wooden stand when it was built. We used to think it was some theater. It was four times bigger’n the stands out West. The first time I saw it I didn’t think there’s ever’d be enough people to fill it.”
He stood firm on the question of whether the game had changed substantially:
“Nope, not as I’ve been able to see.”
Rusie talked more about his “gone” arm:
“I was sent from New York to Cincinnati. I pitched a little there (he appeared in three games and pitched 22 innings) but after a game I lay awake all-night suffering from the pain in my shoulder. I made up my mind to quit…if I couldn’t pitch the kind of ball that I had been accustomed to pitch when I was good, I wasn’t going to pitch. No bush league for me.”
At that point, New York pitcher Fred Toney—having eavesdropped on the conversation—said:
“’We are going to have him in a game before the season is over.’
“Rusie grinned and shook his head negatively
“’My old wing might break off if I took such a chance,’ replied Amos laughing.”
Despite his response, Rusie did wish he could face one more batter:
Fred Toney
“Sometimes, I’ve thought that I’d like to pitch just once against Ruth if I was up to my speed. Just for an experiment. I ‘don’t say that I could fool him anymore’n pitchers fool him now, but I’m like the kid and the buzz saw. I want to monkey with it just once.”
Rusie worked at the Polo Grounds until June of 1929—he picked a poor time to return to Washington and buy a farm—just months before the stock market crashed. His views about the modern game had also changed during his eight years back at the ballpark.
Damon Runyon took credit for tagging John McGraw’s favorite scout, Dick Kinsella with the nickname “Sinister Dick.” Runyon said in his column for the Hearst Newspapers in 1930 that the sobriquet might not make sense any longer:
“The nickname is perhaps misleading. You look for a dour fellow of wicked aspect—a piratical-appearing bloke with perhaps a cutlass between his teeth. Instead, you see a well-dressed, quiet man, deep in his fifties, with kind eyes wrinkled by smiles…Well, twenty years back the man from Springfield (IL) was indeed a sinister looking chappy. He had beetling black brows, and a fierce black mouser, or mustachio, which gave him a positively violent appearance.”
“Sinister Dick” Kinsella
McGraw told Runyon:
“It isn’t the fellows he sends to me that makes him great. It’s the ones he keeps me from buying. He saves my ballclub a lot of money every year by keeping me off the dead ones.”
Kinsella had spent more than 20 years scouting for McGraw, though Runyon said:
“(H)e used to retire at frequent intervals. So often, in fact, that you never could tell when he was officially a scout or just a businessman.”
Damon Runyon
In addition to providing his nickname, Runyon was also responsible for a story about how Kinsella supposedly missed signing Edd Roush for the Giants in 1912, when Roush was playing in the Kitty League. The earliest version of the story appeared in Runyon’s column in The New York American in 1913, with a more complete version appearing in 1916:
“One broiling hot summer day a couple of years ago a sinister looking man arrived in the town of Evansville, Indiana. This sinister looking man was of somber aspect. His hair was a sinister black. His sinister eyebrows hung heavy above a glowering, sinister glare. He wore sinister city clothes, and there was a sinister bulge to his coat just above the right hip.
“With sinister deportment, he accosted a citizen of the town of Evansville and made inquiry of him with sinister significance in his voice.
“’Where’s the ball orchard?’ demanded Sinister Dick Kinsella for it was none other than the sinister scout of the New York Giants, as you doubtless have already divined from the sinister import of this narrative.”
According to Runyon, Kinsella went for a haircut after watching that day’s game and said to the barber:
“That’s a right likely looking outfielder that fellow Roush,’ suggested Sinister Dick. ‘Hits good, and can go fetch ‘em, but don’t throw much, hey? Bad arm hey?’
“’Well, I’ll tell you about that stranger,’ said the barber, pausing in his operations and assuming the attitude of a man about to impart grave news. ‘He used to have as good a throwin’ arm as anybody you ever see, but he hurt that arm and he’s been learnin’ hisself to throw with the other arm.”
