Tag Archives: Old Hoss Radbourn

“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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“I had Discovered a Real Treasure”

22 Sep

The Dubuque Tribune called Ted Sullivan, “The Burton Homes of Baseball.”

Holmes, who coined the phrase “travelogue” presented live stage presentations which combined slides, motion pictures, and monologues about his world travel.

Sullivan was in Iowa in 1915 to present his “illustrated lecture” of the history of baseball and his life as one of the early, nomadic pioneers of the game, to a group in Dubuque.

Ted Sullivan

He told the paper he was “no longer connected with baseball anymore but am still a ‘bug’ and will be until the end of my time.”

He also had personal history in the Iowa town:

“In 1878 Sullivan heeded the call of baseball and organized a club in Dubuque.”

By 1879, with a roster including Old Hoss Radbourn, Charlie Comiskey, Tom Loftus, and Jack and Bill Gleason, the Rabbits won the Northwestern League. The team’s most famous game was August 4 that year, when behind Radbourn the club beat the Chicago White Stockings 1 to 0 in front of 1200 fans.

The Dubuque Herald said the day after 4-hit Radbourn’s masterpiece:

“(The Rabbits) defeat by a score like 12 to 0 was thought to be a foregone conclusion. Pools were even sold in Chicago yesterday on the game 13 to 0 on the white-hosed club.

“But the Dubuques gloriously…gave the visitors a most thorough whitewashing. The victory is due in great part to the deceptive and very effective pitching of Radbourn–spelled without an “e”–and to the splendid backing which the nine gave him in the field.”

The Box Score

Sullivan, 36-years later, told The Tribune how he “landed the pitcher” for Dubuque:

“Sullivan arrived at the Radbourn home (in Bloomington, Illinois) late at night, the family having retired with the exception of Radbourne [sic] Sr. To the pitcher’s father, Sullivan explained his mission and asked if Charlie was home.”

Sullivan was told Radbourn was sleeping.

“Old Hoss” Radbourn

Radbourn was roused from bed:

“’Charlie came down,’ said Mr. Sullivan, ‘and I told him I wanted him for my team.’

“’Of course, you know Sullivan, ‘he said to me, ‘I must get $75 a month,’

“’We’ll fix that up,’ I said, ‘you just sign this contract.’”

Sullivan said after victories over Providence and Rockford early in the season, “the other fellows realized that I had discovered a real treasure…I never tire of talking about Radbourne [sic] he was a great ballplayer and could not only pitch but play the infield and outfield as well.”

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“The Brilliant Ignoramus of The Sun.”

1 Feb

The New York Sun took up the issue of “Scientific batting” in 1884. The paper said:

“(O)f course scientific play at the bat is not to be learned in a day, as hard hitting can be. Take a muscular man and place him at the bat for the first time, and the chances are five to one that he will make a home run the first hit he makes. But the skill to face for position in batting and to place a ball is an art that requires practice, and no novice can get into it at a jump as he can in home-run hitting.”

The Chicago Tribune was having none of it and suggested that “Somebody—probably “old Chad,” Henry Chadwick—was writing a “column of foolishness on the subject of scientific batting.”

The Tribune wasn’t done, and said, “It is hard to believe that the person who wrote this ever saw a professional game of ball,” and set out to correct “the brilliant ignoramus of The Sun.”

A first-time batter, no matter how “muscular” facing “the delivery of (Larry) Corcoran or (Old Hoss) Radbourn,” could not “hit clean for four bases once in 200 ties trying.”

The paper cited “a friendly dispute” between Corcoran and Cap Anson.

 “Anson, who is considered to be the most skillful batsman in American as regards ability to control the direction of the ball when hit, and whose average of right-field hitting is probably greater than that of any right-hand batsman, asserted that if he chose, he could place the ball in the direction of the right field any time.”

Cap Anson

Corcoran bet Anson he couldn’t do it half the time and offered to bet. Anson refused the bet but said he would prove his point the next day against Stump Weidman of the Detroit Wolverines.

