How can this contribution be measured? Part of it can be measured by reviewing the annual All-America College Baseball Teams selected by The Sporting News from 1964 to 1981. These selections actually have been made for TSN by the leading professional baseball scouts and more recently by the scouting directors of the major league clubs. In the early years a team of ten players was selected with a lefthanded pitcher and a righthanded pitcher. Occasionally there would be a tie for one position. Since 1976 a designated hitter was added to the team.

How many of these All-America selections went into professional baseball and how many made it to the majors? Almost all gave professional baseball a trial. In fact, many were so eager to go that route that they left before finishing college. This is reflected by the college-year level of the selectees. Take the 1968 class for example. Two were sophomores, including Steve Garvey, six were juniors, including Thurman Munson, and two were seniors, including Tom Paciorek. The 1965 selections included four sophomores, one being Rick Monday of Arizona State, the Player of the Year. He was the number one pick in the first free-agent draft on June 8, 1965, and was signed by the Kansas City A’s for a reported $104,000 bonus. Another 1965 sophomore, Ken Holtzman of Illinois, signed with the Cubs for $65,000. In 1966, Reggie Jackson of Arizona State also won Player of the Year honors as a sophomore, and immediately signed with Kansas City for a bonus of $90,000.

Approximately 55 percent of the All-America selections from 1964 to 1981 made it to the majors. This percentage will probably be increased with additional names from the 1989 and 1981 teams. Two college players — Dave Winfield and Bob Homer — went straight to the majors and never have played in the minors. Other All-America players who have reached stardom in the majors include Mike Schmidt, Reggie Jackson, Steve Garvey, Don Kessinger, Sal Bando, Thurman Munson, Fred Lynn, Dave Kingman, Ken Holtzman, and Burt Hooton. The aforementioned Rick Monday is the longevity leader with 17 years in the majors.

One of the college players — Tom Harmon, Texas 1970 — never made it to the majors as a player, but he did show up as a coach with the Chicago Cubs in 1982. Two who did make it, met with tragedy. Danny Thomas of the 1972 class was a suicide in 1980, and Mike Miley, class of 1974, died in an auto wreck in 1977.

It is not always easy to predict the professional impact of top college players. Several chosen as College Player of the Year fizzled in major league trials. The list includes, for various reasons, Dave Lemonds, Paul Powell, Rob Ellis, Eddie Bane, and Danny Goodwin. On the other hand, most of those who were two-time All-America selections have done quite well in the majors. There were 13 of those, including Burt Hooton of Texas, who was selected in non-consecutive years. He was the righthanded pitcher in 1969 as a 19-year-old freshman. Although he had an excellent year in 1970, he lost out to Steve Dunning of Stanford, the Player of the Year. Hooton made the team again in 1971 as a junior, and then turned pro. Some college players played different positions when they got to the majors. For example, college outfielder Dave Stieb now pitches for Toronto.

What college teams produced the most All-America selections in these 18 years? Although the University of Southern California did very well with 17 selections, Arizona State took the cake with 20 selections, including four from their great 1976 team. Arizona State also had seven College Players of the Year in those 18 years. In 1978, when USC won the NCAA baseball championship, they filled both pitching positions on the All-America team. Rod Boxberger was the top right-hander, and Bill Bordley the leading lefty.

There follows The Sporting News All-America Collegiate Baseball Teams from 1964 to 1981. Italics indicate the College Player of the Year. Asterisks indicate that the player played in the major leagues.

(Click image to enlarge)

Baseball and injuries, now that’s an idea. You really can’t discuss one without the other. And fittingly so. After all, baseball is unquestionably a contact sport and where you have contact you must have injuries. But this is not about the effect of injuries on the careers of baseball players, nor even on pennant races. Rather, its purpose is to recount the odd series of accidents that befell one Michael “Smiling Mickey” Welch just before and just after he reached what might be considered the apex of his career. Incidentally, it will tend to bear out the “iron men and wooden ships” theory so dear to the hearts of old-time baseball fans and so often challenged by their sons and grandsons. How the old Baltimore Orioles, for instance, dismissed everything short of a compound fracture by rubbing the injured member in the dirt.

