David Leonard Brain was born on January 24, 1879, in Hereford, England. Little is known about his early life, although he appears to have only started playing baseball at the age of 19. Brain’s professional baseball career began with Des Moines of the Western League in 1900 at age 21. He played third base, hit .305, and stole 27 bases. Among his 112 hits, 52 were for extra bases, including 13 triples. Later that year, he played third and shortstop briefly for Chicago of the American League, which was a minor league at the time.

With the elevation of the A.L. to major league status in 1901, Dave made his major league debut in Chicago on April 24 of that year, but was ultimately limited to five games at second base. The 22-year-old’s fielding was one of the features as the White Stockings won their initial three games. This glory, however, was short-lived. Chicago lost its next two games, and Brain’s errors were a significant factor. Though he hit well, 7 hits in 20 at bats, his inadequate fielding resulted in his being demoted to St. Paul of the Western League. He was shifted back to third and hit .262 with 11 triples and led the league with 13 homers. These statistics exemplify Brain’s offensive abilities and limitations throughout his career, i.e., the tendency to produce power numbers despite a less than sterling batting average.

During 1902, Brain had his best professional year while playing third base for Buffalo of the Eastern League. As team captain he produced a .331 batting average with 44 extra-base hits, 247 total bases, and 37 steals. He also led the league with 127 runs scored.

Dave was promptly snapped up by St. Louis of the National League. Despite hitting only .231 in 1903, Brain led the Cardinals with 60 RBIs and 15 triples, the latter being fourth best in the league. Stealing 21 bases demonstrated his decent speed that season, and he averaged 14 per season from 1903-07.

Dave’s offensive production significantly improved in 1904. He was the team leader in doubles, triples, homers and a career high 72 RBIs. The right-handed hitter’s seven home runs were second in the league to Harry Lumley’s nine. Brain’s 43 extra-base hits ranked fourth in the National League, and he was sixth in triples and seventh in doubles. The term “slugger” was an appropriate designation. During the 1903-04 seasons, Dave played 131 games at short and 76 at third. His versatility was further exhibited in 1904 when he played first, second, and the outfield.

Transition and establishing his name in the record books would mark Brain’s 1905 season. On July 4, 1905, Brain was hitting .228 and was traded to Pittsburgh for infielder George McBride, whose average was .218. During Brain’s five years as a regular, the 1905 Pirates were the only club of which he was a member that had an above .500 record. Since Honus Wagner was the Pirates’ shortstop, Brain was used almost exclusively at third base. He finished the season hitting .247 with 63 RBIs and 11 triples. As for establishing individual records, on May 29, 1905, the Englishman hit three triples against Pittsburgh; he duplicated the feat on August 8, 1905, while playing for Pittsburgh versus Boston, also delivering the game-winning single for his new team. Thanks to this performance, Brain holds several major league records. He is tied with many others for most triples in a game since 1900 and for the all-time record for most consecutive triples in a nine-inning game with three. Dave shares with three other players the all-time record for most times with three triples in one game during a career with two. Lastly, he is the only hitter in major league history to have three triples in one game twice in one season.

On December 15, 1905, the Pirates traded Brain, Del Howard, and Vive Lindaman to the Boston Nationals for Vic Willis. Willis, who had achieved 151 career victories, had fallen to 12-29 in 1905 but would win 89 games during the next four years. As for the newly traded third baseman, his salary was cut; this would be the beginning of serious disputes with the Boston ownership. On the playing field the 1906 Doves produced one of the most dismal seasons in history by finishing a record 66.5 games behind the Cubs (who won 116 games). Since 1900, no team has finished further behind the club who had the league’s best record. Dave’s offensive numbers took a downturn that season, but his five homers ranked him sixth in the league. Four of his homers were hit at home, and Regal Shoes, a leading sporting goods company of that era, awarded him four pairs of their baseball shoes. As for fielding futility, he placed himself in the record books on June 11, 1906. When Dave committed five errors that day, he established the major league record for most errors in a game by a third baseman since 1900. One newspaper read, “Dave Brain was in trouble all through the game. He went after all kinds of grounders with dash and spirit, but if he did not fumble, he managed to throw wild, and compiled a most unusual total of errors.”

Brain’s career fielding percentage for his 431 games at third was .913. This was in contrast to a league average over his career of .924. In light of the above, one can question why he was deemed a skillful fielder. First, when examining the fielding statistics of a Deadball Era player, it is necessary to consider poor field conditions, glove size, and so forth. Second, since such factors contributed to significantly lower fielding percentages, it becomes important to compare Brain with his peers. Indeed, a detailed statistical analysis presents a more objective assessment of Brain’s fielding accomplishments. In 1906, he led all third sackers with 48 errors, and his fielding percentage was .917 while the league average was .931. Harry Steinfeldt ranked first at .954. From this perspective, David’s fielding ability does not appear as atrocious, merely below average. However, in the 1906 campaign, he ranked first in putouts, double plays and range factor at 3.82 (a STATS’ category) and was second in assists. Total Baseball‘s category of fielding runs (number of runs a fielder saved) rates Brain as second among all fielders that year and an above-average fielder over his career. When one considers such factors along with the statistic that his career range factor was 3.72 compared to the 3.25 league average for third basemen, Brain was clearly a competent, possibly above-average fielder. Interestingly enough, in his 165 games at shortstop, Brain’s career fielding percentage (.915) was about the same as the league’s (.918) while his range (5.19) was somewhat below average (5.36).

In 1907, David did not sign a contract until late March. “You never can tell,” he said, “I am never in a hurry to sign so there is nothing significant about getting in line at this late date. I am perfectly satisfied with the offer made me.” Brain was able to be quite diplomatic when he needed to be. The Doves’ spring training was marred by the unfortunate death of one of their players, Cozy Dolan, who succumbed to typhoid fever. The funeral took place in Boston, and David was one of the pallbearers for his fallen teammate. As for the 1907 season, Brain reached the pinnacle of his career. He led both leagues with 10 home runs, all in his home park. In the National League, Brain ranked third with 43 extra-base hits and was fifth in doubles, total bases, and slugging average. Although he committed 47 errors at third and had a .916 fielding percentage (league average was .928), Brain finished first in range factor at 4.07 and double plays and second in putouts and assists. Once again, he placed second in saving runs among all the league’s fielders. Based on his hitting and fielding achievements, Total Baseball ranked him as the second most valuable performer in the National League that year, including pitchers. He was surpassed only by Wagner.

Despite Brain’s outstanding statistics, the 1907 Doves ended the season in seventh place, 47 games out of first. In the off-season, Boston’s President George Dovey restructured the team. This involved an eight-player trade with the New York Giants and the slashing of salaries. Several players, including Dave, became holdouts. According to manager Joe Kelley, Brain was demanding an $800 raise and other concessions such as the team contributing to the cost of baseball uniforms. The talk that Kelley did not want Brain “has set everybody by the ears.” In addition, the manager stated that “if I cannot make a trade that is of advantage to the Boston club, Brain will be retained as a member of the team.” Therefore, even though Kelley was not enthralled by the holdout, he would not let go of his star player without appropriate compensation. On April 13, the third baseman released the following statement: “Misleading statements have appeared in various papers regarding the situation between Mr. Dovey and myself. The facts are that I asked him for a raise in salary last year, but as he had just invested in the Boston club, he asked me to continue at the salary I had been getting, and promised to give me an advance for the season of 1908. I was much surprised, therefore, when he sent me a contract this year at a reduced salary. I returned it to him reminding him of his promise, and offered to accept a raise of $400 for the season. Mr. Dovey replied that that was too much, but said nothing more. After waiting for nearly two weeks I wrote Mr. Dovey that I understood he did not intend having me on his team and asked him to give me a release so that I could secure a position on some other team. This he refused to do, and there the matter rests.”

In mid-May, Brain’s holdout ended when he was sold to Cincinnati. The National Baseball Commission reinstated him but fined him $50. The Doves were fined $25. Based on the information at hand, this was done because Boston had allowed Brain to practice with Cincinnati before he had been signed by the latter. His new team was hoping he would supply offense, but in 16 games as an outfielder, Dave hit a paltry .109. In July 1908, he was sold to the Giants because McGraw needed a utility player. The previous year’s slugger continued to falter. This was partly due to illness. Even though Brain played four positions with New York, he only had 17 at bats and a .176 batting average. He did collect a salary of $3200, and the Giants’ catcher Roger Bresnahan cited this as an example of how John McGraw cared for his players, “even for a player who sat on the bench all last summer.” In 1909, McGraw sold Dave to Columbus of the American Association but he refused to go because he wanted a salary of $3200. The club offered him $1800. One newspaper account related, “Dave always came high.” Buffalo of the Eastern League did sign him, and he led the league with 15 triples but only hit .234 with 2 homers. Brain’s abilities continued to deteriorate, and he was out of professional baseball after 1910.

His baseball career over, Brain moved to California. He married Elizabeth Broderson in 1913 and had one daughter, Eugenia, in 1915. He worked for the National Biscuit Company and then as a credit manager at Standard Oil Company for twenty years until 1938. During the depression in the 1930s, David studied to become a chiropractor and passed the required California exam. Dr. Brain died of congestive heart failure on May 25, 1959. He was cremated and buried at Rose Hills Cemetery in Whittier, California.

What can be said about David Brain the man? His post-baseball career, battles with management, and the 1908 press release confirm that he was an intelligent, articulate individual. Concerning his contract squabbles, some might describe him as obstinate and possessing an over-inflated ego. Others would state that he was committed to his beliefs and was much more than just a baseball player. Two letters in Brain’s Hall of Fame file, one from his son-in-law and the other from a friend, offer insight into his character. Brain is revealed as a humble and private person who found fulfillment through his family and close friends. And he enjoyed talking about his baseball experiences with this inner circle.

In a relatively brief career, David Brain was an impact player. He led his league in a number of categories, and established or tied records that remain unbroken to this day. From 1904-07, he was one of baseball’s premier sluggers. His 26 home runs during this period ranks second only to Harry Lumley’s 34. The Englishman will also remain the answer to the following trivia question: Who is the only player to win a season’s home run title in the American or National League (since 1893) and never have another extra-base hit the rest of his major league career? As is evident, it is not possible to keep David out of the record book.

Sources

Evening Times (Pawtucket, Rhode Island)

Carter, Craig, ed. The Sporting News Complete Baseball Record Book. St. Louis, 2001.

Hall of Fame File

James, Bill. Stats All-Time Major League Handbook. 2nd ed. Morton Grove, 2002.

Lee, Bill. The Baseball Necrology. Jefferson, North Carolina, 2003

Spatz, Lyle, ed. The SABR Baseball List & Record Book. New York, 2007.

Thorn, John; Palmer, Pete; and Gershman, Michael. Total Baseball. 6th ed. New York, 1999.

Tourangeau, Dixie. “1901 Openers: The War Is On,” The National Pastime, n. 21, 2001, pp.32-35.

The primary source for this biography was the Evening Times, which was printed daily. It not only covered the Boston teams, but also included syndicated stories from other newspapers.

I thank Steve Constantelos, who edited this biography in 2002. Additional material has been incorporated into this article since that time.

But let’s start at the beginning. Baseball-Reference.com was updated in 2010 to record Sim Bullas as being born in England in January 1863, with the previous listing having been Cleveland, Ohio, in April 1861. The spark for the change was a discovery in the 1900 US Census made by SABR’s Biographical Research Committee in 2008.[1] In accordance with this discovery is a pair of articles from 1890 in an English newspaper, the Lancashire Evening Post, one listing him as being “a native” of the Midlands town of Dudley[2], and the other explicitly stating that he was born there.[3] If this is the case, a record for Bullas should show up in a search of British birth registries and censuses; however, no such details seem to be available. Until the data from the US Census of 1900 can be corroborated in British records, it seems rash to make a definitive conclusion on the player’s birthplace.

It is known that Sim had a brother namd Frank, who was around 10 years his junior. A census record for Frank notes that the brothers’ parents were English-born. However, in line with the limited nature of the details available on Sim’s birth, it may be unsurprising to learn that there is nothing more to report on the major leaguer’s family members or early life. Nevertheless, the fact that he seems to have been born in England is of great interest in itself, as it tentatively places his name on the short list of major-league players who were born in Britain. This list includes, most famously, pro baseball pioneer Harry Wright and Bobby Thomson of “the shot heard round the world.” Another noteworthy performer among this group is Dave Brain, a Herefordian who led the major leagues in home runs in 1907.

Bullas, a 5-foot-7 right-handed catcher and outfielder, earned a spot on the Blue Stockings’ roster in 1884 after a spell during the previous year for a team in Youngstown, Ohio, which competed in the Western Interstate League.

In his 13 major-league games in 1884, 12 at the position of catcher, Bullas managed just three singles and a triple, for a batting average of .089. Unremarkable as his spell with the Blue Stockings was, he was there long enough to at least pick up a nickname. The fans in the home bleachers called him Bullets to acknowledge his ability to handle a group of strong arms. The pitching staff that year included Tony Mullane, an Irish-born ambidextrous hurler who compiled a record of 284 wins and 220 losses in an exceptional major-league career.

Also of note from Bullas’s time in Toledo is that another catcher making his debut in the majors with the Blue Stockings that year was Moses Fleetwood Walker. Some baseball historians state that Walker was the first African American to play in the big leagues, while others give that title to William Edward White, who played in one game for the Providence Grays of the National League on June 21, 1879.[4] After the 1884 season, it would be more than six decades until the big-league color barrier was broken again, by Jackie Robinson.

Bullas also played during the 1884 season with Hamilton in the Ohio State League. The last record for him on Baseball-Reference.com is a stint with the Chattanooga Lookouts in the Southern League. For that club, in 1885, he posted a .153 batting average, with 26 singles and a pair of doubles from his 183 at-bats.

By the late 1880s Bullas was working as a metal molder in a foundry in Cleveland. In March 1890, the management at the foundry received a letter from an industry partner named Francis Ley, who operated a malleable castings factory in Derby, England. Ley had written to them to ask that any.two men who could work and play baseball be transferred from the Cleveland plant to his works in Derby in order to continue with their trade and also play for a The gutsy catcher finished with a batting average of .279 in 118 at-bats; his hits comprised 23 singles, nine doubles, and a triple. Ley honored players’ contracts up to September 1, and they were said to have been kept on with good jobs in the factory.

