William Beville was a Confederate soldier who had served in the 8th Virginia Cavalry, but made his way to California after the Civil War. He was named Deputy County Clerk in Colusa County in 1868 and served as Under-Sheriff from 1870 for a number of years, interrupted only by a four-year term as County Assessor. In 1886, he was elected Colusa County Sheriff. He and Lutie also owned a 20-acre apricot and peach orchard.2

Ben himself is said to have been a Spanish American War veteran.3

In the 1900 Census, William was listed as a clerk and Clarence as a laborer. It was in 1900 that he began his brief baseball career. Controversy preceded him to Boston.

Beville first played in 1900 for the Oakland Oaks (California League), but the Los Angeles Times on February 2 described the right-hander as a “star twirler of the Oaklands, but is now debarred from the California League for jumping his contract and signing with the Montana aggregation” – by which the newspaper referred to the Butte Smoke Eaters of the Montana State League.

He played some right field for San Bernardino in the winter league, in February 1901, and some left field in March, batting .162 at the end of the Southern California Baseball League season, which ended in March. He also pitched for the San Bernardino team. In April, he pitched for Lagoon, Utah, in the Inter-Mountain League, though posting a disappointing 0-3 record.

He was signed by Detroit, though saw no action with the Tigers because manager George Stallings “didn’t have any room for him” and he was released on May 7 to the Boston Americans.4 The Chicago Tribune picked up on the story after he joined Boston and ran the headline “Collins Gets New Pitcher” saying he was “at least ten pounds overweight and will not be in form for some days.”5 He’s officially listed as standing 5-feet-9 and weighing 190 pounds.

The Boston Herald had told readers that “Connie Mack tried to get him” and right after he reported, the Herald declared him a “likely looking chap.”6 Beville debuted for manager Jimmy Collins on May 24, and he pitched acceptably, but the Bostons were shut out by the Tigers in Detroit, 3-0. Beville “did pretty good work,” declared the Globe. He allowed three runs in three different innings on seven hits and five walks, and hit a batter, but suffered as much as anything on account of absent-minded play and three errors by the Boston defense. The Globe said he was “not hit hard, but was as wild as a hawk.” At the plate, he was hitless in four at-bats. The Herald called him a “comer” and said he was “a strapping big fellow, with plenty of speed and a fine drop ball, and he kept the Detroits guessing throughout, but the errors behind him and Miller’s fine pitching gave the Tigers a rather easy victory.”7

Six days later, on May 30, Beville started again in the morning game of a Memorial Day doubleheader in Chicago. He walked the first two batters but escaped further damage in the first. An error behind him gave the White Sox a baserunner to lead off the second. There followed a walk and then a double down the third-base line past Collins. “Beville lost his bearings completely here,” reported the Chicago Tribune. He threw eight straight balls, and was yanked from the game in favor of Cuppy. The Boston Globe wasn’t any kinder, offering a subhead “Beville Goes to Pieces Almost at Start of First Game.” Boston lost, 8-3.

In the fifth inning of a game on June 2 in Milwaukee, umpire Haskell banished both Jimmy Collins and Buck Freeman, so Dowd was brought in from left field to play third and two pitchers were inserted as fielders – Cuppy in left and Beville at first base. Ben came through well enough at the plate, with a 2-for-3 game, though he made an error in the field. With the score 4-2 in favor of Boston after eight innings, Beville kicked off a two-out rally in the ninth with a double into the crowd in left field. Parent hit a home run, and the hits just kept coming. Beville came up a second time and doubled again. They were the only two hits he ever had – and in the process he set a record that still stands today for the most doubles in an inning. It’s been tied by several others, including six other Boston batters. Before the third out could be secured, Milwaukee had given up nine runs. Earlier in the game, in the sixth, Beville had walked and come around to score. Not a bad day at all – but he was released on June 10 when Boston prepared to bring in George Winter, whose debut on the 15th was the first of 213 appearances for Boston.

Beville finished his major-league career with an 0-2 record and a 4.00 earned-run average. His teammate Cy Young was 33-10 for Boston in 1901.

By July 1, Beville was found pitching in Lewiston, Maine, for the New England League’s Lowell Tigers. He pitched in 18 games, but appeared in 44 – his .282 bat perhaps more productive than his pitching. He did have his moments, though, such as the one-hitter he threw against Nashua on July 16.

His last year in Organized Baseball was 1902, when he played for both Lowell and the Haverhill Hustlers, with a 3-2 record.

There was another Beville – Monte Beville – who played around the same time (1903 and 1904 for the Highlanders and Tigers), but he was a catcher and first baseman from Indiana and the two were not related.

The 1910 Census shows Beville still living at home with his parents, his father a bookkeeper in the tax collector’s office but Ben (still listed as Clarence) at age 32 as a laborer doing general work. By 1920, he was himself working as a bookkeeper in a law office, and still living with his parents on Fremont Street in Colusa. At some point, Beville worked as an agent for the I.R.S.

A bit embarrassing for someone working in a law office was his arrest in 1924. Beville (listed in the newspaper as a former internal revenue service agent) pled guilty in U. S. District Court on conspiring with three others to pose as Federal officers and “raided” the house of H. H. “Happy” Sanders, removing 324 cases of liquor from the Sanders home. Judge Frank H. Kerrigan dubbed taxicab George Miller the “master mind of the outfit” and sentenced him to two years in the Federal penitentiary at Leavenworth, saying that he wished the law permitted him to impose a longer sentence. The other two conspirators were Joseph Udell and Jack Romain, known as the “New York kid.” All four impersonated government officers. Udell was sentenced to 20 months, while Romain got 15 months at McNeill’s Island. Both Romain and Beville served as government witnesses.8

In 1930, despite his guilty plea in 1924, Beville was working as a police officer in a steel works in the Pittsburg area of California’s Contra Costa County. Bill Lee’s Baseball Necrology says that Beville worked for a number of years for the government at Pittsburg and that he died from alcoholic poisoning on January 5, 1937, in the Veterans Hospital at Yountville.

This biography can be found in “New Century, New Team: The 1901 Boston Americans” (SABR, 2013), edited by Bill Nowlin. To order the book, click here.

Sources

In addition to the sources cited in Beville’s biography, the author consulted the online SABR Encyclopedia, retrosheet.org, and Baseball-Reference.com. Thanks to Dan Desrochers, Charles Yerxa, Joe Williamson, and Joe and John Morton.

Notes

Collins was a businessman in a baseball uniform. In an interview with the Buffalo Evening News just a few weeks before his death, he gave writer Cy Kritzer an encyclopedic recall of his salary levels as a ballplayer, practically gloating about once earning $18,000 in one year, but yet, as Kritzer related, “he couldn’t recall once during the interview the size of his batting average in any one season.”1 It wasn’t just about acquiring money, though. Collins used his baseball income to develop a real-estate business by building multifamily rental housing, which provided his income after his playing days.

James Joseph Collins was born on January 16, 1870, in the village of Suspension Bridge in Niagara Falls, New York, the second of four children of Irish immigrants Anthony and Alice Collins. The family moved in 1872 to Buffalo, where Anthony Collins worked as a policeman for three decades, rising to the rank of captain.

The Collins family first lived in Buffalo’s Irish-American neighborhoods in the southern section of the city. Irish-Americans were then the distinct minority in Buffalo, as they tussled for economic and political power with the dominant German-Americans on the East Side and the native-born Americans on the West Side. Collins’s father tutored him well in how to work effectively within the three ethnic groups that controlled life in Buffalo.

After receiving his early education in Catholic parochial schools, Collins attended St. Joseph’s College in downtown Buffalo. Despite the use of “college” in its name, St. Joseph’s was more like an advanced high school, more akin to a prep school today; its successor is a high school, St. Joseph’s Collegiate Institute. Collins graduated from St. Joseph’s in 1888 with a diploma in commercial studies, acquiring a business education that he put to good use in the coming years. After graduation Collins worked as a clerk in the Black Rock station of the Delaware, Lackawanna and Western Railroad, just a few blocks north of his parents’ new residence on Niagara Street in Buffalo’s native-born-American-dominated West Side.

The teenaged Collins honed his baseball skills by playing for amateur teams organized by the social clubs in Buffalo. In 1889 and 1890 he played outfield for the Socials, a team made up of Irish-Americans, which helped maintain ties to his old neighborhood. For the 1891 and 1892 seasons, though, Collins played third base for the North Buffalo team, based in the Black Rock section of the city, where he made the difficult decision to forsake his Irish-American ties with the Socials and forge new relationships with the men in his new neighborhood. Soon baseball changed his perspective on life and Collins abandoned his father’s traditional Irish-American value that deified job security.

When Jack Chapman, the manager of the Buffalo minor-league team in the Eastern League, offered Collins the chance to play professional baseball in May 1893, he left his secure job with the railroad for the uncertain life of a ballplayer and what he hoped would be greater income potential in the future. After starting out at third base, Collins played mostly shortstop for Buffalo during the 1893 season, finishing with a respectable .286 batting average, but an erratic .863 fielding average. When Chapman put Collins in the outfield for the 1894 season to minimize his fielding lapses, his batting average improved to .352 (among the league’s top 10 hitters) and he led the league with 198 hits.

In November 1894 the Boston ballclub in the National League paid $500 to obtain the services of the 5-foot-9, 178-pound Collins from the Buffalo ballclub as insurance should one of its outfielders stage a lengthy holdout in salary negotiations. Jimmy Bannon did hold out, so Boston manager Frank Selee put Collins in right field on Opening Day. After 11 games, though, the right-handed hitting Collins was clearly a less than adequate substitute for Bannon, as he was hitting barely .200 and had committed four errors. When Boston finally signed Bannon, Collins was expendable, so he was sold to the last-place Louisville team for $500 in a transaction characterized as a “loan” that was really a recall option.

Collins played in the outfield during his first few games with Louisville, before manager John McCloskey suddenly pressed him into service at third base midway through the May 31 game at Baltimore after the Louisville third baseman had committed four errors. The legend of Collins’s first major-league game at third base, like so many baseball legends, grew over time so that the more recent retellings – that he told Baltimore’s Hugh Jennings, “Bunt ’em down to me and I’ll show you something,” and then threw out four bunters in a row – bear only a partial resemblance to the 1895 facts.2 The bunters Collins threw out were fewer than four and occurred two months later (on July 28) after he became the regular third baseman in mid-June.

Since Collins flourished at third base in Louisville, Boston decided to exercise its recall option in August to have him temporarily fill in for an injured infielder. Collins, however, balked at returning to Boston. The brash Collins looked to leverage the situation and get a better deal from Boston, telling baseball writers that if he couldn’t stay with Louisville he’d retire from baseball and return to his railroad job in Buffalo. Boston relented and instead recalled Collins for the 1896 season.

After Boston traded its incumbent third baseman, Billy Nash, to Philadelphia in November 1895 to make room for Collins in the Boston infield, Collins showed tremendous chutzpah in his salary negotiation with Arthur Soden, the principal owner of the Boston ballclub. The strong-willed Collins thought the Nash trade gave him a negotiation advantage, so he held out for a higher salary until April 1896. Since the National League was a monopoly and the reserve clause in the player contract bound the player to a team until released, ownership had the upper hand in player negotiations. Collins learned a hard lesson that he had little leverage over ownership and finally agreed to a salary of $1,800 for the 1896 season. After performing well as the Boston third baseman in 1896, Collins was offered a salary increase to $2,100 for the 1897 season. Collins, however, felt he should be paid the unofficial salary maximum of $2,400. As he had been the year before, he was a holdout, but he eventually accepted Soden’s offer, which was four times the $500 average pay of an American worker.

Continual disagreements over money soured Collins’s relationship with the Boston ballclub and led to his highly publicized departure from the National League after the 1900 season. Collins had an easier time negotiating back home in Buffalo and in Louisville, where there was a more ethnically tolerant climate among the Irish-Americans, German-Americans, and native-born populations than the environment he found in Boston. There was a fundamental difference in ethnic relations in Boston, where the Irish didn’t just clash with the native-born Brahmin aristocracy over political, religious, and economic issues but indeed were the underbelly of society. In the 1890s the Brahmins (Soden included) controlled virtually everything in Boston, and considered Irish-Americans like Collins as simply pawns in their world.

In 1897 during Boston’s drive to the National League pennant, Collins matured into a graceful fielder and a consistent line-drive hitter who could find the outfield gaps. He became a fan favorite among the changing nature of the spectators at the South End Grounds, dubbed the Royal Rooters, who were middle-class businessmen that were displacing the gentlemanly crowd as ballpark spectators. In late September, more than 100 Rooters traveled to Baltimore to watch the Boston team play a crucial series there, where Collins, with a leech on his face to heal a swollen eye, led the team to victory in the series. Three days later Boston clinched the pennant.

While Collins finished the 1897 season with a .346 batting average, his real value was his ability to produce runs. Although the RBI statistic hadn’t yet been invented, a retrospective determination indicates that Collins would have had 132 RBIs in 1897, second among all National League batters. With the regular season over, Collins moved on to the supplemental income opportunities of the postseason. After the anticlimactic rematch with Baltimore in the Temple Cup series, Collins played for the All-America Baseball Team in a cross-country tour with the Baltimore team, where he observed Boston manager Frank Selee as businessman turn a profit on the itinerant baseball venture.

Collins quietly negotiated a contract with Soden to be paid the $2,400 salary maximum for the 1898 season. After three years as a National League ballplayer, the 28-year-old Collins had reached the pinnacle of his profession. However, because the National League owners lengthened the baseball season by 22 games to play 154 games in 1898, Collins felt duped by Soden, since Collins actually received just a minimal pay increase on a per-game basis.

Boston went on to capture a second consecutive National League pennant in 1898, as Collins compiled a .328 batting average, seventh highest in the league, and led the league with 15 home runs. Collins, who didn’t take kindly to having a boss, responded well to manager Selee’s approach to leave the ballplayers alone to play the game, a managerial style Collins adopted in the future. By now Collins had developed a stellar reputation as baseball’s best fielding third baseman, because he had a quick eye, good dexterity, extensive range, and a strong throwing arm. Collins covered a lot of territory at third base, not just bunts and groundballs but also snagging many pop flies in foul territory and in short left field.

At a team testimonial in October 1898, Selee received a $2,500 check from Soden to share with the players, as a “gratuity” for winning the pennant. It must have galled Collins to receive a “tip” as if he were a Pullman Car porter. It was one more signal to Collins that his income potential was very limited by working for the Boston ballclub. Indeed, he had no success in securing a salary increase for the 1899 and 1900 seasons.

During the winter of 1900 Collins made an investment to take advantage of the explosive future growth he saw in the nascent South Buffalo neighborhood, to which Irish-Americans had begun moving from the inner city. Collins purchased a house lot and made plans to construct a rental unit on it. This was the first of many properties Collins purchased as he planned to live off the rental income as a self-employed person during his post-baseball years.

Collins doubtless saw no benefits in a future with the Boston National League ballclub. Given the penurious ways of the Boston owners, he was likely to face a decrease in salary as age took its inevitable toll on his playing skills. He had no chance to succeed Selee as manager and had been passed over as captain. One ray of hope for Collins to get an increased salary was the formation of the Players Protective Association in 1900. Collins was one of Boston’s player representatives in the fledgling players union, but he was also looking out for his own interests. After attending two union meetings that summer and seeing no action on the compensation front, Collins took matters into his own hands.

