Tag Archives: Pittsburgh Pirates

“He Dresses as he Darn Well Pleases”

1 May

In 1914, writing about Honus Wagner in “The Baseball Magazine”, William A. Phelon said:

“Wagner’s dislike for fancy clothing is well known. I have seen the massive Teuton lounging in the swellest hotels with a grey flannel shirt and no sign of a necktie, while the fashionables were trooping by. Eccentricity? No—Honus doesn’t pose as an eccentric. Boorishness, ignorance of etiquette? Not that bird, for Hans Wagner is as pleasing a country gentleman as anyone could hope to meet.

“Presswork, publicity stuff? He does not need any. He is as independent as he is powerful; as solid and determined in mind as he is in body, and he dresses as he darn well pleases. He is Hans Wagner and he is worth five or six dressy dudes that look in agony upon his tieless flannels.”

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Wagner

Phelon shared several stories about Wagner—Phelon, like Hugh Fullerton, was known for his active imagination—the magazine said in the sub headline of the article: “We shall not endeavor to trace their origin any farther.”

Phelon described a night in Hot Springs with the Pirates shortstop:

“He commands attention and gets respect, even before folks know him for the great ballplayer…Wagner, correctly clad, a splendid picture of strength and manly perfection, was listening to the music in the big ballroom. Sitting beside me was a Chicago plutocrat who has his millions, all won by hustling every minute of his business hours. This man who did not know Hans Wagner, was studying the ballplayer’s general makeup. Finally, turning in his chair, the rich man exclaimed, ‘Who the devil is that man? He’s the sort of fellow I’d like to have working for me. Bulldog, fighter; think; learn a trick and never lose it; honest as the day is long—I wish I had him. Say, Bill who is that?’

“’Hans Wagner, Mr. ——-,’ I answered, strangling a grin. The millionaire took another long, long look. ‘So, that’s Wagner, hey?’ he murmured. ‘Now I understand why he has his reputation.’’

Phelon said it “delights a crowd” to see Wagner strike out “especially if the feat is performed by some kid pitcher.”

He then suggested:

“Perhaps I am wrong, but it has seemed to me, on several occasions, as if Honus deliberately struck out just to give the crowd a ration of glee and flatter the youngster on the slab. When the Pirates are safely ahead, and some young hurler has been sent to the hill by the losing foe, Hans actually seems to strike out far oftener than at any other time, and it always looked to me as if he did so—always making a terrific wild swing at the last one—just through good heartedness.

“And how the crowd always yells and bellows in sheer ecstasy! And how the kid pitcher swells up and hugs himself, while he thinks of the glory that is his—the joy of telling everybody, to the last day he lives, about the time he struck out Hans Wagner—and made him miss the big one by a mile.

“Of course, all these strikeouts may be accidental, and the old boy may be trying—but why is it that you will so often see Wagner miss three under such circumstances, while it’s blamed seldom you’ll see him fan is a tight game, with men on, and some star pitcher working against him?”

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Wagner’s Glove

30 Apr

A Newspaper Enterprise Association syndicated article in 1920 told the story of the glove Honus Wagner refused to replace:

“Many another would be ashamed of it, but not the only Honus Wagner. Wagner would not part with it for love or money. There is a history to the glove.”

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Honus Wagner

Wagner could not recall exactly when he received the glove, but guessed it was 1902:

“Honus knows that Herman Long, once the greatest of all shortstops, then playing with the Boston team, gave him the glove. It is a fact that Long always used a glove with a big hole in the center of it. He would buy a new glove and at once cut it to pieces, leaving an open spot in the center about twice the size of a baseball.”

Eight years later:

“The glove is now a worn-out relic, but Hans hangs onto it like grim death. He figures it would be the worst luck in the world for him to lose it.

“Fans have time and again watched Wagner take that glove off his big left hand and throw it down towards third base. And they can always see the hole in it, for it is too big not to be noticed.”

