The Hapless Braves of 1935

Any avid baseball fan can tell you about the Miracle Braves of 1914-how they rose from eighth place on July 18 to win the pennant by 10.5 games and the World Series in four straight. But who can tell you much about the Miracle-less Boston Braves of 1935? They had the worst record in the National League in the twentieth century (38-115, .248), finishing 61.5 games out of first—and 26 out of seventh!

The next question might be: who cares? The 1914 team rose from the cellar; the 1935 outfit stayed there. Well, just because a team was unsuccessful does not necessarily mean it was uninteresting. Like the phantoms of ’14, this too was somewhat of a mystery team. The mystery was how they got so bad so fast from 1934 to ’35, and how they restored themselves to respectability in ’36.

In his excellent book, The Lift That Ruth Built, Marshall Smelser wrote, “The only real assets of the [1935] Braves were the preseason ticket sale, a very good ballplayer, Wally Berger, two or three adequate journeymen ballplayers, and a crumbling monument named Babe Ruth.” But from this vantage point, the interest in that 1935 club centered around not just two men, but six: team president Judge Emil Fuchs, manager Bill McKechnie, and players Ruth, Berger, Ben Cantwell, and Rabbit Maranville.

Taking them one by one:

Emil Fuchs, age fifty-seven, had been president of the Braves since 1922 and had managed the team in 1929 (they finished eighth). He had been trying to find some alchemy that would turn red ink to black, but without success. Maybe Ruth could do the trick. Through some maneuvering, too intricate to detail here, the old home run king shucked his Yankee uniform (or was stripped of it) and donned one belonging to Fuchs’ Braves. Part of the machinations included Ruth being named not only player, but also a vice president and assistant manager. The duties of the latter positions were never precisely explained nor visibly exercised. The promise of a Ruthian spectacle in Braves Field helped hype the aforementioned advance ticket sale.

The spectacle lasted only a few days, as we shall see, and the ink continued to run red. To Fuchs’ credit, the Braves did outdraw the Phillies in 1935, but they certainly didn’t challenge them for seventh place. Fuchs wasn’t around in any official capacity to see the Braves’ inglorious end: he was gone from the front office by August 1.

Deacon Bill McKechnie, age forty-nine, was in his fourteenth season of managing major league teams and in his sixth with the Braves. The Deacon had never had a last-place team before and he never would again in eleven more years as a skipper. In fact, the first division was more to his way of managing. He had piloted the Pirates to a world’s championship in 1925 and had brought the Cardinals home first in the National League in 1928.

He escaped the ’35 calamity with his job (he managed the Braves through 1937) and apparently his sanity (he brought a pennant to Cincinnati in 1939 and a world’s championship there in 1940). In fact, the Braves were the only NL team he managed that didn’t win a flag (he also finished up the 1915 season as field boss of the Newark entry in the Federal League).

Of course, Bill may have been looking over his shoulder, at least early in the ’35 campaign, to try to see what Fuchs and Ruth had really agreed upon. Fuchs kept voicing solid support for McKechnie, even as he dropped innuendoes that the swat king might ascend to the managership. If McKechnie was troubled by the whole cloudy affair and managed badly because of it, he need not have worried. By season’s end, Fuchs was no longer president and Ruth was not and never would he manager McKechnie was both! (He was named temporary president when Fuchs departed.)

Babe Ruth (the “crumbling monument”), released by the Yankees, forty years old, ravaged by twenty years of pitching, hitting, overindulgence, and the relentless glare of the public spotlight, was signed on by the Beantown team. In his first National League game in Boston, the Babe busted one—off King Carl Hubbell no less! The Braves beat the Giants 4-2 as Ruth also singled.

The next dramatic day for Ruth came more than a month later, on May 25. The Braves were playing in Pittsburgh. Ruth smashed three homers and a single. His third shot of the day was his sixth of the year and the 714th and last of his career; it cleared the right field roof of Forbes Field.

But the Braves lost that day, by a score of 11-7, as they did on most other days (their record after the Ruthian swan song stood at 7-20 and would get worse). Shortly thereafter Ruth, batting .181 and with no extra-base hits besides the 6 homers, packed it in, leaving behind his playing days and his ”vice presidency” and “assistant managership.” The legend was written.

