1899 Boston Beaneaters: The Cracks Begin to Show

With a little luck and considerable pluck, the 1898 Boston Beaneaters were able to overcome injuries to three of their regulars to capture the National League pennant. While injuries would figure in 1899 as well, none matched the far-reaching consequences of the deteriorating mental health of one of the team’s most popular players.

During the offseason, a bruise on Marty Bergen’s right hip, the result of sliding into home in one of the final games of the 1898 season, developed into an abscess, necessitating surgery on January 21, 1899. Although the surgery went well and Bergen quickly recovered, Boston manager Frank Selee sought to secure insurance behind the plate. On March 2 the club purchased Bill “Boileryard” Clarke from Baltimore. Clarke, a solid receiver and a six-year veteran, had been deemed expendable by the Orioles and their new player-manager, John McGraw, after Clarke objected to a proposed salary cut. Although Bergen remained Boston’s first-string catcher, the presence of Clarke may have only exacerbated his growing feelings of paranoia and antipathy toward his teammates and Selee.

With the Beaneaters scheduled to begin training in Durham, North Carolina, on March 24, expectations ran high for the new campaign. “The Bostons,” wrote one prognosticator, “are practically the same team as last season. … This team has played for a number of years together and understand each other thoroughly. Their team work is perfection, and none excel them in batting, fielding, and base running. Nicol [sic], their pitcher, is king of them all, and will be ably assisted by Klobedanz and Willis. From the lights seen at the present writing, it looks as if Boston would be the champion of 1899.”1 Lauded another, “Here is a magnificent aggregation of talent, containing as it does the best infield in the league, a grand outfield, and splendid batteries. In brief, the team that beats Boston out this year will be entitled to championship honors.”2 That the team failed to arrive at camp intact might have been taken as an omen. Center fielder Billy Hamiltonbegged off to stay home with his sick wife; first baseman Fred Tenney, second baseman Bobby Lowe, and pitching ace Charles “Kid” Nichols delayed their arrival to attend to personal matters; and shortstop Herman Long and new Beaneater Clarke received permission to skip training camp altogether and join the team for the opening game. Marty Bergen was, to no one’s great surprise, a no-show.3

Boston broke camp with one rookie, pitcher, Oscar Streit, on the roster. The 25-year-old left-hander, who had won 22 games the previous season between the Western League’s Columbus Buckeyes and Dayton of the Interstate League, was expected to help pick up the slack in the absence of starting pitcher Ted Lewis, felled by illness just before the start of the season and expected to miss the remainder of April.

The Beaneaters began the work of defending their championship at Washington Park in Brooklyn. During the offseason the Brooklyn and Baltimore teams had merged ownership groups, with Orioles owner Harry von der Horst and manager Ned Hanlon becoming part-owners of the Brooklyn club. Von der Horst appointed Hanlon manager of the rechristened Superbas, and shifted several of the Orioles’ best players, including first baseman Dan McGann, shortstop Hughie Jennings, pitcher Jay Hughes, and outfielders Willie Keeler and Joe Kelley, to Brooklyn. Veteran shortstop Bill Dahlen, acquired by the Orioles from Chicago in January in a trade for second baseman Gene DeMontreville, was also transferred to Brooklyn.

Amid festive bunting and the music of the 23rd Regimental Band, the Beaneaters and Superbas paraded onto the field on April 15 before an overflow crowd of more than 21,000. Billy Hamilton, leading off for Boston against William “Brickyard” Kennedy, singled just out reach of Jennings, and had advanced to third when Long hit a long fly to left-center. Upon the catch by Kelley, Hamilton took off for home. “But Captain Kelley was out to show a fast pace and the ball hardly touched his hands before his arm flew back and it came flying toward the plate. Hamilton was moving fast, but the relentless sphere was faster, and it came into Alex Smith’s hands as perfectly placed as would have been possible had the thrower walked in and handed the ball to his catcher instead. The run was not only cut off, but Hamilton was out, and the team was retired in a manner to suit the most exacting critic.”4 Kelley’s crowd-pleasing throw, and another a few innings later that beat Hugh Duffy by a step as he tried trying to take two bases on an error, proved crucial as the game remained scoreless through nine innings.