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Wagner’s glove

Wagner was often asked about replacing the glove:

“(H)e will only say that he has no money to pay for one. But back of that there is the one fact that remains always prominent—Wagner is just as superstitious or sentimental as any other ballplayer, and he has always felt that the Herman Long glove has brought him luck. That’s why he hangs on to it, It is worn to a frazzle. There is nothing to it but the bare edges. The center is all worn away, and Wagner grabs those hard line drives really with the bare hand.”

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“He was Neither Lucky, Dumb, nor Awkward”

22 Apr

On the occasion of the sale of the land which once stood “the old major league ball grounds at Broadway and Twenty-Eight Street,” in Louisville, James Jerpe of The Pittsburgh Gazette-Times reminisced and Fred Clarke bringing “the foundation of those habitual tail-enders to Pittsburgh.”

Jerpe said:

“Louisville is proud of Fred Clarke-maybe prouder than Pittsburgh or Winfield, Kansas, or Madison County, Iowa, where he was born. It was in Louisville that he won his spurs as a player and showed the qualifications that made him a great leader.”

He said future Louisville residents of the homes built on the ballpark site, “may point with pride to the fact that on their home sites great men like Clarke and Honus Wagner reached their prime.”

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Clarke

Twenty-one-year-old Clarke joined Louisville in June of 1894:

“They called him the freshest busher of the period. He had cost Barney Dreyfuss the munificent sum of $100. With him the little recruit brought a little red bat that was the butt of derisive jokes from veteran players.”

Jerpe said Clarke’s “little red bat” caught the attention of the opponents when he made his debut in a game with Philadelphia:

“’Why, kid, these pitchers will knock that toothpick out of your hands,’ exclaimed Billy Hamilton.”

Years later, Jerpe said Hamilton told Clarke:

“Do you remember how you got four hits in that game and then topped it off with a home run that made me run like mad to the clubhouse?”

Clarke—still so unfamiliar that The Louisville Courier Journal left the “e” off his last name—had five hits in his debut, but did not hit a home run as Hamilton recalled; he had four singles and a triple off Gus Weyhing, but the Colonels lost 13 to 6.

Three years later, Clarke, just 24, became manager of the Colonels; he told Jerpe about the wire he received from club president Harry Pulliam in June of 1897 informing him of the move:

“I didn’t know what to make of that telegram. I thought some of the other players had faked up a message to kid me. You know they always roasted me about being fresh and I thought that they wanted to get my goat. But I talked with several of them and found out that the message was on the level. A fellow named Rodgers [sic, Jim Rogers] had been acting in the capacity of manager. He advised me to accept the job. I was younger than any of the men playing regularly on the Pittsburgh club today, and I couldn’t hardly realize that Pulliam had picked me for a boss job.”

Jerpe said the Colonels under Clarke were “a rough and ready crowd,” and Clarke himself was “a tough nut.”

Clarke told him in 1912:

“You know they had the outfielders pegged as bad men, reckless base runners, vicious spikers and so on. But we were not as bad as they tried to paint us. Managers had a fashion of expecting the outfielders to run bases that way and to intimidate the infielders for the opposition. If one of their men spiked or bumped into one of our men the order always went out to get back at them. Of course, an outfielder was picked to bump the offending player on the other team because the outfielder covered no bases and therefore there would be no chance for them to come back at us again. If the third baseman on the opposing team blocked or bumped our shortstop the manager very promptly tipped his outfielders to get back at the third baseman.”

In 1912, Clarke also told Jerpe about the first time Honus Wagner worked out with his team; less than a month after Clarke became manager in 1897:

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Wagner 1897

“We called him the luckiest, dumbest, and most awkward Dutchman we ever saw, but we later learned how badly mistaken we were. He was neither lucky, dumb, nor awkward.

“He played in most every position during his first few days at practice. I was one of the loudest shouters about his blind luck and awkwardness. The way he broke down his hits, fielded anything hit above him or around him and the way he handled himself in general had us all guessing. He stood awkwardly at the bat but hit like a fiend. He ran bases, it seemed, very awkwardly, but he got there. After watching him about two weeks I turned toward a fellow named O’Brien and said, ‘That Dutchman isn’t lucky. He is a wonder. He knows what he is doing, and he can do it better than any of us. I want to take it all back.’”

