In the first game of a doubleheader played at Cleveland’s League Park on July 19, 1909, Boston’s Heinie Wagner singled to lead off the second inning against Cleveland starting pitcher Cy Young, who was pitching in his first season for the Naps after playing for eight years with the Red Sox. Jake Stahl moved Wagner to second base with a bunt single. On a hit-and-run play, the next batter, Amby McConnell, lined a 3-2 pitch up the middle. Ball leaped to catch it, forced Wagner at second base, and then tagged Stahl to record the third out.

“I thought I could spear it and had visions of a double play,” said Ball. “I reached into the air and came down with the ball. By this time, Wagner was on third and Stahl was only a few feet from second. I ran over and touched second for the second out. Stahl was slowing up and reversed his tracks toward first, but I overtook him and tagged him out to complete the triple play.”1

Ball recounted details of his unassisted triple play more modestly during an interview in 1948 at his home in Bridgeport, Connecticut. “Nobody has asked me to tell it in thirty years, I guess,” Ball said, “but you ought to know I wouldn’t forget how in a hundred.”2

After McConnell hit the ball, Ball recalled, “I didn’t think there was a chance of getting it but I was on the move toward second and I gave it a try anyhow. It was dead over the bag by then so I jumped and the darned thing hit my glove and stuck. The rest was easy. Wagner was way around third base somewhere and when I came down on the bag he was out. I just stood there with my hands out and Stahl ran into them. He was halfway down when the ball was hit and couldn’t stop. That’s all there was to it. I can still remember how surprised I was when the ball hit in my glove.”3

Ball’s great-niece, Kathia Miller, writing in 2009 on the 100th anniversary of the unassisted triple play, said that the 11,000 people at the game gave Ball “a great ovation” and that removing all of the hats that had been thrown on the field in appreciation delayed the game by 20 minutes. She said Ball was so unassuming that after making the play he merely put his glove down and returned to the dugout, leading Cy Young to ask: “Where are you going, Neal?” To which Ball succinctly replied: “That’s three outs.”4

A little-noted postscript to Ball’s feat: In the bottom half of the inning he led off for Cleveland and he hit his first major-league home run (and his only home run of the season) on the first pitch he saw from hurler Charlie Chech. The sportswriter who interviewed him in 1948 noted, “… Home runs were rare enough in those days, but this one was, in its way, as remarkable as Ball’s play in the field and possibly as rare. For he hit the ball over the head of Tris Speaker in center field and ran all the way home while the great man chased it. Such a thing simply was not done. Ball is no longer the only man ever to make a triple play unassisted, but he is likely to remain forever the only one to make a triple play and a home run in the same inning. The feat was so notable that Ban Johnson, president of the league, had a medal struck and presented to Ball in commemoration.”5 Speaker, of course, was known for playing a very shallow center field, which certainly contributed to his setting the record for unassisted double plays by an outfielder, and which probably contributed to Ball’s big hit.

Batting eighth in the lineup, Ball also had a double later in the game. The next day he posed for a photograph along with McConnell, Wagner, and Stahl commemorating the historic play.

Ball is almost universally credited with having the first unassisted triple play in major-league history, as an unassisted triple play originally credited to Paul Hines with Providence in 1878 has been disputed. According to an article published in The Sporting News on July 29, 1909, Hines claimed that he had made a triple play unassisted, but “the files of a Providence newspaper state that one of his teammates got the third out.”6

Largely due to the persistence of amateur historian Jules J. Bues, a close friend of Ball, the glove that Ball used to make the triple play was presented to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1952. It was put on permanent display there on March 16, 1953. On March 7, 1955, the jersey Ball was wearing when he made the triple play was added to the display. Bues’ persistence even led to Ball’s feat being commemorated in photographs at the Baseball Hall of Fame in Tokyo.

Cornelius Ball, Jr. was born on April 22, 1881, in Grand Haven, Michigan. (One account lists his birthdate as September 11, 1883.)7 He was the second son of Cornelius Ball, an immigrant from the Netherlands, and Wilhelmina Mieras. The two had nine children. Neal was the fifth. Thinking that he would never have a son, Cornelius Ball named his third daughter Cornelia, after himself. Then the Balls went on to have four boys, including Neal.8

Miller, his great-niece, said all four boys were “excellent baseball players” but that Neal was the only one of the four who would play baseball on Sunday, refusing to adhere to the Dutch Reform Church’s mandate not to do any work on Sundays. He learned to play baseball while growing up in Kalamazoo, Michigan. While he was initially pursued by the Detroit Tigers in 1902, Neal signed for more money with the Toledo Mud Hens of the American Association, where he was assigned the locker once used by John McGraw.9

Ball began his professional career as a shortstop for Toledo in 1903 before moving to Cedar Rapids of the Three-I League later in the season. During the next two seasons with Grand Rapids, he also played some at second base.

Ball almost played for Atlanta in 1906. He was in a competition there for the shortstop job with Lou Castro, and, according to one account, “Castro kidded Ball out of the Atlanta job.” As manager Bill Smith tried to decide between the two players, Castro would tease Ball with comments like: “I’ve got this job clinched. Now watch me scoop this one. See that peg? What chance you got? Better go back to the bushes.” Castro’s chiding apparently got the best of Ball, who came to believe that Castro really was the better player. “Of course, Neal’s playing dropped off when he got into that frame of mind, and any manager would have chosen the peppery Castro.”10 Ball was back with Cedar Rapids in 1906.

In 1907 Ball moved to Montgomery of the Southern League, where there was no one else competing for the shortstop position. There, “Ball came into his own and soon was the sensation of the league, discussion being rife all over the circuit as to whether he or Nicholls, of Memphis, was the best shortstop.”11 According to Kathia Miller, Ball stole 55 bases in the first 50 games of that year.12 Near the end of the season his contract was sold to the New York Highlanders, and he made his major-league debut on September 12, 1907.

Ball, who was 5-feet-7 and weighed 145 pounds, played in only 15 games for the 1907 Highlanders. The right-handed batter hit one double and one triple while batting .205. Most often, he played behind Kid Elberfeld at shortstop, though Ball did play in five games at second base.

With Elberfeld injured for much of the 1908 season, Ball became a regular at shortstop, playing in 130 games there. Although he had a productive year at the plate, getting 110 hits, knocking in 38 runs, and stealing 32 bases, his defense was abysmal; he made 80 errors,

Elberfeld returned, and on May 18, 1909, Ball was sold to the Cleveland Indians, where he became the regular shortstop, setting the stage for his unassisted triple play two months later. Generally, though, his defense remained a sore point, as Ball committed 46 errors in 96 games in 1909. Terry Turner often took over at shortstop for Ball, leaving Ball to play as a utility infielder much of the time as he continued to struggle.

Still, Ball had his moments in Cleveland. In 1911 he enjoyed one of his best seasons at the plate, finishing with a .296 batting average and 21 stolen bases. He set a career high with 122 hits in 116 games for the Indians, who finished in third place in the American League with the help of Shoeless Joe Jackson, whose .408 batting average set a record for a rookie.

On June 25, 1912, the Naps sold Ball to the Red Sox for $2,500. Cleveland had Ray Chapman ready to take over at shortstop, and Roger Peckinpaugh also played there from time to time. With Heinie Wagner, one of the victims of his unassisted twin killing, as the regular shortstop with the Red Sox, Ball was limited to playing a utility role for the remainder of the season. In 18 games with Boston he collected 10 hits, including two doubles, while batting .200. A contemporary account said, “He has had but little work to do and has acquitted himself very creditably.”13

Ball made one appearance in the 1912 World Series. He pinch-hit for starting pitcher Buck O’Brien in the eighth inning of the third game, and was struck out by Giants pitcher Rube Marquard. It was the only World Series appearance of his career.

Ball played in 23 games for the Red Sox in 1913, batting a career-low .172. With Wagner well established at shortstop, Ball was sold to the Baltimore Orioles of the International League, and never played in the major leagues again. He finished his seven-season major-league career with 404 hits, four home runs, 151 stolen bases, and a .250 batting average.

With the Orioles in 1914, Ball coached and became a teammate of young Babe Ruth, who had recently joined the team from St. Mary’s Industrial School. Miller detailed an incident involving Ruth and Ball during spring training in 1914, when Ruth as a pitcher was learning hand signals from Ball, who was playing as a catcher. Ball apparently signaled for a “waste pitch,” which Ruth delivered down the middle of the plate. The pitch was hit solidly by the batter, leading Ball to ask Ruth why he threw such a hittable pitch. “Well,” said Ruth, “I threw it right by his waist.”14

As Miller also recounted, Ball recalled that “Babe was the dumbest and the strongest player I had ever met. He had baseball sense. You’d only have to tell him something once.” Ruth and Ball became friends, and Ruth came to Ball’s home to get his approval to marry his first wife, Helen Woodford. Neal told Ruth: “Aw, go ahead; she seems like a nice gal.”15

After Baltimore in 1914, Ball played with Richmond and Toronto in the International League as well as in Pittsfield, New Haven, and Springfield in the Eastern League. He managed the Bridgeport Hustlers of the Eastern League in 1916, led Augusta of the Sally League in 1922, and managed the New Haven Profs of the Eastern League in 1925.and the Pittsfield Hillies, also of the Eastern League, in 1926.16

In 1921 the 40-year-old Ball hit .300 as the regular second baseman for the New Haven Indians, managed by Chief Bender. In a game against the Waterbury Brasscos, the Waterbury pitcher, Jerry Kahn, had a no-hitter with two outs in the ninth inning. At that point, according to a 1951 account:

“Then, up strode Neal Ball, looking harmless enough after several discouraging experiences with Kahn’s deceptive shoots. With the fans starting to file out of the park, Neal took a half-hearted swing and knocked one of those dime-a-dozen pop flies just inside the foul line that Phil Rizzuto could have caught in his hip pocket. Nine times out of ten, any Eastern League third baseman could have shut his eyes and pulled it out of the balmy June air.

“But this time, the third baseman thought it was the left fielder’s or shortstop’s ball and vice versa—and Jerry Kahn’s no-hitter went a-glimmering in the gathering dusk. The saddest man in Mr. [George] Weiss’ ball park that afternoon wasn’t Jerry Kahn—a smiling kid who laughed it off and proceeded to get the next batter—but an old timer named Neal Ball who had played the game right up to the end, but, great sportsman that he was, hated to ruin a masterpiece.” 17

In somewhat of a surprise move, since many suspected that the job would go to Jack Flynn, Ball became president and manager of the Pittsfield Hillies of the Eastern League in 1926.18 The Hillies finished in last place and Ball was fired before the end of the season. He joined the Springfield Hampdens, working as a coach and scout. A sportswriter described him as “always one of the best liked players in major league baseball.” The sportswriter quoted New Haven team president George Weiss as saying, “I think Springfield is to be congratulated on obtaining a man of Ball’s character as a coach and a scout.”19

Ball retired to Bridgeport, Connecticut, after leaving baseball. with his second wife, Estelle. (His first wife, Maud, had died.) Estelle’s father had moved there at around the same time that Ball was performing well in the minor leagues. Neal and Estelle had no children. 20

In retirement Ball sold hats and also managed a bowling alley.21 His baseball accomplishments were not forgotten, and in January 1951 he was honored by the Connecticut Sports Writers Alliance for his contributions to the sports scene in Connecticut. (Former major leaguer Red Rolfe was one of the other honorees.)22

More than two decades after he retired from baseball, New York Herald Tribune writer Al Laney described Ball’s temperament: “At 64, Ball is still the same bouncy, nervous, friendly man he was in 1910. He has most of his hair and seemingly all of his old energy. He bounces out of his chair to get his scrapbooks, his old photographs and to show off the big fish he has mounted. He leads the pleasantest sort of life, in which fishing seems to be the main activity. He knows all the good spots near Bridgeport and, once or twice a year, he takes long fishing trips, especially to Vermont.”23

Ball remained interested in baseball in retirement, traveling to New York to see games from time to time. “He seems to have no complaint whatever against life,” said Laney, “and the only thing he can think up is over the fact that the American League has denied him a lifetime pass. The National League, in which he never played, long ago gave him a pass, and he resents mildly the fact that he must pay his way into American League games.”24

Ball died on October 15, 1957, at the age of 76 at his home in Bridgeport. A resident of Bridgeport for more than 40 years, he had been inactive and in failing health for some time. The official cause of death was listed as pulmonary edema. He was survived by his wife, Estelle (nee Beardslee); by his brothers John W. Ball of Pontiac, Michigan, and Jay of Kalamazoo, Michigan; and by his sisters, Mrs. William Schrier and Mrs. Minnie MacDonald, both of Kalamazoo. He is buried in Mountain Grove Cemetery, in Bridgeport.

Sources

“Ball, Neal.” No author, title, or date given. From Ball’s file at the Baseball Hall of Fame.

“Ball, First to Make Unaided Triple Play in Majors, Dies: Former Infielder Was 76; Glove Used in Feat Now in Cooperstown Shrine.” No publication given. October 15, 1957. From Ball’s file at the Baseball Hall of Fame.

“Baseball Hall of Fame to Get Neal Ball Glove.” No publication given. From Ball’s file at the Baseball Hall of Fame.

Sam Cohen, “Ball’s feat Hits 60th Anniversary, Connecticut Sun Herald, July 27, 1969.

“Connecticut Writers Honor 3,” January 30, 1951. No publication given. From Ball’s file at the Baseball Hall of Fame.

Walter Graham, “Neal Ball Will Coach Local Club This Year: Former Major League Player and Eastern League Manager Signed by Hampdens—Directors Vote for Most Valuable Player Award.” No publication or date given. From Ball’s file at the Baseball Hall of Fame.

Al Laney, “Stuck in His Glove: Cleveland Vet, at 64, Taking Life Easy at Bridgeport, Conn.” New York Herald Tribune, February 11, 1948.

Kathia Miller e-mails to author, January 3-5, 2011.

Kathia Miller, “On the Ball for Historic Fielding Feat,” Cleveland Plain Dealer, July 19, 2009.

Kathia Miller, “Guest Commentary: Unassisted Triple Play was One for the Record Books,” Naples (Florida) News, July 20, 2009.

Neal Ball, Death Certificate.

“Neal Ball, 76, Dies in Home: Baseball Figure Made First Unassisted Triple Play in 1909.” No publication or date given. . From Ball’s file at the Baseball Hall of Fame.

“Neal Ball Dies at 76,” New York Times, October 15, 1957.

Dan Parker, “Neal Ball Gets Tardy Acclaim for Triple Play,” No publication given, January 25, 1951. From Ball’s file at the Baseball Hall of Fame.

“Player-Manager Assumes New Role,” Hartford Courant, March 6, 1926.

“Substitute Infielder Ball,” October 12, 1912, No publication given. From Ball’s file at the Baseball Hall of Fame.

“Triple Play By Neal Ball: Naps’ Shortstop Completes the Feature Unassisted.” No publication given. July 19, 1909. From Ball’s file at the Baseball Hall of Fame.

“Triple Play Hero Dies,” Bridgeport Post, October 16, 1957.

Untitled article, October 1912. From Ball’s file at the Baseball Hall of Fame.

Untitled article, The Sporting News, July 29, 1909. From Ball’s file at the Baseball Hall of Fame.

Notes

Born on October 23, 1889, in Gerry, New York, Hugh Carpenter Bedient was the second child born to Orlon Bedient and Ellen Partridge Bedient.ii According to the 1900 U.S. Census, Orlon and Ellen had two children: Emma, born in 1882, and Hugh. Ellen’s mother, Ellenor Partridge, also lived with the family. Orlon worked at a nearby butter manufacturing facility.iii

The 6-foot, 185-pound Bedient possessed a rare, somewhat contradictory personality. To the vivid recollection of his family, he was at the same time a “soft-spoken gentleman” and a “hard-nosed competitor.” “Hugh was quiet, but he was just a great guy,” recalled son-in-law Hermes Ames. “If he didn’t like someone, he wouldn’t say. He was just that kind of guy. In fact, I never heard him say anything bad about anybody – except Ty Cobb, who Hugh thought was awfully dirty.”iv

Bedient was smitten by baseball at an early age. Ellen once complained that her son was “crazy over that pesky game of baseball.” In April 1905, he pitched his first game for Falconer High School, beating Jamestown Business College. During that same year, he pitched when Falconer beat archrival Jamestown for the first time in their history.

Beginning in 1905, Hugh began an annual sequence of pitching for his high school during the school year and then pitching for at least one semiprofessional team in the summer. Nearly every Saturday during the summer of 1905, he traveled to nearby Buffalo to pitch for the Buffalo Dry Docks. The 1905 Dry Docks caused a bit of a local stir by winning 26 games in a row. Hugh won 15 of these games, though he wasn’t known as Hugh Bedient to the public. The Grand Rapids Press of November 9, 1912, said that a “pitcher from ‘out of town’ who became known as ‘The Mysterious Murray,’ would walk on the field in a Dry Dock suit, warm up, pitch — and win — his game, and slip away. None knew his identity.” The following year one of the Buffalo City League teams played a game in Falconer, and the Mysterious Murray’s true identity was revealed. In 1906, he won all 10 of his high-school games, striking out 160 batters. In 1907, he helped the Dry Docks win Buffalo’s 1907 City League Championship.

After high-school graduation in June of 1908, the right-hander pitched that summer for his local semipro team, the Falconer Independents. On July 25, his team played a club from Corry, Pennsylvania. This was a highly anticipated rematch between the two teams and drew enormous local interest. Tied at 1-1 after nine innings, the game continued on and on with Hugh piling up strikeouts along the way.

In the top of the 23rd inning, Falconer pushed across two runs on a wild throw. Likely running on adrenaline, Bedient promptly struck out all three Corry batsmen he faced in the bottom of the inning. In 23 innings, he had allowed just six hits, walked only one batter, and struck out a jaw-dropping 42 hitters.

The 42 strikeouts in one game gave Bedient national notoriety and precipitated no fewer than 19 offers from various clubs in organized ball. Bedient later called his 42-strikeout performance one of the greatest thrills in his baseball career.

In 1910, former major-league pitcher Jesse Burkett offered Bedient $180 per month to pitch for his Fall River, Massachusetts, team in the New England League. The pitcher had a successful season at Fall River, notching a 13-9 record. Subsequently reporting on his 1910 effort, Baseball Magazine characterized Bedient as the “mainstay” of the Fall River staff and predicted that “with the proper handling [he] should develop into a star.” During the year, he came to the attention of Boston Red Sox owner John I. Taylor. Dismayed by the performance of his veteran pitchers in 1910, when Boston finished in fourth place, Taylor hoped to bring in some younger pitching talent. He invited Bedient to try out for the 1911 Red Sox during their spring training.

Unlike previous years, when the team traveled south to Hot Springs, Arkansas, for spring training, the 1911 Red Sox trained in Redondo Beach, California. The Boston Globe labeled the audacious plan to cross country for spring training “the great 8,000 mile $15,000 trip.” Bedient saw only limited action in California. At the start of the regular season, the Red Sox sold him to the Eastern League’s Providence Grays.

Obviously disappointed at not remaining in the major leagues, Hugh began his 1911 season slowly at Providence. Initially unimpressed, Providence quickly offered him back to Boston. After Boston declined the offer, Providence subsequently sold Hugh for $750 to Jersey City, another Eastern League team. Although he was now owned by Jersey City, the Jersey City team president worked out a deal with Providence that allowed Bedient to stay with the Grays until the end of 1911.v

Hugh’s pitching finally began improving and he ended the season with an 8-11 record for the inept, last-place (54-98) club. By season’s end, Bedient was once again dominating opponents, as illustrated by his late-September 7-1 victory over Newark when he struck out 11 without giving up any walks.vi By the end of 1911, several Eastern League teams, having witnessed Bedient’s significant late-season improvement, reportedly offered Jersey City $5,000 for the again-promising right-hander.

In early January 1912, Boston announced several major changes to its ownership and management structure, including a new team president, Jimmy McAleer, and a new player-manager-owner, Garland “Jake” Stahl.vii One of the first things the new management did was review the status of all the players under contract with the Red Sox. As Boston was well-stocked with young position players and Smoky Joe Wood’s 23 wins in 1911 had marked him as the ace of the 1912 Boston pitching staff, McAleer and Stahl focused their review on finding additional pitchers to augment the talented Wood. Much to their surprise, they noticed that Boston had let Bedient go. According to the Boston Globe, the Red Sox immediately sent Jersey City 10 players for Bedient. Calling him “high-priced,” the Globe estimated the total value of the players sent to Jersey City at $10,000.

With a new $1,800-a-year Boston contract, Bedient began his rookie season in the major leagues as a reliever. His first appearance was on April 26 in an important early game against the defending champion Philadelphia Athletics. Relieving Eddie Cicotte in the sixth inning with the Red Sox trailing 6-3, Bedient held the Athletics scoreless the rest of the game. With the score 6-4, Boston first baseman Hugh Bradley hit a three-run homer in the seventh inning to win it, 7-6. This surprising turn of events visibly upset the Athletics. Globe baseball writer Tim Murnane wrote that he had “never saw and heard so much kicking by this Philadelphia team, which was simply broken up by Bradley’s hit.”viii

On May 4, Bedient got his first opportunity to start a major-league game; he faced the Washington Senators. It was hardly auspicious, as Hugh lasted only two innings in an 8-7 loss.ix Later in May, however, he pitched his first complete-game victory, leading Boston to another come-from-behind win, 4-3 over the 1911 champion Athletics. Bedient yielded just six hits, striking out three and walking three. The Globe characterized the Red Sox’ effort as the “most brilliant game of the year.”x

By early September, the Red Sox had all but run away with the American League pennant, and Bedient was hailed as one of the main reasons for the club’s stunning success. The Boston Post, in a feature article about him, called Bedient “one of the most dependable” pitchers on the club, saying he had “been one of the big factors in Boston’s wonderful success.” The article characterized Bedient as “quiet and retiring by nature,” noting that he had not even told his teammates when he married Imogene Palmer in nearby Brookline earlier in the season.xi

Bedient finished the 1912 regular season with a 20-9 record in 231 innings, with a 2.92 ERA. He beat every AL team at least once, doing the most damage against Philadelphia (five wins) and St. Louis (four wins).xii While there was no Rookie of the Year Award in 1912, the Society for American Baseball Research retrospectively voted him the American League Rookie of the Year for 1912.

The 1912 World Series featured the Red Sox against John McGraw’s New York Giants. Bedient made his World Series debut in Game Two. As the game entered the 11th inning tied at 6-6, Stahl used him in relief. He began unfortunately, hitting the first batter he faced, right fielder Fred Snodgrass. After a strikeout, as darkness enveloped Fenway Park, the Giants went for the win. Snodgrass attempted to steal second but Boston catcher Bill Carrigan gunned him down. Larry Doyle struck out but Bedient walked the next hitter, Beals Becker. Becker attempted to steal second only to have Carrigan again throw the runner out, this time ending the inning.

Christy Mathewson quickly retired the Red Sox in order in their half of the 11th inning. As it was now too dark to continue, the umpires halted play. The game ended in a 6-6 tie. More importantly for Bedient, he had received his baptism in postseason play.xiii

Bedient started in Game Five at Boston, against Mathewson. For Bedient, facing Mathewson was a special thrill as the Giants ace was one of Hugh’s boyhood baseball heroes. The game was played before a record-breaking Columbus Day crowd of 34,683.

As the game began in a misty fog, the Giants immediately decided to test the rookie’s nerve by taking his first few offerings. Bedient promptly walked the first hitter, Josh Devore, on four pitches.

Showing uncommon coolness for a rookie, Bedient pulled himself together by employing a tactic he had used successfully during the regular season. He began working very deliberately to each hitter. Before each pitch, he would hitch his belt, pull down his cap, landscape the pitcher’s mound, or simply do a thorough examination of the baseball.

After the second batter popped out, a double play ended the inning.

Quickly changing tactics, the Giants then attempted to rattle Bedient with a barrage of “mouth music.” Bedient remained unfazed.xiv xv Mixing his fastball with an occasional slow one, he allowed no Giant to reach base via a walk after the third inning. Consistently throwing first-pitch strikes, he induced the Giants to hit eight infield popouts and eight fly outs. The only Giant run came in the seventh as a result of a Boston error.

Bedient went on to a 2-1, complete-game victory, allowing only three hits. Mathewson also pitched a brilliant game, walking no one. The Boston Globe called the duel “one of the finest battles of the season.”xvi Delirious Red Sox fans stormed the field as the game ended and Bedient had to be escorted to safety.xvii

With the Series tied, 3 games to 3, Bedient was again matched against Mathewson, who had yet to win a game in this Series. Before the game, Stahl told Bedient, “You’ve got to win for us, kid. Just pitch the way you did last time out, and you can take that Mathewson again.”xviii

As the game began, chilly weather and a strong northwesterly wind greeted the Boston crowd of 17,034. Many fans wrapped themselves in woolen blankets to stay warm. Buoyed by their convincing victories over the Red Sox in the previous two games, the Giants appeared confident, emerging from their dressing room singing.

Again the Giants began the game attempting to disrupt Bedient’s concentration. But much to their frustration, he again slowed the game down. After one lengthy interval between pitches, McGraw complained sarcastically to Silk O’Loughlin, the home-plate umpire, “Say, Silk, the young man appears to pitch at least (once) every five minutes.”

Bedient ignored their antics and went to work. Years later, he recalled to Hermes Ames that the cold and dark field conditions that day could not have been more perfect for his fastball. “He said his fastball had a real pop on it that day,” Ames recalled, “and he threw no more than a half-dozen curve balls the entire afternoon.”

The Giants scored a run in the third inning, as Josh Devore led off with a walk and eventually scored on Red Murray’s double to center. Tris Speaker barely missed making a spectacular catch as Murray’s ball bounced off his fingertips.

In the fifth, Bedient was the beneficiary of one of the most spectacular catches in World Series history. Larry Doyle, the National League’s Most Valuable Player that year, hit a shot deep into right-center. Off with the crack of the bat, Boston right fielder Harry Hooper turned his back and sprinted full speed toward the fence in right-center. At the last moment, as he was about to tumble over the short fence, Hooper reached over his head and caught the ball with his bare hand. His momentum carried him over the fence, off the field, and into the crowd.xix He emerged with the ball stuck in his hand.

The attending umpires declared it a legal catch, although the Giants protested that Hooper had left the playing field when he made the play.xx Speaker and a number of other players who were there later described the catch as the greatest they had ever seen.xxi When Bedient left for a pinch hitter in the seventh, Boston was trailing 1-0. In one of the greatest games in Red Sox history, Boston rallied to win in extra innings, 3-2.

Bedient’s outstanding performance in Game Eight drew an avalanche of high praise from baseball’s best, including Cy Young, Walter Johnson, Christy Mathewson, and Larry Doyle. Cy Young wrote, “To Bedient should be given the major portion of the credit for winning yesterday’s game. There are others who did things, but Bedient was the man who stopped the onrush of the confident Giants. He pitched one of the most careful games I have ever seen, taking absolutely no chances with his opponents and obliging them to hit bad balls. I doubt if any other pitcher on the Boston team could have so effectively held the Giants yesterday.”xxii

Despite this overwhelming praise, Bedient remained grounded. At the wild victory celebration the next day at Fanueil Hall, Boston Mayor John “Honey Fitz” Fitzgerald introduced Bedient to the madly cheering throng and asked him to speak. Hugh simply rose, bowed slightly to the crowd, and then sat down again.xxiii

It was the richest World Series in baseball history up to then; each Boston player received a winner’s share of $4,024.68, more than doubling Bedient’s 1912 season salary of $1,800. When asked by the Boston American how he planned to spend the money, Bedient said he would use part of the money to buy a new home, put part of it in the bank, and use the rest for tuition at one of the law colleges.xxiv

Upon returning home to Falconer, New York, Bedient received a hero’s welcome. Nearly 25,000 people met his train at the local railroad station. Laudatory speeches and songs of praise were heaped upon him as a local boy who had become a national hero. At the end of one of the celebrations, an overwhelmed Bedient rose to thank the gathering and said simply, “We have had a pleasant time since coming home and we thank you all for the interest you have shown. That is all I can say.” He then sat down to a five-minute standing ovation.

