Bill Kay

In 1915, the Baltimore Sun said Bill Kay is “unquestionably the greatest hitter of his time in minor league baseball.”1 A “line-drive slasher”2 in the Deadball Era, he averaged .335 in his minor-league career.3 He won four batting titles in the New York State League and peaked at .378 with Binghamton in 1915. Considered a clumsy outfielder, he was given only a scant opportunity in the majors: 25 games played for the 1907 Washington Nationals.4 He batted .333 in those games, and in one he clouted four hits off Cleveland ace Addie Joss.

Walter B. “Bill” Kay5 was born on February 5, 1878, in New Castle, Virginia, to a 19-year-old unwed mother, Georgie Alice Kay, and an unknown father. Growing up in rural New Castle, Bill learned to plow a field before the age of 10.6 In his mid-20s, he attended Roanoke College. In 1904 he was a catcher and second baseman on the college team.7

“Big Bill” Kay was a strapping man, 6-foot-2 and 180 pounds. He batted left-handed and threw right-handed. As a semipro player, he hit .413 in 1906 for Staunton, Virginia, and .580 the following year for Martinsburg, West Virginia.8 This attracted the attention of the last-place Washington Nationals of the American League. Signed by the Nationals, he made an uncommon leap from semipro to major-league baseball.

In his Washington debut on August 12, 1907, Kay pinch-hit and made an out. The next day, the 29-year-old rookie started in right field and got two hits off St. Louis pitcher Jack Powell. It was evident that Kay could hit but was awkward in the field, and he was used primarily as a pinch-hitter until late in the season. In the second game of a doubleheader against Cleveland on September 27, he went 3-for-5 and scored three runs. Three days later, he faced Addie Joss, the major-league leader with 27 wins, and went 4-for-5 with three singles and a triple.

Kay’s success against Joss was eye-opening. He reportedly got hits on four different kinds of pitches: a spitball, curve, fastball, and changeup.9 And none of his hits was fluky, said J. Ed Grillo of the Washington Post.10 Grillo called him “one of the most natural hitters that has ever broken into the game.” But Grillo added, “He has everything else to learn. He is a weak fielder and thrower, and is absolutely lost on the bases. A year or two in a strong minor league may develop him into a great ball player.”11

The next season did not go according to plan. To give Kay the opportunity to develop in the minors, Washington sent him in the spring of 1908 to Minneapolis in the American Association. After he appeared in 16 games, his fielding was deemed too weak for Minneapolis and he was assigned to Montgomery, Alabama, in the Southern Association. However, Kay chose not to report to Montgomery.12 He instead jumped his contract and played for a semipro team in Hagerstown, Maryland.13

Kay’s career got on track in the spring of 1909 after his contract was purchased from Washington by the Albany club in the New York State League.14 On June 6, 1909, he slugged four doubles in Albany’s 15-1 rout of Wilkes-Barre.15 In the second game of a doubleheader on September 9, he “slammed a hot one along the third base line that was fair by an inch. The ball rolled to the fence and lost itself in the wheels of a bunch of autos.”16 He was credited with a home run.

With a .351 average, Kay won the league batting title, but his .922 fielding percentage17 indicated that he was still learning in right field. The rocky outfield of Albany’s Chadwick Park was partially to blame for his defensive struggles.18

In 1910 Kay returned to Albany in an indirect way. He was drafted by the Chicago Cubs and sold to Louisville in the American Association.19 After he balked at playing for Louisville, he was repurchased by Albany.20

Home runs were uncommon in the Deadball Era and were lavishly celebrated. In the second game of a doubleheader at Syracuse on May 11, 1910, Kay launched a prodigious drive that landed in a canal beyond the right-field fence. For this home run, he was awarded “a new hat and five pounds of tobacco.”21 His homer against Scranton on July 26 earned him “shoes, cigars and some haberdashery.”22

On July 7, Kay went 6-for-8 in a doubleheader against Elmira and shined in right field. With the bases loaded in the second game, his “dazzling one-handed spear of a line drive” saved three runs.23 At season’s end, his .363 batting average gave him another batting title, and his .960 rate showed his progress in the field.24 The Albany Times-Union summed up his fine season:

“Big Bill Kay is a hitter pure and simple. … [He] hits ’em on a line into every field. … It is impossible to lay in a certain spot for Kay. He is liable to pole a tremendous foul into right field and follow up this poke with a stinger into left or a drive through the box. Bill is speedy. He can lay down a bunt and beat it out with the best of them … [and] Kay has improved as a fielder. Last year his work in the outer gardens was poor but this season the quiet giant has many a circus catch to his credit, while his work on ground balls in the ragged Chadwick garden has been as well as could be reasonably expected.”25