“Out of five times at bat Anson went out on a fly twice in left-center and once in right field, was once thrown out at first base by the second baseman, and once popped on an easy foul fly. The result of the special effort to ‘place the ball’ was that he made not a single clean hit in five times at bat.”

Over the next fifteen games the White Stockings played in Chicago, the paper said Anson had fourteen hits in 65 at bats for a .215 average; he had six hits to right, three to center, and five to left and of his 51 other at bats, three were fly balls to left field, and 13 were ground balls to the right side. The conclusion was that Anson’s hitting suffered when he made a “systematic effort” to hit to right.

The Tribune said the current “swift curve throwing” that batters faced forced batters to focus on having “the judgement and patience to wait for a good ball, the skill to get it on his bat, and the strength to hit it hard.” This differed from when the “old-fashioned straight-arm pitching was in vogue it was quite possible for a skillful batsman to govern in a measure both the direction and force of the ball.”

The paper concluded that “Hard, clean hitting is what is wanted, and, as a rule, direction is of far less consequence than force.”

Henry Chadwick

The “ignoramus of The Sun” did not respond.

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“He was a Rube Waddell, a Cy Young”

22 Sep

In 1905, Napoleon Lajoie told a story to a reporter for The Cleveland News about “a wizard in the person of a pitcher who applied for a job in Philadelphia<’ when Lajoie played for the Phillies in 1899:

Napoleon Lajoie

“We were out for morning practice one day when a tall, angular, awkward man, who looked more like a sailor than an athlete, gained admittance to the park and asked permission to work with us.”

Lajoie said the man was sent to the outfield and “did fairly well catching fungoes;” he then asked to pitch.

“Big (Ed) Delahanty made two or three swings at the twisters the stranger served up to him, and then he turned around to me: ‘Nap, that fellow’s a ringer,’ he said. We all laughed at Del’s remark, but the laugh didn’t last. I was as helpless before him that day as I am nowadays before Jack Chesbro’s spitball, when it is worked right. Duff Cooley was mad all over because he couldn’t hit the new-fangled curves.”

Delahanty

Lajoie said when he stood behind the man as he pitched, he:

“(W)atched in open-mouthed wonder the zigzag, round-the-corner, hide-and-seek curves he pitched against the grandstand. It was hard to tell whether you were on a ballfield or in the delirium tremens ward of an inebriate hospital.”

He said he asked the man what he did for work:

“’Oh, most anything,’ he said ‘Anything that will earn me bread and butter and a place to sleep. Help load ships, sweep crossings—anything.’”

Lajoie said the man was told he could “earn $500 or $600 a month.”

He said he invited the man out the next day to meet manager Bill Shettsline.

“He was there at the appointed time and showed Shetts his paces. (Bill) Bernhard, (Red) Donahiue and the other pitchers looked on him with voiceless astonishment. He was a Rube Waddell, a Cy Young, a John Clarkson, a Charles Radbourn and Eddie Beaton [sic, Beatin], and a Clark Griffith combined in one.

“Shettsline told him to come to the office the next day and signa contract. That night we all had dreams of the pennant and of the consternation the new pitcher’s debut would create in the ranks of the other clubs.”

But it was not to be.

“He disappeared as suddenly as he appeared and as completely as if he had jumped into the muddy waters of the Schuylkill. Detectives hired by the club hunted high and low for him, and we even advertised in the papers, but we got no trace of him whatever.

“And never before and never since have I seen such a marvelous exhibition of masterful pitching as that unknown man in shirtsleeves and overalls gave that day in the presence of the most famous hitting team ever organized.”

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Salaries, 1885

23 Mar

Before the 1885 season, The Pittsburgh Dispatch asserted:

“It was confidently claimed at the close of last season’s play that salaries would not go higher, and if any changes were made they would rather be in the other direction, but recent contracts do not justify that assertion”

The paper then told readers who would be the best paid players in baseball:

“The highest salaried ballplayer in the profession for 1885 will be James O’Rourke, late of the Buffalo team. After receiving flattering offers from the Cleveland, Boston, Detroit, Providence, St. Louis, and Athletic clubs he finally signed in New York for $6500.”

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Jim O’Rourke

The Spalding Guide placed his salary at $4500.

