Ainsmith’s parents were both born in Russia, the father in the mid-1840s and the mother in 1855. They sailed from Bremen, Germany, to New York in June 1894. The family also went by the last name of Ainsworth (the un-Anglicized surname is not known). William, a shoemaker,1 and Hannah, who also went by Anna, raised three sons. Eddie Ainsmith, the middle son, was born on February 4, 1890, in Russia but grew up in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

“Until 1905, Ainsmith was an outfielder. The following year he began to catch for a semipro team.”2 Ainsmith “attracted attention of scouts while … playing with the Holy Name Society team in Cambridge,”3 although he went to high school at Colby Academy in New London, New Hampshire.4

After stints in Toronto and Jersey City in the Eastern League, he played three seasons in the New England League for two Massachusetts teams located in nearby cities: namely, Lawrence and Lowell. Ainsmith battled arbiters, ballplayers, fans, and strangers. With Lawrence, he served an “indefinite suspension on account of … trouble with an umpire.” 5

The scant statistical record from Ainsmith’s 1909 and 1910 seasons shows that he batted .240. Washington signed the catcher, whom one report mischaracterized before he played in the American League as “some batsmith … said to train in the .300 class.”6

This evaluation of his offensive prowess was greatly exaggerated, but Ainsmith’s troubles with authority figures in the minors proved portentous. He did not immediately report to Washington because of “a mix-up with [Lawrence] Manager [Jimmy] Bannon, [who] announced that Ainsmith will neither be allowed to play again [in 1910] nor to join Washington until the New England League season’s close.”7

Ainsmith’s apology and a payment of at least $2,500 got the suspension lifted.8 He debuted on August 9, 1910, in the first game of a doubleheader against a formidable foe, albeit one past his peak: Cy Young, then aged 43. Ainsmith tripled for his first hit; he also made an error as Cleveland stole five bases, including two by Nap Lajoie. A game recap nevertheless noted his powerful arm, reporting that he must have “been winning prizes … for putting the shot and hurling the discus.”9

During his first home game, “in the first inning, he threw out Ty Cobb trying to steal and in the second cracked out a hit, scoring the first Washington run.”10 The following day, Ainsmith threw out all six Tigers who tried to steal and had three hits.11 “Three times Ty tried to play horse with him on the bases, and in every instance Ty was nipped.”12

Jimmy McAleer, who managed Ainsmith in 1910 and 1911, lauded his young catcher. “Sometimes that boy makes me think more of ‘Buck’ Ewing as far as his throwing is concerned,” said McAleer one day. 13

After almost one month as teammates, Ainsworth, as a defensive replacement, on September 7 caught Walter Johnson for the first time. “Johnson slacked his speed when Ainsmith went in, pitching a game entirely different from that he had shown while [Henry] Beck[endorf] was working. He did not know how Ainsmith would handle him. The younger catcher seemed fully competent.”14 After this promising start, Ainsmith was “elected to handle Johnson [in 1911] … in practically all his games, if they work together as well as they did last fall.”15

Johnson made 666 starts in his career; Ainsmith caught 210, one and one-half times more than any other receiver (Muddy Ruel had 139). Of Johnson’s 110 shutouts, Ainsmith again far outpaced the field by catching 48 (Gabby Street followed with 17).16

One month into his career, Ainsmith had held his own with Johnson and against Cobb and Lajoie, three American League giants. A Boston Globe account quoted Philadelphia manager Connie Mack, whose team won its first World Series in 1910. It described Ainsmith as “one of the sweetest in the business. ‘I don’t understand,’ [Mack] adds, ‘how the young fellow escaped my scouts last season.’”17

This praise notwithstanding, Ainsmith’s time in Washington was stagnant offensively – his production never approached league average:

• 1910: 53 OPS+
• 1911: 55
• 1912: 61
• 1913: 60
• 1914: 60
• 1915: 58
• 1916: 33
• 1917: 66
• 1918: 80
• Average: 62 OPS+

In 1911, Ainsmith hurt his ankle in May and missed about 10 days.18 He then got spiked in June, which kept him out another 20 days.19

In 1912, Ainsmith had an opportunity to catch a plurality of games for the first time after Washington traded Street, but confessed, “I ought to be glad and yet I’m sad. The trade … sends away a great catcher, and a grand fellow… At the same time, his departure gives me a better chance to show.”20

Ainsmith had an uneven season. In August, “he took one of Johnson’s fast pitches on the bare hand.”21 Fortunately, he missed only a few days.

In early September, a banquet in his honor took place when Washington visited Boston. Johnson, manager Clark Griffith, and Cambridge Mayor J. Edward Barry attended the soirée, which attracted 200 people. Ainsmith “could say but little. ‘My heart is bubbling over with deep feelings for the friends at home. This has left a deep impression upon me. It is the happiest moment of my career. I thank you,’ he said.”22

The next day, Ainsmith caught Johnson in an arranged showdown between the Big Train (28-11) and Smoky Joe Wood (29-4). Earlier in the season, Johnson had set the AL record with 16 straight wins; Wood took the mound with an extant streak of 13. Ainsmith fanned twice, walked once, and sacrificed. He threw out Tris Speaker, the only runner who attempted a steal. Johnson yielded five hits, one walk, and one run. Ainsmith came up with two outs in the ninth with a runner on second. With the chance to play the hero in a city next to his hometown, he struck out swinging as Washington lost 1-0.

Ainsmith did not appear in a game after the memorable September 6 contest. After the Boston game, he “sat in a draft, and … his neck was stiff and his back sore.”23 He ended up in Georgetown University Hospital for a few weeks.24 Thus, he revamped his offseason workout schedule. Rather than playing basketball in Cambridge, he went to Texas.25

Ainsmith’s offseason profoundly changed his personal life. “I am in the pink of condition now,” he said. “I have been living in the open … and regained my strength by roaming … in search of game … I had a pack mule and a horse… I killed most of my food, and … not with a stone either.”26

Even so, in 1913, he had another poor year at the plate. After the season, Lajoie observed, “Ainsmith couldn’t hit a low ball with a shovel, but he would probably bat .400 if served balls around his shoulders continually.”27

His struggles on offense notwithstanding, Ainsmith supported Johnson as the ace had his best year, going 36-7 with a 1.14 ERA.28 After Johnson beat the defending world champion Red Sox on July 3 in a 1-0, 15-inning battle in Boston, Ainsmith observed, “I have never seen Walter hop through them as he did … When he struck out [Larry] Gardner, it was practically impossible to follow the ball…. His speed was so great that one of the balls … struck me on the chest directly over the heart. It came near knocking me out.”29

Ainsmith showed his own speed in 1913 as well, leading teammate Ray Morgan to nickname him Deerfoot.30 After notching nine steals in his first 155 games over three years, he set a career high with 17 in 84 games. The mark set an American League record for a catcher, albeit one that did not last long — both Ray Schalk31 (24) and Ed Sweeney (19) bettered it in 1914. Ainsmith’s 86 steals rank seventh among Deadball Era backstops.32

On January 2, 1914, Ainsmith married Julia Pauline Bate, “a popular young society girl of [San Antonio]. She has known Ainsmith but two years, meeting him during … 1912 when he was down [in Texas] in search of health.”33

Domestic bliss did not soothe his temper in 1914. Calling balls and strikes in an exhibition game against the Braves, he clashed with the irascible Johnny Evers. Following the contest, Evers refused to apologize to Ainsmith and then, sensibly, declined to fight someone two inches taller and 55 pounds heavier. Instead, Boston first baseman Charles Schmidt, four inches taller and 15 pounds heavier than Ainsmith, “was bold enough to accept the challenge, throwing in a few uncomplimentary remarks as emphasis. Ainsmith made for him, grabbing him by the throat and sending a stiff blow to his jaw.”34

Evers won the 1914 NL Chalmers Award (while setting a career high in ejections) in his last championship campaign.35 Schmidt had his best season. By contrast, Ainsmith struggled again. A broken bone in his wrist cost him more than one month of the 1914 season.36 Less than two months after returning, on July 30 he bumped umpire Jack Sheridan, who ejected the player. After a fan yelled at Ainsmith, he “jumped into the stand and blows were exchanged. Catcher [John] Henry attempted to pull Ainsmith from the stand and a chair thrown … struck Henry on the head. The crowd … rushed on the field.”37 The Washington Post’s Stanley T. Milliken both blamed and partially exonerated Ainsmith, noting that a fan “called Ainsmith a name that no one with any courage will stand for … Ainsmith … was at fault, yet there are times when one loses his head in cases of this kind.”38

American League President Ban Johnson called Ainsmith “cowardly” and suspended him. 39  Griffith stood by his player, at least somewhat, saying, “Ainsmith … is a hotheaded fellow, who lost control of himself… he did wrong, but his action was not half so bad as many … believe.”40 Ainsmith missed a fortnight of games after the fight.

Julia gave birth to Ann Katherine on January 27, 1915. “She’s going to be great company for her mother when I’m on the road,” Ainsmith told [The Post]. “She sure is a great kid, and I’m the proudest and happiest man in Washington.”41

Fatherhood, too, failed to soften Ainsmith: days into the 1915 season, he received an assault charge and a sentence of 30 days in jail after an encounter with a stranger. Ainsmith appealed and paid $300 bail for his freedom.42 He escaped with a $50 fine, probation for a year, and a judicial lecture: “You have got to stop picking quarrels,” [the judge] said to the able mitt artist, “because such conduct will not meet with leniency in the future. The assault was unprovoked, vicious in its tendencies, and to some extent cruel.”43

Ainsmith missed the first eight games of 1916 after suffering “eye trouble for several months.”44 Despite his pugilistic personality and poor production at the plate, he remained admired. A writeup after his 1916 debut declared, “Ainsmith showed … his old-time skill, which makes him one of the greatest backstops of all times.”45

Straining to see, Ainsmith slugged a career-worst .210 in 1916. Yet he confidently predicted his walk-off extra-base hit in the 12th inning of a July 22 game against the White Sox: “‘I am going to win this ball game for you, Grif.’ These were the words of … Ainsmith as he left the dugout… Just where the Nationals’ catcher got his hunch is not known, but he … caught one of [Reb] Russell’s curves and sent it to left center. [Patsy] Gharrity was on first at the time with one down. He scored.”46

Ainsmith suffered another finger injury about one month later.47 As a result, he played just once from August 24 through October 1.

Poor vision still hampered Ainsmith in 1917.48 Nevertheless, he served as the lone observer of “what writer Joe Williams dubbed ‘the Louis-Schmeling fight of baseball….’ After [a spring training] game, [Buck] Herzog challenged Cobb to a fight. They met in Cobb’s hotel room, with … only Eddie Ainsmith present as the third man.”49

Ainsmith’s final Washington campaign proved unexpectedly challenging. On July 4, he mourned his wife, who died at the tender age of 23 “after a long illness.”50 Eddie would later marry Loretta Brady.

One week after Julia’s death, the District of Columbia ordered Ainsmith to quit baseball and either engage in a useful occupation related to the World War I effort or enter the military draft.51 An appeal to Secretary of War Newton Baker sought to keep players from having to comply.52 Baker rejected the argument and deemed baseball a non-essential occupation.53 Rather than ending the season in mid-July, as first feared, baseball truncated its schedule by about a month but still played the full World Series.

Ainsmith went to Baltimore for the offseason and worked as a ship builder.54 His older brother Frederick, born on May 25, 1888, was wounded while serving in the U.S. Army.55 They also had a brother named Fritz, born in 1892, who built pianos.56

In 1918, Ainsmith had slugged more than .300 for the first time in his career and edged closer to average offensive production. Even so, on January 17, 1919, Washington traded him, “in part because of negative fan reaction … to what was seen by some as a reluctance to do his patriotic duty.”57 Ainsmith went to Detroit as part of a three-way deal also involving Boston. He spent parts of three seasons with the Tigers and blossomed at first; in 1919 he set career highs in plate appearances (422), triples (12), walks (45), on base percentage (.354), and OPS+ (115).

Before the trade, Washington had 17 more wins than Detroit in 1918; in 1919, Detroit had 24 more wins than Washington. The Nationals gave up on infielder Hal Janvrin, the key player they received in the trade, by shipping him to Buffalo of the International League on August 25, 1919.

Over the medium term, the trade worked out wonderfully for Washington because Buffalo exchanged Bucky Harris for Janvrin. In 1922 and 1923, Harris received MVP votes. As a player-manager, Harris took the 1924 Senators to a World Series title and the 1925 team to the AL pennant. In 1975, he won induction into the Baseball Hall of Fame.

In the short term, “Ainsmith was one of the main cogs in the Michigan machine” in 1919.58 In 1920, though, his production on offense was akin to his first six undistinguished Washington campaigns. He improved in 1921, but the Tigers released the 31-year-old catcher on July 25. Ainsmith had served as a bridge between Detroit backstops Oscar Stanage (1909-1920) and Johnny Bassler (1921-1927).

Ainsmith ended up with the Cardinals to back up Verne Clemons, who batted .320. In 1922, however, Clemons struggled, posting an Ainsmith-like 63 OPS+ and dealing with a hand injury.59 Ainsmith capitalized on this opportunity for increased playing time: he established career highs in at-bats (379), runs (46), and hits (111). Surprisingly, he hit 13 homers – the lion’s share of his 22 in the majors. Other personal bests included his marks in RBIs (59), batting average (.293), slugging percentage (.454), and OPS (.797).

Ainsmith played his typical tough defense. Facing Brooklyn, he “blocked Hank De Berry [sic] off the plate in the third inning before receiving the ball … Ainsmith was standing with his right foot on the pan and his left leg toward third base, leaving no opening for De Berry, who did not care to crash into him … Ainsmith received the throw … ran back and tagged De Berry, who had passed the plate.”60

More than two decades later, Ainsmith worked with DeBerry; more than five decades later, Ainsmith called his St. Louis teammate Rogers Hornsby “the greatest to ever play the game.”61

In 1923, Ainsmith regressed. Up until September 1, he did most of the catching but produced less than both Clemons and Harry McCurdy. Two days later, the Cards released him after a “run-in” with manager Branch Rickey.62 The imbroglio continued after the season ended, when Ainsmith petitioned Commissioner Landis for pay withheld by the teetotaling Rickey. The controversy made the front page of The Sporting News. Ainsmith argued, “I want … the money I earned by catching nearly all the games played until Rickey fired me. Do I look like a drunkard? And say, does my record look like I was?”63

Ainsmith had cups of coffee with Brooklyn in 1923 and the Giants in 1924; John McGraw may have answered Ainsmith’s question from the prior season when New York released him on August 20. “Law and order will prevail … or I will dispose of the players who refuse to obey,” said McGraw. “I must win pennants. That’s my job in baseball…. I must have discipline… Each ball player … must refrain from temptations that all good or well-trained athletes keep away from.”64

Long after his career, Ainsmith recalled imbibing with three future Hall of Famers: Harry Heilmann, Babe Ruth, and Bob Meusel. “One night we took the two of them to one of the big breweries in town …” said Ainsmith. “We got back to the hotel in the wee hours of the morning. About 7 a.m., Ruth calls me … and says he wants to go back. Heilmann gets the idea that maybe if we took him back and filled him up some more, he might not be able to play that afternoon…. Ruth showed up … and hit two of the hardest home runs I have ever seen.”65

Ainsmith played for seven minor-league teams in six years from 1925-1930 but maintained a major-league temper. In the Minneapolis 1925 home opener, future NFL Hall of Famer Joe Guyon of Louisville clashed with Johnny Butler of the Millers. “It wasn’t Ainsmith’s fight to start with … Eddie made it his fight … and it was still Edward’s battle at the finish for after mauling Guyon on the field, the Miller catcher followed Guyon under the grandstand and walloped [him] until Josephus conceded defeat.”66

Ainsmith led baseball tours of Japan after the 1924 and 1925 season. Female players made up most of the second team, although Ainsmith and Earl Hamilton, who pitched in 410 games in the majors, formed the battery. As recounted by Barbara Gregorich, the trip ran into financial troubles. Ainsmith came up with sufficient funds so that he and his wife could return home, but he abandoned three of the young female athletes. Their families wired money weeks later, but 16-year-old Leona Kearns washed overboard on the ship home. Ainsmith never publicly discussed his role in the tragedy. Gregorich concluded her damning account thus: “If he ever reflected that he spent his life catching a baseball but dropped the most important pitch, he never told a soul.”67

Ainsmith stayed in the game. Even as an umpire he sought conflict. After a contentions 1936 contest concluded, he “became engaged … with fans… Eddie would stick his chin up close to the fan and then jerk it back as the fellow would swing…. In the meantime fans … swarmed around Ainsmith … Finally … police arrived and broke up the near-riot.”68 Still, the nonpareil Shirley Povich of The Washington Post reported after that season that “Ainsmith will be the next new American League umpire … Ainsmith is regarded as the best umpire in the Southern Association on balls and strikes.”69 Povich subsequently wrote, however, “Umpire In Chief Tommy Connolly scouted [Ainsmith’s] work in the Southern Association … and found his umpiring to be listless.”70

Ainsmith found his way back to the majors by scouting for the Giants. He and DeBerry covered the Middle Atlantic region.71 Seeing Sal Maglie, Ainsmith opined, “He hasn’t much of a curve, but he could develop.”72 He was right: New York signed Maglie, and on the strength of his biting curve, the twirler went 95-42 in seven seasons for the Giants.