With that, said Runyon, “a sinister train bore Sinister Dick on his sinister way” out of town, while a scout for the White Sox, Ted Sullivan, “Purchased Roush for $4000 [sic, $3,000]”
Kinsella left the Giants after the 1930 season, John B. Foster of The New York Sun suggested that an instance of the scout not saving money for McGraw’s ballclub might have led to his departure. In 1927 Kinsella had signed pitcher Bill Walker for $25,000. After Walker finished 1930, 17-15 with a 3.93 ERA and Kinsella had departed, Foster wrote:
“The failure of Walker to succeed may be one of the reasons why Dick Kinsella failed to remain with the New York club as a scout, because a large outlay was made for Walker.”
In April of 1896, Oliver Perry “OP” Caylor of The New York Herald said of Amos Rusie, who was weeks into what would be a season-long holdout and legal battle:
“Rusie is just now a bigger man than old Harrison in Indianapolis.”
Amos Rusie
Benjamin Harrison, the former president, was rumored to be seeking the Republican nomination later that year, and Caylor said even if he became a candidate again, it would not elevate him to “that prominence in the public mind which the recalcitrant pitcher attained in his ‘hold off.’”
As for the current resident of the White House:
“Recently I had the pleasure of meeting the president of the United States at his desk in Washington. Probably to avoid the undesirable topic of politics, Mr. Cleveland brought up the subject of baseball.”
President Grover Cleveland told him:
“I was very fond of the game when I lived in Buffalo and had time to see it played. We had a good team up there then. There were (Pud) Galvin, who rated well as a pitcher, and (Jack) Rowe, and that big man who played first base—what was his name?’
“I said it was (Dan) Brouthers, and that he is still playing.”
The president was curious about finances:
“’These ball players get pretty good salaries, do they not?’ Inquired the president.
“When I told him that some received $3000 for six months’ service and yet were not satisfied, that catching smile, which is so infectious, lighted up his face as he aptly replied.
“’Well, Washington is pretty full of people who are glad to get employment at $1200 a year.”
President Grover Cleveland
Caylor, always an ally of ownership, concluded:
“And yet Amos Rusie refuses $400 a month on a technicality. No wonder baseball players as a class have the reputation of being the most unreasonable people on earth.”
Caylor, in another column, blamed the whole situation on former Giants outfielder Eddie Burke who he claimed, “was responsible for Amos Rusie’s running astray and amuck on the primrose path.”
The Indianapolis Journal told the story of what led to the dispute:
“It started, to recount it briefly, in Jacksonville last year when the Giants were training there. Rusie drank too much. He never denied it. They said that he got drunk and insulted the mayor of the town. That was very naughty. In Baltimore again he and Eddie Burke…got ‘loaded,’ and were fined $100 each.”
Burke’s fine was rescinded, the paper said, and Rusie’s was—for a time:
“The last game of the season was with Baltimore, and Freedman sent down word by manager Harvey Watkins if Rusie didn’t win that game he would fine him another $100. It was talked about and got to Rusie, and the game was lost.”
Rusie was pounded for eight runs and walked seven in an 8 to 3 loss to the Orioles.
“Two hundred was held out of his pay and he went back to Indianapolis at the seasons close.”
While the pitcher sat at home in Indiana, Caylor said, “The national character of baseball was aptly illustrated,” at the 1896 season opener between the Rusie-less Giants and the Senators in Washington.
Three members of President Cleveland’s cabinet were in attendance, “and a reporter counted 40 members of the two houses of Congress among the rooters.”
Caylor chided Rusie for the holdout throughout the season; In October he wrote:
“He has been been met more than half way by President Freedman, and I am glad to announce that the Big Boy will be with us in 1896. If Amos is a friend to himself he will begin right now and turn up in the spring fully fortified to carry out his promise.”