The paper said Tony Mullane had signed with the Browns for $3500 with a $500 advance from owner Chris von der Ahe; Mullane would also “sign” with Cincinnati which drew him a suspension for the entire 1885 season:

“(Mullane) went before a notary and entered into an agreement with the St. Louis club…The Cincinnati managers offered him $5000 for this season’s work with $2000 advance money, and the great flopper flopped.”

Other salaries reported by The Dispatch differed with the Spalding Guide:

“(John Montgomery) Ward of the New York League team gets $3400 next year ($3000), and Buck Ewing $3000 ($3100).”

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John Montgomery Ward

The paper claimed that Old Hoss Radbourn, who was reported to have made $4000 for the 1885 season, “had an offer of $6000 for his services,” but did not say who had made the offer,

Louisville’s Guy Hecker, Cincinnati’s Pop Snyder, Buffalo’s Pud Galvin, Pittsburgh’s Ed Morris; Barney Gilligan of Providence, and John Morrill and Jack Burdock of Boston were are to receive $2500 according to The Dispatch.

Cap Anson was to receive $3000 in Chicago; Frank Mountain, acquired by Pittsburgh with the rest of his Columbus Buckeye teammates after that club folded, was said to have been signed for $3300 for the 1885 season.

Sam Barkley of St. Louis, Joe Gerhardt of New York, Charlie Bastian of Philadelphia, and Jim Manning and Mert Hackett of Boston “and several more players will receive $2000, while the number receiving $1500 and upward are entirely too numerous to mention.”

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Sam Barkley

The Dispatch concluded:

“From the above figures it would seem that, instead of decreasing, the salaries of good players are going higher and higher each season.”

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“The only Great Game in the Country”

7 Aug

Smiling Mickey Welch spent his post-baseball years operating various businesses in Holyoke, Massachusetts, but visited Boston and New York often—until he eventually moved back to New York.

mickeywelch

Welch

In 1908, Welch, “one of the most famous pitchers of half a generation ago,” talked to Tim Murnane, the baseball writer for The Boston Globe, on a trip to visit his former teammate Tim Keefe in Cambridge, Massachusetts:

“’It certainly seems to me,’ said Welch a few days ago, ‘That the players of today have nothing over the stars of the past. I’m not at all prejudiced and I believe that I am at least fairly competent to judge, as I have kept right up with the many changes that have been made since I left the business.”

Murnane said of Welch:

“Mickey finished his career in the baseball world 15 years ago [sic, 16], but he still retains his deep interest in the great national game, and each season always plans to come to Boston or to go to New York to watch the work of the present-day players and compare them with those of his time, when by his superb work in the pitcher’s box he assisted in winning a couple of pennants and world championships for Gotham.”

Welch, who had just sold his salon in Holyoke, “to engage in the milk business with his oldest son, Frank,” asked Murnane:

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Welch, with wife Mary and seven of the couple’s nine children

“Where, for instance, is there today any greater baseball player than Buck Ewing was? Ah, he was the greatest of ‘em all—indeed the grandest that the game has ever known. Universally acknowledged by all followers of the sport as the king of catchers, he also shone in other departments, for he was a hard natural hitter, could run bases with the top-notchers and could play any of the infield or outfield positions as well as any of the regulars holding down those berths.”

Welch said he and Ewing—who died in October of 1906–were “the warmest of friends for years and that friendship dated from the days when as a member of the Troy team, I first became acquainted with him while he was with the Rochester club (in 1880).”

Welch said from the day Ewing joined Troy later that season and after they went to New York together when the Trojans disbanded after the 1882 season:

buck

Ewing

“Buck and I were chums and for all that time used to room together.”

Murnane said that Welch, who “always made it a point to take the very best care of himself,” was in “as splendid condition,” as he was when he pitched:

“One of his favorite hobbies is walking, and on every pleasant day in the fall and winter he and Jack Doyle, also a famous old-time ball tosser, may be seen setting from the Welch home to take a jaunt to Mt. Tom, which is between Holyoke and the neighboring town of Northampton.”

