St. Mary’s College Has Sent Players to Majors for 100 Years

Editor’s note: Reprinted courtesy of the Oakland Tribune. Research by Paul J. Zingg, author of Harry Hooper: An American Baseball Life, contributed to this article. An earlier version ran as a column in The Oakland Tribune on April 9, 1995.

 

Fans of professional football hear incessantly of the collegiate connection to their game. Jerry Rice breaks another record and a color man invariably broadcasts the receiver’s alumni status at Mississippi Valley State. In the last Super Bowl, Oakland Raiders fans who happened to attend Stanford University were seen at local sports bars rooting for the ultimate arch-enemy simply because John Elway is a former Cardinal.

When Reggie Jackson broke his leg sliding into home in the 1972 American League playoffs, his alma mater was not even mentioned. When Jeff Kent came over to the San Francisco Giants in a trade for Matt Williams, the infielder’s record-breaking years with the California Golden Bears were met with derision verging on hostility.

The baseball program at St. Mary’s College of California has endured that lack of respect for more than a century as it continues to churn out big leaguers. A barehanded third baseman began the tradition when St. Mary’s alumnus Jerry Denny joined the Providence Grays of the National League in 1881. An alum of St. Mary’s has performed in the Major Leagues during 102 of the next 118 seasons.

Baseball came west with the Gold Rush and found fans among missionaries at the college’s new campus, overlooking the Excelsior district on University Mound in San Francisco. In 1872, after a fire burned down most of the city, including their college, students were ready to resume their educations and get back to baseball. They named their team the Phoenix at their new hillside facility. Brother Agnon McCann showed up in 1879 and made baseball a priority. The Phoenix had already earned its reputation on the sandlots of the Bay Area. McCann took it into the stadium, after the city finally found a plot that would grow enough grass for a real ballpark at Eighth and Market Streets.

Denny became the first star on that field given the imaginative name “Central Park” and McCann became the drillmaster for a new era in the National Pastime.

Crowds of “cranks” packed the stands to watch Denny and The Phoenix make the throws and powder the baseball. Denny went East and completed a 13-year career in the Major Leagues, with a career year in Indianapolis in 1889, when he drove in 112 runs with 18 homers on a losing team, competing in a league with Hall of Famers Dan Brouthers and Cap Anson.

In 1884, Denny’s home run in game two defeated the Metropolitan of New York in an interleague face-off between champions of competing major leagues. In Denny’s last season, with the Louisville Colonels in 1894, he was one of a few who still took the field without a mitt.

As Denny stubbornly resisted leather, the Christian Brothers of St. Mary’s sought a warmer climate in 1889 and moved their campus to Oakland. Their decision would take their program to the Hall of Fame.

By then, six former members of The Phoenix were playing Major League ball, including Alleghany of Pittsburgh’s battery of Fred Carroll, catcher, and Ed “Cannonball” Morris. With Carroll behind the plate, Morris won 41 games in 1886 to lead the American Association.

The new St. Mary’s campus at 30th Street and Broadway was ideal for baseball. Brother McCann engineered a well-drained diamond behind the main campus, later made famous by football coach Slip Madigan as the “Old Brickpile.” The Phoenix flourished in Oakland under McCann’s sophisticated leadership. The new campus provided education for pre-collegiate students, too; McCann created a four-tiered program, ranging from the “midgets” in high school to the collegiate varsity.

Heavyweight boxing champion Jim Corbett’s kid brother, Joe, became the first big star on the Oakland diamond. After pitching The Phoenix to consecutive intercollegiate titles in 1893 and 1894, “Young” Corbett signed with Ned Hanlon’s Baltimore Orioles.

Before his 21st birthday, Corbett hurled the 5-0 shutout against Cleveland that gave the O’s their first championship in 1896 — a title that placed Hanlon at the vanguard of the game as we know it.

In the off-season, Oaklander Rip van Haltren of the New York Giants would come home to help groom young players at St. Mary’s. So would Hal Chase of the New York Yankees, who spent his youth on the sandlots of the South Bay. With their guidance, The Phoenix won 12 consecutive titles in the California-Nevada Baseball League at the start of the 20th century.

Chase coached the best of those teams in 1907, when St. Mary’s won all 27 of its games and sent its entire starting roster to the professional ranks. Phoenix ace Harry Krause accepted Connie Mack’s standing offer to sign the winningest St. Mary’s pitchers. With the Athletics, Krause went on to lead the league in earned run average. Acrobatic outfielder Harry Hooper joined his fellow St. Mary’s alumnus, Duffy Lewis, in the outfield of the Boston Red Sox to begin a long career that would lead him to the Hall of Fame.

Hooper and Lewis returned to the “Brickpile” in 1911 for a pre-season exhibition against The Phoenix. Elmer “Tiny” Leonard of Napa pitched nine scoreless innings against the Red Sox, to give St. Mary’s a 1-0 victory over their Major League opponents. The shutout was preserved when a throw by outfielder Ed Lynch gunned down future Hall-of-Famer Tris Speaker at the plate for the final out. Leonard also signed with the A’s.

Year after year, St. Mary’s continued to supply talent to the Major Leagues. Former Phoenix pitcher Dutch Leonard signed with the Boston Red Sox, and led that team to a pennant in 1914, with the lowest single-season earned run average (0.96 or 1.01, depending on which record book you read) in baseball history.

Joe Oeschger went on from St. Mary’s to pitch the longest complete game in Major League history for the Boston Braves, who tied the Brooklyn Dodgers 1-1 in 26 innings on May 1, 1920. Fellow alumnus Lew Fonseca won the American League batting title in 1929.

The stream of stars continued from St. Mary’s after the college renamed its sports teams The Gaels and moved to a new campus in Moraga in 1928. Catcher Gus Triandos went on to the Baltimore Orioles and two All-Star teams in the late 1950s. Broderick Perkins, Von Hayes and Tom Candiotti, who has returned to the East Bay, are more recent former Gaels in the majors.

When speedster James Mouton, traded in the off-season to the San Diego Padres, made the cut with the Houston Astros during spring training in 1995, he became the 55th alumnus of St. Mary’s to play in the major leagues — a total few colleges have surpassed.