The winning run was achieved by Boston in the 11th, when Bergen hit to Jennings, who threw past McGann, allowing Bergen to take second. Nichols advanced the runner to third on a groundout and Tenney tripled to deep center, scoring Bergen. Brooklyn was retired easily in the bottom of the inning to secure a 1-0 victory for Boston and a shutout for Nichols.

Boston dropped the next two games to Brooklyn before both teams traveled to the South End Grounds for the Beaneaters’ home opener on April 19. With an overflow crowd finding spectators encircling the field, ground rules were enforced, each batter being allowed a base for a hit into the crowd. Brooklyn failed to capitalize, and Nichols hurled his second straight shutout, winning 7-0.

An outpouring of hitting by Boston and splendid pitching by Vic Willis the next day in Washington was too much for the Senators, Boston winning 17-1, on 21 hits, 19 of them singles, including four by Tenney. On April 21 Oscar Streit made his major-league debut, defeating Washington 7-3 despite issuing seven bases on balls.

Boston took its fifth straight with a 10-1 victory in Washington on April 24. The six-hit pitching of Klobedanz, who contributed a home run to the scoring, came as a welcome relief after he’d been shelled for 15 hits in an 11-7 loss to Brooklyn in his first start of the season. With a record of 6-2, the Beaneaters were in second place, a game behind the surprising 6-0 St. Louis Browns.

None of this could have mattered to Marty Bergen, who received a telegram that day that his four-year-old son had been taken critically ill. Bergen left the club to head home, but little Willie Bergen died of diphtheria before his father could reach his side. “It’s pretty tough that my boy should be taken away,” Bergen lamented to neighbors, “but it seems a great deal harder still to think that I should just get home in time to see him being taken out of the door in a box.”5 Until Bergen rejoined the club on May 6, Clarke assumed the catching duties and George Yeager, the prior season’s backup receiver, was recalled from Worcester.

Kolbedanz was knocked out of the box in the first inning of his next start, in Philadelphia on April 27. Streit pitched poorly in five-plus innings of relief, and right fielder Chick Stahl pitched the final two innings. The Phillies capitalized on 14 walks given up by Boston’s pitchers in winning 20-3, handing the Beaneaters their most decisive loss of the season. The loser of four in a row as April turned to May, Boston slumped to 7-7 and seventh place.

A serious blow was dealt to the club on May 2 when Billy Hamilton, batting over .400 at the time, wrenched his knee sliding home with a run in a 9-2 win at Baltimore. He was initially out for two weeks, and a strained tendon plagued the aging star for the remainder of the season, limiting his playing time to 84 games and reducing his speed and agility on the basepaths. Chick Stahl was moved to the top of the batting order, and utilityman Jimmy “General” Stafford was pressed into duty as the center fielder in Hamilton’s absence.

Barely a month into the season, it was apparent that outside of Nichols and Willis, Boston’s pitching was not performing up to snuff. Klobedanz, 19-10 in 1898, had struggled in winning once in five decisions, and the rookie Streit had not impressed enough to pitch in more than two games. On May 11, with the Boston club hovering just over .500 in sixth place, Selee released Klobedanz and Streit and signed veteran southpaw Frank Killen. Killen had topped NL pitchers in victories in 1893 and 1896 with Pittsburgh, but had started the 1899 season 0-2 with the hapless Senators and been released.

“The champions are handicapped in the box,” observed one journalist. “Nichols and Willis are in good shape. [Charlie] Hickman, Lewis, and Killen are not to be depended upon, and the members of the team have little confidence in any of these men at the present time.”6 But Killen made an impressive debut with the club, limiting Louisville to five hits in a 13-4 win on May 19. “This is the left-hander we have been looking for for a long time,” someone on the Boston squad was quoted as saying, “and now that we have him there is no way on earth to keep us from winning the pennant again.”7

In an otherwise dreary 5-2 loss at Washington on May 15, Marty Bergen demonstrated why he was considered the circuit’s best defensive catcher when he threw out five runners attempting to steal.