Brooklyn-born Mickey was the ace pitcher of the New York Giants in 1884, winning 39 games and losing 21, as they tied Chicago for fourth place in the National League. Tim Keefe, Welch’s future pitching partner, did not join the New Yorkers until the following year, and there was no question as to who was king of the hill in New York.

Mickey’s time of trial began on August 23 when he failed to skip out of the path of a line drive off the bat of Dan Brouthers midway through a contest with Buffalo. Brouther’s batting average that year was a modest .325, but Big Dan was hitting the ball as hard as he ever did in his lifetime. His slugging average was a robust .563, the top figure in the circuit. Don’t overlook the fact that in 1884 the pitcher and batter stared eyeball-to-eyeball at each other from a distance of only 50 feet. That left precious little time to get out of the way when some oaf smashed the ball through the center of the diamond. The horsehide caught Welch on the hip and sent him sprawling. “An intermission of twenty minutes ensued before the plucky pitcher resumed his position,” said a local newspaper, “a surgeon in the meanwhile having been in attendance on him.”

The injured hurler nursed his abrasions and contusions over the weekend and reported ready for duty on Tuesday, on which day he faced rookie John Harkins of Cleveland. All went well for Harkins (who had had control problems all summer) in the early part of the afternoon, but in the sixth inning he unleashed a whistler that collided with batsman Welch’s unhelmeted head with such force as to wipe the smile off his face. Mickey went down as though shot, and many spectators thought he had been killed. Said the New York Times, always a stickler for good taste in reporting: “After making a few spasmodic kicks he regained consciousness, and was assisted to his feet, but was unable to pitch.”

A shot like that might be expected to put the unfortunate batter on the shelf for a while, but Welch was back in harness, with a goodly lump on his noggin, only two days later on August 28.

The smiling one found himself working that day with a skeleton crew. Both first-string catcher William (Buck) Ewing and second-stringer John Humphries, as well as third-sacker Frank Hankinson, were missing from the New York lineup. Behind the bat crouched an unknown named Loughran, whose entire major league career consisted of just eight games.

With both his legs and his lineup shaky, Welch bore down from the start and his reward was an unprecedented strikeout string. He fanned the first nine men he faced, turning back the entire lineup the first time they batted, as his makeshift Giants built up a 7 to 0 lead. His victims were Bill Phillips, Pete Hotaling and George Pinckney in the first round; Ernie Burch, Mike Muldoon and Bloody Jake Evans in the second; and George (Germany) Smith, pitcher John Henry and catcher Jerry Moore in the third. Pinckney was in the midst of a hot hitting streak that netted him nine hits in three games, and he wound up with a satisfactory mark of .309 for the year. Smith, at the threshold of a long career, batted .25 8, as did Evans. Phillips was a .272 hitter in 1884.

The New York Times acknowledged Welch’s great pitching with the following: “In the first three innings Welch retired in rapid succession the first nine batters on strikes.” The New York Clipper, a theatrical weekly that devoted considerable space to baseball, lent substantiation: “Welch reappeared with the New Yorks August 28th, and his puzzling pitching proved too much for the Clevelands, who made six hits, while the first nine batsmen were retired on strikes.”

In spite of this mention by two New York papers, Welch never got credit for this record until many years later. Many out-of-town papers failed to mention Welch’s strikeout effort for the reason that in the third inning, Loughran, the novice catcher, missed the third strike on Smith, allowing the batter to reach first base. Many baseball reporters of that era would not credit the pitcher with a strikeout if the batter reached first base.

It remained for historian Harry Simmons (a current SABR member) to draw attention to Welch’s record. In 1941, Simmons wrote about that game in detail, pointing out the catcher’s error, and his efforts led to the recognition of Welch’s feat. It stayed in the record books until April 22, 1970. Then young Tom Seaver came along and made the whole question an academic one when he whiffed ten in a row. However, his K’s came at the end of a 2-1 victory over San Diego, rather than at the start like Welch.