Ainsmith served as a pallbearer at Johnson’s funeral in 1946.73 The next year, he managed the Rockford Peaches of the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League. In 1948, he opened the New York School of Baseball, which offered a three-week summer program.74

Loretta Ainsmith, Eddie’s second wife, died on January 10, 1971. Ainsmith’s parents lived long lives. Anna passed in 1936 at the age of about 80, and William four years later at about 95. Longevity ran in the family: Eddie died on September 6, 1981, at the age of 91. His daughter Ann surpassed them all – she was 106 when she died in 2021.

Griffith, Ainsmith’s longtime skipper, praised him highly: “[Bill] Dickey and [Mickey] Cochrane and a lot of other catchers could outhit Ainsmith, but none … could compare with him around the plate. He’d throw out base runners … from his squatting position, or drawing his arm back, and … was unquestionably the fastest catcher in history. And as a plate blocker Ainsmith was great.”75

In 1932, a longtime Washington trainer named Ainsmith the best catcher in team history.76 In 1954, the Washington Chapter of the Baseball Writers’ Association voted Ainsmith the second-best Washington catcher behind Ruel but ahead of Rick Ferrell and Luke Sewell.77

Modern statistical analysis makes these rankings appear dubious. For the time they spent in Washington only, Ferrell’s 9.5 WAR in eight seasons far exceeds Ainsmith’s 2.4 in nine campaigns; Sewell’s 1.8 in two years is more than three times Ainsmith’s per annum total. Yet a Walter Johnson biographer called Ainsmith “badly underrated by those whose opinions are formed entirely by statistical tabulations.”78 Maybe he has received insufficient credit for his impressive baserunning, plate-blocking, and throwing skills. Lack of offense matters, too. On balance, however, Johnson’s ability to dominate with Ainsmith behind the plate highlighted the strengths and shadowed the weaknesses of the catcher’s checkered career.

Acknowledgments

This story was reviewed by Gregory H. Wolf and Rory Costello and fact-checked by Dan Schoenholz.

Photo credit: Eddie Ainsmith, Library of Congress.

Sources

In addition to the sources shown in the Notes, the author used Baseball-Reference.com and Retrosheet.org.

Notes

1 The Cambridge Directory, 1916: 317.

2 Stanley T. Milliken, “Only Five of Nationals’ Players with Club for an Extended Time,” The Washington Post, March 8, 1914: 8.

3 Thomas Kirby, “Figure Only Athletics in Battle for Pennant,” The Washington Post, May 18, 1913: S4.

4 Ford Sawyer, “New Englanders in the Big Leagues,” The Boston Globe, May 29, 1923: 16. Ainsmith scored eight touchdowns in a football game against Kimball Union Academy

5 “Lowell 12, Lawrence 11,” The Boston Globe, May 25, 1910: 6.

6 Paul W. Eaton, “From the Capital,” The Sporting Life, June 18, 1910: 5.

7 “Ainsmith in Bad with Manager; Won’t Let Him Join Washington,” The Washington Post, July 31, 1910: M6.

8 “Delivered to McAleer,” The Boston Globe, August 9, 1910: 7. Another article gives a higher price. “Scout [Mike] Kahoe bought his release from Lawrence for $3800” according to Kirby, “Figure Only Athletics in Battle for Pennant.” Kahoe employed subterfuge to snatch Ainsmith from Pittsburgh. William Peet, “Story of How Kahoe Landed Ainsmith Reads Like a Novel,” The Washington Herald, September 22, 1910: 8.

9 “Nationals Get Even Break in First Cleveland Joust,” The Washington Post, August 10, 1910: 4. The description sounds figurative, but months before this article appeared Ainsmith finished third in a shotput competition with a throw of 38 feet and 11 inches. The Dartmouth, May 17, 1910: 659.

10 “Detroit 8, Washington 3,” The Boston Globe, August 17, 1910: 7. Ainsmith did not score but drove in a run with his hit.

11 “Detroit 4, Washington 2,” The Boston Globe, August 18, 1910: 6.

12 Paul W. Eaton, “From the Capital,” The Sporting Life, August 27, 1910: 7.

13 Untitled and undated clipping from the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum’s file on Ainsmith. Thanks to Hall Reference Librarian Rachel Wells for scanning the file.

14 “Noted of the Nationals,” The Washington Post, September 8, 1910: 8.

15 Joe S. Jackson, “Johnson to the Fore,” The Washington Post, April 15, 1911: 8.

16 Walt Wilson, “Catching Hall of Fame Pitchers: Walter Johnson’s Battery Mates,” batteries.sabr.org/7068.htm (accessed July 9, 2024).

17 “Baseball Notes,” The Boston Globe, September 9, 1910: 6.

18 “Naps Make Five after Chance to Retire Side,” The Washington Post, May 21, 1911: S1.

19 “Highlanders Batter All Pitchers, Downing Nationals in Both Games,” The Washington Post, June 25, 1911: S1.

20 Joe S. Jackson, “Ainsmith First here,” The Washington Post, February 29, 1912: 9.

21 “Williams Only Sound Catcher,” The Washington Post, August 12, 1912: 6.

22 “Flattering Reception to Wee Wee Ainsmith,” The Cambridge Chronicle, September 7, 1912: 6.

23 Joe S. Jackson, “Nationals Find Out That Albany Fans Are Patient,” The Washington Post, September 9, 1912: 6.

24 Joe S. Jackson, “Nationals Almost Sure to Land Second Place,” The Washington Post, September 30, 1912: 8.

25 “Roughing It in Texas Cured Eddie Ainsmith,” The Boston Globe, December 11, 1912: 13.

26 Stanley T. Milliken, “Ainsmith in Town,” The Washington Post, February 25, 1913: 8.

27 Nap Lajoie, “How to Hit the Ball,” The Boston Globe, November 2, 1913: 52.

28 Ainsmith’s chatter distracted hitters. “Eddie should get all the credit for Walter Johnson’s great record. There isn’t a batter in the country who could maintain his mental pulse with the fearful clatter Eddie keeps up behind the plate.” “American League Notes,” The Sporting Life, March 13, 1915: 7.

29 Stanley T. Milliken, “Pitcher Mullin to Go to Minor League Club,” The Washington Post, July 6, 1913: S1.

30 “Nicknames Prevalent Among Ballplayers; Some of Them Are None Too Well Received,” The Washington Post, March 21, 1915: 63.

31 Schalk far outranks Ainsmith both reputationally and statistically, but sportswriters compared them. “They are ranked as the best two catchers in the league.” “Griffith Presents Baseball Outfits,” The Washington Post, August 26, 1917: 33. “Probably [Ainsmith’s] only superior as a backstop in the majors today is Schalk, of the White Sox.” J.V. Fitzgerald, “The Round-Up,” The Washington Post, February 19, 1918: 8.

32 L. Robert Davids, “Catchers as Base Stealers,” 1982 Baseball Research Journal, sabr.org/journal/article/catchers-as-base-stealers/ (accessed July 5, 2024).

33 “Ainsmith Weds Southern Belle,” The Washington Herald, January 3, 1914: 10.

34 Stanley T. Milliken, “Evers’ Vitriolic Words Resented by Ainsmith,” The Washington Post, April 12, 1914: 49.

35 Mark S. Sternman, “The Evers Ejection Record,” The Miracle Braves of 1914 (Phoenix: Society for American Baseball Research, Inc.), 2014: 66-67.

36 Stanley T. Milliken, “Neff, Virginia Shortstop, Is Signed by Nationals,” The Washington Post, May 10, 1914: S1. By the end of 1914, Ainsmith had broken three fingers on his right hand a total of four times. “Impossible to Handle Johnson’s Delivery with Bare Hands, Is Declaration of Henry and Ainsmith, Nationals’ Catchers,” The Washington Post, March 7, 1915: 57.

37 “Morgan Struck by Umpire Sheridan,” The Boston Globe, July 31, 1914: 7.

38 Stanley T. Milliken, “Morgan Assaulted by Umpire Sheridan; Ainsmith Sends Blow to Arbiter’s Jaw, and Later Fells an Insulting Spectator,” The Washington Post, July 31, 1914: 8.

39 “Both Players Suspended,” The Boston Globe, July 31, 1914: 9.

40 Stanley T. Milliken, “Ban Johnson Hides; Silent as to Riot,” The Washington Post, August 1, 1914: 8.

41 Stanley T. Milliken, “Ainsmith Now a Daddy; ‘Stork’ Brings Him Girl,” The Washington Post, January 28, 1915: 8.

42 “Ainsmith Gets 30 Days,” The Washington Post, April 22, 1915: 9.

43 “Ainsmith Clear of Jail,” The Washington Post, April 30, 1915: 14.

44 Stanley T. Milliken, “Athletics’ Team Is Not Weak, But Not Like That of Past,” The Washington Post, April 26, 1916: 8.

45 Stanley T. Milliken, “Johnson Faces Red Sox today; Ruth Most Likely to Oppose,” The Washington Post, April 29, 1916: 8.

46 Stanley T. Milliken, “Ainsmith’s Hit Decides in the Twelfth Inning,” The Washington Post, July 23, 1916: S1.

47 Stanley T. Milliken, “Noted of Nationals,” The Washington Post, August 24, 1916: 6.

48 J.V. Fitzgerald, “The Round-Up,” The Washington Post, March 20, 1918: 10.

49 Gabriel Schechter, “Buck Herzog,” sabr.org/bioproj/person/buck-herzog/ (accessed July 9, 2024).

50 “Eddie Ainsmith’s Wife Dies,” The Washington Post, July 5, 1918: 9.

51 “Ainsmith Appeal to Be Test Case,” The Washington Post, July 12, 1918: 8.

52 “Baseball’s Fate in Baker’s Hands,” The Washington Post, July 13, 1918: 8.

53 J.V. Fitzgerald, “Baseball Players Must Work or Fight, Baker Rules, Dooming National Sport,” The Washington Post, July 20, 1918: 8.

54 J.V. Fitzgerald, “The Round-Up,” The Washington Post, September 2, 1918: 6.

55 “Wounded Slightly,” The Boston Globe, November 3, 1918: 17.

56 The Cambridge Directory, 1927: 96.

57 Bill James, The Baseball Book 1990 (New York: Willard Books, 1990), 195.

58 “Jennings on Hand to Greet Recruits,” The Sporting News, February 26, 1920: 5.

59 “Forces Bulk of Work on Eddie Ainsmith,” The Washington Post, June 29, 1922: 17.

60 “Robins Bow to Cards, 4-1,” New York Tribune, July 11, 1922: 12.

61 Bob Chick, “Lang Field: Nostalgia Revisited,” Fort Lauderdale News and Sun-Sentinel, March 18, 1972: 1C.

62 “Eddie Ainsmith Signed by McGraw,” (Brooklyn) Times Union, November 16, 1923: 18.

63 “Troubles of Eddie Make Quite a Story,” The Sporting News, December 6, 1923: 1.

64 “McGraw Swings Ax on Erring Giants,” The Boston Globe, August 21, 1924: 9.

65 Ray Boetel, “An Oldtimer Can Remember Having a Beer with Babe,” Fort Lauderdale News and Sun-Sentinel, February 8, 1976: 8D.

66 “Ainsmith’s Fistic Triumph Over Guyton Features Kels’ 10 to 1 Win,” The Minneapolis Morning Tribune, April 30, 1925: 21.

67 Barbara Gregorich, “Dropping the Pitch: Leona Kearns, Eddie Ainsmith and the Philadelphia Bobbies,” The National Pastime: From Swampoodle to South Philly, 2013. Thanks to Gregorich for her email informing me that she donated her research files to the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum. Thanks to the Hall’s Library Director Cassidy Lent for scanning two folders from the Gregorich files.

68 Bob Wilson, “Sport Talk,” The Knoxville News-Sentinel, June 15, 1936: 10.

69 Shirley Povich, “This Morning …” The Washington Post, December 22, 1936: X23. The column title and the quotation both have ellipses.

70 Shirley Povich, “This Morning,” The Washington Post, March 15, 1938: X17.

71 “Ainsmith, Now Giant Scout, Praises Hoyas’ Sophomore,” The Washington Post, April 12, 1939: 17.

72 James D. Szalontai, Close Shave: The Life and Times of Baseball’s Sal Maglie (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, 2002), 26.

73 Shirley Povich, The Washington Senators (Kent, Ohio: The Kent State University Press, 2010), 224.

74 “Eddie Ainsmith to Head Diamond School in N.Y.,” The Sporting News, April 21, 1948: 30.

75 Shirley Povich, “This Morning …” The Washington Post, January 12, 1937: 15. To Griffith’s point, Ainsmith had a career mark of .232 in more than 3,000 big-league at-bats.

76 “Martin’s All-Time, All-Star Team Picks Johnson, Harris,” The Washington Post, March 6, 1932: 13, 16.

77 “Breakdown on Washington All-Time Team Balloting,” The Sporting News, January 6, 1954: 17.

78 Jack Kavanagh, Walter Johnson: A Life (South Bend, Indiana: Diamond Communications, Inc., 1995), 47.

The best defense for expending time and effort on documenting the life of Izzy Goldstein is summarized by Rob Edelman in the Jewish Daily Standard:

A one-sentence summation of the life of Izzy Goldstein reflects the American-Jewish experience: He was born in 1908 in Odessa, pitched in 16 games for the 1932 Detroit Tigers and died in 1993 in Delray Beach, Fla.

If anything, however, Edelman undersells the Jewish-American universality of Goldstein’s life. Both the life and career of Izzy Goldstein symbolize a certain facet of the American-Jewish experience, of course, but Goldstein’s life says so much more. As a Jew, his experiences provide examples of the power of baseball to bring ethnic minorities into mainstream culture. As an immigrant, Goldstein’s life shows the power of baseball’s Americanizing influence. Furthermore, as a fringe player, Izzy’s ‘cup of coffee’ career provides a sample of the lives of the majority of major league ballplayers

It is Izzy Goldstein’s commonness that tells us about both baseball and America. The “great men” of the baseball world remain immutable, their memories persisting through countless biographical examinations and re-examinations. History is made from the ground up, however, as greatness can only emerge once a proletarian base, composed of an anonymous many, defines the “normal.” While his frequent teammate Hank Greenberg provides an inspiring look at the individual as superstar and Jewish-American idol, Goldstein’s life is a meditation on the American Jew and the baseball everyman.

The circumstances of Izzy’s birth provide an important context for the Goldstein family’s immigration to America. At the turn of the twentieth century, Odessa, the metropolis of current-day Ukraine, had a substantial population of 449,673. Of that total, 133,000 (30%) were Jewish. Sensing a threat from the sizeable minority, Russian Tsar Alexander III introduced the May Laws in May 1882. This system of discriminatory policies created quotas on Jewish education and professional development, ensuring a ghettoized lifestyle for most of the country’s Jewish population.

Alexander III’s policies provided adequate push factors for the area’s Jews, as a period of mass emigration followed both the May Laws and the continuing practice of pogroms in the region. It is a testament to the universality of Goldstein’s condition that he was not the first Odessa-born Jew to play professional baseball. Before the Goldstein family emigrated, the families of Bill Cristall (b. 1875) of the Cleveland Blues and Reuben Ewing (b. 1899) of the St. Louis Cardinals had also left the Ukraine to escape religious persecution. Cristall, Ewing, and Goldstein remain the only native Ukrainians to play in the Major Leagues.

The circumstances of Goldstein’s early life are unclear. Little has been written about Izzy’s parents, William and Ida, nor does there exist much writing on his two siblings, whose names do not exist in the public record. In fact, Izzy’s own birth date is contestable, as baseball historians claim his birth was June 6, 1908, while his army enlistment records claim he was born a year earlier. Goldstein’s pre-American identity is likely lost to history, a condition Jewish-American turn-of-the-century writers Abraham Cahan and Mary Antin called an important aspect of Jewish immigrant identity.