At the close of the British pro baseball season, Sim Bullas returned to the United States, and by mid-September he was reported—along with batterymate John Reidenbach—to have joined an amateur team in Cleveland. As a player, Bullas was described as “the life of [the Derby] team,” and he was remembered in the town for some time after his departure.[6] In March 1891, for instance, Bryan wrote that Bullas was “asked about every day,” with his friends being “legion.”[7] Sadly, Bullas lived only into his mid-40s, passing away in Cleveland in January 1908.

Sources

In addition to the references cited within this biography, the author consulted the following sources:

Gray, Joe. What About the Villa?: Forgotten Figures From Britain’s Pro Baseball League of 1890. Ross-on-Wye, United Kingdom: Fineleaf Editions, 2010

Baseball-Reference.com

It is unclear what became of Matthew. By early 1905, when Walter was 23, his mother was 57 and no husband was indicated. Walter’s occupation was ballplayer. His younger brother Fred was a candy maker. Ann Carlisle’s work was “housekeeping,” perhaps indicating she worked as a maid.

Walter played amateur ball in Minneapolis for three years before joining the Minneapolis Millers of the American Association as an outfielder in 1902. That year the American Association was an independent league, without a classification. After just 13 games, Carlisle began to play for another independent team, the Crookston Crooks of the Northern League, which became a Class D league within Organized Baseball in 1903. Carlisle played for Crookston for part of 1904, advanced to the Rock Island Islanders of the Class B Three-I League later in 1904, and played for them into 1906. He never hit all that well, rarely getting above .250. His last season with Rock Island was a partial one, and he was hitting only .214 in his first 84 games, but he was advanced again, to the Pacific Coast League’s Los Angeles Angels.

The Boston Americans had been after Carlisle since 1905, when he hit .258, and found themselves competing with Cleveland to secure him from the Rock Island club. Interest only increased in May and June 1907, when Carlisle made a “world’s record” by hitting five home runs in a 20-game stretch for the Los Angeles Angels; the team won the PCL pennant and Carlisle was sold to Boston for $2,500. The Los Angeles Times declared, “Boston certainly gets a jewel in him, for he can hit, field, run and play almost any place. The Champions will look a long time to find his equal.” In that 1907 season Carlisle had led the PCL in runs scored with 113 and in home runs with 14, hitting three on August 18 against Oakland.

Carlisle made the Boston team in spring training, regarded by the Boston Globe as “a fast man [who] keeps on winning his way for all-round cleverness. Though not a great batsman, he is a run-getter and a valuable young ball player to have around camp in a strenuous campaign.” [1] In a game in Champaign, Illinois, with the Red Sox Number Two team, he showed some pluck running after a ball and slamming head-first into an iron picket fence in the outfield, knocked semiconscious for his efforts. [2]

Bullet Jack Thoney was Boston’s regular leadoff hitter and left fielder, but he experienced problems with his arm and went to Youngstown, Ohio, to consult with noted sports “doctor” Bonesetter Reese. While he was away, Boston manager Jim “Deacon” McGuire designated Carlisle to fill his slot. Walter played left and batted leadoff – but he appeared in only three games in a four-day stretch in early May. The day before his debut, Carlisle shared a novel experience with his teammates. The afternoon game against the visiting New York Highlanders was called off, but in morning practice a leery Boston team had the opportunity to take batting practice against a pitching machine. Once they settled in, “the players enjoyed swatting the machine man’s curves” but it took a bit for the operator to calibrate the machine and Denny Sullivan and Carlisle “threw somersaults to get out of the way of inshoots, but as a whole the machine was quite successful.” [3]

The 5-foot-9, 154-pound switch-hitting Carlisle (who at some point attracted the nickname Rosy) was 1-for-4 in his first major-league game, at Boston’s home Huntington Avenue Grounds on May 8, with a single in the sixth. The Red Sox lost to the visiting New York team, 3-0. New York won again the next day, beating Cy Young 2-1. Carlisle led off again, but was 0-for-4, though he reached base once on a walk and earned his one stolen base. The Boston Globe described a “beautiful throw from left field” on Kleinow’s single, with Walter “picking up the ball on the dead run and sending it to the plate like a rifle shot.” With a shoestring catch, the paper adjudged him “pretty near filling the bill as a throwing outfielder and a fast man on the bases.”

There was no game on the 10th, it being a Sunday and baseball in Boston being illegal on the Lord’s Day, but the two teams matched up once more on the 11th, the Highlanders taking that one, 3-0 again. Carlisle was 0-for-2, striking out twice and being replaced by Jim McHale in the seventh. Thoney returned to his accustomed role in time for the game on May 12. On May 29, Carlisle got the word that he’d been sold with three other players to the American Association team in Kansas City. Later reports had him “receiving great praise” for his work in KC. The Globe gave him a nice sendoff, with what proved to be his major-league obituary: “Carlisle is one of the finest outfielders in the profession. He is a beautiful thrower, and very speedy, but he failed to show good form at the bat in the few games that he played with the Red Sox.” He was 1-for-10 (he also walked once, and had a stolen base to his credit.) He had six chances in the field, for five outs and one assist. His lifetime fielding average was 1.000; his career batting average was .100.

Carlisle hit .223 the rest of the year in Kansas City, but improved distinctly in 1909, to .258. In 1910, married to Mary Maisie Carlisle of Wisconsin and living in Los Angeles, he played for the Vernon (California) Tigers in the Pacific Coast League, the first of three straight seasons in Vernon. The Tigers moved to Venice and became the Venice Tigers beginning in 1913, still under manager Hap Hogan, and Carlisle played for Hogan through 1915 (though the team moved back to Vernon in July 1915.) He’d played for the same organization for much of seven seasons, before joining the Portland Beavers later in 1915. The Coast League had much longer seasons and in 1910 Carlisle played in a career-high 224 games. [4] In 1911 he hit 17 homers and hit for a .297 average.

Carlisle averaged more than 14 home runs a year his first three years, a significant total in that era albeit one that might appear inflated given the greater number of games. His biggest claim to lasting fame came on July 19, 1911, as a center fielder for Vernon. Running in from center, he caught a ball and fell rolling to the ground. The runners had been off with the pitch. Carlisle regained his feet and ran to second base, retiring the runner Moore, who had rounded third and was most of the way toward home plate. After doubling off Moore, Carlisle switched direction slightly and ran toward first base, where he tripled off that runner, Metzer, who was still between second and third – completing an unusual unassisted triple play. The Sporting News reported that he had at one point been a circus acrobat, which may have helped account for the bit of extra athleticism he showed in making the tumbling play. [5] He led the league in runs scored from 1910 through 1912.

In 1916 Carlisle played for a different team of Tigers; he had been released to the Lincoln (Nebraska) Tigers of the Western League. His 121 runs scored led the league in ’16, and he posted his best season’s average, .304. The Joplin Miners in the same league signed him for the next two seasons, though his hitting fell off, tailing down to .210 in the 64 games he played in the war-curtailed 1918 campaign. Carlisle was out of baseball in 1919, but returned in 1920 with the Double-A Minneapolis Millers, living back in the city where he’d been raised (and working in a wholesale candy manufacturing business during the offseason, perhaps the firm where his brother worked). At that time Maisie and Walter had a 6-year-old daughter, Virginia, who’d been born in California. The 1920 Census reported that Maisie had been born in Belgium and spoke Flemish as her mother tongue. Walter hit .292 in 76 games in 1920. He was 38 years old at the time.

After his retirement, there was one last hurrah when he played for the Western League’s Sioux City Packers in 1923, hitting .256 in 117 at-bats.

The 1930 Census found Walter, Maisie, and Virginia living again in Los Angeles. Walter was working as a painter in the building trade. There he died, in Los Angeles, on May 27, 1945, of a coronary thrombosis. He’d been working as a painter for the Gilmore Oil Company at the time of his fatal heart attack.

Sources

In addition to the sources noted in this biography, the author also accessed the online SABR Encyclopedia, Retrosheet.org, and Baseball-Reference.com.

You might say that Chadwick, a British-born journalist, who had arrived on this other side of the Atlantic Ocean nearly two decades earlier, suddenly ceased being English and became American. He never lost his love for the intricate, demanding game of cricket, but he became convinced that baseball, fast-paced and rugged–a style that suited the American temperament–was good for Americans, that it would inspire them to take to the outdoors and to exercise. Chadwick saw that the nation was shifting increasingly from an agrarian to an industrial way of life. In baseball, he saw great possibilities for the promotion of public health–and, perhaps, for his career. Was it the platform on which he might be elevated to the level of fame enjoyed by his older half-brother, Edwin Chadwick, the soon-to-be knighted sanitary reformer of England?

Why did it take so long for Chadwick to appreciate baseball? He knew of the game’s existence and had even played it from time to time. It resembled, perhaps too much, rounders, a game that he played in childhood and so may have come to feel was too simple and unscientific. Chadwick often reminisced about playing rounders in Exeter, England, where he was born on October 5, 1824. He recalled how, as youngsters, he and his friends would “dig a hole in the ground for the home position, and place four stones in a circle, or nearly so, for the bases, and, choosing up sides, we went in for a lively time at what was the parent game of base ball.”

Like all good English boys, Chadwick advanced to cricket as he matured. He was not quite a teenager when his father, James Chadwick, a noted radical journalist, decided to take his new family (Henry was the product of James Chadwick’s second marriage) and emigrate to the United States. Was it his allegiance to the principles of the French revolution that drew him to this country founded on a revolution by colonists from his homeland? In any event, in September 1837, with his wife Theresa, his son Henry, and his daughter Rosa, he emigrated to the United States, and American history would be forever altered.

Soon after landing in New York, the young family moved to Brooklyn. Henry in adulthood would cherish fond memories of his adolescence there; he spent his first years in Brooklyn fishing in Gowanus Canal, hunting birds, and stealing fallen apricots near a Brooklyn farm. He ice-skated in present-day downtown Brooklyn (Brooklyn Heights), on Court Street near Hamilton Avenue. It was in Brooklyn, in 1838, where he resumed his youthful interest in cricket, attending there a match between the English towns of Sheffield and Nottingham–a sporting event of a sort not so unusual in this early phase of American history, when the English sport was still the dominant sport in America. As a young adult, Chadwick made his livelihood by teaching piano. He never lost his passion for music. He even composed waltzes and quadrilles. Gradually, though, he found himself drawn to his father’s footsteps–his older brother, too, had dabbled in journalism before pursuing his career in public health.

Chadwick began reporting for Brooklyn’s Long Island Star in 1844. By the mid-1850s he had managed to integrate his love for cricket into his professional life, working as cricket writer for the New York Times. Like all enthusiasts of the sport in the New York metropolitan area, Chadwick would frequent Elysian Fields. He would later draw on his encyclopedic knowledge of cricket in formulating his suggestions for improvements to baseball, a younger game that was still somewhat unformed and that he sought to make “more scientific” and more “manly.”

The first journalist to report on baseball regularly was actually William Cauldwell, editor of the New York Sunday Mercury. However, because of Chadwick’s driving ambition to publicize the game and raise it to the status of the national pastime, he soon outshone Cauldwell. Later, Cauldwell hired Chadwick to take over as baseball reporter at the Mercury. After several minor successes in carving out space for baseball in the dailies, Chadwick in 1857 joined the staff of the New York Clipper, an entertainment weekly, which, like many New York weeklies at the time, was read nationwide. And so his articles on the New York game were circulating in Boston and Philadelphia, where town ball still dominated, but would eventually give way to baseball. Chadwick’s influence on this development would be hard to measure but also hard to deny.

His standing in the baseball world by this time had earned him a place with the rules committee. On the side, he began to make improvements to the format of the box score. By 1860 he was working for Beadle Dime, editing Beadle’s Dime Base-Ball Player, which he would make into the quintessential baseball guide. It was there that Chadwick developed the framework for the in-game scoring system that, while evolving somewhat over the years, has remained an enduring feature of baseball in the press box as well as among fans in the seats. Use of the letter K to indicate a strikeout, for example, dates back to Chadwick’s work in the Beadle publication. Around this time he began to tabulate hits, home runs, and total bases. This practice led to the formulation of such familiar statistical metrics as batting average and slugging percentage, although Chadwick was not directly responsible for their invention.

Chadwick’s ongoing concern about the game’s rules led him to conclude that they needed reform. Early on, he began to advocate for the elimination of the bound catch, whereby the fielder would retire the batter by catching the ball on the first bounce. In his view, the fly catch was more manly and scientific. Moreover, it was the rule in cricket, the elder, established sport that baseball had reason to emulate. Chadwick won the argument. In 1864 the rules committee voted to eliminate the bound catch. The move from the bound to the fly catch would coincide with the growth of the New York game and its expansion across the continent in the late nineteenth century. In related developments, Chadwick helped to promote the establishment of the overhand pitch as normative and to determine the uniform distance between the pitcher’s mound and home plate.

Chadwick’s contribution to the game’s inner workings–its rules and its systems for keeping score and keeping records–was great but should not be taken to mean that he ever lost sight of the larger social function he thought baseball should serve. In the early days of the Civil War, in 1861, he had arranged for a special baseball game, billed as the Silver Ball Match, to be played in late October–three months after the Battle of Bull Run. The Brooklyn nine defeated the New York nine, 18-6, in a contest that was welcomed as a necessary diversion from the stress experienced by a civilian population during wartime.

The great expectations that Chadwick had for this noble civic institution, as he saw it, were of a piece with his moral stand against drinking, gambling, and hippodroming (the practice of predetermining the outcome of games). He said he was moved to speak out against gambling after overhearing attempts by gamblers to fix the outcome of the Fashion Course games, an all-star series between New York and Brooklyn and an important matchup in the early years of baseball. Chadwick’s subsequent campaign against gambling earned for him a reputation as the conscience of baseball. Though it is unclear when he began to speak of “the best interests of baseball,” he is among the first to use the phrase.

Much of Chadwick’s hope for baseball’s moral reform was finally realized when, in 1871 the National Association of Professional Base Ball Players was created with the intention of cleaning up the game. In 1876 it gave way to the National League, and Chadwick’s influence in professional baseball was curtailed but not ended. He still had a voice.

