July 19, 1886: Washington’s plucky ‘Pony’ Madigan is a phenom at 17, out of the majors at 18

William J. Madigan, nicknamed “Pony” for his youth and diminutive size, arrived in the major leagues as a 17-year-old phenomenon from the playing fields of Washington’s amateur leagues, a hopeful midseason pickup for the otherwise hopeless first-year Washington Nationals of the National League.

In 1885, playing for a “crack amateur team” known as the English Hills, Madigan, all of 16 years old at the start of the season, won 19 of his club’s 22 games.1 The following year, playing for the Merchants, D.C.’s leading amateur nine, the now 17-year-old Madigan struck out 19 batters in one game and 23 in another.2 Despite such success against amateur batsmen, Madigan seemed an unlikely prospect as a major-league hurler: In addition to his youth, he stood just 5-feet-5 and weighed but 118 pounds.3

The Nationals, however, were floundering. Despite the presence of two-time NL batting champion and first-ever Triple Crown winner Paul Hines and a rookie catcher named Connie Mack, the team had managed to win only nine of its first 47 decisions, and was buried in last place, 28½ games behind the league-leading Detroit Wolverines. With little to lose, the bereft Nationals signed the homegrown Madigan to pitch.

The right-hander made his first start for Washington on July 10 against Boston at the Nationals’ home field, Swampoodle Grounds. Although the Beaneaters took the game, 6-1, their captain, John Morrill, was impressed enough with Madigan’s pitching to remark that the Nationals would have had no trouble winning the game “had they been able to bat at all.”4 “His slow ball,” Morrill said of the youngster, “is different from any now pitched in the league, and all the teams will have difficulty batting it, at least until they get used to it.”5

The Washington Post reported that Madigan, “who made his first appearance yesterday, impressed … as a plucky one in the box and, as he expressed himself after the game, ‘I expected to be hit, but they could not scare me.’”6

Pluck wasn’t enough as Madigan lost his second game as a starter and another in nine innings of relief in the first of a three-game homestand against the Philadelphia Quakers on July 16. Replacing a sore-handed Bob Barr with three runs across and none out in the first, Madigan held the Quakers in check while the Nationals tied the score, only to lose, 9-8. Philadelphia found it easier going the next day, winning 8-1.

For the third and final game of the homestand, on July 19, Nationals manager Mike Scanlon pitched Madigan with two days’ rest. Washington, loser of its last 11 games and 26 of its last 29, was at the bottom of the league standings with a record of 9 wins and 44 losses. The fourth-place Quakers, by contrast, had won six in a row and 13 of their last 15, for an overall record of 34-20. To take on Madigan and the Nationals, Quakers manager Harry Wright chose hard-throwing 19-year-old rookie left-hander Ledell Titcomb (0-3).

The Nationals took the lead on hustle in the second inning when third baseman Hines and shortstop Davy Force singled and second sacker Jimmy Knowles walked to load the bases, and successive sacrifice hits by catcher Barney Gilligan, center fielder Ed Crane (safe on an error by Titcomb), and Madigan pushed two runs across the plate.

Washington tallied an additional run in the third, but the Quakers put up single runs in the third, fourth, and sixth innings to tie the game, 3-3.

Hines opened the eighth inning for Washington with a single. A base hit by Knowles and a sacrifice by Force put runners on second and third, and Gilligan walked to load the bases. Crane followed with a single to left field, scoring Hines and Knowles. Madigan hit a groundball between second and short for a single, his first major-league hit, scoring Gilligan. When left fielder George Wood fumbled recovering the ball, Crane scooted home for the fourth and final run of the inning.

Pitching now with a 7-3 lead, Madigan retired Wood and right fielder Ed Daily before Hines’s fumble of center fielder Jim Fogarty’s grounder and subsequent wild throw to first put Fogarty on base. Shortstop Arthur Irwin tripled over the head of Crane in center field, scoring Fogarty, then scored himself when Hines booted a grounder off the bat of third baseman Joe Mulvey. Mulvey was put out trying for second, ending the inning.