Goldstein’s family lived in the predominantly Jewish Soundview neighborhood in the Bronx, New York. Izzy’s life comes into focus around 1920, when he entered high school. Goldstein flubbed his first attempt at high school at George Washington High. Breaking from the Jewish immigrant stereotype, he was both inept and disinterested in school. This led Goldstein, who was a well-established local baseball player, to drop out of school and join a local semipro baseball team in an effort to jump-start a professional career. Since he was too young and inexperienced to make baseball his career, this ill-advised move was doomed to failure from the start.

With his professional career floundering and the James Monroe High baseball team in need of a pitcher, Izzy decided to give high school another try. Tom Elliffe, the James Monroe baseball coach, was ambitious enough to try to lure Izzy back to school, feeling a desperate need for a pitcher to boost his team’s already considerable success. Treating the high school as if it were merely a bureaucratic hurdle, Elliffe and Goldstein brokered a deal that made Izzy the team’s star pitcher in exchange for members of the team doing his homework and taking his tests. Izzy re-enrolled in high school, joining future Hall of Fame slugger Hank Greenberg (who lived a few doors down from Izzy) as a core member of the team. Elliffe’s gambit paid off, as Goldstein, Greenberg, and the rest of the team made it all the way to the city finals, though they ultimately lost 4-1 at the Polo Grounds. Izzy picked up the loss.

After the tournament, Goldstein dropped out of the eleventh grade for the second time. A year after his ill-fated attempt at semipro ball, he decided to give a pro career another try. Goldstein, a right-handed, six-foot, 160-pound fireballer, appeared to have the right makeup this time, becoming a star on the Sea Cliff team that played out of Long Island.

Word of mouth about the talented youngster from Soundview quickly spread throughout the neighborhood as Izzy steamrolled his competition. He spent only a brief time toiling in semipro ball before he signed with the Detroit Tigers organization, beginning his professional career in earnest. Before the start of the 1928 season, Goldstein was sent to the Wheeling Stogies of the Class C Mid-Atlantic League. He displayed remarkable prowess in West Virginia, finishing with a 12-9 record and a 3.61 ERA.

The Tigers were impressed and promoted Goldstein to their Class B team in Illinois the next year. Goldstein’s success with the Evansville Hubs of the Three-I League in 1929—a 12-8 record with a 2.74 ERA—should probably have been enough to get him promoted to the Class A team in Beaumont. The Tigers decided to keep Goldstein in Evansville for another year, however. Izzy finished the 1930 season with another strong showing, compiling a 14-11 record and a 3.52 ERA.

A possible reason for Goldstein’s additional year in Evansville may be that he was pitching in the shadow of future all star Whitlow Wyatt. Despite his considerable success in 1929, Izzy’s numbers were not as gaudy as Wyatt’s 22-6 record and 3.04 earned run average. While the two pitchers ended up sharing the same locker room a number of times, first in Evansville (1929), and then in Beaumont (1931) and Detroit (1932), their professional careers were a study in contrasts. For the rest of Goldstein’s career, Wyatt would serve as a natural comparison, the contrast between the fringe player and the star.

Izzy’s 1931 season began with the Class AA Los Angeles Angels of the Pacific Coast League. Before he got a chance to pitch on the West Coast, though, he was once again on the move. Goldstein spent almost the entirety of the season with the Class A Beaumont Exporters of the Texas League. This was an important move that brought him back in contact with his old high school acquaintance Hank Greenberg and introduced him to future star pitcher Schoolboy Rowe.

In Texas Goldstein once again rose to the occasion. Showing that he was evolving as a pitcher, Izzy put up almost the same numbers with Beaumont as he had with the lower-level teams, collecting a 16-11 record and a 3.58 ERA. After four seasons of solid performances, the Detroit Tigers front office could not overlook Izzy much longer.

In 1932 the Tigers acknowledged Izzy’s talents with an invitation to spring training. It quickly became clear that the Tigers were not inviting him simply to fill out the ranks, but rather were hoping Izzy could win a spot on the big club’s pitching staff. He took a major step toward this end on March 16 when he teamed with veteran starter Vic Sorrell to beat the Oakland Oaks of the Pacific Coast League. Goldstein came into the game in the sixth inning and promptly loaded the bases, only to get out of the inning without surrendering run. Izzy breezed through the rest of the game and the Sorrell-Goldstein three-hit shutout gave Goldstein his first hint of big league recognition.

Despite a strong showing in spring training, the Tigers sent Goldstein back to Beaumont to start the season. Not usually one to put up gaudy numbers, Izzy pitched like a man possessed, going 6-1 with a 1.58 ERA. This success led to his promotion to the Tigers in April. Izzy made his major league debut at Navin Field in Detroit on April 24, 1930.

Exactly one month later Izzy picked up his first win in the big leagues. At Navin Field, he started against the St. Louis Browns. Likely interested in seeing what Izzy could provide as a starter, Tigers manager Bucky Harris left him in the game for seven and one-third innings, in spite of the five runs and ten hits he surrendered. Whitlow Wyatt was brought in to finish the game, helping Izzy top the Browns’ Dick Coffman and attain his first career win.

Though Goldstein had secured a “W,” his performance didn’t indicate that the kid from Odessa had big league talent. A little more than a month after his first win, Izzy pitched the game of his life, perhaps trying to show his real talents. On June 27 the Tigers took on the White Sox and Harris handed the ball to Izzy. Goldstein responded with a thrilling outing, displaying both undeniable talent and unnerving wildness. The Tigers beat the White Sox 9 to 3 behind Izzy’s complete game, as he allowed three earned runs on just five hits, though he also walked five and hit two White Sox batters. Unfortunately, his breakout game showed both his strengths and weaknesses, including a propensity for walks, wild pitches, and hitting batters.

Izzy’s finest major league outing would also be his last. He was permanently demoted following the win. Goldstein’s final statistics with the Tigers are an interesting smattering of the good and the bad. In 16 games, including six starts, he went 3-2, throwing two complete games and finishing six others. Though his 4.47 ERA was marginally better than the league average and his .294 batting average (5 for 17) showed considerable talent, Izzy’s skills were not fully harnessed. He gave up 63 hits and 41 walks for an ugly 1.846 WHIP, and he accrued only 14 strikeouts over 56 1/3 innings.

Goldstein finished up the 1932 season with the Class AA Toronto Maple Leafs of the International League, a spell that signaled the beginning of the end of his career. Suffering a major arm injury late in the 1932 season, Goldstein turned in a lackluster 1933 season with the Maple Leafs, going 9-7 with a 4.17 ERA. It is hard to say what proportion of Izzy’s worst season in pro ball can be attributed to his injury. It is tempting to believe his regression in Toronto was a combination of the physical and mental.

Izzy came to the conclusion that the 1933 season had been his last in professional baseball. He soon became dissatisfied with his choice and decided to attempt a return to baseball. Given his track record of minor league success, the Tigers invited Goldstein to spring training in Florida the next year, though Izzy found his residual arm troubles made a comeback all but impossible. While being technically demoted to the ClassAA Montreal Royals of the International League, Goldstein never pitched for them, deciding instead to retire for good.

Despite his arm woes and the crushing end of his once-promising career, Izzy returned to playing in the semipro leagues of New York. Unable to pitch regularly, he played as an outfielder, since he had always been an excellent hitter. From 1934 to 1938 Izzy stoked his passion for baseball by playing with the Bushwicks, the Carltons, and the Bay City Parkways.

With the end of the 1938 semipro season, Goldstein retired from baseball. On April 6 of that year he had received his official release from the Detroit Tigers, severing his ties to major league baseball. Goldstein hung up his spikes and began working in a men’s wear retail business in New York City. Though he came to the field later than the many Jewish immigrants of his generation who dominated the business, Goldstein’s career selling men’s clothing once again firmly places him within the Jewish immigrant experience.

Izzy spent the next five years selling men’s wear. With the outbreak of World War II and the onset of the draft, however, he left his new career. The thirty-six year old Goldstein was drafted on September 4, 1943. Single and without dependents, he was sent to the dangerous South Pacific theater of the war, serving there from 1943 to 1945. With the end of the Second World War, Goldstein returned to America and slipped back into his pre-war life in the clothing business.

Though Goldstein’s maturation was slow, his life after the war was that of a responsible adult and citizen. Gone was the rash youth who twice dropped out of school. Over the next thirty years, until 1975, Izzy continued working in men’s wear, retiring at the age of 68. Like so many Jewish immigrants of his and later generations, Izzy moved with his wife, Caroline Levine, to Florida to escape the bitter winters of the Northeast.

Izzy retired to anonymity until 1985, when Erwin Lynn interviewed him for The Jewish Baseball Hall of Fame: A Who’s Who of Baseball Stars. With a rising interest in social histories of sport, Izzy had become a notable figure for Lynn and others who wished to document the history of Jewish baseball players. Recovering from open heart surgery and a stroke, Izzy reminisced for Lynn’s book, clearly missing the game he was now fifty-two years removed from. He ended his interview by humbly noting that, at the age of seventy-seven, “it is flattering that people still remember.”

On September 24, 1993, Goldstein passed away at Delray Beach, Florida, at the age of 86. He was buried at the Jewish Eternal Light Memorial Gardens in Boynton Beach, Florida. The world barely noticed Izzy’s passing, for the world acknowledges its heroes and villains upon their death. Rarely does it mourn the passing of the everyman.

Sources

Boxerman, Burton A. Jews and Baseball: Volume I: Entering the American Mainstream, 1871-1948. New York: McFarland & Company, 2006.

Edelman, Rob. “Holtzman, Ginsberg and Epstein Back at Bat.” http://www.forward.com/articles/5189/

Filichia, Peter. Professional Baseball Franchises: From the Abbeville Athletics to the Zanesville Indians. New York: Facts On File, 1993.

Horvitz, Peter S., and Joachim Horvitz. The Big Book of Jewish Baseball. New York:

S.P.I. Books, 2001.

Lynn, Erwin. The Jewish Baseball Hall of Fame: A Who’s Who of Baseball Stars. New York: Shapolsky Publishers, Inc, 1986.

Talbot, Gayle. “Gomez Proves His Worth to Yankee Club,” Jefferson City Post-Tribune, May 25, 1932.

Baseball Cube website. http://www.thebaseballcube.com/

Baseball-Reference website. http://www.baseball-reference.com/

BR Bullpen website. http://www.baseball-reference.com/bullpen/Main_Page

JewishEncyclopedia.com. http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/view.jsp?artid=289&letter=M

New York Times archives.

Online 1911 Encyclopedia Brittanica. http://encyclopedia.jrank.org/

Online World War II Indexes and Records. http://www.militaryindexes.com/worldwartwo/

Retrosheet website. http://www.retrosheet.org/

SABR BioProject. http://bioproj.sabr.org/bioproj.cfm?a=v&bid=702&pid=0

Western New England College. (http://mars.wnec.edu/~grempel/courses/russia/lectures/23rev1905.html.

Yivo Institute For Jewish Research. http://www.yivo.org/downloads/Pogroms.pdf

Born Leonard Kopeliovitch in an apartment near Red Square in post-revolutionary Moscow, Koppett was the grandson of a prosperous cannery owner from the Crimean city of Kerch.1 His father, David, a trained musician, had been a prisoner of war in Hungary during the First World War. Afterward he worked for Amtorg Trading Corporation, the Soviet foreign trade office, which in 1927 sent him to New York City. His wife, Marya, followed a year later with five-year- old Leonard. They stayed in America when deadly political purges back home made it too dangerous to return to Russia. The Koppetts reentered the United States from Mexico in 1933 to comply with immigration quotas and later became naturalized citizens.

David Kopeliovitch found work in the New York food industry. His son remembered his parents later as the “ultimate assimilated, cosmopolitan Jews.”2 Young Lenny loved sports and the piano, but had too few gifts for the former and too little discipline for the latter. When he was nine years old the family lived on 157th Street, a block east of Yankee Stadium. He once met Babe Ruth, but glimpsed his own future among “some extremely non-athletic-looking middle-aged men” he saw leaving the ballpark toting black boxes containing typewriters. In his 2003 memoir, Koppett wrote, “As a small but literate person, I knew I’d like to make a living by writing—it involved no heavy lifting—and that the only way a writer gets paid every week is to work for a newspaper. It added up.”3

Lenny became a first-rate student at the prestigious Polytechnic Preparatory Country Day School in Brooklyn. After graduating in 1940, he entered Columbia University in Morningside Heights, where he was an editor on the student newspaper, the Columbia Spectator. The paper published his first baseball story, in March 1941, under the byline Len Kopeliovitch. “Spring training is wonderful,” it began. “Although Columbia’s baseball players don’t get a trip to the Sunny South, Torrid Texas, or Clammy California, they do take spring training in the nonchalant, leisurely manner which is the best professional style.”4

Koppett also dove into broadcasting for the student-run campus radio station, CURC (Columbia University Radio Club), which later became WKCR. “Our first spoken program, I believe, was a nightly 15-minute sports report organized by Bill Levinson, a junior, and me, a freshman,” he recalled decades later. “We were offshoots of the Spectator staff, with no radio experience or skills. But dealing only with Columbia activities, we had exclusivity and inside dope.”5

His Americanization was nearly complete one night when at CURC he met Vic Zaro, captain-elect of the wrestling team, whose parents were both Russian. “Zaro spoke fluent Russian, and Lenny couldn’t speak a word of it!” the Spectator reported. “Vic has studied Russian in school, while Lenny dropped it the minute he learned to speak English.”6 Even so, a transplanted New Yorker who knew him a quarter-century later in California joked that although Koppett had been born in Moscow, “no one who knows him has ever suspected it was the one in Idaho.”7

Koppett worked as a student stringer for New York newspapers and occasionally got a mention from sports columnists, such as Hugh Fullerton Jr.’s lighthearted item in October 1942 about “our new Columbia star, Len Kopeliovich [sic] … He started running in a compulsory physical education class last year. Now he has come out for track and says the only reason is that he wants to beat [record-breaking Swedish runner] Gunder Haegg. That’s why they call him a promising miler.”8

With America fighting in World War II, Koppett entered the army in March 1943. Standing five feet, five inches and weighing 129 pounds, he was hardly prime material for the infantry.9 The army assigned him instead to the Army Air Forces. Columbia football coach Lou Little got a laugh later that year from a tongue-in-cheek scouting report the new soldier sent him during training at another, unnamed college. “Both guards pull out on deep reverses and the center has a weakness for stepping into gopher holes,” Koppett wrote. “But the morale of the student body is good.” He signed his missive “Sneak-and-Peak Kopeliovitch, an old reconnaissance man.”10

Koppett received language and logistics training at posts around the United States. Sent overseas in summer 1944, he served as a private first class in the 42nd Air Depot Group, an element of the Ninth Air Force, in England, France, and Germany. That December the unit’s football team faced off in snowy Paris with the powerful and heavily favored Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force (SHAEF) team. The scoreless game went into a sudden-death overtime—unheard of at the time—which the underdogs won. Koppett later described the upset in a letter to a sports-editor friend at the New York Herald Tribune.

By the time he was discharged following 33 months in the army, Lenny Kopeliovitch had become Leonard J. Koppett. He returned to Columbia in spring 1946 to finish a final semester for his degree, although he is always listed as Class of ’44. Afterward he worked briefly as what the Spectator called “Sports Publicity’s inimitable purveyor of facts and figures.”11 Koppett then began covering sports for three major metropolitan newspapers in succession: New York Herald Tribune, 1948 — 1954; New York Post, 1954 — 63; and New York Times, 1963 — 1978. He also contributed to The Sporting News (1965 — 1984), Sports Illustrated, Saturday Evening Post, and other top national magazines. The baseball diamond especially attracted him.

“Koppett knew the whole history of baseball,” columnist Tom FitzGerald later recalled. “From the late ’40s on, he practically lived it. He covered the Yankees of Joe DiMaggio and Mickey Mantle.”12 Koppett likewise chronicled the Dodgers and Giants before their departure to the West Coast, and the bumbling new Mets afterward. He also covered established teams and new arrivals in the other major sports: the football Giants and Jets, the basketball Knicks and Nets, the hockey Rangers and Islanders, as well as New York college athletics.

