Remembering Carl Mays

Carl Mays is unfortunately remembered for two incidents. To some, he is remembered as the man who threw the pitch that felled Ray Chapman. To others, he is remembered as the man who lost a suspicious game during the 1921 World Series. He should be remembered for much more.

Mays’s career accomplishments from 1915 through 1929 exceed those of all of his contemporaries except Walter Johnson and Grover Cleveland Alexander. He is the forgotten star of his era. Why?

Perhaps it is the albatross created by the Chapman accident. Perhaps it is the allegation first introduced by noted baseball writer Fred Lieb that Mays “threw” a game in the 1921 World Series. Perhaps it was his dour, morose personality. The true reason will never be known). The writers who saw him play and failed to extol his virtues are now gone. The batters who stepped gingerly up to the plate against him have met the same fate. In short, there is no one left to ask.

Let’s do the best we can with the information available.

Call him “Sub”

Mays’s famous sidearm/underhand motion was his recipe for success. He got so low on his pitches that his pitching hand sometimes dragged along the mound. This was not, however, his natural motion. When he started his pro career, he threw hard with the conventional overhand motion.

That changed in 1913. Mays was in spring training with the Portland club of the Northwest League. His first day of practice was uneventful. The next day, though, he came up lame. He thought a few days off rest would alleviate the throbbing pain, but it did not. In that era, teams had no room for sore-armed pitchers. Mays felt desperate and began to look for ways to compensate.

Finally, he found a way thanks to “Iron Man” Joe McGinnity, who that year was player-manager for Tacoma. McGinnity threw underhand and with ease. Mays decided to give the submarine motion a fling. When he did, he found he was able to whip the ball without pain. For the rest of the season, Mays practiced the new motion an hour a day. He gradually became more proficient and more comfortable with it. He also found that the lower he dropped his arm, the more “action” he got on his pitches. Along the way, he earned the nickname ”Sub.”

This funky motion undoubtedly provided Mays with an advantage. The underhanded, whip-like arm action gave his pitches a queer spin that allowed them to dip and dive on their flights to the batter. One of Mays’s longtime catchers, Muddy Ruel, put it best when he said Mays’s pitches took “remarkable shoots, jumps and twists.” Mays mastered the submarine motion; he became an excellent control pitcher, though he hit many batters during his career.

Finding hope in Providence

The off-season between 1913 and 1914 was tumultuous for Mays. He spent that winter in Portland, with Franklin Pierce Mays, a distant relative and a lifelong mentor. During the off-season, Mays was sold to the Detroit Tigers along with Harry Heilmann. Mays was not pleased with the thought of going to Detroit. Almost before he was able to voice his displeasure, he was released to Providence of the International League. His spirits plummeted, but his ruffled feathers were smoothed when the Providence club sent a contract paying him $300 per month. Paying a man more money in one month than he had ever seen at one time in his life has a way of curing many ills.

During his stay in Providence, Mays was the stopper of the staff, winning 24 games. He helped the Providence club to the 1914 International League pennant. At the conclusion of the season, he moved up to the Red Sox along with a teammate named Babe Ruth. Mays saw no action for the Red Sox during the remainder of the 1914 season.

The Boston experience

Mays’s major league debut came on April 15, 1915, in a relief role in which he picked up the victory. His first start came a few days later against Walter Johnson. Mays lost, 1-0. Despite pitching brilliantly, he left that game in the sixth inning with a bruised foot caused by a slide into home. Returning to the lineup three weeks later, he appeared in 38 games, starting only six. He won six games, and, using modern calculations, collected a league leading seven saves.

The 1916 season started Mays’s ascent to the top of the class of starting pitchers. He appeared in 44 games, more than half of which he started. He won 18 games in his split role for the pennant-winning Red Sox. His star continued to rise in 1917 and 1918, when he won 22 and 21 games respectively. Then came the crash of 1919.

Mays’s temperament is partly to blame for his troubled 1919 season. He had a reputation as a hothead and a headhunter. Teammates disliked him because he refused to carouse or drink with them. He sulked when things did not go his way and raged at players who made errors behind him, alienating himself even further. Partly, of course, this stemmed from the professional athlete’s intense desire to succeed.

Mays’s hothead reputation was exceeded only by his reputation as a headhunter, for which he was despised by opponents.