Both teams were retired scoreless in the ninth to clinch the 7-5 victory for Washington. One day after his 18th birthday, the Nationals’ Pony had his first major-league victory and driven in the game-winning run, and “the enthusiasm of the fifteen hundred people who saw the home club break a monotonous series of defeats was unbounded.”7

An account in Washington’s Evening Star said, “Young Madigan pitched very effectively for the Nationals and kept his head well.”8 In game accounts, the Nationals were praised for providing good support. Singled out were Hines, whose playing at third (he made three errors, all leading to runs) was “wretched”9 but who “amply made up for it with good batting,”10 and shortstop Davy Force, whose play in the field was “very fine, and he accepted all of the chances offered, some of them being difficult stops of apparently safe hits.”11 Madigan (1-3) scattered nine hits in nine innings, walked one, and struck out one. Titcomb (0-4), whose pitching was described as “wild,”12 allowed 10 hits while walking four and striking out four. He also contributed four errors in the field.

After pitching well in his next start, a 3-2 defeat in Boston, Madigan dropped his next 10 decisions. In two more July starts, he was tagged for 22 hits in an 18-1 rout by the Giants and contributed five walks and a wild pitch to an 11-run, third-inning outburst in a 13-1 loss to the Wolverines. A potential win on August 7 slipped away when Madigan allowed the St. Louis Maroons to tie the game on two runs in the ninth inning and win 6-5 in the 10th. Subsequent losses by scores such as 9-1, 8-1, and 8-0 made it clear that young Madigan had little left to offer even the lowly Nationals. His final start of the season, on September 4 at Washington, resulted in a 20-hit, 13-6 loss to Chicago.

In a syndicated review of NL pitchers that originated in the New York World, Madigan’s work in the box was noted as “yet very ungraceful and boyish, but practice is lending finish to his delivery. He will no doubt make a name for himself in the near future.”13

There was no future in the major leagues for Madigan. With a won-lost record of 1-13 in 14 games and an ERA of 4.87, Madigan was released in mid-September. Before the season ended, Madigan, “late of the Nationals,” was once again pitching for the amateur Merchant club.14 He pitched with mixed success for Binghamton of the International League in 1887 and Kalamazoo of the Tri-State League in 1888 before returning to the amateur ranks. Despite his youth, Madigan never made it back to the major leagues.

The Washington Nationals finished the 1886 season deep in the cellar with a dismal record of 28 wins and 92 losses, 60 games behind the pennant-winning Chicago White Stockings.

Sources

In addition to the sources cited in the Notes, the author consulted Baseball-Reference.com and Retrosheet.org for pertinent information.

Notes

1 “Baseball Matters,” San Francisco Examiner, September 5, 1886: 1.

2 “Several Fairy Tales,” The Sporting News, July 19, 1886: 1

3 “Base Ball,” New Orleans Times-Picayune, July 28, 1886: 2.

4 “Another Defeat for the Nationals – Sunday Games,” Evening Star (Washington DC), July 12, 1886: 1.

5 “Another Defeat for the Nationals – Sunday Games.”

6 David Nemec, Major League Baseball Profiles, 1871-1900, Volume 1: The Ballplayers Who Built the Game (Lincoln, Nebraska: Bison Books, 2011), 118.

7 “Washington and Philadelphia,” Philadelphia Inquirer, July 20, 1886: 3.

8 “The Ball Players: Victory Perches at Last Upon the Banner of the Nationals,” Evening Star: July 20, 1886: 1.

9 “Washington and Philadelphia,” Philadelphia Inquirer, July 20, 1886: 3.

10 “Washington and Philadelphia.”

11 “Washington and Philadelphia.”

12 “Notable Event at the Nation’s Capital – Scanlon’s Men Win,” Detroit Free Press, July 20, 1886: 8.

13 “Baseball Matters,” San Francisco Examiner, September 5, 1886: 1.

14 “Base Ball Notes,” News (Frederick, Maryland), September 22, 1886: 3.