Wagner, Clarke said, fifteen years after his debut:

“(H)as never changed. He is playing ball the same way he played it during his first week with Louisville. He didn’t seem any more awkward then than he does now. So you fellows might take from this that it is not always the best policy to figure that your first impression of a young ball player is correct. It takes a couple weeks sometimes to see a real good man and often it takes much longer.”

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“For That is a Very bad Business”

2 Apr

After winning the National League pennant in 1903, Barney Dreyfuss told The Pittsburgh Dispatch that he intended to further improve his team but:

“I do not want any ‘sports’ on the Pittsburgh team, and that’s why I’m so careful and go slowly in my selection of what new talent we want for next season.”

“By ‘sport,’ I mean the player who will bet on himself or his team to win games.”

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Barney Dreyfuss

Dreyfuss, the paper said, was committed to a fourth straight first-place finish for his club and knew what to avoid:

“I don’t want any man who will wager that his team will win, that the other fellows will be shut out, etc…for that is a very bad business, and there entirely too much of it in baseball now. I know pitchers who will, when they have the money, bet as high as $100 on themselves when they go in the box.”

He said he didn’t want “any of these people,” and currently had “no such players on” the Pirates:

“At first it looks like a good game; it looks as though the club owner should be proud to have in his employ men who will wager their own hard-earned money that they will beat the other fellows, but when we look at it more closely and examine records it proves to be very bad baseball.”

And, he said his colleagues had stories:

“Many are the club managers and owners who could tell, if they would, where such and such a game was lost by a certain player having bet and becoming too anxious.”

Dreyfuss said he had passed “on what seemed to be first-class men,” including “two very fast pitchers,” for being “sports,” because he said in addition to the problems on the field:

“(It) leads them into loafing with the betting element.”

Dreyfuss didn’t care if they never bet against their own club:

“They always bet on themselves of course, but they cannot play on the Pittsburgh club”

Despite his efforts to not sign any “sports,” the 1904 Pirates broke the three-year string of pennants, finishing fourth.

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Things I Learned on the way to Looking up Other Things #40

1 Apr

Minor League Salaries, 1897

In 1897, Ren Mulford of The Cincinnati Times-Star compiled a list of the average monthly salaries in some of the minor leagues:

“Eastern League–$100 to $180 for youngsters, $200 to $250 for stars.

“Western League–$75 to $150 for young men, nominal–$200 limit—real limit, about $300.

“Western Association–$65 to $115.

“Southern League–$70 to $100.

“Texas League–$60 to $100

“New England League–$75 to $125.”

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Ren Mulford

Mulford said:

“Most of the minor league contracts are from four and one-half months. While they are in force the players have their boards and traveling expenses paid when away from home. Seven months in the year these players can earn money doing other work. And yet they are down-trodden! There are many business and professional men who would be willing to be as down-trodden as are ball players.”

Small Market Woes, 1887

Horace Fogel was the third manager of the Indianapolis Hoosiers in 1887; the last place club finished the season 37-89; 20-49 under Fogel.

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Horace Fogel

After the season Fogel told The Indianapolis News:

“(I)t is a fact that it is impossible for a weaker League club to compete against such clubs as New York, Chicago, Detroit, or Boston when one of these begins to negotiate with the players. There is no use trying to get him by the offer of more money, for it will do no good. The young players would rather play on the big clubs for $500 less than they would get in the Indianapolis club. They do not recognize they would have a chance for improvement in a weaker club, while in one of the big clubs they must be on an equality with the best or they cannot stay. Young ball players will learn that they will have to begin at the foot of the ladder.”

Indianapolis, under manager Harry Spence finished 50-85 in seventh place in 1888.

Barney’s Favorite Scout, 1910

Barney Dreyfuss told The Pittsburgh Press in 1910 that the “best scout in the country” worked for him despite having “never secured a ballplayer.”

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Barney Dreyfuss

Dreyfuss said, “And as long as he wants to stay on my payroll, he can do it.”

The scout was Pittsburgh’s man on the West Coast, George Van Haltren. Dreyfuss said:

“He is an excellent judge of ballplayers, When we are tipped off to some player who is said to be a wonder, George hikes out and takes a look at him.”

