Gavy Cravath: The Deadball Era Anomaly

This article was published in the SABR Deadball Era Committee’s November 2015 newsletter.

 

Writing in January 1915, Ernest J. Lanigan suggested that if Gavy Cravath were only to play more regularly, the slugging Philadelphia Phillies outfielder might be able to challenge Buck Freeman’s longstanding record for home runs in a single season (25), set in 1899. Lanigan’s prediction was based on one other factor, namely “if the schedule maker would allow the Quakers to play all their championship games at the Broad and Huntingdon street (sic) grounds.”

That Cravath’s home run totals were a product of playing at the Baker Bowl, where the short leftfield fence was especially friendly to right-handed power hitters like Cravath, is well known. Of the 119 home runs that Cravath hit during his 11 major league seasons, 92 were hit at the Baker Bowl. In no season did Cravath hit more than five home runs away from his home park, and no player in history hit a greater percentage of his career home runs in his home stadium than did the stocky Cravath.

Clifford Carlton Cravath (whose own spelling of his nickname was “Gavy”, even though many sports writers at the time spelled it “Gavvy”) is occasionally mentioned as a glaring omission from the Hall of Fame on the basis of his six National League home run titles (including one tie) achieved over seven seasons from 1913 through 1919. Yet he is remembered just as much for being, as Bill Swank called him in Deadball Stars of the National League, “an anomaly in the Deadball Era” as the first consistent power hitter in a period when teams focused on stealing bases. Swank quoted Cravath as saying: “Some players steal bases with hook slides and speed. I steal them with my bat.”

Even if Cravath’s single-season home run mark has been dwarfed in the years since, it is worth remembering the extraordinary season he enjoyed one-hundred years ago. In 1915, Cravath dominated the National League to a degree that few players have, leading the league in runs, home runs, RBIs, walks, on-base percentage, and slugging percentage. Cravath’s 24 home runs nearly doubled the total of Cy Williams, the N.L.’s second-place finisher that season. Cravath also had 28 more RBIs than anyone else in the league. That the Phillies were able to reach the 1915 World Series with Cravath as the team’s only real offensive threat (other than perhaps Fred Luderus, who hit primarily for average) speaks to Cravath’s historically-significant performance.

Cravath’s name is so closely associated with prodigious home run totals that it is often forgotten that he had one of the best throwing arms for an outfielder of his time. In fact, Cravath led National League outfielders in one other important category in 1915: assists, with 28. Although known by his teammates as a practical joker, Cravath’s on-field toughness and Western roots ostensibly earned him the nickname of “Cactus.” Writing in 1941, Stan Baumgartner, a teammate of Cravath on the 1915 Phillies, provided this description of the 5’10”, 185 lb. outfielder: “a swashbuckling, tobacco-chewin’, high cussin’, bull-necked, blacksmith-armed wielder of the wagon tongue.”

Cravath, of course, fell one home run shy of Freeman’s home run mark in 1915, but Cravath’s total set a 20th Century National League home run record, as well as a modern standard that stood until Babe Ruth surpassed it in 1919. In contrast, the Boston Braves, Boston Red Sox, Brooklyn Dodgers, Philadelphia Athletics, St. Louis Browns, and Washington Senators each hit fewer than 20 home runs as a team in 1915. In comparison, Braggo Roth led the American League with seven homers that year, and other than the 21 home runs that Frank Schulte hit in 1921, no Deadball Era player hit more than 20 home runs in a season until Ruth did so in 1919.

Where Cravath fell short was in his performance in the 1915 World Series, where he hit only .125 (2-for-16) without a home run in the five-game loss to Boston. But, other than Luderus and Dave Bancroft, no one in the Philadelphia lineup had a productive World Series offensively. Cravath’s groundout against Ernie Shore in Game 1 did drive in the tying run in the only game that the Phillies would win in that Series. When the Phillies went on to lose four straight Series games, each by a single run, as Cravath struggled, it was to be expected that the blame would fall on Philadelphia’s most prolific offensive performer. One article published shortly after the 1915 World Series remarked that “Cravath looked more like an amateur than any other member of the Phillies.”

Still, the respect that Cravath commanded in 1915 is evident in this note included by Robert Creamer in his biography of Babe Ruth, Babe: The Legend Comes to Life. Boston manager Bill Carrigan, Creamer says, was so intent on neutralizing Cravath’s power in the 1915 World Series that he insisted on starting right-handed pitchers as often as he could. In keeping with that approach, Carrigan did not start Ruth, then a pitching prodigy. That Carrigan was apparently concerned more with stopping Cravath than he was with countering 31-game winner Grover Cleveland Alexander neatly sums up Cravath’s dominance in 1915.

Perhaps Cravath’s 1913 season, when he set career highs for hits, RBI, and slugging percentage, was his best statistically. Even so, Cravath will be always be remembered first for breaking new ground as a home run hitter in 1915 with his then-astounding 24 home runs. In Cravath’s 1963 obituary, Fred Lieb noted that “[t]wo dozen Cravath home runs in 1915 were almost as magic a figure as 61 for Roger Maris of the Yankees in 1961.” Whereas Ty Cobb was the dominant player in the American League in 1915, there is little doubt that Gavy Cravath, as Cobb’s stylistic opposite, had the greatest impact of any player during that season.