In March 1901 Collins became the manager, captain, and third baseman of the Boston team in the new American League, which Ban Johnson had established as a second major league to compete against the monopolistic National League. Collins justified jumping leagues at the time by saying, “I have given the National league people my best efforts for several years past and often asked them for more money, knowing that I was worth it, but until now they have turned a deaf ear to all my requests. …I saw a chance to better myself and took it.”3

Since Collins was motivated by money and displeased with his history of salary negotiations with the Boston Nationals, he was willing to take the risk of switching over to the Boston Americans. The possible failure of the new baseball enterprise and of being blackballed by the National League were not big risks to the 31-year-old Collins; he could simply fall back on his real-estate venture and connections in Buffalo. Collins was not only pleased that he could be a manager in the American League, but he was also intrigued that former ballplayers could also be part-owners, as exemplified by Connie Mack in Philadelphia.

Collins was handsomely compensated for jumping leagues. His contract with the Boston Americans called for a $3,500 annual salary for three years, nearly a 50 percent increase over his $2,400 salary for the 1900 season, with no reserve clause to restrict his freedom to negotiate with other teams thereafter. This $10,500 package was a key aspect of the deal for Collins, so that he’d have additional capital to invest in his real-estate business. Charles Somers, the owner of the Boston club, agreed to add a personal guarantee concerning the salary payments, to negate Collins’s risk if Soden took legal action to try to enforce the reserve clause that he thought legally bound Collins to the National League ballclub. Collins was also a nominal owner of the Boston Americans, being awarded a few shares of stock in the club.

The timing of Collins’s switch to the American League was impeccable from a cultural perspective, coinciding with the rise of Irish-American political power in Boston. John Fitzgerald, a member of the Royal Rooters, was a congressman in Washington (and soon would be mayor of Boston), while Patrick Collins became the second Irish-American mayor of Boston. From 1902 to 1905, two men named Collins were the toast of Boston among the city’s Irish-American citizens: the mayor and the baseball manager.

Collins piloted Boston to a second-place finish in 1901 and to third place in 1902, while producing .332 and .322 batting averages, respectively, as the team’s third baseman. Because the Royal Rooters followed Collins and transferred their loyalty, the Americans outdrew their rival Nationals at the ballpark, becoming the more popular team in Boston. Collins seized the opportunity to renegotiate his contract each year, nearly doubling his 1901 salary by the beginning of the 1903 season.

Collins was successful as a baseball manager because he extended to the baseball diamond his general contracting skills from his house-building activities in Buffalo, where he had to depend on highly skilled, motivated workers to build well-constructed houses for him. In this fashion, Collins adopted the same philosophy that his former manager, Frank Selee, had used during his five years with the Boston Nationals: find good ballplayers and let them do their jobs without interference. Because he was able to motivate his players through his on-the-field activities as a third baseman, Collins was more of a leader “among” men than a leader “of” men. It was the “we’re all in this together” attitude that enabled Collins to win two American League pennants as player-manager and lead his team to victory in the first modern-day World Series.

Offsetting these positive attributes as manager, Collins had several flaws, primarily that he stayed too long with veteran players and failed to adequately mix in younger players to prepare the team for the future. His problem with handling aging ballplayers was compounded by his weakness in talent evaluation, which stemmed in large part from his inability to build an effective network of contacts to acquire new talent in that pre-farm-system era.

While he continued to perform as a third baseman in Boston for five more seasons, Collins focused more on the leadership functions of his job and his activities to improve the stature of the American League and its president, Ban Johnson. Two developments in 1903 elevated Johnson’s gratitude to Collins for making the new league a success: the peace conference between the two leagues in January 1903 and the first modern-day World Series in October 1903. Both developments solidified Johnson’s stature as an influential baseball executive, and they enabled Collins to enjoy several more years of financial prosperity as well as indulgence by Johnson as his reward for jumping leagues in 1901.

When the Boston Americans secured the American League pennant in September 1903, new Boston owner Henry Killileaand Pittsburgh owner Barney Dreyfuss agreed to play an interleague postseason series in October. The agreement provided for the owners to share revenue from the games, but did not include a provision to pay the ballplayers. Since the contracts of the Boston players expired at the end of September, Killilea had foolishly entered into a contract to play a postseason series without securing the services of the Boston ballplayers. Collins exploited Killilea’s poor business judgment to negotiate a great deal for the ballplayers. They got not just 75 percent of Boston’s portion of the shared revenue under the World Series agreement, but 75 percent of all of Boston’s net revenue from the series.4

After Boston lost three of the first four games of the best-of-nine-games postseason series, Collins led the team, accentuated by the Royal Rooters’ incessant singing of the song “Tessie,” in a comeback to win the next four games to become the World Series champion. In the eyes of the sporting public, the victory over the National League established the legitimacy of the American League. At the time Collins believed these postseason games to be merely meaningless exhibitions to generate additional income, based on his experience in 1897 with the Temple Cup series and the All-America tour. However, he took advantage of the national belief that the 1903 World Series determined baseball supremacy. Indeed, the vast majority of his wealth garnered from major-league baseball between 1904 and 1908 was the direct result of his national acclaim from Boston’s 1903 World Series victory.

After the World Series victory, Collins negotiated a new three-year guaranteed contract with Killilea, who was seeking to retain his services so he could sell the ballclub, which paid Collins a $10,000 annual salary and had a profit-sharing arrangement equal to 10 percent of the club’s profits over $25,000.5 In April 1904 John I. Taylor, the son of Boston Globe publisher Charles Taylor, became the new owner of the Americans. Collins’s clash with the inexperienced Taylor led to a testy feud that eventually led to Collins’s departure from the Boston Americans three years later.

Collins led an aging Boston team to a second consecutive pennant in 1904, in a neck-and-neck battle with the New York Highlanders in the first installment of the longstanding rivalry between the Boston Red Sox and New York Yankees. Unlike 1903, when Boston participated in the first modern-day World Series, the 1904 championship had no similar culminating event, as the National League champion New York Giants refused to play such a series. Although Taylor honored the profit-sharing provision in Collins’s contract, the $8,000 payment on top of Collins’ $10,000 salary stuck in the owner’s craw.

An article in the Boston Globe Magazine in January 1905 portrayed Collins as an up-and-coming businessman. Accompanying the article was a portrait of Collins dressed in a suit, white shirt with raised collar, cravat loosely knotted at the neck, with a watch fob draped across his breast. He looked like any well-to-do Boston Brahmin, not a baseball player. Three photos of his rental properties in Buffalo were also included. “For several winters he devoted his time to looking after the new buildings he was erecting,” writer Tim Murnane wrote of Collins’s dedication to this business venture, “and even now with several fine pieces of real estate, he has planned for two more new houses.”6 Collins was now more businessman than ballplayer, which accelerated Taylor’s dislike for him.

Collins also displayed more hubris during the 1905 baseball season, indicating that he believed the Boston Americans were his team, not Taylor’s. Collins had run the baseball operation for three years without any direct oversight by the ballclub’s absentee out-of-town owners before Taylor became the owner, and had successfully engineered a second straight pennant-winning season in 1904 without Taylor’s assistance. This was the dark side to the soft-spoken but ambitious Collins.

Taylor took a more active role in the team for the 1905 season, seeking to remedy the team’s injury and age issues, not by providing the resources to Collins so that he could fix the situation, but rather by fancying himself as a recruiter of baseball talent to rescue the team on his own. Not only did Taylor’s signings do nothing to improve Boston’s chances for victory on the baseball field (the team finished in fourth place), they intensified Collins’s smoldering animosity for Taylor. While hidden from the public during the baseball season, the feud spilled onto the sports pages in December.

In a late December meeting in Buffalo with Ban Johnson, Collins leveraged his favorable relationship with the American League president to push him to honor the verbal commitment made back in 1901 for Collins to eventually obtain an ownership interest in an American League ballclub. Johnson then exiled Taylor to Europe for a six-month vacation. The timing was perfect to take advantage of John Fitzgerald’s becoming mayor of Boston in January 1906 as the city’s first American-born Irish Catholic mayor, to increase the influence of the Royal Rooters among Irish-Americans and take advantage of transportation improvements (train connections and automobiles) that would bring suburban spectators to the Americans’ Huntington Avenue Grounds.

Although Johnson temporarily assumed the role of Boston owner, Collins was the acting president of the Boston ballclub. To reflect his new duties, Collins extended his guaranteed contract for two more years, through the 1908 season. At the same time, he made his first investment in a baseball organization when he became a one-third owner of the minor-league Worcester, Massachusetts, club in the New England League.

With Taylor out of the way for the 1906 season, Johnson gave Collins a tryout as president. However, just when he was on the cusp on moving from the baseball diamond to the executive suite, three factors combined to derail Collins from achieving his ultimate goal in professional baseball. First, Collins discovered that he just wasn’t good at the job of being an executive, which changed his relationship with the ballplayers. Second, the early success of his investment in the Worcester ballclub nudged him to modify his goal to be a minor-league owner rather than one at the major-league level. Third, Collins, a 36-year-old bachelor, looked to marry his longtime girlfriend.

Over a two-year span following consecutive American League pennants, Collins plummeted from revered hero to reviled bum. A 20-game losing streak in May 1906 sank the team into last place, where it stayed for the remainder of the season. On July 1 Collins abruptly left the team and made his fateful decision to stop performing all his duties for the Boston ballclub to focus on his personal future. He made just two brief returns to the team during the summer. On August 29 the front-page headline in the Boston Globe told the whole story: “Capt. Jimmy Collins No Longer at Helm: Indefinitely Suspended by Boston American League Club.” After Collins’ several absences without leave, Johnson used the term “desertion” in the press announcement.

Collins’s decision to desert the Boston Americans was a disaster. He struck out at buying into ownership in the Buffalo and Providence ballclubs of the Eastern League, believing the asking prices to be too inflated to justify the investment. By December Collins was negotiating to return to Boston as its third baseman for the 1907 season, since he had a guaranteed contract to play through 1908 with the Boston Americans. Because Taylor, now back from his extended European vacation, was legally obligated to pay Collins whether or not he played, he agreed to take Collins back as a player, but not as manager.

During the winter of 1907 Collins secretly married Sarah E. “Sadie” Murphy before he left for spring training. The news of the marriage wasn’t reported in the Boston newspapers until after he was traded on June 7 to the Philadelphia Athletics, when old friend Connie Mack agreed to take on Collins and his contract to bolster the A’s infield to make a run at the pennant. By August Philadelphia had climbed from fourth place to first place, but then lost the pennant after a late September swoon. In August 1908 Mack excused Collins from the team’s season-ending road trip so he could try out some minor-leaguers at third base to replace Collins in 1909, which gave Collins some time to contemplate his next step in baseball and enjoy some family time with his newborn daughter, Agnes.

For the 1909 season, Collins had to settle for being player-manager of the Minneapolis Millers in the American Association. Early in the season, however, Collins suffered an off-the-field tragedy when 8-month-old Agnes died in Buffalo. Collins returned to Buffalo to console his distraught wife, who was now four months pregnant, and made arrangements for Sadie to return to Boston so that she could be with her family for the next five months of her pregnancy. In early July Minneapolis moved into first place, but faded down the stretch to a third-place finish. Just before the season ended, Collins received word from Boston that his daughter Kathlyn had been born.

Now living with his family in Boston, not Buffalo, Collins sought a position near Boston. In October 1909 he was hired as the manager of the Providence team in the Eastern League, which was owned by Charlie Lavis, a former Royal Rooter. He lasted only a season and a half at Providence, being fired in June 1911; his passive managerial style didn’t produce results in an era dominated by intimidating managers. Collins’s hope to become the majority owner of a minor-league ballclub was dashed, as prices continued to skyrocket at what turned out to be a height of popularity of minor-league baseball. In January 1912 his daughter Claire was born and Collins sold his one-third interest in the Worcester ballclub and left Organized Baseball.

Settling into Boston was challenging for Collins. During his days as a popular player-manager, he had managed to navigate the ethnic stratification between Boston’s Brahmin society and its Irish-American underclass. Now, as just another former ballplayer, he couldn’t establish himself in business in the city. Collins was even rebuffed when he tried to become the baseball coach at an Irish-American institution, Boston College. In 1914 the family moved back to Buffalo, where Collins purchased a house in South Buffalo near his rental properties and settled into a quiet life as a real-estate mogul.

In 1922 Collins was appointed president of the Buffalo Municipal Baseball Association, in the wake of a corruption scandal in the Buffalo Parks Department, which sent to prison the former head of the city’s amateur baseball leagues. Collins served 22 consecutive terms as president of the muni-league, during which he helped to expand the opportunity for thousands of youngsters to develop their baseball talents in the city-run amateur leagues, a vast improvement over the former system of social-club leagues in which Collins had played that could accommodate only a few hundred players.

As muni-league president, Collins’s reputation as a great major-league ballplayer spread among a new generation of baseball fans and sportswriters in western New York. John Meahl, the commissioner of the Buffalo Parks Department, was not bashful about profusely praising Collins as baseball’s “greatest third baseman of all time.”7 As a result of Meahl’s promotional efforts, Collins’s baseball reputation soon spread beyond regional newspapers into national publications. During the 1920s his name regularly surfaced as the third baseman picked for the various all-time teams selected by famous ballplayers and sportswriters. When The Sporting News published a long biographical sketch of Collins in 1933, the baseball weekly reinvigorated the fabled 1895 story about his exceptional fielding of bunts by the infamous Baltimore Orioles.8 Ten years later this legend became the centerpiece of a campaign to put Collins in the Baseball Hall of Fame.

Collins’s real-estate business reached its zenith of prosperity during World War I, before suburban flight in the 1920s changed the neighborhood, real estate prices peaked in 1926, and then mortgage defaults during the Great Depression resulted in property foreclosures. In 1927 Collins sold his home; he and his wife began renting apartments, before they moved in with their oldest daughter, Kathlyn. By 1935 Collins’s real-estate business had imploded and he earned an income as an employee in the Buffalo Parks Department. Despite his financial reversals, Collins continued to gracefully serve as an ambassador for Buffalo athletics in his unpaid role as muni-league president.

Collins died on March 6, 1943, in Buffalo and was buried in Holy Cross Cemetery. Two months before Collins passed away, Buffalo Evening News sports editor Bob Stedler began a press campaign to have Collins elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame at the next BBWAA election in January 1945. Even with a heavy dose of electioneering by Stedler, Collins polled only 49 percent of the vote, far short of the required 75 percent. But that spring the Old-Timers Committee unanimously selected Collins for enshrinement in the Hall of Fame.

Jimmy Collins’s legacy in baseball is much more than his batting and fielding exploits during the Deadball Era. As a star player, first manager, and the public face of the nascent Boston Americans, Collins put the franchise, valued by Forbes in 2012 at $1 billion, on a solid foundation. He delivered two pennants in the team’s first four years and victory in the 1903 World Series, and thus should be remembered as the patron saint of today’s Red Sox Nation.