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Van Haltren never signed a prospect for the Pirates but remained Dreyfuss’ favorite scout.

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“The Spitball Suffers from Nothing so much as its Vulgarity”

10 Jan

Louis Lee Arms became well known for being the husband of actress Mae Marsh and publicist for studio head Samuel Goldwyn, but before the age of 30 he was sports editor for The St. Louis Star and a sports columnist for The New York Tribune.

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Louis Lee Arms

In 1918, after it was reported in The Washington Post that Pittsburgh owner Barney Dreyfuss and “other big league magnates (would be) behind a movement to legislate the spitball and other freak deliveries,” at that year’s winter meetings, Arms wrote in The Tribune:

“It is apparent that for the first time in its gay young life the spitball is going to be placed seriously on trial.”

Arms said there were good cases on each side of the debate over “the saturated slant.”

He laid out the arguments:

“Those most opposed to this effective style of delivery make general claims against it, as follows:

  1. From its nature it is not legitimate

  2. It leads to other illegal styles of delivery

  3. It retards hitting

  4. It mars fielding

  5. It delays the game by delaying pitching

Each one of these claims is more or less justified. In opposition, those who favor the spitball submit the following:

  1. From its nature it is NOT illegitimate

  2. It depends upon skillful manipulation

  3. It greatly increases pitching effectiveness

  4. It is an effective substitute for a pitcher who is unable to develop a first-class curve ball

  5. Its abolition would greatly weaken, if not destroy the major league usefulness of many established pitchers.”

Arms had a theory that the pitch was not so much targeted for extinction for baseball reasons, but for changing social mores:

“It is our humble opinion the spitball suffers from nothing so much as its vulgarity. As a nation we are being taught more and more that it is usually unsanitary and largely unlawful to spit in public places. A ballpark is certainly public enough for anyone.

“Pithy placards in our subways, surface cars, and ‘L’s’ and in theaters and public places remind us that two years in prison or $500, or both, may be the penalty for even a first offence. We think now ere we spit. Back in grandfather’s salad days the town bloods may have sat before the grocery store and spit with formality and greater accuracy. But if grandfather had happened along in 1918, he would have smoked Egyptian cigarettes and saved the coupons.

“Assuredly the spitball is vulgar, it is a highly effective pitching asset. Ed Walsh and Jack Chesbro will be remembered as among the greatest pitchers in baseball and the spitter made them that. Dozens of other pitchers have owed the greater part of their success to the (Elmer) Stricklett discovery.”

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Stricklett

Of the pitch itself, he said:

“In effect, it is an artistic and astonishing delivery, as showing the ‘stuff’ that may be put upon a ball over a flight of sixty feet. There is no curve that has to it the arrogant viciousness of the spitter. No delivery is harder to control. By control we mean the ability to ‘break’ the spitter either way as well as to regulate the angle of the break.

“The spitter that carries the biggest break is not necessarily the most effective. It was only the other day that Miller Huggins was saying he had seen Bill Doak, eminent among modern spittists. Knocked from the box when his ‘spitter was breaking a foot,’ only to come back the next day with a delivery that jumped but a few inches and pitch unbeatable ball.

“It is unfair to the spitball to attribute to its influence the discovery of such illegal pitches as the resin and emery balls. Why not indict the knuckle ball on the same score? Yet no word is heard against the knuckle ball, which breaks like the spitter, requiring, albeit highly talented knuckles to control.

“We shall continue to believe the main objection its antagonists find against the spitball is that it isn’t polite. Yet they do not to be thought so softened by civilization as to admit that.”

It would take until the winter between the 1919 and 1920 seasons for the first stage of the spitball ban which allowed two pitchers per team to use the pitch, and the second after the 1920 season  which grandfathered in 17 pitchers.

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“There’s a Player the Newspapers Made”

14 Aug

In 1907, Pirates owner Barney Dreyfuss told The Pittsburgh Press:

“There’s a player the newspapers made.”

The player in question was Tommy Leach.

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Leach

“Leach is a pure product of the newspapers, but a product of which the newspapers should be proud.”