The sportswriter continued flashing his dry wit, as in a 1950 profile of former pitcher Hal Schumacher, a scourge of National League hitters for 13 seasons. “But now, less than four years after his last appearance in a New York Giant uniform, Hal is the batter’s best friend, and it is his former colleagues, the pitchers, who bitterly resent his appearance,” 26-year-old Koppett wrote. “For Prince Hal has turned traitor. He sells bats.”13

Koppett witnessed and reported on a golden age of New York baseball. He was an official scorer at Yankees, Dodgers, Giants, and Mets home games from 1954 through 1972. He saw Bobby Thomson’s “Shot Heard ’round the World” at the Polo Grounds in 1951 and covered Don Larsen’s perfect Game Five at Yankee Stadium during the 1956 World Series.

He also understood sports’ failures. During the 1958 World Series at Yankee Stadium he saw Norm Siebern misjudge three fly balls in left field during a 3 — 0 Game Four loss to Milwaukee. Manager Casey Stengel afterward replaced Siebern with Elston Howard. Koppett noticed the crushed young outfielder trying to slip unnoticed from the clubhouse following New York’s Game Five victory and stepped over for a quiet word. “I want to tell you, Norm, that yesterday when we came in to interview you after the game you acted like a champ,” Koppett said. “That’s the only word I can think of. A champ.”14

As a beat writer and columnist, Koppett often looked beyond the games and the players to the big time business of sports. “Pay-as-you-watch television is still the basic reason the Dodgers are going to Los Angeles and taking the Giants to San Francisco,” he wrote in 1957. “That’s why the meeting yesterday between Mayor [Robert] Wagner and Owners Walter O’Malley and Horace Stoneham produced nothing. There was nothing that could be produced there.”15

Now and then he also wrote just as crisply about classical music. “Two works composed 325 years apart, hard to classify, seldom heard, made a perfect match at Philharmonic Hall last night as The Concert Opera Association, directed by Thomas Scherman, gave the first of the four programs it has scheduled for this season,” he wrote in 1962 of compositions by Igor Stravinsky and Claudio Monteverdi.16

Shifting from the ethereal to the punishing, Koppett was one of only three sportswriters (out of 46 polled) to rightly predict the outcome of the Sonny Liston-Cassius Clay fight February 25, 1964, in Miami. The following week he and Newsday’s Bob Waters appeared on the TV show I’ve Got a Secret, their secret being that they’d picked Clay (later Muhammad Ali) to upset the heavyweight champion.

That spring Koppett married Suzanne Silberstein of Pittsburgh at the Harmonie Club in New York, Earl Wilson noting the April 24 event with a three-dot item in his popular syndicated column.17 The couple had met several years earlier while Suzanne was a graduate student. By the time they exchanged vows, she held a master’s degree from Columbia and was a member of the English department faculty at Hofstra College. The Koppetts would have two children, David and Katherine.

While covering the sports beat Koppett developed unique ways of viewing statistics. In spring 1965, for instance, he offered some “inconsequential but possibly amusing” figures about the inept young Mets. “The toughest town for the Mets has been Los Angeles; three won, twenty-four lost for .111,” he wrote. “But the toughest state is Pennsylvania, where the Mets are 5-22 in Philadelphia, 4-23 in Pittsburgh and 0-1 in Williamsport, for a .164 average.”18 (The Mets had lost an exhibition game in Williamsport to their AA affiliate that season.)

The Times featured Koppett and other top writers in print ads extolling the Gray Lady’s baseball coverage as 1966 spring training approached. “Every winter, Len Koppett combines his interest in the history of baseball (he reports that the Russians did not invent the game) and his love of music to help create a theatrical extravaganza for the annual Baseball Writers’ dinner,” the ad noted. “Then he heads for Fort Lauderdale to write for your entertainment.”19

Koppett’s book, A Thinking Man’s Guide to Baseball, published in 1967, became a classic. (He would change Man’s to Fan’s for later editions). “I hesitate to say that this is the best book on baseball I ever read,” wrote Times colleague Arthur Daley. “But I can’t remember ever reading a better one.”20 Baseball entrepreneur Bill Veeck praised the book’s broad range and its appeal to both fans who cared about the game’s intricacies and to those who didn’t. “But the best chapter, worth the entire price, is devoted to the duties, responsibilities, and powers of a manager,” Veeck wrote. “Whether it be strategy, gamesmanship, discipline or leadership, Koppett’s exposition makes such sense that it should become a standard reference for every real or imagined manager in the land.”21

The sportswriter became known for amiably arguing either side of an issue, and he didn’t hesitate to knock down even his own theories, as he would do in a 1978 Sporting News column about a seeming connection between the stock market and the Super Bowl. Koppett pointed out that after the first 11 Super Bowls, the market rose for the year when an original National Football League team won; conversely, it finished lower whenever an American Football League team won. And in baseball, he added, during 12 of the 15 baseball seasons since 1963, the market fell for the year whenever major league batting averages went up, and vice versa. Koppett offered no explanation for the market-football correlation, but speculated that when moneyed ballplayers invested in stocks, they concentrated more at the plate when the market was down.

What did it all mean? “Absolutely nothing on any rational level … To use sports statistics constructively, you must never lose sight of that possible error,” Koppett wrote. “Some sets of numbers do prove something, others don’t prove but suggest and others create misleading similarities. Statistics, always, are the starting point of an investigation, not the conclusion.”22 His Super Bowl theory nonetheless still resurfaces every football season.

Viewing stats in new ways didn’t always endear him to more established writers. Koppett once entered a press box in New York (accounts vary, some saying Ebbets Field and others Yankee Stadium) toting his ever-present briefcase. Veteran columnist Jimmy Cannon glanced up and asked, “Whatcha got inside, Lenny—decimal points?”23 American sportswriters, including Koppett, repeated the tale for decades. “What I do is entirely cerebral, but it’s not creative cerebral, it’s reportorially cerebral,” Koppett later explained.24

In 1973 he convinced his Times to relocate him to the West Coast as a sports correspondent, the paper’s first on that side of the country. “My greatest professional achievement is persuading The New York Times to send me to California,” he joked.25 Settling in Palo Alto, home of Stanford University, Koppett remained the knowledgeable Puck of professional and college sports. He ordered vanity license plates for his car: KF79. In football lore, this was the name of the touchdown play his alma mater used to beat Stanford 7 — 0 in the 1934 Rose Bowl. “Some Stanford grad, class of ’34, watching me drive by, is going to have a heart attack,” the Columbia grad said with a laugh.26

Koppett was now a rotund little man with an odd resemblance to fictional spymaster George Smiley. David Burgin was the notoriously fiery editor-in-chief of the Palo Alto-based Peninsula Times-Tribune, which served the bedroom communities between San Francisco and San Jose. Burgin had a gift for hiring young up-and-coming journalists, including two future Pulitzer Prize winners.27 He equally appreciated old pros like Koppett, who left the Times in 1978 to get off the road and work from home as a freelancer.

Burgin convinced Koppett to come to the Times-Tribune in 1979 as a columnist and executive sports editor. They were an odder couple than Oscar Madison and Felix Unger, but their collaboration worked. When Burgin suggested the sportswriter as his successor as the paper’s editor in 1982, Koppett assumed the helm of the suburban daily.

“He was ever the student and the professor and the rabbi,” sportswriter-turned-political writer Steve Daley recalled of Koppett. Daley once bumped into him in London, leaving St. Martin-in-the-Fields on Trafalgar Square. “He’d been at a midday orchestral performance and was as giddy as if he’d been at a Yankees-Red Sox double-header.”28 Editor emeritus when the peninsula paper closed in 1993, Koppett afterward became an occasional columnist for the Oakland Tribune.

Koppett’s 17 books primarily dealt with baseball and basketball. He always kept the fan foremost in mind. “Every player, in his secret heart, wants to manage someday,” he observed in Thinking Man’s Guide. “Every fan, in the privacy of his mind, already does.”29 While still at the Times-Tribune he finished Sports Illusion, Sports Reality, which addressed what he called “the essential nature of the commodity a sports promoter has to sell. An illusion. Specifically, the illusion that the result of a game matters.”30

In 1992 Koppett received the J.G. Taylor Spink Award from the National Baseball Hall of Fame. In a brief acceptance speech he said baseball had given him “endless enjoyment from childhood on.” But he worried that younger baseball pros weren’t having as much fun in the game, perhaps because they took themselves too seriously. It was only the work, he said—“writing for us, playing for the players”—that had to be taken seriously. “If everyone concerned could lighten up a little bit these days, and not feel so uptight and self-important so much of the time, all of us might be better off,” he said, faintly smiling to cheers from the crowd.31

His influence on younger sportswriters and statisticians was evident with the 1993 publication of his book on baseball’s top managers, The Man in the Dugout. “Koppett is a seminal figure in recent baseball nonfiction,” said a Washington Post reviewer, “an incisive analyst whose seriousness and intelligence have inspired a whole generation of baseball writers, spawning such varied but indispensable phenomena as the Elias folks, Bill James and (although Koppett probably would rather be spared the credit) sabermetrics.”32

James, the father of sabermetrics, had a complicated relationship with the sportswriter. He dedicated his book 1984 Baseball Abstract in part to Koppett. But in a long review of The Man in the Dugout, while praising Koppett’s style and breadth of knowledge, he wished that the man he’d admired a decade earlier had written it. “His unbroken focus on what is changing within the baseball world makes that world seem like an underground continent, dark and self-contained,” James wrote. “Nothing seems to have changed between 1916 and 1960 except that the farm systems grew up and the number of home runs increased.”33

High honors continued for Koppett following Cooperstown. He received the Curt Gowdy Media Award from the Basketball Hall of Fame in 1994 and was posthumously inducted into the International Jewish Sports Hall of Fame in 2011. Columbia posthumously named him one of its 250 greatest alumni in 2004 (#156). In 2019 Koppett was named a Henry Chadwick Award winner by the Society for American Baseball Research (SABR).

Koppett was a longtime member of SABR’s Lefty O’Doul (Bay Area) Chapter and a frequent and popular speaker at its meetings.34 He and sportswriter Mark Purdy are credited with naming the water beyond the AT&T Stadium right-field wall “McCovey Cove” for San Francisco Giants slugger Willie McCovey.35

The acclaimed sportswriter and author died suddenly of a heart attack June 22, 2003, while attending a concert at Davies Symphony Hall in San Francisco. His daughter gave birth to his first grandchild the next day. Leonard Koppett was 79.

“I believe he would insist, in keeping with his love of great music and literature and for journalistic detail and for baseball, that we note here that the concert he was attending the day of his death began a Wagner and Weill festival,” Burgin wrote. “And that’s Richard Wagner, not Honus.”36

Acknowledgments

This biography was reviewed by Rory Costello and Jan Finkel and fact-checked by Steve Ferenchick.

Sources

The author also consulted Baseball-Reference.com. He worked with and for Leonard Koppett while reporting for the Peninsula Times-Tribune, 1980-1983.

Notes

1 Government and military records and his earliest bylined articles spell Koppett’s original last name “Kopeliovitch,” with a “t,” which is frequently omitted in present-day accounts.

2 Megan McCaslin, “Leonard Koppett,” Palo Alto Weekly, May 1, 1996: https://www.paloaltoonline.com.

3 Leonard Koppett, The Rise and Fall of the Press Box (Toronto: Sport Classic Books, 2003), 53 — 54.

4 Len Kopeliovitch, “Baseball Kept Indoors,” Columbia Spectator, March 20, 1941: 3.

5 Leonard Koppett, “Letters to the Editor: WKCR’s Beginnings,” Columbia College Today, November 2001: http://www.college.columbia.edu.

6 Bill Levinson, On the Sidelines, Columbia Spectator, March 24, 1941: 3. The item was picked up two days later by Herbert Allan, College Sports, New York Post, March 26, 1941: 20.

7 Harry Jupiter, “Thinking Fan’s Guide,” San Francisco Examiner, August 7, 1967: 48.

8 Hugh Fullerton Jr., Sports Round Up, Albany Knickerbocker News, October 30, 1942: B8.

9 Leonard Kopeliovitch WWII Army Enlistment Record, https://www.ancestry.com.

10 Fred Russell, Sideline Sidelights, Nashville Banner, August 3, 1943: 10.

11 Leo Mabel, On the Sidelines, Columbia Spectator, April 29, 1948: 3.

12 Tom FitzGerald, Open Season, San Francisco Chronicle, June 24, 2003: https://www.sfgate.com.

13 Leonard Koppett, “Hal Schumacher subject of Herald Tribune Feature; Sells Bats for Livelihood,” Gloversville (New York) Herald, January 4, 1950: 8. Reprinted from New York Herald Tribune, January 1, 1950.

14 Milton Gross, Speaking Out, New York Post, October 8, 1958: 35.

15 Leonard Koppett, Working Press, New York Post, June 5, 1957: 80.

16 Leonard Koppett, “Monteverdi, Stravinsky Make Perfect Pair,” New York Post, October 23, 1962: 22.

17 Earl Wilson, It Happened Last Night, New York Post, April 24, 1964: 16.

18 Leonard Koppett, “The Old Numbers Game,” New York Times, April 17, 1965: 23.

19 “Jim Roach’s team started spring training at the usual time this year,” advertisement, Tarrytown (New York) Daily News, February 9, 1966: 17.

20 Arthur Daley, Sports of The Times, New York Times, August 21, 1967: 40.

21 Bill Veeck, “Runaway Makes News in National,” Philadelphia Inquirer, August 13, 1967: 11.

22 Leonard Koppett, “Carrying Statistics to Extremes,” The Sporting News, February 11, 1978: 4.

23 David Shaw, “Literacy Finds a Home in Sports Pages,” Los Angeles Times, February 7, 1975: 3.

24 McCaslin, “Leonard Koppett.”

25 McCaslin, “Leonard Koppett.”

26 Murray Olderman, “The Musings of Aging Athletes,” Santa Ana (California) Register, March 24, 1976: E4.

27 Judy Miller led a Miami Herald team that won for investigative reporting in 1999. Chicago Tribune columnist Mary Schmich received the prize for commentary in 2012.

28 Mary Schmich, “Sportswriter’s insight went beyond games,” Chicago Tribune, June 25, 2003: 2-1.

29 Leonard Koppett, A Thinking Man’s Guide to Baseball (New York: Dutton, 1967), 82.

30 Leonard Koppett, Sports Illusion, Sports Reality (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1981), 12.

31 National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum video, “Leonard Koppett 1992 J G Taylor Spink Award Speech,” January 6, 2015: https://www.youtube.com.

32 George Robinson, “Baseball ’93: Let Us Now Praise Famous Managers,” Washington Post, April 4, 1993: WBK1.

33 Bill James, “The Nine-Inning Manager,” New York Times Book Review, April 4, 1993: 22.

34 The article’s fact-checker, a member of the Chapter, affirms Koppett’s popularity and remembers him sharing stories and signing books long after one meeting had ended.

35 Maria Guardado, “The Origins of McCovey Cove, Splash Hits,” MLB News, November 20, 2020: https://www.mlb.com.

36 David Burgin, “A Briefcase of Koppett Treasures,” San Francisco Chronicle, July 7, 2003: https://www.sfgate.com.

Lou Niss was the traveling secretary for the Mets from 1962 through early 1980. He was the first person the team ever hired in its front office.1 Yet his background lay in sportswriting, starting in the 1920s. He became sports editor of the Brooklyn Eagle in 1941, and in 1945 he formed a close long-term working relationship with Branch Rickey – then general manager and part-owner of the Brooklyn Dodgers – as Rickey prepared the way for Jackie Robinson to break the color line. Niss played a vital behind-the-scenes role in this effort that has until now gone largely unnoticed.

After the Eagle folded in 1955, Niss worked as a publicist at Yonkers Raceway. In 1959, Rickey hired Niss to handle public relations for the would-be third major league, the Continental League. When that circuit failed to get off the ground, Niss joined the Mets. He witnessed their rise from comically awful expansion team to World Series champion in 1969, followed by a descent into misery in the late ’70s. Niss died in 1987 – but lived long enough to see the Mets become champs again in 1986.

Lou Niss was born Louis Nisonoff (he had no middle name) on October 5, 1903. His birthplace was Slatvyan, a town near Minsk, the capital city of what is today the republic of Belarus. It was then part of the Russian Empire, and Tsar Nicholas II was the ruler. Slatvyan is no longer visible on today’s maps. Niss’s great-nephew Robert Nisonoff conjectures that it was a shtetl, or small Jewish village, and that it may have been destroyed either by the Nazis or during Stalin’s purges.