Rewarded by Boston with a two-year contract with a 40 percent salary increase, Bedient began the 1913 season with high hopes. Unfortunately, the 1912 Boston success could not be extended to 1913, as the Red Sox experienced both key injuries (Wood) and internal turmoil (manager Stahl was fired in midseason). The Red Sox dropped to fourth place with a 79-71 record. Bedient went 15-14 but finished with a 2.78 ERA, his career best in the major leagues, in 259 innings. He also had five saves, which ranked third in the 1913 American League.

In 1914, the Red Sox rebounded, finishing second with a 91-62 record. Bedient, however, had his worst year in Boston, falling to 8-12 with a 3.60 ERA in 177 innings. His difficulties may have been linked to the emergence of the new rival Federal League.

The new league began operation in 1914 and put a franchise in Buffalo. Bedient had an unexpected opportunity to play the game he loved in the area he loved. It was a combination that enticed many National and American League players to move to the new league. Buffalo representatives reportedly approached Bedient during the 1914 season. At the end of the year, Boston released him and he joined Buffalo, receiving $7,000 up-front to jump leagues. The Buffalo offer nearly doubled his 1914 Boston salary of $4,000.

In 1915 at Buffalo, Bedient played with former American League players Hal Chase, Russ Ford, and Clyde Engle. He pitched a career-high 269 innings, posting a 16-18 record with a 3.17 ERA. Pitching in 53 of Buffalo’s 153 games (35 percent), he led the league in saves (10) as Buffalo finished sixth with a 74-78 record. When the Federal League folded after 1915, Bedient was “despondent.” Not only had he lost his team and his league, but the team he left behind, Boston, won the 1915 world championship.

Bedient joined the Toledo Mud Hens of the American Association in the spring of 1916. He posted a 16-18 record while pitching 305 innings.xxv He started again with Toledo in 1917 and went 1-2 in six games. According to the Toledo News Bee, he developed arm problems that season. He dropped out of baseball for nearly four years.

In the summer of 1920, testing his arm in a local game, Bedient found he could again throw pain-free. He returned to the Mud Hens in 1921, and won 20 games with 13 losses and a 4.17 ERA in 274 innings. Bedient returned to the club in 1922, going 15-18 in 271 innings with a 3.59 ERA. In 1923, his last year with Toledo, Bedient went 10-21 in 238 innings with an ERA of 5.37 as the last-place Mud Hens won only 54 games. He pitched for Portland in the Pacific Coast League in 1924, going 6-12 in 178 innings with a 5.66 ERA. In 1925, he pitched for Atlanta in the Southern Association, going 7-5 in 94 innings with a 3.06 ERA.

After baseball, Hugh returned to his beloved western New York, where he worked and continued pitching as a semipro, primarily with the Jamestown Spiders. As his speed waned, he relied more on trickery. The Tribune of Warren, Pennsylvania, described his 1928 pitching performance against a hard-hitting Ohio team as crafty, featuring a “bewildering” assortment of pitches.xxvi Bedient pitched well into his late 40s.

He also helped Imogene raise their family. His son, also named Hugh, pitched in college for the University of Alabama. The Bedient family suffered a major blow in 1940 when young Hugh, a second lieutenant serving in the Air Reserve Corps of the United States Army, died along with 10 other young Army flyers when their two bombers locked wings and crashed during a training drill.  Both planes crashed “in a ball of flame” over suburban New York City. Still a student pilot at the time of the crash, the youngster had reportedly declined an opportunity to play for the Red Sox in order to go into the Army Air Service. His father was devastated. xxvii

Never straying far from his beloved home in Falconer, New York, Bedient died in nearby Jamestown, New York, of arterial sclerosis on July 21, 1965. He is buried in Falconer, in Levant Cemetery. “Hugh was my best friend for 25 years,” Hermes Ames recalled with great fondness. “He was very quiet and didn’t talk baseball voluntarily. He was just a very humble, down-to-earth guy.”

Sources

Timothy Gay. Tris Speaker (Lincoln, Nebraska: University of Nebraska Press, 2005).

Frederick G. Lieb. The Story of the World Series (New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1965).

Bill Nowlin. Day by Day with the Boston Red Sox (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Rounder Books, 2006).

Glenn Stout and Richard Johnson. Red Sox Century (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2005).

Cecilia Tan, and Bill Nowlin. The 50 Greatest Red Sox Games (Hoboken, New Jersey: John Wiley & Sons, 2006).

John Thorn, Pete Palmer, Michael Gershman. Total Baseball, 7th edition (Kingston, New York: Total Sports Publishing, 2001).

Baseball Magazine

Boston Globe

Boston Post

Jamestown Post-Journal, Jamestown, New York.

Hugh Bedient player file at the National Baseball Hall of Fame

SABR Minor League Database

Notes

The first time we can find Hugh Bradley mentioned in print, it was in the account of a 1904 football game between Grafton High School and Upton High. “Hugh F. Bradley, the baseball player, was referee.”i He’d played baseball for the Spencers, the semipro town team for Spencer, Massachusetts, earlier in the 1904 season. There he “made a remarkable showing, his batting average being .361, and his fielding average 1000, accepting 87 chances.”ii Bradley attended the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Massachusetts, but does not seem to have graduated from there.

Bradley had an abortive start to his pro baseball career. In 1905, he was one of five outfielders who tried out for the Norwich Reds team in the Connecticut State League. [Hartford Courant, April 21, 1905] The season opened on April 28 but Bradley wasn’t in the lineup. He had made the team but left after just a couple of days to seek a tryout with South Manchester, as reported in the May 2 Hartford Courant. Apparently, he injured his right hand after a month – back with Norwich, though not for certain – and had to quit playing. Later in the summer, he is reported to have played some in the Maine Central League, batting .450 in limited action.iii

1906 – Worcester

Bradley’s first full-season professional team was the Worcester Busters of the New England League, a Class B team that was also having its first season. The Worcester ballclub was owned and managed by Jesse Burkett, who also played in the outfield. Sporting Life informed readers in its February 24 issue that Bradley and Burkett had agreed to terms. Bradley signed with the team on March 13, and was described in the Boston Globe dispatch as “a husky chap, standing 5 feet 11 inches and weighing 170 pounds. He is very fast on the bases.” The Worcester Telegram wrote on March 13, “Bradley has played on several strong semi-professional teams in the vicinity of Worcester. …He is a husky player who may prove a find for the Worcesters when he gets the practice of regular playing.”

Bradley was, wrote Sporting Life, “the best-known young ballplayer in Worcester County.”iv On the same day he was signed, grading was done and the ground was staked for the stands of a new ballfield, Boulevard Park, but a snowstorm prevented actual construction of the buildings for the team.

Ballplayers reported for duty on April 19 and training began in earnest. Worcester played its home games at the brand-new facility, and had a successful year, easily winning first place in the eight-team league. First place was a status that Worcester earned all four years (1906-1909) that Bradley held down first base for them.

The first game at Worcester’s Boulevard Park was a spring training game on April 19, and the next day’s Worcester Daily Telegram recounted the 3-1 victory over visiting Bridgeport, played in front of 3,500 spectators, with a nod to cleanup hitter and first baseman Bradley (1-for-4 in the game): “Bradley of Grafton was given a trial at first. Bradley had one difficultly thrown ball to handle, the ball being thrown into the runner. He acquitted himself creditably at the bag. With the stick Bradley swung well, and hit the ball on the nose. He got one safe one.”

The next day Bradley made the Telegram’s subhead: BRADLEY CROSSES PLATE WITH VICTORY. Worcester was playing in Providence. With two outs in the top of the 11th inning of a scoreless game, Bradley grounded the ball to the second baseman (Providence’s player/manager Jack Dunn), who threw wildly to first. Bradley took second on the throw, and then scored when the next batter, Ambrose Kane, lined one to left. Kane was thrown out trying to take second, but Bradley had crossed the plate before the out was recorded.

The regular season began on April 27, and a host of dignitaries were present, including the Massachusetts lieutenant governor and Boston’s Mayor John F. Fitzgerald. Bradley, “the Grafton lad,” figured prominently in the game story. Not only did he manage to catch a foul ball after falling over the bag, handling 11 chances without an error, but he tripled to left field in the bottom of the seventh inning, driving in the third run of the inning, an insurance run which extended the Busters’ lead to 6-4. The Worcester paper said, “Bradley played a nice game at first.”

Hugh went 0-for-4 on the 30th, but on May 1 had himself a 3-for-4 game with a double and a stolen base. The Worcester Telegram wasn’t as impressed as one might have thought, explaining of his hits, “Every one was due almost entirely to good luck.” Bradley typically played first base, but even filled in as catcher once late in the May 11 game, a 13-inning tie against Manchester. Four days later, he started in right field against Lynn, then swapped positions with Kane and moved to first base.

On June 1, Bradley had a pair of hits, one of them a triple, and scored two runs. Bradley played first base throughout, but batted at several slots up and down the lineup – fourth place, fifth place, seventh. He had a three-hit game batting cleanup on August 7, hit a couple of doubles on August 30. It was a good first season. Burkett had had to choose between Kane and Bradley as his regular first baseman. “Although Bradley was pretty green then,” the Telegram opined near the end of the season, “Burkett saw the possibilities and kept Bradley.”

The Busters finished the season as New England League champions. In the postseason, the Worcesters played the Connecticut State League leaders, the Norwich Reds, but Worcester was “off-stride” and went down to defeat in the Inter-League Series. Bradley did little to help his team. All in all, he seems to have played serviceable ball in 1906, collecting 106 base hits for a .243 average in 113 games, but he rarely stood out in any way whatsoever.

After the season was over, Bradley took a position as a clerk in a Thompsonville, Connecticut hotel. He planned to do some coaching of high-school teams on the side as he waited for the 1907 season to begin.

1907 – Worcester

The first home game of the season was May 1, but Bradley had already made headlines in the Worcester Telegram. BRADLEY’S CATCH SAVES THE GAME headlined the April 22 game story, which featured the great stop he made in extra innings during the first game of the year, a 5-4 win in 11 frames at Norwich.

Bradley had three hits and a stolen base on May 10 and another three-hit game on June 11. On July 1, Bradley was the leadoff batter, after hitting third most of the season to this point. Later in July, Burkett held a meeting with the Boston Doves, the National League club owned by George K. Dovey. The Washington Post reported that it was “practically settled” that Bradley and two other players were to be sold to Boston. Two of the four players mentioned in the article served with Boston in September, but neither Bradley nor one of the pitchers were sold, for reasons that remain unknown.

Bradley played out the year with Worcester – a quite good one – finishing the year hitting .285 with 112 hits (30 for extra bases, but without a home run) in 393 at-bats. One of his better days came on August 12, when he hit third in the order and produced two doubles and a single. Worcester once more won the New England League pennant.

In November, a couple of publications reported that Bradley and teammate Eddie Russell were both sold to the Providence club for $600 apiece. Come 1908, though, Bradley was once again at first base for the Busters.

1908 – Worcester

Bradley played a third season with Worcester, but it was the worst season of his 12 years in the minors, finishing the year hitting .238 with one homer in 466 at-bats.

One astonishing game near the end of preseason play didn’t require any hits to win. On April 30, Worcester played Woonsocket and managed to score nine runs in the combined second and third innings without the benefit of even one base hit. There was a six-run bottom of the second produced by four bases on balls, four errors, a stolen base, and a passed ball. In the third, another walk and three more errors by Woonsocket’s shortstop, Maloney, and the Worcesters held a 9-0 lead. The 117 fans at Boulevard Park were thrilled for a moment with Bradley’s long drive to left field but it was hauled in “near the stone heap” in the outfield. “Brad” was 0-for-4 for the day, but with two outs in the bottom of the eighth was robbed of a clean single when the baserunner ahead of him “loafed on his way to second and was thrown out by the centerfielder.”v

Bradley kicked off the regular season with a 2-for-4 game against the New Bedford Whalers, and hit the first home run of his professional career in the first inning of the May 13 game against the Brockton Tigers, in Brockton. He hit only one other homer in 1908, but that one doesn’t show in the record books. It was another first-inning blow, over the right-field fence in a 13-0 exhibition-game victory at Clinton Oval in Woonsocket against the Machine & Press team of the mill league there.

There was a little comedy early in the season, during a 13-1 shellacking Worcester administered to the Lawrence Colts. A throw from the third baseman pulled Bradley off the base, and “Brad” failed to touch the runner as he crossed the first-base bag – but the runner missed the bag. Bradley could have just stepped on the sack to record the out, but instead took off after McLane, the Lawrence baserunner. “The latter continued to run out toward the right-field fence as if he intended to go to Bloomingdale Road if Bradley would give chase.” Instead of chasing him all the way, or returning to step on first, Bradley waited until McLane came back in and then tagged him before he could dodge Bradley’s touch.vi

For the third year in a row, Burkett’s Busters led the New England League. After the season, Bradley picked up a little more cash playing some semipro ball and took part as the right fielder in a game for the Spencer team, going 1-for-3 in helping beat Marlboro, 9-1, during a September 23 game at the Spencer Fair.

1909 – Worcester

After being part of three championship seasons in a row, and despite an offyear with the Worcesters, Bradley, come springtime, decided to hold out for more money. Burkett said he wouldn’t pay any more than he’d offered. After several weeks, Burkett gave in, though perhaps just enough that Bradley could save a little face. The Sporting News reported in its April 29 issue, “It is pretty much all settled now, that Bradley will get a raise, but the amount of the monthly raise would not pay his board for a week in anything better than a third-class hotel.”

The additional funds may have encouraged him, however. He jumped his average dramatically to .312, hitting safely twice on July 24 to pass the century mark in hits. He was particularly praised for his fielding, with Sporting Life commenting on July 3 that “Hugh Bradley is the big boy of the first sack of this league. For three seasons this young man has been the best at that position in the New England League.” By the end of August, the publication, called him “undoubtedly the premier fielding first sacker of the league.” Manager Roger Bresnahan of the St. Louis Cardinals was reportedly interested in Bradley.

He finished the year with seven home runs and tied Brockton’s Simeon Murch for the league lead in hits at 144, Bradley batting cleanup much of the year. His two standout days were May 11, when he singled, doubled, and tripled, scoring twice in a 7-5 win over Fall River, and on July 13, when he hit four singles in a losing effort against Haverhill. 

On September 1, the Red Sox drafted Bradley, pitcher Fred Anderson, and shortstop Steve Yerkes.

1910 – Boston Red Sox

The February 3, 1910, Boston Globe headlined a story “BRADLEY JOINS RED SOX TEAM – Crack First Baseman Signs Contract.” Bradley had come by the team offices to sign his 1910 contract. Tim Murnane, the baseball editor of the Globe, revealed that Bradley was nephew to one of the earliest professional ballplayers in Boston, George H. “Foghorn” Bradley, who had pitched for the 1876 Boston Red Caps (9-10, with a 2.49 ERA) and played four games in the outfield. Foghorn, brother to Hugh’s father, Joseph, played just the one season but umpired for seven seasons.

Jake Stahl was expected to play first base, with Bradley prepared to back him up. This is how it played out.,with Bradley appearing in 21 games at first. Manager Patsy Donovan knew Stahl would be the stalwart at first, so he had Bradley try to develop skills as a catcher, and near the end of the year he appeared in three games behind the plate and “handled himself like a veteran,” said sportswriter A.H.C. Mitchell. He played right field in one game. The Atlanta Crackers tried to pry Bradley away from Boston in May, making an offer to the Red Sox. Boston declined, and the reference to Hugh as “Tom Bradley” in the May 19 Atlanta Constitution leaves one wondering if the Crackers knew which first baseman were they bidding for.

Hugh’s first major-league appearance came on April 25, 1910, when he was sent up to pinch-hit for Smoky Joe Wood in the bottom of the eighth. The Athletics were ahead, 4-2, but Boston had two men on base with only one out. Bradley flied out to center field. Bradley came through in his next appearance, however. It was May 7, in a game at the newly expanded Huntington Avenue Grounds against the visiting New Yorkers. The game was tied after nine, but New York took a 4-1 lead in the top of the 10th thanks to a rally that began with a hit batsman and two errors. With one out in the bottom of the 10th, Bradley batted for pitcher Eddie Cicotte and singled to right. He was stranded on first, though, and the game was a loss.

On May 30, with three runs already in, Bradley’s pinch-hit single to left field tied the game in the bottom of the ninth; the Sox beat the Athletics in the 10th. Three days later, in St. Louis, he doubled to the right-field fence in the top of the 11th (his second two-bagger of the game) and scored the winning run on Heinie Wagner’s single. Manager Patsy Donovan called Bradley “a grand young player” who could play several positions and “a corking good man with the stick.” On June 7, he had an 0-for-5 day, but in the top of the 13th he drew a walk, stole second, reached third on a passed ball, and scored the eventual winning run on Tris Speaker’s single to center.

That brief cluster of activity was the best part of his year, and Brad finished with a .169 average in 83 at-bats, though steady in the field with only one error in 189 chances. Bradley was already noted as a singer and spent the winter months on the vaudeville circuit in New England. He was offered a Red Sox contract for 1911 and signed it at the beginning of January. Stahl said he was retiring and manager Donovan initially penciled in Brad as the everyday first baseman.

1911 – Boston Red Sox

For spring training, President John I. Taylor had his men train at Redondo Beach in Southern California, breaking into two teams to get in more games, then playing a series of games as they traveled back east across the country. Red Sox teams engaged in an astonishing 64 preseason contests, winning 41 of them, playing games in Utah, Nevada, Nebraska, and even in the Arizona Territory. To while away the time in travel to the West Coast, it was Bradley who took the lead in forming a barbershop quartet with teammates Buck O’Brien, Marty McHale, and Larry Gardner.

Bradley suffered a “serious injury” near the end of the spring training trip, and lost his shot at a starting role.vii At first, it was reported that he had suffered a sprained ankle and then developed water on the knee. Sporting Life, though, reported in its season wrapup that it was a fracture of his leg; the publication termed it a broken ankle in another story a year later. Whatever the injury, it was indeed serious and he wore a plaster cast until after the midpoint of May. This left Hack Engle taking over for the departed Jake Stahl at first base. Bradley had less than half the playing time he had in his rookie year, batting only 41 times all season long. He took advantage of his moments, though, hitting for a .317 average and scoring nine runs to 1910’s eight. The highlight of his year was, without a doubt, his first home run. Near the end of the season, on September 25 and playing in one of the last games held at the Huntington Avenue Grounds, Brad faced Lefty George of the St. Louis Browns in the bottom of the sixth inning and hit what the Globe called “a fine home run.” It was the next to last homer hit at the Grounds; Joe Riggert hit one in the last inning of the final game played on Huntington Avenue, on October 7.

After the season, the Red Sox Quartet really got to work. Bradley was joined by Buck O’Brien, Marty McHale, and a new pitcher named Bill Lyons, who took Gardner’s place when the third baseman had to return home to help his ailing father. They performed several shows at Keith’s Theatre in Boston, and headed from there to Philadelphia. “They can sing, and sing well,” noted the Globe. “They compare favorably with any quartet in vaudeville.” Of Bradley, the newspaper – stat book not at hand – gushed, “While Hugh Bradley was hitting the ball to the music of .340 or thereabouts, he can sing rag time at an average of .598.”viii John I. Taylor was pleased with the addition of Lyons, saying, “Lyons, if you can pitch as well as you can sing, we might well hoist the pennant for next year right now.” Vocalizing was presumably his greater strength; Lyons never appeared in a major-league game.

It looked as if 1912 would be the year that Bradley might finally get to play major-league ball on a regular basis. Stahl was still retired in Chicago, active as a banker. Hack Engle had done very well in 1911, but – writing in October 1911 – A.H.C. Mitchell saw Bradley as the man for 1912: “After a long absence caused by breaking his ankle on the spring trip, Hugh Bradley is back in the game again, and the way he is covering first and hitting the ball makes the fans forget about Jake Stahl. There is no doubt Bradley can make good and the club need look no further for a first baseman for next year.”ix

New club president Jimmy McAleer had other objectives. Just a month later, as it happens, the new owners of the team determined to lure Stahl back and did so successfully, hiring him as field manager on November 10 and even granting him a small ownership stake in the team. He would become the only player/manager/owner in Red Sox history.

Fortunately, Brad had his singing to look forward to. The December 2, 1911, issue of Sporting Life saw the songster as irrepressible: “Bradley just cannot keep from singing. It is morning, noon and night with him on the training trips, and those who do not care for music have a hard time of it with Brad around.”

1912 – Boston Red Sox

Bradley’s vaudeville work with the Quartet continued into the new year, and the January 21 Globe remarked, “The second time you hear them you like them better than the first.” The newspaper praised Bradley’s standout number, “Oh, You Beautiful Doll.” They’d performed in at least seven cities, and often stopped the show when audiences clamored for an encore before the next act came on. The January 12 Globe said they’d never received less than six encores per performance. Lyons may have lost his chance to play ball due to the incessant bowing: “Hold on there, I’m bowing so much now that my neck’s lame.”

Jake Stahl returned to the Red Sox in 1912, to manage and play first base. Hack Engle joined Bradley as a backup infielder. Even so, Bradley had his busiest season yet, with 137 at-bats in 40 games. He was well-regarded, with the Boston Post’s Paul Shannon writing of him on January 17, “Bradley is one of the most earnest players in the game and his heart and soul is always in his work.” Most importantly, Bradley made his mark in history by hitting the first homer ever hit at Boston’s new Fenway Park. The date was April 26. It was only the fifth game played at Fenway.

The dominating feature of the brand new ballpark was the high left-field wall, just 310 feet or so from home plate, but with an imposing height of 31 feet. The original rendition of the wall was a 25-foot wooden barrier set atop the six-foot berm or earthen incline which took on the name Duffy’s Cliff for the Red Sox left fielder who learned how to play this original version of the warning track in front of the fence – and when roped off could also serve as overflow seating.

This was baseball’s Deadball Era, when home runs were few and far between, and many of them were of the inside-the-park variety. The Red Sox as a team hit 29 homers all season long, Tris Speaker’s 10 roundtrippers leading both the pack and the league. He was only the third Sox player to ever reach double digits. Jake Stahl had hit 10 in 1910, and Buck Freeman had done it three times, 1901 (12), 1902 (11), and 1903 (13). Some analysts, scoping out the new park, wondered if anyone would ever hit one over the wall. It didn’t take that long, and came off the bat of the unlikely Hugh Bradley, he of the one career home run to date. It was, as it played out, the last homer he ever hit in major-league ball.

Bradley was facing another pitcher known as Lefty, Lefty Russell of the 1911 world champion Philadelphia Athletics (he had hit his first home run off Lefty George). It was the bottom of the seventh inning, with two outs and two runners on base. Back in the first inning, Bradley had hammered a double off the fence. It was, wrote Paul Shannon in the Boston Post, a “screaming drive to left field, a swat that struck that high board fence wall well up toward the top and sent his two teammates across the plate.” An accompanying note said it hit about 10 feet below the top of the fence. Gardner then singled in Bradley. But the Red Sox frittered away their 3-0 lead and now were down, 6-4. The outfield played deep, mindful of his earlier drive off the wall. After the crack of the bat, Philadelphia left fielder Amos Strunk “flattened himself against the signboard after climbing the bank. He couldn’t get any farther, but the ball knew no such obstacle. It sailed over, seven feet from [the] upper rim.”

The moment the bat struck the ball, reported the Boston Globe: “The scene that followed was indescribable. Players came bolting from the dugout to take a look at the mighty blast. They could not believe their eyes.” Neither could many of the fans, apparently. The Post’s game notes declared, “Few of the fans who have been out to Fenway Park believed it possible to knock a ball over the left field fence, but Hugh Bradley hit one that not only cleared the barrier but also the building on the opposite side of the street.” Brad had five RBIs for the game, and had scored twice. His homer, wrote Shannon, was “a feat that may never be duplicated.”

It was. On May 24, Rube Oldring of the Athletics hit one that the Globe described as clearing the wall “at almost the same spot that Bradley sent it to beat the Athletics four weeks ago today.” Duffy Lewis hit one out on July 2 and Jake Stahl hit one out on July 20. Though none at all cleared the fence in 1913, four homers had been banged out in the first three months of Fenway Park. Bradley’s will forever be the first.

Bradley had his chance to become a regular. Stahl had suffered his own leg injury, which gave Brad his best chance, but he’d proven unable to lay claim to the position.

Bradley hit only .190 for the year, primarily filling in during a stretch when Stahl was hurt, and by July the Sox were looking to move him. Mid-July reports had Brad on his way to the International League’s Jersey City Skeeters as soon as he cleared waivers. This proved more difficult than expected, though, and he remained with Boston throughout the season.

The Los Angeles Times summarized his 1912 season on September 29, saying that he had “started in like a race horse and bade fair to supplant Manager Stahl at first base, but he fell off woefully in his hitting and lost a great opportunity.” Agreed, wrote the Boston Globe, terming Brad “a free hitter [who] could not seem to get them safe and fell off badly in his stickwork.” Still young, the newspaper expected to see him back in the major leagues after another year or two of seasoning. The Boston paper announced on November 25 that he’d been sold to Jersey City.

The Red Sox might have disposed of Bradley earlier. Tim Murnane reported in the December 5 Sporting News that Pittsburgh had offered Boston $8,000 for Bradley back in 1911, but they couldn’t get him past waivers in order to effect the sale. After his disappointing season, the Jersey City offer was the best on the table.

Brad saw no action in the World Series against the New York Giants, which the Sox won in eight games, though he collected a share which he planned to spend on real estate in the Worcester area and for some new stage clothing as the Quartette (now comprised of Bradley, Buck O’Brien, Bill Carrigan, and Heinie Wagner) planned on a two-month tour attracting what Bradley himself described as “the highest salaries ever paid for an act of this kind.”x

1913 – Jersey City and Toronto

The Quartette toured, even though Brad was a Skeeter now and not a member of the Red Sox. An early February report indicated dissatisfaction with one aspect of the demotion: “Bradley says he is not satisfied with the terms of the contract sent to him by the Jersey City club.”xi Presumably, it was not for one of the highest salaries ever paid.

One of the benefits, however, was spring training in Bermuda, and by March 1, Brad had come to terms, “counted on to shine at first base for the Pests.”xii Bradley played for both Jersey City and the Toronto Maple Leafs in 1913, starting off with the Skeeters. His old friends hadn’t forgotten him and during the April 27 offday for the Red Sox, Buck O’Brien took a group of players to see Bradley, McHale, and Bill Purtell play for Jersey City against visiting Rochester. Bradley’s tenure with Jersey City was fraught with some difficulty, resulting in a case being taken to baseball’s National Commission. Jersey City wasn’t pleased with the level of his play, and returned him to Boston, claiming that his release to their team had been conditional on his performance and stating that they hadn’t found his play satisfactory during what they argued was a trial period. The Red Sox refused to take Bradley back, and demanded payment of the $1,750 owed them. There was no record of the original transfer in Commission files, but AL president Ban Johnson’s files contained notice of his outright release to Jersey City on November 25. Further, there was a telegram from Montreal in the AL files offering Boston $1,500 for his release. The idea that Boston would have declined a firm offer of $1,500 for a conditional one of just $250 more was deemed unlikely, and the Commission upheld Boston’s claim and ordered Bradley back to Jersey City.xiii

The Jersey City club looked around for takers, and wired the Los Angeles Angels to offer Bradley, but the Angels owner “cast the telegram aside with the remark that any player which is not fast enough for Jersey City should not look to the Coast League for a job.”xiv A deal was worked out with the Toronto Maple Leafs and Bradley headed north to Canada. Within a month, manager Joe Kelley said that Brad was “playing grand ball for his club.”xv He had a good season, hitting .290 all told and added a couple more homers to his resume. Jersey City finished last in the International League, with Toronto one rung above them in the standings. A dispatch from Toronto in the November 29 Sporting Life reflected the thought that Brad was not the top choice of the Leafs: “First baseman Borton has declined to play here and Hugh Bradley will again cover first.”