Dreyfuss said it made Leach “mad to tell him that,” but that the Louisville papers were responsible for his career:

“They roasted him so hard (when he played for Dreyfuss with the Colonels in 1898 and ’99) trying to drive him from out of the business that I got mad and said I’d stick to Leach as long as I had a dollar, and I did.”

Dreyfuss said Leach, “was very bad at that time I must admit.”

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Dreyfuss

But, he said he felt the papers “had it in” for Leach:

“I knew he could do good work, for I had seen him perform in the New York State League, but when he went to Louisville he seemed to scare at the cars and his fingers were all thumbs. My, how the papers did roast that boy. I suppose if they hadn’t done so, Leach might have been released, but when they took to devoting columns to his bad plays, simply singling him out for a mark, I took his part and our day soon came.”

Dreyfuss said he was sure that had he bent to the “newspaper roasts” of Leach and released him, “he would likely have never been given another chance in fast company.”

Leach played for Dreyfuss’ Pirates through the 1912 season, and finished his career with the team in 1918 when the 40-year-old, whose last major league game was in 1915, appeared in 30 games for the club whose roster had been depleted because of World War I.

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“Smashing Circuit Clouts all Over the Island”

22 Apr

Edgar Forrest Wolfe was a cartoonist and feature writer who wrote under the pseudonym Jim Nasium at several Eastern newspapers including The Philadelphia Inquirer from 1907-1922.  In 1920, he told readers about “the Black Babe Ruth.”

Wolfe had seen Cristobal Torriente play against barnstorming major leaguers in Cuba:

“While Boston Babe Ruth is insisting that he will not be thumping home runs next season unless he receives $20,000 a season for the service (Torriente) is smashing circuit swats all over the island for a percentage of the gate receipts and doing it with such consistent regularity that one is led to believe he might be able to take ‘Boston Babe’s’ place.”

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Torriente

Wolfe said against the barnstorming major leaguers including Jeff Pfeffer and Leon Cadore of the Brooklyn Robins and Elmer Ponder and Hal Carlson of the Pittsburgh Pirates:

 “Torriente, ‘The Black Babe Ruth’ pasted the pellet for the healthy batting average of .377 (and) in six games against the All-Americans, batting against Jack Quinn, Bob Geary, and ‘Mule’ Watson, Torriente managed to compile a batting average of .408.”

Torriente, he said:

“(I)s the surest and hardest hitter Cuba has ever produced. He broke up one of the Pittsburgh games with a terrific home run belt off pitcher Carlson that traveled so far into right-centerfield that he had completed the circuit of the bases before outfielder Max Carey had reached the ball.”

When facing Bob Geary in another game, Wolfe said Torriente hit a ball ‘so far into the same pasture,” and:

“(He) loafed coming up the third base line and had crossed the plate on a slow trot before the ball had been returned to the infield.”

Wolfe said the home run gave the Cubans a victory in a game that appeared “hopelessly lost,” and the fans threw money at Torriente who “collected thirty-two dollars from the grass around home plate.”

Wolfe noted that in another game, Torriente homered twice, one to left field, the other to right “with equal force.”

He called Torriente “the perfect picture of a natural hitter,” and gave the final word on his ability to Frank Schulte who while watching the games in Cuba called Torriente “one of the best-looking hitters he had ever seen:”

“He looks natural up there, and he takes the right kind of cut at the ball that doesn’t swing at any bad ones. If they could whitewash that bird he’d help some big league club a lot.”

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Lost Advertisements: Marty O’Toole for Sweet Caporal

22 Mar

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A 1914 advertisement for Sweet Caporal Cigarettes featuring “the famous $22,000 pitcher,” Marty O’Toole of the Pittsburgh Pirates.

“If I could smoke Sweets while pitching, I’d make a world’s record for strike-outs.”

O’Toole’s contract was purchased by Pirates owner Barney Dreyfuss from the St. Paul Saints for $22,500, and along with his Saints teammate, catcher William Kelly became “The $30,000 Battery,” although the sum paid for Kelly remains in dispute and was anywhere from $5000 to $12,500 depending on the source.