An updated version of this biography appeared in “The Glorious Beaneaters of the 1890s” (SABR, 2019), edited by Bob LeMoine and Bill Nowlin. This biography also appeared in “New Century, New Team: The 1901 Boston Americans” (SABR, 2013), edited by Bill Nowlin.

Sources

In addition to the sources cited in the Notes, the author also consulted:

O’Connell, Fred. “Boston’s Baseball Idol: Jimmy Collins, Manager and Captain of the World’s Champion Club.” Washington Post, September 11, 1904.

Stedler, Bob. “Jimmy Collins, Buffalo’s Baseball Immortal, Dies,” Buffalo Evening News, March 6, 1943.

Notes

1 Cy Kritzer, “Late Jimmy Collins, the ‘King of Third Sackers,’ Became Hot Corner Star by Ability to Handle Bunts,” The Sporting News, March 11, 1943.

2 Charlie Bevis, Jimmy Collins: A Baseball Biography (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland, 2012), 33-35.

3 Boston Globe, March 10, 1901.

4 Bevis, Jimmy Collins, 113, 120-121.

5 Ibid., 7.

6 Tim Murnane, “His Winter Pastime Collecting Rents,” Boston Globe Magazine section. January 15, 1905.

7 Buffalo Express, December 6, 1922.

8 “Daguerreotypes: James J. (Jimmy) Collins,” The Sporting News, July 27, 1933.

A 1910 newspaper account described Criger as having light chestnut hair, porcelain colored eyes, a countenance something like Julius Caesar’s, and so slight that he “looks anything but athletic.” But looks can deceive, as Criger proved by using his arm and his cunning as weapons worthy of journalists’ praise. Wrote Boston writer and former player Tim Murnane, “Criger is the man who can turn back the fleetest base runner, a man who can nip the boys at first and third unless they are ever on the alert. Criger is the backstop that never drops a ball that he can reach, and who can throw harder and quicker to second than any catcher in the profession. … I would like to see some one pick out the equal of Criger.”

Louis Criger was born on February 3, 1872, on a farm just south of Elkhart, Indiana, to Charles Criger, a cooper originally from the Mecklenburg region of Germany, and Lovina (Stutsman) Criger. Lou had five brothers, one of whom, Elmer, pitched in the minor leagues, winning 22 games with Jackson of the Southern Michigan League in 1909 and earning a place with Los Angeles of the Pacific Coast League. In 1890 Lou Criger pitched for the Elkhart Lakeviews. The following year, he moved behind the plate, where he became a mainstay for the newly organized Elkhart Truths.

After spending five seasons playing for Elkhart, Criger was signed by the Michigan State League’s Kalamazoo Kazoos in 1895. The next year he began the season with the Fort Wayne Farmers of the Inter-State League, splitting his time between left field and catcher and typically batting third or fourth in the lineup. One of his Fort Wayne teammates was R.C. Grey, whose brother Zane, a semipro player, went on to fame as an author of Western fiction.

Criger joined the Cleveland Spiders at the end of 1896, going hitless in five at-bats. He began 1897 year as a third-string catcher for the Spiders, but when he finally got a chance to play, he dazzled observers with his powerful throwing arm, gunning down all six would-be Louisville base stealers on June 22, 1897. Criger took great pride in his throwing; he often sounded like a pitcher when he discussed his technique. “Now the way I throw the ball, it rotates backward and has an upward tendency, while some catchers throw with the thumb exposed and that gives it the downward effect, like the billiard draw shot, a ball that hurts to catch,” he told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch in 1909.

In 1898 Criger became the Spiders’ primary receiver, appearing in 82 games behind the plate and batting a modest .279 with one home run. That turned out to be the best offensive performance of the right-handed batter’s career. A classic example of the good-field, no-hit catcher, Criger batted just .221 during his 16-year-career, and never collected more than 22 extra-base hits in a single season. He played because of his stellar defensive work and his close relationship with Cleveland ace right-hander Cy Young.

From 1897 to 1908, wherever Young went, Criger joined him: with Cleveland in 1897 and 1898, St. Louis in 1899 and 1900, and the Boston Americans from 1901 to 1908. During those 12 seasons Young won 283 games, and Criger was behind the plate for most of them. As Sporting Life put it in 1908, “What battery still serving in the major leagues has more inseparable service than the firm of Young and Criger?” In 1910 Young called Criger “the greatest catcher that ever stood behind the plate.” But catching the burly hurler took its toll. Recalled his son, Harold Criger, in 1988,  “I remember when the ball hit the mitt, it sounded like a pistol shot, and when dad was home, he soaked his hand in hot water, and it was red as fire. Sometimes he put a slice of beefsteak in his mitt for more padding, and Cy beat it to bloody shreds.” After the two parted ways – Boston traded Criger to the Browns in December 1908 – Young talked to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch about what the 1909 season might be like without Lou. Said Young, “In Criger, St. Louis will get one of the greatest catchers that ever donned a glove. I’ve pitched to him so long than he seems a part of me, and I am positive no one will suffer from the departure more than I. Lou is a great student of the game and knows the weaknesses of every batter in the league. So confident am I of his judgment that I never shake my head. It means that I have to learn a great deal about the batters, features to which I had heretofore paid no attention.”

Criger was behind the plate for some of Young’s greatest games, including his perfect game against the Phildelphia Athletics at the Huntington Avenue Grounds on May 5, 1904, and his no-hitter against the New York Highlanders at Hilltop Park on June 30, 1908. Criger also caught all 20 innings of Young’s famous duel with Rube Waddell on July 4, 1905. In 1903 the backstop was behind the plate for every game of Boston’s eight-game triumph over the Pittsburgh Pirates in the first modern World Series. Twenty years after that success, Criger revealed that he had turned down a $12,000 offer from a gambler named Anderson to call “soft pitches” during the Series. In 1923 Criger, believing he was dying of tuberculosis, hired an attorney to file an affidavit with American League president Ban Johnson, who went public with the incident. Johnson, impressed with Criger’s honesty, personally established a pension that helped Criger and other players after their playing days.

During his playing career Criger endured his share of bumps and bruises, a subject about which the catcher was particularly sensitive. While recuperating from a damaged finger during the 1901 campaign, Criger told Sporting Life, “They are very solicitous about my health. Just tell them for me that I am feeling perfectly well. I am out of the game just now with a bad finger, but will be in all right, and think I am good for many more years of ball playing before I quit. Every now and then someone sends me a clipping in which it is stated that I am not well. It is extremely annoying, not only to me, but to my folks.” Nonetheless, Criger became so associated with injury that he later became a spokesman for the Elkhart-based Dr. Miles’ Anti-Pain Pills.

With batterymate Cy Young nearing the end of his career, Criger was traded to the St. Louis Browns in December 1908 for catcher Tubby Spencer and $5,000 (some sources say $4,000). In one season with St. Louis, Criger batted just .170 with two extra-base hits in 212 at-bats. After the season Criger was again traded, this time to the New York Highlanders for pitcher Joe Lake and outfielder Ray Demmitt. Criger appeared in only 27 games for the Highlanders and batted just .188. The following year he played briefly for Milwaukee of the American Association and was player-manager for Boyne City of the Michigan State League. In 1912 Criger returned to the American League as pitching coach for the Browns. The 40-year-old played in one game when both Browns catchers got hurt.

Criger married the former Belle Louise Wolhaupter in 1893. They and their six children lived in Elkhart until 1909, when the family moved 22 miles northeast to a 40-acre farm at Bair Lake, Michigan. There, he spent many an offseason hunting and fishing with his ballplaying friends. In 1914 Criger developed tuberculosis in his left knee, and the following year his leg had to be amputated above the knee. In failing health, Criger moved to Nevada in the early 1920s and in 1924 relocated to the arid climate of Arizona, spending winters in Tucson and summers in Flagstaff. The family ran a bakery in Tucson. In 1920 Criger’s son Rollo, also a catcher, joined the St. Louis Cardinals but never appeared in a game.

Criger died on May 14, 1934, in Tuscon and was buried in Evergreen Cemetery in that city. A Northern Indiana SABR chapter was named for Criger in the spring of 1998.

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

Sources

Sporting Life

Elkhart Truth

St. Louis Post-Dispatch

Jeanette Criger Done (granddaughter and family historian)

George Maceo Koppe was born on July 3, 1869, in Logansport, Indiana, fourth of the eight children of Christina Stieffenheffer Koppe and Christian Koppe. Christina came to the United States in 1845. Christian immigrated five years later. The couple married in 1856. In 1880 the family, including 11-year-old George, was living in Eaton, Ohio, where Christian worked as a brick and stone mason. Later they returned to Indiana. Christian and Christina were living apart in Jasper County in 1900. By this time George was no longer living at home. After playing baseball for independent clubs in Indiana, George started his career in Organized Baseball at the age of 20 with the Dayton (Ohio) Reds of the Tri-State League in 1890. His baseball name became Cuppy, the phonetic spelling of the German name Koppe. It is not clear when he acquired the nickname Nig. In 1891 Cuppy divided his time between two clubs in the New York-Pennsylvania League, Jamestown, New York, and Meadville, Pennsylvania. The right-handed pitcher won 21 games that season and found time to play 17 games in the outfield.

On April 16, 1892, the 22-year-old Cuppy made his major-league debut with the National League Cleveland Spiders. His first major-league win came in his first start, on April 23. He bested Cincinnati Reds starter Billy Rhines, who was knocked out of the box in the first inning. Cuppy allowed five earned runs on eight hits and six walks with a wild pitch as his mates beat Cincinnati 14-5 at League Park. The 5-foot-7, 160-pound hurler had an outstanding rookie season, winning 28 games against 13 losses and posting an earned-run average of 2.51, fourth in the league. He was second on the team in wins, an accomplishment that happened many times. For each of his first five seasons, Cuppy ranked second in wins among Cleveland pitchers, always behind future Hall of Famer Cy Young. During those five years, 1892-1896, Cuppy and Young combined for 279 wins, the most of any two teammates in the majors over that span. In 1894 Cuppy led the National League in shutouts. A good-hitting pitcher, he scored five runs in an 18-6 win over the Chicago Colts on August 9, 1895. Cuppy pitched a complete game in that contest, one of the 224 times in his career that he finished what he started.

Cuppy was known as a slow pitcher, not only for the number of off-speed pitches he threw, but also because of the time he took between deliveries, which many hitters found frustrating. Newspapers of the day took delight in describing Cuppy’s actions in the pitcher’s box. One reporter wrote, “It is really amusing to those in the stands to witness the maneuvers of this little twirler with the swarthy complexion and pearly teeth. He fondles the ball, rubs it on the back of his neck, grins at the batsman, and then stops to adjust his cap and hitch up his trousers. He does all this several more times before he delivers the ball to the batsman.”2

In addition to his slow pitch, Cuppy also threw a jump ball, that is, a rising fastball. The elimination of the pitcher’s box and lengthening of the distance to the plate in 1893 may have been at least partly responsible for a decline in his performance during the 1893 season, but he recovered in 1894.

According to the Cleveland Press, one day in 1894 Cuppy announced that he was going to spring a surprise on fans and players alike at that afternoon’s game. When the game began Cuppy walked out into the pitcher’s box wearing a glove on his left hand. Other fielders had worn gloves before, but this was believed to be the first time in history that a pitcher had used a glove. By the end of the season use of the glove had been adopted by other pitchers.3

During his first six seasons in the majors, Cuppy had five 20-win seasons. (He collected 17 victories in the exception, his “poor” 1893 season.) In 1897 his arm gave out. He won only ten games that season and never came close to 20 again. During Cuppy’s tenure with Cleveland, the club consistently finished in the first division, including three seasons in second place, but they captured no pennants.

On March 29, 1899, Cuppy was transferred to the St. Louis club. (The St. Louis Browns were expelled from the league before the start of the 1899 season. The Robison brothers, who owned the Spiders, were allowed the St. Louis franchise without having to relinquish the Spiders. They took the best players from the 1898 Browns and Spiders and made an “A” team which stayed in St. Louis. The “B” team went to Cleveland, which went 20-134, drawing fewer than 10,000 fans for the season.) After playing second fiddle to Cy Young for so many years, was Cuppy now freed from comparisons with his more famous teammate? No. Young also joined St. Louis that season. However, Cuppy was sold to the Boston Beaneaters on May 23, 1900, and did not appear in a game for St. Louis that season. For the only time in his major-league career, Cuppy did not pitch on the same team as Young. With an 8-4 record, Cuppy won twice as many games as he lost that year, but he was far from the pitcher he had been in his heyday.

In 1901 as the American League gained major-league status, Cuppy joined a host of National Leaguers jumping to the new circuit. Among the jumpers was Cy Young. Both pitchers joined the Boston Americans. Cuppy and Young were teammates for one last time. This time Cuppy did not play second fiddle to Young; he was much further behind the maestro, ranking fourth in wins among the Boston pitchers with only four victories compared with Young’s 33. Cuppy’s four wins were outnumbered by his six losses, giving him the only losing season of his career.

The Americans’ manager, Jimmy Collins, made an effort to speed up the pitcher’s notoriously slow delivery. With the hyperbole that permeated sportswriting in that era, a reporter for a Cleveland newspaper wrote:

“Collins has served notice on Pitcher Cuppy that one and one-half minutes is the limit of time which will be allowed him in delivering the ball. Cuppy in the national league was noted as the living picture twirler. He assumed seventy-seven imposing and statuesque poses while in the act of delivering the ball, the poses melting into one another ’til the whole performance was like watching a kinetoscope picture with the machine slowed down. The bleachers used to take delight in rising and counting in unison from the time Cuppy received the ball through all the convolutions in his frame and the divers and sundry positions he assumes until with an Ajax-defying-the-lightning attitude he finally lets the ball go. … Collins has given one of his young players the task of standing behind Cuppy as he warms up in practice. The youngster is armed with a long hatpin and at the count of eight if the ball isn’t delivered, Cuppy receives a jab.” 4

Whether the manager’s efforts speeded Cuppy’s delivery is unknown. What is known is that it did not improve his effectiveness. During the season he was released, and his career on the big stage was over. Cuppy made his final major-league appearance on August 7, 1901, at the age of 32. His finale was a 10-4 loss to Joe McGinnity of the Orioles at Baltimore. A Logansport newspaper reported that Cuppy retained counsel in preparation of a lawsuit against the Americans for salary allegedly owed him. At the request of the club he went to Boston to enter negotiations on the matter.5 The outcome of the negotiations was not reported.

Cuppy was noted for his bubbling good nature and his fondness for harmless practical jokes. Once he announced he was going to build a 22-story hotel in Logansport. It would be so luxurious that it would make the famed Palace Hotel in San Francisco look like a wrecked shanty on the Wabash. The absurdity of locating such a building in a small Indiana town did not register with the public. Cuppy received more than 100 letters in his mailbox. There were applications for positions as manager, clerk, cashier, and bellboy; inquiries from builders, architects, and dealers in hotel furnishings. Cuppy answered every letter. This was to be a $10,000,000 project he said. He was going to pay himself one million as manager. None of the job applicants was good enough; none of the drawings submitted by builders or architects was satisfactory; the furnishings were not elegant enough.6

After leaving the majors, Cuppy returned to Indiana, where he pitched for and managed an Elkhart semipro club in 1902. For some time he and his former catcher Lou Criger ran a billiard parlor, appropriately called The Battery. Later he entered the retail tobacco business. The 1910 census showed George Cuppy, the owner of a cigar store, living in Elkhart. Cuppy was an excellent trapshooter, who scored well in tournaments.7

Cuppy died of Bright’s disease on his farm near Elkhart on July 27, 1922, at 53. He was buried at Rice Cemetery in Elkhart.