Some nights Murnane said the two went out in the evening and “they sit for hours and talk over the good old days when they were players of mark in the fastest company.”

After all of those talks with Doyle about their days in baseball, he maintained:

“I’m throwing no bouquets at myself but have there ever been any better pitchers than Tim Keefe, John Clarkson and Charlie Radbourn? I say ‘no’ emphatically. Then look at the rest. Dan Brouthers has never been excelled as a batsman and I don’t believe he ever will be. He could land a ball farther and with less apparent effort than any ballplayer that ever swung a bat. I faced him many a time and I could never discover that he had any weakness.

“(Cap) Anson was also a fine hitter, as were Deacon White, Hardy Richardson, Jim O’Rourke, Mike Tiernan, (Ed) Delahanty, and George Gore, to say nothing of a dozen more whom I might mention. Jerry Denny has never been excelled as a third baseman, and Johnny Ward is the headiest man that has ever played shortstop. ‘Dickie’ Johnston, pride of Boston for years, and Curt Welch of the old St. Louis Browns and (Jimmy) McAleer of the Clevelands were easily the most brilliant outfielders of the past.”

Welch also believed “the best club in the history of the game,’ were the 1888 and 1889 Giants—Welch was 26-19 1.93 in ’88 and 27-12 3.02 in 1889 for those New York teams.

“Buck Ewing was the captain, and a magnificent one he was too. Buck used to catch nearly all of the games.”

Welch said of the team:

“We won the pennant rather easily in the National League in ’88, and fully as easily beat out the St. Louis Browns for the world’s flag. But the next season of ’89, we had to go some right up to the very last notch to pull away from the Bostons in the National League, the championship not being decided until the final day of the season when we won in Indianapolis while the Bostons lost in Pittsburgh. Then we met the Brooklyns, champions of the American Association. In a series of nine games, we won five”

Welch got two details wrong; while 1889 was the first pennant decided on the season’s final day and Boston did lose to the Pittsburgh Alleghenys, the Giants beat the Cleveland Spiders that day; also, in the series the Giants won six of the nine games with Brooklyn.

Welch vowed to Murnane, “I shall never lose my interest,” in “the only great game in the country.”

 

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Things I Learned on the way to Looking up Other Things #36

17 Jul

Bancroft on Radbourn

In 1900, in The Chicago Record, Frank Bancroft said of one of his former players:

“Charlie Radbourn did more scheming than any man that ever played baseball. When I had him in Providence, he always was springing something new and some of his ideas were exceedingly far-fetched.

“I remember on one occasion and at a critical period in a game Rad drew back his arm as if to pitch, then instead of delivering the ball to the batsman he threw it around his back to Joe Start, who was playing first base for us. It was only by the greatest effort that Start managed to get the ball. Had it gone wild the game would have gone against us as there were several men on the bases. When I questioned him regarding the throw, he claimed that it was a new idea, and that if Start had been watching himself he would have retired the runner on first.”

rad

Radbourn

National League Facts, 1880

The Chicago Tribune reported before the 1880 season that every National League charged $15 for a season ticket, except for the Providence Grays who charged $20.

The paper also calculated the miles each team would travel during the season (listed in order of finish):

Chicago White Stockings 6,444

Providence Grays 6,200

Cleveland Blues 5,592

Troy Trojans 4,990

Worcester Ruby Legs 6,470

Boston Red Stockings 6,240

Buffalo Bisons 5,356

Cincinnati Reds 6,294

Dan Brouthers and “Dude Contrivances”

In 1893, The Buffalo Courier reported that Brooklyn Grooms manager Dave Foutz told his players “there was nothing better than good bicycle practice to keep in condition.”

Dan Brouthers said back home in Wappinger’s Falls, New York, people “never would recognize him again if they heard he had been riding one of those dud contrivances.”

brouthers

Brouthers

The paper corrected the first baseman: “Dan evidently needs a little education in cycling. The day has passed when a rider was regarded in the light of a dude.”

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“I was Pretty Fast in Those Days”

3 Jul

“We did everything 30 years ago they do today, with the possible exception of sacrificing. Little of that was done, and I consider the game was better.”