Actually, Welch’s 1884 elevator ride was not quite over with his outstanding August 28 game. He had a final “down” trip a week later. On September 4, Cap Anson of Chicago shot another liner through the box that put Smiling (Grimacing) Mickey in dry dock for several more days. No one could keep him inactive for very long.

A nostalgic look at the historic ballyards must begin with Sulphur Dell Park, Nashville, the site of amateur baseball games shortly after the Civil War, with the earliest recorded date September 11, 1866. The spot was originally a sulphur springs and a trading, watering and picnic spot in the pioneer days.

Known as Athletic Park as early as 1885, when old Southern League games were played there, the Dell was given its name sometime after the Nashville Vols became part of the newly formed Southern Association in 1901. Grantland Rice, the noted sportswriter, is given credit for naming the park. Until 1927 the Dell field faced the opposite direction. The Vols played their first game in the turned-around park on April 12, 1927.

The park’s outfield distances and terrain were a blessing to left-handed hitters and a nightmare to outfielders, who should have been replaced by goats, for a steep embankment, with a 45-degree slope in right field, ran all around the outfield. The right field barrier was only 262 feet from home plate and had a fence only 16-feet high. The field was a paradise for left-handed sluggers. In 1931, to cut down on the home run barrage, a screen 22½ feet high (some sources state 30 feet) was placed on top of the fence and extended 186 feet to a point in right-center.

But left-handed hitters continued to draw a bead on the inviting rightfield wall. Joe Dwyer, a little line-drive hitter, set the all-time Southern Association record for doubles in one season by cracking out 65 in 1936. In 1941 Les Fleming, a slugging first baseman, and the third Vol to go over the .400 mark in batting, hit .414.

With the disbanding of the SA at the end of the 1961 season, the Dell’s days were numbered. In 1963, Nashville entered a team in the Class AA South Atlantic League, but then dropped out of organized ball for a time. Sulphur Dell then passed from the scene, to become only a memory.

Other old ballparks were built on sites as interesting as Sulphur Dell but lacked its long history and quaintness. Seals Stadium, at Sixteenth and Bryant Streets in San Francisco, was built on what was once the site of a mine. The original deed listed the name of the land as Home Plate Mine. Built by a triumvirate, headed by Charles H. Graham, which owned the Seals in the Pacific Coast League, the park opened on April 7, 1931. There in 1933 the 18-year-old Joe DiMaggio hit safely in a PCL record 61 consecutive games. Later the Seals shared the park briefly with the San Francisco Missions after the latter club moved from old Recreation Park.

Beginning in 1959 the park was used by the transplanted New York Giants until Candlestick Park was completed.

A swimming hole and haunt for youngsters rather than a mine provided the site for Muehlebach Field in Kansas City. Built by George F. Muehlebach at 22nd Street and Brooklyn Avenue (1922-1923), the park was renamed Ruppert Stadium, Blues Stadium, and Municipal Stadium, the latter after it had been rebuilt and double-decked in 1954 to prepare for the arrival of the former Philadelphia Athletics.

Although its site at West 31st Street and Nicollet and Blaisdell Avenues in Minneapolis had no exotic previous use, Nicollet Park, built in 1896, rivaled Sulphur Dell in its quaintness and dimensions. Its old wooden roof over the entrance and 279-foot right-field fence provided a special atmosphere. Atop the roof stood what appeared to be an old chimney.

To prevent home run barrages (Joe Hauser hit 69 homers for Minneapolis in 1933), a second layer of fence replaced the single layer of screen in 1935 and at the same time a new screen was added, making 30 feet of boards topped by a 16-foot screen extending from the foul line to the scoreboard, 435 feet in center. Right-center was only 328 feet from home plate. In an effort to offset the predominantly left-handed slugging Miller team, opposing managers always saved their southpaw pitchers for Nicollet.