George “Nig” Cuppy was only a minor contributor to the Boston Americans in 1901. Unfortunately for him, he was released before the end of the season and was no longer around when Boston won the World Series in 1903. He never got to celebrate a league championship. However, he had posted 162 major-league victories against just 98 losses, which is certainly worthy of celebration.

This biography can be found in “New Century, New Team: The 1901 Boston Americans” (SABR, 2013), edited by Bill Nowlin. To order the book, click here.

Acknowledgements

The kindness of Trey Strecker in sharing information about Cuppy’s life and career is deeply appreciated.

Sources

Cuppy’s file at the National Baseball Hall of Fame

Rich Eldred, “George Joseph Cuppy,” in Baseball’s First Stars, Robert L. Tiemann and Mark Rucker, eds. (Cleveland: Society for American Baseball Research, 1996), 46.

David Nemec. Major League Baseball Profiles, 1871-1900, vol. 1. (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2011), 40-41.

www.ancestry.com.

www.Baseball-Reference.com.

www.NewspaperArchive.com

Notes

They were there in all the cities; all the teams had at least a couple of them. New York had several, some of them from the theatrical crowd. There was De Wolf Hopper of “Casey at the Bat” fame, and his friend, fellow actor Digby Bell. The comedian Henry Dixey, born in Boston, strongly believed that life was a game, while baseball was very serious. Actress Helen Dauvray, creator of the Dauvray Cup in 1887, was so smitten with baseball that she married John Montgomery Ward, proving that not only had she a passionate love of the New York Giants, but she also kept a player for herself – for a while anyway, until their divorce in 1893.

But there was one baseball crank in America whom baseball writer Hugh Fullerton in 1915 called the greatest of them all, a man who preceded the Royal Rooters and Nuf Ced McGreevey and all the others in Boston’s sports history, and set the bar high for his 20th-century successors. His name was Arthur Dixwell. He left his mark on baseball history, even if he is not easily recalled today. Besides being considered the greatest baseball crank of them all, he was a director of Boston’s Players League club in 1890. He showered his favorite players with gifts of cigars for all when the team won, diamond scarf pins, recliner chairs, loans that often were never paid back, and even an invitation of a European tour to catcher Morgan Murphy. His Dixwell trophy was awarded to the New England League pennant winner. He turned over the ceremonial first shovel of dirt for construction of the Huntington Avenue Grounds when the American League settled into Boston as the new team, threw out the first ball at the first game played there on May 8, 1901, and sent Ban Johnson $100 for season tickets that first year. After the 1903 World’s Series win, he presented the Boston club with a lavishly designed pennant flag. And then he virtually disappeared.

Few remember Arthur Dixwell today. His name crops up only fleetingly; a mere mention of his name is all there is in most books about Boston sports. He never occupied a position on any baseball team, yet his impact left an indelible mark on the city’s sports history during the 1890s. Born on August 6, 1853, into a prominent Boston family, he was the son of John James Dixwell, a banker who died when Arthur was a young man, leaving him with a comfortable trust fund – $10,000 annually, and an additional $10,000 if he maintained any sort of useful employment.1 He was the grandson of Nathaniel Bowditch, famed author of The New American Practical Navigator, considered the best treatise on navigation ever written. Arthur was a cousin of Fanny Dixwell, wife of Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. His upper-class connections served him well when he navigated Boston’s Brahmin society.

In an 1889 interview with the San Francisco Examiner, Dixwell explained, “I never played a game of ball in my life. Once they put me out in right field on the Common. You know in those days if you couldn’t play they put you in right field. There was one ball knocked out my way in the first part of the game, and I disgraced myself by running away from it. That settled my career as a ball player. But I’ve been a crank for many years. Last season I missed but one championship game played by the Bostons.”2

That settled Arthur into a permanent position in the grandstand. There he found fame, fortune, and notoriety for his signature yell, “Hi! Hi!” That was his way, he explained, of expressing his appreciation of a good play. He did not consider it too noisy, not half as bad, he maintained, as some other cranks had in giving expression to their feelings. Dixwell was celebrated in 1890 with a song and chorus dedicated to him and the Players League, words by Charles Sleeper and music by J.W. Wheeler, titled “Hi! Hi!” and published in the Boston Globe.

Dixwell honored his father’s wish that he in some way earn a living to supplement his trust-fund allowance. Dixwell’s Art Furniture Store, 4 Park Street [a/k/a Arthur Dixwell’s Art Parlor] , opened after his father’s death in 1876, but the enterprise went bust in 1884. He reopened at 175 Tremont Street as the agent for Marks’ Adjustable Chair, an early version of a recliner, and it became a gift he often gave to baseball players.

By 1889 Dixwell abandoned forever all his business interests and devoted himself full-time to baseball. He could be found at every game, scorecard in hand and punctuating the air whenever a good play was made with a shrill chorus of “Hi Hi’s!” He traveled with the team during spring training and to all the league games as far away as Chicago. When out of town, he had the results of all the league games cabled to him. He always kept score and was never so distracted that he failed to record a play. Scoring became his field of expertise. He kept impeccable records of the players, including height, age, average ability, color, race (nationality), and “previous condition of baseball servitude of every professional player”3 – information he found useful as a director of the Boston Players League team. He was a sabrmetrician long before there was such a thing.

He became known as “Hi Hi” Dixwell, and eventually assumed the title “General,” although he never served in the military. The title was bestowed on Dixwell for the General Petition, a request for season tickets that he sent to Boston’s National League owners – a request they declined. Perhaps it was the controversy over the season-ticket issue or an opportunity he could not pass up, but when the Brotherhood of Base Ball Players was organized, General Hi Hi Dixwell was at the front of the line to support the new Players League league team in Boston with “Hi Hi’s” and his bankroll. Elected a director, he set out to attract the best players his money could buy. He offered John Clarkson $6,000 to join the Brotherhood in Boston, but Clarkson told him that was not enough money and negotiations ceased.4

At a game in Buffalo in 1890, Dixwell’s hi-hi-ing got him into trouble when a police officer demanded,“You’ll have to stop that noise here or else go out on the bleaching boards.”

“Well, I’ve made the noise 130 times before this year and I don’t believe I’ll stop it now,” the General replied with a scornful smile, and asked whether his cheering was likely to keep the policeman awake on his beat. Several fans in the crowd sympathized with the General and started up a solid defense with a chorus of “hi hi’s” that sent the defeated officer away.5

The Brotherhood and the Players League were gone in 1891. Dixwell stood by the players and had been persuaded to invest a large sum of money which he expected to lose. He had also invested in Boston’s American Association club, but the only return he would foresee from that would be a few good games to exercise his “hi-hi’s.” The Boston Reds won the AA pennant in 1891, the Association considered a major league of the day. With regret Dixwell returned to the games at the South End Grounds, but it wasn’t the same. He was seen less often at the ball grounds and Hugh Fullerton reported that Dixwell’s devotion to the National League team was damaged by feeling he had been insulted by some of the players.

He pursued other interests – was founder and president of the Boston Bowling Club, started a bowling team that sported fashionable gray uniforms with close-fitting caps, and kept bowling records as meticulous as his baseball scorecards. The Dixwell team included ex-Commodore Charles F. Morrill of the South Boston Yacht Club and George L. Whitney, an African-American waiter whom Dixwell was acquainted with by way of the private clubs he frequented. He was also highly devoted to the theater and attended all 160 performances of the play Peggy from Paris, and was disappointed when he was unable to see all 200 performances of Yankee Consul. He always purchased two tickets, attended all engagements alone, and reserved the second seat for his hat. He prevailed upon the orchestra to move the bassoonist to the other end of the pit, far away from his seat in the front row as the noise, ironically, highly displeased him.

In September 1899 Dixwell endured an embarrassing lawsuit filed by the wife of George L. Whitney, his waiter friend. She accused Dixwell of alienating the affections of her husband. The Boston newspapers kept the story subdued on a back page in the Friday evening edition, and requests for more information by probing reporters were turned down. “You wouldn’t publish it if you knew all the facts, and I won’t give them to you,” declared Mrs. Whitney’s lawyer.6 She wanted $10,000 in damages, but the lawsuit was eventually dropped. Mr. Whitney simply wanted a divorce.

The only known photograph of Dixwell was taken at the March 7, 1901, ceremonial turning of the first shovelful of dirt for the new Huntington Avenue Grounds for Boston’s new American League team. He was a diminutive figure, surrounded by much taller Royal Rooters, and standing next to 6-foot-2-inch former pitcher and State Senator Michael J. Sullivan. Other clues about Dixwell’s physical attributes can be gleaned from his 1872 passport application, which described him as 5-feet-4½-inches tall, with a high forehead, gray eyes, regular nose, medium mouth, round chin, brown hair, light complexion, and oval face. In other accounts, he was described as having “victorious blue eyes, a flood of wavy golden whiskers, attired in fancy-colored vests and looking like a Merovingian prince, too magnificent to be ill-natured and enjoying the most agreeable relationship with himself.”7

But the Prince of Cranks no longer graced the sports pages after the 1903 season. The Royal Rooters dominated the scene from then on and General Hi Hi Dixwell faded away. Although he was reported to be dead in Everybody’s Magazine in 1907, that was a Hi Hi-ly premature declaration. Dixwell survived until September 16, 1924, and died in virtual obscurity in his apartment at the Copley Square Hotel. Boston has had its share of cranks, rooters and fanaticals, but they would not ever see again another like General “Hi Hi” Dixwell. He’s buried at Mount Auburn Cemetery among his siblings, his parents, and many of his distinguished ancestors.

This biography can be found in “New Century, New Team: The 1901 Boston Americans” (SABR, 2013), edited by Bill Nowlin. To order the book, click here.

Sources

Hugh Fullerton, “Fans Formerly Were Noisy Lot,” Muskegon (Michigan) Chronicle, January 26, 1915.

“All Sorts of Sport,” Chicago Daily Inter Ocean, November 16, 1890.

“Players,” Chicago InterOcean, June 28, 1890.

“Baseball Brevities,” Haverhill (Massachusetts) Bulletin, July 21, 1891.

“Goes Away Satisfied,” Boston Herald, January 24, 1901.

“Dixwell’s Ultimatum: Team Must Win or Buy Their Own Cigars,” Boston Daily Globe, June 27, 1890.

“Boston and the Brotherhood,” Boston Herald, October 26, 1889.

“General Dixwell Speaks,” from San Francisco Examiner, Boston Daily Globe, December 30, 1889.

W.I. Harris, “Baseball Cranks,” Wichita (Kansas) Daily Eagle, June 13, 1891.

“Ball Player Clarkson Explains,” The Patriot (Harrisburg, Pennsylvania), January 16, 1890.

“Pop Ups,” Chicago Daily Inter Ocean, October 3, 1890.

“HI HI Dixwell,” Morning Herald (Baltimore, Maryland), September 25, 1891.

“Highest Salary Scorer, General Dixwell Earns $10,000 Per Annum as a Statistician,” Philadelphia Inquirer, January 26, 1899.

“King of Theater Goers,” Boston Journal, November 1, 1903.

James A. Hart, “The Story of ‘General Hi Hi Dixwell,’ ” Saturday Evening Post, April 26, 1902.

“ ‘Gen.’ Dixwell Sued for $10,000,” Boston Traveler, September 8, 1899.

“Husband’s Love Alienated,” Boston Post, September 8, 1899.

“That Prince of Rooters,” Sporting Life, January 20, 1900.

“Work Commenced on New Grounds,” Pawtucket (Rhode Island) Times, March 8, 1901.

Passport Application – Arthur Dixwell, May 13, 1872, www.Ancestry.com.

“Arthur Dixwell, An Old Fan, Gives This Most Unique Present To Collins’ Team,” Pawtucket Times, March 18, 1904.

Allan Sangree, “Psychology of the Fan,” New York Herald, October 4, 1911.

“Famous ‘Rooters,’ ” Berea (Ohio) Advertiser, November 1, 1907.

“ ‘Hi Hi’ Dixwell Is Called By Death,” Boston Daily Globe, September 17, 1924.

Notes

Dowd, the left fielder, led off that first game by grounding right back to the Baltimore Orioles’ pitcher, Joe McGinnity, and was thrown out at first base. He was 1-for-5 that first day, singling in the top of the eighth and driving in Lou Criger. Boston lost the game, 10-6. Dowd also had the first stolen base for the new team. There were no thefts in the first two games, but Dowd walked and stole second in the first inning of game No. 3, on April 29, 1901, then stole third and scored on a bad throw to third – all before the second batter completed his at-bat.

In Boston’s first home game, played on May 8 at the Huntington Avenue Grounds, Dowd earned a number of firsts. He was the first batter to play before the home crowd, and he got the first hit in Boston, a first-inning leadoff single to left field. He was sacrificed to second, and scored the first run when Jimmy Collins drove him in with a single. The final score of the game was 12-4 over the Philadelphia Athletics.

Dowd played Brown University baseball from 1888 to 1891. A brief article in the March 6, 1891, Boston Globe said that “T. J. Dowd, second baseman of the Brown University team, has been signed by the Boston Athletic Club team.” This was the American Association team known as the Boston Reds, not to be confused with the National League’s Boston Beaneaters. The American Association approved the contract the next day. Dowd played his first game for the Reds in Baltimore on April 8, in front of 5,000 fans. The Reds played under manager Arthur Irwin. Dowd “made a beautiful running catch in the ninth inning, for which he got a round of cheers.”1 He played right field and batted ninth, after the pitcher. He was 1-for-4 and scored a run, but Baltimore won, 11-7. The Brown Alumni Magazine wrote that the Globe’s Tim Murnane had called him “the best center fielder he’d ever seen, especially for his skill at sprinting back on a ball over his head and then turning left or right for the catch. For years Dowd held the unofficial record time for circling the bases.” He was fast; he stole 366 bases during his years in the majors.

Dowd also attended other colleges as well, and studied law at Georgetown. In that 1891 debut season, he appeared in four games for Boston with just the one hit and the one run, in 11 at-bats. He was then sold (or loaned) to the Washington Nationals. Dowd was a hit in Washington. The April 27 Boston Globe quoted the Washington Post: “Tommy Dowd owns the town, and can have all the earth but Italy for the asking.” He’d gone from the team that finished first – the Reds – to the team that wound up finishing last. He was the Senators’ regular second baseman, appearing in 112 games. His .259 was a few points above the team average. Dowd played in 1892 for Washington as well, getting into 144 games and hitting .243. This time, his average was four points above the team’s. He was released in November and was signed on December 1 by the St. Louis Browns, for whom he played the next four-plus seasons. The release and sign appears to have been part of a prearranged deal; the August 6, 1989, issue of Sporting Life wrote that St. Louis executive Chris Von der Ahe had seen Dowd in action and after “becoming stuck on his playing, bought his release from Washington.” But by mid-1898 he was seen to have “retrograded rather than advanced.”