In the early 1880s, Chadwick began his new position as editor of Spalding’s Official Base Ball Guide. The official guide of the National League, it was distributed by his friend Albert Spalding, a sporting-goods magnate and a former pitching great for Boston and Chicago. Chadwick was among Spalding’s mentors, though Spalding had a special talent for marketing and a good baseball mind of his own, as the success of his sporting-goods business demonstrated.

Spalding and Chadwick remained friends despite the growing differences between them. As the business of baseball grew, so did Spalding’s business, and Chadwick began to lose touch with that side of baseball’s development. They found themselves divided as well on the issue of baseball’s origins. Motivated by nationalism and the calculation that it was good for his business, Spalding propagated the idea, now discredited, that baseball’s origin was entirely American, that it was invented in the United States and without any foreign influence. Chadwick maintained that baseball derived from the English bat-and-ball game he knew as rounders, which shared many of the same rules with baseball. Chadwick assumed, with good reason, that the English variant was parent to American baseball. Chadwick had said as much in the first Beadle guide, in 1860.

Spalding was adamant, however, and in 1907 he appointed the Mills Commission to determine baseball’s “true origins.” After some deliberation, the members determined that Civil War general Abner Doubleday in Cooperstown, New York, invented the game although Doubleday never mentioned baseball in his voluminous diaries and there is no evidence that he ever even played the sport. Authoritative voices from the four corners of the baseball world chimed in to affirm the commission’s finding, but Chadwick stuck to his guns, maintaining to the end that baseball’s origins in rounders were undeniable. With his friend’s sentiment, Spalding’s wish to imagine the national pastime as a purely American game, Chadwick genuinely sympathized, though not at the cost of confusing fiction with historical fact.

He lost the argument, for the time being, but not his reputation. As early as the 1870s he had been carrying the title “Father of Baseball.” He had won admiration from all quarters; President Theodore Roosevelt saluted his work. In 1904, as Chadwick celebrated his eightieth birthday, Roosevelt wrote to him: “My Dear Chadwick: I congratulate you on your eightieth year and your fiftieth year in journalism … and you are entitled to the good wishes of all for that part you have taken in behalf of decent sport.”

Chadwick continued to write throughout the 1880s and 1890s, working as editor of the Spalding guides, and the Sporting Life was a venue for his opinions on a range of topics–the Player’s Revolt of 1890, the home run (an expenditure of too much energy, he thought), the rise of the American League in 1901, and Turkish baths, which he recommended. He was a versatile sportswriter and penned numerous articles and guides on football, chess, tennis, yachting, rowing, ice skating, and bowling (specifically, lawn bowls). In his last years, though, his output began to wane. He left the Sporting Life and returned to write almost exclusively for the Brooklyn Eagle.

Chadwick caught a cold after attending two opening-day games in April 1908 and grew progressively weak. Though sick, he attempted to move some furniture from one apartment to another in his Brooklyn walkup. Overstraining his heart, he fell unconscious, his illness had worsened to pneumonia. Chadwick died the next day on April 20, 1908, a few minutes past noon. He was 83. He is buried in Brooklyn’s Green-Wood Cemetery, his grave marked by a monument on top of which is a granite sphere carved to resemble a baseball. The four corners of the site are marked by stones etched to look like bases.

Chadwick was the most important figure in nineteenth-century baseball, according to Christopher Devine in his biography of Harry Wright. (Spalding ranked second, and Wright third.) A visionary, Chadwick saw baseball’s great potential and dreamed of the day when it would be enshrined as the national pastime, and all this at a time when it was relatively ill-defined, fledgling, and under the shadow of cricket. Given the place of importance that baseball would come to occupy in American society and culture, Chadwick’s own place in American history has to be deemed high. We can only speculate whether it exceeds the aspirations he nurtured in his ambitious youth. In bringing his seriousness and reformer’s zeal to his work as a baseball journalist, he anticipated our own time, when sports news has the power to knock political news off the front page and often does. Chadwick was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1938. He is the only journalist enshrined in the Hall.

Sources

This article originally appeared in The National Pastime, volume 28, published by SABR in 2008.

Sources

Adelman, Melvin L. A Sporting Time: New York City and the Rise of Modern Athletics, 1820-70. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1986.

Chadwick, Henry. The Game of Baseball: How to Learn It, How to Play It, How to Teach It. New York: George Munro, 1868.

Devine, Christopher. Harry Wright: The Father of Professional Base Ball (Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 2003), 10.

Richman, Jeffrey I. Brooklyn’s Green-Wood Cemetery: New York’s Buried Treasure. Brooklyn: The Cemetery, 1998.

Schiff, Andrew. The Father of Baseball: A Biography of Henry Chadwick. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 2008.

John Whitby Dickins was born in Wigan, Lancashire County, England, on June 24, 1841, the son of Samuel Dickins, a schoolmaster, and his wife Eliza. When he was sixteen John was sent to the United States to study at the Williston Seminary in Easthampton, Massachusetts. After a year of teaching school, he moved to Brooklyn and commenced the study of law while working for the law firm of Hagner & Smith. Brooklyn was a baseball-mad city at the time and the young Englishman must have been introduced to the sport at this time, if not before.

The outbreak of the Civil War interrupted his law studies as he began what was supposed to be a three-month enlistment in the 71^st New York State Militia. Instead, Dickins was captured at the Battle of Bull Run, spending four months in Libby Prison in Richmond, four months in Parish Prison in New Orleans, and another three months in the Confederate Prison in Salisbury, North Carolina. While imprisoned, he became the associate editor of “The Stars and Stripes in Rebeldom,” a collection of the writings of Union prisoners.

After close to a year behind bars, Dickins was exchanged and promptly reenlisted in the 165^th New York Infantry, a regiment that became known as “Duryea’s Zouaves.” One of his fellow soldiers in the 165^th was future National League president Abraham G. Mills, who would later recollect having regularly packed a bat and ball in with his field equipment and having played in a Christmas Day 1862 game at Hilton Head, South Carolina, said to have been watched by 40,000 soldiers. The figure is preposterous, but it seems a safe assumption that Dickins’ time in Duryea’s Zouaves increased his familiarity with baseball. He was promoted from Corporal to Full Sergeant on February 25, 1863, and was wounded at the battle of Port Hudson, Louisiana, on May 27, 1863.

After another promotion to Sergeant-Major, Dickins was transferred to a captaincy in the 100^th U.S. Colored Troops Infantry Regiment in July of 1864. He led his new charges at the Battle of Nashville that December and was brevetted Major and Lieutenant-Colonel for “uniform gallantry and good conduct, and for especial bravery” at this pivotal battle.

It was not until the end of 1865 that John Dickins was mustered out, but he must have been free to travel after the war’s end, as he took advantage to return to England in the summer of 1865 and marry a young woman named Emma Lowe. The young couple returned to the States in October, and on Christmas Day the Civil War service of John Dickins officially ended.  His discharge read: “Character, excellent; a brave, skillful and most efficient officer.”

It had now been more than four years since he had put aside his law studies, and, instead of resuming them, Dickins chose to accept a position in Nashville with the Bureau of Freedmen and Abandoned Lands. Upon his arrival in Nashville, the young Englishman used his familiarity with baseball to help organize the Cumberland Base Ball Club of Nashville, of which he served as captain and president.

Nor was his ambassadorial service on behalf of the sport restricted to Nashville. In July of 1866, he made two trips to Louisville to umpire a series for the local championship. His umpiring earned high praise from the Louisville press, and after the final out of the first contest, both clubs joined in giving him three cheers and a “tiger” – a distinctive growling cheer created by Princeton students. Not to be outdone, Dickins then called for three cheers for “base ball in general.”[1]  There was another type of drama at the end of the second game, which saw the Louisville Base Ball Club retain local bragging rights. After announcing the result, Dickins challenged the Louisville Club to face his club for the “championship of Kentucky and Tennessee.”[2]  While the right of these two clubs to contest for this honor was debatable at best, there could be no argument about the excitement the series generated in a region where baseball had yet to take firm root.

The first game was scheduled for July 31 in Tennessee. The excited members of the Louisville Club made the 183-mile trip to Nashville on the night train and engaged in “many a lusty shout and cheer for all that pertained to base ball either generally or specifically” before finally turning in for the night. Their time in Nashville lived up to their expectations as the Cumberland Club hosted them in style. The contest took place on the grounds of the Cumberland Club, located near Fort Gilliam, and in spite of intense heat a crowd estimated at 2,000-3,000 turned out to watch the visitors pull out a 30-23 triumph. One feature of the game that drew special attention was the identity of the score-keeper for the home club: Emma Dickins.[3]

The return game took place in Louisville a couple of weeks later. It was originally scheduled for August 15, but the train carrying the Nashville players was delayed by an accident on the line, forcing a one-day postponement.[4] Even with the delay, an overflow crowd of over 5,000 was on hand to watch, including Emma Dickins, who again acted as score-keeper for the Cumberland Club. The match ended with the Louisville Base Ball Club winning and wrapping up the best-of-three series, a result that led a reporter for the Louisville Daily Democrat to call the “exciting” contest “an epoch in the history of base ball.” He exuberantly declared that there was “not a more healthy, interesting and innocent recreation than that of base ball, a game which is recognized throughout the entire country.” He concluded by describing the Louisville Base Ball Club as “entitled to the proud CHAMPIONSHIP OF THE SOUTH” and “the equal of any in the country.”[5]

John Dickins must have felt very proud to be a part of a match that so vividly demonstrated the extended reach of baseball. Yet his familiarity with the caliber of baseball played in other regions must have made him less sanguine about the contest’s significance. The Louisville Club’s right to claim the championship of the South was debatable at best, while the assertion that it was on a par with the national powers was mere hyperbole. Of more direct concern to Dickins was the lopsided 72-11 score by which his club had lost. The enormous gap highlighted a recurring problem for the still-young sport of baseball – that even great enthusiasm and the best of planning could not ensure the competitive balance necessary for long-term success.

As it happened, John and Emma Dickins moved to Louisville that winter, where he became an accountant. He also took over as shortstop for the Louisville Base Ball Club, and was described as an old Brooklyn player.[6]  Over the next two seasons, Dickins played shortstop for this club as it hosted a series of national powerhouses, beginning with the historic visit of the Nationals of Washington on July 17, 1867.  The arrival of this club on the first-ever trans-Allegheny tour was another important milestone for a game that was still mostly confined to the Northeast. The contest led one reporter to declare that baseball had “undoubtedly established itself as the National game of our country,” so it was fitting that John Dickins played in the game.[7]

But by this time the best days of the Louisville Base Ball Club were past, with many core players having less time for baseball because of the demands of careers and families. In the thirteen months after the game against the Nationals, the Louisville Club played host to the Athletics of Philadelphia, the Atlantics of Brooklyn, the Unions of Morrisania, and the Cincinnati club that was soon to become known as the “Red Stockings.” But none of these matches were remotely close, and the Louisville public became disenchanted with the lopsided losses. Even after the loss to the Nationals, the attitude of the Daily Democrat had begun to change, and its reporter wrote that he was “disappointed” by the “poor playing” of Dickins and second baseman Walter Brooks.[8] Subsequent defeats prompted more grumbling and led to the departure of more regulars from the “first nine” of the Louisville Base Ball Club.

John Dickins remained a fixture in the Louisville Club’s lineup in 1868, though the birth of their first son put an end to Emma’s days as a score-keeper. He also found time to umpire numerous local contests, performing his duties “in a long-tailed duster, under a sun umbrella” on one humid summer day.[9]

The Louisville Base Ball Club barely managed to retain local supremacy in 1868, but it came as no surprise to anyone when it disbanded at the end of that season. That was also the end of any recorded connection between John W. Dickins and the sport he had helped to popularize in the South. His family continued to grow, and by 1880 he and Emma were raising six children. His father eventually emigrated from England and joined the household.

John Dickins remained in Louisville for the rest of his life, and in 1902 he accepted a commission in the Internal Revenue Service. Emma Dickins died at some point, and he remarried around 1898 and started a second family. He died at his Louisville home on October 17, 1916, survived by his second wife and by five children from his two marriages.[10]  By then the game he had helped to introduce to the South in the 1860s was long established, with Louisville having obtained and lost two different major league franchises. It would be fascinating to learn what Dickins thought about the many changes to baseball during those years, but alas those reflections remain unknown.

Sources

History of the Second Battalion Duryee [sic] Zouaves : One Hundred and Sixty-Fifth Regiment New York Volunteer Infantry, mustered in the United States service at Camp Washington, Staten Island, N.Y. (Salem, Mass.: Higginson Book Co., 1905); Album of the Second Battalion, Duryee [sic] Zouaves, One Hundred and Sixty-fifth Regt., New York Volunteer Infantry. (1906); LDS Film 1469056, Lancashire County Baptisms 1841-1846 from the Bishop’s Transcripts, Page 2, Entry 15; BMD Birth and Marriage Records for Lancashire County; Obituary of John W. Dickins in the Louisville Evening Post, October 19, 1916, 2; Ancestry.com. Kentucky Death Records, 1852-1953 [database on-line]. (Provo, Utah: Ancestry.com Operations Inc, 2007); Chadwick Scrapbooks; census listings and city directories; contemporaneous news coverage, as cited in notes.

Most sources record Ferris as being born on December 7, 1877, in Providence, Rhode Island. However, the Rhode Island State Archives have no record of his birth, and census records indicate that Albert Sayles Ferris was actually born in England, as were his parents, and immigrated to the United States in 1879. Having developed his baseball skills on the Providence sandlots, Ferris advanced to the next level by playing for a team in North Attleboro, Massachusetts, in 1898. One day the shortstop was missing, so Hobe, “with one side of his face swollen with a toothache,” filled in and handled 22 chances perfectly, a feat that won him a starting position. Having kept himself in fine shape by playing polo during the offseason, Ferris reported to Pawtucket of the New England League in 1899. Despite an initial batting slump, he finished with a .295 average and won accolades for his fielding. In 1900 the infielder joined Norwich in the Connecticut League, where he played shortstop and batted .292 with 31 extra-base hits.

