Turkey Mike Donlin: One of the Twentieth Century’s First Sports Entertainment Figures

Michael Joseph Donlin was born May 30, 1878, in Peoria, Illinois, the sixth child of railroad conductor John Donlin and his wife Maggie (Clayton) Donlin. He grew up in Erie, Pennsylvania.

When Mike was eight, his parents died in a bridge collapse. Young Mike had to hustle for a living and worked as a machinist. He was often in poor health, with a concave chest due to consumption. At age fifteen, he got a job as a candy seller on a California-bound train. He stayed in California, and the sun helped him grow stronger.

The speedy Donlin ran foot races when he first arrived in California. He played baseball for Los Angeles in 1897 and for the Santa Cruz Sandcrabs in 1898 and 1899. He was primarily a left-handed pitcher, but played some outfield.

University of Oregon coach Tom Kelly recalled pitching against Donlin a month after Admiral Dewey’s victory at Manila Bay. Donlin’s bat was painted red, white and blue, and he called it “Dewey.” Kelly described him as “the typical wild Irish kid, imbued with natural baseball sense and confidence.”

On the mound Donlin was strong but wild. In one game he fanned fifteen batters with his “big drop” and also homered and hit three triples.

Even early in his career, Donlin was mindful of the value of publicity. With the Sandcrabs, he gave a photo of himself to San Francisco Examiner artist Hype Igoe, saying: “If you put a picture of me in the paper, I know I’ll get a break. I know I’m going to be great.”

“I am Mike Donlin”

In 1899 he pitched for Santa Cruz and hit .402 in twenty-nine games. A Sporting News correspondent sent clips about Donlin to editor Joe Flanner in St. Louis. Flanner underlined Donlin’s stats and sent the clips to Cardinals manager/first baseman Oliver Wendell “Patsy” Tebeau. Tebeau acquired Donlin for “little more than train fare.” Donlin learned he was going to the National League while he was locked up in a Santa Cruz jail for drunkenness.

Mike reported to League Park in St. Louis wearing a newspaper photo of himself clipped to his lapel. When the gatekeeper refused him entry, he proclaimed, “I am Mike Donlin,” and pointed to the clipping.

In his first big league game, Donlin pitched in relief against Boston. Afterward, hearing Tebeau needed a shortstop, he volunteered. In his first game at short, he handled a dozen chances. He later recalled: “I was swelled on myself at shortstop that first day.” The next day, in front of a big crowd, Donlin mishandled every chance and made several wild throws. He was moved to first base in the fifth inning and had trouble there, too.

After a few days Tebeau put Donlin in the outfield, where he played most of his career despite erratic fielding. He batted .323 for the Cardinals in 1899 and .326 in 1900.

St. Louis teammate Ossee Schreckengost often fought with the temperamental Donlin, telling him once: “You are what I’d call a man with a $10,000 arm and a ten-cent head.”

After the 1900 season Donlin jumped to Baltimore of the new American League. Baltimore’s manager was the legendary “Little Napoleon,” John McGraw, a brilliant tactician and a champion of intimidating, aggressive play. The scrappy Donlin was a perfect fit and the two soon became friends.

One day in Detroit, Baltimore pitcher Harry Howell was ejected for arguing a call, and Donlin responded by firing a ball at the umpire’s back. On June 24, 1901, Donlin got s{x hits off Detroit’s Roscoe Miller in six at-bats: two singles, two doubles and two triples.

Donlin’s future seemed unlimited. But in March, 1902, he went on a drinking binge in Baltimore, urinated in public, and accosted two chorus girls. He was fined $250 and sentenced to six months in jail, and McGraw was forced to release him. (The Philadelphia North American carried a story on August 2 that the St. Louis Browns organization, and a few individual players, contributed $250 to support Donlins sister and mother while he was in jail.) Released a month early for good behavior, Donlin in August joined the Cincinnati Reds. The next year, he stayed out of trouble and almost won the batting crown, hitting .351 to Honus Wagner’s .355. He also finished second in the league in runs (110) and triples (18), and third in slugging (.516).

To the Giants

The next spring, Donlin and some teammates were carousing in a bar during spring training in Augusta, Georgia. A customer irritated by Donlin’s singing pulled a revolver on him, but manager Joe Kelley saved his life by spiriting him away. That summer, Donlin was hitting .356 when he went on another bender in St. Louis. Kelley suspended him for thirty days, then traded him to the New York Giants, where McGraw had taken over.

McGraw was glad to have Donlin back. “He was a notorious drunk and a carouser, and he had a scar running from his left cheek down to his jaw from a knifing,” noted baseball historian Mike Sowell, “but Donlin knew how to hit the ball.” Donlin asked the New York sportswriters to “give me an even break,” and promised: “If you treat me right, I’ll be on the up and up.” The press and the fans in New York immediately took a liking to him.