Beginning in 1893, the National League was a 12-team league. Dowd was never on teams finishing in the top six. His batting average fluctuated from .282 in 1893 (when he mostly played left field) to .271 (1894, when he was the right fielder) to .323 (right field) to .265 (back to his original position at second base). His best year without a doubt was 1895 (the .323 season), when he drove in a career-high 74 runs.

The Browns were a team that had managerial instability, to say the least. Bill Watkins was the skipper in 1893 and Doggie Miller was in 1894. There were four managers in 1895: Al Buckenberger, Chris Von Der Ahe (for one game), Joe Quinn, and Lou Phelan. The 1896 team topped even that, with five managers: Harry Diddlebock, Arlie Latham (three games), Von Der Ahe (two games), Roger Conner (under whom the team was 8-37), and Tommy Dowd, who oversaw 25 wins against 38 defeats. Dowd’s work was regarded highly, at least at first, in Sporting Life. The August 15, 1896, issue saw a “great improvement” in the team during his first couple of weeks on the job. “Roger Conner as manager lacked firmness,” the publication opined. “There is none of that nonsense now. Dowd, in addition to being a tip-top ball player, has a good head. He has taken advantage of his opportunity and possesses an education above the average. It was Dowd’s original intention to become a lawyer. His studiousness now stands him well in hand.”

Dowd was the first of four managers in 1897. “He Will Hustle Hard to Keep the Browns out of Last Place” was the subhead in a March 20 Sporting News article titled “Tommie’s Task.” It was, the paper added, “a task that would dismay many men.” In fact, it did. The Browns posted a record of 6-22 before Dowd was relieved of his duties, surrendering them to Hugh Nicol. After appearing in 35 games, Tommy was traded on June 1 to the Philadelphia Phillies for Bill Hallman, Dick Harvey, and the princely sum of $300. He finished the season, batting .292 to the .262 he’d hit for St. Louis, reverting back to right field. On November 10, the Phillies traded him back to St. Louis, but as part of a much larger trade, one involving two played named Cross going in opposite directions: Lave Cross, Dowd, Jack Clements, Jack Taylor, and $1,000 was the package for the Browns, who swapped Monte Cross, Red Donahue, and Klondike Douglass.

Dowd played second base in 1898, hitting .244 – just three points below the team average. The Browns finished last in the league standings. He stayed with St. Louis until March 29, 1899, when he was part of a group of 15 players assigned to the Cleveland Spiders. (The St. Louis club had gone into receivership and the assets were sold at a sheriff’s auction for a sum in excess of $70,000. The sale included all the stands of Sportsman’s Park and the lease held on the ground, and a number of ballplayers.)2

The team in St. Louis changed its name to the Perfectos. On March 29, the following ballplayers were all assigned to the Cleveland Spiders: Kid Carsey, Jack Clements, Lave Cross, Dick Harley, Bill Hill, Jim Hughey, Harry Lochhead, Harry Maupin, Joe Quinn, Jack Stivetts, Willie Sudhoff, Joe Sugden, Suter Sullivan, Tommy Tucker, and Tommy Dowd.

The Perfectos did improve as a team, reaching fifth place. The Spiders finished last, with the unbelievably bad record of 20-134, finishing 84 games out of first place. Their center fielder, Dowd, scored a team-leading 81 runs, batting .278, but drove in only 35 runs. He led the team in stolen bases with 28.

Dowd was out of the majors in 1900, working for more lucrative pay at a laundry business in Holyoke, then playing for Chicago and Milwaukee of the American Association, which by then had reverted to minor-league status. On March 29, 1901, Dowd signed with the Boston Americans and returned for the one final year.

Holyoke was his home. He was born there and he died there. He is buried there at Calvary Cemetery. Both parents had come to the United States from Ireland. Jeremiah Dowd was a brick mason or bricklayer (he used both terms) and did some farming. His wife, Mary (Lynch) Dowd, was listed in the 1870 Census as “keeping house.” It would have been a full-time job. At the time of that year’s census, when Tommy was 1 year old, he had older brothers Michael, John, Jeremiah, and Eddie, and an older sister, Mary. But the Dowd parents weren’t finished yet. After Tommy was born, they added Kate, Lawrence, and Theresa to the Dowd brood. Michael and John became bricklayers, too. Mary became a dressmaker and Theresa a schoolteacher. Thomas became a professional ballplayer.

He was right there at the beginning of franchise play, on April 1, 1901 when Jimmy Collins and 11 members of Boston’s brand-new American League club began their first workout of their first spring training, at Charlottesville, Virginia, with two hours of light practice on the grounds of the local YMCA. Collins, Stahl, Freeman, Dowd, Hemphill, Schrecongost, Jones, McLean, Mitchell, Kane, McCarthy, and Connor joined in the session. Cuppy, Criger, Parent, Ferris, Kellum, and McKenna reported the following day. Perhaps the first sign of exceptions for Red Sox superstars was set – Cy Young was training in Hot Springs and due to report on Opening Day in Baltimore.

Dowd had a standout game in the second spring training game, a 23-0 win over the University of Virginia nine on April 11. It was only the second game the team ever played. Tim Murnane covered spring training for the Globe and it’s likely he who wrote the account: “Everyone but Hemphill hit the ball. Ferris led with a home run and two singles. Close behind came Parent, with two screeching doubles and a single, and Dowd with four singles. Collins lifted the leather over the palings, besides singling.”

Dowd’s last major-league games were both on September 28, 1901, in the final day’s doubleheader. He was 1-for-5 and 2-for-3. For the season he batted .268 – close to his .271 career mark – with three home runs and 52 RBIs. Boston wrapped up the first year of the franchise with two high-scoring wins over Milwaukee, 8-3 and 10-9. (Jack Slattery, the only Boston native playing for the Americans that year, made his major-league debut as Boston’s catcher in the first game. He went 1-for-3, and then was injured in the eighth.) Dowd homered for Boston in the first game. The second game perhaps didn’t offer the best competition. “Both pitchers worked wretchedly,” wrote the Washington Post. Manager Jimmy Collins hit two homers for Boston, but it was Hobe Ferris who won it in the bottom of the seventh with a two-run triple. Then the umpire (games in this era often had just one), Tommy Connolly, called the game due to darkness. Boston wound up the year with a six-game winning streak but finished four games behind the first-place White Sox. They drew three times as many fans as the Boston Nationals. The team that would become the Red Sox was here to stay.

Tommy Dowd had aspirations for 1902 and applied to the National Association for a franchise in Milwaukee but his request was referred to committee.3 He went to the minor leagues in 1902, playing for the snappily-named Amsterdam-Gloversville-Johnstown Jags (in the Class B New York State League). There was a method to his seeming madness, though: He owned the club, and also managed it. And batted .287 in 404 at-bats, and 94 games. Alas, the team finished last, 29-72.

The next year Dowd played for two clubs – 55 games with the Baltimore Orioles in the Eastern League and 33 games as player and sometime manager in Nashua, New Hampshire – a team without a name. One of his fellow outfielders was Moonlight Graham. With the Orioles he played under two future Hall of Famers, Wilbert Robinson and Hugh Jennings, and hit .228. In Nashua, B-level ball in the New England League, he hit .276. He was busy in 1904, too, but without any extra duties, playing Class B ball for both the New Orleans Pelicans (Southern Association, 30 games, .256) and then, right in his own hometown, the Holyoke Paperweights (Connecticut State League, 82 games, .241).

In the spring of 1905, Dowd coached the Williams College baseball team in Western Massachusetts during the school year, then managed in Burlington, Vermont, the rest of the year.

In 1906 and 1907 he returned to the Paperweights, as player-manager, running the team for part of 1906 (and hitting .270) but hitting only .216 in his final year as an active player. Though not successful at the plate, he led the 1907 team to the Connecticut State League pennant.

The next three seasons, Dowd managed exclusively. He raised hopes in Hartford in 1908, assuming the reins there. George E. Cox wrote before the season got under way, “The players, upon reporting, will be given a ‘treatment’ in the Dowd method which has been so successful in other cities where applied in the past. No laggards, says Dowd, will be tolerated on the team. He adds that he will demand that every player give his best efforts, but will not ask anything more than he is willing to do himself. The fans in this city like this sort of talk.”4 He didn’t last the year as manager.

In 1909 and 1910, Dowd managed the New Bedford Whalers of the New England League, placing sixth the first year (after coaching at Williams again) and winning the League pennant the second. In March 1911, he was involved in a controversy regarding a case of farming player George Walsh between Boston’s National League team and the Whalers, which the National Commission found objectionable, adding in its report, “This is but one of many violations of the laws of organized base ball by the New Bedford Club within the past year. The same unlawful and irregular tactics were employed by its offices in the Temple and Ulrich cases.”5

Dowd and Organized Baseball parted company, but Tommy kept busy, coaching independent baseball teams, Williams College, and Amherst College, too. Among the players he is credited with discovering were Chick Evans and Rabbit Maranville.

On July 2, 1933, the body of a man was found in the Connecticut River near Holyoke. Two days later, Dowd’s brother Jeremiah identified the body as that of Thomas Dowd. The death certificate ruled his death as due to accidental drowning.

He was single and had been retired since December 1914. He is said to have “fallen upon unfortunate days” for some unspecified period of time prior to his death.6

This biography can be found in “New Century, New Team: The 1901 Boston Americans” (SABR, 2013), edited by Bill Nowlin. To order the book, click here.

Sources

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

Notes

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sources

Newspapers

Boston Globe

Chicago Tribune

Evening Times (Pawtucket)

Los Angeles Times

New York Times

Providence Journal

Washington Post

Books and articles

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Other resources

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

Rhode Island State Archives

Heritage Quest

Known throughout his career as a comedian, Foreman may not have had the temperament for

umpiring in the major leagues, a task he performed briefly on the major-league level in the twilight of his big-league career. He looked like the stereotypical 19th-century baseball player as he wore a well-maintained handlebar mustache which, at least according to Hollywood, was de rigueur for the day. He stood an even 6 feet tall and weighed 169 pounds. Fulfilling another stereotype of left-handed hurlers, Foreman was something of a flake and was always good for a joke or a laugh. His nickname came from one of his favorite on-field impersonations. So well did he impersonate a simian that Sporting Life was led to comment, “Frank Foreman should dispose of his inimitable impersonations. His portraiture of the monkey has a tendency to strengthen the Darwinian Theory.”1

Frank’s younger brother, John Davis “Brownie” Foreman, followed him to both the major leagues and the umpiring ranks. His father, George Washington Foreman, was born in 1837 and worked as a steamfitter, cotton mill worker, and engineer. His mother, Anne Elizabeth, was born in either 1841 or 1843. According to a distant cousin of the family, Suzanne De Vier, and Ancestry.com, there were three children in the family. Frank had an older brother, Joseph E. Foreman, born around 1860, who was employed as a machinist – the very same work that Frank sometimes engaged in when not playing ball. There was also a sister, Ella May, born in 1881.

Born during the Civil War, on May 1, 1863, Frank grew up in the Woodbury section of Baltimore. He and John, 12 years younger, grew up playing on the city’s lots where both boys distinguished themselves. Frank played for the local nine, the Woodbury Baseball Team. Though he tried all the positions, it soon became clear that pitching was his forte. A teammate and friend described a game from 1882 or 1883: “I think the last game I played with him was on the Huntingdon grounds against the pastime club. … Foreman struck out 16 men in that game.”2

Around this time Frank married a local girl, Annie Bates Barton. Like him, she was of English extraction on both sides of her family.3 The marriage lasted until Annie Foreman died in 1950. At the age of 21 he became a professional when he joined the Chicago/Pittsburg franchise of the upstart Union Association. The Union Association was the brainchild of Henry V. Lucas, a St. Louis railroad millionaire. Lucas went to war with the established National League and American Association and those leagues’ oft-opposed reserve clause. He attempted to lure big names to the new venture but was largely unsuccessful. Baseball historian Bill James maintains that, in retrospect, the UA should not be considered a major league. He notes that not even the Spalding Guide of 1885 considered the UA among the major leagues of the previous season. Of all the players of UA only about 40— including Foreman—had any sort of career after 1884. Illustrating James’s point is the league’s tendency for signing greenhorn players such as Frank Foreman.4

The Union Association was a woefully organized league. The strongest and only talented team was Lucas’s own St. Louis Maroons. Every other team in the league was a decided also-ran. The Chicago and Baltimore franchises were both owned by A.H. Henderson, a Baltimore mattress manufacturer. Foreman parlayed the Baltimore connection he shared with the team’s owner to land his contract with the Chicago Browns. Thus it was that he made what is considered his major-league debut on May 15, 1884.

Illustrating that perhaps Foreman was too green for even this maiden league, he had a thoroughly mediocre 1-2 pitching record with a 4.50 earned-run average. Mediocrity would be the hallmark of Foreman’s career: He ended his tour of the major leagues with a 96-93 record.

Not a lot of people saw Foreman pitch in Chicago. Because the UA was noncompetitive, the National League White Stockings easily outdrew the Chicago Browns and forced them to relocate from the Windy City to the Smoky City in August. Once in Pittsburg, the Browns were renamed the Stogies.

Demonstrating the fly-by-night nature of the Union Association, Foreman next played with a second franchise that was part of the UA’s musical-chairs season. Dropped by the Browns, he ended up with the Kansas City Cowboys. Until June 1 the Cowboys’ spot in the Union Association’s standings had been occupied by the Altoona, Pennsylvania, Mountain City. After compiling a 6-19 record Altoona, the smallest city to ever host a major-league franchise, folded and was replaced by the Kansas City Cowboys, who became the city’s first major-league team.

Foreman was either given his outright release or traded to Kansas City. In any event he was on the mound for Kansas City on June 19 when they appeared in Chicago. He pitched for his new team against his old teammates and was completely ineffective in a 7–1 loss. Dropped after the one game, Foreman returned to Baltimore, but not for long. Within days he had journeyed to nearby Lancaster, Pennsylvania, where he joined the Ironsides of the Eastern League. Piecing together how good a player he was is difficult because the league’s statistics are incomplete. Playing primarily in the outfield, Foreman was also given a chance to pitch. He started 15 games, completed 14, and had a 5-9 record in 120? innings with an ERA of 2.24. Not bad at all for a 21-year-old rookie. But Foreman’s actual statistics may be quite different due to the incompleteness of the statistics.