Before the 1901 season Ferris was drafted by the Cincinnati Reds, but instead jumped to the American League to play for the Boston Americans. That same offseason, shortstop Freddy Parent signed with the club, and Ferris shifted to second base. It was initially a rough transition for Ferris, who committed 61 errors in 1901, the second highest total by a second baseman in American League history. (That same year, Detroit second baseman Kid Gleason committed 64 errors.) At the plate, the 23-year-old Ferris batted .250, drove in 63 runs, and led American League rookies with 15 triples.

The next year, 1902, Ferris again drove in 63 runs while hitting eight home runs (tied for seventh best in the league) and 14 triples. His glove work also showed signs of improvement, as he committed 22 fewer errors in the field and showed brilliant range. In one June contest, Ferris recorded 11 putouts, and on another occasion he accepted 26 chances in two consecutive games.

But it was Ferris’s numerous run-ins with umpires that garnered the most attention. In May he tangled with umpire Jack Sheridan and received a three-day suspension from American League president Ban Johnson. “Ferris deserves his suspension, and while it will hurt Collins’ club, I am glad of it,” wrote Peter Kelley of the Boston Journal. “We do not want any of the John McGraw biz in Boston, and the sooner that certain players become reconciled to that fact, the better it will be for Boston baseball lovers. I hope this will be a lesson for Hobe, for if he behaves, he will make a big name for himself.”

Ferris never reformed his ways, but he remained an integral part of the Boston club as it captured the 1903 American League pennant. In August the second baseman’s defense led to two victories in a doubleheader against St. Louis. “When the Browns broke into a rally Hobe cut them down with a triple play in one game and worked a double in the next that thrilled 19,000 fans,” one account said. “Retiring five men on two chances is quite an achievement for one day.” For the season Ferris batted an unimpressive .251, but hit a career-high nine home runs and scored a career-best 69 runs. In the Americans’ World Series triumph over Pittsburgh, Ferris recovered from a poor showing in the first game, in which he made two errors (and briefly raised suspicions that Boston had thrown the game), to make a spectacular unassisted double play on a Honus Wagner line drive in Game Two, preserving a 3-0 Boston victory. In the eighth and final game, Ferris drove in all three Boston runs off Deacon Phillippe to secure the franchise’s first world championship.

In 1904 Ferris slumped badly at the plate, as his batting average dipped to .213, but he figured prominently in Boston’s narrow victory in the American League pennant race, scoring from second base on a fly ball and error in a showdown end-of-season series with the New York Highlanders to give Boston a 1-0 victory. It was the final team triumph of Ferris’s major-league career, as the aging Boston roster unraveled from 1905 to 1907. Still in his prime, Ferris continued to post low batting averages but ranking among the league leaders in extra-base hits and providing Gold Glove-caliber defense at second base. He also continued to make headlines whenever his nasty temper flared on the ball field, as occurred on September 11, 1906.

In that afternoon’s game against the Highlanders at New York’s Hilltop Park, Boston outfielder Jack Hayden took a leisurely route on a fly ball hit to short right field, which Ferris himself failed to go after, and the result was an inside-the-park home run. Returning to the bench at the end of the inning, Ferris initiated a vile verbal attack on Hayden for what he perceived as lackadaisical play. Hayden in turn landed three stingers to Hobe’s jaw. After their teammates separated them, Ferris braced himself on a rail and thrust his foot into Hayden’s face, knocking out several teeth. The fisticuffs continued and eventually both players were arrested. Neither pressed charges, but in response to what one reporter called “the most disgraceful affair ever predicated by any ball players on the ball field,” Ban Johnson suspended Ferris for the remainder of the season. For his part, Hobe declared, “I suppose I’m a fool for being in earnest and trying to win, but that is my way. I can’t help it.” Ferris lasted one more season in Boston before owner John Taylor dealt him to the St. Louis Browns in a six-player trade. Explaining the move, Taylor suggested that Hobe had “outlived his usefulness.”

With the Browns Ferris enjoyed perhaps his best season as a professional in 1908, as he posted career highs in batting (.270), on-base percentage (.291), and RBIs (74). Because Jimmy Williams was already established at second base, Ferris shifted to third, where he combined with shortstop Bobby Wallace to form what one writer called “the stonewall defense.” Hobe adjusted very well to his new position, and led the American League’s third basemen in putouts, double plays, and fielding percentage. Browns manager Jimmy McAleer was effusive in his praise of Ferris: “I have been in the game a long while, but I have never seen a man play such remarkable ball for a team as has Ferris for us. … You never see him that he is not hustling.”

The 1909 campaign, however, was a disappointment, as Ferris’s average plummeted to .216. He claimed he had a difficult time getting in shape, and as his season deteriorated, his frustration level spiraled to the point that a sportswriter sarcastically wrote that Ferris “has a sweet disposition when he is not getting his share of base hits.” In a game against Washington he hit a fly ball to left, and as he returned to the dugout complained to Tom Hughes, the Washington pitcher, “I ought to have killed that one.” The hurler retorted, “You hit like an old woman.” Hobe applied “a few choice names to Hughes, who was willing to stop the ball game while he got at Ferris. Umpire [Jack] Egan, however, waved him back and prevented hostilities.”

After the 1909 season Ferris was released to Minneapolis of the American Association, where he produced respectable numbers for three seasons as his playing time gradually decreased. He spent the 1913 season with St. Paul in a utility role before drawing his release. Ferris played one season for Wilkes-Barre of the New York State League before that club, too, released him. Baseball Magazine clarified the reasons for Hobe’s decline: “Ferris is let out because he has slowed up both with arms and legs – finds it hard to make the throw to first, hard to stoop quickly for fast grounders.”

By 1920 Ferris, his wife, Helena, and their daughter, Natalie, had established roots in Detroit, where Hobe worked as a mechanic and occasionally played for semipro teams. As the years passed, however, Ferris became obese. On March 18, 1938, he came across a newspaper account of ex-Tiger Fatty Fothergill’s hospitalization. As he informed his wife of this story, Ferris died of a heart attack. He was 60 years old.

An updated version of this biography appeared “New Century, New Team: The 1901 Boston Americans,” edited by Bill Nowlin (SABR, 2013). The biography originally appeared in “Deadball Stars of the American League” (Potomac Books, 2006), edited by David Jones.

Sources

Newspapers

Boston Globe

Chicago Tribune

Evening Times (Pawtucket)

Los Angeles Times

New York Times

Providence Journal

Washington Post

Books and articles

Anderson, David. More Than Merkle. (Lincoln: University of Nebraska, 2000).

Browning, Reed. Cy Young: A Baseball Life. (Amherst: University of Massachusetts, 2000).

Carter, Craig, ed. The Sporting News Complete Baseball Record Book 2001.

DeValeria, Dennis, and Jeanne DeValeria. Honus Wagner. (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh, 1998).

James, Bill. All-Time Major League Handbook. 2nd ed. (STATS, 2002).

James, Bill. The New Bill James Historical Baseball Abstract. (STATS, 2001).

Masur, Louis. Autumn Glory. (New York: Macmillan, 2003).

Neft, David, Richard Cohen, and Michael Neft, eds. The Sports Encyclopedia: Baseball 1999. (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1999).

Palmer, Pete, and Gary Gillette, eds. The Baseball Encyclopedia. (New York: Barnes & Noble, 2004).

Phelon, W,A., “The Month’s Parade.” Baseball Magazine, April 1915.

Reichler, Joseph. The Baseball Encyclopedia, 6th ed. (New York: Macmillan, 1985).

Reichler, Joseph. The Great All-Time Baseball Record Book. (New York: Macmillan, 1981).

Stout , Glenn, ed. Impossible Dreams. (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2003).

Stout, Glenn, and Richard Johnson. Red Sox Century. (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2000).

Thorn, John, Pete Palmer, and Michael Gershman. eds. Total Baseball, 6th ed. (New York: Total Sports, 1999).

Tourangeau., Richard. Remembering Opening Day a Century Ago.” The National Pastime, Volume 22, pp. 19-24, 2002.

Ward, John. “The Keystone Kings.” Baseball Magazine. October, 1914, pp. 43-48.

Other resources

Hobe Ferris’s file at the National Baseball Hall of Fame

Rhode Island State Archives

Heritage Quest

George William Hall was born on March 29, 1849, 1 in Stepney, England, to George R. and Mary Hall; he was the third of five children. Hall’s father, an engraver, emigrated from England to the United States around the time Mary birthed their fourth child, Edwin. Mary and her four children immigrated to the United States soon thereafter and arrived at New York on July 26, 1854.2 George developed an affinity for baseball in his adolescent years in Brooklyn and proved to be an adequate fielder and skilled with the bat.3

Hall began his baseball career as an amateur and played for the Excelsior Juniors of Brooklyn in 1868 and as a first baseman for the Cambridge Stars (New York) in 1868 and 1869.4 In 1870 he joined the Brooklyn Atlantics and was responsible for ending the most famous undefeated streak in professional sports history. On June 14, 1870, the Cincinnati Red Stockings brought their unblemished 57-0 record to the Capitoline Grounds in Brooklyn to face the Atlantics. Henry Chadwick’s Base-ball Manual for 1871 estimated that nearly 10,000 people watched as the Atlantics and the Red Stockings played an intense match. Cincinnati led 3-0 after three innings, but the Atlantics rallied to score four runs in the following three innings. “The game now began to get quite exciting, and every movement of the players was watched with eagerness.”5 The teams traded the lead and were tied 5-5 after nine innings. Cincinnati refused to accept a tie-game outcome and sought to finish the match. In the 11th, the Atlantics tied the score again. Charles Ferguson was on second and George Zettlein at first. Hall batted next but what unfolded next is unclear.

Hall stepped up to the plate and hit Asa Brainard’s pitch to George Wright, who tossed the ball to Charlie Sweasy. At this point, the reports begin to differ. Cincinnati newspapers agree that Sweasy muffed the ball and hurried a throw to catcher Doug Allison, who did not catch the ball. “Hall hit to Wright, who threw to Sweasy, who muffed and threw to Alison, who missed it, and Ferguson scored the winning run. [Long and tremendous cheering.]”6 The New York Tribune simply states that “Hall closed the game in triumph for the Atlantics; his hit released Ferguson, who ran over the plate, winning the game by one run.”7 The Brooklyn Daily Eagle held that Hall got a hit. “Hall batted Zettlein out at second, and was nearly put out at second himself, but Sweasey dropped the ball passed in by George Wright, and Fergy got home, making the winning run.”8 Most newspapers held that Sweasy dropped the ball and threw the ball errantly to home plate, allowing Ferguson to score but it was Hall’s action that initiated the play that ended Cincinnati’s unbeaten streak. Chadwick’s guide called the game “The Match of the Season of 1870.”9

Despite the incredible victory, the Atlantics reorganized as an amateur club in 1871. Because of this, Hall decided to take his services elsewhere and found a home as a center fielder for the Washington Olympics of the newly christened National Association. Hall batted .294 in 1871 and continued to impress fans and players with his speed. In 1872 the Olympics reorganized as a co-op team and Hall again decided to move on, this time to Baltimore. He spent 1872 and 1873 as a member of the Baltimore Canaries (also known as the Lord Baltimores). Hall batted .340 in his two years with Baltimore and ranked third in the league in doubles and triples in 1872. Baltimore folded in 1874 despite strong second-place finishes in 1872 and 1873. The Panic of 1873 affected Baltimore’s proprietors and the funds for the Canaries quickly vanished.10 Financial uncertainty led Hall to leave Baltimore before the 1874 season and sign with the Boston Red Stockings for half of his 1873 salary.11

George Hall’s experience highlights the volatility and financial unease of 19th century baseball clubs. Prior to the formation of the National League, clubs, and especially their players, were at the mercy of gate receipts in order to stay afloat. An ambitious schedule and the need to travel from city to city made it difficult to remain financially stable and profitable on a consistent basis. Thus, players like Hall found it difficult to make a living playing the game they loved. However, players made important – and at times detrimental – personal connections when they jumped from club to club. Hall is no exception, as he met a shady character named Bill Craver and was likely introduced to his future wife, Ida Layfield, a Maryland native, while a member of the Canaries.12 George and Ida were married in 1876 while George played for the Athletics of Philadelphia.13

In 1874 Hall joined the best baseball club in the National Association, the Boston Red Stockings. The Red Stockings were crowned National Association champions in 1872 and 1873 and fielded a roster that included five future Hall of Famers, George Wright, Harry Wright, Jim O’Rourke, Deacon White, and Al Spalding. Although Hall’s career hitting statistics suggest he was a slightly above-average player, his addition to the best professional squad in the National Association speaks volumes. Both Wright Brothers, Andy Leonard, and especially Cal McVey knew how dangerous Hall could be with the bat. Additionally, McVey was Hall’s teammate in Baltimore in 1873, where the two batted .380 and .345 respectively. It’s possible that Harry Wright signed Hall at McVey’s urging. With Boston Hall split time in the outfield with the aging legend Harry Wright and others. Combined with his offensive skill, Hall’s defensive prowess improved the Boston outfield. The New York Clipper commented, “Hall was the crack player south of Philadelphia at centre field.”14 Hall’s versatile defensive talents blended nicely with the evolving understanding of outfield play. Prior to 1874, the right fielder was considered the weakest of the three, with the best outfielder playing in left field. By 1874 the Clipper opined that right field was the most active due to the lack of a shortstop on that side, but all outfield positions essentially required equal skill.15 “As a general thing, however, the three positions required the same qualities, viz., long-distance throwing, sure catching, and good judgment in the guaging [sic] of balls.”16 Pitching improved in several ways so fewer balls were hit to the outfield. Thus, by 1874, outfielders were standing much closer to the infield than in the game’s early days. Hall’s speed helped him in this style of play because he could quickly track a ball down if one were hit well, deep into the outfield. His arm was likely good to above average because he played all outfield positions successfully.17 Outfielders like Hall had to be incredibly athletic to succeed. “It will not do, therefore, to put any but the best men in those positions,” the Clipper opined.18

The Red Stockings’ first National Association game of 1874 was against the New York Mutuals on May 2. Hall’s first professional contest played with Boston was a significant one as he replaced Harry Wright in the lineup, “filling (Wright’s) position acceptably at centre-field.”19 He had one hit, scored a run, and made two putouts in center field. But Hall’s season was mediocre– actually the worst of his professional career. This is possibly due to his limited playing time; Hall played in only 47 of the 71 scheduled league games. His role on the club was again as a rotating outfielder, splitting most of his time with Harry Wright. Hall batted .288 and had 64 hits, one home run, and 34 RBIs, all figures either career lows or close to them. Still, Hall played a role in one of baseball history’s grandest tours: the 1874 World Base Ball Tour.