Ben Cantwell, thirty-three-year-old starting pitcher, lasted the whole year, but there must have been days when he thought Ruth had the right idea. His won-lost record was 4-25, .138. That was the last time a major league hurler ever lost as many as 25 games and was the lowest percentage in this century for any pitcher who lost as many as 25 (there have been nineteen such “performances”).

For the team, the pattern was win one, lose three. For Ben Cantwell, it was twice as bad—win one, lose six. Cantwell wasn’t really that poor a pitcher, in 1935 or any other year. He had a 76-108, .413 lifetime record (72-83 by eliminating ’35). He won 20 games for the fourth-place Braves in 1933 and had a 9-9 record for them in 1936, as the team climbed out of the mire into sixth place. His ’35 ERA of 4.61 was bad, yes, but not as bad as that of the whole staff (average 4.93). Ben was a hard-luck pitcher on a down-on-its-luck team. Reached at his home, in San Antonio, seventy-eight-year-old Pinky Whitney, the third baseman on that ’35 team, said Cantwell was a ”very fine pitcher.”

Wally Berger, age twenty-nine, was in his prime. He led the league in home runs (34) and RBI (130). He had the second best record in history in percentage of his team’s RBI (See TNP, Vol. 1, No.1, p. 4). He led the team in every important hitting category except two.

What was amazing was not that he led the team in so many categories (even tying for the lead in stolen bases with 3) but that he WAS the team in most hitting statistics. For instance, Ruth’s mere 6 home runs were second-best on the club—and the Babe played in only 28 games. Berger had more than twice as many RBIs as the next Brave (Whitney, 60). His leads in other departments were by margins of 18 in games played, 75 in at bats, 29 in runs, 43 in hits, 15 in doubles, 10 in bases-an-balls, 43 in strikeouts (he got his cuts), and .165 in slugging. His batting average of .295 was 8 points less than Hal Lee’s .303. He had four triples to Lee’s six.

If you were in a Braves uniform that year and somehow managed to get on base, about your only chance of scoring was if Wally came to the plate while you were standing around. The Chicago Cubs of the late ’50s and early ’60s were ofttimes referred to as “Ernie Banks and eight other guys.” The 1935 Boston Braves were built along the same lines.

Rabbit Maranville, age forty-three, was trying one last hurrah for the Braves that dismal year of 1935, his twenty-third major league season.

The curious thing here is that the Rabbit was a twenty-two-year-old hotshot shortstop on that Miracle team of 1914! He played for the Hub team from 1912 through 1920, moved through the Pirates, Cubs, Dodgers, and Cardinals over the next eight years, and then returned to the Braves for the 1929-33 seasons. He was injured and didn’t perform in 1934, and 1935 was enough to put him off the game for good.

For that fine 1914 group, Maranville played 156 games at shortstop; for that downtrodden 1935 bunch, 20 at second base. His batting average (.149) was worse than Ruth’s.

A funny thing as regards the Miracle-less Braves, compared to the Miracle Braves, perhaps good for a trivia question or two: The 1935 contingent had three Hall of Famers (Ruth, Maranville and McKechnie), and the 1914 crew two (Maranville and Johnny Evers).

*****

Just why those 1935 Braves were so woebegone is a bit of a puzzle. It wasn’t because it was a brand new team like the 1962 Mets (120 losses); Boston had had a National League franchise every year since the league was organized in 1876. Nor was it that they were the worst of a long string of bad teams like their neighbors, the Red Sox of the ’20s and early ’30s (six straight cellar dwellers). And the 1935 debacle didn’t follow the breakup of a great team like the 1916 Philadelphia Athletics (.235 winning percentage and the century’s major league record for futility).

Ruth and Maranville didn’t play enough to make much difference one way or the other. The team batting average of .263 wasn’t that bad (it rose only 2 points for the 1936 sixth place team). Besides, there was Berger.