Bergen, though, was struggling in his mind. After his son died in April, Bergen began to imagine that his teammates were making light of the boy’s death and joking about it behind his back. His teammates, in turn, would later confess they felt “an indescribable fear”8 whenever they were in his company.

On June 20, in one of the hardest-fought contests of the season, Kid Nichols matched Chicago’s Clark Griffith inning for inning, each giving up a single run in the fourth and nothing thereafter, and carrying the game into extra innings. Finally, in the 13th, with two men on and two outs, Chicago second baseman Barry McCormick fumbled what ought to have been the third out, loading the bases. Griffith, perhaps rattled, walked in a run before giving up a bases-clearing double to Jimmy Collins. Nichols went the distance in the 5-1 victory.

Collins, the league’s premier third baseman in only his third season, put together a string of 18 straight games without an error, ending on June 3.

On June 21 Charlie Frisbee, “crack outfielder of the Western League,”9 a .316 hitter over four minor-league seasons, was plucked from the Worcester roster to be Hamilton’s on-again, off-again replacement in center field. Although no match for Hamilton’s skill at the bat and on the basepaths, Frisbee would prove an adequate substitute, stroking the ball at a better-than-.300 clip all season.

Still looking to bolster the pitching staff, Boston signed Harvey Bailey, a 22-year-old left-handed pitcher for the independent South Bend club, on June 29, and put him in the pitcher’s box the next day. Bailey looked sharp in his major-league debut, scattering seven hits and one walk in nine innings in beating Cleveland 3-1.

“When a team begins to lose,” observed the Pittsburgh Press, “all kinds of stories are put into circulation. The latest report is to the effect that the Boston players are fighting among themselves. The fact that Ted Lewis … threatened to leave the team the other day and go home would indicate that there is not the best of feeling among the players. Lewis is one of the nicest players in the business, and would not make such a declaration unless there were some reason for it.”10

The Beaneaters were suffering internal unrest, but they were hardly losing. From May 11 through June 15, they had won 23 of 28, mostly on the strength of hitting by Tenney and Stahl, both batting over .350, and had climbed into second place behind Brooklyn. The Superbas, though, were all but uncatchable, winning games at an astonishing pace, including 12 in a row from May 28 through June 9, and 20 of 21 through June 22. As June came to a close, Brooklyn sat atop the NL at 45-18, a .714 percentage, with Boston five games back at 39-22 (.639).

On July 1 Boston took on the Cleveland Spiders, 11-48 and on their way to an abominable 20-134 won-lost record for the season, in a doubleheader at League Park. In the opener Boston, behind the splendid three-hit pitching of Willis, led 7-0 going into the ninth inning when Cleveland, “by a batting streak such as they have seldom developed, sent seven men across the plate and tied the score.” In the 11th, after Boston had scored twice to regain the lead, Cleveland, having driven Willis from the box, rallied for three runs off Ted Lewis to pull out an exciting victory and send the disbelieving crowd into a celebratory frenzy. In the six-inning second game, the Beaneaters pulled themselves together and, in support of a two-hit, scoreless performance by seldom-used starter Charlie Hickman, pounded Cleveland’s Fred “Crazy” Schmit andHarry Maupin for 14 runs on 17 hits.

Boston was, in its next game, on July 3, on the receiving end of a 15-2 pounding from Washington, loser of 18 of its last 19. Killen was driven from the box in a nine-run explosion by the ordinarily woeful Senators in the third. An unusual play unfolded in the eighth inning when with two on, Washington’s Shad Barry hit a fly that landed safely in deep center. After racing around the bases with what appeared to be a home run, Barry was called out for failing to touch first base, depriving him of even a base hit.