Whether it was because of his inability to smoke on the mound or not, O’Toole struck out just 300 battersin 599.1 innings over five major league seasons.

 

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“Who’s the Greatest Ballplayer that Ever Lived?”

13 Mar

In the 19th Century, conversations about baseball in hotel lobbies

The Chicago Daily News shared one such discussion in 1896:

“’Who’s the greatest ballplayer that ever lived?’ Demanded the old ball crank of the gathering at the hotel.  And there were, straightaway, almost as many opinions as there were gentlemen in the party.”

A man in town on business said:

“To my mind, Anson outranks them all.  When you consider the wonderful grip which Anse has retained on the sport for all these twenty-five tears, when you take into consideration his qualifications as a player and as a man, his work as a leader and a general, the great batting he has always done every little point that can be recalled about both uncle and the game, I can’t see where any other player, living or dead, ranks with Anson.”

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 Anson

The paper said there were murmurs, then the night clerk weighed in:

“Mike Kelly was his ideal.

“‘Poor old Mike,’ said he, ‘had baseball genius and brilliancy to an extent never paralleled.  He had the mind to originate, the ability to execute.  He was, in the hearts of the masses, what John L. Sullivan was to pugilism.  Remember the tricks he worked, the batting and the base running he did, and the way in which he filled every position—remember only his methods of play, if you will, and then see if any one can compare with poor dead King Kel!’

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 Kelly

The “theatrical man” in the group said:

“’Bill Lange is the best that ever came down the road.  Who is there who does not like to see Lange play ball? What other player in the league, taking batting, base running and fielding into account, is as of as much value as Lange? What club would not eagerly give him the best position and the best salary it could command?  Bill Lange is destined to leave a mark in baseball history as deep as that Mike Kelly made, and future generations will speak of him as they do of Kelly now.’”

Then the “Old baseball crank” spoke up:

“’To my mind gentlemen, the greatest player of them all was Charlie Ferguson of Philadelphia.  There was a man who never realized how good he was.  When it came to effective playing, in any position, Ferguson was the man who could step into the gap so well that the regular man would never be even missed.  He could kill the ball, he was fast on the bases, and we all know he could pitch.  And the head that Charlie Ferguson wore was as good a head as ever decorated any player’s shoulders.  I saw hundreds of great players before Ferguson came, I have seen hundreds since he died, but I never to my mind at least, have seen his equal.’”

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Ferguson

The assembled men said the paper, “remembered the time of Ferguson,” with “nods and mutterings of assent,” thinking of Ferguson’s four seasons in Philadelphia—he died just 12 days after his 25th birthday in 1888.

 “Jim Hart, who ought to be a good judge of players, thinks Ferguson the greatest that the world has ever known. A canvass of ball cranks would probably show sentiments about equally divided between Ferguson and Mike Kelly.”

The paper concluded that there were, and would be, “few such popular idols” as Kelly and Ferguson:

“The increased batting has, queer as it may seem, done away with hero worship.  In the old days hits were few and the man who could step up and kill the ball was a popular king.  Nowadays the fact that nearly everybody is apt to hit takes away the individuality and accompanying romance of the great isolated sluggers.”

The paper said Lange was one of the few contemporary players who “comes as near being the subject of hero worship,” as players in previous years and that there were only players who had that impact in their own cities:

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Lange

“(Jesse) Burkett might be worshipped in Cleveland for his grand batting, but is handicapped by morose, unsociable ways.

‘(Jimmy) McAleer’s fielding would make him an idol, but his batting is pitifully light.  Baltimore’s great hero is Hughey Jennings, and the cranks treat him as though he owned the town. Brooklyn has no heroes.  There is nobody on the Boston nine whom the crowd raves over, even Hugh Duffy having lost his grip.”

“Eddie Burke and Charlie (Dusty) Miller have great followings in Cincinnati.  Louisville dotes on (Charlie) Dexter and Fred Clarke.  New York is idolless.  Philadelphia gives ovations to the whole team as a matter of principle but singles out no player.  Pittsburgh is the same way.  There is nobody at St. Louis or Washington whom the crowds adore.”

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