Needless to say, there would be no touring this winter as part of the Red Sox Quartette. It’s possible the theatrical life had taken a toll on Bradley’s play. Teammates Joe Bush and Wally Schang talked about going into vaudeville in the offseason of 1913, but Harry T. Jordan, who ran the Philadelphia operations of the Keith theater organization, advised them that they could make good money for themselves and the Keith chain, but nonetheless sufficiently discouraged them, advising, “You are both very young and I am afraid you would be open to too many temptations. If you recall, there were four singers known as the Red Sox quartet. Two of them, Buck O’Brien and Hugh Bradley, were members of the Red Sox team. They spent a full winter on the stage, and made quite a success, but neither man is in the major leagues today, although both are young and promising. The same might happen to you.”xvi

1914 – Pittsburgh / Federal League

In mid-February 1914, Toronto manager Joe Kelley said that Bradley was on the market. Brad became intrigued with the idea of the nascent Federal League, hoping to mount a challenge to the established National and American Leagues as a third major. There were rumors that he was going to play for the Chicago Federals, the Whales, but he was signed by the Pittsburgh Rebels. Brad jumped from “organized baseball” to the rival upstart, “because he figured the chances slim of getting back into the big ring after a fellow has been there once and passed out.”xvii He also apparently got a pretty good deal for himself, a three-year contract at the rate of $4,000 per year plus a $1,000 signing bonus.

The Rebels were initially managed by Brownie Gessler, who had played for the 1908 and 1909 Red Sox. On March 14 both Bradley and center fielder Ennis “Rebel” Oakes joined Pittsburgh’s spring training camp in Lynchburg, Virginia. After the first 11 games, Oakes became manager for the two years the team (and league) lasted.

Brad got off to a terrific start, occasioning correspondent Harry H. Kramer to write from Pittsburgh early in the season, “Bradley’s fielding has been phenomenal and the manner in which he is hammering the ball to all corners of the lot has shown the Federal fans that Manager Gessler made a ten-strike when he secured the former Toronto first-sacker.”xviii The following week, the paper said that his infield work “could not have been improved on.”

There was some sense that Bradley’s ego may have been considerable, not surprising in someone used to the stage during the offseason as well. A Boston Herald report said that “Bradley tried to live on his reputation for being the first man to lift the ball over the left-field fence at Fenway Park” but acknowledged that he was, at the time, batting .343 for the Pittfeds.xix

Bradley was the starting first baseman for the Rebels, playing in 118 games and batting .307 in a career-high 427 at-bats, despite missing a number of games in June to a “sprained side” and in July to a severe spiking that took fully 10 minutes to bandage on the field before he could be taken to the clubhouse. He drove in 61 runs, but not one by the home-run ball. Pittsburgh finished seventh in the eight-team league. At the end of the season, the team hosted Rebel Oakes Day to honor their manager, and it fell to Bradley to step to home plate and present Oakes with a “handsome diamond stickpin.”xx

Come November, once again, there was writing on the wall that – despite his very strong season and despite his three-year deal – Brad would be asked to become a backup once more. The Rebels had acquired veteran St. Louis Cardinals first baseman Ed Konetchy. At least one report surfaced that the Indianapolis Hoosiers were considering trading for Bradley, but he stayed put for the first part of 1915.

1915 – Federal League: Pittsburgh, Brooklyn, and Newark

In 1915, Pittsburgh moved up to third place in Federal League standings, finishing just a half-game out of first, just four percentage points (.562) behind the second-place Chicago Whales (.566). But Konetchy had supplanted Bradley on first base, hitting .314 with 10 homers and 93 RBIs. Brad got into 26 games, batting .273. He drove in only 6 runs and on June 22, he and former St. Louis Cardinal Eddie Holly were both unconditionally released. They had both refused to go to New Haven of the independent Colonial League. The two ballplayers claimed they would hire a lawyer to demand full payment of their salaries. Bradley, though, signed on with the Brooklyn Tip-Tops, returning to the Federal League as a backup first baseman.

He hit .246 for Brooklyn, driving in 18 runs, but on August 23, the Brookfeds gave him his second unconditional release of the season. He signed on with his third Federal League ballclub, the Newark Pepper. With Newark, his batting declined further, and he finished his major-league career hitting just five singles in 33 at-bats (.152).

1916 – 1923 – Columbus/Omaha/Galveston/Houston/New Orleans/Nashville/St. Petersburg

Hugh Bradley wasn’t finished with baseball yet, though, nor were his legal troubles over, either. The Toronto owner was still pursuing a claim against him in the middle of 1916, arguing that Bradley’s contract still belonged to the Maple Leafs for having deserted Toronto to jump to the Federal League.

In March 1916, he signed with the Columbus Senators (American Association) to play first base. He appeared in 146 games, batting .250, and hit a pair of home runs. In June, though, Bradley was looking ahead, reported to be angling for the job of player/manager for the Worcester club, even offering to buy some stock in the team.

Brad played in 1917 for the Omaha Rourkes in the Western League, upping his average to .281 in the Class A circuit. The following year, he was out of baseball, perhaps involved in some way with the war effort or, more likely, simply unable to find work given the small number of teams operating during this wartime season. He played Class B ball in the Texas League in 1919, for both Galveston and Houston, hitting for a combined .280. In 1920, Bradley moved back up a notch to play A ball for the New Orleans Pelicans; he hit .254 in the Southern Association for the Pels, and .289 for the Nashville Volunteers in 1921, appearing in only 25 games.

Bradley’s last years in professional baseball were in the Florida State League with the St. Petersburg Saints. In neither 1922 nor 1923 did he play more than 105 games, but he hit .286 and then .296. In the latter year, he managed the Saints as well, named to the skipper’s slot in December 1922, attracting a salary of $3,500. The Saints finished fourth in the six-team Class C league. It was during 1923 that Brad homered for the last time.

An intriguing chapter in Bradley’s life appeared to open up after the 1920 campaign, when it was announced that he was going into the movie business, granted a territory by the Pathe Studios in which his job was to place films.xxi He nonetheless remained known as a Worcester man and it appeared to be but a short-lived posting.

Bradley turned up at the winter meetings in Chicago in December 1923, hoping to land a job as manager of the Pittsfield, Massachusetts, club, but he didn’t get the job and Pittsfield saw three different managers during an unsettled 1924 season.

Brad took up work as an umpire, working in the Eastern League beginning in 1927; he officiated at the season opener in New Haven. There was an incident in Waterbury on June 12 when manager William McCorry of the Albany Senators was suspended for assaulting Bradley. McCorry was fined $50 for the assault and an additional $25 for using offensive language directed at Bradley. It wasn’t an easy job umpiring; on August 7, a foul ball caromed off his chest protector in the eighth inning and struck him in the Adam’s apple. After first aid was administered and Bradley caught his breath, he worked the remainder of the game. He was dropped from the umpire list in 1928, but – in what seemed like an odd-year phenomenon – was back again in 1929 and again in 1931.

Life after baseball

According to the 1930 Census, Hugh was 29 when he got married in 1914. He married Worcester native Rita E. Kenney. Her given name appears to be Margarita (or possibly Marguerita), and the couple had a daughter, Doris A. Bradley (b. ~1915), who married Edward P. Salmon. They provided the Bradleys with three grandchildren. Bradley was a member of the Holy Name Society of St. Paul’s Church in Worcester.

In the years after his playing days were done. Bradley held a number of jobs. He worked as playground director at Worcester’s Logan Field, and worked with many boys who went on to play with high-school and semipro teams in the area. He was a member of the Worcester Retired Professional Baseball Players Club and spoke up on behalf of umpires (based on his own Eastern League experiences and perhaps aware of his uncle Foghorn’s umpiring career), leading an appeal in the middle 1940s for them to be included in the National Baseball Hall of Fame at Cooperstown. “They deserve a place there,” he declared. “They have played a big part in building up the game.”xxii

In February 1947, three-quarters of the old Red Sox Quartet reunited at the Boston Baseball Writers Association, and Gardner, McHale, and Bradley entertained the writers with songs of days long gone.

Bradley died of a heart attack at City Hospital in Worcester on January 26, 1949. He was living at 43 Austin Street in Worcester at the time, and a front-page story on his death in the Worcester Telegram informed readers that after being stricken at home, he tried to walk to the police station but was unable to make it. A passing motorist saw him and took him to police headquarters, where he was rushed to the hospital and died half an hour later. He was 63 years old.

At the time of his death in 1949, Bradley was employed by the Wright Machine Company, a long-established metal machining firm based in Worcester.

Former Worcester teammate Hugh J. McCune said that Bradley “was always a great fellow to have around a ball club. He was always trying to help everyone. He had a fine personality, and a great singing voice. Many times he helped cheer up the ball players with his songs after a losing game.”xxiii

Sources

In addition to the sources cited above, the author consulted the online SABR Encyclopedia, Retrosheet.org, and Baseball-Refefence.com.

Notes

Henry Bushelman immigrated to the United States from the Oldenberg region of Germany. Like many German immigrants in the mid 19th century, he settled in the Cincinnati, Ohio area. Henry married Mary Hoggins, an Irish immigrant. On March 17, 1855, their first child John H. Bushelman was born in Covington, Kentucky just across the river from Cincinnati. John H. Bushelman married in 1879 and settled on the Ohio side of the river, working as a gardener, a dairy farmer, and later as a teamster. On August 29, 1885, a son, John Francis Bushelman was born. i

Jack Bushelman grew up in Avondale and then St. Bernard, Ohio both suburbs of Cincinnati now but separate villages a century ago. John Bushelman opened a sand company and the family appears to have been fairly well off financially. Jack graduated from high school and attended the University of Cincinnati where he majored in Civil Engineering and starred as a pitcher on the baseball team. Bushelman would be the second University of Cincinnati athlete to reach the major leagues. The first was Miller Huggins.

Jack also played semipro ball, and was already regarded as a promising but inconsistent player. Just how inconsistent was later described by one of his early managers: “Jack was certainly the best youngster I ever saw, his one weakness was wildness. After pitching a fine game against the Shamrocks, striking out seven of the first nine men who faced him, I decided he would do. I took him to Middletown with the Cincinnatus club to play Miller’s Middletown club. For the first four innings, the batters could not knock the ball out of the diamond, because Jack wouldn’t let them come within a mile of the ball. He gave eight bases on balls.” ii

In the fall of 1905, Jack Bushelman signed his first professional contract with Cedar Rapids, Iowa of the Class B Illinois-Indiana-Iowa (Three-I) League. Cedar Rapids was managed by former major-league third baseman Belden Hill. Bushelman reported to Cedar Rapids in mid April of 1906. His first appearance for the Rabbits was in an exhibition game with Duluth. Pitching three innings in relief of starter Otis “Doc” Crandall, he surrendered three hits, struck out five, and walked one. It wouldn’t be his last appearance against the Minnesota team. A few days later he followed Russ Ford (another future major leaguer) in an exhibition win over Ottumwa. The Cedar Rapids Republican was impressed with his performance. “He has every ear mark of being a coming pitcher and the work he did yesterday gladdened the hearts of the fans.” iii He started the second game of the season for Cedar Rapids and was much less successful than he’d been in exhibition games. The Republican said: “Most of the poor work for Cedar Rapids was done by Bushelman. He should have won the game with ease but at two different times he went in the air and finally threw the game away.”iv He allowed five runs each in the second and ninth inning of the 12-11 loss. Two hits and a pair of stolen bases couldn’t save his place on the Rabbits roster, and he was soon sent to Grand Forks, North Dakota of the Northern Copper Country League. Cedar Rapids retained an option on his services.

The Northern Copper Country League had been formed that spring in a merger of the Northern and Copper Country Leagues. The new Class C league included four communities from Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, plus Duluth, Grand Forks, Fargo, North Dakota, and Winnipeg, Manitoba. The Grand Forks Browns were the worst team in the league and fan support was sparse at best. On July 4, Bushelman lost to Winnipeg 9-2, allowing 15 hits, six earned runs, and throwing a pair of wild pitches. In his next start, also against Winnipeg, he was beaten 13-4, striking out six but walking seven. Despite the poor efforts, he must have impressed Winnipeg manager A.R. “Spike” Anderson. When Grand Forks disbanded on July 29, Winnipeg got the team’s two best players Bushelman and first baseman Fred Luderus, another future major leaguer.

The change of scenery helped Bushelman. The Manitoba Free Press commented on his debut, a 6-1 win over Lake Linden. “Bush as the fans soon dubbed the tall fellow [6’2”] was a trifle nervous at the start, but he soon settled down and had the ball singing over the pan in a manner most tantalizing to the Lake Linden sluggers.” v Bushelman lost five of his first eight starts with Winnipeg.

The Maroons closed the 1906 season with a home series against Fargo, and that series was pivotal to Bushelman’s baseball future. On August 27, he shut out Fargo on four hits. Three days later he beat them 9-2, but his third start in the Labor Day doubleheader was truly memorable. The Free Press said of the game: “Bushelman entered the mystic circle to which all pitchers aspire when he shut Fargo out without a hit in the morning game. [He] seemed to have everything at his command, and he had the Fargo men batting as if they were handcuffed.” vi The closest thing to a hit was a ground ball deflected by Bushelman and ruled an error.

After the regular season ended, the Maroons made a barnstorming tour of Alberta, playing series against Edmonton and Calgary and several smaller communities before returning home for a three-game series with Minneapolis of the American Association. Between starts and relief appearances Jack pitched in most of the games, including five of six games at one stretch. He started two of the three games against Minneapolis. The Free Press considered his pitching one of the highlights in the first game of the series. “The tall young pitcher was distinctly on his mettle and threw one of the best games seen here in a long time.” vii He allowed five hits, struck out four, and walked three in a 2-1 loss. Although he later spent parts of three seasons in the American Association, it may have been the best performance of his career against an A.A. team. Bushelman finished his first professional season with an 11-8 record in 22 appearances.

Jack Bushelman began and ended his 1907 season in much the same way as he had the previous year, but his season was still far from ordinary. Jack reported to Cedar Rapids in April. Again, his stay was brief. Cedar Rapids and Winnipeg were in a dispute over the pitcher’s ownership. Cedar Rapids’ claim was based on the fact they had optioned him to Grand Forks and the option should remain in effect even though the team disbanded. Winnipeg argued that fact made Bushelman a free agent since he hadn’t been recalled when Grand Forks dropped out.

Hill used Bushelman frequently during the Rabbits exhibition schedule, and he made a pair of starts for Cedar Rapids once the regular season began. He started and lost a 2-1 start to Clinton on May 9. Taken out after five innings, the Republican said Bushelman “was a bit unsteady, though he deserves the credit also for working his way out of some very tight places. [He] pitched a good game but needed a larger plate.” He walked two and struck out two. Bushelman made just one more appearance for Cedar Rapids losing at Springfield largely due to his own throwing error. Then he was forced to stop pitching until National Association President Thomas Farrell determined who he would be awarded to.

Winnipeg Manager Ed Herr was optimistic Bushelman would return to Winnipeg, and he was soon proven correct. When he was awarded to Winnipeg, the Free Press commented on his June 20 debut. “Winnipeg fans’ old friend Jack Bushelman who has been among the lost, strayed or stolen since ordered to leave Cedar Rapids and report here, finally turned up yesterday and was immediately assigned to duty in right field. He accepted his one fielding chance, but failed to do anything but remove large chunks of ozone on each visit to the batting station.”

The next day he lost his first start, but losses would be few and far between for Bushelman and the rest of the Winnipeg team in 1907. The team was already 22-13 and 4 ½ games ahead of second place Duluth. The Maroons had the rare distinction of winning every series on the season and leading the Northern Copper Country League pennant race every day but one. Francis Richter of Sporting Life said this was the first time it had been done in the minor leagues.

Jack got into the winning spirit in his second start shutting out Houghton. The Free Press offered colorful comment on his effort. “Bushelman was harder to find than a million-dollar job. He held the Solbraa [the Houghton manager] Sluggers down to two little hits and made nine of them hit where the ball wasn’t.” His next start was a Victoria Day shutout of Calumet and the Free Press was impressed with his effort despite six walks. “He was the real candy. Whenever danger threatened Bush tightened up like a society dame and Calumet never had a chance.” viii

Even when defeated in 1907, the setback for Bushelman was momentary. One of his few bad outings was a July loss to Houghton. The Free Press described the rematch:

“Jonathon Bushelman the prize bull pup of the northern kennels was on the mound in the matinee. Jonathon pitched against the Giants in the rain the other night and had his pet curves pushed and shoved in a most exasperating manner. He was glad of the chance to get back at the Giants again and he sure delivered the goods in neat parcels. Up to the ninth but one little single had been made off the big fellow, but he let up a little in the final round; and a couple of hits with an out gave the visitors their only run.” ix

He won that game 4-1 and beat Houghton again the next day 6-1. That wasn’t his last iron man performance. Just three days later he pitched and won both games of a doubleheader against Calumet. The four-win week improved his record to 9-4.

As with any successful team in the lower minors, there was talk of sales to teams either in the major or high minor leagues. Winnipeg was no exception. On August 5, the Free Press reported Bushelman’s sale to Toledo of the American Association. As with a majority of similar sales, Bushelman would not report to his new team until the following spring.

Meanwhile there was a pennant to be clinched, and Bushelman delivered. The Free Press said: “Any time the tribe of Herr can hit in a couple or three runs behind Bushelman you can generally bank on another boost in the percentage. He stacked up against a couple of healthy-looking full houses, but he always held the cards and raked in every jackpot. Eleven of the [Duluth] Sox died on the bases, creating a mad scramble among the undertakers.” x When the 1907 season ended on Labour Day in Canada, Bushelman’s record was 15-7 and the Maroons compiled one of the most dominant team performances in minor league history. None of the other three Northern Copper Country League teams posted a better than .500 winning percentage.

Jack Bushelman joined the Toledo Mud Hens at Chattanooga, Tennessee in mid-March of 1908. The Toledo News-Bee said of his first appearance in an intrasquad game: “[He] worked as smoothly as though it were the middle of July. [He] had all brands of smoke on the mound. [He] acted as though a nine round affair would be easy [and] had the Colts standing on their heads throughout the four periods [he] worked.” xi He wasn’t quite as effective in his first outing against major league competition. Against the New York Highlanders, the News-Bee described him as “effective but wild.”xii His last appearance in Chattanooga was one of his best in a Toledo uniform. Pitching against the defending World Champion Chicago Cubs on March 31, “Bushelman went through his three innings like a prairie fire. This big fellow has something. He worked it coming and going.”xiii The Chicago lineup included many of the team’s regulars.

In early April, the Mud Hens returned to Toledo for a few more exhibitions against major league opposition. The first of those games was a turning point for Jack Bushelman. On Saturday April 4, the Boston Americans came to Toledo’s Armory Park for a weekend series. Jack was the starting pitcher that afternoon and was the story of the game. The News-Bee thought his experience at Winnipeg might have helped him that cold Ohio afternoon.

“[He] was acclimated to the hardships and rigors of the wintry weather by reason of his season’s experience in Winnipeg. Bushelman has not been afflicted with a sore whip this year but he is liable to fall heir to one if he keeps on cutting loose like he did in the snow ball atmosphere. Big Jack Bushelman pitched himself into high favor with the fans and on his way to the clubhouse after his five innings toil, was enthusiastically greeted. The lofty lad worked as smoothly as he did all spring at Chattanooga.” xiv

He pitched the first five innings allowing four hits and striking out four that afternoon.

Boston owner John I. Taylor witnessed the game that afternoon and offered $5,000 for Bushelman. The Mud Hens were actually owned by Charles Somers the owner of the Cleveland Naps. Between that cold afternoon in Toledo and Bushelman’s late 1911 Boston debut, the big right hander would be one of the most traveled pitchers in professional baseball.

Bushelman’s decline started with an exhibition appearance against the Giants. The Toledo Blade said: “The big bold Bushelman stepped into the box, anxious to finish his end of the afternoon engagement and beat it for the clubhouse where there is a fire that keeps the icicles from gathering along the rim of one’s hat. But alas! Poor Bushelman was given an awful bombardment. Three runs were gathered from his big frame and only one was out.” xv

The decline continued into the regular season. He made his debut on April 20; the season’s fourth game. Toledo won 8-7, but Jack was shaky at best. The Blade said: “Bushelman’s seven walks kept the entire team unsteady. Three balls were frequently called before he began to get them over the pan. The young pitcher had Abbott bobbing all over the territory behind the plate. The passed ball charged to Fred was a wonderful drop curve, which broke so suddenly it fooled even the catcher.” xvi

Given another start a week later, he allowed 11 hits, walked four, and threw two wild pitches in a 14-4 loss. He pitched better in a 3-1 loss at Milwaukee, but after a giving up two first inning runs and walking the first two men in the second inning of a loss to Indianapolis, he wasn’t used again by the Mud Hens. When Toledo optioned him to Springfield of the Class D Ohio State League on June 5, Armour said: “This young fellow has the speed and curves to make good with any team, but he needs more experience and should be worked every four days.”

At first it looked as though his Springfield assignment to Springfield might be brief, with a return to Toledo. The Springfield Daily News was impressed with his home debut. “Bushelman was the whole works in the first contest. He has terrific speed and a clever slow ball, and he worked a change of pace most successfully on Mansfield.” xvii He shut out Mansfield, one of the league’s best offensive teams on four hits.

He beat Newark 2-1 in his next start, then shut out Mansfield again. The Mansfield Daily Shield said: “He….had the locals guessing at all stages of the game. He struck out twelve coming within three of beating the league record held by [Harvey] Doc Bailey. He was wild during the early stages of the game, but was invincible when the bases were occupied.” xviii He gave up six hits that afternoon. That was also the last time he pitched for Springfield. The franchise moved to Portsmouth after the series in Mansfield.

Bushelman started the team’s first game in their new home and was again effective. He beat Marion 3-2 allowing just five hits and striking out six. Both runs scored on wild pitches. With a 4-0 record for a poor team, Bushelman seemed on the verge of another outstanding season. He dropped two of his next three decisions, but still seemed ready for a promotion, Toledo loaning him to Lincoln of the Class A Western League.

The promotion was the worst thing that could have happened to Jack Bushelman. Whether it was inactivity or an adjustment to his pitching motion by manager Bill Fox is unclear, but he wouldn’t be a consistently effective pitcher again until the second half of the 1910 season. Bushelman allowed one hit and struck out six but walked eight. He made a relief appearance five days later and was equally ineffective. Unhappy in Lincoln, he wrote Armour asking for a change of scenery. On July 24, the Newark Advocate announced Bushelman’s return to the Ohio State League, this time with the Newark Molders.

Newark’s franchise had been purchased by Cleveland through Armour earlier in the summer and former Toledo pitcher Harry Eells was the manager. It looked like a good situation for Bushelman. In his return to Ohio, Jack pitched three hitless innings striking out three but walking five. The Advocate said: “He has a good head in the box and works with the air of a veteran.” xix He shut Marion out in his first start and demonstrated a good pickoff move catching three runners napping. He walked five that day and also in a loss to Lancaster, but at first it seemed like he could be considered effectively wild.

That idea vanished in an August 2 start at Mansfield. The Shield described how much he’d regressed since his early June starts against the team. “Bushelman’s wildness in the first inning gave the Tigers an advantage which they held all through the game. The ex-Toledo and Portsmouth man gave four bases on balls in that one inning, forcing two runs over the plate by his wildness.” The Mansfield News said: “It required exactly 27 minutes to play the inning.” Soon there was talk of Jack’s release by Newark.

Frank Sheridan of the Portsmouth Times described another August start. “Bushelman was as wild as a March hare or a February hare, for that matter—one is just as wild as the other.” xx He struck out nine and walked six that day. His next start was even worse. He walked 11 in an 8-1 loss at Lima. News of his wildness was spreading beyond the Ohio State League. The Akron Beacon Journal printed his stats after a rumor circulated that he’d be joining the team. Those statistics included 26 strikeouts, 25 walks, 22 hits allowed, and two hit batsmen in 34 innings.

Instead he returned to Portsmouth. Portsmouth manager Billy Doyle later one of the game’s outstanding scouts was also a member of the team’s pitching staff, but he couldn’t help Bushelman. After walking five in six innings in an early September start, Jack Bushelman was sent home for the season. At season’s end, he was 7-15 in the Ohio State League. The league released more complete pitching statistics than most and they show 108 hits, 140 strikeouts, 101 walks and a league-leading 11 wild pitches in 171 innings. His walks per nine innings led the league.

That winter, Cleveland through Toledo conditionally sold Bushelman to Savannah of the South Atlantic League for $300. Bushelman refused to report to Savannah, negating the sale. In May 1909, Toledo tried to send him to Mansfield, but he didn’t report, preferring to play for the Ivorydales of Cincinnati’s Saturday Afternoon League.

The caliber of semipro ball in Jack Bushelman’s hometown was very high. Ernie Diehl was the best known Queen City semipro. Business and political interests kept Diehl in Cincinnati most of the year, but he frequently filled in with various major league clubs as well as Toledo. In addition to the Ivorydales, Bushelman and Diehl were both members of the Hamilton Krebs. By late July, there were rumors of Bushelman’s return to organized ball. Dayton of the Central League was interested, but Toledo still held his rights and he reported to Toledo in late July after Armour received a favorable telegram from Diehl.

The Blade said: “The lofty right-hander has the natural ability to be as good as Addie Joss, Christy Mathewson and others. If Bushelman can control his fast ball, nobody in this league will have any right to beat him.” xxi Unfortunately, in his brief second chance with Toledo, he couldn’t control the fastball. He appeared in both games of an August 1 doubleheader at Milwaukee, and the News-Bee was not impressed. “Jack Bushelman, who worked the last two innings of [the first game] in order that that multitude might be appeased started off in the afterpiece. He looked soft in the first two periods, but went entirely to the bad in the fourth and took everybody with him.” xxii In four innings he allowed ten runs on as many hits. He was quickly released and returned to independent baseball.

Despite the lack of minor league success in 1908 and 1909, Jack Bushelman made his major-league debut the last day of the 1909 season. The Cincinnati Reds hosted the soon-to-be World Champion Pittsburgh Pirates in an October 5 doubleheader, and – though he wasn’t signed to a contract – it was a tryout of sorts when Reds manager Clark Griffith started Jack in the second game. As might be expected, the Pirates won the game 7-4. Just two of the runs were earned, Bushelman allowing seven hits including a home run by Dots Miller. He walked four and struck out three in the seven-inning contest.

Four days later, pitching for the Krebs at the Butler County Fair, he faced Louisville of the American Association and shut them out 2-0 allowing just one hit. He struck out seven and walked four, impressing Louisville manager Heinie Pietz enough to be signed for the 1910 season. He turned down an offer from Buffalo believing Pietz, a former catcher would make him a better pitcher.

Hopes for a successful return to the American Association were quickly dashed. He allowed four runs in three innings against the Athletics and was beaten 7-2 by the Cubs allowing nine hits and walking eight. Appearing briefly in the regular season for Louisville he was equally ineffective. On May 3, his sale to the Syracuse Stars of the New York State League was announced. The president of the team said of Bushelman: “[Manager Ed] Ashenback has had his eye on this man for some time past…. Bushelman is a big fellow with lots of ginger and his purchase will materially strengthen the pitching corps.”