A stripped but still competitive Orioles team hosted the Beaneaters in a July 4 morning-afternoon doubleheader at Baltimore’s Union Park. After taking the morning game 2-1 when Ted Lewis walked the bases full in the sixth and allowed the Orioles’ Jimmy Sheckard to drive in the winning run on a sacrifice fly, the Orioles stole another close one in the afternoon, 5-4, from Nichols. Steal, indeed – with two out in the fourth inning, John McGraw reached on a bunt single, then stole second, then third. Nichols walked Ducky Holmes, who became “engaged in dodging up and down the base lines.”11 While Nichols was distracted, McGraw took off for home and got his third stolen base of the inning. In doing so, McGraw became the first player in history to steal second, third, and home in the same inning. (Louisville’s Honus Wagner duplicated McGraw’s feat less than a month later, on August 1. Wagner today shares a record with Ty Cobb, each having accomplished the feat four times.)

The pair of losses dropped the Beaneaters into fourth place behind Brooklyn, Philadelphia, and Chicago. A turnabout in fortune gave Boston four straight victories and returned the team to second place.

On July 9 the Grand Rapids Cabinet Makers of the Interstate League filed a protest with the national board claiming that Harvey Bailey had signed with the team before jumping to Boston. Bailey denied accepting terms with Grand Rapids, but the board upheld the team’s claim, and Boston was forced to turn over $300 to buy Bailey’s contract.12 Opting for the younger Bailey, Selee released Killen on July 28, despite the veteran’s 7-5 won-lost record. The gamble worked for Boston, as Bailey went 6-4 before season’s end.

Batting records through July 12 showed Philadelphia’s Ed Delahanty leading the NL at .421, with Boston’s Fred Tenney fourth at .394. Despite distractions, Bergen topped the league’s catchers in fielding percentage.13

On July 21, on the way to Cincinnati with the team to begin a long Western road trip, Bergen, suitcase in hand, stepped off the train in Washington, and caught another train for home. Bergen “has melancholia at times,” one of his teammates told The Sporting News. “When he has one of his spells he talks of nothing but his children and home and usually jumps a train and goes to them.”14 Selee fined Bergen $25.

“[Bergen] says that last season he had trouble with one of the players, which was magnified. He claims he could not get a day off to see his family, and that Selee would not listen to his excuses for going home; that at Chicago, at least four members of the team went out of the way to abuse him every time he went to bat, and would call out ‘Strike him out’; that one player, after the loss of [Bergen’s] child, continually reminded him of his trouble.

“He says he left the team at Washington because he found that Selee and most of the players were avoiding him. He is in good condition, with the exception of his nerves, which he says will be all right ‘if the boys play ball and let up aggravating me while manager Selee sits silently by.’”15

While observers weighed Boston’s chances at the pennant without their star backstop, Boston players were irritated at Bergen’s allegations. Meanwhile, Clarke was catching every inning of every game in Bergen’s absence.

Selee wired Bergen to return at once or not at all. Bergen tore up the telegram. On July 28 he met with club President Arthur Soden, telling him he was “subject to a nervous trouble, and when he was attacked he had no control over himself but to get away from the team as rapidly as possible.”16 Soden advised Bergen to rejoin the team when they returned from their road trip.

The prodigal catcher’s return turned out to be one of the finest games of his career. Against the Washington Senators at Boston on August 4, Bergen threw out all three runners who tried to steal. The fans at the South End Grounds cheered Bergen like a returning hero each time he came to bat. In the ninth inning, with two out, Boston down 3-2 and men on second and third, Bergen drove a single to left that scored both runners and won the game. “After the game Bergen was a mark for the crowd, who cheered him until he went out of sight.”17

His teammates, still riled over what Bergen had said about them in the newspapers, bristled at the cheers for Bergen, believing that the public had taken Bergen’s side. Before the game the next day, the Boston players demanded that Bergen retract his allegations, but he refused. Threatening to strike and delaying the start of the game by 15 minutes, they took the field only after Bergen alleged that he had been “incorrectly quoted.”18

Boston enjoyed its biggest offensive afternoon of the year at home against the Cleveland Spiders on August 8. The Beaneaters teed off on Frank Bates, scoring four runs in the first, another in the third, and five more in the fourth to take a 10-1 lead. Harvey Bailey faltered in the fifth, with Cleveland scoring four runs on four singles and a home run by center fielder Tommy Dowd. Hickman replaced Bailey for the final four innings, as Boston added three more runs in the seventh, and another five in the eighth. In all, the Beaneaters tallied 20 hits, including home runs by General Stafford and Hugh Duffy, winning 18-8.

