Bill Hoffer

In the lineage of eastern Iowa baseball stars, a line that includes 1936 American League RBI champion Hal Trosky and 218-game winner Earl Whitehill, one name more than any other continues to top the all-under-appreciated list.  Over a three-year span in the mid-1890s, Bill Hoffer won 78 games for one of the most notorious teams in baseball history, Ned Hanlon’s Baltimore Orioles, and he helped those teams win two Temple Cup series and appear in another. 

Were that not enough, he also twice led the National League in winning percentage while pitching over 300 innings in each of those seasons. When he died in July 1959, the first line in the Cedar Rapids Gazette article that announced his passing began: “The greatest professional baseball player Cedar Rapids ever produced is dead.”1 

William Leopold Hoffer (pronounced “Hoe-fer,” according to several aged, lifelong Cedar Rapids residents who knew Hoffer personally) was born on November 8, 1870, in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, to Louis and Rosa Hoffer. Louis, along with his mother, had emigrated from Germany in 1853 when he was just four years old, and worked as a laborer for a local railroad.  Rosa, two years his junior and a German immigrant, remained at home to do the work of keeping house and raising William and his younger sister, Ida.  Bill attended the Washington School in town but ended his education after graduating from the eighth grade in order to go to work for the railroad and help support the family.

Bill Hoffer was never a large man, reaching only 5’9” and weighing 155 pounds in his playing prime, but was a gifted athlete and earned several nicknames that included “Whizard” (sic) and “Chick.”  As amateur baseball rose in eastern Iowa, Bill’s natural ability to hit and throw made him popular on several of the local club teams. In 1890, seeking to put a few more paid admissions into the seats, Cedar Rapids signed the teen to play in the field.  In what may have been his professional debut, on May 10, 1890, he played in a Saturday afternoon contest with Aurora. Reaching base with a bloop in the bottom of the third inning, he was quickly eliminated on a force. Hoffer also grounded out in the fifth, singled and scored a run that tied the game in the eighth, and struck out in the ninth. The citation reports further that Hoffer chased down and retrieved “a long hit [double] over center.” If this was indeed Hoffer’s pro debut, he had two hits in four at bats and almost certainly played centerfield. The final score of the game was Aurora 8, Cedar Rapids 7.2  

In 1890, business interests in the now-burgeoning city of Cedar Rapids collectively agreed to bring professional baseball to the area. The game had thrived as an amateur club sport throughout the region and the state, and increasingly as an industrial recreation, so while the notion of a professional squad represented a financial risk, it was one with a potential upside.  That first team, the Cedar Rapids Canaries, joined the independent Illinois-Iowa (IL-IA) League, and finished the year with a 62-49 record within the eight-team league, which included teams from Ottumwa, Aurora, Joliet (Illinois), and Dubuque.3

The next year, the Cedar Rapids Canaries again signed their local star. The 20-year-old not only played the outfield, but also pitched, and he was credited with 16 victories and an ERA of 0.91 for 1891. On August 7, Hoffer shut out Rockford in what is recognized as the first-ever professional shutout by a Cedar Rapids pitcher.4

On that squad, Hoffer also teamed for four months with a fiery infielder, two years his junior, named John J. McGraw.  That relationship would eventually alter the course of Hoffer’s baseball career.

Hoffer pitched the 1892 season with Peoria, and then the Aurora Indians, still of the IL-IA League, and finally Joliet after Aurora folded in July.  He also pitched briefly with Toledo of the Western League.  In 1893, after the IL-IA League failed, he moved to Nashville, Tennessee, where he and Tom Vickery formed the pitching core. Such was the demand on the staff that at one point the Iowan pitched five complete games in a seven-day stretch.5  The team finished last in a twelve-team Southern League with a 33-60 record, but it did, at the end of the season, send both Vickery and Hoffer to Class A Buffalo of the Eastern League, where the two exclusively pitched the Bisons to a sixteen-game winning streak in 1894. Hoffer was proud of his durability,6 and pitched often for Buffalo while batting .323.7  The pitchers had some help in the field and at the plate, including a very young Jimmy Collins, a 37-year old Pud Galvin, and an outstanding effort by Jake Drauby, who hit 21 homers and batted .351.