Jack made his Syracuse debut in the team’s home opener. The Syracuse Post Standard was impressed with the new pitcher. “Bushelman owns to three inches over six feet and has a hand like a ham. He was altogether too lavish with his gifts of bases, two of the gifts resulting in runs, but he pitched an excellent game, nevertheless as the record attests.” He allowed five walks striking out eight in a 4-3 loss to Utica. The Post Standard was even more impressed with his next start: “He pitched consistent ball. The [Albany] Senators found him for nine hits all save three of which were widely scattered.” xxiii Most importantly he walked only one batter in an 8-1 win. It seemed like he’d found a home, but after three straight ineffective starts was released in late May.

He was soon signed by Lawrence (Massachusetts) of the New England League, but was no more effective than he’d been at Louisville or Syracuse. In a late June start, he gave up six runs in just over an inning of work walking three. In mid-July, Lawrence released him. The release was another turning point in his career. First-place New Bedford (Massachusetts) quickly signed him. Sixteen of his 27 appearances were with his new team, and by season’s end Bushelman showed signs of mastering his control and resurrecting his career, finishing the year with a 12-9 mark. Catcher Fred Ulrich was likely responsible for the improvement that would soon bring him to Boston.

Once the 1911 New England League season started, Bushelman was the Whalers’ best pitcher. In a pair of May starts he struck out 15 batters walking just two. He was also batting .350 over his first six games. The Whalers as a team included nine men with previous or subsequent major league experience, including Tommy Griffith and Rabbit Maranville, but still lost more games than they won.

He had several other successful starts, and in July, the Lowell Sun wrote, “The fans were disappointed in not seeing Bushelman, the big league prospect in yesterday’s game. Bushelman is generally regarded as the best pitching proposition in the league.” xxiv Chicago White Sox manager Hugh Duffy reportedly offered $4,000 for Bushelman but New Bedford management wanted $5,000. At the end of July, John I. Taylor paid that sum for Bushelman and outfielder Arthur McCrone.

Jack won 16 games against 14 losses for the Whalers before joining the Red Sox, but his last start for New Bedford was controversial. According to Sporting Life and the Fitchburg (Massachusetts) Daily Sentinel, Bushelman was accused of intentionally losing to Fall River on September 4. He was fined $50 by the Whalers but after an investigation no evidence was found that he’d indeed thrown the game. In fact such accusations were not uncommon in that era and he joined the Red Sox almost immediately after the game in question.

After the unpleasant exit from New Bedford, Bushelman’s debut with the Red Sox came September 11 against one of the American League’s best pitchers, Walter Johnson. Joe Jackson of the Washington Post described Bushelman’s rocky start:

“Young Mr. Bushelman, hitherto domiciled in New Bedford, but who yesterday was handed a Boston uniform, shown where the pitching hill is located on a regular yard, and told to go in and do his worst did so. He made the mistake common to twirlers transported from the bush and sent into a major league game before getting their bearings, that of imagining that more speed, wider curves and a larger number of strikeouts are essential to success in the large league. He spent one inning in trying to show and get these things and in so doing blew the ball game. After that Bushelman steadied and pitched a very creditable game. He seemed to have plenty of stuff when he contented himself with pitching to the batters and relying on his support, instead of trying to fool them all the time. In six consecutive innings only two hits and one base on balls were charged against him, and one of the hits as well as the pass came with two out.”

In the first inning, four walks, a hit batsman, a balk and at least three errors led to five runs without benefit of a base hit. In the second, he recovered to strike out Germany Schaefer and Tommy Long. Washington added two more runs on four hits.

Despite the generally positive effort after the first inning, that game was Bushelman’s only regular season start for Boston. He made a couple of relief appearances in a late September home series against the White Sox replacing Ray Collins and Larry Pape who were lifted for pinch hitters. In 12 innings he surrendered eight hits, walked 10, and struck out five. Only four of the nine runs scored against him were earned.

In the spring of 1912, Bushelman was one of 30 players (including 10 pitchers) listed on the Red Sox preseason roster. Sheridan of the Portsmouth (Ohio) Daily Times said “Here is a kid who if he could get the bean over the plate would be another Christy Mathewson.” xxv Unfortunately for Jack, he didn’t master his pitches in his brief opportunities for the 1912 Red Sox. In late April he pitched an uneventful inning against Philadelphia. A week later, he walked a pair of Washington batters in the eighth, one scoring on a throwing error by Bill Carrigan. Jack’s best performance in a Boston uniform was a 4-2 exhibition win over Baltimore of the International League on May 5.

Jack’s final regular season appearance in the major leagues was also his only big league win. On May 13, Boston scored nine runs in the second inning and Bushelman entered the game in relief of Charley Hall who’d surrendered four first-inning runs. Bushelman held the Browns scoreless until the seventh when according to game accounts “he went to pieces in the seventh” and had to be relieved by Hugh Bedient. Despite the rocky seventh, he allowed three runs, eight hits and a pair of walks in 5 1/3 innings. After that game, he remained with the Red Sox but never appeared in another regular season game. After a poor start in another exhibition against Baltimore, Boston sent Bushelman to Worcester (Massachusetts) of the New England League. Optioned at first, he was officially sold to Jesse Burkett’s team in August. He won eight of 12 decisions for Worcester.

Jack Bushelman had his best season as a professional in 1913 but it was likely responsible for shortening his career. Burkett’s Busters were battling Lowell (Massachusetts) for the New England League pennant. Jack won 26 games in 37 decisions season but his effectiveness declined in the season’s final weeks and he was never really the same pitcher again. xxvi

Bushelman was one of the first players to sign a 1914 Worcester contract. As the season started, Jack was still winning but not in the often dominant fashion of 1913. One of his better efforts was a mid-June start against Fitchburg. The Fitchburg Daily Sentinel said he “was practically invincible, holding Fitchburg to three hits. He pitched very effective ball in all the sessions but the fifth…” xxvii He also pitched well in his next start a win over Lewiston (Maine), but by the end of the month was essentially finished for the season.

According to the Lowell Sun there was reason for optimism at the beginning of August. “Jack Bushelman is back again in the Worcester lineup and his arm feels much better. Jesse sent Bushelman out to see Bonesetter Reese and the latter guaranteed Burkett a speedy return of form for the big pitcher.” xxviii The rumor was overly optimistic, and Jack finished the year with an 8-4 record in just 18 appearances.

Worcester did not offer Bushelman a contract in 1915. Manager Bill Schwartz of the Southern Association’s Nashville Vols was a fellow Ohioan familiar with Bushelman and signed him. Perhaps his most memorable game in a Nashville uniform was a 17-inning game against Atlanta on May 31. Bushelman pitched effectively for the first nine before being lifted for a pinch hitter. At midseason he was 4-5 in 14 appearances foe the Vols. In late July, he was released to Memphis of the same league.

The Chicks were in second place when Bushelman made his debut for the team on July 25. The Atlanta Constitution said of his losing debut against the Crackers: “Bushelman kept himself continually in trouble through his wildness, but managed to pull himself out of each hole which he put himself in with the exception of the fifth.” That inconsistency was typical of his stint with Memphis, though his effectiveness improved late in the season. Perhaps most satisfying were a pair of September wins over his former Nashville teammates. He finished the year with a 12-11 record and 97 walks in 203 innings.

The 1915 season was also the end of Jack Bushelman’s organized baseball career, though he played for Cincinnati’s top semi pro teams for several more seasons. Jack settled into the lumber business which had been his offseason occupation. Jack and his wife Helen (generally referred to by her middle name of Zilla) had met when Jack was briefly the property of the Little Rock Southern Association club early in his professional career. The Bushelmans raised four daughters and two sons. Immediately after his baseball career, the family lived in Eastlake, Tennessee while Jack worked as a traveling lumber salesman. Moving back to the Cincinnati area by 1920, he was living in St. Bernard and was an inspector for a lumber company. The family lived in Ohio until 1932 when hired by the Tennessee Eastman Lumber Company of Kingsport. Initially working in the sales and purchasing department, he was promoted to lumber and box department superintendent in 1944. The Bushelmans lived in nearby Gate City, Virginia where he served as president of the Rotary Club. He retired in 1951 and died at a Roanoke, Virginia hospital on October 26, 1955 after a long illness.

Sources

Sporting Life 1905-11

Cedar Rapids (Iowa) Republican 1906-07

(Winnipeg) Manitoba Free Press 1906-07

Winnipeg Daily News 1906-07

Toledo News-Bee 1908

Toledo Blade 1908-09

Springfield (Ohio) Daily News 1908

Mansfield (Ohio) Shield 1908

Mansfield (Ohio) News 1908-09

(Lincoln) Nebraska State Journal 1908

Newark (Ohio) Advocate 1908

Portsmouth (Ohio) Times 1908-12

Lancaster (Ohio) Eagle 1908

Cincinnati Enquirer 1909

Syracuse (New York) Post Standard 1910-11

Lowell (Massachusetts) Sun 1911-15

Fitchburg (Massachusetts) Daily Sentinel 1911-14

Boston Globe 1911-12

Washington Post 1911-12

Atlanta Constitution 1915

Kingsport (Tennessee) News 1955

Genealogical information

Kentucky Birth Records

Cincinnati, Ohio Directory 1890-91

U.S. Census 1880, 1900, 1910, 1920, 1930

World War I Draft Registration Eastlake, Tennessee

World War II Draft Registration Gate City, Virginia

Thanks to Jack V. Morris and Dave Pugh for tracking down the dates of many of the citations.

Notes

Cady went on to enjoy a seven-year career in the major leagues during the height of the Deadball Era. He played six seasons with the Boston Red Sox on some of their greatest teams, including three World Series champions, and ended his career on a less-than-stellar Philadelphia Phillies team in 1919. Noted for his defensive abilities, Cady was a light-hitting right-handed-batting catcher who had a knack for timely hitting and was known as the preferred catcher of Smoky Joe Wood.

Forrest Cady’s family history and their introduction to the United States is an interesting tale. In 1846 a group of 1,100 Swedes set sail from Gavle, Sweden, in search of the religious freedom that America promised. Called Jansonists after their leader, Eric Janson, they were frequently at odds with Sweden’s state-run Lutheran Church over doctrine. Many of them, especially Janson, had suffered fines and imprisonment. Looking for a place where they could practice their religion without persecution, the group had sent a member ahead to America to secure a parcel of land that would accommodate their growing numbers. By summer, land in western Illinois had been purchased and by October the first colonist arrived. Led by Janson, the group decided to name the village Bishop Hill, after a town of the similar name in their region of Sweden.

Among the first to Bishop Hill was seven-year-old Hans Martensson Hollander, who was born October 9, 1839, in Bollnas, Sweden. Accompanied to America by his parents, Hans was raised in a religious commune where it was customary to spend three hours a day during the week and six hours on Sunday in church. His parents were firm believers in Janson.

Janson met an untimely death on the courthouse steps in Cambridge, Illinois, when he was shot by John Root, a nonbeliever. Root had married a Janson follower named Charlotta, but Janson had refused to allow her to leave the colony with Root. Outraged by this, Root confronted Janson on the courthouse steps in Cambridge, the county seat. Heated words were exchanged and Root pulled out a revolver and shot Janson dead.

Over the years more followers immigrated to Bishop Hill, settling in the colony or in the nearby countryside and becoming farmers. Christena Backlean and her 4-year-old daughter, Christena “Minnie” Backlean, were among this second wave. Minnie had been born in 1865 in Sweden. Hans Hollander and Minnie’s mother met in Bishop Hill, and by November 11, 1871, they were married.

In May 1883 Minnie was married to Johannes (John) Berglund, who had come to the US from Sweden in 1880 and worked as a farm laborer in Bishop Hill. By 1890, when they divorced, the couple had produced three children, Victor, Forrest, and Bessie. In 1892 Minnie married a widower, Frank E. Cady, a carpenter in Bishop Hill. Four-year-old Forrest quickly identified with Frank as a father figure and accepted his surname as his own. Frank had two children, Minnie had three, and she and Frank had three more. (In 1898 Forrest’s father, John Berglund, returned to Sweden, where he worked as a farmhand until his death in 1931.)

As a youngster Forrest Cady was affectionately tabbed with the nickname Hollick, whose origin was unknown. Early in his minor-league career, teammates shortened it to Hick. In his youth he gained a reputation as a first-rate local ballplayer. Local news accounts credited Ben J. Arnquist, a longtime supporter of baseball in the Bishop Hill community, with refining Cady’s skills as an outfielder and hitter. From 1903 to 1907 Cady played primarily with the Bishop Hill club under the tutelage of Arnquist. In 1906, as his team won the amateur Western League pennant, Cady batted .361 and recorded a .978 fielding percentage.

On occasion Cady played for a semipro team from nearby Kewanee, the Clippers, for whom his older brother, Victor, played. After a tryout Cady had impressed Kewanee manager Ike Reno enough to earn a place on the team as a reserve outfielder, occasional first baseman, and pinch-hitter. His career-changing moment came in a doubleheader against a team from Bradford, Illinois, when the Clippers’ regular catcher split his finger and was unable to continue. Even though he had never played the position, Cady donned the catching gear and set his professional career in motion.

For the next couple of years Cady bounced from team to team trying to earn his place in minor-league ball. In 1907 he tried out with the Rock Island, Illinois, club of the Three-I League, but was not offered a contract and went back to playing for Bishop Hill. Toward the end of the season he caught on with Monmouth, an independent club, which sold him at the end of the season to Indianapolis of the American Association for $300. Cady’s trial with Indianapolis was disappointing as he never appeared in a game. Unhappy with his situation in Indianapolis, he asked for and was granted his release.

After Cady returned home to Bishop Hill, he briefly played with the Kewanee Boilermakers of the Central Association and finished the 1908 season with the Ottumwa, Iowa, Packers of the same league. With both teams he played in 81 games, collecting 58 hits in 251 at-bats for a .231 average. He showed some power, collecting 16 extra-base hits, and a penchant for running the bases by accumulating nine stolen bases. His play earned him a contract the following year with Evansville, Indiana, of the Central League. In December 1906 Cady married Kittie Monjar. They were married for 40 years, until Cady died in 1946.

Playing for the Evansville River Rats in 1909 and 1910, Cady became known as a fine defensive catcher with some pop in his bat. In 240 games during the two seasons, he batted .218 and hit 11 home runs. After the 1910 season he signed with the Newark Indians of the Eastern League, where in 1911 he set personal highs in every offensive category except home runs. Cady played in 136 games, batted .260, scored 42 runs, collected 114 hits, 16 doubles, and 7 triples, and stole 12 bases. In January 1912 the Red Sox purchased his contract for $6,000 and two players.

On April 20, 1912, when the Red Sox opened their brand-new Fenway Park, the 26-year-old Cady was on their roster as a backup catcher. The 6-foot-2, 178-pound backstop was to share backstop duties with Bill Carrigan and Les Nunamaker. He saw his first major-league action on April 26, against the Philadelphia Athletics. For the season Cady played in 47 games, and hit .259 in 135 at-bats. Behind the plate he recorded a .990 fielding percentage in 43 games and he played four games at first base without committing an error. On June 29, against New York, Cady singled, driving in Jake Stahl from third. Then home-plate umpire Silk O’Loughlin ruled that Stahl had actually been balked home and recalled Cady back to bat. This time, Cady doubled. The quirky incident led the newspaper feature “Ripley’s Believe It or Not” to proclaim that Cady had recorded the impossible—two hits in one turn at bat.

Boston won the pennant by 14 games and played the New York Giants in the World Series. In what is considered to be one of the most exciting World Series in history, Boston defeated the Giants in eight games, winning four, losing three, and tying one game. Cady was the starting catcher in six of the games, batting .136 (3-for-22) with one RBI. He and his teammates pocketed the winner’s share paycheck of $4,024.

In Game Three Cady came to bat with two outs, runners on first and third, and the Giants clinging to a 2-1 lead in the bottom of the ninth inning. He sent a sharply-hit line drive into deep right-center and into the late afternoon haze. Both baserunners appeared to score easily as Cady rounded first base. However, Giants right fielder Josh Devore had a good jump on the ball and raced back, caught the ball over his shoulder, and simply continued full-stride into the outfield clubhouse. The Boston spectators, whose view was impaired by the late-afternoon haze and were reading Devore’s body language, were under the impression that the ball had fallen in and both runs had scored for a Red Sox victory. It wasn’t until the following day when they read the morning newspaper that they realized the Giants had taken the game.

In 1913 Cady found himself as the Opening Day catcher for the defending World Champions. While he enjoyed a solid second season, the Red Sox could not find their way back to the World Series. Cady played in 40 games, batting a solid .250. He also improved upon his defense, and ended with a fielding percentage of .992. An article that year in The Sporting News identified Cady as one of the few catchers who could throw out Ty Cobb and the speedy Clyde Milan during the 1912 season.

The 1914 season was very similar to the 1913 season for both Cady and the Red Sox. Boston finished behind the Athletics and Cady once again put up very similar numbers to his first two years. Appearing in 61 games, he batted.260 and recorded a respectable .971 fielding percentage.

Cady was the Opening Day catcher for a 1915 Boston team that held high hopes of a productive season. He produced his best major-league season. Appearing in 78 games, he collected 57 hits in 205 at-bats for an impressive .278 batting average. (All were career highs.) He hit 12 doubles and two triples while knocking in 17 runs and scoring 25. His trademark defense was also spectacular, with a solid .980 fielding percentage. The Red Sox finished 2½ games ahead of the Detroit Tigers to claim the American League pennant, then defeated the Philadelphia Phillies, four games to one, in the World Series. Cady saw action in four Series games, collecting two hits in six at-bats. In that season Cady became one of the few men to pinch-hit for Babe Ruth, then a second-year pitcher.

The 1916 season started to signal the end for Cady. His fielding percentage of .967, in 63 games, was his lowest to date. At the plate the 30-year-old started to struggle significantly. He finished the season with only 31 hits in 162 at-bats, for a.191 batting average, and scored a meager five runs. (He did hit a career-high three triples.) The Red Sox once again won the pennant and beat the Brooklyn Robins in five games. Cady appeared in only two of the games and collected one hit in four at-bats.

The 1917 season was Cady’s last as a member of the Boston Red Sox. The aging veteran saw action in only 17 games, 14 of them as catcher. He posted career lows in every imaginable offensive and defensive category. He hit a paltry .152, collected only seven hits, two of which were for extra bases, and scored four runs with two RBIs. In the field, Cady committed three errors to compile a career-low .959 fielding percentage. Boston finished in second place in the American League, nine games behind the pennant-winning Chicago White Sox.

Back home in Bishop Hill after the season, Cady and his wife, Kittie, were involved in a fatal automobile accident in October while returning home from Kewanee after a night out with friends. They were apparently traveling at a good rate and did not see a horse and buggy in the darkness. In an attempt to avoid the collision, Cady jerked his car to one side but still managed to clip the rear wheel of the buggy. Cady’s Hupmobile continued through the ditch and rolled two or three times. Milford Lundberg, one of his passengers, was killed. His wife and Lundberg’s wife escaped without serious injury as did those in the buggy. Cady suffered multiple breaks in his right shoulder.

The injuries did not stop Connie Mack of the Philadelphia Athletics from trading for Cady. On January 10, 1918, three months after the accident, Boston sent Cady along with outfielder Tilly Walker and third baseman Larry Gardner to Philadelphia for first baseman Stuffy McInnis. While dumping McInnis was more about purging salary than acquiring young talent or capable veterans, it is not clear why Mack would agree to accept a diminished player in Cady and now a debilitated one as well.

While he was with the Athletics, Cady never played for the team. Apparently his only duty was to warm up the pitchers. He was released in late June. Newspapers reported that manager Pat Moran of the National League Phillies was considering signing Cady, even noting that he worked out with the Phillies, but there is no indication that Cady was ever offered a contract by the Phillies.

Cady had other pressing matters to deal with. With the US now embroiled in the First World War, all able-bodied men were required to join the armed forces or find war-related work. During the summer Cady went to work for the Chester Ship Building Company in Pennsylvania, listing his occupation as ship builder. The shipyard had a team in the Delaware River Shipyards League, and Cady played for the team, mostly as a first baseman, as the team won 12 of its 14 games.

In 1919, with the war over, Cady made a brief comeback. In what was his last season as a major leaguer, he caught on with the Phillies. His skills significantly diminished, Cady played in 34 games and batted .214. Although he had only 98 at-bats, he had a career-high 19 RBIs and hit the only home run of his seven-year major-league career. But his major-league career ended on a sour note. On July 9 Cady and two Phillies pitchers, Gene Packard and Frank Woodward, were thrown out of the game. The three dressed and went into the center-field bleachers where they “harangued the bleacherites against the action of President Baker in changing managers.” For sticking up for their beloved manager, Jack Coombs, pitchers Packard and Woodward were fined $200 while Cady was fined $100 and given 10 days’ notice of his release

Before the end of the season, Cady caught on with the Vernon Tigers of the Pacific Coast League and eventually the Sacramento Senators of the same league. For the next six years he bounced around the minor-league circuit, with stops in Joplin, Missouri; Kansas City, Missouri; Augusta, Georgia; Danville, Illinois; and Columbus, Ohio. Cady briefly managed the Augusta Tygers of the South Atlantic League (1922) and the Danville Veterans of the Three-I League (1924). He ended his playing career in 1925 but quickly reappeared in organized baseball as an umpire in the Western, Pacific Coast, and Three-I Leagues for nearly two decades.

On March 3, 1946, at the age of 60, Cady died in a hotel fire in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. According to Cady’s death records, he was employed as a desk clerk at the hotel. The fire was caused by sparks from an electric heater that ignited some papers in his room. Cady was discovered by the hotel manager after other guests reported smelling smoke coming from his room. The fire was contained to his room. Cady apparently forgot to turn off the heater when he went to bed. He was survived by his wife, Kittie.

Sources

Baseball Hall of Fame Library. Forrest Cady file.

Bishop Hill (Illinois) State Historic Site. Correspondence with author.

Bishop Hill News, March 11 and May 16, 1890.

“Forrest Cady Dies In Blaze,” Cedar Rapids (Iowa) Gazette, March 4, 1946.

“Chester Ship Building Co. vs. N.Y. Ship,” Chester (Pennsylvania) Times, July 27, 1918.

Arthur Daley, “Strange Things Happen in the World Series.” New York Times, October 2, 1945.

Paul Elmen. Wheat Flour Messiah (Carbondale, Illinois: Southern Illinois University Press, 1997).

“The Days of Forrest Cady Recalled By Francis Geiger.” Galvaland Magazine, August 1961.

Galva (Illinois) News, May 24, 1883.

“Meets His Death In Auto Accident,” Galva (Illinois) News, October 25, 1917.

“Bishop Hill Star Once in Series,” Galva (Illinois) News, October 16, 1983.

Gary Gillette and Pete Palmer, eds. ESPN Baseball Encyclopedia (New York: Sterling, 2008).

Iowa State Department of Health, Forrest Cady Death Certificate, 1946.

“Connie Mack Makes Up List of Players,” Los Angeles Times, March 16, 1918.

T. H. Murnane, “Stahl Will Try Out Six Recruits Against Dooin’s Best Team.” Boston Globe, March 16, 1912.

“Catcher Sold To Boston,” Naugatuck (Connecticut) Daily News, May 15, 1911.

“Baker Fines 3 Players,” New York Times, July 10, 1919.

Roy Ostrom, “Forrest ‘Hick’ Cady.” E-mail message to Doug Dowell, April 15, 2007.

Herb Simmons. “They Pinch Hit For The Greats” Baseball Digest, November 1972, 71-76.

The Sporting News, January 23, 1913.

Trenton (New Jersey) Evening News, June 26, 1918.

Warren (Pennsylvania) Evening Times, August 12, 1918.

Most sources indicate that William Francis Carrigan was born in Lewiston, Maine, on October 22, 1883, though the 1900 Census places his birth year at 1884. William was the youngest of three children of John and Annie Carrigan, Irish Catholic immigrants who had arrived in the United States prior to the Civil War. According to census records, John supported the family as a deputy sheriff. During his youth, William worked on local farms when not playing sports, and was a star football and baseball player at Lewiston High. After high school, he moved on to the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Massachusetts. He starred as a football halfback for the legendary Frank Cavanaugh, who was later the subject of a movie (The Iron Major, starring Pat O’Brien) and is a member of the College Football Hall of Fame. On the diamond Carrigan played for Tommy McCarthy, the baseball star of the 1890s, who converted his young charge from the infield to catcher, a position Carrigan would play the rest of his career. 

In the spring of 1906 Carrigan was signed to a Red Sox contract by Charles Taylor, the father of Red Sox owner John I. Taylor. Carrigan joined the struggling Red Sox directly in the middle of the season, immediately catching the likes of Bill Dinneen and Cy Young. In this initial trial, he hit just .211 in 37 games, but impressed with his play behind the dish. Sent to Toronto of the Eastern League the next season, he batted .320, and rejoined the Red Sox in 1908. The right-handed-hitting Carrigan was not a feared batsman, hitting just six lifetime home runs, but was soon one of the more respected members of the team. In 1908 he hit .235 as the primary backup to Lou Criger, but assumed the bulk of the innings for the next six seasons after Criger’s departure to the St. Louis Browns. His .296 average in 1909 was the highest of his career, and the eighth best in the league that season. 

The well-mannered Carrigan earned the nickname Rough for the way he played. He was a well-respected handler of pitchers, and had a fair throwing arm, but it was his plate blocking that caused Chicago White Sox manager Nixey Callahan to say, “You might as well try to move a stone wall.” On May 17, 1909 he engaged in a famous brawl with the Tigers’ George Moriarty after a collision at home plate, while their teammates stood and watched. He had a fight with Sam Crawford a couple of years later, and maintained a reputation as someone who would not back down from a confrontation.

Fully entrenched as a regular by 1911, Carrigan had a fine season at the plate (.289 in 72 games) before suffering a broken leg on an awkward slide at second base on September 4. He caught the majority of the innings for the 1912 pennant winners, hitting .263, but was hitless in only seven at bats in the Red Sox’ World Series victory that fall. 

In July 1913 the Red Sox were grappling with a series of injuries, fighting among themselves, and limping along in fifth place. Team president Jimmy McAleer fired manager Jake Stahl just months after his World Series triumph, and replaced him with his 29-year-old catcher. Carrigan liked Stahl, as did most of the team, and was reluctant to take charge of a team filled with veterans, many of whom were just as qualified for the job as he. McAleer persuaded Carrigan to take it. The Red Sox were a team fractured along religious lines, as Protestants like Tris Speaker and Joe Wood often crossed swords with the Catholics on the team, including Carrigan and Harry Hooper. 

The club’s new manager commanded respect through the unique brand of toughness he brought to the job. Wilbert Robinson, who managed Brooklyn against Carrigan in the 1916 World Series, later said that Carrigan was serious when it came to his pitchers dusting a hitter off: “When Carrigan told one of his pitchers to knock a man down and the batter didn’t hit the dirt, the pitcher was fined.” The team played better the remainder of 1913 before finishing a strong second to Connie Mack’s Philadelphia Athletics in 1914. 

The most important event of the 1914 season was the purchase, at Carrigan’s urging, of pitchers Ernie Shore and Babe Ruth from Baltimore of the International League. Although Ruth gave his skipper a lot of credit for his development as a player, Carrigan was humble in his own assessment: “Nobody could have made Ruth the great pitcher and great hitter he was but himself. He made himself with the aid of his God-given talents.” Old Rough did allow that his protégé needed quite a bit of discipline, and Carrigan was there to provide it, even rooming with Ruth for a time. Carrigan caught Ruth in his pitching debut, on July 11.