So said “The hero of the first unassisted triple play in baseball,” to a reporter for The Pittsburgh Press in 1913:

“Holding a good position in the department of agriculture, Washington D.C., is a blonde individual of comfortable corpulence who answers to the name Paul A. Hines.”

Later, The Associated Press would say he got the government position because he, “became a favorite of Rep. William McKinley, who later became president, and when Hines retired from Baseball McKinley found a government job for him.”

The Press described Hines, who would turn 58 that year, as:

“Well preserved, genial a comfortable looking businessman (who) little resembles the dashing outfielder of three decades ago.”

He told the paper that Charlie Buffinton, Tim Keefe, and Old Hoss Radbourn where the greatest pitchers he saw. He said Ned Williamson was the greatest player he witnessed, and that Silver Flint was “the most banged up and best catcher that ever lived.”

Hines also gave the paper a first-hand account of his most famous moment:

“It was made May 8, 1878. I was playing a deep center field and there were runners on second and third when a short fly was hit over the second base.

“I ran in after the ball, believing I had the speed to reach it, for I was pretty fast in those days. Both base runners thought the ball would fall safe and ran for the plate.

“I got the ball off my instep, near second, touched the base and then ran to third, reaching that base before the runner who had occupied it could return, thus completing the play.

“The play has been questioned, but I see that Umpire (Charles F.) Daniels, who worked that day vouched for it recently.”

Daniels’ version of the play differed from Hines’ however, as did the contemporary accounts of the play; even Hines told a different version that year in the October issue of “Baseball Magazine”—none of those versions included the part where Hines claimed to have touched second base before going to third base.

The other versions said he threw to second baseman Charlie Sweasy, but that the throw was unneeded because both runners had rounded third and had been retired. The only version that matched Hines’ The Pittsburgh Press recollection was William Wrothe Aulick’s description of the play that appeared in a syndicated article that eventually became part of the book “The National Game,” published in 1912

grays.jpg

Hines, standing at left, with Providence Grays, 1882

In Hines’ “Baseball Magazine” version–in addition to getting the date wrong, he said May 15, rather than May 8–he claimed he went to second and stepped on the bag after stepping on third, then:

“Sweeney [sic], our second baseman, took the ball and danced around with it, cutting up monkey shines.”

Hines told the The Press that after he completed the play:

“Of course, I remember distinctly how the crowd, when it realized what had happened, went wild. It was one of the proudest moments in the life of Paul Hines, I tell you.”

Hines likely had one of his worst moment years later; he was arrested when caught stealing a pocketbook from a policewoman at the corner of Ninth Street and New York Avenue.

hines.jpg

Hines circa 1900

The Washington Evening Times said:

“The gray-haired man has been under surveillance for some time. When his room was searched at 233 Rhode Island Avenue, a number of purses and pocketbooks were found in it, as well as twenty-five pairs of eyeglasses and spectacles.”

The Washington Star said Hines was released on $1000 bond, and:

“According to the police, Hines, who is 69 years old, when confronted with the charge broke down and said: ‘I have played my last game and lost.’”

Hines, almost completely deaf—his longest obituary, written by Guy M. Smith, who wrote for The Sporting News, and knew Hines, said the deafness was the result of a beaning by Grasshopper Jim Whitney in 1886—and destitute spent the last years of his life at the Sacred Heart Home in Hyattsville, Maryland, he died there in 1935.

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Lost Pictures: Griffith Dedicates Radbourn Memorial

28 Jun

 

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Clark Griffith dedicating the Charles “Old Hoss” Radbourn plaque at Bloomington (IL) Cemetery, May 1, 1941.

Griffith told a reporter for The Associated Press:

“It’s been 20 years since I’ve been back where I spent part of my boyhood. I lived in Normal (the town separated by only a street from Bloomington from my seventeenth to twenty-first year and it was Ol’ Hoss who taught me the first rules of pitching.”

Griffith said of Radbourn:

“He was a husky, durable fellow, but to watch him was to be impressed by his keen pitching brain rather than by his strength. I pitched against him in several town games and was always amazed with the way he worked on tough hitters seldom giving them the kind of pitch they liked.”