Lou’s father, Meyer Nisonoff, had served in the Russian Army as a writer or scribe. He had also been a cantor. Meyer’s wife, Basha, was a homemaker. They had five children, two of whom (both brothers) preceded Lou. Around 1904 or so, Meyer and one brother emigrated to the United States; the wives and children later followed. Lou was very small when he arrived in the U.S., and his two younger sisters were born there. The Nisonoffs first settled in Spotswood, New Jersey but later moved to New York City.2

For a time, Lou attended Flushing High School – near where his future workplace with the Mets, Shea Stadium, would later be built. Niss told in 1972 how his career started. “Then, I figured I knew everything, and I gave up going to school. I’d been fooling around writing stories for some of the local newspapers.”3 According to his retirement press release, he joined the Flushing Times in 1920 and moved to the Brooklyn Times in 1923. When he got the latter job, Niss said, “I was hooked.”4

A different version of the story (one unfamiliar to his family) appeared in May 1958. It said that Niss got a break in 1922 from Garry Schumacher, who later became publicity director for the New York and San Francisco Giants (1946-1971). Schumacher, not even two years older than Niss, was already sports editor of the Brooklyn edition of the New York Journal. He was also said to have hired sportswriter Tom Meany and Ned Irish, who founded the New York Knicks of the NBA, as well as Niss. The trio of youngsters (Irish was then just 17 and still in high school) worked with Jimmy Murphy, who covered scholastic sports for the Brooklyn Eagle for decades.5 Murphy gained notice as the man who recommended Sandy Koufax to the Dodgers.6

At least as early as 1930, Niss covered the “The Daffiness Boys,” as the Dodgers were then known.7 Four years later, Casey Stengel began his storied career as a big-league manager in Brooklyn. He and Niss became friends; they worked together directly when the Mets came into being.

The Daily Times bought out the Brooklyn Standard Union in 1932; the merged paper was renamed the Brooklyn Times Union. Then, in 1937, the Times Union was sold to the Eagle. Niss remained with the organization throughout. “I believe that from the beginning he always wrote under the name Lou Niss,” said his son Michael. The family name was not officially changed from Nisonoff, however, until around 1949, after Mike was born.8

Niss married Hazel Lois Mitchell, who came from the Bay Ridge section of Brooklyn, on September 14, 1938.9 They had three sons. The first two, Robert Jeffrey (“Jeff,” who died in 2011) and Steve, graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy. The third, Mike, went to Northwestern.

Along with baseball, Niss covered the other Brooklyn Dodgers – the football team which played in the NFL from 1930 through 1944 – as well as golf and basketball. Long Island University (located in Brooklyn) was then a national power in college basketball under renowned coach and author Clair Bee.

Niss wrote non-sporting stories too. In January 1941, he interviewed Brooklyn-born war correspondent Quentin Reynolds, who was just back from England and talked about how the British were standing firm against Nazi Germany in World War II.10 After the United States entered the war, Niss served as Brooklyn sports chairman in the drive to sell war bonds. His total of $100 million in sales was his proudest achievement.11 The effort included staging a number of benefit shows at Brooklyn’s Ebbets Field. One such show, on April 13, 1944, featured Frank Sinatra at the height of his early popularity as a singer. Niss later told his son Steve how it happened. An Eagle reporter saw Sinatra in a restaurant; the reporter called Niss and asked if he should approach the star about taking part. Lou was doubtful, but said to ask anyway. Sinatra replied that he had heard about the good work and that he would definitely be there. There was skepticism about whether “The Voice” would really show up, but he did – photos of the day show him wearing a Dodgers cap. It was the only time Niss met Sinatra, but his impressions were very positive.12

Niss also covered boxing at its highest level. On January 9, 1942, at Manhattan’s Madison Square Garden, the great Joe Louis defended his heavyweight title for the 20th time, knocking out Buddy Baer in the first round. The crowd included notables Dan Topping (then owner of the football Dodgers, later co-owner of the Yankees), Larry MacPhail (president and GM of the baseball Dodgers), and Joe DiMaggio. Niss described the bout colorfully: “The Garden was jammed, and the aisles looked as if they had been cut with a carving knife.”13

Previously, in 1941, Niss had succeeded Jimmy Wood as the Eagle’s sports editor (he’d been assistant sports editor for roughly three years). Steve Niss noted how Lou helped at least two future star sportswriters, Red Smith and Dave Anderson. “While working for a paper – in Philadelphia, I believe [the Record] – Red asked for and got an interview with my father. My father told Red that he would not hire him because the Eagle salaries were lower than those of the Manhattan-based papers. If he worked for the Eagle, one of the Manhattan papers would hire him away. So, my dad introduced Red to Max Kase, his good friend who was sports editor of the Journal-American.” Smith joined the New York Herald Tribune in 1945. He and Niss also became very good friends.14

Anderson joined the Eagle as a clerk after graduating from Holy Cross in 1951. Niss hired him for $40 a week.15 Anderson later wrote that a year after he started, “Lou Niss had me covering some New York (baseball) Giants and Yankees games. In May 1953 the Dodgers’ beat writer, Harold C. Burr, broke his hip and all of a sudden I’m covering the Dodgers.”16 Anderson realized that Niss had been grooming him for this contingency.17 He went on to win multiple awards and honors. Steve Niss recalled, “Dave spoke at our father’s funeral and credited him for giving him his start and training him and giving him the tools to become the writer he became.”18

From 1941 through 1955, Niss was chairman of the Brooklyn chapter of the Baseball Writers Association of America. The Dodgers appeared in five World Series during this period, as well as two playoffs for the National League pennant. As BBWAA chapter chairman, Niss handled the press arrangements for those series.19

Niss’s social consciousness was visible when the Dodgers signed Jackie Robinson for their farm team in Montreal in late October 1945. Soon thereafter, Michael Carter, a columnist for The Afro-American, observed that Niss “long ago recommended that colored players start in the minor leagues and work up. Any other technique would alienate white players who had to start that way. Today Lou seems to be justified.”20 Niss has received no mention in the many books that have been published about Robinson, Rickey, and “The Great Experiment.” Yet his son Steve states that, “Next to Rickey, Dad was one of the most important people in this endeavor. He worked very closely with Rickey to insure that when Robinson was brought to the majors, they had done everything possible to make the transition smooth and accepting.” To insure this, Niss spent many hours working with community and church leaders, as well as those within baseball. Without his efforts, it might not have been as successful as it was. 21

Niss also strongly promoted youth sports. He was a regional director of Sports America and an official with the Brooklyn Amateur Baseball Foundation, co-founding a sandlot series called “Brooklyn Against the World” in 1946. His partner in this fundraising effort was Branch Rickey.22 The games were held at Ebbets Field. Originally, Rickey wanted it to be a match of North vs. South, like college football’s Blue-Gray Classic, but Niss said, “No good. The Civil War is over. Let’s make it Brooklyn against the World.” Rickey said, “Your team will get its ears beaten off.” Niss replied, “You underestimate our town.”23

Indeed, in the first series, the Brooklyn team – handpicked by Dodgers scouts and managed by Leo Durocher – took two of three from the “World” squad, which featured young men coming from as far as Hawaii and was managed by George Sisler. Three future big-leaguers took part, including a pitcher from Queens named Ed Ford, who played right field in the second game. The next year, the New York Yankees signed him, and he became known as Whitey Ford. “Brooklyn Against the World” ended after 1950, but overall, it sent eight players to the majors.24

Niss also continued his fundraising on behalf of the Red Cross. One example was the exhibition game between the Montreal Royals and the Dodgers at Ebbets Field on April 10, 1947.25 In the fifth inning of that game came the landmark announcement that Jackie Robinson (playing first base that day for Montreal) was becoming a big-leaguer. Steve Niss fondly remembers frequent visits to the Dodgers clubhouse and conversations with many players. One evening after a game, he also got a ride home with his father, Robinson, and Jackie’s wife Rachel in Jackie’s new Buick convertible. “That was about the trust and relationship Dad had with him and Rachel.”26

Player safety was another concern for Niss, as seen also in 1947. That June, Dodgers star Pete Reiser suffered a concussion in another of his crashes into an outfield wall. While discussing how to prevent such collisions, Niss made a pointed observation: “It seems strange that so many club owners have devoted so much time and expense in rigging fences and moving home plates to accommodate selfish interests.”27

Niss was the featured guest on the Colgate Sports Newsreel radio program in September 1948. This show invited many top-rank celebrities, including Babe Ruth and Frank Sinatra. When Niss chatted with host Bill Stern, they discussed “Brooklyn Against the World.” Niss spoke out in support of the man called “El Cheapo” – “When I say Branch Rickey and generosity, I mean it.” The other topic was the big Dodgers story of the summer, Leo Durocher’s move to the arch-rival Giants.

That November, the Men’s Club of the Infants Home of Brooklyn honored Niss at a sports brunch for his work with the borough’s youth. Emcee Jimmy Murphy introduced many special guests, including Jackie Robinson and Roy Campanella of the Dodgers, Tommy Holmes of the Boston Braves, and George Sisler (then a Dodgers scout).28

The 1949 All-Star Game took place at Ebbets Field, and Niss was one of two assistant official scorers.29 He also did that job in the 1949 World Series, although he protested that he hadn’t done it enough recently to be qualified. Nonetheless, Commissioner Happy Chandler insisted.30

When the Eagle folded during a strike in 1955, Niss went to work for Yonkers Raceway, the harness racing track in Westchester County. He and his family moved to the town of Eastchester, just six miles north. Previously they had lived in Hollis, Queens, but he and Hazel believed that Hollis was no longer a really suitable place to raise children. Lou also needed to shorten his daily drive, but there was a flipside: the Niss family had gone to Ebbets Field frequently before moving but visited seldom after that.31

At Yonkers Raceway, business had been conducted in a questionable way. Niss’s challenge was “to woo and win the goodwill of the community, a monumental task in the face of the inherited accumulation of ill will.” He and management sought to make the track a greater asset to the city and to show it as “a good neighbor who contributes to the life, economy, and prestige of Yonkers.”32 For this work, Niss won an Annual Achievement Award from Public Relations News in 1959.

By early 1957, the Dodgers’ move west loomed. Niss talked about it that April. “If they build him a park seating 60,000, as it appears Los Angeles will, plain economics will force Walter O’Malley to go west, where the Brooks’ stockholders would get rich practically overnight.” Of outmoded Ebbets Field, he said, “People don’t like to go there any more. The park is too difficult to reach from Manhattan and there are too many bad seats. There was a time when an occasional sell-out of 32,000 would stand off stretches of poor attendance, but those days are gone just like the Dodgers seem to be, as far as Brooklyn is concerned. A minimum of 40,000 seats are required now.”

Niss continued, “I’ve often wondered about that widely publicized Brooklyn spirit, and I lived in it for many years. I’d like to have the Brooklyn attendance broken down and find out just what percentage of it comes from Long Island and lower Manhattan. The same thing with the club seat plans. My guess is that not more than half of the attendance comes from Brooklyn. Here’s a club that has lorded it over the National League for 10 years which has to put on all sorts of days and nights to get the attendance up to 1,200,000. O’Malley must wonder what would happen if the Dodgers dropped into the second division.”33

After the Dodgers and Giants announced they were leaving, in late 1957 New York City Mayor Robert Wagner enlisted local lawyer Bill Shea to help fill the void. Shea – for whom Shea Stadium was later named – did so by seeking to launch the Continental League. Branch Rickey was named the league’s president on August 18, 1959.34 The same day, Niss left Yonkers Raceway.35

“There’s no room for pessimists in this organization,” said Niss – described as being as excited as a youngster with a brand new toy – in May 1960. “Everyone connected with the new Continental League, and particularly those associated with the New York club, are convinced that the new major league will succeed. I’m as convinced as Mr. Rickey that eventually there will be room for six major leagues, let alone two. This is progress.”36

Niss continued to wax enthusiastic. “Wonderful people of sport such as Don Grant, Dwight Davis, Jr., Herbert Walker, and Mrs. Charles Payson are equally convinced of the predicted success of the new league. They are not accustomed to failures.”37 Niss later changed his tune regarding M. Donald Grant, who became chairman and minority owner of the Mets – but nobody ever had a bad word about the franchise’s majority owner, warm and motherly Joan Payson.

“This is something I’ve always wanted, something I’ve waited years for,” Niss added proudly. “These are the type of people I’ve always wanted to be associated with. Branch Rickey, in my book, is the greatest man who ever came along in baseball or any other sport for that matter.”38

For almost a year after Rickey came on board, the Continental League negotiated for acceptance with the two existing major leagues. The campaign ended in early August 1960. As Niss said, “What may have appeared to be outright capitulation was nothing more than a clever maneuver in accomplishing the same purpose. It was the easiest and most expedient way out. The eight teams, or franchises, in the proposed Continental League will all eventually be accepted into organized baseball, four now and four in the immediate future.”39

The Mets, of course, were one of the first four expansion teams. Considering Niss’s top-level connections within the franchise, plus his credentials, it made sense that he stayed with the organization. Many stories from 1960 and 1961 list him as its public relations director. For example, during the team’s search for its nickname, Niss said, “This is a decision that cannot be made quickly. After all, this is a name we will have to ‘live’ with. We can’t afford to make a mistake.”40 Niss also helped choose the Mets’ logo; he had the honor of informing cartoonist Ray Gotto that Gotto’s design had won.41

Team president George Weiss hired Tom Meany to do P.R., however, so Niss became traveling secretary.42 He was well suited to his often thankless new role. Art Shamsky, one of the 1969 Mets, explained: “The traveling secretary is always going to be the person taking the blame for just about everything. . .The perfect traveling secretary is a person who can handle the pressure, doesn’t care, and is a little hard of hearing. Lou Niss fit all those criteria.”43

Author Bill Morales described how hard the job was: “The idiosyncratic scheduling created by expansion and coast to coast travel was tiring for everyone involved, from Casey Stengel, to the players, to the harried Lou Niss.”44 Yet Niss remembered that professional conduct was the order of the day. “Even in 1962 when we started we had a good group. The team was inept, but the players were veterans and they acted like a big league club.”45

Niss emphasized team unity, regardless of skin color. When pitchers and catchers reported to spring training in February 1962, there were two African-Americans among them: Al Jackson and Choo-Choo Coleman. Milton Gross of the New York Post wrote, “They are the first Negro players in baseball history to be living and eating at the same hotel with their white teammates at a permanent training base in Florida.” In Gross’s account, they went for a walk after breakfast, and Niss introduced himself, encouraging them to join the rest of the club for the bus ride to the ballpark. Niss said, “We’re all here together. If anything bothers you, tell me. That’s my job. I’m getting paid to see that all the players are comfortable.”46

According to Gross, Jackson said that everything was fine and that things had come a long way since 1947, when Jackie Robinson broke the color line. But another columnist, Steve Jacobson, later heard otherwise. In his book Carrying Jackie’s Torch, Jacobson wrote, “I covered that training camp for Newsday and didn’t recognize until I was told later that, for the black players, being in the Colonial Inn was a mixed blessing at best.” When Jackson checked in, he got a call from the hotel manager, who asked him not to use the bar, the restaurant, and especially not the pool. Niss “raised hell” but to no avail. An uneasy compromise was reached: All the Mets ate in the Colonial’s private dining room and stayed out of the bar.47

In May 1963, the sportswriters covering the Mets threw a dinner party for Niss, who (unsurprisingly) had a good relationship with them. Niss said of his job, “It’s hard work and it’s a challenge, yet at the same time it’s fun.” He added that his newspaper experience helped. “What on the surface might look like an unreasonable request can make full sense to a fellow who was in that business as long as I was.”48

Niss had a superb memory. In 1969, he joined manager Gil Hodges, coaches Rube Walker and Joe Pignatano, general manager Johnny Murphy, and P.R. man Harold Weissman for a round of golf at the Memphis Country Club. They met the club pro, Pat Abbott, and Niss instantly recalled that Abbott had been U.S. Amateur Public Links champion in 1936. He had covered the event for the Eagle and rattled off the details.49

When the Mets won the 1969 World Series, Niss got a ring, which he wore proudly. He spoke highly of Gil Hodges and the tone he set. “When Hodges was managing the club, people knew we were the Mets by the way we acted and the way we dressed. It was all class with jackets and ties.”50

New York sportswriter Leonard Koppett told a story after that World Series. “A full share, supplied by the club in accordance with baseball custom, went to Lou Niss, obliterating a nine-year joke. Back in 1961, when Weiss told Niss that he would henceforth be the road secretary instead of the publicity man, he pointed out to the astonished Niss one advantage the new position would bring. ‘The road secretary, of course,’ Weiss said in all seriousness, ‘gets a full World Series share.’ In all his Yankee years, Weiss had never been associated with a club that failed to finish in the money, so it was, perhaps, a natural observation. But during seven years of finishing ninth or tenth, Niss had been the subject of much teasing on this point.”51

However, the major-league owners decided to cap traveling secretaries’ World Series shares in 1970 – they would no longer be full. The sarcastic New York sportswriter Dick Young said, “Now that it’s up in the big dough, the magnanimous Lords of Baseball are reneging.”52

Easter Sunday 1972 was a sad day in Mets history: Gil Hodges dropped dead of a heart attack after playing golf. Niss was with Hodges and the coaches on the course in West Palm Beach, Florida. “Dad was only riding in the cart and not playing,” said Steve Niss. “We first heard that Gil had died on television and were concerned about how Dad would handle it. He was very close to Gil, as was our family, and he was 68 at the time. We could not reach him. Finally, that evening, one of the coaches, either Rube or Piggy, called to say that they were taking care of Dad and he would be OK. My brother Jeff and I went to Gil’s wake with Dad in Brooklyn and he went to the funeral. There are videos that show him outside.”53

It’s also notable that Niss, on a bet in 1968 with Hodges, kicked a three-pack-a-day smoking habit cold turkey.54 Hodges couldn’t quit altogether, and though he had other cardiac risk factors, that didn’t help matters.