A full year later, in April of 1897, Rusie signed again with the Giants for $3000 (the league reported the salary as $2400) and settled his legal claims for $5000. The Journal said:
“(T)he big fellow gets every cent he started out for, as well as all his attorneys’ fees. It is really not a compromise, but a capitulation on the part of Freedman, insisted upon by the league, and a tacit admission by that organization that the reserve rule, while all powerful in baseball and quite necessary to the life of the game, is not fitted to stand the strain of a court trial.”
Rusie left Indiana to join the team on April 20, two days before their season opener. The Indianapolis News said the “Hoosier Thunderbolt,” was:
“In better shape than he has been in years.”
Rusie was 28-10 with a 2.54 ERA for the third place Giants.
After National league umpire Tim Hurst died in 1915, his American League counterpart Billy Evans said in his nationally syndicated column:
“In the passing of Tim Hurst, baseball lost the quaintest character of the diamond. It was believed there would never be another one to approach him., but in Bill Byron baseball has a pocket edition of Timothy Carroll Hurst.
“No more fearless umpire ever held an indicator than Tim Hurst. Bill Byron runs him a close second.”
Evans said before coming to the National League in 1913, Byron was the subject “of many stories of wild minor league riots, in which Bill played the leading role without so much as mussing his hair.”
Fearless was one adjective used about Byron, but there were many others. After the 1911 season, Ed Barrow, president of the Eastern League removed Byron from the league’s staff. The Baltimore Sun said many celebrated the move:
“Byron’s chief fault is his stubbornness, and he, as well, is a bit dictatorial and oversteps his authority on the diamond…For the good of the game–in the face of many prejudices–Barrow has acted wisely in giving him the ‘can.'”
Bill Byron
Known as the “singing Umpire,” Byron’s “little ditties” were so well known that writers like L.C. Davis of The St. Louis Post-Dispatch and Willian Phelon of The Cincinnati Times-Star both wrote columns suggesting new songs for the umpire.
Davis suggested that when the Cubs Heine Zimmerman argued a call:
Heinie, Heinie, I’ve been thinking,
I don’t want none of your slack;
To the clubhouse you’ll go slinking,
If you make another crack.
Johnny Evers complained to Phelon:
“How can a guy tend to his batting when the umpire’s warbling in his ears?”
John McGraw was Byron’s biggest foil and foe, and Byron had a song for the manager of the New York Giants:
After the incident, McGraw provided a signed statement admitting to punching Byron, but blaming the incident on the umpire:
“Byron said to me: ‘McGraw, you were run out of Baltimore.”
When the umpire repeated the charge, McGraw said he “hit him. I maintain I was given reason.”
When Byron arrived in St. Louis the day after the incident to work a series between the Cardinals and Phillies, he refused to answer when asked by a reporter from The Philadelphia Inquirer if McGraw had punched him, instead:
“Bill pointed the right hand to the jaw. There was dark clot—which indicated that something landed as early as 20 hours ago.”
McGraw’s justification for the attack notwithstanding, he was fined $500 and suspended for 16 days.
McGraw responded, claiming to be “discriminated against personally,” by league President John Tener,” and that “Byron was more to blame than I was.”
He said the action taken against him would result in:
“Umpires with Byron’s lack of common intelligence and good sense, will now be so overbearing with players there will be no living with them.”
But the feud had been brewing since the umpire entered the league.
In August of 1914, in a game where the Reds scored five runs in the eighth to beat the Giants 5 to 4, The Cincinnati Enquirer said:
“The character of McGraw was shown by his getting into an insulting ruction with Umpire Byron…He was so angered at losing out that he pelted the official with vicious expletives and delayed the game for several minutes.”
In 1915, Sam Crane, the former player turned baseball writer for The New York Journal, and a close friend of McGraw, chronicled a clash between the two during a September 25 game between the seventh place Giants and sixth place Cardinals in St. Louis:
Byron was being taunted from the New York bench and decided utility infielder Fred Brainard was the culprit and ejected him:
“Brainard (in a startled voice: ‘Who me/ Why, I didn’t open my mouth, did I boys?’