Some might fault Carrigan for not seeing the potential of Ruth as a hitter. Given that the Red Sox were blessed with the game’s best outfield in Duffy Lewis, Tris Speaker, and Harry Hooper, and that Ruth soon developed into one of the game’s best pitchers, it is understandable why Carrigan did not wish to mess with success. In 1915 Carrigan did use Ruth occasionally as a pinch-hitter, and Babe responded with a team-leading four home runs.

The next two seasons brought Carrigan and his team their back-to-back World Series triumphs. Against the Phillies in 1915, Carrigan famously did not pitch Ruth, which some took as a message to the Babe that the team did not need him to win. Carrigan always disputed this, claiming he wanted to avoid using left-handed pitchers against the heavily right-handed-hitting Philadelphia club. 

In early September 1916, Carrigan announced that he would be leaving baseball at the end of the season. He had actually wanted to quit after the 1915 Series, and had so told owner Joe Lannin, but his owner talked him into the one additional campaign. Carrigan later wrote, “I had become fed up on being away from home from February to October. I was in my thirties, was married and had an infant daughter. I wanted to spend more time with my family than baseball would allow.” He retired to his hometown of Lewiston and embarked on careers in real estate (as co-owner of several movie theaters in New England) and banking. A few years later he sold his theaters for a substantial profit and became a wealthy man.

When Lannin sold the club to Harry Frazee before the 1917 season, Frazee drove to Lewiston to try to talk Carrigan into staying on. After that, an offseason did not go by without offers from major-league teams to lure Carrigan back into the game. After a decade of trying, the Red Sox finally summoned Carrigan out of retirement in 1927 to manage the tail-end Sox. Offering proof that the players often make the manager, the Red Sox continued their struggles, finishing last for all three seasons during the second Carrigan regime, despite improving their record each year.

Carrigan was not happy with the way the players had changed in his time away. “These players didn’t talk baseball. They talked golf and stocks and where they were going after the game.” Players resisted practice, individual instruction, or talk of cutoff plays and other strategies. “Inside baseball had become a lost art,” he felt. Interestingly, he thought baseball was too concerned with finding good citizens: “I’ll take players who get arrested every night and win ball games two out of three afternoons to the best behaved second-division gang ever assembled.”

Moving back to Lewiston for good, Carrigan continued a very successful banking career. He joined the city’s Board of Finance in 1938, and became president of Peoples Savings Bank in 1953. Through the years, he was a frequent guest at Fenway Park for ceremonies and reunions. He was named to the Holy Cross Hall of Fame in 1968.

Carrigan married the former Beulah Bartlett in 1915, and they had two daughters, Beulah and Constance, and one son, William Jr. Wife Beulah died in 1958, but Old Rough hung on until July 8, 1969, when he passed away at the age of 85 in his beloved Lewiston. He was buried in Lewiston’s Riverside Cemetery.

Note: This biography originally appeared in David Jones, ed., Deadball Stars of the American League (Washington, D.C.: Potomac Books, Inc., 2006).

Sources

A primary source for this work was Bill Carrigan’s file at the National Baseball Hall of Fame Library. Other sources include:

Will Anderson, Was Baseball Really Invented In Maine? (Bath, ME: Will Anderson, 1992).

Jack Kavanagh, “Quit While You’re Ahead.” The National Pastime 11. SABR, 1993. 

Kerry Keene, Raymond Sinibaldi, and David Hickey. The Babe in Red Stockings (Champaign IL: Sagamore, 1997).

Frederick G. Lieb, The Boston Red Sox. (New York: Putnam, 1947).

Tom Meany. Baseball’s Greatest Teams (New York: Barnes, 1949).

Fred Stein. And the Skipper Bats Cleanup (Jefferson NC: McFarland, 2002).

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

Paul J. Zingg. Harry Hooper, An American Baseball Life. (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois, 1993).

Cicotte once estimated that 75 percent of the pitches he threw were knuckleballs. The rest of the time the right-hander relied on a fadeaway, slider, screwball, spitter, emery ball, shine ball, and a pitch he called the “sailor,” a rising fastball that “would sail much in the same manner of a flat stone thrown by a small boy.”2 Whether he was sailing or sinking the ball, shining it or darkening it, the 5-foot-9, 175-pound Cicotte had more pitches than a traveling salesman. “Perhaps no pitcher in the world has such a varied assortment of wares in his repertory as Cicotte,” The Sporting News observed in 1918. “He throws with effect practically every kind of ball known to pitching science.”3

But the most famous pitch Cicotte ever threw was the one that nailed Cincinnati Reds leadoff man Morrie Rath squarely in the back to lead off the 1919 World Series, a pitch that signaled to the gamblers that the fix was on. After confessing to his role in the scandal one year later, Cicotte was banned from the game for life, a punishment that perhaps denied the 209-game-winner a spot in the Hall of Fame.

• Learn more: Click here to view SABR’s Eight Myths Out project on common misconceptions about the Black Sox Scandal

Edgar Victor Cicotte (pronounced SEE-cot)4 was born on June 19, 1884, in Springwells, Michigan, a former township in the Detroit metropolitan area, into a family of French heritage. He was the son of Ambrose and Archangel (Drouillard) Cicotte. Eddie’s brother, Alva, was the grandfather of Al Cicotte, who pitched in the major leagues for five seasons from 1957 to 1962. By the time Eddie was 16 years old, his father had died, forcing his mother to support her large family as a dressmaker. Leaving school early, Eddie took up work as a boxmaker to help pay the family bills.

Cicotte began his baseball career, according to some sources, as early as 1903, playing semipro ball in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. In 1904 he pitched for Calumet (Michigan) and Sault Ste. Marie (Ontario) in the Northern Copper League, posting a record of 38-4 with 11 shutouts.5 Based on that dominating performance, Cicotte earned a tryout with the Detroit Tigers in the spring of 1905. The Tigers determined that he wasn’t ready for the majors, and optioned him to Augusta (Georgia) of the South Atlantic League, where he compiled a record of 15 wins against 9 losses, and brawled with his young teammate Ty Cobb after a Cobb stunt cost Cicotte a shutout. As a joke Cobb had taken popcorn with him to his position in center field and as a result committed an error that led to a run.6 This incident notwithstanding, among his teammates Cicotte was known as an easygoing prankster who enjoyed a good laugh.

Near the end of the season Detroit brought Cicotte up and he made his major-league debut on September 3, 1905, allowing one run in relief and getting tagged with the loss in a 10-inning game. Two days later Cicotte earned his first major-league win, a complete-game victory over the Chicago White Sox. He finished the year 1-1 with a 3.50 ERA, but would not return to the major leagues for another three seasons.

Cicotte began 1906 with Indianapolis of the American Association, where he posted a 1-4 record in 72 innings before landing with Des Moines of the Western League. Cicotte blossomed with his new team, registering an 18-9 record. The following season he pitched for Lincoln, also of the Western League, going 21-14. Impressed by the young hurler’s arsenal of pitches, the Boston Red Sox purchased Cicotte’s contract for $2,500 at the end of the 1907 season.

During his five-year stint with the Red Sox, Cicotte lost nearly as many games as he won, and frequently found himself in trouble with Red Sox owner John I. Taylor, who accused the pitcher of underachieving. “He was suspended without pay so much of the time that it was like having no job,” the Chicago Tribune’s Sam Weller wrote of Cicotte’s Boston career.7 On a club that consistently failed to meet expectations, Cicotte often became the scapegoat, and in 1911 Taylor tried to secure waivers on his inconsistent pitcher, only to pull back when another team made a claim. “[Taylor] wouldn’t like the way I was working, or perhaps the opposition had made one or two hits,” Cicotte later charged. “Taylor never liked me; I never liked him, and it was seldom that I went through a game without having him comment upon it.”8

After Cicotte started the 1912 season with a 1-3 record and a 5.67 ERA in six starts, the Red Sox, though no longer owned by Taylor, had finally seen enough. On July 22 the team sold Cicotte’s contract to the Chicago White Sox, where the 28-year-old right-hander began to mature into one of the game’s best pitchers. With Boston, Cicotte had won 52 games and lost 46. Over the next 8½ seasons with the White Sox, he won 156 games against 101 losses.

The biggest reason for this improvement was Cicotte’s gradual mastery of his expansive pitching repertoire. As his command over his knuckleball improved, Cicotte’s walk rate dramatically decreased; from 1912 to 1920 he ranked among the league’s 10 best in fewest walks per nine innings seven times, leading the league in 1918 and 1919, when he walked 89 in 572⅔ innings.

Cicotte also fully exploited the era’s liberal regulations regarding the doctoring of the ball. In this area, his most infamous pitch was the shine ball, in which he rubbed one side of the ball against the pocket of his right trouser leg, which had been filled with talcum powder.

Flustered opponents protested to American League President Ban Johnson that the pitch should be outlawed, but Johnson ruled the pitch legal in 1917, and it would remain so until February 1920. Thanks to the knuckleball, the shine ball, the emery ball (ruled illegal by Johnson in early 1915), and other trick pitches, Cicotte struck out a fair number of batters, placing in the top 10 in strikeouts per nine innings three times, even though his fastball probably couldn’t break a plane of glass. Asked to explain his success, Cicotte chalked it up to “head work,” adding, “It involves an ability to adapt pitching to certain conditions when they arise and perhaps use altogether different methods in the very next inning.”9

In 1913 Cicotte enjoyed his first standout season in the major leagues, posting an 18-11 record to go along with a 1.58 ERA, second best in the American League. That offseason, Pittsburgh of the newly formed Federal League attempted to sign Cicotte, but White Sox owner Charles Comiskey was able to secure the pitcher’s loyalty through a three-year contract. In the first year of his contract, Eddie managed only an 11-16 record, although his 2.04 ERA was fifth best in the league. After a mediocre 13-12 campaign in 1915, Cicotte finally hit his stride in 1916, when he split time between the starting rotation and bullpen, posted a 1.78 ERA, won 15 out of 22 decisions, and had what today would be five saves. (The statistic hadn’t been invented yet.)

The following year, 1917, Cicotte moved back to the starting rotation and enjoyed the best season of his career, as the White Sox captured their first pennant in 11 seasons. Cicotte led the way, ranking first in the league in wins (28), ERA (1.53), and innings pitched (346⅔). Eddie also tossed seven shutouts, including a no-hitter against the St. Louis Browns on April 14, the first of six no-hitters pitched in the major leagues that season. In that year’s World Series, Cicotte contributed one win to Chicago’s six-game triumph over the New York Giants. He was, according to Grantland Rice, “the most feared pitcher of the series.”10

After Cicotte’s breakthrough season, Comiskey offered his star pitcher a $5,000 contract, with a $2,000 signing bonus, making him one of the highest compensated pitchers in baseball.11 But Cicotte failed to produce an encore suitable to his dominant 1917 campaign, as he wrenched his ankle in early May, and limped his way through the season to a mediocre 2.77 ERA and 19 losses, tied for the most in the league. It was not a performance to inspire Comiskey to hand out a raise, and when the 1919 season began, financial troubles were weighing heavily on Cicotte. According to the 1920 Census, Cicotte was the head of household for a family of 12, including his wife, Rose; their three children; his wife’s parents; Eddie’s brother and wife; and a brother-in-law and his wife and child. To make room for his large family, Cicotte took out a $4,000 mortgage on a Michigan farm.12

Cicotte regained his 1917 form, pitching the White Sox to their second pennant in three years. Once again, Eddie led the American League in victories (29) and innings pitched (306⅔, tied with Jim Shaw). His 29-7 record was good enough to lead the league in winning percentage (.806), and his 1.82 ERA ranked second. In early September, first baseman Chick Gandil and infielder Fred McMullin approached Cicotte about throwing the World Series. After thinking it over, Eddie agreed to the scheme, telling Gandil privately, “I would not do anything like that for less than $10,000.” Three days before the Series began, Cicotte demanded to have the money in hand before the team left for Cincinnati. That night, he found $10,000 under his pillow.13

Contrary to conventional wisdom, Cicotte’s abysmal performance in the 1919 World Series was not a complete surprise to informed observers. Throughout September, reports surfaced that the overworked Cicotte was suffering from a sore shoulder. Prior to the first game of the Series, Christy Mathewson noted, Cicotte “has had less than a week [actually two days] to rest up for his first start. … And that may not prove to be enough. If he blows up for a single inning it may cost the White Sox the championship, for I think the first battle is going to have a very strong bearing on the outcome, especially if the Reds win it.”14

With at least six of his other teammates in on the fix, Cicotte led the way in blowing the first game, surrendering seven hits and six runs in 3⅔ innings of work, and fueling Cincinnati’s winning rally by throwing slowly to second base on what should have been an inning-ending double-play ball. The performance was so bad that it generated renewed speculation that Cicotte was suffering from a “dead arm.”

For his second start, in Game Four, with the White Sox trailing two games to one, Eddie pitched more effectively, holding the Reds to just five hits and two unearned runs, both coming in the fifth inning on two Cicotte errors, including one inexplicable play in which he muffed an attempt to cut off a throw from the outfield, allowing the ball to go to the backstop and letting a Cincinnati runner – who had already stopped at third – score. The miscues were enough to ensure that the White Sox lost the game, 2-0. Afterward, Chicago manager Kid Gleason declared, “They shouldn’t have scored on Cicotte in 40 innings. … There wasn’t any occasion for Cicotte to intercept that throw. He did it to prevent [Larry] Kopf from going to second. But Kopf had no more intention of going to second than I have of jumping in the lake.”15

Though Eddie had received his $10,000 before the start of the Series, many of his fellow conspirators had not received the money promised them by the gamblers, so before Cicotte’s third start, in Game Seven of the best-of-nine Series, the players decided to play the game to win. Accordingly, Cicotte put forth his best effort of the Series, allowing just one run on seven hits in a 4-1 Chicago victory. Lefty Williams threw the following game, however, giving Cincinnati the world championship. In the wake of Chicago’s defeat, Mathewson publicly tossed aside rumors that the Series had been fixed, saying, “No pitcher could guarantee to toss a game. … Even if a pitcher should let the other side get two or three runs before he was yanked, he could not guarantee that the other side wouldn’t come up the next inning and make four or five. That wipes out any single pitcher and leaves the proposition of fixing on a club. This can’t be done.”16

Despite the persistent rumors that swirled around the club that offseason, Cicotte re-signed with Chicago for 1920, and put forth another excellent season, posting a 21-10 record with a 3.26 ERA. That summer Babe Ruth electrified the sport with his 54 home runs for the New York Yankees, but Cicotte grabbed a few headlines of his own after he stymied Ruth in several encounters. Asked to explain his success, the crafty Cicotte allowed that he mixed up his pitches and relied heavily on the spitball, because the pitch was “hard to hit for a long clout.”17

Before the season, the spitball and other doctored pitches, including Cicotte’s famous shine ball, had been banned from baseball. Although a number of established spitball pitchers were given a one-year exemption from the rule, Cicotte was not one of them.

On September 27, 1920, the Philadelphia North American ran a story in which Billy Maharg, one of the gamblers in on the Series fix the previous fall, testified to his role in the affair, and specifically named Cicotte as the man who initiated the plot. The next day, Eddie met with White Sox counsel Alfred Austrian and admitted to his role in the scandal. He also implicated seven of his teammates.18 Afterward, he went to the Cook County Courthouse and repeated his story for a grand jury charged with investigating corruption in baseball. The grand jury responded to Cicotte’s testimony by indicting all eight of the “Black Sox” players for throwing the 1919 World Series.

In front of the grand jury, Cicotte testified that he began to have second thoughts during the Series. After losing Game One, he was “sick all night” in the hotel and told roommate Happy Felsch, “Happy, it will never be done again.” He also said that he tried his best to win Game Four, claiming “I didn’t care whether I got shot out there the next minute. I was going to win the ball game and the series.” But he never offered to return the gamblers’ money. “I couldn’t very well do that,” he admitted.19

Though he and the other seven accused players were acquitted of conspiracy charges the following year, Eddie Cicotte’s major-league baseball career ended with his confession. For the next three years he played with several of his banned teammates for outlaw teams in Illinois, Wisconsin, and Minnesota, but by 1924 Cicotte had moved on with his life.20 He worked as a Michigan game warden and managed a service station before finding a job with the Ford Motor Company, where he remained until his retirement in 1944.

During the last 25 years of his life, Cicotte raised strawberries on a 5½-acre farm near Farmington, Michigan. In an interview with Detroit sportswriter Joe Falls in 1965 he said he lived his life quietly, answering letters from youngsters who sometimes asked about the scandal. He agreed that he had made mistakes, but insisted that he had tried to make up for it by living as clean a life as he could. “I admit I did wrong,” he said, “but I’ve paid for it the past 45 years.”21 Falls seemed to agree, noting that as he prepared to leave Cicotte’s home, he looked at Eddie’s socks. They were white.

Eddie Cicotte died on May 5, 1969, at Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit. His death certificate listed his occupation as baseball player, Chicago White Sox. He was buried in Park View Cemetery in Livonia, Michigan.

An updated version of this biography appeared in “Scandal on the South Side: The 1919 Chicago White Sox” (SABR, 2015). This biography originally appeared in “Deadball Stars of the American League” (Potomac Books, 2006).

Sources

Asinof, Eliot, Eight Men Out (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1987).

Falls, Joe, Interview with Eddie Cicotte. Detroit Free Press, December 4, 1965.

Lardner, Ring, Chicago Examiner. July 21, 1912.

MacFarlane, Paul, ed., Daguerreotypes. The Sporting News, 1981.

Stump, Al, Cobb (New York: Algonquin Books, 1996).

findagrave.com.

Obituary, The Sporting News. May 24, 1969.

Michigan Death Certificate.

Obituary, New York Times. May 9, 1969.

1880 Wayne County, Michigan, Federal Census.

1920 Wayne County, Michigan, Federal Census.

1930 Wayne County, Michigan, Federal Census.

ancestry.com.

The Sporting News, February 23, 1933, 8.

retrosheet.org.

Contract card, National Baseball Library, Hall of Fame.

Washington Post, August 24, 1906; August 24, 1907; March 8, 1908; April 15, 1917.

New York Times, April 15, 1917.

Sporting Life, February 21, 1914.

Kermisch, Al, “From a Researcher’s Notebook.” Baseball Research Journal #23 (Cleveland: SABR, 1994.)

Chicago Daily Tribune, August 27, 1906.

baseball-reference.com.

Notes

Though big for his time (6-feet-1, 185 pounds), the Colchester farmboy did not throw hard. “Ray Collins hasn’t a thing,” said Hall of Fame manager Clark Griffith at the height of the Vermonter’s career, “yet he is one of the best pitchers in the American League – one of the two or three best left-handed pitchers in the business.” Hugh Jennings, another Hall of Fame manager, concurred: “I class him as the best left-hander in the American League, with the possible exception of Eddie Plank.”

When Collins’s major-league career was cut short in 1915, he returned to his native Colchester and struggled to eke out an existence as a dairy farmer for 42 years. Though he never made it to Cooperstown, Ray Collins was an original inductee of the University of Vermont’s Hall of Fame on October 10, 1969, and the Vermont Department of Historic Preservation honored his memory with the erection of a roadside historical marker at the Collins farm on July 19, 1998.

Collins wasn’t kidding when he listed his nationality as “Yankee” on a Baseball Magazine survey he filled out in 1911. A ninth-generation descendant of William Bradford, second governor of Plymouth Colony, Collins was also the great-great-grandson of Captain John Collins, purportedly one of Ethan Allen’s Revolutionary War Green Mountain Boys. One of Burlington’s original settlers, Captain Collins arrived from Salisbury, Connecticut, on August 19, 1783, and built the first frame house in town. Ethan Allen stayed with the Collins family while building his own homestead.

The 375-acre Collins farm on Route 7 in Colchester, originally purchased by Charles Collins in 1835, was where Ray Williston Collins was born on February 11, 1887. His family moved around a lot when he was a youngster, renting farms in other parts of the state, but his father, Frank Collins, still owned the Colchester farm. It was small and wet so he rented it to others. Around 1894 the family returned to the Burlington area and purchased land in the Intervale, an area of rich farmland along the banks of the Winooski River. There, on one of the largest farms in Chittenden County, the Collinses raised a herd of Jersey cows. The brick farmhouse still stood in 2010, just down the embankment from the former site of Burlington’s Athletic Park.

For a while Ray had an idyllic childhood. “Played ball today” is by far the most common entry in the journal he kept during childhood. He also went to University of Vermont baseball games. But when Ray was 10 his father died of scarlet fever. Ray’s mother, Electa, was forced to sell the Intervale property and move into a house in Burlington.

Electa Collins not only survived but prospered, buying and improving lots and selling them at a profit. She rented out the farm in Colchester, where Ray helped with the haying when it didn’t interfere with his studies. Later he worked as a conductor on the trolley that ran from Burlington through Winooski and out to Fort Ethan Allen.

Ray’s best buddy growing up was Dwight Deyette. The pair once jumped off the railroad bridge over the Winooski River together. Both attended Pomeroy School and later Edmunds High School, where Ray was captain of the tennis, basketball, and baseball teams. He didn’t play football in high school because his mother wouldn’t let him, even though he was considerably larger than most boys his age.

Collins often recalled his time at the University of Vermont as the four greatest years of his life. Though he lived at home, Collie joined the Delta Psi fraternity and got involved in campus social life. Among other activities, he served as committee chairman of the Kake Walk, a midwinter minstrel show that was banished from campus in the 1960s when it fell out of step with changing racial values. Ray also put his wide-ranging athletic talents to use, playing center on the varsity basketball team as a freshman and varsity tennis as a sophomore.

Ray’s greatest accomplishments, of course, came on the baseball diamond. In Vermont’s home opener on April 17, 1906, the first baseball game ever played at Centennial Field, freshman Collins batted safely twice and pitched a complete game, allowing only one earned run.

The crowning achievement of Ray’s freshman year came against Williams at Centennial Field on May 19. The Williams squad entered the game with just one loss, having ruined their undefeated record at Dartmouth the day before. Larry Gardner drew a leadoff walk in the first inning and scored what turned out to be the game’s only run. Entering the ninth, Collins was pitching a no-hitter and had not walked a single batter. With two outs, a Williams batter singled cleanly to right field, but when the runner was thrown out stealing moments later, Ray was carried off the field on the shoulders of his schoolmates.

Gardner received many accolades for his role on a team that finished 9-8, but the real hero was Ray Collins. Drawing all of the tough pitching assignments, Collie finished with a 4-3 record and an ERA of 0.70, striking out 36 and giving up only 43 hits and 10 walks in 64 innings. He earned honorable mention on the Springfield (Mass.) Republican’s All Eastern and All New England teams.

During his sophomore year of 1907, the Vermont team improved its record to 11-6 and that year’s class yearbook, The Ariel, praised Ray’s performance as “second to that of no college player in the country.” By that time his prowess had attracted the notice of major-league scouts. The Boston Red Sox followed him throughout the season, and toward the end a New York Highlanders scout offered Collins $3,000 to play from July through October. According to the Burlington Free Press, “on the advice of older men, Collins has declined the tempting offer, believing that he is yet too young to take up base ball in the fastest league in the world.”

The previous summer Ray had played in the Adirondack Hotel League for a team sponsored by Paul Smith’s Hotel on Lower St. Regis Lake. A brochure found among his papers boasted that “[t]he Paul Smith’s Baseball nine have always been champion of the Adirondacks.” During the summer of 1907 he pitched for semipro teams in Massachusetts, then joined his university teammates in playing for Newport, New Hampshire, of the Interstate League. In one game he struck out 21 batters.

That July, through some odd twists and turns, Collins and his teammates played a brief but full-fledged professional baseball stint in the Class D Vermont State League. When several of the original clubs dropped out, the university nine stepped in as replacements. “Many have felt all along that the Vermont team was the one to uphold the Burlington end on any baseball proposition, made up as it is of so many local favorites,” the Free Press wrote. In his first minor-league start, Collins pitched a shutout against first-place Barre-Montpelier, snapping that club’s eight-game winning streak. “Nothing like the pitching of Collins has been seen at Intercity Park since the days of Reulbach,” wrote the Montpelier Evening Argus. The collegians fared well during their short stint in professional baseball, holding the second best record (4-3) when the league disbanded for good on July 27.

With still a month to play that summer, Collins joined the Bangor Cubs of the Maine State League. In his first game, on July 30, he pitched a four-hit shutout against a Portland club called Pine Tree. A Portland sportswriter wrote that Ray’s windup resembled an “explosion in a leg and arm factory,” while a Bangor scribe wrote:

Collins is a tall, slim young feller from Burlington, Vermont, and is first string man on the University of Vermont team. This university is famous for the ball players it turns out, among whom may be mentioned Reulbach of the Chicago Cubs, and Collins seems to ably sustain the reputation of the university. He has all kinds of speed, curves and shoots, change of pace, good control, and a corkscrew delivery which is enough to scare a batsman away from the plate. Added to these important details, he has all kinds of confidence and a snap that keeps a game a’going.

Ray finished out the season with Bangor and led the Cubs to the 1907 Maine State League pennant. In his last appearance of the season, at the Eastern Maine State Fair on August 30, he pitched both ends of a doubleheader, defeating Portland 11-2 and 5-4 in ten innings – a harbinger of his greatest day in the majors seven years later.

Vermont finished with a disappointing 9-7 record in 1908, the last year both Collins and Gardner played for the varsity. Still, the season had its share of highlights, like the time Collins beat Holy Cross 1-0 and drove in the game’s only run with a triple. Students celebrated the victory in traditional fashion by going downtown and staging a mini-riot:

Shortly after the game the chapel bell began to ring, summoning the faithful to gather on the campus. About 200 students responded to the call, most of them provided with the night shirt prescribed for such occasions. Forming in line in front of the mill, they marched to the president’s house, where continued cheering brought President Buckham out to make a short speech. The march was then taken up down Prospect Street and to Brookes avenue to the home of Collins, the successful pitcher. After giving rousing cheers, the students continued down town to the club rooms of the Eagles, where they [were] joined by the band. Pitcher Collins was captured and borne on the shoulders of the advance guard as far as the foot of Church Street. The line then marched down to the Van Ness house where the Holy Cross team was supposed to be. Upon finding that the team was being entertained by the Knights of Columbus, the boys marched up the street and gave lusty cheers in front of their club rooms. On the return march to the college, some little trouble was experienced with the police over possession of various signs that had taken a place in the line of march.

The students in their ardor crippled temporarily the trolley service of Pearl Street. The trolley pole on a car was pulled from the wire at the corner of Pearl and Church streets and in front of the Howard Relief hall an attempt was made to block an Essex car; but the motorman applied the juice and the students, deciding that they would be the worse for wear in the encounter with the moving car, cleared the track. The trolley pole on another Pearl street car coming down the hill from Winooski was pulled from the wire and in the mix-up a window was broken, the splintered glass cutting the conductor, George Rogers, although not seriously injuring him. On the march up Pearl Street, the large bill board at the corner of Prospect Street was taken down and borne in solemn procession by some 60 students to the campus. Here a number of tar barrels were added to the stock of combustibles and an old-fashioned bonfire and war dance took place. After the fire died down the students gradually dispersed.

Following the close of the season, Collins was elected captain for his senior year. Gardner decided to forgo his last season of eligibility, instead signing with the Boston Red Sox, but Ray shunned offers to turn professional. “The president of the Red Sox team of Boston worked hard to land Collins,” the Free Press reported, “but the college boy, who has one more year at Vermont, decided to pitch college ball for the team of which he was recently elected captain.”

Collins received a large increase in pay – reportedly $185 per month – to return to Bangor for a second summer in 1908. This time he brought with him his college catcher, Marcus Burrington of Pownal, Vermont. Combining with Ralph Good, a Colby College star who later pitched two games in the majors with the Boston Nationals in 1910, Ray led Bangor to its second straight Maine League pennant. In appointing him to its 1908 All-Maine team, one Maine newspaper called Collins the “premier twirler of the league this season, as he was the last.”