Amusing glimpses of Niss and his duties appeared in The Sporting News. One example came in 1972, when the players perused the menu for their charter flight, part of the itinerary that Niss issued before each road trip. Dominican utilityman Ted Martínez cracked up the team when he shouted, “Hey, Lou. . .when we gonna have rice and beans?”55 Niss issued ballots for menu choices in 1973, and again there was much levity. Gourmet cook Rusty Staub opted for high-end delicacies. Willie Mays voted for soul food.56

New York won the NL pennant again in 1973, despite a mediocre 82-79 record, but lost a hard-fought World Series in seven games to the Oakland A’s. Seven years later, Niss still had bottles of champagne intended for the celebration that never took place.57

On September 29, 1975, Casey Stengel died. “I loved him,” Niss later told Joe Gergen of Long Island’s Newsday. Niss talked about Casey and his favorite adult beverage. “He had a favorite bar in the Netherland Hilton in Cincinnati. He’d sit and drink bourbon old-fashioneds at this one spot. When he died, I was in Cincinnati. I walked into the bar just before it closed and told the bartender to put a bourbon old-fashioned in the spot where he sat and not to let anyone touch it. I told him if it was gone in the morning, I’d know there was a hereafter.”58

Joan Payson died just five days after Stengel’s death. Hard times ensued for the Mets. The team eked out a decent record in 1976 but then finished last for three straight years. It was their bleakest period in terms of attendance, and Niss laid the blame squarely on M. Donald Grant. “Grant took the Mets apart as if it were a deliberate move on his part. Piece by piece and player by player he ruined the club.”59

At the end of May 1979, Niss missed his first road trip in his time with the Mets. P.R. director Arthur Richman stepped in for the nine-day swing. “Just another of the Mets’ economy moves,” said New York beat writer Jack Lang, who sniped at the club’s penny-pinching in that era.60

Shortly before the 1979 season ended, Niss announced his retirement, effective the following January 2.61 Age (nearly 76) and the demands of his job were the major reasons – player attitudes had worsened. He said, however, “If you don’t let all this roll off your back, it will drive you crazy.” Niss finished training his successor, Art Richman, and then returned to his home in Eastchester. There he contemplated writing a book about his time with the Mets, to be titled “The Team That Didn’t Cost a Nickel and Wouldn’t Spend a Dime.” Niss said, “I don’t know if I’ll ever publish the book. Maybe I’ll only write it for myself. But it is something I need to do.”62 Decades later, though, Mike Niss reviewed his father’s papers and found insufficient output.63

A group led by Nelson Doubleday bought the Mets in early 1980. The new regime soon hired Frank Cashen as general manager, and the club began to climb back to respectability. Niss “was thrilled to see the improvement after the dismal late ’70s,” said his son Mike, “but probably impatient that it took a while.”64

Niss was still with the Mets during the 1980 exhibition season, and he threw out the first ball that Opening Day. Joe Gergen described how Lou was “still bouncing around in a manner Stengel loved to imitate. The fans cheered and the scoreboard saluted him.” Gergen also told a story featuring Niss and Fred Wilpon, then president and 5% owner of the team. Two decades before, Wilpon had been a salesman. He walked into the Mets office and offered a deal on a copying machine. Noticing how small the staff was, he asked Niss if they wanted help. They did, and so Fred’s wife, Judy Wilpon, worked with the Mets too for a little while in their earliest days.65

After retiring, Niss still got back to Shea often. Though he and Frank Cashen had long been acquainted, after the latter joined the Mets, “they became very close,” said Steve Niss. “They spent quite a bit of time together sharing insights. Frank and his wife Jean lived down the road from Eastchester in Bronxville. Many times Dad and Frank drove into or back from the stadium together.”66

“At some point Dad was not comfortable driving at night,” said Mike Niss. “He would take the train/subway in on occasion – a bit of a schlep from Eastchester – and hang out in the press box. Sometimes he’d catch a ride home.” Another person who gave Niss lifts was Mike Torrez, who pitched for the Mets in 1983 and part of 1984. Torrez then lived in White Plains, somewhat further north.67

The Mets established a Hall of Fame for their franchise in 1981. According to his family, Niss was to be inducted in 1985, but the club decided against it. It was a big disappointment to Lou.

During the National League Championship Series between the Mets and Houston Astros in 1986, Niss was back in the news. That October 14, Nolan Ryan started Game Five of the NLCS for the Astros in New York. Exactly 17 years before, Ryan – then a Met – had made the only World Series appearance of his long career, and it was also at Shea Stadium. Niss told a nice story about Ryan and his wife, Ruth.

“I was getting off an elevator the other day, and this beautiful blonde gives me a kiss and says, ‘Mr. Niss, don’t you remember me?’ I said, ‘Of course I remember you, Ruth.’ Let me tell you something about Nolan. He was one of the few players who wrote me a thank-you note after he left. [Jerry] Koosman. [Tom] Seaver. A few others. And Nolan wrote me right away.”68

Niss also attended some of the Mets’ home games in the 1986 World Series, and he rejoiced in the team’s exciting triumph. However, his health had begun to deteriorate that fall. “Dad would return home from the World Series games exhausted,” said Steve Niss. “He would come to our home and could hardly stay awake.” In general, Lou had been remarkably healthy his whole life, other than cataracts and hearing aids. Soon after the World Series, though, he was admitted to New York’s Roosevelt Hospital. He was diagnosed with vasculitis, an inflammation of the arteries to the body’s primary organs. He fought bravely but never recovered.69

Lou Niss – “one of the most amiable and least flappable men in baseball”70 – died on April 30, 1987. He was survived until October 1991 by his wife, Hazel. Both are buried in Greenwood Union Cemetery in Rye, New York.

Acknowledgments

Grateful acknowledgment to the following members of Lou Niss’s family for their help: Steve and Mike Niss (sons), Nancy Giganti (granddaughter), Robert Nisonoff (great-nephew – his grandfather was Morris Nisonoff, one of Lou’s older brothers).

Thanks also to SABR member Alan Cohen for his input on the “Brooklyn Against the World” series.

Sources

Internet resources

Lou Niss entry in the Bill Shannon Biographical Dictionary of New York Sports, located on the New-York Historical Society website (http://sports.nyhistory.org/lou-niss/)

Bill Stern Sports Newsreel (http://www.radioechoes.com/bill-stern-sports-newsreel)

ultimatemets.com

fultonhistory.com (online repository of New York State newspapers)

boxrec.com

Notes

It is highly probable that no professional baseball player — from any era, country or league — ever lived a more erratic, dramatic, and in the end tragic life than did the pitcher today known to the game’s history connoisseurs as Victor Starffin. He is the sport’s only hall-of-fame legend born in the unlikely baseball breeding grounds of the Russian Urals; he wove his diamond legacy in the unlikely setting of pre-World War II Japan; his family history would in the end contain enough political and criminal intrigue to spice the pages of a classic novel penned by Dostoevsky or Tolstoy; his own personal character flaws and his adopted country’s remarkable xenophobia conspired to produce one of the most rapid and dramatic tumbles from grace suffered by any renowned star athlete. Author Richard Puff was hardly guilty of exaggeration when he suggested that the Russian-born immigrant turned Japanese pitching hero lived a life fit for a Hollywood script and also amassed mound statistics appropriate for enshrinement in Cooperstown.1

Starffin would play a pivotal role in early Japanese experiments with professional baseball and it was only one of the many ironies attached to his unlikely career that Japan’s first great diamond star would not be a native-born son but rather a fortuitous foreign import. Japanese professional baseball history from its earliest years in the 1930s through the dawn of the 21st century has been vividly colored by deep-seated racism, and that fact alone makes Victor Starffin’s rise to prominence all that much more remarkable. Many of Japan’s greatest ballplayers have in fact been drawn from immigrant Korean and Chinese (especially Taiwanese) stock, yet none of the best imports have ever played on an equal footing with more celebrated natives. The island nation’s most recognizable slugging hero, Sadaharu Oh — perhaps the single Japanese diamond star best known to North American fans — found his own career marred from beginning to end by the subtle and all-pervasive Nippon brand of xenophobic prejudice. 2

Despite its prewar successes, the Japanese professional game only surged to real prominence in the aftermath of the Second World War when retired or fading North American big leaguers began to be recruited by the Land of the Rising Sun in a concerted nationalistic effort to elevate the still-inferior local game to coveted major-league standards. But the Japanese have always been zealously proud of their untainted national heritage — a fact only enhanced by the wartime defeats of the 1940s — and “foreigners,” or Gaijin, have never found the going easy in Japan. The same cold-shouldered treatment plaguing early American imports like Don Newcombe, Daryl Spencer, Don Blasingame, and Hawaiian-born Wally Yonamine had already had a telling effect on the career of immigrant star pitcher Victor Starffin more than a decade and a half earlier.

Historian and recognized Japanese baseball authority Robert Whiting has written extensively about the often largely negative Gaijin experience and its roots in the insipient racism at the core of the Japanese national pastime.3 This was a sullied tradition that went back to the earliest years of Japanese professional baseball, the first noteworthy instance occurring in the league’s second full season of 1938 when the spring-session MVP trophy was handed to unheralded Tokyo Senators infielder Hisanori Karita. Hisanori had posted rather modest offensive numbers while playing for the circuit’s worst club, yet he was nonetheless selected for the postseason honor over the league’s top two white stars — Starffin (who led in pitching wins) and American recruit Harris McGaillard (the home-run champ and one of the league’s best hitters). It was only a sign of things to come since runaway Japanese nationalism would surge during the coming war years and then became perhaps even more intense in the aftermath of World War II military defeats (in the mid-’40s) and also during a decade of embarrassing American government occupation (throughout the late ’40s and early ’50s).

Often Japanese-born stars hailing from immigrant families have had to hide their true family backgrounds, sometimes going to great lengths to conceal family roots as the offspring of Korean- or Chinese-born mothers or fathers. The most notable case is that of Japan’s greatest diamond legend, Sadaharu Oh (son of a native Taiwanese shopkeeper) who as a teenager had already been banned from accompanying his high-school club to a wildly popular annual national schoolboy tournament.4 Once fully established in the professional ranks with the Yomiuri Giants as the Central League’s greatest slugging star of the 1960s and 1970s, Oh was cheered across the nation for remarkable batting feats that led not only to rewriting the Japanese record books but also to numerous Yomiuri pennant victories; yet at the same time Oh was never the recipient of the same level of hero worship as that bestowed upon his more popular native-born teammate and heavy-hitting third baseman, Shireo Nagashima.

The most long-suffering Gaijin ballplayers of course were the imported Americans, many of whom were themselves largely to blame for a public unpopularity brought on by their shoddy performances, inability to match unrealistic expectations (automatically attached to them as one-time big leaguers), or stark refusals to adopt to the differing ways of Japanese baseball. Flaky if charismatic ex-Yankee first baseman Joe Pepitone was perhaps the classic case of “the ugly American” phenomenon; recruited at the start of the 1973 season by the Yakult Swallows (for the then-lofty sum of $150,000) Pepitone was a giant bust, displaying arrogance by refusing to accept Japanese standards off the field and providing little return for the club’s investment during the mere 14 games in which he actually appeared (one homer and a .163 batting mark).

Other Americans adjusted admirably and performed heroically in the Nippon leagues — especially another former Yankee, Clete Boyer, as well as slugging San Francisco Giants infielder Daryl Spencer. Nonetheless, there were also obvious instances of outright and unmerited prejudices against foreigners — especially the Americans. Several imported stars were clear victims of schemes to rob them of batting titles, home-run titles, or pitching honors.5 Even Hawaiian-born Wally Yonamine was a prototypical victim of such cultural conflict early in his Tokyo Giants career. A former professional football player (San Francisco 49ers) of Japanese heritage, Yonamine was recommended to the Yomiuri ballclub (by Lefty O’Doul) in 1951 and made an immediate splash in the Central League with his hustling and aggressive big-league playing style (which included hard sliding on the basepaths). But Yonamine’s personal aggressiveness seemed out of tune with the more polite and restrained brand of Japanese play. (Japanese fans were appalled at the seeming illogic of his dashes to first base on sacrifice bunts; the reigning Japanese style was to lay down a bunt and walk immediately to the dugout.) At first a lightning rod for widespread outrage among Japanese fans, Yonamine nonetheless worked hard to adapt and finally won widespread general acceptance mainly on the strength of his three batting titles and a career-capping league MVP award.

During the pioneering prewar years of Japanese baseball, Victor Starffin largely escaped such obvious outward displays of racist attitudes that were soon enough coloring the Japanese version of the professional game. Eventually the imposed status of Gaijin outsider would inevitably catch up with even Japanese-raised Starffin once full-scale Pacific Theater hostilities broke out with the Chinese and Americans and “anti-foreigner” mania was ramped up to a near fever pitch during the expected wartime tidal wave of patriotic nationalism. In the early phases of his career, Starffin’s status as an ethnic “outsider” seemed to take a back seat to his unrivaled achievements as one of the game’s most popular pioneering heroes. His blond hair, blue eyes, and towering frame seemed more charming and engaging than frightening or culturally insulting, and his bulky size and resulting overpowering fastballs were seen primarily as exotic assets for a Tokyo Giants team that already claimed the nation’s widest fandom.

When a homegrown Japanese professional league was initially launched in mid-1930s, Victor Starffin emerged alongside another early Japanese pitching legend, Eiji Sawamura, as one of the twin aces of the immensely popular and successful Tokyo Kyojin (eventually known as the Yomiuri Giants). Founded by a wealthy newspaper magnate in 1936, the Kyojin would quickly emerge as the island’s version of the New York Yankees, a status they still enjoy eight decades later. Sawamura tossed the league’s first two no-hit games, in 1936 and 1937, and Starffin authored the third, also in 1937. While Sawamura’s meteoric fame was tragically short (since he became a wartime casualty before his 28th birthday), the powerful, right-handed Starffin would survive on the Japanese pro circuit well into the modern two-league era, not retiring until 1955, by which time he amassed more records (many still standing) than any other celebrated hurler in league annals. He was the first Japanese leaguer to claim 300 wins and as of 2013 still stood among only a half-dozen to cross that esteemed plateau.6 He still owned the most consecutive seasons (three) with 30-plus victories, most wins in a season (42 in 1939), most career shutouts (83, one better than Masaichi Kaneda), and a career 2.09 ERA. During his spectacular first half-dozen campaigns, he amassed 182 wins (better than 30 per year) against a mere 53 defeats and never allowed his ERA to soar above his 1937 mark of 1.70. And he might have been much better still had it not been for the latent personal demons that would eventually turn his later life into a sustained tale of self-inflicted woe. In the end a long-developing alcohol-abuse problem, likely worsened by public harassment received as a foreigner during World War II, surfaced periodically throughout his final years, causing the breakup of his marriage and even his eventual death in a car wreck less than two years after his premature baseball retirement.

The future Japanese hall of famer was born as Viktor Konstantinovich Starukhin on May 4, 1916, in the midsized village of Nizhny Tagil, a rural outpost tucked in the middle of the Russian Ural Mountain region about 1,000 miles east of Moscow. The youngster’s life was destined to be infused with mystery from its opening hours since there are actually three different versions of his accurate birthdate. Technically the child first saw the light on April 21 (according to the Julian calendar then in use in Czarist Russia); the date would later be modified to May 4 when the post-Revolution Bolshevik government adopted a Western European Gregorian calendar.7 But even if these calendar discrepancies are ignored, there is still a problem with the “official” date since the family had apparently decided that May 1 might be somehow easier to remember. Victor’s mother, Evdokia, had already given birth three previous times, but all the earlier male siblings had fallen victim to fatal illness in early infancy. The fourth and only surviving son was fondly dubbed Weejer by his doting parents and as the only healthy offspring the boy rapidly grew into a strapping and oversized youngster.