The fiery McGraw was molding the Giants into one of the best teams of the Deadball Era. They won the pennant in 1904 behind the great pitching of Christy Mathewson and Joe McGinnity. Donlin finished the year with a .329 average, second to Wagner again.

In 1905, Donlin enjoyed his greatest season, slashing pitches into the gaps, running the bases with reckless abandon, and arguing incessantly with umpires. As captain of the team and its sparkplug, he batted a career-high .356, third best in the league, led the league with 124 runs, and was second with 216 hits. The fans loved his combativeness. The Giants again won the pennant and Donlin hit .316 in New York’s victory in the World Series.

McGraw tried to keep Donlin out of trouble. One writer noted that Donlin was a “great natural hitter but not serious about the game.”

His fielding was notoriously shoddy and he neglected physical conditioning. He often was ejected from games by umpires. But he could hit as well as anyone in baseball. A powerfully built 5-foot-9 lefty, he rarely walked, was masterful at hitting curve balls, and had power to all fields. His .468 career slugging percentage compares favorably to more famous contemporary power hitters like Wagner (.466) and Sam Crawford (.452).

“He had color and swagger,” noted his New York Sun obituary.”He was rough, tough and profane but likeable. He wore his cap at a belligerent angle over one ear, had a plug of tobacco in his jaw. He was the most picturesque player of his time and the baseball idol of Manhattan. He was scrappy, fiery, the Babe Ruth of his time.”

On the field he clowned and often chatted with fans. He was dubbed “Turkey” for his strutting walk and his red neck. He hated the nickname. But he had such a following that kids imitated his strut. Off the field he was a flamboyant playboy and partygoer, a dapper dresser who always had a quip and a handshake ready for anyone he met.

In February 1906, Donlin was arrested after punching a train conductor who found him brandishing a gun. Some accounts swore the famous ballplayer had been “set up” by a swaggering jewelry salesman named Diamond Dick. Donlin was charged with assault.

Oh you Mabel’s Mike!

That spring, rumors circulated that Donlin was about to marry actress Mabel Hite following a well-publicized courtship. Hite was a stunning Broadway musical comedy sensation. She claimed she became interested in baseball after reading a reporter’s unique account of how Donlin was caught stealing home: “Donlin got tired of life and suicided at the plate.”

Donlin arrived at the Giants’ spring training camp by himself and told teammates: “Neither now nor at any time have I any intention of making a double steal up to the altar.” He added: “What is matrimony? A fumble, an error.” A few weeks later, on April 11, 1906, he stole up to the altar with Hite, and newspapers soon were reporting that marriage had tamed him, loosening his attachment to the bottle.

Early that season Donlin broke an ankle sliding, finishing his season after just thirty-four games. He would never regain his blazing speed.

In the spring of 1907 Donlin demanded the same $3,300 he had been paid in 1906, plus a $600 bonus if he stayed sober all year. Owner John Brush declined. Mike held out and eventually went on the vaudeville circuit with his wife, missing the entire season.

“At first they laughed at him,” said one critic, but Turkey Mike stuck with it and “fought as hard as he did in baseball.” Another critic said Donlin “never was the actor he thought he was or wanted to be.” It wasn’t for lack of confidence. Donlin claimed: “I can act. I’ll break the hearts of all the gals in the country.”

Donlin returned to the Giants for the 1908 season, and huge ovations greeted him at the home opener, with the bleacherites yelling “Oh you Mabel’s Mike!” In the ninth, the Giants were down, 2-1, with two out and a man on second. Donlin worked the pitcher to a full count and homered into the right field bleachers to win the game. Thousands of fans mobbed the field, slapped him on his back as he rounded the bases, took his cap and ripped the buttons off his shirt.

The 1908 season was another great one for Donlin, who finished second in the National League in batting average (.334), hits (198), RBIs (106), total bases, and slugging percentage. After the season, he won the New York Journal trophy as New York’s most popular player. John Barrymore, one of Donlin’s best friends, performed Hamlet’s soliloquy at a dinner in his honor.

Vaudeville success

Vincent Bryan wrote a one-act play called Stealing Home for Hite and Donlin. It opened at the Hammerstein Theatre in New York on October 26, 1908, to great acclaim. Variety raved: “Mike Donlin as a polite comedian is quite the most delightful vaudeville surprise you ever enjoyed.” The New York Globe said Donlin’s dancing “created a small pandemonium of uproar.” For the next three winters the pair performed Stealing Home in front of sold-out houses from Boston to San Francisco.

“Hite was so good she could carry him,” wrote one critic who was not so fond of Donlin’s stage abilities. “Thereafter Donlin never lost the bug.” He vowed never to return to baseball because he was making more money in vaudeville. One of the greatest players of his era missed two more seasons during his prime.