“Chorus of players: ‘No, he didn’t.’
“A mysterious voice from a far corner of the dugout: ‘’Byron, you can’t hear any better than you can see. You’re rotten.’”
At this point, Byron walked to the Giants bench and gave Brainard one minute to leave.
McGraw responded, “You have pulled another boot Byron,” and accused the umpire of once ordering a player off the bench who was coaching at first base, and asked how he knew it was Brainard:
“Umpire Byron (turning pale): ‘I caught Brainard with his mouth open.’”
The Giants bench laughed at the umpire and McGraw accused him of always “guessing” at his decisions.
At this point Crane said Byron, “five minutes after he had given Brainard one minute,” removed his watch from his pocket and again gave Brainard a minute to leave and told McGraw he would be ejected as well. The manager responded:
“Why should I be put out of the game? I haven’t done anything. Neither has Brainard. You’re all tangled up. Do you know the rules? What time is it by that tin timepiece you have got there?”
Byron repeated the order and threatened to forfeit the game to St. Louis. McGraw said:
“Go ahead and forfeit. You will be in very bad if you do. Every one of my players here say Brainard did not say a word. You will be in a nice fix with Tener, won’t you. You will have a fat chance to umpire the world’s series. Go ahead and forfeit the game.”
Byron then summoned three police officers to remove Brainard, but according to Crane, the police sergeant said,” I will have to take the umpire along, too.”
This elicited more laughter from the Giants bench.
Crane’s story ends with McGraw chastising the umpire while finally telling Brainard to go, and Byron returning to homeplate while singing:
“Oh, I don’t know. The multitude and the players are enraged at me; but I gained my point. Oh, I don’t know; I ain’t so bad.”
And the game “then proceeded, and smoothly throughout.”
Crane claimed the whole ordeal took at least 15 minutes.
The Post-Dispatch didn’t mention police, implied that Byron clearly won the encounter, and said, “five minutes were consumed in this senseless argument.”
The paper scolded the umpire for the “bush league trick” of pulling out his watch, but said:
“In time, however, McGraw relented under the threat of a forfeiture, which means a fine of $1000, and Brainard went his way.”
McGraw might have gotten the better of Byron in their 1917 fight in Cincinnati, but in 1915 the umpire “landed twice” on Boston Braves third baseman Red Smith after the game when Smith renewed an earlier argument over balls and strikes September 16 in Chicago. Smith attempted to get at Byron after being hit but was stopped by the other umpire, Al Orth.
Byron and McGraw continued to butt heads and the umpire’s combative style and singing continued to draw attention.
George Moriarty, the Detroit Tigers infielder, turned American League umpire—who also wrote songs—and often included poems about players in the nationally syndicated column he began writing in 1917, said—in part–of Byron:
“It’s wonderful the way you face the throng of maddened players all season long;
While other umps get busted on the bean you pacify the athletes with a song.
You know that music charms the savage beast, and as they rush to stab you in the vest,
And tell you how they’ll tear you limb from limb, you sing like John McCormack at his best.”
After hitting just .285 in 1897, and not managing the Colts to a finish better than fourth place in eight seasons, Cap Anson’s career in Chicago was coming to an end at age 45. His contract had expired and Albert Spalding had made no effort to sign him.
Cap” Anson
But Ned Hanlon of the Orioles said he was not convinced Anson’s career was over and offered him a contract. The Baltimore Sun said:
“Adrian C. Anson will play first base for Baltimore the coming season if he will consent to do so, Manager Hanlon will offer him every inducement that he can afford to have the ‘Grand Old Man’ come to Baltimore.”