After wintering in Baltimore, Foreman found work in the 1885 season with the Baltimore Orioles of the American Association. Before he was dropped in late June, he had his first winning season, 2-1 with a 6.00 ERA. He also put in a two-game appearance with the Newark Domestics of the Eastern League. He acted strictly as an outfielder and got just seven at-bats. After the season Foreman managed and served as an instructor at a roller rink. (1885 was a banner year for roller skating. In 1884 ball bearings had been added to roller skates, creating the modern roller skate. For the first time virtually everyone could skate with minimal effort or athleticism. This kicked off a worldwide craze for four-wheeled relaxation. Rinks popped up everywhere from the smallest country hamlets to the largest cities. Foreman got in on the ground floor and profited handsomely.5)

Foreman claimed that skating kept him in shape but by 1887 the fad had abated somewhat and Foreman sought work again in baseball. He played for both the Mansfield and Columbus Buckeyes in the Ohio State League. He appeared in eight games, seven as a pitcher. According to baseball-reference.com, he won one game for each team and lost three for Mansfield and one for Columbus. At home in 1888 he was scouted by fellow Baltimore resident Thomas York, manager of the Albany (New York) Governors of the International Association, and easily landed a position on the team. Foreman’s appearance with Albany, if the statistics are to be believed, was one for the ages. He appeared in 42 games in the outfield and 39 on the mound (he probably played in the field on some days on which he also pitched). He went 9-24 with a 2.96 ERA on a truly terrible team. The team went 18-87, meaning that Foreman won half of his team’s games! His batting, on the other hand, was an abysmal .199. His workhorse heroics must have appealed to the Orioles, who needed pitching, so in 1889 Foreman was back with the team. He had turned down several offers from teams in both the American Association and the National League to play in his hometown.

In a remarkable turnaround, 1889 was be one of the finest seasons Foreman ever had. As part of the Orioles’ rotation he pitched 414 innings, won 23 games and lost 21 with an ERA of 3.52. Demonstrating a knack for wildness, Foreman led the league with 40 hit batsmen and walked 137. He started 48 games and completed 43. His wildness caused Sporting Life to assert, “Frank Foreman is not quite up to the standard of Association pitchers”6 – a characterization that neatly summarized his entire career.

In March 1890 Foreman’s contract was purchased by the Cincinnati Reds of the National League. One negative was that it took him away from his batterymate, Tom Quinn, probably the most effective catcher Foreman had ever been teamed with. Sporting Life noted: “Foreman is most effective when Quinn catches him.”7

Before agreeing to the contract with the Reds, Foreman passed up a chance to join with disgruntled players who were moving to the upstart Players League. He flirted with an offer from the Philadelphia team, going so far as to accepting an $800 advance from the Athletics. Only personal intervention from the Reds president kept him in the National League.8 The final destination of the Athletics advance is lost to history.

In Cincinnati Foreman stayed with his young family in a boarding house only a few blocks from the boarding house where team manager Tom Loftus and several teammates roomed. The Queen City was the only other place besides Baltimore where Foreman lived for any length of time.

He was not entirely happy with the Reds. He really missed Tom Quinn. “Frank Foreman would like to go back to Baltimore for the sake of having Tommy Quinn catch him. He says, ‘Unless a pitcher is receiving co-operative assistance from his catcher he suffers from a terrible handicap.’” 9 The loss of Quinn resulted in a severe dropoff in his skills. His final results for the season were a 13-10 record with a 3.95 ERA. Despite his gripes about missing Tommy Quinn, Foreman had a pretty good first season in the National League. While he racked up more walks and fewer strikeouts, the competition was tougher. He started 24 games and completed 23 of them, something for anyone to be proud of.

Once the season was over, Foreman found himself in a low-stress job, no doubt set up by the Reds. He worked in Stern’s Clothing store for $80 a month. Alluding to possible family troubles, Sporting Life mentioned that “Frank Foreman’s family have gone to Baltimore and Foreman would not mind getting back there himself. He seems imbued with the idea that his room in Cincinnati is preferred to his company.”10 As it turned out he spent most of the offseason in Cincinnati apart from his family. Eventually he did return east, finding work as a machinist in Woodbury.

Desperate to return to the baseball in the Baltimore area, Foreman jumped his contract with the Reds to sign for $300 a season less to play with Washington of the American Association. His 1891 season with Washington was a bit of a step down from Cincinnati. He won18 games and lost 20 with a 4.34 ERA, pitching 345? innings. Like other pitchers he had to adjust to a new longer pitching distance of 60 feet 6 inches, an increase of 10½ feet. The increased distance and his extensive pitching took a toll on Foreman’s arm, however, and he complained of arm trouble throughout the following season.

Evidence of arm trouble is seen in his statistics. Completely ineffective in 1892, he appeared in only 11 games for Washington, now in the National League, winning two and losing four before he was traded to Baltimore (then in the National League), for whom he pitched in four games and lost three without a win. He also played five games in the outfield for Baltimore. He ended the season with Buffalo of the Eastern League strictly as an outfielder and hit .267.

Foreman kept himself in baseball shape. On May 13, 1893, Sporting Life reported, “Pitcher Frank Foreman says this is the first year since 1890 that he has not had a sore arm. He practices at Union Park in Baltimore every day.”11 The paper also said he would be given a trial by the Giants. Foreman was quite full of himself in 1893: “Pitcher Foreman who is free to sign with any club writes from Woodbury, Baltimore, that he is in the best condition. Far better, in fact, than at any time last season. He thinks he could hold his own against all comers in the big leagues this season.”12

Foreman did in fact end up with the Giants in 1893, for two games with a record of 1-0 but a nightmarish ERA of 27.00. When not working on his pitching, Foreman once again managed his skating rink. He was out of Organized Baseball completely in 1894 as his arm was completely useless. In 1895 he recovered enough to turn in an 11-14 record with a 4.11 ERA for eighth-place Cincinnati. He batted.309 with seven doubles, two home runs, and 11 RBIs. Despite his sore arm, this season may have been his best. His earned-run average was the best on the Reds’ pitching staff.

After the season Foreman found a novel way to keep himself in shape. Already an adept roller skater, he added ice skating to his résumé. The brand-new North Avenue Rink was a wonder of 19th-century technology. Wrote the Baltimore Sun: “The building is of brick with a graystone front and iron roof, and is 75 feet by 300 feet. The skating surface is 55 feet by 250 feet on a foundation resting solidly on the ground. Seven consecutive floors were laid with interlinings of waterproof paper and wool. On this foundation is built a seamless pan, which contains the artificially frozen ice for skating. Over three and one-half miles of one and one-half inch pipe are laid throughout the pan. This is covered by four inches of water, which is frozen solid to 100 tons of ice in 37 hours.” 13 The day the Sun ran this article the rink hosted the first ice hockey game played in the US on an artificial surface when players from Johns Hopkins University challenged the Baltimore Athletic Club to a match.

The 1896 season in Cincinnati was a turnaround. Either Reds coach Buck Elwood or Denver’s coach McGlone (sources vary) developed an exercise regime that was credited with bringing Foreman “back to life again.” 14

The process hardly seems revolutionary. Foreman described it thusly: “Just take and rub your arm in a brisk manner. Then let cold water run on it for fifteen or twenty minutes, hold it under the hydrant. Then give it another good rub and that will help it.”15

However primitive the treatment seems today, there is no doubt that it worked wonders. In 1896 Foreman had perhaps his best major-league season so far: 14-7 with a 3.97 ERA. He appeared in 27 games, started 22 and completed 17. The Reds were much improved, especially on the mound. The third-place team’s ERA was 3.67, second best in the league. (Younger brother Brownie was briefly a teammate. He appeared in four games, winning one and losing three. It marked the end of his abbreviated playing career.)

For his efforts Frank thought he deserved a big pay raise, but the Reds thought differently. At the close of the season he remained the only unsigned Red, and in 1897 he was with the

Indianapolis Indians of the Western League. There Foreman put together the two best seasons of his professional career. The Reds must have kicked themselves when they saw the Western League box scores. In 43 games in 1897 Foreman went 30-9 in 332 innings with a 1.87 ERA. The next season, 1898, was a bit of a drop-off but still impressive, especially since Foreman was now 35 years old. He won 24 games and lost 11. In both seasons he also played the outfield, batting .225 and .231. After those seasons Baltimore and Louisville, among other teams, wanted Foreman but couldn’t land him. The main problem was the contract he had signed with John T. Brush, owner of the Indians. No one wanted to pay Brush the money to buy out his contract.

In protest, Foreman sat out the entire 1899 season. He worked at the skating rink and hung out with the legendarily rowdy Orioles. He was part of the circle of high-living, hard-partying Birds including Wilbert Robinson, Ned Hanlon, and John McGraw. He was a regular at Robinson’s bowling alley. (Late in life Foreman claimed to have been the first man to bowl 200 in a duckpin game.)

After Foreman refused to report to Indianapolis for spring training in 1900, the Indians’ manager, Bill Watkins, dropped him from the team. Watkins was convinced that Foreman was through. Foreman proceeded to sign with the Springfield, Massachusetts, Eastern League team on May 1. He was released on July 8. (League records are incomplete and his statistics have not been unearthed.) Within a few days the 37-year-old had signed with Buffalo of the nascent American League.

Not yet a major league, Ban Johnson’s brainchild was marking time until it emerged to challenge the monopoly of the National League. Foreman seemed to have found a home by Lake Erie. His pitching did not go so well; he won seven and lost six with a 5.38 ERA. The Lake Erie nine finished seventh in the eight-team league. There was talk of Foreman’s taking over as manager in 1901, but Ban Johnson dumped Buffalo in favor of placing a team in Boston. It was from the Bisons that the nucleus of the Boston Americans was drawn.

The lure of managing was too much to resist, so in the offseason Foreman began a stint as coach for Gettysburg College in Pennsylvania. There he coached a local boy, Eddie Plank. Foreman is said to have told the youngster, “If you follow my instructions closely I’ll make you one of the greatest southpaws in the country.” 16 Foreman recommended Plank to Connie Mack. With the Athletics Plank became a starter in 1901 and was the first left-hander to win 300 games. In 1946 he was enshrined in the Baseball Hall of Fame. Plank always credited Foreman for his major-league career.

Foreman was still not through with baseball. On April 27, 1901, he signed with the Boston Americans. He appeared in exactly one game for the Americans. He pitched in Washington on May 3, 1901, going the distance in a losing effort. He surrendered eight earned runs on eight hits and two walks. Not surprisingly, on May 16 Foreman was dropped from the roster. His outing on the mound, as bad as it was, did indeed count as an official appearance in his fourth major league. While 18 other men share this distinction, few have had as odd a trajectory as Foreman. At the age of 38 he gave no thought to hanging up his spikes. He was nothing if not persistent and stubborn. He signed with the Orioles on June 16, determined to show that perhaps Boston had given up on him too soon. Pitching like a man much younger, Foreman became a part of the Orioles’ rotation and put together a solid season. He went 12-6, with an ERA of 3.67, a hair above the league ERA of 3.66. Proving that he was still a workhorse, he started 22 games and completed 18. In 1901, at least, Father Time had been defeated.

If this were fiction, the 1901 season would have been Foreman’s last – a final hurrah worthy of the dime novels of the day. But as the 1902 season began, Foreman’s 40-year-old body and arm were once again a part of the Orioles. This season Father Time had the upper hand. As the second oldest player in the American League, he went the distance in two games but lost both. His ERA at 6.06 was almost doubled from 1901. Sporting Life covered Foreman’s dismissal by John McGraw in its May 24 issue.17

Still feeling that he had something to offer baseball, Foreman spent the rest of 1902 bouncing between three teams in two leagues. In rapid succession he played for and was released by Omaha, Colorado Springs, both of the Western League, and Kansas City of the American Association, the city where he had played in his rookie season 18 years previously. After this Foreman could no longer deny that his day had passed.

Having had experience as a fill-in major-league umpire in 1895 and 1901, Foreman spent 1903 trying to hack it as a professional umpire. It was not necessarily the best fit. Umpiring has always been a thankless job, even more so at the turn of the 20th Century. Foreman may have been too gregarious for umpiring. He started out in the American Association, just a rung below the majors. His name dots the box scores of Sporting Life throughout the 1903 season. He was regarded as a fairly good umpire by the publication even though he did not always maintain a cool head, calling the police in at one point in a game to restore order.

In 1904 Foreman was making noises about pitching again. In April Sporting Life reported, “Frank Foreman persists in declaring that he can still pitch, and he is trying himself out with the Baltimore Eastern Leaguers.”18

In May the journal had the following one-line notice: “Frank Foreman, the veteran pitcher, has signed with the Roxborough (Pa.) Independent club.”19 Roxborough is a prosperous suburb of Philadelphia, close enough to Baltimore to go home on offdays. Foreman’s last two years in baseball were by far the saddest part of his long story. By 1905 he was playing for anyone who would have him. He ended up with Holyoke in the Massachusetts amateur leagues. He did about as well as one might expect a 42-year-old to do, and he was cut from the team. Yet this was still not the end. Having been cut by Holyoke he was signed by the Meriden Silverites of the Connecticut State League. Amazingly, Foreman had worked his way back into Organized Baseball, just barely. The Connecticut State League was a Class B league, equivalent to the very low minors today. He was abysmal, going 4-10 primarily against players young enough to be his sons. At this point even Foreman had to admit that it was over.

His final major-league totals after 11 years of service stood at 96-93 with a 3.97 ERA. His lifetime batting average stood at .224 with nine home runs.

For the next few years Foreman kept himself in the game by scouting for various teams, though he never made a discovery on a par with Eddie Plank. (Foreman’s sons, Elmer E. and J. Barton Foreman, both pitchers like their dad, also pursued baseball careers. Neither reached the major leagues. By 1910 Elmer had made it as high as Reading in Class A ball. J. Barton Foreman signed with Jacksonville of the South Atlantic League in 1911.)20

In retirement at last, Foreman returned to Baltimore and held several jobs. At various times he ran ice-skating and roller rinks. Like many former ballplayers of his era he owned a billiard hall. Foreman ran the Fayette pocket billiard parlor on 223 West Fayette Street, not far from where he played ball as a youngster. He resided at 1410 Union Avenue, where in 1945 he and Annie celebrated their 63rd wedding anniversary. Although the census recorded Foreman’s occupation from 1900 through 1930 as machinist or clerk, his obituary makes no mention of these jobs. Instead it focused upon his career in ice and roller rinks. Aside from their sons, Frank and Annie had two daughters, Helen and Frances.

Foreman was the oldest living major leaguer in 1957. He was 94 when he died on November 19 of that yer. He had been ill for 18 months. During that time he gave interviews to various reporters about his career and long life. He told The Sporting News in an interview that it included in his obituary the following tall tale: “A faint heart is one of the big causes of sore arms. In the old days we were ready to pitch every day. I never had a sore arm.”21

Foreman is buried in St. Mary’s Episcopal Cemetery, in the same neighborhood where he was born.

This biography can be found in “New Century, New Team: The 1901 Boston Americans” (SABR, 2013), edited by Bill Nowlin. To order the book, click here.

Notes

John Frank Freeman was born on October 30, 1871, in Catasauqua, Pennsylvania, near Allentown, to Irish immigrants John and Annie Freeman. The elder John Freeman, born in Ireland at the height of the potato famine, emigrated to Pennsylvania in 1865. When young John was 8 years old, the family moved to coal mining country near Wilkes-Barre, where first the father and later the son found work at what was reputed to be the largest coal breaker in the world. Young John lied about his age to get the job, and worked his way up from slate picker to – at age 12 – the more glamorous job of mule driver. Much to the dismay of his parents, John found he liked baseball more than the mines, and starred as a pitcher on various local semipro teams. In 1891 the Washington Statesmen of the major-league American Association gave Freeman a trial, but the 19-year-old southpaw quickly earned his release by walking 33 batters in five games.