The plaque, which like Radbourn’s grave and Hall of Fame plaque, spells his name with an “e” at the end. The one  dedicated by Griffith was apparently replaced–either because the original was damaged or stolen–by a nearly identical version. When Griffith died in 1955, The Bloomington Pantagraph said the original plaque was still place–however, several articles in the paper after the Bloomington City Cemetery and the Evergreen Cemetery were combined in 1963 said the plaque was “put there by Pontiac Correctional Center inmates” sometime after 1955. None of the 1941 stories mentioned the origin of the plaque.

radbournplaque

The plaque 

 

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The current grave site photographed before the dedication of the new wood carving made from the trunk of a dead 150 year-old tree adjacent to Radbourn’s grave.

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“Radbourn Never Thought of Quitting”

10 Jun

In 1911, The International News Service published an article “written by” Hardy Richardson about “the gamest man who ever stepped in the box:” Old Hoss Radbourn.

richardson.jpg

Richardson

Richardson said he knew Radbourn “perhaps better than anyone who played with him or against him,” but still did not know him well:

 “Really I do not believe anyone had better opportunity to penetrate the reserve of this unassuming little fellow than myself. I spent one whole winter with him near Bloomington, Illinois. We were together almost continually, hunting or knocking about the open country. But I soon realized that the more I associated with him the less I knew him.”

Richardson told a story that he said exemplified Radbourn’s determination—although after more than 20 years, he got many of the facts wrong:

rad.jpg

Radbourn

“It was in 1890 during the Brotherhood days.”

Radbourn faced Ward’s Wonders in Brooklyn on May 5:

“It was one of Radbourn’s few poor days, and Brooklyn simply hit him here, there, and everywhere. The smothered Radbourn by the very disconcerting score of 27 to 6 (the actual score was 20 to 4). It was one of the real slaughters of the season. But Radbourn never thought of quitting. His teammates asked him to retire but Charlie stuck to his guns. The more they hit him the harder he gritted his teeth and the harder he tried. He took his medicine like a little gentleman, without a whimper. To the taunts of Brooklyn, he would simply grunt to his teammates: ‘Well, we’ll get then yet, see if we don’t.’”

may5box.jpg

The Box Score

Here is where Richardson’s memory fails him:

“The next day Radbourn declared he was going to pitch again. His teammates laughed at him. When he went out to warm up they thought him a fit subject for an insane asylum…But there was no stopping Radbourn. And he got his revenge on Brooklyn all right. He shut out the team that had massacred him the day before, allowing only one Brooklynite to reach first.”

Richardson was correct that Radbourn refused to leave the game on May 5. The Brooklyn Eagle said he was “plucky and refused to retire,” despite the drubbing, being hit in the neck with a pitch by Brooklyn pitcher George Van Haltren, and later being struck in the leg by a Van Haltren base hit:

“The ball that Van Haltren hit struck him fair on the shin, making a report that sounded as if the leg was broken. So hard did the ball land that it bounced back from the pitcher’s box to foul ground.”

He was also correct that Radbourn insisted on pitching the following day. The Boston Globe said:

“Radbourn was going in to pitch today.  He said he was anxious to show the Brooklyn men they were in big luck when they hit so hard the first day. Rad was very sore on Umpire Gaffney, who he says would give him nothing over the plate in the first game unless he split it in two.”

That’s where Richardson’s imagination took over. Radbourn warmed up but the game on May 6 was rained out. Bill Daley pitched the next two days for Boston, beating Brooklyn 8 to 4, and 11 to 10; Radbourn did not appear again in the series.

The 35-year-old Radbourn finished the 1890 season with a 27-12 record and 3.31 ERA and led the Reds to the Players League’s only pennant; he would only pitch one more season. Thirty-five-year-old Richardson had his last great season in 1890, hitting .328 and led the league in home runs (16) and RBI (152).

Richardson summed up his late teammate:

 “Radbourn was a man who never despaired of a victory no matter how the tide of fortune flowed. He did not know the meaning of the word ‘quit.’”

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