Mays was beset by personal and professional problems throughout the 1919 season. Spring training started on a sour note with a contract squabble. Then, on March 26, he received notice that the house he built for his mother had been destroyed by fire, along with the personal belongings, which he had stored there. Mays had insured the house for only a fraction of its value; the fire ruined him financially. In need of money, he grudgingly signed on the Red Sox’ terms.

Baseball offered no solace from this personal tragedy, as he suffered a series of demoralizing defeats. The Red Sox either scored no runs while he was pitching or allowed a slew of unearned runs. With each defeat, Mays became more sullen and more frustrated.

His temper boiled over on July 13 against the White Sox. Chicago scored four first inning runs on Red Sox fielding gaffes. At the end of the second inning, he Mays walked off the mound and shouted that he was not going to pitch for the Red Sox again. He stomped into the clubhouse, tore off his uniform, stormed out, and hopped the next train to Boston. Upon his arrival, he announced to a reporter that he was going fishing. His record was 5-11.

Mays’s vacation lasted seventeen days. Red Sox owner Harry Frazee, in the midst of the 1919 version of the salary dump, wanted desperately to peddle Mays so that he could raise some much-needed cash. Five teams (the Yankees, White Sox, Senators, Indians and Tigers) were interested in the AWOL star.

American League president Ban Johnson directed the Red Sox to suspend Mays for his insubordination. Johnson was not about to allow a disgruntled player to essentially demand a trade or sale. Frazee refused. He wanted the money Mays’s sale would bring in. Johnson won temporarily, as the interested clubs agreed to back off.

Finally, though, the aggressive Yankees, determined to build a winner, broke ranks. They worked out a deal directly with Mays, almost as if he were a free agent. Yankee co-owner “Cap” Huston then contacted Frazee and agreed upon terms. The Red Sox would receive $40,000, and two pitchers, Allan Russell and Bob McGraw.

Johnson found out about the trade when he read the headlines in the next day’s paper. Enraged, he immediately suspended Mays, infuriating the Yankees and the Red Sox in the process.

The league split into two factions. The pro-Johnson group was made up of the Senators, Indians, Tigers, Browns and A’s. The Yankees, the Red Sox, and the White Sox (whose owner, Charles Comiskey, hated Johnson for his own reasons), were allied on the other side. Johnson voided the Red Sox-Yankees deal, then called a league meeting to iron matters out.

The meeting only solidified hard feelings. The Yankees were determined to use their new pitcher in the pennant race, and they obtained a temporary injunction against the implementation of Johnson’s ruling in each city in which Mays pitched for them. Mays went 9-3 with New York.

The Mays debacle, which spilled into the 1919-20 off-season, effectively ended Johnson’s tyrannical rule over baseball. It reminded baseball executives that they had to observe limits to their power if they wanted to retain their control over players. The Mays acquisition helped propel the Yankees to their dynasty-and helped put an end to any hopes that the Red Sox might become the game’s dominant club.

Ignominy in New York

Mays’s 1920 season was filled with triumph and tragedy. He won 26 games and helped keep the Yankees in the pennant race. New York finished third, three games behind the Indians and only one game behind the second-place White Sox. Mays was the ace of the staff. His . 703 winning percentage far exceeded the team winning percentage of .617.

But August 16 became a day that forever changed the baseball world’s perception of Mays, and his perception of it. The Indians and the Yankees were in the middle of the hot pennant race when they squared off.

The Indians carried a 3-0 lead into the fifth inning. Ray Chapman, the Indians’ regular shortstop, led off the fifth. Chapman was affable, well-liked, and highly regarded by teammates and opponents-the antithesis of Mays. Chapman worked the count to one ball and one strike. Catcher Muddy Ruel called for a fastball low in the strike zone. As Mays reached back to throw, he saw Chapman shift his back foot as if to prepare to lay down a push bunt. Mays did the usual-he changed the location of his pitch to high and tight to make it more difficult to bunt.

Chapman crowded the plate, much like many modern players. For some reason, he froze as the pitch bore down on him. The ball struck him squarely on the left temple, hitting him so hard that it made a crack similar to that of bat hitting ball. The blow caused a fatal double skull fracture.

After the game, Mays sat in front of his locker with his head in his hands, visibly shaken. When he learned that Chapman had died, he became depressed and withdrawn. He later stated that “it was the most regrettable incident of my career, and I would give anything if I could undo what has happened.”