Other teams had bigger one-year declines or recoveries-but not in succession! Mack’s A’s tumbled from first in 1914 to eighth in 1915 and lost .368 in winning percentage in the process. But they crumpled still further in 1916, losing another .048 as they established the modern record for ineptitude. The Milwaukee Brewer nine in the new American League moved to St. Louis in 1902 and improved their record by .224. The Boston Red Sox later made a neat recovery from seventh place in 1945 (last war year) to a pennant in ’46, gaining .214.

The ’34 Braves dived by .269 in ’35, then leaped up by .213 in ’36, an incredible crash and correction. What accounted for it?

That ’35 group gave up 852 runs and scored but 575. The ’34 and ’36 editions surrendered in the 700s and scored in the 600s.

There was some luck involved. SABR statistician Pete Palmer, by a runs-differential method (see TNP, Vol. 1, No. 1, p. 79), figures the Braves got lucky in 6 wins in 1934 and un,lucky in 11 losses in 1935. What he’s saying is that, based upon their deteriorated run differentials, with average luck in close games the team should have declined by about 23 wins over the two years, not 40. Luck aside, what happened?

The ’35 team finished last in the league in hits, doubles, runs, RBI, batting average, slugging, and stolen bases; in pitching, the Braves were last in strikeouts, shutouts, saves, and ERA. However, last-place statistics accompany almost every last-place team. Also, they were not the worst fielding team and were in the middle of the pack in some categories, such as home runs hit and walks allowed.

Pinky Whitney was asked, “What do you think were the reasons for the Boston Braves’ record of 78 wins in 1934, only 38 in ’35, then back to 71 in 1936?” His reply: “I really do not know.”

If Whitney doesn’t know, how am I supposed to? I didn’t see the team play (I was one year old at the time).

I decided to look for more statistical clues.

One question I scrutinized: did several key players have off-seasons that one long summer? Eight men, besides manager McKechnie, were with the club all three years, 1934-36. Below is the book on them.

 

Batter	1934	1935	1936
Buck Jordan, 1B	.311, 2 HR	.279, 5 HR	.323, 3 HR
Billy Urbanski, SS	.293, 7 HR	.329, 4 HR	.261, 0 HR
Wally Berger, CF	.298, 34 HR	.295, 34 HR	.288, 25 HR
Hal Lee, LF	.292, 8 HR	.303, 0 HR	.253, 3 HR
Tommy Thompson, OF	.265, 0 HR	.273, 4 HR	.286, 4 HR
TOTALS	.293, 51 HR	.276, 47 HR	.282, 35 HR
Pitcher	1934	1935	1936
Ben Cantwell	5-11, 4.34 ERA	4-25, 4.61 ERA	9-9, 3.05 ERA
Bob Smith	6-9, 4.65 ERA	8-18, 3.95 ERA	6-7, 3.77 ERA
Bob Brown	1-3, 5.74 ERA	1-8, 6.37 ERA	0-2, 5.63 ERA
TOTALS	12-23, 4.69 ERA	13-51, 4.57 ERA	15-18, 3.48 ERA

 

The table shows that Jordan and Urbanski had off-seasons in average in 1935 (but not HR). Lee actually had his best average year, though he didn’t homer. Thompson was steady and Berger was solid. Among the pitchers, on the basis of ERA, Cantwell had kind of a bummer and Bob Brown was horrific, but Bob Smith’s performance was tolerable.

Nothing very conclusive here.

Let’s look at other pitchers, too. The pitchers in ’35 were about the same crew as those who performed for the 1934 first division team, only now they were a year older and about one earned run a game worse. Records of pitchers aboard both years are shown below.

 

Pitcher	1934	1935
Fred Frankhouse	17-9, 3.19	11-15, 4.75
Huck Betts	17-10, 4.06	2-9, 5.46
Ed Brandt	16-14, 3.53	5-19, 4.99
Flint Rehm	8-8, 3.59	0-5, 5.40
Bob Smith	6-9, 4.65	8-18, 3.95
Ben Cantwell	5-11, 4.34	4-25, 4.61
Bob Brown	1-3, 5.74	1-8, 6.37
TOTALS	70-64, 3.90	31-99, 4.84

 

I’ve already commented on Cantwell, Smith, and Brown. But look at the rest. Their ERA’s ballooned by 1.56, 1.40,1.46 and 1.81. No wonder they were all gone the next year!