One game behind the first-place Brooklyn squad on August 10, Boston began to shake up the roster. Jouett Meekin, 5-11 as a starting pitcher with the New York Giants, was purchased for $5,000 on August 11. Meekin posted a 7-6 won-lost record and a fine 2.83 ERA over the remaining two months of the season. The next day, despite batting .302 in 55 games, utilityman Stafford was released. None of Boston’s moves would make a difference in trying to catch the Superbas, who were busy winning 26 of 30 games between August 11 and September 14

Batting above .310 through most of the summer, third baseman Jimmy Collins twisted his ankle while sliding in a game against Baltimore on August 19, and although he remained in the lineup, his hitting suffered, and his average fell more than 30 points by season’s end.

Making more roster moves, Selee gave second baseman Mike Hickey and pitcher Billy Ging each a one-game trial. Hickey went 1-for-3 on September 14, but his defensive play showed “poor form.”19 Ging’s outing, on the other hand, was a good one; he tossed eight innings of five-hit, one-run ball on September 25 in beating the New York Giants, 2-1. Curiously, Ging never appeared in another major-league game.

Another young player, 24-year-old Billy Sullivan, later an outstanding defensive receiver for the American League’s Chicago White Stockings, was purchased in September from the Western League’s Grand Rapids Furniture Makers. Sullivan made his debut behind the plate on September 13, ultimately getting into 22 games as Bergen’s erratic behavior increasingly cost him playing time.

A Boston loss to Baltimore on September 5, in the middle of a 3-6 slide, allowed the Philadelphia Phillies to slip past the Beaneaters into second place. Held scoreless in consecutive games, September 8-9, by Brooklyn’s all-star aggregation, Boston fell behind in the standings by double digits.

On September 25 Bergen again went home after splitting his finger in a game in New York against the Giants, leaving only a note for Frank Selee.20 He returned unannounced a week later, showing up in Boston, where the Beaneaters were again to take on the Giants, and suiting up for the game without speaking to anyone, not even Selee.

Finally, on October 9, Bergen appeared to suffer a mental breakdown during a game against Philadelphia. Imagining someone was trying to stab him with a knife,21 Bergen leapt out of the way of several pitches, letting the ball fly by. One of these dodged pitches was a third strike to Ed Delahanty with two men out, allowing him to reach first base.22Selee removed Bergen from the game. “Bergen Makes a Farce of His Position,” remarked a headline in the Boston Globe.23

Boston won 13 of 18, including one tie, down the stretch, including three shutouts –by Lewis, Willis, and Nichols – in four games against Philadelphia. They had reclaimed second place on October 2, but were unable to gain further ground on the Superbas, who captured the pennant with a 101-47 record, eight games ahead of the Beaneaters.

Bergen, playing in only 72 games in 1899, caused considerable tension and disruption for the rest of the team. “Mr. Soden makes no bones in asserting that his club has lost the pennant on account of the Bergen trouble,” a newspaper said. “This created a bad feeling on the team, on account of which the men did not play the ball of which they were capable.”24

No doubt. But Bergen hadn’t sidelined Billy Hamilton, whose strained tendon cost him 64 games and contributed to a sharp decline in his batting average. from .369 in 1898 to .310, and his stolen-base total from 54 to 19. Jimmy Collins’s slump in the second half of the season hurt, too, his totals dropping from .328 with 15 home runs in 1898 to just .277 with 5 four-baggers. Fred Tenney and Chick Stahl batted .347 and .351, respectively, and Hamilton’s frequent stand-in Charlie Frisbee hit .329 in 42 games. Vic Willis enjoyed a superb sophomore season, winning 27 against only 8 losses, with a league-leading 2.50 ERA, but staff ace Kid Nichols, after three straight seasons with 30 or more wins, turned in a disappointing 21-19 won-lost record, and Ted Lewis dropped to 17-11 after going 26-8 for the pennant-winning club of 1898. The generally overlooked Charlie Hickman was a perfect 6-0 with a pair of shutouts in nine starts out of 11 appearances in the pitcher’s box, and added eight more games as an outfielder-first baseman, batting an impressive .397 with seven triples in only 63 at-bats; next season would find him playing regularly at first base for the New York Giants.