Because of his reputation as a headhunter, opponents and fans turned on Mays, calling for his expulsion from baseball. Old nemesis Ban Johnson joined the cry. Mays was never officially punished but, the strain of the incident: took its toll. Mays pitched poorly in four of his next six starts, probably costing the Yankees second place and possibly the pennant.

Mays rebounded in 1921 to win 27 games and help lead the Yankees to their first pennant. Mays was far and away the ace of the staff, with a. 750 winning percentage for a .641 Yankee club.

The storm clouds returned in 1922, when Mays was only 13-14. Nine of his losses occurred when the Yankees scored two runs or less. Nonetheless, manager Miller Huggins seethed over Mays’s losing ways. Huggins’s disenchantment was solidified when Mays lost Game 4 of the World Series. The manager’s caldron of disenchantment boiled while the weather chilled. During the off-season, Huggins placed Mays on waivers to teach him a lesson. When other clubs tried to claim the pitcher, his name was withdrawn. Mays remained a Yankee, but in 1923 he collected more splinters than wins. He was rarely used, pitched in only 81 innings and won only five games all season. Fred Lieb described the Huggins-Mays feud in his book, Baseball As I Have Known It:

In 1923 Huggins really made Mays suffer. While Carl claimed he was in fine physical condition and that his arm felt as strong as ever, he got almost no work, despite being one of the highest salaried pitchers on the club. Sometimes two or three weeks would go by, and then Huggins would let him finish a losing game.

In Martin Smelser’s book The Life That Ruth Built, he described Huggins’ conduct toward Mays in 1923 as a public shaming. Huggins would not permit Mays to pitch batting practice or even warm up in the bullpen. Catchers were ordered to refrain from catching him. The height of humiliation happened on July 17, when a rusty Mays started a game against the Indians and was allowed to absorb a 13-0 shellacking. The Indians pasted Mays for 20 hits and four walks. This “Huggins show” so disgusted shortstop Everett Scott and first baseman Wally Pipp that they walked off the field during a game. Huggins began telling anyone that would listen that Mays had lost some on the fast one.

Banished to Cincinnati

Huggins’s dislike toward Mays knew no bounds. Mays was waived again after the 1923 season. Cincinnati gladly claimed him for $20,000. Huggins took one last jab at him with a letter to Reds president, Garry Herrmann. He acknowledged Mays as one of his best pitchers, saying he did not want Mays pitching against the Yankees (that is why he would only accept inter-league waivers on him). He said he did not want Mays because he was a tough man to handle, and that Herrmann should cut his salary in half because of this. Perhaps the best explanation for Huggins’ conduct lies with his character. In The Life That Ruth Built, Smelser described Huggins as a brilliant talent evaluator, yet small-minded, mean, and subject to throwing tantrums.

Mays regained his focus for the 1924 season. He won 20 games for the fourth-place Reds, and won a $2,000 raise for 1925. Meanwhile, the Yankees lost the 1924 pennant to the Senators by two games. Mays might well have made the difference in the Bronx. In 1925, Mays suffered all season with a sore arm and appeared in only 12 games.

Mays returned to health for most of the 1926 season. On September 14, with eight games to go, Mays collapsed during pregame warmup, prematurely ending his season. Earlier in the season, Pirate outfielder Kiki Cuyler hit a vicious line drive off Mays’s shin. The blow to the leg had somehow become infected. Without their ace, the Reds were unable to overtake the Cardinals and lost the pennant by two games.

Injuries marred 1927, too. Mays suffered a double hernia and pitched sparingly. When he returned, he had lost the zip off his pitches and was through as a regular starter. He got into only 14 games for the Reds in 1928 ( 4-1), and though he appeared 3 7 times for the Giants in 1929 (7-2), 29 of those appearances were in relief.

World Series play

Mays participated in the Series of 1916, 1918, 1921, and 1922 (he rode the bench for the ’23 Series). He compiled a mediocre 3-4 record, but he built a 2.20 ERA and permitted only 47 hits in 57 innings.

Mays’s role in the 1921 World Series became controversial after the publication of Fred Lieb’s history of the Yankees in 1947.

Mays started Game 4 on October 4, and breezed through the first seven innings without allowing a run. In the eighth, he seemed to tire, and lost command of his pitches. With the Yankees leading, 1-0, the Giants’ Irish Meusel led off with a triple and scored when the next batter, Johnny Rawlings, singled him home. Frank Snyder laid down a sacrifice bunt that Mays tried to field, when he fell. Snyder was safe at first and Rawlings moved to second. Phil Douglas sacrificed the runners to second and third. George Burns followed with a double that scored Rawlings and Snyder. Mays then retired Bancroft and Frisch, but the Giants emerged from the inning with a 3-1 lead and eventually won the contest, 4-2.