Back in Wilkes-Barre, Freeman began pondering the sage advice given him a few years earlier by Bud Fowler, the first African-American player in professional baseball, who had reportedly witnessed the 16-year-old Freeman hit two home runs in an 1888 sandlot game. “I never gave batting a thought until Fowler tipped me off,” Freeman said. “You have pretty good control of the ball for a left-handed pitcher, kid,” Freeman claimed Fowler told him. “But batting is your hold. Keep on practicing with the stick. It will get you more money.”3 Freeman pitched for Wilkes-Barre’s Eastern League squad in 1893 before moving on to Haverhill, Massachusetts, where in 1894 he destroyed the New England League in his first season as a full-time hitter. Buck won the batting title at .386, while clubbing 34 home runs (including four in one game) and driving in a whopping 167 runs. After a brief stint with Detroit in 1895, the latter half of that year found Freeman in Toronto, where he would spend four seasons. Buck’s “wicked bat made the hearts of the Eastern League pitchers quake with craven fear,” according to one reporter.4 The free-swinging Freeman slugged 20 homers for the Toronto Canucks in 1897 and a league-record 23 in 1898.

At the conclusion of the 1898 Eastern League season, Toronto manager Arthur Irwin took over as skipper of the NL’s Washington Senators. He took five of his best players with him to Washington, including Freeman, who was given a month to “make good” or be sent back to the minors. On September 14, after a seven-year absence from the major leagues, Buck made his National League debut and in his second at-bat, drove the ball deep into the right-field bleachers for his first major-league homer. Freeman impressed the Washington press corps by hitting the ball hard six times in eight at-bats during his debut doubleheader. “Freeman has a free, natural swing,” the Washington Post reported. “His position at the bat indicates a natural hitter.”5 Buck turned in a two-homer game five days later, and his .364 average and .523 slugging percentage during his 29-game trial eliminated any possibility of returning to Toronto.

Unlike almost every other hitter of the day, Freeman’s batting style was to swing from the heels, and for the fences. Umpire Pop Snyder compared Freeman’s batting approach to the pugilistic style of then-World Heavyweight Champion Bob Fitzsimmons. “When Fitz drives one of his pile-driver favorites into the enemy the blow is supported by the force of the body,” Snyder said in 1898. “Freeman seems to push his full weight against the ball… he meets the ball about half way in a well-gauged, sweeping stroke. But his knack of meeting the ball is supported by a keen, correct eye for judging the angles.”6 Freeman, an amateur boxer himself, was no doubt flattered by the comparison to the heavyweight champ.

In 1899 Freeman became the talk of baseball, clouting an unheard-of 25 home runs in his first full major-league season. He also batted .318, slugged 25 triples, scored 107 runs while driving in 122, and even stole 21 bases during what still stands as one of the greatest rookie seasons in baseball history. Reds manager Buck Ewing called the rookie “one of the greatest batsmen that ever came into the League.” John McGraw publicly lusted after Freeman’s services, calling him “the best developer of heart disease among pitchers.” Meanwhile, Irwin, Freeman’s manager, claimed that half of Buck’s homers had come on hit-and-run plays, and praised him as “one of the best natural batsmen I have ever seen.” Not everyone was so pleased, however. The 1900 Spalding Guide virulently denounced Freeman without ever mentioning him by name, excoriating “sluggers” whose “sole object was to hit it out of sight.” The Guide concluded that a good slap hitter was “worth a dozen of your common class of home-run hitters.”

Although the Washington Post predicted that “his triumph at skirting the bases for homers will stand as a red-letter record for many a season to come,” Freeman’s 25 round-trippers were not technically the major-league record.7 In 1884, Chicago’s Lakefront Park boasted distances of 180 feet to the left-field fence and 196 feet to right. Four White Stockings took advantage of these cozy dimensions to post 20-homer seasons, led by Ed Williamson with 27. Until 1899, they were the only four 20-homer seasons in major-league history, and because of their illegitimate nature, Freeman’s mark of 25 in 1899 was widely considered the standard until Babe Ruth arrived.

Freeman didn’t need short porches to pad his home-run totals; he was noted for holding distance records at several different ballparks. In 1899, Buck slugged what Ned Hanlon and others described as the longest home run ever hit at Brooklyn’s Washington Park. “The ball sped far over a canvas awning in the right center corner of the lot,” the Washington Post reported, “and was picked up by a small boy on the opposite side of the street, in front of a row of tenement houses half a block from the grounds.”8 Although Freeman claimed the pitch was eight inches outside, he still had enough plate coverage to pull it to deepest right field. Meanwhile, in Louisville that year, a Freeman drive hit the wall of a distillery 50 feet behind the outfield fence. In Washington, he smashed two opposite-field drives off the distant left-field scoreboard. On August 20, 1903, Freeman became the first man ever to hit the ball completely out of Chicago’s South Side Park. And at Philadelphia’s Columbia Park, he once hit a ball so far that it reportedly sailed out of the stadium, over several houses, and through an open second-story window.

As part of the National League’s contraction from 12 teams to eight before the 1900 season, the Washington club went out of business. On February 9, 1900, owner J. Earl Wagner sold off eight of his best players, including Freeman, Bill Dinneen, and Shad Barry to the Boston Beaneaters for $8,500. Freeman, who made a point of never engaging in holdouts, immediately agreed to a $2,000 contract with Boston for 1900. Even the Boston papers called Washington’s dumping of Freeman and the others “the rankest offense ever perpetrated on a sport-loving public.”9

Freeman batted a solid .301 in 1900, but did not get along with Beaneaters manager Frank Selee, who, like the Spalding Guide, abhorred Buck’s power-hitting ways. “I know the Boston public like to see Freeman in the game, as he is likely to hit the ball very hard at times,” Selee said. “But this style of play is not a winner, for when Freeman is dangerous the pitchers keep the ball away from him, and his hitting counts for little. He is a poor fielder, thrower, and base runner.” Although previous observers in Washington had called Freeman’s outfield defense “above average,” Selee’s comments were the start of a bad defense rap that would follow Freeman the rest of his career. Meanwhile, Boston’s season spun out of control, with the franchise posting its first losing season in 14 years. “The Boston team is now playing every man for himself, and floundering about like a ship without a rudder,” Tim Murnane wrote in the Boston Globe.10 The “Napoleon-like” Selee pounced upon Freeman as a scapegoat, leaving him off the traveling squad for a late-season road trip and insulting him in the press: “I have often thought of playing [Freeman] at first and trying [Fred] Tenney in the outfield,” Selee said, “but brains are needed in the infield.”11

It was no surprise, then, that Freeman chose to jump to the fledgling American League in 1901 rather than play for a manager who openly despised him. In March, Buck signed a contract with the Boston Americans and rebounded to have one of his best seasons, ranking third in the AL batting race at .339 while finishing second to Nap Lajoie in homers (12), RBIs (114), and slugging percentage (.520). Freeman also contributed several game-winning hits in the ninth or extra innings, helping the Americans to a second-place finish in their inaugural season. Freeman posted equally strong numbers in 1902, finishing second with 11 homers while leading the AL in extra-base hits (68) and RBIs (121).

Ballplayers of Freeman’s day shunned conditioning and weight training, often believing that it would make them muscle-bound and restrict their movements. “The successful ballplayer never hardens his muscles,” Ty Cobb wrote in 1913. But Freeman was a notable exception. Indeed, he was a forerunner of the power-hitting workout gurus of the 1990s. A dedicated member of the local gym in his offseason home of Wilkes-Barre, Freeman kept himself in shape by walking 12 miles a day in addition to weightlifting, parallel bars, boxing, and other activities. “What work I have done as a batsman I owe in large measure to my exercise in the gymnasium,” Freeman said, “which… developed the muscles that come into play when I hit the ball.”12

Freeman also carefully studied the mechanics of hitting, adapting his stance to get as much of his weight behind the swing as possible. “I gather myself for a swing, and, as a rule, take a forward step in order to place myself at such an angle that the whole weight of my body moves at once in the same direction as the bat.”13 This approach to hitting was enhanced when Freeman began playing for Irwin, who spent long hours in Toronto teaching the dead pull hitter how to hit for power to the opposite field. Freeman was also an expert at intentionally fouling off pitches he didn’t like – a practice which, though commonly accepted today, was illegal during Buck’s career. On August 15, 1899, umpire Hank O’Day enforced the little-used rule against Freeman, calling a strike against him (foul balls did not yet count as strikes) for intentionally fouling off a Cy Young pitch.

In 1903 Freeman was the best hitter on Boston’s World Championship team, winning his second consecutive RBI title with 104 while also pacing the league in home runs (13), extra-base hits (72), and total bases (281). He thus became the first hitter ever to lead both the National and American leagues in home runs, later to be joined by Sam Crawford, Fred McGriff, and Mark McGwire. That October, Freeman played a key role in helping Boston win the inaugural World Series, batting .290 with three triples in the eight-game Series. Freeman continued to bludgeon opposing pitchers in 1904, leading the league with 19 triples while finishing second in RBIs (84) and tying for second in homers (7).

In 1905, however, the 33-year-old Freeman slipped dramatically, his batting average dropping 40 points to .240, while he failed to finish among the league leaders in home runs for the first time since 1898. In 1905 he also ended his impressive streak of playing 541 consecutive games and 5,431 consecutive innings, the latter a record which would stand until broken by Cal Ripken in 1985. In 1906 Freeman’s downhill slide continued, as he posted a .302 on-base percentage with only one homer in 436 plate appearances. When Freeman started off the 1907 season 2-for-12, Boston gave up on him, selling him to the Washington Senators on April 24 for the waiver price of $1,000. But four days later, before Freeman played in a single game for Washington, the Senators sold him to Minneapolis.

Although the origin of his nickname is unknown, Freeman’s popularity was such that later players with that surname were automatically dubbed “Buck”. “Some day – but not in our generation,” Baseball Magazine wrote in 1913, “it will be possible for a man named… Freeman to escape being called ‘Buck.'”14 This phenomenon proved especially confusing in 1907, when there were three Freemans on the Minneapolis Millers, with the others dubbed “Buck II” and “Buck III” by the press. But the original Buck separated himself from the crowd, posting a .335 average while taking advantage of Nicollet Park‘s 279-foot right-field fence to set a new American Association record with 18 homers. Freeman returned to Minneapolis in 1908, but his season ended in late July when he dislocated his right shoulder sliding into home plate. Despite playing only half a season, his ten homers were still good enough to tie for the league lead.

Freeman recovered from the injury to serve as a player-manager in the outlaw Susquehanna League in 1910 and 1911, and in 1913 he embarked on a lengthy minor-league umpiring career. After a game on August 9, 1913, the rookie arbiter was mobbed by 2,000 angry fans in Wilmington, Delaware. As a squad of a dozen policemen rushed him off the field, Buck was pelted with a hail of stones and bricks, several of them hitting him on the head. With Freeman still under police escort, the mob trailed him from the ballpark to a local saloon and then a trolley stop, where Freeman was finally able to board a car and escape safely. Unbowed by the riot, Freeman umpired for the next 13 years in the Tri-State League, Canadian League, International League, American Association, and even, apparently, a brief stint in the Negro Leagues. (An umpire named Buck Freeman is known to have worked the 1924 Negro League World Series. Since Freeman was an active minor-league ump at the time, and since the Negro Leagues used white umpires then, it was almost certainly the same Buck Freeman.)

During his offseasons, though he didn’t need the money, Freeman kept in shape by working as a stoker in the boiler room of a local silk mill. He spent much of his time cockfighting, and became well known as a breeder of fighting birds, keeping a flock of more than 100 gamecocks in his barn. Even a 1937 police raid on a cockfight at Freeman’s home did not deter him. “I’d walk 20 miles to see a good cockfight,” he once said.15 In October 1906, Freeman purchased the New Haven Blues of the Connecticut League; by 1910 the team had been renamed the Prairie Hens. After his retirement from umpiring, Freeman scouted for the St. Louis Browns from 1926 to 1933, then managed an outlaw team in Bloomsburg, Pennsylvania, for two years. After the 1935 season Freeman retired to the modest hillside home in the Georgetown section of Wilkes-Barre where he resided with his wife, the former Annie Kane (whom he had married in 1895), and their six sons. A well-known local institution, Freeman enjoyed regaling youngsters with tales from his playing days. “In Wilkes Barre he was just like Babe Ruth,” one of those youths recalled years later. “Every kid in town knew him.”16 Buck Freeman died of a stroke in Wilkes-Barre on June 25, 1949, at age 77. He is buried at Evergreen Cemetery in nearby Shavertown.

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

Sources

Scott Labenski. Unpublished biographical sketch of Buck Freeman. 2004.

Boston Globe

Chicago Tribune

New York Times

Sporting Life

Washington Post

Notes

Gleason was almost killed by a beanball thrown by future Hall of Famer Rube Waddell. He fought with his team’s hometown fans during one game and was arrested after another game for defying New York’s Blue Laws. Despite his minuscule offensive output, he perpetually fought with ownership over pay, getting placed on Organized Baseball’s suspended list several times.

Gleason was very short, even by Deadball Era standards. Reference books list him at 5-feet-6 and 160 pounds. However Alfred Spink, in his 1911 book, The National Game, listed him as 5-feet-3, 145 pounds. In describing him, the press often called him “midget” or “little” – sometimes both in the same sentence. He was also a dead ringer for his famous older brother, William, better known as Kid. “Harry is the very picture of his brother in every possible way and many address him for his brother,” wrote the Utica Herald-Dispatch. Early in his career, he earned the nickname Kid or Kidlet for this reason.1

On the field Gleason was a fan favorite almost everywhere he played because of his hustle and baseball smarts. He was “one of the brainiest players in baseball” and was often described in the press as “heady” and “clever.”2

He was forever looking for greener pastures. He jumped from team to team, from league to league with frequency. Trying to keep track of it was probably confusing for the fans during his career, let alone for historians of today.

Harry Gilbert Gleason was born on March 28, 1875, in Camden, New Jersey. He was the seventh of nine children born to William and Ellen (Ivins) Gleason. His father was a railroad man, working himself up from freight hand to superintendent of the Pennsylvania Railroad’s West Jersey & Seashore railyard in Camden. Five of Gleason’s brothers eventually worked there as well.3

Harry, however, followed in the footsteps of his brother Kid, who was nine years his senior. He played baseball at Camden High School for two years. After high school he played right field for the Camden town team. In 1897 the Philadelphia Inquirer wrote that Gleason “played a beautiful game in right field” and that he “promises to get in the push with his brother.”4

With his brother’s recommendation, Tom Burns, former major leaguer and manager of the 1897 Springfield, Massachusetts, team in the Eastern League, signed Gleason to a contract for 1898.5

The Springfield Republican called Gleason “a valuable acquisition” and said he had “showed to wonderfully good advantage” in training camp. He initially practiced at shortstop but when the regular season started he mostly played second base.6

Springfield struggled throughout the season. Mired in last place at the end of May, the team suffered low attendance and ownership missed payment to some of the ballplayers as a result. Gleason, a utility fielder, left the team until he was paid.7

Gleason wasn’t setting the world on fire either. His defense and versatility (in addition to second base, he also played 19 games at shortstop and three in right field) made him a popular player, but his hitting was terrible. He ended the season with a .199 batting average.