After the Eastern League championship concluded in 1894, Ned Hanlon selected and signed Hoffer to buttress his pitching staff in what was referred to as a “Rule 5” draft.8  The Orioles had played an exhibition with Nashville a year before,9 and evidently the prospect of a reunion of Hoffer and McGraw supported Ned Hanlon’s inclination to sign the young pitcher.  It must have been impossible for a young, first-generation American from Cedar Rapids, Iowa, to have imagined his new “major league” environment. In signing with the Baltimore Orioles, Bill Hoffer joined what is still considered one of the more notorious teams in the annals of the game.

The Orioles were baseball hoodlums in the late nineteenth century, the embodiment of the stereotype of rough young men, desperate to win for the spoils that accompanied victory, and willing to push the rules to the edge – and perhaps a tad beyond – in pursuit of that success. In 1949, Robert Smith wrote a book about the team and noted, “Men who had never umpired in Baltimore before, men who had stuck their chins out into the faces of some of the toughest players of the decade, would feel an icy chill take hold…when the Baltimore boys marched forth…[There] was nothing the Orioles hesitated to say and very little they hesitated to do.  If blandishment would not work, then open threats of violence…were employed to keep an umpire aware of which team most wanted to win.”10  Whether hyperbole or not, the theme was endlessly reiterated in the press at the time, a practice continued over the years since.

That Baltimore team was replete with talent. In addition to future Hall-of-Famers Dan Brouthers, Willie Keeler, and Hughie Jennings, it was led by a group of future Hall-of-Fame managers, including not only skipper Ned Hanlon, but also third baseman McGraw, catcher Wilbert Robinson, and star infielder Kid Gleason.  Every one of them was a fighter. Said McGraw when later discussing Gleason, “He could lick his weight in wildcats and would prove it at the drop of a hat.”11

Starting with Baltimore in 1895, the 24-year-old pitcher posted a 31-6 record against the National League, with a 3.21 ERA, which converted to a stellar 149 Adjusted ERA+.  For the season, he logged a bWAR of 8.2, based on 314 innings pitched, 32 complete games, and a league-leading .838 winning percentage. His four shutouts tied for the league lead in that category. Most notably, though, the Orioles finished in first place, three games ahead of Cleveland.

Following the 1895 season, Hoffer returned to Iowa with enough financial stability to wed Emma Vanous in November 1895.12  She, too, was a first-generation American – her parents having emigrated from what is now Czechoslovakia – and the Hoffers later had two children of their own, daughters Marguerite and Ida Rose.

The next season, 1896, Hoffer won 25 games against 7 losses, and in 1897 he posted a 22-11 record. Over the three seasons he pitched over 900 innings.

Hoffer’s first three seasons, 1895-97, represented a remarkable stretch, and it helped propel the Orioles into the de-facto championship series, the Temple Cup, in each of those years. The Temple Cup featured a post-season series between the top two teams in the National League, which was the sole major league in existence at that time.  The Temple Cup existed for a mere four seasons, 1894-1897, and the Orioles played in the cup series each year. While the Orioles won two titles, there is some enduring speculation about the real legitimacy of the Cup, in that the players saw the series as more of an exhibition, and that the regular season winner was the legitimate champion. Additionally, after 1894, the players agreed to split the proceeds evenly, regardless of which side won.

Despite his success, Hoffer experienced a noticeable drop-off in 1897.  His ERA ballooned almost a full run, from 3.38 in 1896 to 4.30, and his WHIP increased from 1.333 to 1.497.  Possibly, the workload was too much for the slightly built hurler. Following an 0-4 start in 1898, along with a 7.34 ERA, and in spite of Ned Hanlon’s assertion that he would not be releasing the pitcher fewer than two weeks beforehand, the Orioles released Hoffer on June 13.13  Even after posting a 78-28 record with the team over their incredibly successful run, Hanlon discarded Hoffer in order to sign “a well-known player…a utility player.”14  Hanlon was continuously refining the Baltimore roster, and had decided that if the unnamed player could be signed, then he’d be forced to release the pitcher in order to make room on the team.