The ’35 staff had an average age of thirty-three, and all the starters were thirty or older. What’s more, the guys who most frequently had to trudge in from the bullpen had old, tired arms rather than young, live ones. Larry Benton, 29 games in relief, was thirty-seven; Smith, 26 relief appearances, the same age; and Huck Betts, who was called in to relieve 25 times, was thirty-eight. Smith was credited with all of the team’s saves-5. But that low number wasn’t so unusual for the times, and with the kind of year the Braves had, there wasn’t a whole lot to save.

One of the first things the new management did after 1935 was to run a “name that team” contest. “Bees” was chosen. (The name never caught on and the team reverted to Braves a few years later.) But the owners were smart enough to know that it would take more than a name change to post some wins.

The pitching looked mighty suspect, yet the Braves did not go after that commodity for ’36. The front office apparently-and correctly it would seem—decided to shore up the defense instead. Thus they engineered a six-player swap with Brooklyn, fifth in ’35.

The Hub team shipped lefthander Ed Brandt plus their regular rightfielder, Randy Moore, to the Dodgers. Brooklyn, in turn, parted with veteran righthander Ray Benge, second baseman Tony Cuccinello, catcher Al Lopez, and all-purpose Bobby Reis (he played first, second, third, and the outfield for Brooklyn in ’35 and also pitched). In a separate deal, righthander Freddie Frankhouse went south from the banks of the Charles to the shores of the Gowanus.

Brandt had had a 94-119 record with Boston over eight seasons. Frankhouse had been 63-59 in the previous six years with the Braves. Both were starters for Brooklyn in ’36, working 234 innings apiece and logging 11-13 and 13-10 records, respectively. Moore got in only 42 games, batting a dismal .239.

Benge, who had gone 33-38 for Brooklyn in the previous three years, logged a 7-9 record in 115 innings for Boston; he was banished to the eventual Braves’ successor to the cellar, the Phillies, before the ’36 season ended. Reis got a chance to become a pitcher almost exclusively (two games in the outfield were his only duties off the mound) and turned in a 6-5 slate in 139 innings. He won only one more game in his career after that, as he returned to his role of jack of all trades, master of none.

The key to the turnaround, it developed, had little to do with pitching and almost everything to do with strengthening the middle.

Lopez led the majors in assists with 107; Braves catchers Al Spohrer and Shanty Hogan had only 70 between them in ’35. That indicates to me that the opposition wasn’t stealing on Lopez as it had on the Braves in ’35.

Cuccinello anchored the infield and probably was the player who did more than any other to resurrect the team. He batted .308, a marked improvement over the second base tenants of 1935, Les Mallon (.274) and Maranville. Welcome as his bat was, it was Tony C’s glove that really made a difference. The Braves turned 101 double plays in 1935, seventh in the league. With Tony at the keystone, the club executed 175 in ’36, tops in both leagues. “Coach” led all second sackers in assists with 559, a right smart figure for that position.

The suggestion, therefore, is that the Braves-Bees pitchers were not much better in ’36 than in that horrendous ’35 campaign (runs allowed per inning declined by 22 percent, but hits-walks allowed per inning declined by only 9 percent).

As proof the Braves knew what they were doing in the Brooklyn deals, they improved stupendously while the Brooks declined a bit. Boston actually beat out the Bums by four games in the final 1936 standings.

Still, for all this analysis, we’re talking about mediocre teams in 1934 and ’36 with an aberrant abomination in between. The lingering question about the 1935 Boston Braves is: why not forget them? Sure, it’s the American way to accentuate the positive and go with the winners. But most of us can identify with losers, too. Who doesn’t like Charlie Brown? When I asked Pinky Whitney to comment on the best-known players, he described Babe Ruth as “a great fellow,” said Rabbit Maranville was “lots of fun all the time,” and called Wally Berger a “real nice guy.” I didn’t ask Leo Durocher, but he would probably tell you that the 1935 Boston Braves were all nice guys.