The park also was a part of two traditions — “On to Nicollet Day” and the home-and-home games with the St. Paul Saints on holidays. Prior to the home opener, attractive, large tickets designed as baseballs or diamonds and bearing the slogan “On to Nicollet” were sold throughout the area by baseball boosters and pretty girls. On the day of the game, a long parade featuring bands, majorettes, and cars carrying dignitaries from Minneapolis and the surrounding hamlets wended its way out Nicollet Avenue to the ballpark for the opening-day ceremonies.

For the holiday tradition with St. Paul, a morning game would be played in one of the cities, followed by an afternoon contest in the other. Rival fans traveled between Nicollet and the Saints’ Lexington Park on streetcars, which at times became prize rings as the partisan fans supported their team with fists.

In 1955 came Nicollet’s last and finest hour. The Millers, who had won the American Association pennant and play-off titles, defeated the Rochester Red Wings in the deciding seventh game of the Junior World Series. But, early in October, only a short time after the dust had settled, wrecking crews began tearing down the historic park. No longer would paraders trek to the park for the annual ritual. No longer would a little tailwind carry a towering fly to right field as an outfielder, first waiting ten feet from the fence, then back against the scoreboard, would turn in disbelief to watch the ball soar over the screen onto Nicollet Avenue.

St. Paul fans, however, had little time to rejoice over the demise of their rivals’ park, where Ted Williams in 1938 and Willie Mays in 1951 slugged and romped as 20-year-olds on their way to the majors. The Saints’ Lexington Park, which featured a distant right-field fence, met the wrecking ball the next year. The parks that had been the scene of one of the minor leagues’ greatest rivalries were no more.

The American Association had a park older than Nicollet. Even more of a monstrosity, Borchert Field (originally Athletic Park) in Milwaukee had a longer though less glamorous history. In 1888 the Milwaukee Athletic Park was opened at Eighth Avenue and Chambers Street to house the Milwaukee team in the newly formed Western Association.

In 1895, the club, which gradually became known as the Brewers, moved into a newly built park — the Milwaukee Baseball Park — at North Sixteenth and West Lloyd when the owners balked at the rent at Athletic Park. With the formation of the American Association in 1902, the Brewers entered the new league and reclaimed old Athletic Park, while the Western League Creams (1902-1903), named for the color of Milwaukee-manufactured brick, took over the Lloyd Street Field.

Athletic Park was later called Brewer Field and then became Borchert Field in 1927 after the death of Otto Borchert, owner of the club for eight years. A monstrosity in construction and rickety even at that time (it was once described as “a lot of kindling wood called a grandstand”), it nevertheless had the finest-groomed diamond in the American Association. The grandstand, however, had been built at such an angle that no one could see the full field from either of the side sections. After the arrival of night baseball, 100-foot light poles sticking up out of the grandstand blocked the spectators’ vision. The poles were placed outside the park in 1948.

Several times the rickety structure was threatened with condemnation even though over the years the original bleachers had been replaced. In 1944 a gale leveled part of the left field fence, and two months later the wind ripped off 100 feet of the roof and dropped the debris on homes in the area.

Borchert Field, where Al Simmons, Oscar Melillo, Ray Schalk, Frank Schuite and other stars had played, had its greatest moments of glory under the ownership of Bill Veeck in the I 940s. With Jolly Cholly Grimm as manager, the club won pennants in 1943 and 1944, when Grimm was succeeded by Casey Stengel, and in 1945 under Nick Cullop. Charlie Grimm, back at the helm, won a pennant in 1951, and the Brewers repeated in 1952, when the managers were Grimm, Bucky Walters, and Dick Smith. Lou Perini, owner of the Boston Braves, had bought the Brewers in 1946, and this paved the way for major league baseball with the moving of the Braves’ franchise in 1953.

In 1952 Borchert’s widow sold the park to the city for $123,000. Back in 1937 the debilitated stadium had been assessed at $73,000, only $13,000 representing the value of the plant. With the completion of the new County Stadium in 1953, the old park met its end.