If Kay was going to play in the minors, he preferred to play for Albany.26 The Philadelphia Athletics drafted him then released him to Montgomery.27 He began the 1911 season with Montgomery and was pleased when Albany reacquired him.28 In 99 games for Albany that year, he hit .337 and stole 35 bases. The Albany Argus said he “ran the bases like a speed merchant” and noted his continued improvement in right field.29 His fielding percentage was .976.30

In 1912 Kay returned to Albany again by a circuitous route. He was drafted by Newark in the International League and held out for more money.31 Newark traded him to the Brooklyn Superbas of the National League, but Brooklyn decided he was not needed and returned him.32 Newark then tried to sell his contract to Scranton, but Albany stepped in to claim him.33 After all of this, there remained half a season in which he batted .342 for Albany.

Kay spent the offseason at his New Castle farm. With Albany in 1913, he batted .316. After the season he was sold to Binghamton in the New York State League, and he hit .322 for that club in 1914. The following year he lifted Binghamton to first place and led the league in batting average (.378), runs (98), and triples (25). Kay’s swing was “poetry in motion,” recalled Emil “Irish” Meusel, who played for the third-place Elmira team and later starred for the New York Giants.34

Kay reportedly swung a “big black bat.”35 He would “blow on his hands, then pull down his cap every time he came to bat.”36 The Brooklyn Eagle described a “peculiarity” of his batting form. A left-handed batter, Kay held his bat “with the left hand well up the handle, until he is ready to deliver the blow, when his left hand slides down to the right [and] is firmly closed.”37

With a .360 average in 1916, Kay won another batting title. He followed that with .314 and .324 marks in 1917 and 1918. Still a feared slugger at age 40, he was intentionally walked four times at Syracuse on May 23, 1918.38

Slowed by injuries, Kay played parts of two more seasons, at Springfield, Massachusetts, in early 1919 and at Greenville, South Carolina, in 1920. In the latter half of the 1919 season, he played right field and batted .358 for a team representing the Klein Chocolate Company of Elizabethtown, Pennsylvania.

Russ Walsh, in a 2022 article in the Baseball Research Journal, said the 1919 Klein squad was “one of the finest independent professional baseball teams in the country.” It won “more than 80 percent of its games” and won seven of 11 exhibition games against major-league teams.39 At Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, on September 25, 1919, the Klein team defeated the Boston Red Sox, 4-0. In the fourth inning, Kay robbed Babe Ruth of a home run by a splendid catch in deep right field. And with Ruth pitching for the Red Sox in the eighth inning, Kay singled in a run.40

Kay retired from baseball and pursued a career in banking in his hometown of New Castle. On April 10, 1922, the 44-year-old banker married Florence B. Mann, a 38-year-old Albany schoolteacher. They had no children.

At a Roanoke hospital on December 3, 1945, Kay died of pneumonia at age 67. He was interred at the Mount Pleasant Cemetery in New Salem, New York.

Acknowledgments

This biography was reviewed by Bill Lamb and Rory Costello and fact-checked by Larry DeFillipo.

Sources

Ancestry.com, Baseball-Reference.com, and Retrosheet.org, accessed in the spring of 2025.

Image from page 8 of the May 14, 1908, issue of the Washington Herald.

Notes

1 “Bill Kay Again Leads New York State League,” Baltimore Sun, November 28, 1915: 14.

2 “Bill Kay Fifth Greatest Swatter in the Country,” Albany (New York) Argus, January 17, 1911: 2.

3 SABR, Minor League Baseball Stars, Volume II (Manhattan, Kansas: Ag Press, 1985), 90. This source provides minor-league statistics for Bill Kay, but it includes the numbers for a different Bill Kay for the 1924 and 1925 seasons. After those are excluded, the career minor-league totals are as follows: In 1,269 games played over 13 seasons from 1908 to 1920, Kay accumulated 1,512 hits in 4,515 at-bats for a .335 batting average. Per 162 games played, he averaged 576 at-bats, 93 runs, 193 hits, 29 doubles, 15 triples, 4 home runs, and 31 stolen bases. His slugging percentage was .460.

4 The 1907 Washington Nationals have also been identified as the Washington Senators.

5 Sources disagree on his middle name. It may have been Brocton, Brockton, or Benton.

6 “Dooin Asks for Return of M’Bride,” Albany Argus, August 11, 1910: 2.