The postscript to Boston’s 1899 season is a tragic one. On the morning of January 19, 1900, Marty Bergen surrendered to the demons in his mind. Rising early, he took an axe and murdered his wife, Hattie, 3-year-old son, Joe, and 6-year-old daughter, Florence. Standing before a mirror, he then took his own life by slashing his throat with a razor.25 The next day, 800 mourners gathered at St. Joseph’s Church in North Brookfield. Only one member of the Boston club – Billy Hamilton, Bergen’s roommate on the road – attended the funeral. Frank Selee sent flowers.

The era of Boston’s baseball greatness had also come to an end. After winning five pennants in the 1890s, the club managed one only winning season in the next 14, losing 100 or more games five times. By the time the team hoisted another pennant, it was 1914 and they had been rechristened the Braves. Meanwhile, a new Boston team, a charter member of the rival American League, had opened for business at a ballpark across the railroad tracks from the South End Grounds. As one dynasty ended, another was about to begin.

RICHARD RIIS is a writer, researcher, and genealogist with an abiding interest in baseball since he beheld his first baseball card in 1964. In addition to contributing to the SABR BioProject and 10 SABR books, he has been a contributing editor for a popular music magazine and is presently working with his friend and former child star Pamelyn Ferdin on her memoirs. He lives in South Setauket, New York.

 

Sources

In addition to the sources listed in the notes, the author also consulted:

Caruso, Gary. The Braves Encyclopedia (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1995).

Kaese, Harold. The Boston Braves, 1871-1953 (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 2004).

 

Notes

1 “Leaders of the National League,” Nashville American, March 6, 1899: 6.

2 “Promise Good Sport,” Daily Inter Ocean (Chicago), March 7, 1899: 8.

3 “Players Were Scarce,” Baltimore Sun, March 22, 1899: 6.

4 “Brilliant Base Ball Opens the Season,” Brooklyn Daily Eagle, April 16, 1899: 10.

5 William Nack, “Collison at Home,” Sports Illustrated, June 4, 2001: 71.

6 “Must Play Faster,” Pittsburgh Press, May 17, 1899: 5.

7 “Made Scores in Bunches,” North Adams (Massachusetts) Transcript, May 20, 1899: 6.

8 “Tragedy on Heels of Romance,” Cincinnati Post, January 23, 1900: 2.

9 “Baseball Briefs,” Buffalo Evening News, March 7, 1899: 14.

10 “Plays and Players,” Pittsburgh Press, July 3, 1899: 5.

11 “Orioles on Top,” Baltimore Sun, July 5, 1899: 6.

12 “World of Sport,” Buffalo Commercial, July 25, 1899: 7.

13 “Baseball Briefs,” Washington Evening Star, July 17, 1899: 9.

14 “Selee Reinstates Bergen,” The Sporting News, July 29, 1899: 5.

15 “Bergen’s Tale,” Cincinnati Post, July 26, 1899: 5.

16 “Bergen Is Penitent,” Philadelphia Times, July 29, 1899: 11.

17 “Bergen’s Triumph,” Boston Globe, August 5, 1899: 1.

18 “Brooklyn Sends Meekin in Air,” Deseret Evening News (Salt Lake City), August 23, 1899: 5.

19 “St. Louis 11-7, Boston 1-4,” Kansas City Journal, September 15, 1899: 5.

20 “Baseball Gossip,” Detroit Free Press, September 27, 1899: 6.

21 William Nack, “Collison at Home,” Sports Illustrated, June 4, 2001: 80.

22 “The Phillies Play Fast Ball and Defeat Boston in the Second Game,” Philadelphia Times, October 10, 1899: 10.

23 “Tie for Second,” Boston Globe, October 10, 1899: 3.

24 “Recent Peace Conference,” Washington Evening Star, October 13, 1899: 8.

25 “Bergen’s Awful Deed,” Illustrated Buffalo Express, January 21, 1900: 14.