Although Borchert Field was older than the parks in the International League, that circuit also featured fields where minor-league history was made — especially Oriole Park in Baltimore and Ruppert Stadium in Newark.

Although from 1889 to 1891 an Oriole Park had been located at what was then called York Road and Tenth Street, the best-known park by that name was the later one at 29th Street and Greenmount Avenues made famous by the teams of Jack Dunn. Built in 1914 by the Federal League Club, it was named Terrapin Park until 1916, when Jack Dunn bought it for $25,000 and renamed it Oriole Park. Previously Dunn’s clubs had played at American League Park, built in 1901 when Baltimore was in the majors. Babe Ruth played in that park when Dunn signed the 19-year-old left-handed pitcher for the Orioles in 1914 and in July sold him to the Boston Red Sox.

Dunn moved the franchise to Richmond, Virginia, for the 1915 season. In 1916 he sold the Richmond franchise and bought Jersey City’s, moving it to Baltimore and Oriole Park. By 1928, when Dunn died of a heart attack, his clubs had won eight pennants, seven of them in a row, and produced outstanding players such as Lefty Grove, George Earnshaw, and Max Bishop. At the end of the 1924 season Dunn received a record $100,600 from the Philadelphia Athletics for Grove, far more than he had received from the Red Sox for Ruth. Lights were added to the park in 1930.

After Dunn’s death, the club, under nine different field managers and various general managers, won no pennants until 1944. Then a motley team of graybeards and teenagers won the flag by a margin of .0007. However, early on the morning of July 4, the old wooden park with its freestanding hexagonal ticket booths that bore some resemblance to outhouses, caught fire, and was totally destroyed. The freshly tarred roof assisted the flames that prevented firemen from saving the club’s irreplaceable archives, trophies, and pictures. Forced to go on the road, the team returned to play in old Metropolitan Stadium. Although the Orioles went on to win the Junior World’s Series against Louisville, the fire had lessened the thrill of victory. An era had come to an end.

But the fate of Oriole Park going out in a final blaze of glory was far more appropriate than that of Newark’s Ruppert Stadium, which lingered on to be used for soccer and midget racing. It escaped the fate of Newark’s earlier parks, Harrison Field and Wiedenmayer’s Park, both of which burned down. Ruppert Stadium was built next door to the site of old Wiedenmayer’s Park.

Ruppert Stadium, called Davids Stadium until Yankee ownership in 1932, was built in 1926 by Charles A. Davids, who went broke when the cost went beyond half a million dollars. The fans of Newark then raised $147,000 and gave it to the club without any promise of repayment. Holding more than 24,000, the stadium rivaled Wrigley Field in Los Angeles in strength and beauty of construction.

Two of the greatest teams in minor league history performed in the stadium. The 1932 Newark Bears featured Red Rolfe, Mary Owen, Don Brennan, Johnny Murphy, Johnny Neun, Dixie Walker, and Pete Appleton. Oscar Vitt’s 1937 Bears, which beat Barney Shotton’s Columbus Red Birds to win the Junior World Series after losing the first three games at home, included Charlie Keller, George McQuinn, Joe Gordon, Babe Dahlgren, Buddy Rosar, Willard Hershberger, Bob Seeds, Spud Chandler, Atley Donald, Marius Russo, Joe Beggs, and Steve Sundra. They could have handled most of the present major league teams. All told the Newark Bears won seven pennants in 17 years under Yankee ownership.

In those years the crowds were huge and fan enthusiasm high. Before night ball in the majors, thousands of New York, Brooklyn, and Long Island fans flocked to the night games in Newark. At times upwards of 10,000 fans jammed downtown traffic to watch the progress of out-of-town games on the huge scoreboard on the roof of the old Star-Eagle building.

Then the honeymoon ended. The location of the park, the meadow fires, television, and the shift of fans to the suburbs stopped the flow of Newark fans over the Centre Street Bridge to the stadium. After the 1949 season the Bears were moved to Springfield, Mass. The stadium had had its brief moment of glory. Instead of dying a dignified death, it lingered for years, demeaned by the uses to which it was put, vandalized, overgrown with weeds — it stood alone in the wasteland of the marshes.