Lieb blew the dust off this “suspicious” game a quarter century after it took place, and it has since haunted Mays’s reputation almost as much as the Chapman accident. According to Lieb, a man (unidentified) approached the reporter a few hours after Game 4 and accused Mays of throwing the game. Lieb, accuser in tow, rushed to Commissioner Landis’s hotel suite and reported the story to him. Landis hired a detective to investigate and to tail Mays for the remainder of the Series. At the conclusion of the Series, Landis told Lieb the private investigator was unable to corroborate any of the allegations and was unable to observe Mays engaging in suspicious conduct. Mays was cleared by the Commissioner’s investigation, but Lieb’s publication of this episode has forever sullied his reputation.

Career perspective

Mays was among the top pitchers of his era. He collected 207 wins while compiling a .622 winning percentage. The teams for which he played compiled a winning percentage of .578. Mays’s career winning percentage translates into almost 20 more career wins than the average pitcher who pitched for these clubs.

During his tenure, the league batted .272 against the competition, but only .257 against him. The pitchers of this period allowed an average of 3.57 runs per nine innings. Mays’s ERA over that period was 2.92.

Mays also consistently ranked in the top five of various pitching categories. His top five rankings are as follows:

1. Twice in saves (by modern calculations)

2. Six times in wins

3. Six times in winning percentage

4. Six times in complete games

5. Four times in fewest hits allowed per game

6. Three times in ERA

7. Twice in shutouts

8. Four times in innings pitched

9. Once in strikeouts

10. Twice in games pitched

He was clearly among the elite pitchers of his era.

Mays played partly in the Deadball Era and partly during the live ball era. Excluding Walter Johnson and Grover Cleveland Alexander, who were in a class of their own, eight pitchers who spanned similar years are enshrined in the Hall of Fame. The “elite eight” are Stan Coveleski, Red Faber, Jesse Haines, Waite Hoyt, Rube Marquard, Herb Pennock, Eppa Rixey, and Burleigh Grimes. Mays compares favorably with each of these men, and in some cases exceeds their accomplishments.

The elite eight exceed Mays in total career wins, but they also played more seasons. His three career interruptions clearly affected Mays’s win total.

On average, Mays had 13 .8 wins per season. This figure exceeds Faber’s (12. 7 ), Haines’s (11 ), Hoyt’s (11.3), Marquard’s (11.2), Pennock’s (11), Rixey’s (12.7). Only Coveleski (15.4) and Grimes (14.2) have higher averages.

Mays’s career winning percentage is higher (significantly so in many cases) than that of each of the elite eight. It is three percent higher than Coveleski’s .602. It is four percent higher than Pennock’s .598, nine percent higher than Haines’s .571, ten percent higher than Hoyt’s .566 and Grimes’s .560, 13 percent higher than Faber’s .544, 17 percent higher than Marquard’s .532, and 20 percent higher than Rixey’s .515.

Mays’s ERA far surpasses that of all but Coveleski, whose 2.89 career ERA is slightly better than Mays’s. Marquard’s 3.08 career ERA is six percent higher than Mays’s. Rixey’s 3.15 and Faber’s 3.15 career ERAs are seven percent higher. Grimes’s 3.53 is 17 percent higher. Pennock’s 3.60 and Hoyt’s 3.59 careers ERAs are 18 percent higher. Haines’s 3.64 is a whopping 20 percent higher than Mays’s.

Mays was one of the best pitchers of his era, a vital cog for two of the game’s early dynasties. He played a role (albeit unwittingly) in shaping baseball’s approach to labor and its very power structure. His on-field exploits are shadowed by a bad attitude, terrible tragedy, and what could fairly be called character assassination. But what a fascinating man. What a wonderful career. It is now time to begin the oral tradition-pull up a chair, son. Have you ever heard of Sub Mays? You haven’t! Well, listen closely …

 

Sources

McGarigle, Bob. Baseball’s Great Tragedy.

Sowell, Mike. The Pitch That Killed.

Lieb, Fred. Baseball As I Have Known It.

Smelser, Martin. The Life That Ruth Built.