Still, Springfield brought him back the next season despite cleaning house on most of the 1898 team. New manager Tom Brown played Gleason solely at second base in 1899. But Gleason, unhappy with his pay, jumped his contract on June 14. The Springfield Republican implied that Gleason was dishonorable with respect to “baseball dealings.” The team placed him on the suspended list. In his 26 games with Springfield, Gleason did hit better, batting .230.8

There is a Gleason who appears in box scores for the Mount Holly, New Jersey, town team after Gleason left Springfield. This may be where Harry played for the rest of the 1899 season.9 

Sporting Life reported that Springfield had reserved Gleason for the 1900 season for “disciplinary purposes.” If Gleason wished to play in Organized Baseball, he would have to work it out with the management. So in April 1900, Gleason signed with Springfield again.10

This time he played third base for the Ponies. Instead of leaving the team in midseason, Gleason was sent down to Meriden in the Connecticut State League after he batted just .232 in 26 games. “He is a nice little fellow,” wrote Sporting Life, “but his stick work is poor.”11

At Meriden, Gleason played shortstop and managed to hit a respectable .251 in 66 games. But the league was at the lowest rung of the Organized Baseball ladder. Gleason could not be demoted any lower. Remarkably, he was playing in the major leagues by the end of the following season.

In 1901, Gleason signed with the Utica Pentups of the New York State League. The Springfield Republican, after watching Gleason demand money but not perform for parts of three seasons, sarcastically wrote about the signing, “Those who know his record here and the high value he set upon his services will be surprised that he is not in one of the big leagues.”12

Yet the Utica press welcomed Gleason with open arms. The Utica Daily Press wrote that Gleason was a “cracking good short stop” and that Utica manager Wally Taylor “thinks very highly of him.” For once, Gleason proved the predictions right. In what was easily the best hitting season of his career to that point, he batted .284 in 99 games.13

In fact, he played so well in Utica that it was arranged that he would report to Boston to play for the Americans once the New York State League season ended. When Gleason finally reported to the team, he was inserted into just one game, on September 27, as a replacement for player-manager Jimmy Collins at third base in Boston’s 7–2 win over the Milwaukee Brewers. He got his first major-league hit, a single off Ned Garvin, in his only official at-bat. He also stole a base and started a double play.14

Boston held onto Gleason for spring training the next season. Utica wanted him back but Boston manager Jimmy Collins wouldn’t let him go. Gleason “has made a very favorable impression upon [Collins],” wrote the Utica Herald-Dispatch. Rumors also popped up that Connie Mack wanted Gleason for the Philadelphia Athletics.15

Gleason, however, stayed with Boston and made the Opening Day roster as one of two utility infielders. In all, Gleason played in 71 games in 1902. Boston utilized him mostly at third base, where he played in 35 games. He also played 23 games in the outfield as well as four games as a second baseman. Though he batted only .225, on May 16 he hit the first of his three major-league home runs, off Philadelphia’s Snake Wiltse. He also led all American League pinch-hitters with three hits in eight at-bats, good for a .375 average. Additionally, for making the big leagues, he was rewarded with a pair of diamond-studded cuff buttons by his Camden friends during a July 11 game against the Philadelphia A’s.16

All in all, things were going very well for Gleason. “Little Harry Gleason has established himself as a prime favorite here,” wrote the Boston Globe. “He is always in the game, is quick in all departments and never lets up. The crowd is quick to applaud such a player upon any provocations.”17

In the offseason, rumors abounded that both the Baltimore Orioles and the Philadelphia A’s wanted Gleason, but Gleason was in Macon, Georgia, with Boston when the 1903 training camp began. This marked one of the strangest periods of Gleason’s baseball life.18

Boston had decided that Gleason wasn’t in its plans for the 1903 season. The Americans planned to audition John O’Brien and George Stone for the utility-player job. Essentially Boston gave Gleason to Charles Comiskey and his White Sox team for nothing. It was up to Gleason to work out his contract, but Gleason wasn’t going to go without a fight. In March the first reports of Gleason’s going to the White Sox hit the press. Yet he never left Macon despite assurances to Comiskey from Boston owner Henry Killilea, manager Collins, and Gleason himself that he would report to White Sox camp in Mobile, Alabama. The White Sox were desperate for a third baseman, having lost infielders George Davis, Sam Mertes, and Sammy Strang to the National League. Yet Gleason stayed with Boston, practicing with the Americans throughout camp.19

American League president Ban Johnson weighed in finally, awarding Gleason to Chicago, but added, “He cannot be compelled to play in Chicago but if he consults his own interests he will do so. There is no room for him on the Boston team.” At some point, Gleason did report to the White Sox. He worked out for Comiskey and was offered a contract at “pretty steep terms.” But Comiskey balked when Gleason demanded that back pay be included in the contract.20

So Gleason stayed with Boston, practicing with the team. When Hobe Ferris was hurt late in spring training, Gleason filled in at second base. He traveled north with the team and, despite persistent reports that he was going to Chicago, he played in six games at the opening of the regular season, two as a second baseman.21

Finally, on May 16, Gleason was purchased for $1,000 by the Columbus (Ohio) Senators of the American Association. Columbus owner T. J. Bryce was trying to build a powerhouse and wasn’t averse to paying for it. Sporting Life called the move “another bold stroke” by Bryce to put together a championship team. The bold stroke didn’t pay off for Bryce, however. Gleason, in 70 games, hit but .143. It was by far the worse batting performance of his career.22

After the season Columbus traded Gleason and “a bunch of cash” (one report mentioned $1,000) to the St. Louis Browns for Bill Friel, Benny Bowcock, and Joe Martin. Browns second baseman Dick Padden had injured his thumb toward the end of the season, and Gleason was seen as an insurance policy in case it didn’t heal in the offseason.23

Padden’s thumb did heal in time for spring training but Gleason had such a good camp that the Browns kept him as a utility fielder. Gleason “is playing a great game at second,” wrote Sporting Life in March. “[Browns manager Jimmy] McAleer is well pleased.”24

Gleason didn’t play much but when he did get into the starting lineup, he made the most of it. When shortstop Bobby Wallace went down with an injury, Gleason played so well that he was one of the “most popular players” on the Browns.25

Gleason’s season came to an end on August 2. On that day, he replaced the injured Padden in the lineup against Philadelphia. Gleason was having a great day, lashing two hits including a triple against future Hall of Famer Rube Waddell. His third time up, he came to bat in the bottom of the sixth with no outs and a run in. Waddell threw one of his hard “inshoots” and hit Gleason in the back of the head, behind his left ear. When it struck his head, it sounded like it had hit the bat. Gleason “fell like a log, unconscious.”26

The players rushed to Gleason’s side, Waddell being one of the first. Dr. Max C. Starkloft, the former St. Louis city health commissioner, was called out of the grandstand to attend to Gleason. Played was stopped for 10 minutes, while Gleason lay at home plate. “Father Tracey, who was in the grand stand, hurried to the side of his parishioner, and with a wide Panama, fanned the stricken gladiator.”27

With Waddell carrying Gleason at the shoulders and the Browns’ Mike Kahoe taking his legs, Gleason was carried to the bench. Blood was running from his nose and ears. He was semiconscious. Two players tore a clubhouse door off its hinges and, using it as a makeshift stretcher, carried him into the clubhouse. An ambulance eventually arrived to transport Gleason to St. Louis’s Missouri Baptist Sanitarium.28

The next day he was reported to be in “critical condition suffering from a concussion of the brain.” By chance, Gleason’s mother, Ellen, was traveling that day from Camden to St. Louis to visit him. It was a stopover on a cross-country trip to see her daughter, who was ill, in California. Another visitor to Gleason was Waddell. When the game had resumed that day, there was a noticeable difference in the level of play between the two teams. “Rube was completely unnerved.”29

On August 5 Gleason was “rapidly recovering.” He spent almost two weeks in the hospital, eventually feeling good enough to leave. On August 15, thirteen days after the beaning, Gleason was in uniform for the Browns and practiced for 15 minutes. His only complaint was a “faintness at irregular intervals.”30

But those proclamations were obviously a brave front because three days later Gleason announced his retirement from baseball. The left side of his head was in a “constant state of numbness” and his right arm and shoulder “were almost useless.” “I think my time on the diamond is over,” Gleason told the Philadelphia Inquirer. He added that the doctor had advised him to retire.31

Despite his pronouncement, Gleason stayed with the team. And on October 3 he entered a game in the eighth inning in a 3–0 win over New York when Padden was thrown out of the game for arguing a call.32

After the season Gleason moved to California for the winter, living with relatives in Oakland. The St. Louis Republican reported that he was playing second base for Portland in the Pacific Coast League. The PCL season ran into November that year.33

When the 1905 spring training camps opened, Gleason was again a holdout. He and a group of his teammates were upset with the contracts that were offered them. “A mutiny is rife in the ranks” of the Browns, wrote the Washington Post. Eventually the Browns signed the disgruntled players with pay increases. Gleason signed for $1,500 with the provision that his pay would be increased if he could remain a regular all season.34

Before he signed, there were rumors that Gleason might be traded to the White Sox, but that was quickly denied by Charles Comiskey. “I had one dose of Gleason when Boston gave him to me,” said Comiskey. “I do not want another.”35

For the first time in his major-league career, Gleason was handed the starting job. The extremely popular player played third base for most of the season. But despite his hustle and defense, his batting left much to be desired. For the year, he batted only .217 in 150 games. On October 8, 1905, he played the last major-league game of his career.

The Browns were disappointed with Gleason. “Gleason is a fairly good player,” wrote the Cleveland Plain Dealer after the season ended, “but did not come up to expectations at all times last year.”36

Rumors swirled about Gleason’s next destination. Earlier in the season Hughie Jennings, manager of the Baltimore Orioles, was supposedly interested in Gleason. In October the New York Highlanders expressed interest. Finally, the outlaw Tri-State League was reported to want Gleason.37

In February 1906 the Browns sold Gleason, along with Joe Sugden, to the American Association’s St. Paul (Minnesota) Saints. St. Paul wanted Gleason to play shortstop for the team, but Gleason wasn’t about to take a pay cut just because he was sent down. He refused to report to St. Paul and signed with the Tri-State League, which played baseball outside the aegis of Organized Baseball. The league was paying top dollar for talent and Gleason was more than happy to play with them, even if it meant he was placed on Organized Baseball’s blacklist.38

Before he reported to camp, he worked all winter for the Pennsylvania Railroad in Camden under his brother Walter, who was a yardmaster. An accident, though, almost cost him his life and he resigned immediately.39

Gleason played the next four seasons in the Tri-State League and before almost every season there was a dispute over which team in the league owned his rights. Part of the fault belonged to the league, which was loose on its signing rules, but part of the blame belonged to Gleason, who was always trying to cut the best deal possible for himself, even if he had already had a deal in place.

Gleason played the next four seasons in the Tri-State League and before almost every season there was a dispute over which team in the league owned his rights. Part of the fault belonged to the league which was loose on its signing rules but part of the blame belonged to Gleason, who was always trying to cut the best deal possible for himself, even if he had already had a deal in place.

In all, he played with Williamsport (1906-1907), Trenton (1908), Wilmington (1908), Harrisburg (1909), and York (1909), with a 36-game stint in 1908 with the Jersey City Skeeters of the Eastern League. In 1907 the Tri-State League moved under Organized Baseball’s umbrella. That meant salaries would come down to the other minor leagues’ levels. There was much conjecture about players like Gleason, who were on Organized Baseball’s blacklist and whether they would be allowed to play. In the end, all the players were allowed to play but at reduced salaries.40 There were several other significant events for Gleason while he played in the Tri-State League

On the morning of May 12, 1906, Gleason was married to Christine Wilhemine Carstens of Philadelphia, at the parsonage at St. Stephen’s Lutheran Church in Lancaster. He then played in a game that afternoon against Lancaster. According to newspaper accounts, he had “a great game.” After the game, he left with his bride on a “western trip.”41

After the 1907 season a new outlaw league, the Union League, was being formed. The league organizers’ objective was to become a third major league. Rumors swirled that Gleason had signed a contract with the Washington team. He even attended the Union League’s spring meeting in Philadelphia. He was to play second base for the team in the coming season. But the league collapsed, leaving Gleason no choice but to go back to an Organized Baseball team.41

In 1909, while playing for a terrible Harrisburg team, Gleason had an altercation with a Harrisburg fan. On July 13, in the middle of a game at Harrisburg that the home team would lose to Lancaster, 11–3, Gleason punched the fan, who was sitting in a car beyond the bleachers. The fan had been heckling all during the game and after the sixth inning Gleason had had enough. Two days later, Gleason left Harrisburg for good.43

And soon after that incident, Gleason left the Tri-State League for good. After a short stint with a Hagerstown, Maryland, semipro team at the end of the 1909 season, Gleason moved on to New York State League. At the beginning of the 1910 season, he was with the Utica Utes but didn’t play well. By June 13, he was batting only .154, so Utica released him. However, an injury to Utica shortstop Louis Hartman kept Gleason on the team a little while longer. On June 28 he was sold to the Binghamton (New York) Bingoes.41

In late August, after returning to the team after tending to his sick wife, Gleason was one of several players and coaches arrested after Binghamton and Albany attempted to play a Sunday game in Colonie, New York, in opposition to the Blue Laws in that city.45

While with Binghamton, Gleason managed to pull his batting average up to .219 by season’s end. He returned for the 1911 season but batted only .218, playing in 123 games. With little prospects for a light-hitting 36-year-old in Organized Baseball, Gleason retired for good after the season.

Even before he retired, Gleason had worked in the winters at a shoe company. His maternal grandfather, Isaac H. Ivins, had been a shoemaker, and Gleason no doubt learned the trade from him. By 1911 Gleason was vice president of the Union Shoe Manufacturing and Repair Company of Philadelphia. According to his World War I draft card, which was filled out in 1918, he listed his occupation as shoe repairing and wrote that he was self-employed. He moved to Haddonfield, New Jersey, sometime in the 1910s, and in 1915 his wife, Christine, gave birth to their son, William Carstens Gleason. He and Christine later had a daughter, Pauline.46

Tragically, Christine died in 1928. By 1930 Gleason was remarried to a widow, Ena Griffing, who was 15 years his junior. According to the 1930 US Census, he had become an undersheriff in the Camden Sheriff’s Department. He remained an undersheriff until he retired.

On October 21, 1961, after a three-day stay in West Jersey Hospital in Camden because of an infected appendix, Harry Gleason died at the age of 86.47 He is buried at Locustwood Memorial Park in Cherry Hill, New Jersey.

This biography originally appeared in “New Century, New Team: The 1901 Boston Americans,” edited by Bill Nowlin (SABR, 2013).

Notes

1 Baseball-Reference.com ; Alfred H. Spink, The National Game, Second Edition. (Carbondale, Illinois: Southern Illinois University Press, 2000), 226.; Williamsport Gazette & Bulletin, May 25, 1906; Sporting Life, July 18, 1902; Utica Herald-Dispatch, May 2, 1902; Worcester Daily Spy, May 26, 1903.