Despite returning only five veterans, the 1909 Vermont team survived and even improved without Larry Gardner, posting a record of 13-9. Captain Collins pitched well throughout the season, but never better than in his last game for Vermont, on June 18. Going out in a “blaze of glory,” according to the Free Press headline, Ray struck out 19 and beat a tough Penn State team, 4-1. It was a fitting end to an incredible college career in which he won 37 of the 50 games he started, surpassing Bert Abbey, Arlie Pond, and Ed Reulbach as the greatest pitcher in UVM history.

After the season Ray received offers from eight of the 16 major-league teams. He decided to follow in Gardner’s footsteps and, shortly after the Penn State game, went down to Boston and came to terms with Red Sox president John Taylor. “That day I saw my first major-league game,” he remembered years later. “The Red Sox were playing the Tigers and Ty Cobb stole second, third, and home.”

Collins returned to Burlington for Senior Week. He served as marshal at the baccalaureate sermon, then carried the class banner at commencement on June 30, leading a procession of 73 undergraduates (including Larry Gardner) down the aisle of Burlington’s Strand Theatre. After handing out the various degrees (Collins received a B.S. in economics, as did childhood friend Dwight Deyette), President Buckham called on Ray to close the ceremony with a speech on behalf of the graduating class.

As part of his deal with the Red Sox, Collins received permission to remain in Burlington and pitch an exhibition game commemorating the 300th anniversary of Samuel de Champlain’s 1609 discovery of Lake Champlain. The games were part of Tercentenary Week, which included Vermont’s first-ever marathon (104 times around the oval track surrounding Centennial Field), featuring 1908 Olympic champion Johnny Hayes; a wrestling match involving Burlington’s own Fritz Hanson, champion welterweight of the world; Colonel Francis Ferari’s trained wild animal arena and exposition shows; and a re-enactment of the Battle of Lake Champlain on a man-made island in Burlington Harbor, attended by President Taft and the French and English ambassadors to the United States. In the opening game, as 50,000 visitors flooded into Burlington, Collins held an independent team from Pittsfield, Massachusetts, scoreless for nine innings, but the opposing pitcher was equally stingy. Each team scored once in the tenth, but in the 13th Collins’s run-scoring single gave Burlington the 2-1 victory.

Ray Collins left Burlington on July 12, 1909. He first went to Boston, then caught up with the team on a road trip. On July 19, with the Red Sox down 4-0 to Cy Young after three innings at Cleveland, Boston manager Fred Lake figured it was as good a time as any to test out his acclaimed rookie. In five strong innings of relief, Ray yielded two unearned runs and even singled in his first big-league at-bat. This game is best remembered as the one in which Cleveland shortstop Neal Ball made the first unassisted triple play in major-league history. It may also be the only time three Green Mountain Boys of Summer played for the same team in a major-league game: In addition to Collins, both Amby McConnell and Larry Gardner appeared in the Red Sox lineup.

Four days later, on the 23rd, Ray was the starting pitcher against the hard-hitting Detroit Tigers. Though he lost 4-2, he twice struck out the dangerous Ty Cobb. Collins was given a second chance to beat the Tigers on July 25, 1909. Pitching on only one day’s rest, Ray tossed the first of his 19 shutouts in the majors. It was a three-hitter, and all three of the hits were made by Hall of Famer Sam Crawford. Collins pitched only sporadically during the rest of the 1909 season, going 4-3 with an ERA of 2.81, but he had proved that he was capable of competing in the majors without any minor-league apprenticeship. As if to prove the point, after the regular season Ray matched up against the great Christy Mathewson on October 13 and defeated him, 2-0, in an exhibition game against the New York Giants.

Collins became a regular in the Boston rotation in 1910. In his first full season in the majors, the 23-year-old pitched a one-hitter against the Chicago White Sox and compiled a 13-11 record, making him the second-winningest pitcher on the Red Sox. His ERA of 1.62 was sixth best in the American League. He became a fan favorite at the Huntington Avenue Grounds, as demonstrated by the following clipping from the Boston Evening Record’s Baseball Chit-Chat column:

Ray Collins is a star. He is the idol of all the lady fans, those bewitching young women, who coyly gaze from under piles of feathers and ribbons. Is it any wonder that he pitches wonderful ball when those brown and blue and gray and violet orbs are on him? Gee, it’s great to be a big, fine pitcher. If I ever have a son that’s him, a pitcher and of course he will be a dashing fine chap. Fond expectations.

In February 1911 Tim “The Silver King” Murnane, a jovial, white-haired ex-major leaguer of the 1870s who had become baseball editor of the Boston Globe, came to Burlington to visit Ray Collins in his hometown. The following is an excerpt from the column he wrote about that visit:

In looking over the list of Boston Red Sox players still in love with their surroundings, living within a day’s ride of Boston, I selected Mr. Collins as the player on whom to make a friendly call and wired the young man that I was coming up to see him. I had also intended calling on Larry Gardner, who winters at Enosburg Falls, about 50 miles farther north, but our signals became crossed and to my surprise Mr. Gardner was on hand to greet me on my arrival at Burlington, where he has many friends as the result of his student days at the University of Vermont, where he, like Collins, was a valuable member of the baseball team.

I was soon tucked away in a roomy sleigh and started for Mr. Collins’ home, 10 minutes ride from the business section of the city. “I would like to have you see mother” was all the comment that the ball player made as we went slipping over the snow. “This is my home,” he remarked as the team drew up in front of a pretty house on a residential street with a grade just right for fine sledding. Before entering the house the camera man snapped a picture of the player and the writer, and Ray pointed to a field close by, saying: “There is where I learned to play ball as a schoolboy. About all that is left to remind me of the old place now is that elm tree.”

I was introduced to Mr. Collins’ mother as “Mr. Murnane of the Boston Globe” and was informed by the lady that she always has read the Globe baseball news since Ray took up the game as a serious matter.

“Ray always loved to play baseball,” remarked Mrs. Collins. “When at the primary school he was captain of a team, later at the high school, and finally during his four years at college he kept up his enthusiasm for the game, so I was not surprised to find that he was willing to take a position with the Boston Americans. I never tried to influence my boy to give up the game that he seemed to love so much and his success in which made so many friends for him.

“Ray seldom talks baseball, however, but loves to bring home the pictures of young men he has played with.” This was very evident after a glance at his interesting den, where the green and gold colors of his alma mater were the principal decoration, with pictures of baseball parks and Red Sox players strewn around.

We then went for a sleighride around the city, with the ball player handling the ribbons. As we slipped through the main streets it was a continual “Hello, Ray.” Everyone in the place seemed to know the player. Collins simply recognized the salute with a “Hello” in each case.

That evening I sat down to supper with the good Mrs. Collins and the pride of her heart. For the first time Ray mentioned baseball. We chatted about the Red Sox players and about the splendid treatment the boys received on their visit to Vermont last fall. Mrs. Collins said she had enjoyed a call from Tris Speaker and other players of whom she had read and had a great desire to see.

The delightful simplicity of the woman, and the good taste displayed in the home, made it quite easy to understand why Ray Collins is modest at all times and deeply considerate of every man’s feelings.

It is said that in springtime a man’s thoughts turn to love and baseball. So it was that during spring training in 1911, while the Red Sox were working out in Redondo Beach, California, Ray Collins became smitten. Her name was Lillian Marie Lovely, and it is said that her surname suited her well. She was the 18-year-old sister of Jack Lovely, one of Ray’s fraternity brothers who later headed the Jones & Lampson Company, the largest gear factory in Springfield, Vermont. Jack’s family had recently moved from St. Albans to Los Angeles, and Jack insisted that Ray meet them while he was out there.

Ray apparently left his heart and his concentration in California. He was 3-6 at one point in the 1911 season, prompting rumors that he was soon to be released. “Ominous rumblings agitate the atmosphere,” wrote one poetic scribe. “The management holds, apparently, that a player who cannot pitch nine games and win, say, 15 or 20, is useless, dangerous and ought to be abolished.” But before management did anything rash, Ray turned his season around, finishing at 11-12 with a 2.40 ERA.

During the offseason Ray married Lillian in Los Angeles. In a congratulatory note, Red Sox president James McAleer wrote, “May you live long and prosper and have a million little Collinses. . . . I think you are due for a great year and Mrs. Collins will be proud of her big boy when the season is over.” The couple set out as though they were taking McAleer’s blessing of fertility at face value – their first daughter, Marjorie, was born in December 1912. Four more followed: Ray Jr. in 1914; Janet in 1916; Warren in 1919; and Dorothy in 1923.

During their first winter together Lillian may have made life too comfortable for her new husband. Ray was noticeably overweight when he reported for spring training at Hot Springs, Arkansas, and his problems were compounded when a spike wound resulted in an abscess on his knee. Collins missed the first two months of the 1912 season, during which time the Red Sox christened their new stadium, Fenway Park. Ray did not start a game until June 7, nor win one until June 22, but from that point on he was nearly invincible.

A half-century later, Ray’s fondest memory of that season was pitching the first-place Red Sox to two victories in three days over the second-place Athletics at Philadelphia’s Shibe Park. When he defeated the A’s 7-2 on July 3, the headline in the next day’s paper, over Ray’s photograph, read, “SURPRISED ATHLETICS, RED SOX AND PROBABLY HIMSELF.” Then on July 5 he surprised the A’s again, 5-3. Collins finished fifth in the American League in shutouts in 1912, but all four of them came in the second half of the season. By October his record stood at 13-8 and his ERA at 2.53, fifth-best in the American League. The team’s only left-hander, Collins was considered the second best pitcher on the staff behind Smoky Joe Wood (34-5) as the Red Sox walked away with the American League pennant.

Ray started Game Two of the World Series against New York Giants ace Christy Mathewson and led 4-2 after seven innings. Then in the eighth Collins was pulled with only one out after the Giants rallied for three runs. The game was called on account of darkness after 11 innings with the score tied 6-6 (which is why the Series went eight games). The Red Sox led the Series three games to one by the time it was Collins’s turn to pitch again in Game Six, but player-manager Jake Stahl surprised everyone by starting fireballer Buck O’Brien. O’Brien was no slouch, coming off a 20-13 season, but the Giants shelled him for five runs in the first inning. Collins took over in the second and pitched shutout ball for seven innings, but the Red Sox lost 5-2. “Things might have been a little different had Collins been sent in from the first,” Stahl admitted.

Game Six turned out to be Ray’s last appearance in a World Series, and though he ended up with no decisions, he did not walk a single batter in 14⅓ innings – quite possibly a World Series record. When a newspaperman pointed that out to him decades later, Ray responded, “Maybe I made them too good.”

Collins had his best season yet in 1913, finishing at 19-8, his .714 winning percentage the second-highest in the AL. A highlight was his performance on July 9, when he pitched a four-hitter and hit a home run in a 9-0 drubbing of the St. Louis Browns. Another characteristic outing was July 26 against the Chicago White Sox, when Collins pitched a five-hitter and hit a bases-loaded triple to give Boston a 4-1 victory. “This was simply keeping up the remarkable work that he has been doing this season, no one in the business showing better form,” was one Boston reporter’s comment.

On August 29 Collins pitched scoreless ball for 11 innings to defeat Walter Johnson, who entered with a 14-game winning streak. It was one of three times that Ray went head-to-head against the Big Train in 1913; each game was decided by a score of 1-0, with the Vermonter winning two of them.

During the 1913 season Collins became involved in the Base Ball Players’ Fraternity, an organization founded by Dave Fultz, a lawyer who had played seven years in the big leagues, 1898-1905, leading the AL in runs scored in 1903. A presage of his future leadership ability, Collins served as player representative for the Red Sox; later he was chosen as vice president for the American League and admitted to the BBPF’s board of directors and advisory board.

Coming off a fine season in 1913, Ray Collins expected his $3,600 salary to increase substantially for the 1914 season, and was sorely disappointed when the contract the Red Sox sent out on January 16 called for only $4,500. On January 23 he returned it unsigned to new Red Sox owner Joseph Lannin, prompting this response:

We have no intention of considering an increase in your case as the amount named in your contract is a very liberal one…. We have the signed contracts of most of the regular men and there is now only yours and one or two others of any importance that have not been received. We expect them, however, within a day or two. I thought you would like to know this as our prospects are very good for the coming season, with the team intact and with the addition of some promising youngsters.

In a typical year Collins would have had no choice but to accept Lannin’s terms, but 1914 was no typical year. That winter the Federal League was waging its war for baseball supremacy; players had options for the first time in years. Perhaps recognizing this, player-manager Bill Carrigan wrote the following note to Ray on February 14, enclosing another copy of the contract:

You can rest easy that you will stick with me as long as I stay with this club so don’t let anything trouble you and I will see that you get home when your wife needs you. I’ll do anything in my power to make you feel right, Ray, and hope that you will feel alright about this contract.

Ray phoned Carrigan and told him $4,500 was not enough, but that he would sign for $5,000. On February 16 Lannin wrote to Collins: “Enclosed please find contract calling for $5000.00 for the season of 1914, as per your understanding with Bill.”

On February 17, 1914, about the time he received Lannin’s letter, Collins also received a Western Union telegram from Youngstown, Ohio:

I had [Earl] Mosely [a former Red Sox teammate] wire you in regard to Federal League don’t sign or accept terms with Boston can go you more than they will pay you big money in sight three year contract money sure regardless of injury if you come here at my expense will wire you hundred before you leave answer my expense.
– Jack McAleese

McAleese, a former major leaguer, was working as a sort of bounty hunter for the Federal League, and his telegram obviously caught Ray in a receptive mood. The Vermonter sent the $5,000 contract back to Boston and raised his demand to $5,400, causing this response from Lannin:

I want to acknowledge receipt of your letter, and was very much surprised at the contents. Mr. Carrigan stated to Mr. John I. Taylor that you agreed to sign for the amount mentioned in the last contract we sent you, namely, $5000. I just talked with Mr. Carrigan on the phone, and he verified that statement to me.

We have accepted your terms, and we consider that a contract, and binding, and expect you to report at Hot Springs, as per instructions.

Collins did report to Hot Springs, but when he arrived at the Eastman Hotel he found his teammates up in arms. “They seemed to be money mad and claimed that their contracts were no good and that nothing could stop seven or eight from jumping at the Federal League money,” reported a Boston newspaper.

Most anxious to jump were pitcher Dutch Leonard and second baseman Steve Yerkes, but Federal League president James Gilmore sent the following telegram to McAleese, staying at the Arlington Hotel in Hot Springs under an assumed name: “Never mind the others; get Ray Collins by all means.” Newspapers reported that the Federal League had offered Collins a three-year contract at $5,000 per year, with a signing bonus of $7,500, and that he was slated to pitch for the Brooklyn Tip-Tops.

Ray sought advice from his older sister Genevieve’s husband, Dr. Frank Finney, a physician who lived in Burke, New York:

Since wrote letter to you Boston accepted terms of mine they once turned down. I didn’t write them between time. Does that constitute contract? Lannin comes Tuesday. Would you threaten to quit should Lannin refuse to give Federals’ terms? Wire.

Finney wired back on March 10: “You have made no contract, make Lannin meet Federal terms or satisfy you.” The next day he wired again: “No harm to Lillian, Genevieve talked with mother, all favor Feds.”

That same day Lannin arrived at Hot Springs, issuing a proclamation that Collins had 24 hours to sign with Boston or leave the team. “As late as 4 o’clock this afternoon Collins was called to the long-distance telephone and talked with President Gilmore of the Federal League, who is at Shreveport, La.,” one Boston paper reported. But Ray met with Lannin and Carrigan for an hour before dinner, and when they emerged they announced that Ray had signed a two-year contract.

That night, according to the Boston American, Ray walked around the lobby of the Eastman Hotel “as happy as a schoolboy starting a holiday.” He issued the following statement:

I am happy now that I have signed to play for the Red Sox for the next two years. I like Boston and its people and wouldn’t like to play in any other city, although I would probably have joined the Federal League if I had not signed with the Red Sox.

I will receive a much bigger salary with the Red Sox this year than I got in 1913. Just what my salary for the next two years will be I prefer to keep between Mr. Lannin and myself.

Though he refused to disclose exact terms, one Boston paper was probably correct in reporting that the contract called for $5,400 per year.

Ray’s signing was a tough blow for the Federal League. “Collins is nothing if not deliberate and shrewd,” reported one newspaper. “When the Sox saw him turn down a remarkably tempting offer from the Feds, involving the placing in his hand of a big bunch of advance coin, they suddenly lost confidence in the validity of the Feds.”

With the illness of Smoky Joe Wood, the Red Sox expected Ray Collins to step up and become the ace of their pitching staff in 1914, and that is exactly what he did. His six shutouts ranked fourth in the American League that season, and he was one of only three AL pitchers to reach the 20-win plateau. He picked up his 19th and 20th victories on September 22, 1914, by pitching complete games in both ends of a doubleheader at Detroit’s Navin Field. Collins won the first game, 5-3, and the nightcap, 5-0.

It’s no surprise that Ray’s incredible feat came against the Tigers; he seemed to own Ty Cobb, Detroit’s temperamental superstar. He once walked a batter intentionally to pitch to Cobb, and the tactic worked when Ty grounded weakly back to the mound. The Georgia Peach once said that Collins gave him as much trouble as any pitcher he ever faced. He attributed his difficulty to Ray’s peculiar windup, which caused hitters to “swing at his motion.”

Nonetheless, Collins and Cobb were friendly, and during one road trip to Detroit Ray and Larry Gardner were invited to Cobb’s home for dinner. “We went and had a nice time,” Ray remembered. The psychopathic Southerner had a genuine affection for the two educated Vermonters, whom he considered his social equals. In a rambling letter dated September 17, 1958, he wrote the following to Gardner:

Nothing would please me more than to have a few days with you and your friends in your home town amongst those real people up there that I know of and their history so well, you being such a true representative. I should tell you now though you must have for years known it so well that I liked you, also Ray, also your kind no matter where they lived. We were reared properly.

In 1915, because the Boston Red Sox were in the enviable position of having too many good pitchers, Collins was relegated to the bullpen. As early as June, newspapers began speculating that he was soon to retire; one even printed a false rumor that he had purchased a hotel in Rutland. When he pitched a two-hitter to beat Cleveland on July 14, the Red Sox players reportedly were pleased to see Ray return to his old form, but the performance turned out to be an aberration. Starting only nine games, the fewest since his rookie year, Ray finished at 4-7 with an abysmal 4.30 ERA.

What caused the sudden downturn in Ray Collins’s career? The newspapers make no mention of injury. Perhaps it was just a matter of the Red Sox having better (and younger) pitchers: Rube Foster (20-8), Ernie Shore (19-8), Dutch Leonard (14-7), and a 22-year-old lefty named Babe Ruth (18-6) made up the best rotation in baseball. (Incidentally, as an educated man of strong morals, Collins did not care for Ruth’s antics: “Ruth would drink to excess, party all night, get no sleep and arrive late for games,” Ray Jr. remembered his father telling him. Still, Ray Sr. was amazed by how well Ruth could play under those circumstances.)

Collins did not pitch a single inning in the 1915 World Series as Boston defeated the Philadelphia Phillies four games to one. After the season the Red Sox expected him to take a cut in pay to $3,500. Rather than suffer that humiliation, on January 3, 1916, Collins announced his retirement from professional baseball, stating simply that he was “discouraged by his failure to show old-time form.” He was only 29 years old.

After announcing his retirement Ray Collins was offered a position at a New York bank. With his college and baseball contacts, economics degree, and keen intellect, the job appeared to suit him well. Instead he chose to return to his family’s Colchester farm – “the worst move he ever made,” according to son Ray Jr., who was physician.

Located, ironically, just north of Poor Farm Road, the Collins Farm was hilly with marshy meadows better suited to growing rush-like swale grass than hay or corn. Because he didn’t own a tractor at first, Ray farmed in sweat-intensive, 19th-century fashion, walking behind a horse-drawn plow. For a long time the farmhouse lacked indoor plumbing; it had an outhouse and the family used the Sears catalogue as toilet paper. Lillian was not used to that sort of lifestyle, but she endured it without complaint. Nor did she raise a fuss when Ray’s mother moved back to the farm to live with the family for the next 22 years.

For years the Collinses lived without an automobile, and some still remember Ray’s forays into town on a horse-drawn wagon or sleigh: 95-year-old Walter Munson (grandson of Warren Munson, second-in-command of the Colchester Company that helped repel Pickett’s Charge at Gettysburg) remembered playing “rounders” in Colchester Village with a sawdust-filled ball when Collins, on his way to the creamery, pulled a brand-new American League baseball from his overalls and tossed it to the boys.

Not every minute was a struggle. On hot summer nights Ray took his children to Nourses Beach to go swimming. On Sundays the family went to Colchester’s United Church, then picnicked in the afternoon in upstate New York or at Lake Willoughby. They participated in community silo fillings, the men from local farms banding together to help one another fill their silos with corn, followed by a common supper in the barn-raising tradition. Sometimes Ray took his sons to University of Vermont basketball games, always arriving late after the evening milking. They stood in the back of the crowded gym until someone invariably recognized Ray and ushered them to courtside seats.

By the early 1920s the knack for pitching that had left Ray in 1915 started to come back. Larry Mayforth, a former Vermont catcher then working as athletic director at the college, used to come out to the farm a couple of nights each week. After supper Ray went out front of the farmhouse and pitched to him until dark. On weekends they drove up to the Montreal suburbs, where they received $100 per game to form a battery. Ray also pitched occasionally for local town teams and in university alumni games. Sometimes the competition was even tougher.

One such occasion was July 4, 1922, when 35-year-old Ray Collins took the mound at Centennial Field against the Brooklyn Royal Giants, a black team considered one of the finest of the era. Locked up in a pitchers’ duel with Jesse Hubbard, Ray held the Giants scoreless for 12 innings and did not walk a single batter, but in the 13th he finally gave up three runs. “Collins showed the fans that he has not lost the pitching arm, and the head to go with it, which made him at one time one of the most famous twirlers in the major leagues,” the Free Press wrote. After the game, several of the Royal Giants were boarding their bus when they saw Collins in the Centennial Field parking lot. Unaware that the man who had just pitched so effectively was a former major leaguer, they approached him and asked, “Man, where did you come from?”

Several local legends developed about the ex-Red Sox star. Colchester resident Harley Monta claimed that Collins would go into his barn on rainy days and pitch baseballs through a small hole in the wall. Eben Wolcott said he heard that Collins could stand at one end of Sunderland Hollow and throw a baseball to the other. Stories like that are flattering but untrue, said Ray Jr. But he did remember one true incident that occurred at the Champlain Valley Fair in 1924. In a cruel forerunner of the dunking stool, a midway booth advertised “Hit the Nigger, Win a Cigar.” An African-American man with his head stuck through a hole in the wall waited for someone to throw a medium-soft ball at his head. The crowd urged the former major leaguer with the famous control to take his shot, but Ray refused. Then a man holding real, hard baseballs prepared to throw at the African-American. Collins became enraged. He grabbed the man’s shirt with both hands, lifted him off the ground, looked him in the eye and said, “You leave him alone!”

After a couple of seasons as a part-time assistant, Collins took over as Vermont’s head baseball coach on January 19, 1925. Following a successful Southern swing, highlighted by a meeting with President Coolidge at the White House, the Green and Gold enjoyed a memorable season. Road victories over Syracuse and Colgate caused a bonfire celebration on campus for the first time in years, and on Decoration Day more than 6,000 people showed up at Centennial Field for a game against Dartmouth. At the age of 38, Collins appeared to have finally found a position that suited him. But the coaching position did not pay enough to make up for his time away from the farm, so after the 1926 season he gave up the job.

The harder Ray threw himself into farming, it seemed, the more his luck turned against him. He used some of the money he had earned in baseball to plant an apple orchard, but the trees failed to take. In 1927 a half-dozen of his cows tested positive for tuberculosis in the state’s mandatory testing program; only after Ray took the cows to St. Albans and had them butchered did he learn that the test results were false positives. Then on October 22, 1929, a spark from a blower blade ignited dry grass and Ray’s barn burned to the ground. The barn had been equipped with state-of-the-art milking machines and its loss was estimated at $15,000. Unfortunately, the fire occurred before Ray had a chance to buy sufficient insurance. He was forced to cash in his life insurance to build its replacement.

Ray Jr. remembered his father lying down on the couch after dinner; with a long career in medicine behind him, he could only guess at the pain his father silently endured. The stress and hard work gradually wore down the man who twice pitched and won both ends of a doubleheader. During the winter of 1929-30 Ray came down with a severe strep infection. His physicians identified the germ under their microscopes but couldn’t kill it because antibiotics hadn’t been invented. They told Ray that either his immune system would kill the germ or it would kill him. Months of weakness and delirium later, Ray won.

For more than two decades the Collins family managed to scrape by. To make ends meet, Ray and Lillian took in travelers in a precursor of today’s bed and breakfasts, serving meals and talking baseball with their guests. They also supplemented their income by operating a sugarbush, wresting sap from a stand of sugar maples a mile north of the farmhouse. Ray lugged the sap buckets, a hired man boiled the sap and Lillian made and sold a variety of maple products. Eventually the Collinses won an award from the Vermont Maple Sugar Industry.

During World War II Ray chaired the town draft board and the War Bond drive. Though he probably could have secured an agricultural exemption for one of his sons, both went into harm’s way, serving with distinction and then returning to successful professional careers. Ray Sr. couldn’t carry a rifle, but he could drive a tractor – barely, due to severe arthritis in his hip from years of strenuous labor, but well enough, especially since all the young men were gone – so he hayed and plowed his neighbors’ fields, often until midnight. What drove him to sit his nearly-crippled body onto a tractor night after night, after the sun had set? Money and neighborliness, to some degree, but one can’t help but imagine that he also felt a sense of obligation to the hundreds of young men his draft board sent into the armed forces. Ray Collins, Home Front Warrior, was quietly doing his bit, and then some.

Ray Jr. remembered his father lamenting bitterly about being “peons” and living like poor people. Almost all the clothing the family wore, like Ray himself, had seen better days. Yet neighbors had no idea that Ray Collins was struggling financially. To them he was a pillar in the community. His leadership credentials were impeccable: college-educated, well-traveled, well-connected in several levels of society, a star athlete, physically imposing. From 1922, when Winooski split off from Colchester, until the 1960s, when the IBM influx to the area occurred, an oligarchy of civic-minded Republican farmers represented Colchester in the state Legislature. Ray took his turn in the Legislature from 1943 to 1946, serving on the agriculture committee and as chairman of the highway traffic committee. Looking for better prices for his milk, he co-founded the Burlington milk cooperative creamery that later became H.P. Hood and served as chairman of the county agricultural stabilization board for many years.

In 1953 Ray was named Colchester’s first zoning administrator, which required lots of measuring property. Ray and Lillian were a team; he would get out of the car and hold up one end of the tape measure, while Lillian did the walking with the other end. He also served on the school and cemetery boards. For many years he was moderator of town meetings, and he was always the foreman during his frequent jury duty. Longtime Burlington attorney Joe Wool told Ray Jr. that he loved seeing Ray Sr. as foreman because he knew everything would be done right.