After four bad starts for Baltimore, was Hoffer suddenly through?  Hoffer didn’t think so.  He felt his arm was alright, but that he had been a victim of bad luck, and he went home to Cedar Rapids to revitalize.15  Meanwhile, the middling Pittsburgh Pirates took the view that Baltimore’s trash was Pittsburgh’s treasure.  They decided to take a risk on a player who won 78 games over three seasons and hit .304 in 1896.  In early July, Bill Watkins, Pittsburgh’s president and manager, signed Hoffer with the idea that he could pitch or play the field.16 

In fact, it appears that Hoffer was sick, not washed up.  Watkins stated that when Hoffer first came to Pittsburgh, “he was sick and discouraged. I gave him a month’s rest and practice until he seemed well and then put him in the box.”17  Watkins, the Pirates, and their fans were well pleased with the results.  Hoffer made three starts and won all three games, including a defeat of the then first place Cincinnati Reds.  His ERA for Pittsburgh stood at a sparkling 1.74.18  In mid-August, the Pirates were set to start Hoffer against the Orioles in Baltimore, when the illness bug bit him again.  It was first thought that he had contracted malaria, but by August 24, he was in the hospital diagnosed with typhoid fever.  Hoffer’s season was over.19

Hoffer returned to Pittsburgh for the 1899 season in good health.20  However, he injured his pitching arm in a collision in the second game of the season on April 17.21  Hoffer tried to return to the slab 11 days later, but was generally ineffective for two months, and had no wins until late June.  Nevertheless, he recovered to have a good second half, and though he only tossed 163 2/3 innings, he had a credible 8-10 record with a 3.63 ERA for what was basically a .500 Pirates team.  The Pittsburgh Press opined that Hoffer wound up 1899 in great shape after being marked for release in mid-season.22

The merger of Louisville and Pittsburgh after the 1899 season led to a house-cleaning and the new Pirates team released Hoffer on February 28, 1900.23 He managed to catch on with the Cleveland Lake Shores of the minor Class A American League. Hoffer was 16-12 for a Cleveland team that finished in sixth place. The following season, the American League became a major league, and Hoffer re-signed with Cleveland, now known as the Cleveland Blues, a charter member of the new American League.

On April 24, 1901, Hoffer started the very first American League game, pitching for Cleveland against the Chicago White Sox in front of 9,000 fans at Chicago’s South Side Park. There were four games on the American League’s inaugural schedule that day, but three of the games were rained out, leaving the Chicago game as the only one on the docket. Hoffer pitched a complete game but gave up two runs in the first inning and five more in the second to, effectively, seal the deal in an 8-2 White Sox victory. Hoffer struggled in vain to find his Baltimore form, and on July 4, 1901, he appeared in his final major league game, earning the win in the second game of a doubleheader against the White Sox. Per the norms of the time, Hoffer pitched all nine innings in the 6-5 victory.  In August, he reported to the independent Sacramento Senators to finish out the season.24

Between 1902 and 1904, Hoffer pitched and managed the Des Moines, Iowa, entry in the Class A Western League. The team had three names over the three seasons, ranging from Midgets in 1902 to Undertakers in 1903, and closing with the Prohibitionists in 1904. “He has earned his way back to popularity” one newspaper reported after Hoffer tossed three wins including a shutout.25  Hoffer hung on in professional baseball through 1909, with stops in Springfield, Illinois, Little Rock, Oklahoma City, and ultimately with his hometown Cedar Rapids Rabbits.  At age 38, Bill Hoffer appeared in nine games and logged a 3-6 record for the last place Rabbits. Unable to find a new home for 1910, Hoffer retired from the game. Over his six major league seasons, he recorded a 92-46 win-loss record and a 3.75 ERA. He tied for the NL lead in shutouts in 1895, and led the NL in winning percentage in both of his first two seasons. While his career was relatively brief, in his best years he was brilliant.

In 1922, Hoffer left the post office and worked full-time on the Ridgewood line of the Iowa Railway and Light company.26  By the 1950s, living in Cedar Rapids, he was fully retired and completely devoted to his art. He drew roughly 50 pen-and-ink Christmas cards every year, sending them to family and friends. “Seems as though I send out more every Christmas. I can’t remember when I started drawing as a hobby…now I do so many I had to start back in October.”27  One example of Hoffer’s artwork:

Bill Hoffer original freehand ink drawing, sometime post-baseball retirement. (Author’s collection.)