Political intrigue and surrounding historical circumstance plagued the small Starffin family from the outset and dogged Victor from his infancy right down to the months and weeks immediately preceding his untimely death. Victor’s dashing father, Konstantine Fedrovich Starukhin, had been born into the pre-World War I (and thus pre-Revolution) Russian aristocracy. In his own youth Konstantine attended a prestigious military academy and upon graduation he rose quickly in the ranks of the czar’s army; with the outbreak of the first truly global warfare that was already raging across Europe by the time of Victor’s birth, Konstantine had apparently avoided being sent to the battle front largely due to his family’s upper-class status and their long record of noble czarist service. But soon enough the crush of world events nonetheless struck a severe blow on Starukhin family fortunes. The first phases of the anti-czarist revolution, in February 1917, forced Konstantine to abandon his army post and join forces with the White Russian rebels — the remnants of the old aristocracy opposing the temporary Kerensky provisional government that had almost overnight ended both the reign of Czar Nicholas II and also more than 300 years of Romanov family rule.

The immediate and multiple dangers facing all members of the old-guard czarist supporters were severe enough to convince Konstantine that it was necessary to dispatch his wife and young son to safe harbor with friends in distant Siberia, the nation’s Far Eastern outpost, where early phases of the Revolution so far had made little impact. What followed was a lengthy and arduous flight romanticized (and perhaps largely fictionalized) by biographer John Berry into a remarkable ordeal involving near-starvation, torturous exhaustion, narrow escapes from disastrous discovery and thus certain execution, and several months of painful trekking on foot and in horse-drawn cart by the heroic mother Evdokia and her brave and resilient infant son Victor.8

If biographer John Berry’s account of the Starffin family’s escape embellishes lost details, it nonetheless certainly captures the essential elements in a remarkable tale of tenacious human survival. After numerous close and even rather miraculous escapes from the Bolshevik military forces and a several-thousand-mile trek to the western edge of Siberia, Konstantine was eventually reunited with his wife and infant son in the village of Krasnoyarsk, from which they made their way farther eastward to temporary refuge in Irkutsk, arriving at the next sanctuary only a few steps ahead of the advancing Red Army. A final equally arduous flight ultimately took the escapees to a Russian refugee community in the sprawling Manchurian city of Harbin, in northeastern China. After a fitful residence in Harbin that stretched to nearly five years, Konstantine finally received the necessary permits and paperwork that would allow his small family to resettle into a new and hopefully improved life in neighboring Japan. The fee for immigration status exacted by the Japanese authorities was 4,500 yen, a hefty price tag that the Starffins were barely able to meet. They did so by selling off some remaining family jewelry that Evdokia had managed to smuggle out of their homeland, having sewn the valued family treasures into the lining of her ragged peasant undergarments before she fled her original homestead.

Eventually settled in the city of Asahikawa on the northern Japanese island of Hokkaido, the long-suffering family finally took up a promising new life in a strange and exotic adopted homeland. A chance meeting with a fellow Japanese refugee on the resettlement train ride to Hokkaido had provided Konstantine with a small startup business as a vendor of imported European fabrics. Evdokia supplemented the family income by baking bread for a local teahouse. Victor also prospered when sent off to an elementary school where his large size and considerable strength made him a natural at the increasingly popular schoolboy sport of baseball. By the time the child reached his early teens he stretched to above 6 feet and towered over his diminutive Japanese schoolmates. His baseball skills were soon so advanced that he was already carving out a substantial reputation as a gifted pitcher not only in schoolboy games but also while performing on weekends for some of Hokkaido’s best all-star amateur nines.

Resurging family fortunes seemed about to take a further prosperous upturn when it appeared that Victor’s budding athletic talent would mean a baseball scholarship at the prestigious Koyo high school in nearby Kobe; so desperately did the baseball powerhouse program at Koyo desire the talents of the young Russian teen that they offered to resettle the entire family in Kobe and provide the parents with a startup bakery business. But the whole plan collapsed suddenly when the region’s other high-school principals formally protested and the offer had to be withdrawn. Victor would have to settle for playing baseball with the local Asahikawa high-school team, which he soon led to several near misses at reaching the prestigious year-end national high-school tournament staged annually in Koshien.

But there would soon enough be yet another family tragedy on the horizon and one far more crushing then the mere scuttling of Victor’s dreams of playing for powerful Koyo high school or leading his team to the Koshien tournament. On the brief visit to Kobe the Starffins had met a pretty Russian immigrant girl named Maria who returned to Asahikawa with them and began working in the Russian-style teahouse they now operated. Konstantine soon became involved in a romantic tryst with young Maria and the stormy affair apparently involved violent arguments between the two over the issues of Russian politics. In February 1933 Konstantine flew into a jealous rage at the girl’s apartment (he apparently suspected her of taking another lover) and brutally stabbed her to death. At first Konstantine admitted the murder was the result of a fit of “sexual jealousy,” but later he changed his story and claimed that he committed the act because he had discovered that Maria was a secret Soviet spy (a strong indication of the mental imbalance that would plague both father and son during their middle-age years). The end result of the inexplicable and horrific crime was a sentence of eight years in a prison labor camp.

Just as one door slammed shut on Konstantine’s future happiness in Japan, another seemingly swung wide open on Victor’s own promising prospects. At the very time the tragic occurrences were unfolding in Asahikawa, baseball events were also taking a rather historic turn in central Japan. During the fall months of both 1931 and 1932 prominent Tokyo newspaper publisher Matsutaro Shoriki — seeing the growing Japanese passion for the sport of baseball as fraught with potential business opportunities — had sponsored visits by barnstorming big leaguers who played against local university all-star squads. Embarrassed by the one-sided nature of those games and also determined to establish professional play in his homeland, Shoriki was bent on hiring skilled local ballplayers as true professionals and training them to achieve far better results against the talented Americans.

One of the prominent big leaguers on the 1931 and 1932 barnstorming tours (which also included such luminaries as Lou Gehrig and Charlie Gehringer) was two-time National League batting champion Lefty O’Doul. O’Doul quickly developed a lasting fascination with Japan and established a budding friendship with entrepreneur Matsutaro Shoriki. At Shoriki’s urging O’Doul was soon able to persuade the grandest American star of them all — George Herman “Babe” Ruth — to join the big leaguers’ tour planned for the fall of 1934. The stage was set for events that would launch Japan’s modern baseball era. Shoriki began assembling the best squad he could muster to face Babe Ruth and such fellow stars as Jimmie Foxx, Gehrig, Gehringer, O’Doul, Earl Averill, and venerable manager Connie Mack when they arrived in late November. One of the young players clearly in Shoriki’s sights was Hokkaido’s Russian teenage star Victor Starffin.

As with so many other elements defining Starffin’s life, we find two conflicting accounts providing far different details about the teenager’s abandonment of high-school baseball in Hokkaido for the promise of professional play in the nation’s capital. The first is provided by Richard Puff and suggests that Starffin was forcibly spirited out of his hometown largely against his own wishes and certainly against the desires of local residents. This version of the tale suggests that Shoriki’s agents used some strong-armed persuasion to entice the youngster, who had no desire to leave his high-school squad (where he still had a remaining year of eligibility and still nursed the dream of reaching the prestigious Koshien tournament). It also suggests that fans in Hokkaido were so unwilling to lose a genuine hero that Asahikawa town officials and village residents conspired to sequester the young pitcher and his mother and even assigned them personal bodyguards. As this tales goes, Shoriki’s representatives finally threatened the Starffins (who were now without financial support after Konstantine’s imprisonment and thus subject to deportation) that Victor’s signing with the Tokyo all-stars was the only available means of salvaging their situation. The scales were also tipped, according to Puff, when a promise was made to modify Konstantine’s prison sentence.

Biographer John Berry offers a slightly different account, one in which Victor was reluctant to leave his high-school team but at the same time was embarrassed by his mother’s financial plight (she had been forced to close the teahouse) and by the fact that school officials and teammates’ families were chipping in to keep his family solvent. This version paints Victor as a far nobler figure driven by guilt that his mother had made so many sacrifices to provide him with his new life in Japan. As Berry tells it, Victor himself made the decision to leave Asahikawa under the cover of night with his mother and with Shoriki’s agent, and school officials and teammates didn’t know anything of his departure until they discovered him mysteriously missing a day later. In Berry’s account, Shoriki exerted his influence to have Konstantine’s prison term cut from eight to 4½ years largely as an act of gratitude and not one of coercion.9

The launching of Starffin’s national-level stardom thus coincided with a crucial moment in the growth of Japanese baseball and also with the eventual establishment of a professional league in the nation that would soon become obsessed with the “American” sport. The 1934 Babe Ruth barnstorming tour was well in progress when young Starffin inked his contract with Shoriki (for a 1,000-yen bonus and a 120-yen monthly salary) and joined the squad for the final pair of matches. Victor’s debut came on November 29 in Kyoto when he took the mound for a single inning against the seasoned Americans, some of whom were twice his age (he was 18 at the time). But the size and Caucasian appearance of the new hurler had to be a surprise for the cocky big leaguers, who had been hacking away for two weeks at diminutive and soft-pitching Orientals. Starffin enticed his first opponent, Detroit second baseman and future Hall of Famer Charlie Gehringer, into a weak infield groundout. After walking both Ruth and Gehrig, Starffin then retired two straight, one a strikeout victim. The solo appearance was, on the whole, a resounding success.

Starffin’s presence on the team was amply hyped in the Japanese press, and although he had pitched only a single inning and had joined the squad quite late, as early as the first week of October the Yomiuri Shimbun (Tokyo’s leading daily newspaper) had already promoted Starffin as one of the first 14 prospects selected for the Japanese all-star squad. By contrast, the brief appearance was nothing to brag of when compared to those of future teammate Eiji Sawamura. It was Sawamura who had gained instant fame and lasting immortality during the memorable series. On November 20 in Kusanagi Stadium, the 17-year-old, small-framed righty came within an eyelash of not only authoring the only home-squad victory of the tour but also shutting out the overpowering big leaguers. Young Eiji fanned Ruth three times and at one point struck out Gehringer, Ruth, Gehrig, and Foxx (Cooperstown immortals all) in rapid succession. It was Gehrig’s seventh-inning homer into the right-field bleachers that provided a narrow 1-0 American victory. On that single afternoon Japan gave birth to its first true professional baseball legend.

Encouraged by Lefty O’Doul, the Tokyo club owner changed the name of his fledgling team and even made plans to launch an experimental league built around his own talented nine. Shoriki had envisioned labeling his outfit “The Great Japan Tokyo Baseball Club” but O’Doul lobbied successfully for the shorter moniker of his own big-league team in New York. Shoriki’s plan soon provided the humble beginnings for a thriving and even MLB-rivaling professional Japanese baseball circuit. But while the league was being patched together in 1935 owner Shoriki had to find a way to keep his own promising club in shape and prepared for the domestic seasons now on the horizon. That was accomplished (again with an assist from O’Doul) via a pair of hastily arranged tours through California during the spring and summer of both 1935 and 1936. These extensive barnstorming tours led to some personal complications for Starffin, who ran into problems with US immigration authorities due to the absence of Japanese citizenship or a valid international passport.10 But by the second year the situation had eased a bit, largely due to the publicity surrounding the star Japanese hurler and his 1935 encounters with American authorities. Victor’s immigration problems aside, the Giants enjoyed a most successful pair of California tours. During its first American sojourn the Tokyo club won 93 of 102 contests (mostly against colle and amateur squads); they lost all five games, however, against the more talented Pacific Coast League teams they faced.

It was during the second trip of 1936 that the young pitcher accidentally earned a novel and rather amusing nickname. While attempting to show off his limited English, Starffin had ordered a meal by announcing “I am chicken” — and of course the label quickly stuck with his amused Japanese teammates. The 1935 summer tour also produced a fortuitous collision between two emerging baseball worlds. In one exhibition match with the San Francisco Seals (now managed by O’Doul) Japan’s soon-to-be greatest pitcher faced a budding American icon, Joe DiMaggio. The future Yankee immortal managed one hit in three plate appearances against Starffin.

Domestic Japanese play finally began in the fall of 1936 with a short campaign that was more like a series of tournaments than a true baseball season. The Giants won 18 of the 27 games they played against seven other league clubs and thus claimed the first Japanese championship. The bulk of the Giants’ pitching that first fall was done by Sawamura, who registered a 13-2 mark with a 1.05 ERA while starting all but a dozen of the team’s games. Relegated to the role of infrequently used number-two starter, Starffin logged only 24 total innings and recorded an unimpressive 1-2 ledger (2.63 ERA). The big Russian had to settle for playing in Sawamura’s shadow and hoping for a more substantial role when a full-fledged campaign would open the following spring.

Starffin didn’t have to wait long for his own chance in the spotlight. During four straight seasons at the end of the 1930s the Gaijin hurler emerged as a true national pitching legend. Sharing mound duties across the now expanded season with fellow ace Sawamura, Victor rang up a 28-11 mark in 1937 and an even more luminous 33-5 ledger the following campaign. Sawamura had already hurled the first Japanese professional no-hitter in the league’s brief inaugural season (September 25, 1936) and then followed that up with a second masterpiece in May 1937. Sawamura actually topped Starffin with his own 33-11 ledger in 1937 and boasted a league-best 1.38 ERA (compared with Starffin’s 1.49). Those were years in which the Japanese season was divided into spring and fall segments with the two half-season champions meeting for the overall title in the late fall. If the new league had been initially built around Matsutaro Shoriki’s all-star Kyojin club, that fact hardly meant that the Tokyo team would dominate its top rivals. The Osaka Tigers proved equally potent behind their own ace hurler, Yukio Nishimura (24-6, 1.78 ERA in 1937) and 1937 batting champion Kenjiro Matsuke (.296 with 7 homers and 62 RBI). Osaka in fact won the November playoff titles over the Kyojin team in both the 1937 and 1938 year-end showdown series.

One noteworthy element of these earliest Japanese league campaigns is the fact that while the victory and ERA totals of both Starffin and Sawamura (and Osaka’s Nishimura as well) were seemingly off the radar charts, the strikeout numbers posted by these aces were hardly eye-popping by big league standards. Pitching a 1937 no-hit masterpiece of his own (July 3 versus the Korakuen Eagles), Starffin for all his dominance struck out only 187 batters (despite logging an impressive 312 innings) in the full campaign. During an even more dominant double-season a year later, the totals climbed only to 222 Ks in 356 innings. The explanation for this anomaly was found in the special ambience and style of Japanese baseball. While smaller Japanese hitters belted few long balls, they were experts at putting balls in play. Even in those earliest years the Japanese built their game around a small-ball approach that featured constant bunting (for base hits, sacrifices, and frequent run-scoring squeeze play) and eschewed strikeout-producing wild swinging in favor of opposite-field slap hitting.

Constant structural change defined the earliest Japanese league seasons, with the original 105-game split season already being abandoned by 1939 (the league’s fourth year) in favor of a single summer 96-game campaign. Season number three in 1938 had already been severely impacted by the outbreak of warfare between Japan and China (which actually began in 1937) that caused a dip in the number of split-season games to 75 overall. Sawamura had left the Giants roster in early 1938 for his first patriotic stint of voluntary military service, leaving Starffin as the undisputed staff ace and unrivaled workhorse. With a minuscule 1.49 ERA over his hefty assignment of 350-plus innings, Victor’s 33 victories made up more than half of his team’s entire spring and fall composite total. Such a workload and such skewed numbers in the win column were once again a product of the special features of Japanese baseball structure. It was customary for ace pitchers of the era to draw starting assignments in two of the three weekly games played by each team.

If he had become a legitimate headliner in only two seasons, in the next pair of campaigns Victor became a true legend. His 1939 campaign has to rank as one of the most impressive ever posted by a professional hurler (any league and at any level) in the annals of modern-era 20th-century baseball. With the season expanded to 96 games and the league expanded as well to nine teams, Starffin registered a remarkable 57 decisions (and 68 pitching appearances in his championship club’s 96 outings), posting 42 wins (64 percent of the Giants’ total).11 About the only league honor to escape him was the ERA title (his was 1.73), which fell to Tadashi Wakabayashi of the Hanshin Tigers (1.09). It was also a joyous year off the field of play since that very fall Victor married a fellow Russian immigrant named Lena whom he had befriended a year earlier at the Nicolai Russian Orthodox Church in Tokyo. It was a joyous family occasion for the Starffin clan since Konstantine had been finally released from prison earlier in the year and was thus also able to attend the elaborate wedding celebration.