Finally the arthritis got so bad that Ray could no longer operate the family farm, so around 1960 he sold it to Ray Jr. By the time of Fenway Park’s 50th anniversary in 1962, Ray Collins needed two canes just to walk. But he had missed Fenway’s 1912 opening due to a knee injury, and this time he was intent on attending. “My legs aren’t what they used to be,” he told the Boston Globe weeks before the big day, “so I’ve been out to the airport finding out how I can climb the staircase to get into the plane. I’ve been kind of training for my trip to Boston and getting accustomed to going up the staircase is part of it.” On Saturday, April 21, 1962, Collins was one of nine members of the 1912 team to make it back for the celebration (the others were Larry Gardner, Bill Carrigan, Joe Wood, Harry Hooper, Duffy Lewis, Hugh Bedient, Steve Yerkes, and Olaf Henriksen). They saw Boston’s Don Schwall defeat the Detroit Tigers, 4-3, despite home runs by Norm Cash and Al Kaline.

Collins was an active alumnus of the University of Vermont. During the 1950s he served on UVM’s board of trustees, presiding over the school’s transition from private to public university. Every year during reunions Ray hosted a Sunday brunch for the Class of ’09, and 10 or so classmates made their way out to the farm to feast on fried eggs, ham, pancakes, and Ray’s famous maple syrup. It was during one of those breakfasts in 1969 that he suffered a minor stroke. His condition gradually worsened until he died at Fanny Allen Hospital at 4 p.m. on January 9, 1970. He was buried in the Village Cemetery in Colchester.

Respect for athletic success goes only so far, and many stars squander it. Ray Collins used it as capital to serve his town, county, and alma mater. Maybe returning to Colchester and taking over the family farm wasn’t such a bad move after all.

Sources

A version of this biography originally appeared in Green Mountain Boys of Summer: Vermonters in the Major Leagues 1882-1993, edited by Tom Simon (New England Press, 2000).

In researching this article, the author made use of the subject’s file at the National Baseball Hall of Fame Library, the Tom Shea Collection, the archives at the University of Vermont, and several local newspapers. In addition, the author wishes to thank Guy Page for his research assistance.

Born on March 19, 1884, in Dayton, Ohio, Arthur Clyde Engle was the youngest of three boys born to Isaac and Lina (Bitzer) Engle. Isaac was the chief engineer of the plant that powered the Dayton City Railway’s electric trolleys. After gaining local baseball acclaim in and around his hometown, Clyde, as he was known to friends and census-takers throughout his life, entered the professional ranks in 1903 as a pitcher with the Nashville Volunteers of the two-year-old Southern Association.

In 1904, he played 15 undistinguished games in the outfield with the Dayton Veterans of the Class B Central League before signing with the Augusta (Georgia) Tourists of the South Atlantic League as a center fielder for the rest of that year. In Augusta, he joined several teammates who would go on to the major leagues and their own attachments to fame and infamy, including Eddie Cicotte of the 1919 Black Sox Scandal and the irascible Ty Cobb.

During the 1905 season, Engle moved from the Augusta outfield to second base and, with a.265 average, became one of the top batters on the team. In fact, he might have made it to the majors at the end of that year if it hadn’t been for Cobb. The Tigers had been trying to choose between Cobb and Engle and they were leaning toward Engle because Tigers manager Bill Armour thought Cobb had “a screw loose.” But Engle’s hitting waned in the late summer heat while Cobb’s soared and, on top of that, the rest of the team was, not surprisingly, not enjoying Cobb’s pugnacious temperament. And so, in August 1905, Cobb was sent to the majors, and the next season Engle moved to Newark of the Eastern League.

Engle made progress in his three seasons with the Newark Sailors. He gained experience, playing 125 to 141 games each season, and lifted his batting average from .216 in 1906 to .259 in 1908. Near the end of that run, Engle caught the eye of New York Highlanders manager George Stallings and was signed for the 1909 season. Although he had spent most of 1908 in Newark at third base and shortstop, he often told reporters he didn’t like the infield. He was happy when playing left and center fields during spring training in Macon, Georgia. But Stallings tried him in the infield – at second and third as well, with good results. Engle had earned the opportunity to play major-league ball.

In the Highlanders’ season opener in Washington, Engle started his first official major-league game where he preferred to play: left field. According to the April 13, 1909, New York Times, 15,000 fans witnessed Engle in top fielding form:

“The fielding feature of the game was a remarkable one-handed catch by Left Fielder Engle on a long fly from Street’s bat in the third inning. There were three men on the bases and only one out at the time. Engle ran to the edge of the crowd in left, and, as the ball was sailing over his head, jumped and grabbed the ball in his ungloved hand. As Engle disappeared into the mixture of arms and legs he held to the ball.”

Engle’s inaugural performance with a fly ball was not the only foreshadowing of his later claim to fame. He appeared in 135 games, playing left and center fields, and his .278 average was third best on the Highlanders. The right-handed batter drove in 71 runs, tops on the team. At under 5-feet-10 and weighing 190 pounds, he even earned the nickname Hack for his resemblance to the stocky strongman and professional wrestler Georg Hackenschmidt. But in one of his last appearances of the season, Engle made an error of nearly Snodgrassian proportions.

“Engle’s Muff Dazes Hilltop Fandom” proclaimed the headline in the October 1, 1909, New York Times. There were two men out and none on base in the top of the ninth, with the Yankees leading the visiting St. Louis Browns, 4-2. Second baseman Hobe Ferris popped an easy fly ball. Engle was so sure of catching it that he added some flourishes to his performance—what the Times called a “Hogarthian curve.” Hilarity ensued:

“Hack’s feeling of sureness was shared by his comrades and even most of his opponents. Almost all the players on the diamond and the benches began their dash for clubhouse before the ball, high in the air, quivered in its turn for the descent. Chase sped so swiftly toward his shower bath and street clothes that he was close to the clubhouse gate ere the ball came to earth. In addition, at least a tithe of the 1,000 spectators spraddled themselves across the diamond in the customary pursuit of the players. But, alas! The game was not at an end. No indeed! Down came the ball—down, down, shooting straight and true toward Engle’s upraised hands and then—why down, down, down it kept going, right between those hands, until it bounced on the waiting lawn. Engle was so dazed by his misplay he didn’t know what to do next.”

The Browns went on to tie the game, which was then called on account of darkness.

New York sold Engle’s contract to the Boston Red Sox early in 1910 season, on May 10. He was initially signed as a third baseman, but as he told one reporter, “I play wherever they put me and do the best I can.” That perspective served him well; over the next 4½ years with Boston, he played every position except pitcher and catcher. The trade put him on a ballclub that would win the pennant a couple of years later.

In 1910, Engle mostly split his time between third base and second base, although he also played seven games at shortstop and 18 games covering various outfield positions. He hit for a .264 average. He boosted that a bit in 1911, to .270.

The 1912 Red Sox had such a strong infield that Engle was relegated to a utility role and appeared in only 58 games, hitting .234. He was often used as a pinch-hitter and that is the role he played in the 1912 World Series against the New York Giants. In the sixth game, Engle stepped in for Buck O’ Brien and hit a double off future Hall of Famer Rube Marquard, driving in the Red Sox’ only runs in that loss. In the eighth and final game (there had been a tie game, and the teams were tied at three games each), Engle faced another future Hall of Fame inductee on the mound—the almost mythical Christy Mathewson. In the bottom of the 10th inning, with the Giants in the lead 2-1, Engle stepped up to home plate to bat for pitcher Joe Wood. Engle lofted a routine fly ball into the outfield and center-fielder Fred Snodgrass called for it, or, if you believe Snodgrass’s later account, was asked to get it by left-fielder Red Murray. Snodgrass caught the ball, but dropped it before throwing it to Murray to get it to the infield. Engle made it to second base and the “$30,000 muff” went down in history (the difference between the payout to the losers and the winners of the series was $29,514).

The mistake didn’t directly lose the game and, if Snodgrass had caught it, it would not have won the game either. In fact, Snodgrass made what all commentators considered an excellent running catch on the next batter, Harry Hooper. Engle moved to third on that play. Steve Yerkes walked. And the blame stuck, as another blunder occurred. First baseman Fred Merkle (already carrying the burden of a bad play in an important game), catcher Chief Myers, and Mathewson let a foul ball from Tris Speaker’s bat fall between them. Speaker then slammed a ball into right field to send Engle home with the tying run. Two batters later, a sacrifice fly by Larry Gardner allowed Yerkes to score the winning run. The world championship belonged to the Red Sox.

One wonders if Engle might have been readying himself for the second act of his baseball career­—as a coach—while he toiled for Boston throughout 1912 and 1913. During Red Sox spring training in Hot Springs, Arkansas, Engle was put in charge of the Yannigans, whipping the rookies and second-string players into shape. During the World Series, he was found coaching third base. His facility in this role did not go unnoticed. Legendary Boston Globe sportswriter and editor Tim Murnane wrote:

“I find that Engle is a fine student of the game. Last year he took a deep interest in the work of Harry Hooper, and convinced the great young player that a heavier bat than he was using would help his batting. In fact, Hooper’s remarkable improvement at the bat was a revelation to the members of the American League.”

In 1913, Engle’s fielding was just above average for American League first basemen that year, at .987, and he made the third most errors, at 17. But from a batting perspective, it was Engle’s best season in the majors; playing 133 games at first base, he batted.289 with 17 doubles, 12 triples, and two home runs in 143 games overall. Perhaps as a result of his success, Engle bargained hard for his 1914 contract. Throughout his career, Engle was one of the first players to sign his contract in the offseason; he was always among the first to show up at spring training. But in the winter before the 1914 season, rumors circulated that Engle might jump to the new Federal League. A bit of drama played out on February 12, 1914, in New York, according to the next day’s Boston Globe.

“Engle reached New York this afternoon at 4:30, on his way to a conference with Pres. Gilmore of the Federal League, but was met at the depot by Pres. J.J. Lannin of the Boston Red Sox and escorted to the Biltmore Hotel and, after a short conference, Clyde signed his contract and said he was delighted to be with the Red Sox once more.”

Engle was again assigned as first baseman. By late May, rumors were already circulating about the possible sale of Engle back to New York. In August, after just 59 appearances and one of the lowest batting averages of his career (.194), Engle was released by the Red Sox and joined the Buffalo team of the Federal League at third base. He raised his batting above .250 and rejoined Buffalo for the 1915 season, playing mostly in the outfield and ending the season at .261. At the end of the season, Engle considered a university coaching job, but decided to go another year with Buffalo. Unfortunately for him, the league folded before the 1916 season could begin and Engle was set adrift (although his contract was required to be paid in full).

The Cleveland Indians signed Engle, but he played just 11 games; he took advantage of the time and helped do some first-base coaching while there. This included a series of games where he was later accused of tipping off batters as to which pitch the Red Sox were throwing by reading the signals of his former teammates. After his short sojourn with Cleveland, Engle finished his season with the Topeka, Kansas, team of the Western League (Class A), taking on the team manager duties while batting .290 and playing third base. When Topeka left the Western League, Engle’s career in professional baseball ended.

During World War I, Engle joined the shipbuilding effort at the Fore River Shipyard in Quincy, Massachusetts. He played for the shipyard team while there. In 1919, he took over as baseball coach at the University of Vermont for a year and then joined his old Red Sox teammate Smoky Joe Wood at Yale. For the next 18 years, Engle coached the freshman squad at Yale while Wood coached the varsity.

Throughout his Yale years, Engle kept in touch with his friends in professional baseball, attending old timers games and doing some scouting work for Toronto and other teams. He died from a heart attack on December 26, 1939, at the age of 55 at Boston’s Lenox Hotel. He had been divorced from his wife, Natalie Miller, several years earlier and no children were listed in his death notices. His body was sent home to his brother in Dayton for burial.

When Snodgrass died 35 years after Engle, his obituary in the New York Times was headlined: “Fred Snodgrass, 86, Dead; Ball Player Muffed 1912 Fly.” Although the error featured prominently in Engle’s obituary, it was a gentler sub-head: “CLYDE ENGLE, 54; EX-YANKEE PLAYER; Baseball Coach of Freshmen Team at Yale Is Victim of a Heart Attack ALSO WITH THE RED SOX Gained Wide Notice in 1912 World Series for Hitting Fly Snodgrass Missed.”

Sources

In addition to the sources cited in the text, the author consulted US Census, military draft, birth, marriage, and divorce records via Ancestry.com; statistical data from Baseball-Reference.com and Baseball-Almanac.com; and contemporaneous reports from the following publications: The Sporting News, Boston Journal, Kansas City Star, Hartford Courant, Augusta Chronicle, Grand Forks Herald, and Sporting Life. The anecdote about Cobb’s time with Engle in Augusta is from Al Stump’s Cobb: A Biography and The Detroit Tigers by Frederick Lieb.

But Enosburg Falls fights to reclaim lost glory. In recent years an energetic village manager and board of aldermen have spruced up Lincoln Park, the quintessential village square, with its bandstand and fountain dating from 1897. One recent addition is a Vermont historical site marker commemorating the birthplace of Larry Gardner. A Civil War hero? An innovator of farming techniques? Hardly. Long considered the greatest baseball player to come out of Vermont, Gardner was the regular third baseman on four World Series championship teams, the Boston Red Sox of 1912, 1915, and 1916 and the Cleveland Indians of 1920.

Back in Larry Gardner’s day, Enosburg Falls was one of the most prosperous villages in Vermont. Dairy farming was more lucrative then, but the chief source of the village’s prosperity was the world-famous Dr. B.J. Kendall Company, manufacturer of a liniment called Kendall’s Spavin Cure. An alleged remedy for a disease that affects horses’ ankle joints, Spavin Cure became hugely profitable in the 1870s when the horse was the keystone of transportation.

Economic opportunity is undoubtedly what attracted Delbert Murancie Gardner to Enosburg Falls in 1872. The son of an Episcopal minister, Delbert came from St. Armand in the Eastern Townships of Quebec. He sought his fortune less than 20 miles from St. Armand, establishing himself in a shop near the Enosburg Falls railroad depot as a “dealer in groceries, provisions, dry goods, Yankee notions, etc.” Five years later, Delbert married a local girl, 18-year-old Nettie Lawrence, whose family claimed distant connection to George Washington and a great-grandfather who fought in the Battle of Bunker Hill. Delbert and Nettie had a son, Dwight Murancie, then a daughter, Glenna Maude. Their third and final child, William Lawrence, better known as Larry, was born on May 13, 1886.

Larry’s childhood days in Enosburg Falls were among his happiest. He sang tenor in the school quartet and spent many evenings playing guitar with an Italian storekeeper who accompanied him on the mandolin, the beginnings of a lifelong love of music. During the winter he skated, snowshoed and hunted, and at an early age developed a passion for fishing that lasted his entire life.

But Larry’s chief talent lay in team sports – or what little opportunity there was for organized athletics at tiny Enosburg Falls High School. “For lack of an organized leader, not much was done at football, although we had good material,” he wrote in his column in The Echo, a student magazine. “Basketball has created some excitement among the girls, but as yet the boys have not formed a team.” Larry captained the EFHS hockey club. But “the most popular sport with the townspeople as well as the school,” he reported, was baseball. The first records of Gardner’s diamond career date from 1902, his freshman year. In his junior year he pitched every inning of every game and batted an even .400. A 7-4 record prompted The Echo to claim that “we are the champion high school team in Franklin County.” With five starters returning, expectations ran high for Larry’s senior year.

In that season of 1905, Larry Gardner rose to what stardom a small town near the Canadian border could offer. The campaign opened with a disappointing 5-3 loss to Brigham Academy, but Larry brought the team back by pitching three consecutive shutouts. On May 20 he was finally scored on but struck out 13 in a 7-2 win. Two days later Larry pitched against Montpelier Seminary, and in 1943 he told a reporter that “of all the baseball I’ve ever been connected with, this particular game stands out most vividly in my mind.” Thirty-eight years after the game he recalled its details:

Going into the ninth inning we were leading 1 to 0. “Montpelier Sem” was at bat with bases full and one out. I really was in a tough spot then. The man at bat knocked a hard one that I fielded. I forced the man out at home. The catcher threw to get the man out at first, making a double play and ending the ball game. I can tell you, the men at the corner drug store talked over this game for weeks.

Enosburg Falls celebrated Gardner’s fourth shutout of the season with a band concert, bonfire, and promenade, the Montpelier boys remaining overnight to enjoy the festivities.

Larry tossed his fifth shutout in seven games against Newport High School on May 27. More than two weeks later he closed the season with a 10-1 win over Newport, which “would have been a shutout, but for a wild throw in the first which let in Newport’s only run.” The team’s 7-1 record, according to the Enosburg Standard, clinched the high school championship of Vermont. “The local team has worked hard, has played clean ball, and has made a great 1905 baseball record for Enosburg High School,” it proclaimed, “and is entitled to all the honor and credit which the state championship gives them.” In eight games on the mound Larry Gardner yielded only eight runs, the majority of which most likely were unearned. He was no weak hitter, either, finishing with a batting average of .432, second-highest on the team.

The Missisquoi River cuts through the heart of Enosburg Falls, providing a summer playground for the children of the village. In 1904 Larry Gardner wrote an essay about it that was published in The Echo:

A DARING ADVENTURE

It was one of those warm, pleasant days of July when nearly every youngster of the village was down at the river, swimming. They were doing all sorts of dangerous tricks, but none so dangerous as the one I had in mind to do that afternoon if I could get one of the boys to go with me.

It was an easy matter to persuade one of the lads, even more adventurous than myself, to fall in with my plan; so after spending the early part of the afternoon at the river, we left our companions and started off.

The plan was to try to climb a steep rock just below the bridge. So far as we knew no one had ever scaled it, and a dog that had been thrown off it had been instantly killed. The rock was on the very edge of the river, and extended straight up into the air for about one hundred feet. The water below was about three feet deep, out of which protruded huge bowlders and sharp fragments of rocks.

It was difficult starting because the rock bulged out, making a shelf about six feet from its foot. I helped my companion upon this shelf and he pulled me after him. The rest of the way was straight up. There was once in a while a little crevice, which helped us along, but progress was slow. We had gone up over half way when we came to a crumbly-looking part of the rock. I put the fingers of one hand into a crevice and held myself up by the other. I then started to pull myself up, when a rock broke away and came tumbling down, landing upon my left hand. As this was the only hand with which I was hanging on, I almost let go. Had I done so, I should surely have rolled down with the rock, which, quicker than a flash of lightning, went splashing into the water beneath. But a small rock had rolled out of the way, which gave us a good foot-hold; and as the rest of the way was easy, we soon reached the top.

I have never attempted to climb the rock since; but I have often stood on its top and wondered how I ever had the nerve to attempt to scale its dark surface.

In prophesying the fates of the next year’s editorial staff in that same issue, a clairvoyant schoolmate wrote: “This is Mr. Lawrence Gardner, the future athletic editor of The Echo. Fame is sure to be his, if he isn’t killed first.”

The summer following Larry’s graduation from high school, four of the area’s semipro teams banded together to form the Franklin County League. Larry’s older teammates appointed him assistant captain of the Enosburg Falls team – called the Spavin Curers or Liniment Makers by local newspapers. The team from St. Albans was known as the Railroaders because the town was the home of the Central Vermont Railway. Swanton was called either the Fish Hatchers, because it was home to a fish hatchery, or the Bullpout, after the gamefish. Newspapermen dubbed the Richford team the Chinese Spies because the border town contained a US Customs detention center for illegal Chinese immigrants.

In a season marred by contract jumping, frequent protests, and a brawl that resulted in criminal charges against participating players, Larry Gardner stood out as the Franklin County League’s top all-around talent. He played shortstop and pitched, and after one outing the St. Albans Messenger coined him a new nickname: “‘Larry’ Gardner, the child marvel from Enosburg Falls, pitched rings around the local baseball players yesterday at the local league grounds.” From that point on Franklin County newspapers frequently referred to Gardner as the child marvel. Despite his heroics, the Spavin Curers (12-10) finished in third place, two games behind arch-rival Richford (15-9).

Though the rough-and-tumble circuit lasted only that one season, it had a lasting impact on Larry Gardner’s life. Several “ringers” from the University of Vermont baseball team played in the Franklin County League, and they got him interested in attending UVM. In late September 1905, the 19-year-old Gardner became one of 82 men and 30 women, only 16 of whom were from out of state, to make up UVM’s Class of 1909. In those days a year’s tuition and expenses at UVM could run as high as $350, but with a loan from brother Dwight, who was working in Ohio as a traveling salesman for the Dr. B.J. Kendall Company, Larry scraped together the money. Even friends helped defray the enormous expense; the Saturday before he left for Burlington, 25 of them met at his home and presented him with a $5 gold piece as a farewell remembrance.

Larry majored in chemistry at UVM, his goal to go out west to the gold mines and work as an assayer. According to The Ariel, he was the “peerless songster of the chem. lab., and because he is very mischievous Nate has required him to change his seat quite often in lectures.” (Nate was Professor Nathan Merrill, dean of the chemistry department, who had been teaching at UVM since the year before Gardner was born.) Larry was popular among his classmates; The Ariel called him the “‘Sunny Jim’ of the class” and stated that “[his] presence is a sure cure for the ‘blues.’”

Though freshmen baseball players typically played for UVM’s second team or their class team for at least a year, Larry was one of two first-year students to make the varsity – the other being fellow future major-leaguer Ray Collins. That season UVM christened a new baseball field, called Centennial Field because the purchase of the land on which it was built was announced on July 6, 1904, at the conclusion of a three-day celebration of the 100th anniversary of UVM’s first graduating class. After two years of clearing and grading, Centennial was finally ready for the home opener against Maine on April 17, 1906.

Batting leadoff and making his debut at third base (he had played right field in the opener down at Harvard), Gardner made an out in his first at-bat, hence becoming the first UVM batter in Centennial Field history. Still he managed a pair of hits and his second stolen base of the season in a 10-4 victory. It was an auspicious opening for the new field, the Free Press reporting that “attendance was good, the cheering enthusiastic and the day ideal for base ball barring a bit too much breeze.” Vermont’s vaunted freshmen distinguished themselves: “Fielding features were contributed by Gardner and Collins, new men this year in the varsity line-up.”

The largest crowd of the 1906 season climbed college hill on May 1 to take in the game against Holy Cross, winner of eight in a row before losing at Dartmouth on the way to Burlington. Four players from that Holy Cross team went on to the majors: Within 10 weeks catcher Bill Carrigan and left fielder Jack Hoey joined the Boston Red Sox; Jack Barry signed with the Philadelphia A’s in 1908 and become the shortstop in Connie Mack’s famous “$100,000 Infield”; and first baseman John Flynn, who had played in the Northern League in 1904, smashed six home runs as a Pittsburgh Pirates rookie in 1910. With Larry Gardner at third base and Ray Collins in right field for Vermont, the Holy Cross game featured six future major leaguers.

Centennial Field’s bleachers were filled to overflowing with students shouting themselves hoarse. Under freshmen rules, all first-year students were required to attend “smokers” in the gymnasium to learn the college yells and songs. Those rules also mandated attendance at home athletic contests – hardly necessary since games were considered major social events. On this day the Holy Cross “Big Four” were held to three hits in 15 at-bats as UVM won easily, 9-3. Afterwards students thrilled to the traditional tolling of the college bell in the Old Mill belfry.

Then as now, UVM students knew how to celebrate. They marched 300-strong down College Street headed by the college drum corps. When they arrived at the train station, they gave a rousing send-off to Gardner and his teammates, who took the 8:15 train to Rutland where they spent the night en route to the next day’s game against Williams College. The mob had achieved its main objective, but it was having too much fun to disband. The Free Press described the rest of its activities:

On the return march from the depot, a happy thought struck the boys — they must have a bonfire to finish up with. What better fuel than the unsightly shed which was annexed to the “hash house,” so long an eyesore to those who love to see the campus kept beautiful. The shack was quickly demolished, the debris was carried well out in the center of the field and the fatal torch applied. The boys gathered around the big fire and spent the remainder of the evening in singing songs, cracking jokes, and telling stories, breaking up about 10:30 o’clock well pleased with their celebration.

After batting safely in each of his first 10 games as a collegian, Larry Gardner led the UVM team with a .350 batting average. The rest of his season was a disaster. In his last seven games, he batted .148 and committed 10 of his season’s total of 15 errors. On a team that combined for an .896 fielding percentage, Gardner’s .769 was worst among regulars. For the season he batted .269, tied for fourth on the squad. On the positive side, he did steal a team-leading nine bases.

In Gardner’s era, playing independent baseball during summers was a legal way for college players to defray school year expenses. Tom Hays, the UVM coach, was also in charge of stocking Burlington’s team in the Northern League, probably the top independent circuit in the country. It was a tradition to announce the players’ names at Burlington’s Base Ball Carnival, an annual event to raise money for uniforms and equipment. “[T]he reading of the names at the fair last evening was heartily received,” the Free Press reported in June 1906, but the last name read, “to be given a trial as utility man,” drew a particularly hearty reception. It was Larry Gardner, “whose brilliant plays for Vermont during his first year in college have attracted much attention.”

For the summer Larry boarded at 138 Colchester Avenue, sharing the house with Doc Hazelton, Burlington’s veteran first baseman, and himself a future big leaguer. Other teammates who went on to the majors included catcher Bob Higgins, a former Brown University standout who played parts of three seasons with the Cleveland Naps and Brooklyn Superbas; pitcher Ray Tift, Higgins’ batterymate at Brown who appeared in four games for the New York Highlanders in 1907; and Harry Pattee, who stole 24 bases in 74 games in his best season with the Brooklyn Superbas in 1908. In all, no less than 25 former or future major leaguers played in the four-team Northern League in 1906, but even in that heady company Gardner held his own. He became Burlington’s regular right fielder and batted .296 as the team walked away with the Northern League’s last pennant.

The following spring Larry received his first attention from a major-league scout. George Winter, a pitcher who had twice won 16 games in a season for the Boston Americans, was married to a woman from Burlington and lived at 70 Front Street during the offseason. To pass the time before spring training, Winter watched the UVM team work out in the cage and dubbed Gardner a prospect. Larry played shortstop for UVM in 1907. He was batting .400 after 11 games when an “inexcusable accident” occurred at Centennial Field in the third inning of a game against Massachusetts Agricultural College on May 17:

“O’Grady knocked a high fly into short left field and Higgins and Gardner both went after it, no coaching being evident. The men came together with terrific force, and both were stretched out almost senseless. Drs. Cloudman and Beecher took the cases in hand and it was discovered that Gardner had sustained a broken collar bone, while Higgins, though not considered dangerously hurt, was reported last night to be delirious and in a more serious condition than Gardner.”

When it was announced that Larry would miss the remainder of the season, UVM’s student newspaper, The Cynic, decried his loss: “Gardner will sorely be missed on the team. He was strong at the bat and wonderful at base running, his fielding was well nigh errorless, while his throwing was swift and sure as fate.” Without Larry in the lineup, UVM lost its next three games and finished with a 10-7 record. Though he missed a good portion of the season, his teammates nevertheless elected him captain for his junior year. He was also elected president of the junior class for the coming school year.

By June 30 Gardner had recovered sufficiently to join his UVM teammates, who were playing summer ball in Newport, New Hampshire. As if to answer any question whether his collarbone was fully mended, Larry smashed two home runs to lead Newport to a 5-3 win in its Interstate League opener against Randolph. A couple of weeks later he played a brief but full-fledged stint in organized professional baseball. When the Burlington team dropped out of the Class D Vermont State League, the UVM nine stepped in as replacements. “Many have felt all along that the Vermont team was the one to uphold the Burlington end on any baseball proposition, made up as it is of so many local favorites,” the Free Press wrote. The collegians fared well, holding the second-best record (4-3) when the league disbanded for good on July 27.

With still a month to play that summer, both Larry Gardner and Ray Collins joined the Bangor Cubs of the Maine State League. Batting cleanup, Gardner established himself as Bangor’s best hitter as the Cubs captured the 1907 pennant. His average of .371 (39 for 105) led the league, and both he and Collins were unanimous selections to the All-Maine team. By this time both players’ actions were followed closely by numerous scouts, especially Fred Lake of the Boston Americans, and newspapers frequently mentioned that they were considered “big league material.”