Periodically, local writers would check in with him to reminisce about his glory years in Baltimore and discuss the state of baseball in general. An affable man by all accounts, Hoffer could be a bit curmudgeonly when it came to the game. In evaluating Ted Williams in 1950, Hoffer held forth: “Why all they do is walk that Williams…I never walked any batter on purpose in my life.  I walked some of ’em, but it was just because I couldn’t get the ball over the plate.”28

In 1953, Hoffer was inducted into the Iowa Sports Hall of Fame.29  In late 1958, Hoffer developed cancer, and on July 21, 1959, at 12:55 p.m., he passed away at Mercy Hospital in Cedar Rapids.30  He was 88 years old. Following memorial services at Knox Presbyterian church, he was buried at Linwood Cemetery in his hometown.31

Acknowledgments

This biography was reviewed by Bill Lamb and Rick Zucker and fact-checked by Tim Herlich.

Notes

1 “Hoffer Won 31 Games, Batted .318 as Rookie,” Cedar Rapids Gazette, July 22, 1959: 27.

2 “A Pretty Game,” Cedar Rapids Evening Gazette, May 12, 1890, 3.

3 http://www.baseball-reference.com/bullpen/Two-I_League.

4 Mike Koolbeck, “War Years Were Good Years in C.R.,” Cedar Rapids Gazette, June 23, 1991: 7B.

5 Koolbeck, “War Years Were Good Years in C.R.”

6 Bert McGrane. “Bill Hoffer, Cedar Rapids, 1953,” Des Moines Register, http://data.desmoinesregister.com/hall-of-fame/single.php?id=544.

7 Minor League Baseball history, online: http://www.milb.com/content/page.jsp?sid=t422&ymd=20080405&content_id=380898&vkey=team4.

8 Bill Felber, A Game of Brawl: The Orioles, the Beaneaters, and the Battle for the 1897 Pennant (Lincoln:  University of Nebraska Press, 2007): 22.  From  MLB’s history of the Rule 5 draft (https://www.mlb.com/news/complete-history-of-the-mlb-rule-5-draft-c210225288), the event now known as the Rule 5 Draft dates all the way back to 1892, 11 years before the American League and National League held the inaugural World Series. Most commonly referred to as the “Selection of Players” at first, it allowed big league teams to draft players between Oct. 1 and Feb. 1 each offseason, in no predetermined order.

9 Bill Traughber, “Looking Back: 1893 Orioles Visit Nashville,” online at MiLB.com: https://www.milb.com/news/gcs-12919528

10 Robert Smith, Hits, Runs and Errors (New York: Dell, 1949): 58.

11 Garrett J. Kelleher, “More Than a Kid: The Story of Kid Gleason,” Baseball Research Journal 17 (1988).

12 The Evening Times (Washington, DC), November 21, 1895: 8.

13 “Maul Will Be Signed,” Baltimore Sun, June 6, 1898: 8.

14 “Pond and Hoffer to be Released,” Baltimore Sun, June 14, 1898: 10.

15 “Baseball Brevities,” Pittsburgh Press, June 25, 1898: 5.

16 “Hoffer is a Patriot,” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, July 4, 1898:8.

17  “Sporting Notes,” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, August 16, 1898:6.

18 “Hoffer’s Fine Work,” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, July 30, 1898:6.

19 “Sporting Notes,” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, August 25, 1898:6.

20 “Pitcher William Hoffer,” Pittsburgh Press, March 20, 1899: 5.

21 “Hard Game to Lose,” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, April 18, 1899: 6.

22 “Baseball Gossip,” Pittsburgh Press, October 5, 1899: 5.

23 “He Must Find Other Stars,” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, March 1, 1900: 6.

24 “Pitcher Hoffer Expected in Sacramento Tomorrow,” Sacramento Bee, August 6, 1901; 2.

25 “Billy Hoffer Goes into the Box Again,” Cedar Rapids Evening Gazette, July 20, 1903: 3.

26 “An Old Timer,” The Republican and Times (Cedar Rapids, IA), January 8, 1922: 20.

27 Gus Schrader, “Hope Billy Gets Back to Baltimore,” Cedar Rapids Gazette, December 25, 1957: 29.

28 Gus Schrader, “Hoffer, Baseball Pioneer, Scorns Intentional Walks,” Cedar Rapids Gazette, May 20, 1951: 5.

29 Bert McGrane, “Bill Hoffer, Mighty Pitcher of ‘90s, in Iowa Hall of Fame,” Des Moines Register, March 29, 1953: 26.

30 “Bill Hoffer, Ex-Pitching Great, Dies,” Cedar Rapids Gazette, July 21, 1959: 13.

31 “Hoffer Services Thursday at 3:30,” Cedar Rapids Gazette, July 22, 1959: 6.