But there were plenty of storm clouds on the immediate horizon for both the Starffins and the Japanese nation as a whole. The outbreak of worldwide warfare would soon enough send the personal lives and professional careers of pitchers Sawamura and Starffin spinning in radically different directions. Both were destined to meet tragic ends, but it would be two tragedies of far different orders. Sawamura re-enlisted for a second stint in the Japanese military and perished as a national hero during the global war’s final stages. His name was later immortalized with attachment to the Japanese League version of major-league baseball’s Cy Young Award. Starffin’s immigrant status initially protected him against the physical dangers of military service. But the Gaijin hurler in the end paid an almost equally severe price precisely because of his non-native background.

Starffin for his part continued to thrive for a brief while in a Japanese league that marched on during wartime years.12 While the peak seasons of his career had already come and passed during the earliest years of the widening Pacific conflict (the late 1930s), by the early 1940s the towering Russian right-hander was once again a seeming idol, boasting both a beautiful Russian wife and continued soaring professional success. Nonetheless, the war atmosphere was affecting even more severely Japan’s national sport by the dawn of the 1940 season, and it soon impacted even more directly the country’s number-one star pitcher. Politically motivated changes introduced by the Japanese Baseball Association for the 1940 season included the mandating of a whole new set of native Japanese-language terms to replace the imported American-inspired baseball lingo: “play ball” would now be “shiai hajime”; a strike became a “right pitch” (seikyu) and a ball a “bad pitch” (akkyu); dozens of similar improvisations were also added. And team names were also changed: the Osaka Tigers were redubbed the Hanshin Gun or “army,” while the Tokyo Senators morphed into the Tokyo Tsubasa, to cite but two cases. Since the Tokyo Yomiuri Giants were already using the moniker Kyojin (Japanese for Giants) they merely had to replace the English spelling on their uniforms (which looked exactly like that of the New York National League club) with more appropriate Kanji characters.

The biggest name change was reserved for the Giants’ top pitcher. Government officials were becoming increasingly uneasy about the fact that one of the nation’s top sporting heroes not only boasted a Russian or foreign name but also as a 6-foot-plus statuesque blond was a spitting image and constant remainder of two looming foreign enemies, the Russians and the Americans. There was mounting behind-the-scenes pressure to have Starffin simply removed from the Japanese baseball scene; from the late ’30s until the war’s end the Giants ace was kept under constant surveillance as an untrustworthy outsider and perhaps even a dangerous foreign agent or potential spy. Club owner Shoriki was able to fend off outright expulsion but he eventually had to agree to a distasteful compromise with government agents. Starffin, who had already seen his formal application for Japanese citizenship stonewalled, was now required to officially adopt a Japanese name — Hiroshi Suda — if he was to continue his baseball career. An angry Starffin had little choice but to accept the humiliating change. Stories (perhaps apocryphal) circulated that as a quiet act of defiance the proud Russian secretly wore a T-shirt under his game jersey with a V stenciled over his heart.

Further harassment of Starffin came in the form of a mandate to file special applications for permission to travel outside Tokyo whenever the Giants set forth on road trips during those wartime seasons. But as troublesome as it might have been personally, government harassment seemed to have altogether little impact on actual performances by the ace hurler now known as Hiroshi Suda in the Japanese sporting press. The Giants surged to the second of what would eventually be six consecutive war-era pennants in 1940 with an overall 76-28 record and Starffin/Suda again was the club mainstay. The pitcher’s second straight campaign of remarkable numbers stood only a shade below those of a year earlier: 38-12 won-lost record, a massive 436 innings pitched, 245 strikeouts, and a microscopic 0.97 ERA. The spectacular ERA figure was again only second-best in the pitching-rich Japanese circuit (behind the 0.93 posted by Jiro Noguchi of the Tokyo Tsubasa, née Senators) but it nevertheless contains its own remarkable feature. Boasting credible hitting skills, Starffin batted home 22 runs as a slugger, less than half of the mere 49 earned runs he surrendered on the mound. For his remarkable efforts Starffin/Suda was awarded a second consecutive MVP trophy.

While Starffin’s baseball career (and accompanying personal life) did not suffer an immediate collapse after 1940, it did begin a rather dramatic downward spiral. Having labored a Deadball Era-like 894 innings during the previous two seasons, the once physically dominating Russian felt the inevitable effects on his health by the time the 1941 spring season rolled around. Slowed by general fatigue and then a bout with pleurisy, he was able to appear in only 20 games (though his 15-3 record and 1.20 ERA might suggest something far short of complete disintegration). Teruzo Nakao replaced Victor as the Giants’ number-one starter, and Eiji Sawamura also returned on temporary military discharge to register nine wins in the Giants’ fourth straight pennant-winning effort. To add to the on-field setbacks, for a second time Starffin’s hopeful application for Japanese citizenship was rejected, this time with a specific explanation (that he was Russian and furthermore that his father was a convicted murderer). It wasn’t all bad news though, as Victor and Lena welcomed their first child, a son they defiantly named George in honor of American slugger George Herman “Babe” Ruth.13

One week after the late-November close of the 1941 baseball season, the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor and the lives of all Japanese residents — citizens and noncitizens alike — were drastically changed forever. Starffin did rebound with a 26-8 effort during yet another pennant-winning effort for the Giants in 1942, although the Japanese League, just like its American counterpart, showed an immediate dropoff in playing talent and fan support. Many in Japan turned against what was increasingly seen as “the game of the enemy,” and a large contingent of top league stars swapped bats and gloves for military apparel (again just as did their American counterparts). But Japan’s government, like its US enemy, remained every bit as unwilling to admit moral defeat on the home front by canceling the national pastime.

Pressures continued to mount on unwanted foreigner Starffin/Suda while war surged on across the Asian front, and among other embarrassments there was a publicized arrest while eating with teammates in a Tokyo noodle restaurant. This transpired when a waitress alerted police to the presence of foreign-looking potential spy. Pressure also increased on Giants management and by 1944 the ballclub was finally forced to suspend its ace hurler, largely due to fears that a foreigner in the lineup of the country’s most popular team might encourage some government officials to push even more strongly for shutting down the league altogether.

By the outset of the 1944 season the depletion of talent had reduced the skeletal league to a mere six teams. Victor had just burst out of the gate with an early-season unblemished 6-0 mark (and 0.68 ERA) against the reduced opposition when he was given the shocking news that the team was letting him go in the interest of national security. While there is little evidence that Japanese authorities actually saw the longtime resident as a potential spy, he was certainly a thorn in their sides as a public figure and as a celebrity ballplayer permitted to travel freely around the countryside with his touring teammates. With his baseball career apparently over, the Starffins (Victor, Lena, and baby George) were forced to take up residence in the Japanese equivalent of a wartime resettlement camp, in Karuizara, a rural village that was home to other displaced foreigners, including ostensible allies Germans and Italians. In short, the Starffins suffered a fate parallel to that of so many Japanese-Americans on the U.S. West Coast who had been relocated into internment camps. The biggest impact of the move was that Victor’s troublesome pleurisy condition once again returned full force.

And while Victor was suffering ill health in Karuizawa, there were two other significant wartime casualties impacting his life. On November 13, 1944, professional baseball was closed down in the island nation due to the increased threat that American bombing raids on the Japanese mainland were imminent. Three weeks later, on December 2, Starffin’s longtime teammate Eiji Sawamura died when an American submarine sank the Philippines-bound troop transport on which he was a passenger in the South China Sea.

Things didn’t get much better immediately after the war, despite a return to Tokyo following release from semi-incarceration in Karuizawa. Evdokia and Konstantine had remained in Tokyo during the war years but Victor’s father had died there in 1943. Having learned passable English from an Australian during the forced residence in Karuizawa, the former athlete was approached by representatives of the occupying American forces in late 1945 and was briefly employed as an interpreter by a US Army engineering battalion stationed in Tokyo. It was work Victor enjoyed and it also brought a certain renewed prestige, but only a possible return to baseball seemed to brighten any hopes for a more normalized future. When baseball was restarted in Japan Victor approached his old team but was immediately rebuffed despite the fact that he was still under 30 years old and potentially still in the prime of his career. A break nonetheless came when his old manager with the Giants, Sadayoshi Fujimoto, was hired late in the 1946 season by the Pacific club of a newly constituted Japanese League. Fujimoto did not hesitate to offer a roster spot to his old ace. Starffin (now once again proudly playing under his true name) joined the club at season’s end in time to earn a single historic victory, the 200th of his professional league career.

Every upswing seemed to bring a corresponding downturn for Starffin and vice versa. He was not about to escape repeated life-changing upheavals inflicted by a pair of world wars (one that forced his childhood family out of native Russia and a second that wreaked havoc on his adult life in Japan). During the stay in Kazuizawa Lena had become increasingly dissatisfied with her life in Japan and her marriage to Victor. She grew tired of nursing him through his illnesses and blamed his pleurisy attacks on weak mental courage. And after the resettlement in Tokyo she and Victor had a fateful reunion with an old pal from their earliest years at the Nicolai Russian Orthodox Church. Alexander Boloviyov had immigrated to America before the war and now returned triumphantly as a military linguist with the US forces. Lena immediately saw Alexander as her way out of Japan and quickly took him as her new lover. Once his wife had hitched her star to Boloviyov and filed for divorce, the distraught former baseball idol turned to heavy drinking to escape his renewed depression.

Starffin’s return to professional baseball brought one final glory season in 1949 with his new club (the Kinsei/Daiei Stars, to which he moved in 1948 after pitching in 1947 for the Taiyo Robins). His 27-17 ledger paced the circuit in wins (as did his 376 innings pitched) and his 2.67 ERA was third best in the league. That same fall he faced the barnstorming San Francisco Seals on two losing occasions, shutting out the PCL squad for seven innings on the first occasion and for eight frames on the second. But the long layoff and the alcohol use took their toll and his last six seasons in the early and mid-1950s witnessed a constant downward spiral. There was a final lone appearance against the touring American big leaguers in 1953, a short relief outing in a losing effort against the Eddie Lopat All-Stars. But there was little else to stimulate memories of the prewar glory days for Victor Starffin.

A final high point came in his swan-song 1955 season when he became Japan’s first 300-game winner. The ’50s brought a new era in Japanese baseball (highlighted by a new two-league format), and the sport quickly began to evolve from strictly a pitchers’ game to one featuring more heavy-hitting offense. Fans quickly forgot the old generation of ballplayers, and Starffin as much as anyone had faded rapidly from fans’ collective memories. His quest for 300 victories drew surprisingly little note around the circuit and was played out with minimal attention from the Tokyo sporting press. By 1955 Victor’s team had a new name (the Tombo Unions) and a new corporate sponsor; it was also the worst club in the lesser-quality Japanese Pacific League (winning only 42 games and limping home at the bottom of the pack and 57 games off the pace). Thus there was little interest paid to the game that represented perhaps Starffin’s greatest individual victory. The milestone win finally came against his previous team, the Daiei Stars, and thus also against his old manager, Sadayoshi Fujimoto, the friend who had opened the door for his return in the shadows of postwar occupation a decade earlier.

For all the disappointment of a lost baseball career, one final and more wrenching tragedy lay immediately around the corner. The hopes for another playing contract, or perhaps an alternative opportunity to utilize decades of pitching experience by coaching on the sidelines, met with only further disappointment; no contract opportunities materialized as the months dragged on. Years in the public limelight had brought enough fame to result in a few opportunities for bit movie roles and also a brief stint hosting a popular weekly Tokyo radio music broadcast. But there was little fulfillment and even less money to be found in this handful of celebrity-based odd jobs secured away from the baseball diamond. As 1956 rolled on, Victor’s wife Kunie was accepting part-time hairdressing tasks in order to support her husband and three children. Increased bouts of depression and further escapes into heavy drinking haunted the former star athlete, and, worse yet, Victor began to struggle with the serious episodes of paranoia that had once plagued his aging father. He slept with a baseball bat at his bedside for protection (fearing attacks from intruders) and installed chain ladders on the windows of the family’s second-floor duplex apartment (fearing the outbreak of fire in the family living quarters). He also reportedly would not enter public buildings without thoroughly checking all possible escape routes that might be needed in the case of some cataclysmic unforeseen emergency.14

The slide into psychological illness brought on by alcohol and genetic inheritance did not last especially long. On January 12, 1957, after a night of heavy drinking at a Tokyo location, Starffin rammed his speeding automobile into the rear of an electric streetcar and was killed instantly. The severely depressed ex-ballplayer had left his family behind earlier that evening, supposedly to attend a reunion party of Asahikawa high-school classmates living in the Tokyo area, but he mysteriously never appeared at the event. Later police reports indicated that Starffin was both intoxicated and driving recklessly at the time of the crash, but no one ever determined precisely why he never reached the planned reunion festivities or why he was in the district of the city where the fatal collision occurred. Many in Tokyo at the time speculated that the event was not an accident but rather a successful suicide attempt. Starffin was still nearly four months short of his 41st birthday at the time of his tragic and unexpected demise.

Yet despite the obvious downward tumble that marked the end of his life, Starffin remained an unblemished hero in his boyhood home city of Asahikawa, even if his earlier triumphs had long since faded for many contemporary Japanese baseball fans. Two years after Victor’s death the Japanese Baseball Hall of Fame was established in a location adjacent to Tokyo’s Korakuen Stadium; the initial class of seven inductees included Yomiuri Giants founder and owner Matsutaro Shoriki and former Giants teammate Eiji Sawamura. One year later Starffin himself was admitted into the national shrine that was relocated after 1988 inside the Yomiuri Giants’ new home park, Tokyo Dome Stadium, the nation’s premier baseball palace. When the city of Asahikawa erected a new 25,000-seat baseball stadium of its own in 1983, Starffin received perhaps his greatest posthumous honor: the new facility was named Victor Starffin Stadium (which today remains the only park hosting Japanese League games that is named in honor of a single player), and a bronze statue of the late 300-game winner was placed at the arena’s entrance portals.

Baseball has celebrated its large share of bold racial and ethnic pioneers, none more renowned or decorated than Jackie Robinson. The sport has produced legions of immigrants who have earned their fame and fortune on foreign soil; one has only to recall legions of Latino big leaguers from Cuba’s Adolfo Luque in the early 20th century to hordes of Dominican hurlers and sluggers in the modern era. A large number of diamond stars have suffered truly tragic premature endings to both their on-field careers and post-baseball lives — after the fashions of Ed Delahanty, Roy Campanella, or Luke Easter. But one has to search long and hard to find another professional baseball player whose uncommonly short life span and unevenly celebrated career achievements quite so dramatically combined all these varied elements in a single fortune-blessed yet ultimately ill-starred human being. Among baseball’s truly mythic figures, Victor Starffin may well rank as the most unlikely storybook character of them all.

Sources

Berry, John, The Gaijin Pitcher: The Life and Times of Victor Starffin (self-published, CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2010).

Bjarkman, Peter C., Diamonds Around the Globe: The Encyclopedia of International Baseball (Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Publishing Group, 2005). See in particular Chapter 3: “Japan — Besuboru Becomes Yakyu in the Land of Wa.”)

Johnson, Daniel E., Japanese Baseball, A Statistical Handbook (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland and Company Publishers, 1999).

Puff, Richard, “The Amazing Story of Victor Starffin — A Russian Ace in the Land of the Rising Sun,” in The National Pastime 12 (Cleveland: The Society for American Baseball Research), 17-19.

Whiting, Robert, The Chrysanthemum and the Bat — Baseball Samurai Style (New York: Dodd, Mead and Company, 1977).

Whiting, Robert, You Gotta Have Wa* — When Two Cultures Collide on the Baseball Diamond (New York: Macmillan Publishing, 1989).

Albright, Jim, “Summarized Cases for Cooperstown of Six Great NPB Pitchers,” online article at BaseballGuru.com (http://baseballguru.com/jalbright/analysisjalbright37.html/).

Gillespie, Paul, “Victor Starffin: The Greatest Pitcher in Japanese Baseball History,” online article at fromdeeprightfield.com, December 5, 2011 (from http://deeprightfield.com/victor-starffin-the-greatest-pitcher-in-japanese-baseball-history/).

Notes