By the spring of 1908 both Gardner and Collins were receiving offers from major-league clubs. In an April 11 letter, Connie Mack tried to induce Larry to sign a contract immediately for $300 per month, with one month’s advance upon signing, and join the Athletics after UVM’s season. To allay Gardner’s fears that signing a professional contract would make him ineligible for college ball, Mack wrote that ”it will not be necessary for anyone but you and I to know that you have signed.” During the course of UVM’s season Larry also received several offers by telegram from John Taylor, president of the Boston Americans (at that point just starting to be called the Red Sox).

Gardner rebuffed those offers and remained at UVM for his junior season. Bad weather caused a lack of outdoor practice and a poor 2-4 showing on the southern trip, but the team rebounded to finish with 15 wins, eight losses, and two ties against the toughest schedule UVM had played since the days of Bert Abbey and Arlie Pond. Calling them the “champion baseball team of New England,” the Free Press wrote, “Capt. Gardner, the hardest hitting man on the team, has been batting at a .300 clip, and it would be hard to find a better shortstop.” Nonetheless he was named the third baseman on the Springfield Republican’s All Eastern Nine, making room for Holy Cross’ Jack Barry at shortstop.

When Red Sox utility infielder Frank Laporte went down with an injury in late May, the Red Sox stepped up their efforts to sign Gardner. After UVM’s season ended with a win over Manhattan College on June 4, Larry’s brother, Dwight, and mother, Nettie, came to Burlington to assist Larry with his difficult decision. Signing would mean he could finally repay Dwight’s generous loan, but it would also force him to give up his senior season at UVM. Finally Larry succumbed. After final examinations, he reported directly to St. Louis, where the Red Sox were in the midst of a western road trip.

Larry remembered feeling “like a lost kid from the green hills” that summer. “Before this time I’d never seen a big league game,” he said. “I’d been to the city a few times and while there held on to the hand of an older person for fear of getting lost.” If he was nervous, it didn’t show in his initial performance. Larry saw his first action on June 22 in an exhibition game in Rochester, New York, as the team made its way back to Boston. He homered in his first at-bat and played shortstop in “whirlwind fashion,” handling six chances without error. Three days later, in his first official major-league game, Larry replaced an injured Harry Lord in extra innings and ripped a game-winning double to beat the Washington Senators at Boston’s Huntington Avenue Grounds.

On June 27 he appeared in the starting lineup for the first time as the Red Sox took on the New York Highlanders at Hilltop Park in the Bronx. Playing third base and batting fifth, he went 0-for-4 with an error as Boston lost, 7-6. To make things worse, Larry was “bunted to death” by Wee Willie Keeler, who had two bunt singles among his four hits. That night Cy Young, the legendary pitcher, invited Larry to join him at the hotel bar. The 41-year-old veteran consoled the 22-year-old rookie by sharing a bottle of a rare rye whiskey called Cascades. (In his next start, Young, at the time the oldest pitcher in the majors, tossed the third no-hitter of his distinguished career.)

Larry had appeared in three official games and was batting an even .300 when “Taylor, the owner of the club, made me a proposition: ‘stay with the Red Sox and gain experience by watching or go to Lynn where there’s a place open for a shortstop.’” Larry chose to play regularly, reporting to the New England League’s Lynn Shoemakers on July 15. To make room for him, Lynn’s regular shortstop, Barton, moved to second base, and 45-year-old Jimmy Connor was forced to the bench. The former regular second baseman of the 1898 Chicago Orphans took no offense; years later Larry said that Connor “probably helped him as much as anyone to make the big time.” In 61 games for Lynn, Gardner batted .305 and showed “all the earmarks of another Harry Lord.” In September the Red Sox invited him to rejoin the team for another western road trip, but Larry opted to return to UVM for the fall semester.

“With a little extra money in my pocket my senior year I lived the life of Reilly,” he remembered. “On occasion I’d even eat at Dorn’s Restaurant, a high-class restaurant in town at that time. Heretofore I had eaten at any hash house.” For the second straight year Larry lived in the Delta Sigma house at 342 Pearl Street, which was built in 1800 by Horace Loomis but sold to Elbridge Adsit as an investment property in 1907. Gardner joined a long line of distinguished guests that included Henry Clay and President William Henry Harrison.

Come spring, Larry watched from the bleachers as Ray Collins led the UVM baseball team to a 13-9 record. Final exams ended in mid-June but commencement festivities did not start until June 26, so Larry went down to Boston and actually managed to get into a game. On June 23, 1909, after replacing Harry Lord at third base in a game against the Highlanders, Larry tripled and scored in his only at-bat. A couple of days later he came back to Burlington for graduation. Only 59 of the 112 students who started at UVM in the fall of 1905 managed to earn diplomas, but Larry was one of six to receive a B.S. in chemistry. Returning to Boston, he appeared in only 18 more games for the Red Sox in 1909. With Lord a fixture at third and Heinie Wagner at shortstop, Larry spent most of his time on the bench. He performed well when given the opportunity, batting .297 with a .432 slugging percentage.

In 1910 a position opened up in the Boston infield when second baseman Amby McConnell was stricken with appendicitis only 10 games into the season. Larry filled in even though he had never really played second base. His inexperience showed on one occasion when he took a throw in the baseline with Ty Cobb sliding in. The Georgia Peach could have cut Gardner to shreds, but instead he slid around him and was tagged out. Walking off the field, Cobb turned to Wagner and said, “Tell the kid I won’t give him a break like that again.” But for the most part Larry performed admirably, batting .283 in 113 games and winning accolades for his fielding. One sportswriter went so far as to call him “one of the best second basemen in the country.” Gardner’s development allowed the Red Sox to trade McConnell to the Chicago White Sox.

After spending the offseason in Enosburg Falls ice skating, taking long hikes, and hunting (21st century residents of the house at 14 School Street found several of his old Vermont hunter’s licenses in the rafters), Larry reported to spring training in Redondo Beach, California, with new confidence in 1911. He entertained newspapermen and teammates alike with feats of ventriloquism. “Larry converses from his stomach and keeps the other players guessing from what direction the talk is being directed,” wrote one reporter. He also sang baritone in the Red Sox barbershop quartet, which included pitchers Marty McHale (first tenor) and Buck O’Brien (second tenor) and first baseman Hugh Bradley (basso). The quartet was good enough to tour the Keith’s vaudeville circuit for two winters at $500 per week, though Larry never traveled with them. “He used to sing around Boston but we used a ringer named Bill Lyons on the road,” said O’Brien.

Despite the speed he showed when he first took over at second, Gardner seemed slow and unable to cover territory in 1911. Manager Patsy Donovan was searching for a third baseman to replace Harry Lord, who had been sent to Chicago the previous year in the same trade as McConnell. At midseason he shifted Gardner to third. “Can it be possible that Larry Gardner has been out of position all this time?” wrote Ring Lardner. “He was certainly a success as a second sacker, but right now it would be hard to convince the uninformed observer that he hadn’t been playing third base for years.” A Boston scribe wrote, “Third base has not been played so well in Boston since the days when Jimmie Collins was in his prime.” After the season Washington manager Jimmy McAleer selected Gardner as the third baseman on a team of American League all-stars. They played a series of exhibitions against the Philadelphia Athletics, who were preparing for the 1911 World Series.

During the 1912 season Gardner and his best friend on the Red Sox, Harry Hooper, lived together in Winthrop on Boston’s North Shore. During mornings the two players viewed the bay and took dips in the salt water before driving to brand-new Fenway Park in their four-cylinder Stutz roadster, which they co-owned. They cooked shellfish by digging a hole in the sand, throwing in hot rocks and covering the hole with seaweed. Once Larry attempted to duplicate the trick for his family in Enosburg Falls, using chicken instead of shellfish and hay instead of seaweed, but it tasted so awful they couldn’t eat it.

That 1912 season was a breakthrough year for both the Red Sox and Larry Gardner. Boston ran away with the American League, besting second-place Washington by 14 games, and Gardner hit .315 with a team-leading 18 triples. But on September 21, in the eighth inning of a meaningless game in Detroit, he was injured diving for Donie Bush’s grounder down the line. The ball hit the little finger of his bare right hand, snapping it at the first joint and causing the bone to protrude through the flesh. Larry went home to Enosburg Falls to recuperate. Initially it was feared that he might miss the World Series, but he returned to the lineup on October 6 for a couple of games against Philadelphia.

Playing with his fingers taped together, Larry performed poorly in the first three games of the 1912 World Series against the New York Giants. In Game Four at the Polo Grounds he finally broke out of his slump, blasting a single and a triple and scoring two runs in a 3-1 Boston victory. In the next three games his bat again fell relatively silent, though in Game Seven he hit Boston’s only home run of the Series. Then came the eighth and deciding game at Fenway Park (Game Two had been a tie). It was one of the most dramatic games in baseball history, and one for which Larry Gardner will forever be remembered.

The game was tied at 1-1 after nine innings. In the top half of the 10th the Giants grabbed a 2-1 lead. With Christy Mathewson on the mound for New York, Boston’s chances appeared slim. Clyde Engle led off the inning by lifting a soft fly to center field, but Fred Snodgrass pulled his infamous muff. Hooper made the first out and then Steve Yerkes walked. With runners on first and third, Tris Speaker lifted a lazy fly in foul territory near the first base coach’s box, but for some reason Fred Merkle didn’t make much of an effort. He just stood watching as Chief Meyers, the Giants catcher, plowed down the line and tipped the ball with the end of his mitt. Given new life, Speaker singled to score Engle with the tying run. With runners at second and third, Mathewson walked Duffy Lewis intentionally to load the bases. Up to the plate stepped Gardner.

Realizing that Mathewson was working him to hit a low ball, Larry allowed two balls to go by before he swung and missed at the third pitch. A walk meant forcing in the winning run, so Matty couldn’t afford to be cute. His next pitch was over the inside corner, well above the knee. Larry swung and a shout went up as the ball headed for deep right field. “I was disappointed at first because I thought the ball was going out,” Larry remembered, “but then when I saw Yerkes tag up, then score to end it, I realized it meant $4,024.68, just about double my earnings for the year.”

After a celebration the next day at Boston’s Faneuil Hall, Larry returned to a hero’s reception in Enosburg Falls. His train arrived bedecked with red lights from engine to rear coach, and explosions of railroad torpedoes went off every few rods as it swept into the village. Fully 500 people were on hand to greet him. After alighting, Gardner was escorted to the car of honor, which was beautifully trimmed with American flags, bunting and “red sox.” Seated in the car with Larry were his father, Delbert Gardner, and the whole reception committee. Sixteen autos followed in a procession through the village. In front of the Perley block on Main Street, the Honorable Olin Merrill, chairman of the Vermont Republican Committee, made a speech lauding Gardner as a “clean type of ballplayer of whom any community might well feel proud.” After Larry made a few short remarks, expressing his appreciation, the procession reformed and escorted him to his home at 14 School Street.

Gardner’s presence was much in demand during the week following the World Series. At a reception in Enosburg Falls sponsored by the Philemon Club, Merrill spoke again, this time focusing on the significance of a small state contributing two members to the champion team of the world (he saw it as “evidence of the sterling qualities of Vermont stock”). Special guest Tim Murnane of the Boston Globe talked about how the earnings of baseball players all over the country were a great benefit to rural communities, as players generally hailed from those parts and spent their money there.

The next night Larry, Ray Collins and 1912 Olympic gold medal winner Albert Gutterson were feted at Burlington’s Hotel Vermont. Among the 450 in attendance were Governor Fletcher, Mayor Burke, and some 300 UVM students. Each of the guests of honor received a silver loving cup presented by UVM President Guy Potter Benton. Gardner’s was inscribed as follows:

From The City of Burlington
and The University of Vermont,
to “Larry” Gardner
in loving appreciation of the deserved
fame he has won for himself, for his
city and his alma mater as third
baseman for the Boston Americans,
world’s champions of 1912.

Whatever became of the ball that Larry Gardner belted to Josh Devore for the sacrifice fly that won the 1912 World Series? The bat is on display at UVM’s Gutterson Fieldhouse, but the whereabouts of the ball is a mystery.

Initially it was in the possession of Thomas W. Watson, who worked the turnstiles at Fenway Park during the 1912 World Series. After Steve Yerkes crossed the plate with the winning run, Chief Meyers chucked the ball aside and Watson pocketed it. That night he went to the Hotel Putnam and presented it to Gardner. In exchange, Larry gave him a brand-new ball autographed by the whole Red Sox team, with the addition of Mayor John F. Fitzgerald’s signature.

When Larry arrived at Enosburg Falls, both the bat and the ball were displayed at the office of the Enosburg Standard. Eventually Larry donated the bat to the UVM athletic department, but the Gardner family has no idea what happened to the ball.

Larry Gardner was on top of the world that winter. He was named the first-team third baseman on Baseball Magazine’s All-America team, the first of four such selections he earned over the course of his career. Then he signed a three-year contract with the Red Sox. Still Larry remained his same humble self. “He has a disposition as sweet as the wild flowers that grow on the mountains of Vermont,” wrote Tim Murnane. A few years later, T.C. Cheney wrote that “there is no more modest, unassuming or clean young man in [baseball] than our Green Mountain boy, who is an honor and credit to the game and his state.” Larry also carried a reputation as an intellectual: “Off the ball field Gardner prefers to read an essay on Shakespeare’s poems than to discuss baseball,” wrote one reporter.

On July 11, 1914, Larry Gardner collected three hits to make a winner of a rookie southpaw in his first big-league pitching appearance – a young man by the name of George Herman Ruth. “One of the first times I saw Ruth, the guy was lying on the floor being screwed by a prostitute,” Larry said. “He was smoking a cigar and eating peanuts, and this woman was working on him.” Perhaps hoping some of Gardner’s gentility might rub off on the Babe, the Red Sox assigned Larry as his roommate. “What’s it like to room with Babe Ruth?” Larry was often asked. “I don’t know,” he replied. “He never stays with me in the room when I’m on the road. He’s always living with women.”

In 1916 Ruth matched up five times against Walter Johnson, whom Gardner always credited as the greatest pitcher he ever saw. The Babe triumphed in four games, two by 1-0 scores, and in the last of them Gardner’s single in the 13th inning won the game. “How can you figure hitting? I still can’t,” Larry said. “One pitcher I never could touch was Eddie Plank. I got one hit off him in my entire career – and it won a ballgame. Yet I always could hit Walter Johnson and he was off in a class by himself. I did it by just punching the ball to left field.”

After hitting .259 and a career low (as a full time player) .258 in the previous two seasons, Larry rebounded in 1916 to hit .308 despite playing with a dislocated big toe. His batting average was fifth best in the American League, behind only Tris Speaker, Ty Cobb, Shoeless Joe Jackson, and Amos Strunk. With Speaker gone to Cleveland, Gardner became the biggest bat in Boston’s lineup as the Red Sox won their second consecutive AL pennant. Then he enhanced his reputation as a clutch player by smashing two home runs in the 1916 World Series against the Brooklyn Dodgers.

The first one came in Game Three at Ebbets Field. “I hadn’t been hitting and I was really mad,” Gardner remembered. “Jack Coombs was pitching for the Dodgers and he was a helluva pitcher. He broke off a curve on me, a lefty hitter. I started to swing and tried to stop because I thought it was a bad pitch, but I was committed too far and had to go through with it. I even had my eyes shut. When I opened them, I saw the ball going over the wall. Can you believe that – hitting a home run with your eyes closed?”

In Game Four, with two men on base and Boston down 2-0, Gardner hit a fastball from Rube Marquard for an inside-the-park homer, giving the Red Sox a 3-2 lead they never relinquished. “That one blow, delivered deep into the barren lands of center field, broke Marquard’s heart, shattered Brooklyn’s wavering defense, and practically closed out the series,” wrote Grantland Rice. Boston went on to win in five games, and Larry Gardner was considered the hero of the Series. As Tim Murnane put it, he had “a way of rising to the occasion as a trout rises to a fly in one of his favorite Vermont streams.”

Despite his heroics, Larry couldn’t get a raise. The most Red Sox owner Harry Frazee offered was to bring Larry’s new bride, the former Margaret Fourney of Canton, Ohio, to spring training at Hot Springs, Arkansas, as the club’s guest. “I told my wife to take 40 baths a day and ride horses the rest of the time,” Larry said. “We really stuck Harry on that one!” In 1917 his batting average fell from .308 to .265, giving the Red Sox an idea that he was slipping after 10 years of service.

On January 10, 1918, Boston traded Gardner, reserve outfielder Tillie Walker, and backup catcher Hick Cady to the Philadelphia Athletics for first baseman Stuffy McInnis. “While the loss of Walker and Cady might be accepted with cheerful resignation,” wrote Paul Shannon in the Boston Post, “the going of Gardner, one of the most powerful hitters on the team for years, one of its most dependable members and a model player in every way, will be severely felt.” Philadelphia writers, on the other hand, welcomed news of the trade. “The report that Gardner has passed the zenith of his career and is on the decline is all camouflage, probably designed to placate the Boston fans, with whom he was extremely popular,” wrote one of them. “His moral and corrective influence upon the younger men of whom the team will mostly consist this year should be invaluable.”

The A’s were in the midst of an AL-record seven consecutive seasons in last place, and though they finished in the cellar again in 1918, the 32-year-old Gardner proved that he wasn’t washed up by batting .285. Though the Red Sox won another World Series, they missed Larry’s presence. “Gardner’s absence last year almost cost the Red Sox the world’s championship,” wrote a Boston reporter. “The Sox tried out more than a dozen third sackers in an attempt to fill his shoes.”

But Connie Mack was continuing his youth movement, so before the 1919 season he traded Gardner, pitcher Elmer Myers, and outfield prospect Charlie Jamieson to the Cleveland Indians for slugging outfielder Braggo Roth. The Indians had finished second in 1918 with a weak platoon of Joe Evans and 37-year-old Terry Turner at third, so Cleveland writers thought the deal strengthened the team considerably. Gardner-for-Roth straight up would have been fair, they thought, but this trade was a steal. Reunited with former Red Sox teammates Tris Speaker and Joe Wood, Larry played every inning of every game, hit an even .300, and led the team with 79 RBIs.

In 1920 Gardner did even better, batting .310 with a team-leading 118 RBIs to help Cleveland finish on top of the American League. It had taken 42 years; of the 11 cities with major-league franchises, Cleveland was the 9th to win a pennant in the 20th century. Larry’s leadership proved instrumental. When shortstop Ray Chapman was killed by a pitched ball in August, 21-year-old Joe Sewell was called up from the minors in the middle of a tight pennant race. Sewell, who had played very little shortstop, was extremely nervous. “Larry Gardner helped me a lot,” he remembered. “He talked to me all the time when we were in the field, trying to steady me.” The rookie batted .329 down the stretch, the start of a Hall of Fame career.

Cleveland went on to win the 1920 World Series, and on a road trip to Washington during the 1921 season the Indians attended a White House reception to receive congratulations from President Warren Harding, who was from Ohio. When it was Gardner’s turn to shake hands with the President, Harding said, “I know you are a good player, young man, because way back in the early ’80s I knew a player by that name. He was with Cleveland in the old National League and was a mighty good man.” Gardner drew a laugh when he said, “That was just about the time I was breaking in.” Though 35, Larry had his best season ever in 1921. He established career highs for batting average (.319), runs (101), hits (187), doubles (32), and RBIs (120).

Hampered by nagging injuries, Gardner was not quite as good in 1922, though he still played in 137 games and batted .285. He considered retirement when the Indians bought minor-league phenom Rube Lutzke, a third baseman, but Speaker persuaded him to come back and serve as coach and occasional pinch-hitter. Over the course of his last two seasons, 1923-24, Larry appeared in a total of only 90 games, playing the field in only 33.

Larry Gardner had always been concerned with his career after baseball. In his early days with the Red Sox he had invested in a Cape Cod cranberry business, but an early frost one year ruined the harvest and destroyed the company. After that experience Larry went into the automobile business in Enosburg Falls. With his partner, Francis Smith, whose wife was a cousin, Larry owned a garage and Willys-Knight dealership. But when the time finally came to devote all of his attention to another occupation, he couldn’t leave baseball behind.

In 1925 Larry managed Dallas of the Texas League, taking charge of a “mixture of indifferent and ‘mean’ ball players,” according to one reporter. Though the team finished a respectable third (85-66), Gardner quit before the end of the season, giving his wife only one day’s notice that they were leaving. The next two years Larry managed Asheville of the South Atlantic League. In 1926 the club won a league-record 15 consecutive games en route to a second-place finish, but in 1927 the team fell to fourth. Larry Jr. remembers his father’s chief complaint about the South: “Those were the days before refrigeration, and he always said it was hard to find ice cream.” After the 1927 season Larry returned to his garage and automobile business in Enosburg Falls. Margaret hated it there and was relieved when Larry joined the physical education department at the University of Vermont in 1929. Mr. and Mrs. Gardner and their two young sons lived in a rented house on Brookes Avenue, the street where Ray Collins grew up.

In 1932 Gardner became head baseball coach at UVM. He stressed sportsmanship ahead of winning – his overall record in two decades of coaching was a lackluster 141-166 – and well-rounded students over specialized athletes. “I guess he liked the team to win, but all I remember was how warm and human he was with the players,” said Larry Jr., who served as batboy. Nothing captures the essence of Gardner’s coaching philosophy better than a letter he wrote to President Stanley King of Amherst College on May 13, 1938 (coincidentally Larry’s 52nd birthday):

Dear Sir:

I am writing you a somewhat belated letter to express to you the keen pleasure our boys experienced at Amherst on April 21st when we met your Amherst team in a baseball game. While we lost the game, we gained something much more valuable than is expressed by winning or losing.

In the ten years I have been connected with baseball at Vermont, I can honestly say that I never saw our boys more impressed by spirit, gentlemanly conduct, and treatment than was given and exemplified by your students.

In the thirty years of my experience in baseball, this was truly the highlight and it pleases me to hand this observation on to you.

The boys join me in expressing our gratitude to you and the Amherst men.

Three days later he received this reply from President King:

Dear Mr. Gardner:

I would not be honest if I did not say that I am deeply touched by your letter of the 13th. The qualities which you stress in your letter are of course the qualities you and we are trying to develop in our boys in the playing of competitive sports. They are the qualities which seem to me most important in our staff. The teams that you coach at Vermont and which Paul Eckley coaches here may win or lose in individual games but the qualities of sportsmanship which the boys learn from their coaches and their fellows are among the most important by-products of our college education.

I watched the Vermont game from the stands myself and congratulate you on the fine boys on your team. The score of two to one was as close as a score can be. Again my warm appreciation for your letter.

In addition to his coaching duties, Larry Gardner was named UVM’s athletic director in 1942, and he held both positions until his retirement from the university in 1952. During the 1940s he also served as commissioner of the independent Northern League and as a part-time scout for the Boston Braves. After his 1952 “retirement,” Gardner fished frequently and worked a regular schedule at The Camera Shop on the top block of Church Street in downtown Burlington.

Gardner and his family lived a comfortable life in Burlington. They spent summers at a spectacular camp on Colchester Point, surrounded by cedars and situated on a rocky bluff overlooking Lake Champlain, with stairs leading to a quarter-mile stretch of sandy beach. Puffing on a cigar or pipe, Larry spent evenings sitting on the wraparound porch, enjoying the cross-breezes and the nearly 360-degree view of Camel’s Hump to the east and the Adirondacks to the west. The camp itself, which was built by the founder of the Laird-Shobert Shoe Company, was paneled with knotty pine on the inside and featured a large stone fireplace.

The Gardners loved to host big lobster bakes at the camp. Frequent guests included Burlington High School principal Dean Perreault, insurance agent Phillip Bell and Larry’s best friend, UVM track coach Archie Post. The Gardner boys also remember the time Larry’s old Red Sox teammate Dick Hoblitzell – and particularly his beautiful daughter – visited. From the camp the Gardners could watch fishermen netting sturgeon. When the south wind came up in early summer, Larry took his rowboat (equipped with a small motor) out to catch walleye and pike. His favorite spot for bass fishing was Hogback Reef, near the Colchester Lighthouse.

When the kids returned to school in the fall, the Gardners moved back to their comfortable brick cottage at 17 Overlake Park, in one of Burlington’s nicest neighborhoods. It was rented through the second week of September to two women who came down from Canada every summer to live near the lake. The living room was adorned with no pictures or trophies – they were all upstairs or down the basement. Larry told visitors he’d left his playing days behind and only took private trips back to the Boston, Philadelphia, and Cleveland of the early part of the century.

Still, he kept in touch with several old teammates, especially Harry Hooper. Larry also maintained a steady correspondence with Ty Cobb. In their playing days, he and Cobb were intense rivals. “I don’t think Ty ever bunted for a hit against me because I found out his secret early,” Larry said. “Cobb used to fake a lot of bunts, but I noticed that when he was really going to bunt, he always licked his lips. When I saw that, I’d start in with the pitch. He never realized I’d caught on.” In the 1950s Cobb wrote long, rambling letters to Gardner, trying to establish a fund for players whose careers had ended before major-league baseball’s pension system. In a letter dated September 17, 1958, Cobb wrote: “Nothing would please me more than to have a few days with you and your friends in your home town amongst those real people up there that I know of and their history so well, you being such a true representative. I should tell you now though you must have for years known it so well that I liked you also Ray [presumably Ray Collins], also your kind no matter where they lived, we were reared properly.”

Larry and Margaret Gardner enjoyed playing golf at Burlington Country Club. They didn’t keep score, even though Larry was very good. On Sundays Larry read the New York Times and listened to classical musical all day long. He also liked Bing Crosby, Perry Como, Joey Browne, and opera – Puccini was a favorite composer. “My God, listen to that,” he would say. “That’s a great tune!” On television Larry watched Perry Mason, Ed Sullivan, and Leonard Bernstein conducting symphonies. He was an avid reader, especially books about World War II. During the war he kept a map on which he pinpointed the advance of the Allied forces – a practice he discontinued when his son John was drafted.

Larry Gardner received numerous accolades as the years went on. Collegiate Baseball named him the third baseman on its all-time All-America team, and he was an original inductee into the University of Vermont’s Hall of Fame in 1969. In 1973, when SABR conducted a survey of its members to determine the greatest baseball player born in each state, Gardner was selected from Vermont. UVM’s most valuable player award in baseball was named after him, as was UVM’s cage (an honor he shared with Ray Collins). Still, the ultimate honor – induction into the National Baseball Hall of Fame – eluded him.

“I remember when Harry Hooper was being considered for the honor and Dad talked with me after I raised the question about him being eligible for it,” said Larry Jr. “Generally speaking, Dad was very quiet, soft-spoken, reticent about his baseball career when talking with me, but at that one time he got very talkative – very adamant – and told me, ‘If you boys ever get involved with the campaigning, the politics of getting me into the Hall of Fame, I’ll be upset and angry.’”

William Lawrence Gardner died two months short of his 90th birthday on March 11, 1976, at Larry Jr.’s home in St. George, Vermont. He left his body to UVM’s Department of Anatomy, and his ashes were spread at St. Paul’s Cathedral in Burlington. Though he never was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame, he continued to receive honors even after his death. In 1986 the UVM baseball team wore commemorative patches on their sleeves in honor of his 100th birthday. And when a regional chapter of SABR was founded in the Green Mountains in 1993, its members elected to call it the Larry Gardner Chapter. It was another fitting tribute to a Vermont baseball legend.

Sources

A version of this biography originally appeared in Green Mountain Boys of Summer: Vermonters in the Major Leagues 1882-1993, edited by Tom Simon (New England Press, 2000).

In researching this article, the author made use of the subject’s file at the National Baseball Hall of Fame Library, the Tom Shea Collection, the archives at the University of Vermont, and several local newspapers.