The Clipper called the tour “The Grand International Tour.”20 In the winter of 1873 Harry Wright proposed that the Red Stockings and Athletic of Philadelphia sail across the Atlantic in the summer of 1874 and expose Europeans to the American game. Hall returned to his country of birth on July 27, 1874, and played his first game on July 30 at the Liverpool Cricket Grounds in front of 500 onlookers. He scored two runs in the 14-11 loss to Athletic. On July 31 Hall hit one of Boston’s five home runs as the Red Stockings beat the Athletic, 23-18. This trend continued for the entire tour as he proved to be an offensive force. He hit in every game but one and belted at least two home runs.21 The London Times noted that Hall was a good fielder.22 He established himself as one of the best players on the tour. The teams returned to America on September 9. The tour proved to be a financial failure; the English reacted indifferently to the American game. “Some American athletes are trying to introduce us to their game of base-ball, as if it were a novelty; whereas the fact is that it is an ancient English game, long ago discarded in favour of cricket,” the Times lectured.23 The Red Stockings completed their season on October 30 with a loss to Hartford. Boston finished 1874 atop the National Association standings with a 52-18-1 record.

Despite playing for a champion, Hall signed with the Athletic of Philadelphia for the 1875 season. The reasons are unknown but Philadelphia may have offered a higher salary to Hall, who hit extremely well against the Athletic in Europe. In his first season with Philadelphia, Hall hit .299, with 107 hits, 4 home runs, and 62 RBIs. His play was above average (2.3 WAR) but Philadelphia finished a distant third to Boston in the final standings. The Red Stockings were a major catalyst in the National Association’s collapse in 1875 – they were simply too good and attendance waned. Chicago businessman William Hulbert formed the National League officially in February 1876. He viewed the National Association as corrupt, mismanaged, and, worst of all, weak. Hall decided to stick with Philadelphia for 1876, a decision that set up his best season in professional baseball.

The National Association’s best clubs from 1875 squared off against one another on April 22, 1876, in Philadelphia.24 Hall had several clutch at-bats that kept Philadelphia in the game. Regardless, the Athletics dropped the opener to the Red Caps, 6-5. Once again Hall was at the center of baseball history as he played a crucial role in the National League’s origin story. Although the game is now a famous first, Hall’s play in a forgotten game later that season was arguably his best performance.

The Cincinnati Reds arrived in Philadelphia and began a three-game series against the Athletics on June 14. (The first game was scheduled for June 13 but was rained out.) Both teams were bad; the Athletic carried a 5-15 record into the set while the Reds sported a balmy 4-17 record; no wonder that “the attendance was small.”25 Despite their poor record, Philadelphia put on a powerful offensive display. “The extraordinary batting of the Athletics on this occasion has perhaps never been equaled, and certainly, has not been excelled. … Hall’s wonderful batting was the feature. …”26 During the game, Hall tallied five hits in six plate appearances, “once making a clean home-run by driving the ball over the right-field fence, and making, besides, three three-basers [triples].”27 It is likely that his omitted fifth hit was a single because the Clipper noted all Athletics who registered extra-base hits that day. Thus, George Hall was probably a double away from being the first major-league player to hit for the cycle.28 His home run – one of his league-leading five in 1876 – was rare for two reasons: 1) He hit a home run in the fifth inning and 2) the ball bounded over the fence (a legal home run at the time). Such home runs were rare in the 19th century. That he hit a dead ball deep enough to bound over the fence in the middle of a game in which the Athletics notched 20 runs on 23 hits is even more impressive. The ball was surely a misshapen blob at that point. Three days later Hall hit two home runs off Amos Booth of the Reds, becoming the first player to hit more than one in a game.29 The veteran had his best offensive season in 1876, batting.366 with 98 hits, 5 home runs, and 45 RBIs in 268 at-bats. His league-leading five home runs crowned him professional baseball’s first “home run king.”

Despite Hall’s success, the 1876 Athletics were a bad team, mostly young and inexperienced.30 Financial woes hit the club hard, and it failed to complete its scheduled final Western road trip, no-shows for series in Chicago and St. Louis. The club also owed every player between $200 and $500 in back pay. Rumors circulated in Philadelphia that a new club would be organized, using the players from 1876.”31 Hall told the team management that he would stay,32 but, the Athletics were barred from the National League for the 1877 season, leaving him without a team.

Hall soon found a home along with former teammate Bill Craver on the Louisville Grays. The Grays were a formidable team with pitching ace Jim Devlin on the roster. While Chicago and Hartford failed to translate their 1876 success into the 1877 season, Louisville transformed itself from a mediocre team in 1876 to pennant contenders. On August 13 the Grays had a four-game lead over St. Louis with a 27-13 record. St. Louis offered Hall a contract for 1878. (He also expressed interest in joining the Cincinnati nine for 1878.) For whatever reason, he had no interest in signing again with Louisville, even though his salary was a healthy $2,800.33 Hall was a major catalyst for Louisville’s success in 1877, batting .323, but he was also a major factor in the club’s downfall.

The Grays were leading the pennant race by 3½ games midway through August. Suddenly, with 20 games left in the season, Louisville began to drop games. Between August 17 and September 26, the Grays went 2-11-1 and ended the season on October 6 with a 35-25 record, good enough for second place, but a distant seven games behind. Hall led the team in hitting on August 17 but hit just .143 on the final road trip.34 His performance and that of a few teammates increased suspicion that games were being fixed. John A. Haldeman, a baseball writer for the Louisville Courier-Journal, learned that four players, including Hall, had been persuaded by gamblers to throw games.35 Furthermore, after the ill-fated Eastern road trip, Hall sported a new diamond pin and cluster diamond ring.36

Speculation about the purported Louisville scandal increased at season’s end. Club owner Charles Chase interviewed Jim Devlin, who said he played loosely only during exhibition games. “Hall had seen Devlin enter Chase’s office that morning and was now filled with anxiety that he had blown the whistle on him.”37 Hall offered to tell Chase about the scandal’s mechanics if Chase “promised to let [him] down easy.”38 Eventually Hall admitted to fixing games. On October 26, at a meeting of the Grays’ board of directors with the entire team to discuss the Grays’ last 20 games, Hall maintained that he accepted payment only to throw non-League games.39 Four days later, the directors expelled Hall and others from the Louisville club. Despite that, and the League rule barring players convicted of disreputable play from signing with other National League clubs, St. Louis signed both Devlin and Hall for the 1878 season.40 On December 5 the National League Board unanimously banned Hall, Devlin, Bill Craver, and Albert Nichols from signing with any National League club until reinstated.41

The National League never reinstated Hall, and he eventually faded into obscurity. Rumors spread that he continued to play for nonleague teams, but no evidence of that has been founed. Hall moved back to Brooklyn with his wife, Ida, and took up steel engraving, his father’s trade. The couple had six children. Ida died of acute nephritis in 1912 and was buried in Brooklyn’s Evergreen Cemetery. In his later years, George either quit or retired from the engraving profession and became a clerk in a New York art museum. He died of heart trouble on June 11, 1923, and was buried next to his wife.

Hall was involved in some of professional baseball’s earliest key moments and established himself as one of the era’s better players. Baseball historian and statistician Bill James labeled him baseball’s “Least Admirable Superstar” of the 1870s.42 Hall’s role in baseball’s largest scandal of the 19th century continues to overshadow his skill as a player. He completed his career with a .322 batting average with 13 home runs, 252 RBIs, and 538 hits.

Notes

1 Hall’s birth date is disputed. Most sources claim March 29, 1849, as his date of birth while his death certificate states that it was June 22, 1849.

2 They immigrated to the United States aboard the Sir Robert Peel. Year: 1854; Arrival: New York, New York; Microfilm Serial: M237, 1820-1897; Microfilm Roll: Roll 143; Line: 22; List Number: 928.

3 James D. Smith III, “George William Hall,” from the archives of the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum.

4 Ibid.

5 Henry Chadwick, Chadwick’s Base Ball Manual, baseballchronology.com/baseball/Books/Classic/Henry-Chadwicks-Baseball-Manual/Page-2.asp#70RedStockings1stLoss.

6 “Base-Ball: The Atlantics of Brooklyn Beat the Champions by a Score of 8 to 7 in a Game of 11 Innings, the Rest on Record,” Cincinnati Daily Enquirer, June 15, 1870.

7 “Base-Ball: Atlantics vs. Red Stockings,” New York Tribune, June 15, 1870.

8 “The Atlantics Triumphant,” Brooklyn Daily Eagle, June 15, 1870.

9 Chadwick’s Base Ball Manual.

10 Joe Tropea, “Your Baltimore Canaries: A Very Brief History of Baltimore’s Second Professional Base Ball Team,” Maryland Historical Society, April 3, 2013. mdhs.org/underbelly/2013/04/03/your-baltimore-canaries-a-very-brief-history-of-baltimores-second-professional-base-ball-team/.

11 George V. Tuohey, A History of the Boston Base Ball Club (Boston: M.F. Quinn & Company, 1897), 68; Baseball-reference.com cites, per Preston Orem, that Hall’s salary was $1,000 with Baltimore in 1873 and $500 with Boston in 1874. If this is true, then the financial situation must have been truly perilous for Hall to accept half his salary with an employer 400 miles north of Baltimore.

12 Borough of Brooklyn, New York. Death Certificate number illegible (1912), Ida Aurelia Hall; Bureau of Vital Records, New York.

13 The 1900 US Census states that George and Ida were married for 24 years (1876). 1900 U.S. census, Kings County, New York, population schedule, New York City (page 16), dwelling 280, family 340, George W. and Ida A. Hall; digital image, Ancestry.com, Accessed September 25, 2015.

14 “Baseball: The Players of 1873. Outfielders,” New York Clipper, March 28, 1874.

15 Ibid.

16 Ibid.

17 As an outfielder, Hall’s career fielding percentage (.856) was slightly above the league average (.824). His Range Factor per 9 innings of 2.17 and Range Factor per Game of 2.19 were also above the league average (RF/9: 1.99, RF/G: 2.01). Per baseball-reference.com, baseball-reference.com/players/h/hallge01.shtml.

18 “Baseball: The Players of 1873. Outfielders.”

19 “Boston vs. Mutual,” New York Clipper, May 9, 1874.

20 “Baseball: The Grand International Tour,” New York Clipper, March 7, 1874.

21 Box scores are available for only 9 of the 15 games played in Europe. Eric Miklich, “1874 World Base Ball Tour,” 19cbaseball.com/tours-1874-world-base-ball-tour.html.

22 “Base Ball.” Times of London, August 7, 1874.

23 GRANDMOTHER. “Base-Ball.” Times of London, August 13, 1874.

24 On the first major-league game, see John Zinn, “April 22, 1876: A New Age Begins With Inaugural National League Game,” in Bill Felber, ed., Inventing Baseball: The 100 Greatest Games of the 19th Century (Phoenix: Society for American Baseball Research, 2013), 97-99.

25 “Baseball: Athletic vs. Cincinnati,” New York Clipper, June 24, 1876.

26 Ibid.

27 Ibid.

28 Not enough substantial evidence exists to credit Hall with hitting the first cycle in professional baseball. In addition to the Clipper’s account, the June 15, 1876, Cincinnati Enquirer states that Hall totaled 14 bases (four for a home run, nine for three triples, and one for a single). The Times of Philadelphia, June 15, 1876, credits Hall with a home run, two triples, a double, and a single (totaling 13 bases). Major League Baseball Historian John Thorn agrees with the information provided in both the Clipper and Enquirer. The accepted first cycle in the major leagues was completed by Curry Foley in 1882.

29 David Vincent, Home Run: The Definitive History of Baseball’s Ultimate Weapon (Dulles, Virginia: Potomac Books, 2007), 6.

30 William A. Cook, The Louisville Grays Scandal of 1877: The Taint of Gambling at the Dawn of the National League (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc., 2005), 78.