7 “Roanoke College Won,” Roanoke Times, April 17, 1904: 8; Roentgen Rays 1904. Documents. Roanoke College, 1904. https://jstor.org/stable/community.36732761.

8 “Ball Artists Have Made Fine Record,” Staunton (Virginia) Leader, September 4, 1906: 1; “Big Bill Kay Goes into Major League,” Old Dominion Sun (Staunton, Virginia), August 9, 1907: 2.

9 “Bill Kay Natural Hitter, Says Joss,” Utica (New York) Herald-Dispatch, March 28, 1911: 9.

10 J. Ed Grillo, “Whitewash the Naps,” Washington Post, October 1, 1907: 8.

11 J. Ed Grillo, “May Get Elberfeld,” Washington Post, October 20, 1907: 4.

12 “Rockenfield in Game Today, Hopkins Comes with Record,” Montgomery (Alabama) Times, July 20, 1908: 3.

13 Thomas S. Rice, “Will Stand Pat, Says Cantillon,” Washington Times, August 20, 1908: 8.

14 “New York League Notes,” Sporting Life, July 31, 1909: 17.

15 “Albany Drove Two of Barons’ Twirlers into Woods,” Albany Argus, June 7, 1909: 2.

16 “Barons Now Set the Pace,” Wilkes-Barre (Pennsylvania) News, September 10, 1909: 8.

17 Francis C. Richter, ed., The Reach Official American League Base Ball Guide for 1910 (Philadelphia: A.J. Reach Company, 1910), 299.

18 “Albany Ball Park Is to Be Improved,” Wilkes-Barre (Pennsylvania) Record, October 28, 1909: 20.

19 “Cubs Draft Big Bill Kay,” Washington Post, September 2, 1909: 8; “Bill Kay Sold to Louisville Team,” Scranton (Pennsylvania) Times, January 20, 1910: 10.

20 “Bill Kay Don’t Want to Be with Louisville Team,” Wilkes-Barre (Pennsylvania) Times-Leader, February 3, 1910: 18; “Roaring Bill Clarke Bought Big Bill Kay, Swat Artist,” Albany Argus, March 9, 1910: 3.

21 Reported by the Syracuse Journal and reprinted in: “From the Foul Lines,” Wilkes-Barre Record, May 14, 1910: 23.

22 “Kay Aided Albany in Massacre,” Albany Argus, July 27, 1910: 2.

23 “Handed Two to Elmira,” Albany (New York) Times-Union, July 8, 1910: 11.

24 Francis C. Richter, ed., The Reach Official American League Base Ball Guide for 1911 (Philadelphia: A.J. Reach Company, 1911), 347.

25 “O’Rourke and Kay Drafted,” Albany Times-Union, September 2, 1910: 9.

26 “Kay Don’t Like Shifting About,” Albany Times-Union, July 25, 1912: 12.

27 “Draft Big Bill Kay,” Frederick (Maryland) News, September 8, 1910: 3; “Clarke to Again Lead Albany Club,” Albany Argus, September 21, 1910: 2.

28 “New York State League Moves,” Sporting Life, June 17, 1911: 1.

29 “Hartley and Kay Drafted for Class A,” Albany Argus, September 17, 1911: 3.

30 Francis C. Richter, ed., The Reach Official American League Base Ball Guide for 1912 (Philadelphia: A.J. Reach Company, 1912), 320.

31 “Bill Kay Decides to Stick to the Farm This Year,” Albany Argus, May 1, 1912: 2.

32 “International Incidents,” Sporting Life, June 15, 1912: 15.

33 “Heard and Seen at the Game,” Newark (New Jersey) Star, June 24, 1912: 13.

34 “Irish Meusel Always Watchful of Bill Kay,” Binghamton (New York) Press, October 3, 1921: 17.

35 Tom Burke, “Binglets Drop One to Albany,” Albany Times-Union, May 12, 1914: 11.

36 Al Lamb, “Spinning the Sports Top,” Binghamton Press, April 28, 1937: 22.

37 Thomas S. Rice, “New Philly Player Looks Like a Stayer,” Brooklyn Eagle, September 29, 1919: 20.

38 “Pitcher Fears Bill Kay,” Baltimore Sun, May 24, 1918: 8.

39 Russ Walsh, “The Klein Chocolate Company Baseball Team’s Remarkable 1919 Season,” Baseball Research Journal, Fall 2022, sabr.org/journal/article/the-klein-chocolate-company-baseball-teams-remarkable-1919-season.

40 “‘Babe’ and His Boston Cohorts Held Scoreless by Ritter,” Lancaster (Pennsylvania) Intelligencer, September 26, 1919: 8.