The couple pantomimed their vaudeville routine for a camera, lip-syncing to dialogue they had prerecorded. The film was released with phonograph records, and the early “talkie” became a popular curiosity at theaters nationwide.

Back to the game

By 1911, Stealing Home had finally run its course and other vaudeville ventures with Hite were floundering. Donlin returned to his baseball career. But his hiatus from the sport, combined with his customary lack of conditioning, took a toll. He had more arguments than hits for the Giants. One day he poked his finger into the press box at the Polo Grounds and told New York Times reporter Harry Cross: “Don’t you ever call me Turkey in your paper again!”

On August 1, 1911, Donlin was sold to the lowly Boston Braves. They put him in center field and he hit .315. But the Braves didn’t need an aging star and his salary demands, so they traded him to Pittsburgh. He played seventy-seven games in right field for the Pirates in 1912 and hit .316, his tenth .300 average in eleven seasons.

That fall, Hite fell ill on a European trip. She was diagnosed with cancer. Reportedly, on her death bed she read her husband an account of Napoleon’s return from Elba because “she wanted him to understand that if anything happened to her he was to quit vaudeville and go back to the game.” She died in December 1912.

That same month the Pirates put Donlin on waivers. Philadelphia claimed him, but Donlin announced his retirement. However, late in the summer of 1913, he tried a comeback, playing thirty-six games with minor league Jersey City. McGraw then named him to an all-star team that went on a postseason barnstorming tour through Europe, Asia and Africa. At a game in London attended by King Edward, British fans chanted “Mike from over there.”

Based on Donlin’s hitting on the tour, McGraw decided to give his old friend another chance. The New York World exclaimed, “the Apollo of the whackstick is back with the Giants.” During his absence, Giants fans sometimes had sung this ditty:

If Donlin would only join the Giants
The fans would drink his health in pints

But Donlin managed only five hits in thirty-one at-bats and the club let him go. At thirty-six, he was washed up. One New York sportswriter hailed him as “one of the most picturesque, most written-about, most likeable athletes that ever cut his mark on the big circuit,” and added, “there was never a better hitter.”

Vaudeville and his love of the bottle likely cost Donlin a shot at Cooperstown. His .333 lifetime batting average could have earned him a spot in the Hall of Fame had he sustained it over a full career. But he played the equivalent of only seven full seasons.

In October 1914, Donlin married Rita Ross, a member of the famous musical comedy team Ross & Fenton. Again, the marriage was childless. Donlin returned to vaudeville, pairing up with Giants teammate Marty McHale, but their act flopped.

In 1915 Donlin started his movie career, starring in a film about his own life called Right Off the Bat. In 1916 he managed a semipro team in New Jersey, and the next winter ran a baseball clinic and a boxing tournament in Cuba. In 1917 he managed the Memphis Chicks of the Southern League. At first he was popular with the fans, but they booed him when he put himself in to pitch and made a farce of the game. He quit the Chicks, or by some accounts was fired, in midseason. Later that year the War Department appointed Donlin to teach baseball to U.S. soldiers in France.

Hollywood

In 1918 Donlin returned to California as a scout for the Boston Braves. Immediately he got into Hollywood movies, helped by his friend John Barrymore. He appeared with the great actor in the 1918 film Raffles. The next year Donlin had a part in The Right Way.

Donlin had chronic money troubles and kept scraping for jobs in baseball and acting. His movie roles included parts in Slide, Kelly, Slide and Fifth Avenue Models.

In 1926 three films were released in which Donlin appeared. He played one of the Southern generals in Buster Keaton’s classic The General. He appeared in The Sea Beast, a Moby Dick adaptation in which Barrymore played Ahab. And he had a part in the popular Ella Cinders.

Donlin was as well-liked in Hollywood as he had been in New York. He was always in demand to be an assistant director in baseball movies to give the films some authenticity. In 1927 actors and movie stars staged a minstrel show benefit to raise money to send Donlin to the Mayo Clinic for a major operation.

In 1929 Donlin had his first role in a talkie, playing a condemned convict in Thunderbolt. In 1931 he appeared in the boxing movie The Iron Man. His last role was in 1933’s Air Hostess, which starred Ed Wynn. That spring, Donlin still wanted to get back into baseball, asking a friend if he could get a coaching job with the Giants.

A heart attack took Turkey Mike Donlin in his sleep on September 24, 1933. His funeral was attended by many ballplayers and movie stars, and the eulogy was delivered by Harry English, president of the National Vaudeville Association.

MICHAEL BETZOLD is a Michigan-based freelance writer and the author, with Ethan Casey, of Queen of the Diamonds: The Tiger Stadium Story. This biography of Donlin is excerpted from the epilogue to Betzold’s novel, Casey and the Bat, a “surrealistic feminist baseball revenge fantasy” about the first woman in the major leagues, in which Donlin appears as a character (see www.mbetzold.com).