31 Ibid.

32 Cook, 84.

33 Cook, 124.

34 Cook, 130.

35 Ibid.

36 Cook, 137.

37 Cook, 139.

38 Ibid.

39 Cook, 139-141. George Hall’s testimony: “About three or four weeks after Al Nichols joined the Louisville Club, he made me a proposition to assist in throwing League games, and I said to him: ‘I’ll have nothing to do with any League games.’ This proposition was made before the club went on its last Eastern trip. He made the proposition to throw the Allegheny [Pittsburgh] game, and I agreed to it. He promised to divide with me what he received from his friend in New York, who was betting on the games. Nichols and I were to throw the game by playing poorly. While in Chicago, on the club’s last Western trip, I received a telegram from Nichols, stating that he was $80 in the hole, and asking how he could get out. I told Chapman that this dispatch was from my brother-in-law, who lived in Baltimore. I did not reply to the dispatch. Devlin first made me a proposition in Columbus, O., to throw the game in Cincinnati. He made the proposition either in the hotel or upon the street. We went to the telegraph office in Columbus, and sent a dispatch to a man in New York by the name of McCloud, saying that we would lose the Cincinnati game. McCloud is a pool-seller. The telegram was signed ‘D & H.’ We received no answer to this telegram. I did not know McCloud. Devlin knew him. McCloud sent Devlin $50 in a letter, and Devlin gave me $25. One of us sent a dispatch to McCloud from Louisville saying, ‘We have not heard from you.’ He sent then sent the $50 to Devlin; this was the 1-0 Cincinnati game. We telegraphed to McCloud from Louisville that the club would lose the Indianapolis game. I never received any money for assisting in throwing this game. I think it was the 7 to 3 game. Devlin said that he did not want to sign the order to have his telegrams inspected; said it would ruin him. There was another game Nichols and I threw. It was the Lowell Club of Lowell, Mass. He and I agreed to throw it. He did all the telegraphing. Never got a cent from Nichols for the games he and I threw. My brother-in-law has often said I was a fool for not making money. He has said this for several years past. His talking this way caused a coldness between us. When I was in Brooklyn the last time he asked me if we could not make some money on the games, and I told him I would let him know when we could. He bet on the Allegheny game and lost. Telegraphed him from here about the Indianapolis game. Had a talk with him in June, I think in Brooklyn, about selling games. Have sent two or three telegrams to him – not over three. His name is (Frank) Powell, and he lives (at 865 Fulton Street) in Brooklyn. Nichols first approached me about throwing games. Nichols asked me, on the last trip, if I could get somebody to work Brooklyn for me. I can’t tell you where it was that Nichols first approached me about throwing league games. When I told him that I would have nothing to do with League games, I meant that I would go in with him on outside games. I made the proposition about the Cincinnati game to Devlin. Last night I said he made it to me. I made the proposition in Columbus. Nichols spoke to me in Cincinnati about selling the Cincinnati game, and I said I would see about it. Nichols said: ‘George, try and get Jim in.’ He suggested that I should write a letter to Devlin. Devlin was not in the room when I wrote it. In the note to Devlin I think I said: ‘Jim how can we make a stake?’ I left the note on the marble-top table in our room at the Burnett House, Cincinnati. When I next saw Devlin he was in the room putting on his ball-clothes, and it was there that he said: ‘George, do you mean it?’ And I said: ‘Yes, Jim.’ After Devlin accepted the proposition I told Nichols that Jim was in it. Nichols was not in with us on the Cincinnati game. Think I wrote the letter to Devlin in Columbus, but won’t be certain. Think I destroyed the note at that time. Did not take it out of his pocket two or three days afterwards and destroy it. Am certain of this. Never got a cent for the Indianapolis game. Devlin said that he had never heard from McCloud about the money for it. Received but $25 from Devlin.”

40 “Baseball: The League and Its Work,” New York Clipper, January 20, 1877.

41 “Baseball: League Association Convention,” New York Clipper, December 15, 1877.

42 Bill James, The New Bill James Historical Baseball Abstract (New York: Free Press, 2001), 15.

Charles Joseph Hanford, who made his major-league debut in 1914 at the age of 31, is one of a minority of English-born major leaguers who made his major-league debut after 1910. Only nine players born in England have played in the major leagues since Hanford.

Hanford was born to William and Mary Handford on June 3, 1882, in Tunstall, England — a village in the West Midlands region about 170 miles northwest of London.

William Handford, who was born in England, and Mary Handford, who was born in Ireland, were married in 1880. In 1885 the family moved to New Jersey. By trade, William Handford was a potter. According to the 1900 US census, Charles was the second oldest of six children living at home.1

Growing up in Trenton, New Jersey, Hanford was “one of the outstanding players in Trenton. He began playing as a catcher with the Extons and Hopewell teams. Later he switched to the outfield.”2

Hanford, who was listed at 5-feet-6½ and 145 pounds, spent the first five seasons of his professional career with the Jersey City Skeeters of the Class-A Eastern League. He made his professional debut in 1906 at the age of 23.

Hanford got off to a good start in his rookie season, hitting .312 in his first 16 games. For the season he hit .252 in 116 games for the Skeeters, who finished second in the eight-team league with an 80-57 record (3½ games behind first-place Buffalo).

In 1907 he hit .249 in 137 games for the Skeeters, who finished in a tie with Newark for fifth place.

In a preview of the 1908 season, Hanford’s third with the Skeeters, he was referred to as “the old reliable” who again would hold down the right-field spot.3

Hanford improved to .268 in 110 games in 1908, but the Skeeters slumped to 58-79 and finished in seventh place. On September 23, three days after the Eastern League season ended, Hanford’s contract was sold to the Philadelphia Phillies.

Hanford joined the Phillies in Philadelphia on February 26, 1909, for the train trip to their spring-training home in Savannah, Georgia. The Philadelphia Inquirer wrote of him:

Hanford, “the former Y.M.C.A. boy and who made good for Jersey City … is a hard-hitting right hand batsman, and should, according to (manager Billy) Murray give both (Fred) Osborn and (Otto) Deininger a close run for the center field position.”4

For much of spring training, Hanford was a regular in the Phillies lineup. But as the team broke camp in late March to return north, it was reported that Deininger had been shifted to the “first squad” and that “Hanford, who has played on the Regulars in the Southern games, was relegated to the Yanigans. Whether the deposition of Hanford is intended to be permanent or not is not yet known.”5

Another report said, “Hanford is a handy little man, but hardly as valuable all around as Deininger.”6

In early April Hanford was returned to Jersey City. In 1909, his fourth season with the Skeeters, he batted .237 in 143 games as the Skeeters finished in last place with a 63-87 record.

After he batted .243 in 133 games in 1910 with the Skeeters, who finished in seventh place, Hanford’s contract was sold to the Montreal Royals of the Eastern League in January of 1911.

“The change of scenery will please Hanford,” a sportswriter commented. “He is not a favorite with the Jersey City fans. Hanford is a good ballplayer. The toughest that was ever said about him was that he starved himself when the team was at home and had the gout from overeating on the road.”7

Hanford got off to a good start with the Royals, hitting .367 (11-for-30) in their first nine games. For the season, he hit a career-high .284. In 156 games, he had 26 doubles, 18 triples, and 11 home runs and had a .475 slugging percentage. In 1912 he batted .303 for the Royals.8

In April of 1913, it was reported that Hanford was “still holding out on the Montreal club.”9

Hanford eventually joined the Royals but got off to a slow start. By mid-June he was hitting only .165 (13 for 84) with one home run in 23 games. On June 13 Montreal traded Hanford to Buffalo for Deininger. Deininger, who was born in Germany and appeared in 55 games with the Phillies in 1909, was hitting .236 for the Bisons.

“Hanford’s hitting record in no way compares with that of Deininger’s,” the Buffalo Enquirer noted. “However on (the) bases he is a fiend. His fielding average too is almost perfect. He has wanted to come to Buffalo for some time.”10

After arriving in Buffalo in the morning of June 14, Hanford reported to the ballpark for Buffalo’s doubleheader with Rochester. Hanford made an immediate impression in the first game, in front of “one of the largest Saturday crowds in the history of baseball in this city.”11

In his second at-bat, with Buffalo trailing 3-1 in the third inning, Hanford hit a grand slam that “was among the most sensational ever pulled off here.”12

Buffalo went on to win the game 9-3, and Hanford was a mainstay in the Buffalo lineup the rest of the season. He recovered from his unproductive first two months to hit .284 for the season. In 123 games, he had 22 doubles, 7 triples, and 6 home runs.

After the season Montreal returned Deininger to Buffalo and Hanford was returned to Montreal. The trade had officially been a “loan.” The two outfielders swapped cities again in March when Montreal purchased Deininger’s contract. Several days later, Hanford informed the Montreal team that he had signed a contract with the Buffalo Buffeds of the upstart Federal League.

“Fortune dealt the already much-afflicted Montreal club a staggering blow when Charlie Hanford jumped to the Buffalo outlaws,” the Buffalo Times wrote. “Hanford was given a salary apparently at his own terms and his defection, as the common saying is, was a wrench to Owner (Sam) Lichtenhein and Manager (Kitty) Bransfield of the Canadian team.”13

After eight seasons in the minor leaguers, Hanford’s major-league debut would be memorable for several reasons.

The Federal League opened its 1914 season on April 13 in Baltimore. The game between the Buffeds and Baltimore Terrapins was the only Federal League game scheduled for Opening Day. The American League and National League weren’t scheduled to open their season until the next day.

“Not since the organization of the American League has there been such an upheaval in the baseball world caused by the organization of the Federal League,” observed a Buffalo newspaper.14

A crowd of nearly 28,000 jammed Baltimore’s Terrapin Park, which was located “directly opposite Oriole Park, the home of the Baltimore Internationals,” to witness the debut of the third major league.15

Hanford, playing center field, led off for the visiting Buffeds against veteran pitcher Jack Quinn, a native of Stefurov, Austria-Hungary, who pitched in the major leagues from 1909 to 1933. Hanford took a called strike on the first pitch of the season. He lined the second pitch to right field for the first hit in Federal League history.

After Baltimore scored three runs in the bottom of the fourth inning to take a 3-0 lead, Hanford drove in two runs in the top of the fifth with a single to center. Quinn shut down the Buffeds the rest of the way as the Terrapins held on for a 3-2 victory.

Hanford went on to have an outstanding season for the Buffeds. With two weeks left in the regular season, one Buffalo newspaper raved about Hanford’s performance:

“Charlie Hanford, the hard-hitting Buffalo Federal outfielder, is playing a sensational game this season with the Buffs. Hanford started the season hitting close to the .400 mark and for a time led the league. He ran into a slump later, however, but is still feared by the Federal League pitchers. Although he is not hitting an average to place himself among the league leaders, he is still the same Hanford of the early season when it comes to putting over a bingle in a pinch. He is in a class by himself in this respect. It is just this kind of work on the part of Charlie Hanford that has made him one of the most popular players on the Buffalo Federal club roster.”16

Hanford, who opened the season hitting .390 over the first 14 games, played in all 155 games for the Buffeds. For the season, he batted .291 while leading the team with 28 doubles, 13 triples, 12 home runs, 90 RBIs, and 37 stolen bases. He had an on-base percentage of .332 and a slugging percentage of .442. The right-handed-hitting Hanford batted .387 against left-handers.

Hanford’s 597 at-bats were second-most in the league (behind Harry Swacina of Baltimore, who had 617) and his 12 home runs were tied for third in the league as the Buffeds finished in fourth place in the standings with an 80-71-4 record, seven games behind the champion Indianapolis Hoosiers (88-65-4).

On New Year’s Day 1915, the Buffalo club announced that it had signed outfielder Jack Dalton, who had batted. 319 for the Brooklyn Robins of the National League in 1914.

A Buffalo newspaper applauded the move: “Dalton will materially boost the local team. Its outfield needed bolstering. With Dalton playing one of the fields, (Frank) Gilhooley another and with Joe Agler, Charlie Hanford and (Tex) McDonald in battle for the third position there promises to be some lively outer garden gamboling here next year.”17

A little over a month later, Buffalo sold Hanford to the Chicago Whales. The move caught Buffalo fans off-guard.

“Baseball fans of Buffalo were greatly surprised one day last week when they read in local newspapers a Chicago dispatch to the effect that Charlie Hanford, who had covered center field for the Buf-feds last season, had been sold to the Chicago Whales,” reported Sporting Life. “They immediately began to ask various questions as to the cause of the sale of the gardener, who at the opening of the season, displayed extraordinary fence-bursting propensities, but the management of the local Feds assured all inquisitors that an understanding had been reached and an arrangement made whereby Buffalo would benefit by the exchange as well as Chicago. Hanford’s batting fell off somewhat during the latter part of the season, although occasionally he would whale the pill for a three-bagger or a circuit trip.”18

Two days after acquiring Hanford, the Whales signed outfielder Les Mann, who had played for the World Series champion Boston Braves in 1914.

The Whales held their spring training in Shreveport, Louisiana, and early reports indicated that Whales manager Joe Tinker was planning on platooning his outfielders: “The addition of Leslie Mann and Charlie Hanford, outfielders, has supplied the north siders with reserve strength to spare. With Mann and Hanford, both strong right-handed hitters, Tinker expects to use two sets of outfielders.”19

In late March, Tinker announced that Hanford would be in the lineup against left-handed pitching.

Hanford got off to a slow start with just two hits in his first 13 at-bats. But he quickly warmed up. On April 16 his pinch-hit single in the bottom of the ninth inning lifted the Whales to a 4-3 victory over the visiting Pittsburgh Rebels.

On April 26, two days after Whales club President Charles Weeghman offered the St. Louis team its choice of Hanford, Mann, or Leo Kavanagh, Hanford went 3-for-4 in the Whales’ 7-0 victory over Kansas City. On April 28 Hanford was 3-for-6 with two triples and a single in the Whales’ 13-1 victory over the Packers.

The Whales, who had finished in second place in 1914 with an 87-67-3 record, played .500 ball for the first two months of the season. After a loss to the Kansas City Packers in the first game of a doubleheader on June 13, the Whales were 25-25. At the close of play on June 13, they were in sixth place. A 4-1 victory in St. Louis on July 14 — the Whales’ 19th victory in 26 games — moved them into a tie for first place.

After a doubleheader split with the visiting Brooklyn Tip-Tops on July 17, the Whales remained in first place, which created a unique milestone in Chicago. At the close of play on July 17, as described in a 2015 article:

“The American League’s Chicago White Sox led the league by 1½ games, the Federal League’s Chicago Whales had a half-game lead, and the National League’s Chicago Cubs were tied for first. The feat of one city having three first-place teams has not since been repeated, since there have not been three major leagues since that season. (This statement, of course, assumes not counting Brooklyn as part of New York City.)”20

On August 12 Hanford helped the Whales pull out a victory in unique fashion. With the score tied 1-1 in the top of the ninth, Mann tripled. Hanford, pinch-hitting, drove him in with a squeeze bunt. What made that unusual was that Hanford “had been ‘ejected’ two innings earlier ‘because Umpire (Barry) McCormick’s sensitive ear was offended. [Under Federal League rules] a player ousted merely from the bench, who has not been in the game, may return any time his manager desires, so Tinker was able to recall … Hanford … from exile.’”21

The Whales went on to win the Federal League pennant with an 86-66 record. Hanford batted .240 with 22 RBIs and 10 stolen bases in 77 games.

His two seasons in the Federal League showed a .280 average with 12 home runs, 112 RBIs, and 47 stolen bases in 232 games. The 1914 and 1915 seasons were his only major-league experience.

After the Federal League folded, Hanford bounced around the minor leagues for the next three seasons. He split the 1916 season with three teams, Kansas City (American Association), Mobile (Southern), and Peoria (Illinois). For the season, he hit a combined .306 in 119 games. In 85 games with Peoria he batted .329.

In 1917 he returned to the International League, playing in 125 games with Richmond. He batted .254 with 12 home runs. His final season in professional baseball was 1918, when at the age of 36, he hit .255 in 51 games with Omaha of the Western League. He had a career batting average of .265 in 11 minor-league seasons.