Hanlon told the paper:
“I believe he would be a good man for Baltimore, and I shall write him at once for his terms…Anson is good for some years yet on the diamond. I consider his ability much underrated. With the things he had to contend with in Chicago it is a wonder to me he played as well as he did. With the Orioles he would bat .350 and be like a colt again.”
Ned Hanlon
Spalding, who was in the process of organizing a “testimonial” for Anson, intended to raise $50,000 for his retirement, told The Chicago Tribune Anson signing with Hanlon would be a mistake:
“(I)t will be a case of a big flash in the pan. Two or three months of praise and then, ‘Get out, you big dud.’ It is always the way, for a man of 47 [sic] cannot expect to play good ball for ever. Besides an error from Anson would not be excused. He would have to play perfect ball or be a failure.”
Orioles captain Wilbert Robinson agreed, saying that while Anson might help the Orioles with his bat:
“I think he is too slow and too poor a fielder and thrower and baserunner to fit such a team as the Baltimores.”
In The Sun, Orioles third baseman John McGraw disagreed with Spalding and Robinson:
“I should be greatly pleased to see Anson come to our team, and if he should I believe it would be a case of Dan Brouthers and ’94 over again. When Brouthers came to Baltimore everybody said he was too old to play ball and no good, and you know how he played that year.”
Brouthers hit .347 and drove in 128 runs for the pennant winning Orioles in 1894 but was just 36 years old.
McGraw was skeptical about Dan McGann, who Hanlon had traded for to play first for the Orioles, and noted that Hanlon’s experiment the previous season had failed:
“McGann may be all right, and again he may not. In the minor leagues there are few who can hit the ball harder and oftener than George Carey, but in a club like ours he was nervous. Every time he went to bat his hand shook from nervousness. McGann may not be that way at all; I do not mean to say he would be, but he might.”
Carey hit .261 in his one season with Baltimore in 1895.
The Baltimore American reported that Hanlon said his proposal was “a joke,” but Hanlon immediately denied that and told The Sun:
“I had no interview in which I denied my intention of trying to get Anson, or did I in any way make light of that intention.”
The Chicago Journal was concerned that local “enthusiasts never would get over it,” if Anson made good in Baltimore.
The Chicago Post said:
“(T)hose who think they know how (Anson) feels say he will not entertain any such proposition.”
The Chicago Daily News said:
“Many of the veteran’s friends believe he will be glad of the chance to go with another club, especially such a team as Baltimore’s.”
The Tribune talked to Anson’s father in Iowa. Henry Anson said he wanted his son to retire so he could:
“(C)ome back to Marshalltown, the land of his birth, and assist me in the upbuilding of the city.”
While Anson remained silent about whether he would continue playing and refused to comment on whether he would go to Baltimore, he had a letter read at Spalding’s meeting at the Chicago Athletic Club to plan the “testimonial;” the letter was printed in The Daily News::
“I refuse to accept anything in the shape of a gift. The public owes me nothing. I am not old and am no pauper. I can earn my own living. Besides that, I am by no means out of baseball.”
After nearly two weeks, Anson sent a letter to Hanlon, The Sun said:
“Anson neither accepts nor declines the offer but says he has not yet decided upon his future plans., and until he does, he does not care to talk business with anyone.”
Anson told Hanlon:
“In the event I should care to do business with any club outside of Chicago, I should be pleased to negotiate with you. However, I do not care to do business with anyone just at this time.”
Anson stayed out of baseball until June when he signed to manage the New York Giants. The Tribune said:
“Anson has been one of the few admirers of (Giants owner Andrew) Freedman. He admired him because of his stubbornness. Freedman has been an admirer of Anson. When their wishes clash something will break.”
Anson managed the Giants for just 22 games; guiding New York to a 9-13 record before he quit. He told The Tribune:
“My experience as manager? I simply and shortly discovered that (Freedman) did not want me to manage the team. I wanted to manage it, as that was what I understood they wanted me to do. They didn’t really want me to, and so I resigned.”
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