After retiring as a professional player, Hanford continued to play baseball, helping the J.N. Barbers team ofTrenton win the Delaware River League title in 1921 at the age of 39.

Hanford initially worked as a foreman at a shipbuilding company in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, before going to work for Trenton Transit. He eventually became the superintendent of Trenton Transit.

He died on July 19, 1963, in Trenton at the age of 81. At the time of his death, he was survived by Lillian, his wife of 55 years, son Charles Jr., a sister and two brothers.

Sources

In addition to the sources cited in the Notes, the author also consulted baseball-almanac.com, Baseball-Reference.com, findagrave.com, Newspapers.com, and Retrosheet.org.

Notes

1 According to the 1900 US Census, the family name was spelled Handford. During Charles Hanford’s playing career his name was occasionally spelled “Handford” in box scores and newspaper accounts. His name is spelled Hanford on baseball-reference.com and retrosheet.org. Hanford’s obituary on findagrave.com and in newspapers said a surviving son was Charles Hanford Jr.

2 “Charles Hanford, Star Athlete, Bus Official,” Trenton Times, July 21, 1963.

3 “Baseball Boom at Jersey City,” Buffalo Express, January 28, 1908: 11.

4 “Advance Guard of Phillies in Town,” Philadelphia Inquirer, February 27, 1909: 6.

5 “Deininger Is a Regular,” Altoona Tribune, April 2, 1909: 10.

6 Jim Nasium, “Jim Nasium Gives Some Inside Tips about Them and Gives a Line on the Athletics and Phillies’ Teams,” Philadelphia Inquirer, March 28, 1909: 6.

7 “Jack Ryan Sells Hanford,” Buffalo Enquirer, January 28, 1911: 8.

8 The Eastern League had rebranded itself as the Double-A International League.

9 “News Notes,” Sporting Life, April 5, 1913: P12.

10 “Deininger Leaves Us,” Buffalo Enquirer, June 14, 1913: 6.

11 “Hanford Hero of Sensational Game; 11,194 Fans at Grounds,” Buffalo Times, June 15, 1913: 61.

12 Ibid.

13 “Bill Clymer Can See a Pennant,” Buffalo Times, April 3, 1914: 16.

14 “Order Prevailed,” Buffalo Express, April 13, 1914: 4.

15 “Close Game Lost by Buf Feds in Season Opening,” Buffalo Enquirer, April 14, 1914: 9.

16 “Charlie Hanford a Star With the Buffalo Feds,” Buffalo Evening News, September 26, 1914: 6.

17 “Dalton Signed by Buf-Feds, Report Today,” Buffalo Evening News, January 2, 1915: 8.

18 Edward Tranter, “Buffalo Budget,” Sporting Life, February 20, 1915: 10.

19 James Crusinberry, “Whales to Face Stovall’s Gang,” Chicago Tribune, March 14, 1915: Part 3, 1.

20 Mark S. Sternman, “The Last Best Day: When Chicago Had Three First-Place teams,” The National Pastime (SABR, 2015).

21 Ibid.

He was with the New York Mutuals in 1871, the inaugural year of the National Association of Professional Base Ball Players, the first professional association. Except for 1872 when he played with the Lord Baltimores, and part of the 1875 season when he was captain of the Chicago White Stockings, he remained with the Mutuals. In 1874, after a slow start for the Mutuals, he became their manager. The team finished with a .725 winning percentage under his leadership, reaching first place but losing out to the Boston Red Stockings. At that time, only wins were counted toward the pennant race. Since a number of the teams bested by the Mutuals folded during the season, those games were eliminated from their total count.

In 1876, the National League of Professional Base Ball Clubs, the progenitor of today’s National League, opened for business. That year Dick played for the Hartford Dark Blues, who were second to the Chicago White Stockings. He also played for Providence in 1878 and Troy in 1880 in the National League.

In the inaugural 1876 season, he tied with two other players for the most doubles (21) in a season while playing for Hartford. Playing for the Providence Grays in 1878, he led the National League in both doubles (22) and total runs (60).

In 1877, he was captain of the Syracuse Starts in the inaugural year of the International League (IL). The IL was a part of the League Alliance with whom the National League had a working relationship providing for, among other things, interleague play.

In 1879, he was with the Albany, New York team of the new National Association. The luminaries of that city hoped having a professional team would give it a metropolitan face. But politics and sharp business practices by the team’s owners resulted in a shift of the franchise to Rochester where they were nicknamed the Hop Bitters.

During his playing career, Higham captained and/or managed a number of teams. He played all positions except pitcher. He is best known as a catcher, second baseman and outfielder. He most often batted lead off. He finished his professional playing career with a lifetime batting average of .307.

His prowess as a player may be traceable to his father, James Higham, a famed cricket player with the New York Cricket Club. James also starred for the American All Star Teams that played the Canadian All Stars from 1856 to 1860 as part of the International Series between the two countries. During that time the American All Stars lost only once to the Canadians.

In an era when the average span of a professional player’s career was perhaps six seasons, Dick Higham played for ten years. By the time of the inauguration of the National League, his playing career, but not his love of the game, was more than half over. At the conclusion of his stint with the Troy Trojans in 1880, he remained in Troy, New York. In 1881, he became a National League umpire

He had umpiring experience during his playing days in the National Association. He had even umpired when his own team was on the field. This was not an uncommon occurrence as the players were the ones best versed in the rules of the game.

Like all potential umpires for the National League, he had to be voted on by all the team owners. The League Rules, in 1881, provided that a list of approved umpires be promulgated at the beginning of the season. In addition to being nominated to the list, each successful candidate had to receive the highest number of votes of all persons nominated until twenty-four were appointed. He placed third on the list in 1881.

An umpire was selected from the list at the beginning of the season and assigned to a team as the umpire for its games. He could be moved to other teams later in the season. When the 1881 season opened, Higham was with Providence, He later moved to Detroit, then on to Troy and finished back with Detroit. That first year, he umpired fifty-eight National League games. At the end of the season, a testimonial game was held in his honor.

In 1882, he was voted to the list in the same manner as the year before, placing number eight. Only one of the seven who placed higher on the list was being reappointed. All the rest were new comers as umpires. He began the second season with Detroit.

In any written account of Baseball’s early days, Dick Higham’s playing prowess and ability to lead teams certainly warrants a word or two along with the rest of early base ball pioneers. However, it is most often as an umpire that he garners unbridled verbiage to this day. He remains the only umpire to be forever disqualified from acting as such in any game of ball participated in by a National League Club. Although nothing is clearly stated in the official League minutes of a hearing held on the matter, it is assumed it had to do with gamblers. 1882 was the first year in which league umpires as well as players and managers were barred from betting on games.

While he was definitely barred from continuing as an umpire in the National League, suffice it to say that the affair itself and the actions of the League, it can fairly be said, are open to questioning and differing determinations.

Of some further interest perhaps is the unsubstantiated hyperbole, which was and has been written about the incident and his later life. For the benefit of history and future researchers, it can be stated clearly, that Dick Higham never confessed to any wrongdoing and denied such accusations; never resigned from his position as a League umpire; his activities were not the subject of any investigations by any private detective, nor was he ever confronted by the findings of any private detective; he did not draw any suspicions of the owner of the Detroit team for their losing out on close calls or having close games go against them. In later life, he was employed, on more than one occasion, as a bookkeeper. He did not become a “bookie” or “race track tout” in Chicago.

Dick Higham was born on July 24, 1851, in Ipswich, County Suffolk, England, to Mary and James Higham. On May 13, 1854, together with his mother and brother Frederick, born October 7, 1852, as well as his Aunt Matilda, he arrived in America. His father James had arrived on December 2, 1853. They resided in Hoboken, New Jersey, until 1870 when they moved to New York City.

James’ brother George, and his wife Sarah emigrated to America at about the same time. The brothers set up a business, in New York City, as tailors, a trade taught to them by their father, Robert. In 1865, they opened a restaurant on East Houston Street called “The Office.” It was a most successful establishment in the “English” style. It continued in that manner until July 1872 when James suddenly died. Aunt Sarah died in August of the same year. Mary had died in June of 1871. By the age of twenty one, Dick’s only remaining family in New York consisted of brother Frederick, Uncle George and Aunt Matilda.

Dick married Miss Clara M. Learned on September 6, 1888, in Kansas City, Kansas. Their first son, Harold (Harry), was born in December 1889, in Kansas City, Missouri, where they resided. Their second son, George, was born in April 1896 in Chicago.

Dick Higham died in Chicago, March 18, 1905, and was buried on March 20, 1905, in Mount Hope Cemetery of the same city.

Sources

Dick Higham File at the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum at Cooperstown, New York.

Gerlach, Larry, and Harold V. Higham. “Dick Higham.” The National Pastime.
20 (2000), 20-32.

Higham, Harold V., and Larry Gerlach. “Dick Higham, Star of Baseball’s Early Years.” The National Pastime. 21 (2001), 72-80.

Higham, Harold. “Identifying 19th-Century Player Dick Higham…Perhaps!” The Baseball Research Journal. 31 (2002), 45-50.

Thorn, John, Pete Palmer, and Michael Gershman, eds. Total Baseball. 7th ed. Kingston, New York: Total Sports Publishing, 2001.

But the heights of fame, glory, and accolades never obscured, even slightly, Hope’s affection for his hometown — Cleveland. On October 3, 1993, Hope, who began his career in vaudeville 70 years before, sang a customized version of his trademark song “Thanks for the Memory” at Municipal Stadium to lead the city’s farewell to the beloved baseball edifice. The Indians were blanked, 4-0, by the White Sox that afternoon, but Hope’s appearance was more salient than the score.

“If you’re a Clevelander, you always had the connection to Bob Hope,” says former Indians play-by-play announcer Jack Corrigan, a hometown guy who called games on WUAB-TV in 1983 and 1985-2001. “Our family had a connection to him — my grandparents had mutual friends with his family. He spoke lovingly of the city in his appearances. So, we all thought that it was pretty special when we heard he would do the sendoff.”1

Hope was more than a fan bonded to his hometown team — he had two stints as a part owner for decades. In 1946, he joined Bill Veeck’s group to purchase the Indians. “My interest in the deal was purely sentimental, as I am a former resident of Cleveland,” said Hope. “Of course, I have no interest — ahem — in any money we might make out of the club.”2 An opportunity had been presented the year before, but it never reached the deal-making phase.3 In 1963, he became a member of the team’s board of directors.4

It was a fact that he often highlighted. In 1947, Hope joined Bing Crosby, often his co-star in movies and a part-owner of the Pittsburgh Pirates, for a comedy bit during Spring Training. “Baseball’s Bustin’ Out All Over” was part of the Paramount News offerings shown before movies. It features Hope and Crosby wearing their individual team garbs, tossing a baseball, and joking about contract holdouts.5 Hope showed up at the Indians’ 1949 Spring Training camp in Tucson, Arizona, for laughs and took a swing with an oversized bat that Goliath might have used if David was pitching.6

In 1963, Sports Illustrated gave the cover story to the comedian: “Hope: All Kinds of a Nut About Sports.” In addition to the stake in the Indians, SI writer Jack Olsen underscores Hope’s commitment bordering on fanaticism. But Hope was not the average fan limited to radio, television, and newspapers for information. Wealth allowed access. “He is the kind of sports nut who will interrupt a visit to New Orleans to fly to Cincinnati to play a round of golf with some cronies,” wrote Olsen. “He has been a fighter, a sprinter, a pool hustler, a four-handicap golfer, a professional football team’s mascot and a holder of substantial shares of stock in enterprises such as the Los Angeles Rams and the Cleveland Indians. He seldom misses a big fight, even if he has to rush over to the Pantages Theater in Hollywood to see it on theater TV. He has played something between 1,000 and 1,500 golf courses, in such varied places as Brazil and Greenland, in company with anteaters, monkeys and, sometimes, Presidents.”7

Hope was born on May 29, 1903, in the Greater London area. An American comedy treasure, Hope emigrated from England at the age of four with his parents, William Henry Hope and Avis Hope, and six brothers. “I left England because I knew there was very little chance of me becoming king,”8 joked Hope in a 1972 interview with Dick Cavett. As a teenager, he fought under the name “Packy East” around Cleveland. It was, according to Hope, a futile vocation. “I fought as Rembrandt East for a while. I was on the canvas so much.”9

Originally named Leslie Townes Hope, he changed his name to Bob, a moniker with an everyday aura, while pursuing a performing career in vaudeville. This form of entertainment began to fade with the ascendance of radio and talking pictures in the 1930s. “What Hope had been through was thirteen years of vaudeville, which taught the lessons of free enterprise: thrift, self-reliance, perseverance, innovation, and ruthlessness,” explained John Lahr in a 1998 retrospective for The New Yorker. “It was a paradigm of Darwinian struggle, in which only the fittest performers survived the schedule, the audiences, and one another.”10

Hope’s emergence as a star began with a starring role in the Broadway musical comedy Roberta in 1933. Noted critic Brooks Atkinson was none too kind. “The humors of ‘Roberta’ are no great shakes, and most of them are smugly declaimed by Bob Hope, who insists upon being the life of the party and who would be more amusing if he were Fred Allen.”11

Other reviewers found Hope to be praiseworthy. The Brooklyn Citizen lauded him: “Bob Hope, one of the most likeable persons on the stage to-day, dominates every scene in which he appears. He has a pleasing personality and puts a song across in such a manner as to make it click instantly.”12 The Daily News stated that Hope “gives cheerily of his late-spot pleasantries”13 while the Brooklyn Daily Eagle noted his “able clowning.”14

Before Paramount’s The Big Broadcast of 1938, Hope’s Hollywood career had consisted of short films. Then his on-screen partnership with Bing Crosby and Dorothy Lamour in the “Road to…” movies solidified him as a bankable star. But it was Hope’s connection to NBC that made him a popular-culture icon with a place on the Mount Rushmore of comedy. It began on NBC’s radio network in 1934; Hope’s affection for sports led to a smooth on-air rapport jousting with guest stars such as Babe Ruth15 and Dizzy Dean.16 In a 1950 episode, the Indians were in the radio audience. Their boss made them the target of his wit: “But the boys look good to me. These boys have taken off so much weight in Spring Training, yesterday, Lou] Boudreau slid into third and his uniform was just rounding second.”17

But Hope was able to break away from NBC for an occasional guest spot for a rival. He emceed the first broadcast for independent television station KTLA (Los Angeles) on January 22, 1947. “It is a thrill being here because television I understand is a combination of radio and pictures. This is a little medium that Crosby invented so he could steal the money without even leaving the house.”18 A baseball skit featured an actor pantomiming pitching a game for the New York Giants, but getting pulled after giving up a line drive. The background music is “Take Me Out to the Ball Game.” Hope broke ranks with NBC again in 1974 when he did a cameo on ABC’s The Odd Couple because of a “great friendship with Tony Randall.”19 While taking out his garbage, he has a chance encounter with star-struck photographer Felix Unger (Tony Randall) and his roommate, New York Herald sportswriter Oscar Madison (Jack Klugman), who’s in Hollywood to do his own cameo in a baseball movie with fellow scribes.20

Hope’s well-known friendship with fellow comedy icon Lucille Ball was manifested in a guest spot as himself on the season premiere of I Love Lucy in 1956.21 In a paradigm typical of the CBS show, Lucy Ricardo wants to perform at the nightclub owned by her husband, Cuban-born singer and bandleader Ricky Ricardo, who bought his place of employment — Tropicana — and changed the name to Club Babalu. Ricky signs Hope for opening night. Lucy, always determined, tracks Hope to Yankee Stadium, where the Indians are playing the Yankees. Disguised as a vendor, Lucy overwhelms the comedian, as she is apt to do, and he misses third baseman Al Rosen hitting a home run. (An entire season of I Love Lucy was set in Hollywood, where she had hilarious encounters with entertainment’s elite, including John Wayne,22 Harpo Marx,23 and William Holden24.)

There is a touch of truth to the scene. Rosen homered in two Indians-Yankees contests at Yankee Stadium in 1956, on May 9 (Indians won, 6-5) and June 8 (Indians won, 9-0). It’s plausible that the May 9 game is the one described because Rosen went yard in the first inning — a solo shot off Don Larsen after the pitcher retired Jim Busby and Bobby Avila — and Hope would likely have arrived at the start of the game.

Lucy’s shenanigans also lead to a foul ball hitting Hope on the head. Continuing her ruse, Lucy masquerades as an Indians player, wearing Bob Feller’s 19 and a cap depicting what appears to be a studio-made, though distorted, version of Chief Wahoo. Ricky visits Hope, who is nursing his noggin in the Indians locker room, and alerts him to Lucy’s zaniness. Though Ricky reveals the ballplayer to be Lucy, she convinces Hope through tears and heartbreak that she belongs on stage. Dressed as umpires, the trio sings “Nobody Loves the Ump” and Hope dances a soft shoe routine, then sings his trademark song, “Thanks for the Memories,” and Desi sings in Spanish. There’s an obvious chemistry between the stars. Hope jokes, “I may never go back to NBC.”

Later that month, Hope welcomed Don Larsen after the hurler’s perfect game against the Brooklyn Dodgers in the World Series. Hope asks Larsen if he’s ever seen Little Leaguers in action. Larsen’s response: “Sure, Bob. We played Cleveland.”25 The joke is factually unsound. Though the Yankees were dominant that year with a 97-57 record, Cleveland had a respectable 88-66 tally, good enough for second place in the American League. Larsen recreated the last out of the perfect game — a strikeout of Dale Mitchell.

In the 1963 movie Critic’s Choice, Hope teamed up with Ball again. He portrays a New York City theater critic with a son, bordering on adolescence but wiser than his years, from his first marriage to an actress whom he recently panned. Ball plays his second wife, an aspiring playwright. One scene has a father-son baseball game with Hope playing second base. During Major League Baseball’s Centennial in 1969, Chrysler bought space for print advertisements and put its most famous spokesman in cartoon form, wearing his Indians uniform with a question mark in place of a number. Hope has a dialogue bubble: “Make a hit with the whole family…with a new car from Chrysler Corporation.”26 Elsewhere in the ad are players and an umpire touting Chrysler’s array of models: Plymouth, Dodge, Imperial, Simca, Sunbeam, and, of course, Chrysler. Just a few months before, Hope’s ownership concern in the Indians teetered towards a sale when the comedian considered buying the second incarnation of the Washington Senators (1961-1971). The purchase, which had a reported price tag of $10.5 million,27 would have required Hope to sever his ten percent ownership in his hometown nine. Hope did not exercise his option. “I am still interested in buying the team, but we have to work out a few things.”28 Bob Short, a politically-connected businessman and treasurer of the Democratic National Committee, bought the team for $9 million29 and kept the Senators inside the Beltway for three seasons, then moved to the Lone Star State as the Texas Rangers.

Hope’s baseball connection furthered in the 1978 NBC special Bob Hope’s All-Star Comedy Salute to the 75th Anniversary of the World Series featuring baseball-themed comedy sketches, film clips, and one-liners. The roster of guests is a Who’s Who of late 1970s stardom: Cheryl Tiegs, Billy Martin, Glen Campbell, Charo, Kermit the Frog and Miss Piggy, and Steve Martin, who was just beginning his ascent to icon status. ABC sportscaster Howard Cosell crossed the invisible boundary separating networks to appear on the program.30

Danny Kaye, himself a part-owner of the Seattle Mariners, joins Hope as an informal co-host. Film clips include Hope’s live appearances with Vida Blue and Johnny Bench; the song “Nobody Does It Better” as a backdrop for a baseball bloopers montage; and a 1963 segment showcasing Don Drysdale, Sandy Koufax, and Tommy Davis after their four-game sweep of the Yankees in the World Series. The trio wears white tie and tails, banters with Hope, and sings custom-made lyrics of “We’re in the Money.”

Though his connection to baseball was formidable, Hope became synonymous with golf. The Palm Springs Desert Classic, which originated in 1952 as the Thunderbird Invitational Pro-Am, changed its name to the geographical moniker in 1959, then in 1965 to the Bob Hope Desert Classic. In 2019, he became one of three inaugural members of the tournament’s Hall of Fame, along with Arnold Palmer — who won the tournament five times — and original tournament board member Ernie Dunlevie.31 Such was Hope’s imprint on the game that he was inducted into the World Golf Hall of Fame in 1983. “I couldn’t believe it when they notified me,” said Hope two years later. “It was almost like inducting John McEnroe into the Diplomatic Hall of Fame. I’ve done about as much for golf as Truman Capote has for sumo wrestling.”32 It was a remark typical of Hope’s self-deprecating humor, but nonetheless a false one. Hope incorporated golf into the nation’s zeitgeist for a post-World War II generation elevated by well-earned prosperity and hungry for middle-class leisure. It was common for Hope to brandish a golf club during his dozens of USO performances for soldiers overseas. “He brought it to mainstream,” said Tiger Woods. “He brought it to the masses. I think with their affiliation together, Arnold [Palmer] as well as Bob, they did a tremendous job of doing that. It couldn’t have happened at a better time in popularizing our game.”33

At the age of two, Woods met Hope in a foreshadowing of the former’s excellence. Earl Woods brought his son to The Mike Douglas Show, where Tiger showed prowess at hitting a golf ball while most of his peers were mastering blocks.34

“Bob’s favorite sport to watch was golf because he played it,” says Hope’s archivist and producer Jim Hardy, who began working for the comedian in 1986 and continues preserving his entertainment archives. “He always carved out time on the weekends. Bob’s favorite athlete was Arnold Palmer because he was the first pro golfer that he really forged a friendship with. Arnold had a great sense of humor, too. He would needle Bob after a putt missed the hole. But Bob’s favorite event that he attended was the 1948 World Series. When he was a kid in Cleveland, he watched games through the fence. His favorite player was Tris Speaker.

“Bob had a genuine admiration for what athletes do and it was clear in his performances with them. Audiences really responded to that. You can’t fake it. There was a time when we didn’t know anything about our sports heroes. Bob brought them to a national audience through radio and television so they could show their humor and personality. They also went with him on goodwill trips to visit military bases, where Bob had a great relationship with military personnel. He cared about the soldiers and they knew it.”35

Hope’s specials with NBC were a television staple in the latter half of the 20th century,and the sporting world was a cornerstone for comedy. Just a few samples: Bob Hope’s Stand Up and Cheer for the National Football League’s 60th Year. Bob Hope’s All-Star Super Bowl Party. The Bob Hope Special: The Opening of the New Madison Square Garden. After the 1968 Tigers-Cardinals World Series, Hope brought the season’s leading pitchers, Denny McLain (31-6) and Bob Gibson (1.12 ERA), on The Bob Hope Show.36 His last special was in 1996 — Laughing with the Presidents.

Honors for Hope include cargo ship USNS Bob Hope; Air Force plane The Spirit of Bob Hope; Bob Hope Airport in Burbank; Bob Hope Patriotic Hall in Los Angeles; Bob Hope Drive in Burbank and Rancho Mirage; the Congressional Gold Medal; Kennedy Center Honors; Presidential Medal of Freedom; and Department of Defense Medal for Distinguished Public Service. Though he had the comportment required to dine, joke, and golf with heads of state, it seems that Bob Hope was most comfortable when he performed, whether at a military base in Da Nang or an NBC studio in Burbank.

Hope passed away on July 27, 2003, survived by his wife, Dolores, and four children — Kelly, Nora, Linda, and Tony. The Hopes adopted the children and were surrogate parents to Tracey Shor, the youngest child of legendary restaurateur Toots Shor and his wife, Marion.

One thought develops when coming across clips of his performances from newsreels, radio, movies, live performances, or television shows: thanks for the memories, Bob.

Acknowledgments

This biography was reviewed by Phil Williams and Norman Macht and fact-checked by Alan Cohen.

Notes

1 Jack Corrigan, telephone interview with writer, December 23, 2018.

2 Carl T. Felker, “Contacted Last Year on Deal for Indians, Hope Discloses,” The Sporting News, July 10, 1946: 11.

3 Felker

4 Hal Lebovitz, “Derrick Hurler? Wait — Let’s Have Board Vote on It,” The Sporting News, March 23, 1963: 1.

5 “Baseball’s Bustin’ Out All Over,” Paramount News, 1947.

6 “Indians In Arizona,” Warner Pathe News, 1949.

7 Jack Olsen, “Hope: All Kinds of a Nut About Sports,” Sports Illustrated, June 3, 1963, 66.

8 The Dick Cavett Show, ABC, October 4, 1972.

9 Cavett

10 John Lahr, “The C.E.O. of Comedy,” The New Yorker, December 21, 1998, 68.

11 Brooks Atkinson, “The Play: Fashions for Women in a Musical Comedy by Jerome Kern and Otto Harbach,” New York Times, November 20, 1933: 18.

12 “The Premiere,” Brooklyn Citizen, November 20, 1933: 14.

13 Burns Mantle, “‘Roberta,’ With Handsome Gowns and Tunes,” Daily News (New York), November 20, 1933: 34.

14 Art Arthur, “Reverting to Type,” Brooklyn Daily Eagle, December 18, 1933: 13.

15 The Bob Hope Show, NBC (radio), March 3, 1942.

16 The Bob Hope Show, NBC (radio), March 11, 1941

17 The Bob Hope Show, NBC (radio), March 21, 1950.

18 First Broadcast, KTLA, January 22, 1947.

19 Jim Hardy, telephone interview with writer, June 21, 2019.

20 The Odd Couple, “The Hollywood Story,” ABC, October 3, 1974, Hal Goldman and Al Gordon.

21 I Love Lucy, “Lucy and Bob Hope,” CBS, October 1, 1956, Madelyn Davis, Bob Carroll, Jr., Bob Schiller, Bob Weiskopf. (An entire season of I Love Lucy was set in Hollywood, where she had hilarious encounters with entertainment’s elite, including John Wayne, Harpo Marx, and William Holden.)

22 I Love Lucy, “Lucy Visits Grauman’s,” CBS, October 3, 1955, Jess Oppenheimer, Madelyn Pugh, Bob Carroll, Jr., Bob Schiller, Bob Weiskopf; I Love Lucy, “Lucy and John Wayne,” CBS, October 10, 1955, Jess Oppenheimer, Madelyn Pugh, Bob Carroll, Jr., Bob Schiller, Bob Weiskopf.

23 I Love Lucy, “Lucy and Harpo Marx,” CBS, May 9, 1955, Jess Oppenheimer, Madelyn Davis, Bob Carroll, Jr.

24 I Love Lucy, “Hollywood at Last,” CBS, February 7, 1955, Jess Oppenheimer, Madelyn Pugh, Bob Carroll, Jr.

25 The Bob Hope Show, NBC, October 21, 1956, Mort Lachman, Bill Larkin, Charles Lee, John Rapp, Lester A. White.

26 Print advertisement, Chrysler Corporation, 1969.

27 Shirley Povich, “Bob Hope Enters Bidding for Nats,” Washington Post, November 7, 1968: L1.

28 Shirley Povich, “Senators’ Sale, Price Lower, Tips Toward Short,” Washington Post, November 22, 1968: D1.

29 Shirley Povich, “Senators Are Sold To Short,” Washington Post, December 4, 1968: A1.

30 Bob Hope’s All-Star Comedy Salute to the 75th Anniversary of the World Series, NBC, October 15, 1978.

31 Larry Bohannan, “Bob Hope, Arnold Palmer headline inaugural Desert Classic Hall of Fame Class,” Palm Springs Desert Sun, https://www.desertsun.com/story/sports/golf/careerbuilder/2019/01/15/pga-tour-desert-classic-names-bob-hope-arnold-palmer-ernie-dunlevie-hall-fame/2553935002/, January 15, 2019.

32 Dave Anderson, “Bob Hope a Maestro With Golf, Guffaws,” Palm Beach Post, January 13, 1985: 475.

33 100 Years of Hope and Humor, NBC, April 20, 2003, Linda Hope and Steve Feld.

34 The Mike Douglas Show, Syndicated, October 6, 1978.

35 Jim Hardy, telephone interview with writer.

36 The Bob Hope Show, NBC, October 14, 1968.