And where are you Swayne Field (Toledo), replaced by a shopping center? Rickety Vaughn Street Park (Portland), where industrial smoke swirled? Lane Field (San Diego)? Recreation Park (San Francisco)? Gilmore Field (Hollywood)? Emeryvihle Park (Oakland)? Ponce de Leon Park (Atlanta)?

Are you merely off somewhere waiting for the long, long winter to end; listening for the feet of fans, the shouts of vendors, the opening-day ceremonies, the cry “Play Ball”?

One of the more interesting stories is that of a little known player, Robert M. Keating. Keating, who for years was listed in the record books as Edward Keating, was a left-hander who pitched one game for Baltimore in the American Association in 1887. He lost the game, giving up eleven runs in nine innings, and then disappeared from the major league baseball scene.

In 1968, while working on some unrelated research, the late Lee Allen came across the fact that it was Keating who invented the rubber home plate. In baseball’s early days, home plate had been made out of iron, stone, or wood. These hard surfaces resulted in a number of injuries, and, in 1886, Keating invented a two-part home plate made of rubber, which he patented in 1887. Since Keating was believed to have come from Pittsburgh, this writer’s home at the time, Allen gave me the assignment of learning more about Keating.

As it turned out, the elusive Keating was not from Pittsburgh at all, but was born and died in Springfield, Mass. It also turned out that the fact that Keating invented home plate was no fluke, since he was both a prolific and talented inventor.

Robert M. Keating was born on September 22, 1862, the son of Irish immigrants. After making a name for himself as an amateur pitcher in the Springfield area, he signed with Washington in the National League in 1887, but was released without appearing in a game. He then signed with Baltimore, but an arm injury soon ended his baseball career.

Keating’s career as an inventor began in 1886. His first inventions were various shaving devices, early forms of the safety razor. He sold one of his patents for $250, and then expanded his horizons.

Keating’s next area of work was the fledgling mechanical transportation field. He invented one of the early low wheel bicycles, the type in use today. He also invented the first bicycle wheel to use the criss-crossing spokes still in use today. He then turned to motorcycles, and came up with his most famous invention. Keating’s motorcycle later gained fame as the Indy model, America’s first truly popular motorcycle. In 1902, Keating organized the R. M. Keating Company, which was based in Portland, Maine. He also manufactured bicycles in Springfield and in Middletown, Conn.

Among Keating’s later inventions were arm chairs, rotating lunchroom stools, and various types of flushing valves including those used in “water closets.” He organized his own company to manufacture the valves, the Keating Valve Company. After his death in Springfield on January 19, 1922, the company was sold to a large firm based in Waterbury, Conn. He had never married.

In all, Keating held over 40 patents at the time of his death. He made a good deal of money on a few of them, and some became famous. He was one of the early examples of a player who made a significant mark on society after leaving the game. In fact, his obituary in the Springfield newspaper made no reference to his early baseball activities.

With his great season, McRae also moved comfortably out in front in most DH career categories. He has played 990 games and has gone to bat 3818 times. His chief career contenders — Willie Horton and Rico Carty — are far back and, furthermore, are no longer in the majors. Don Baylor seems to be his primary future competition and is closest in home runs with 97 to 109 for McRae. The latter even leads in bases on balls with 350 and stolen bases with 72, which are not closely associated with the DH. Willie Horton leads in strikeouts with 532 and Jim Rice leads in batting average with .298 and slugging average with .546.

After ten seasons of the DH, a brief review of its origin and operation would be appropriate.

Batting in the 1960s reached a low level of achievement. We are reminded that in 1968 the American League almost finished the season with a batting leader hitting under .300. Fortunately, Carl Yastrzemski was able to pull himself up to .301 by the time the curtain fell.

Because of the general deterioration in hitting and the painfully small contribution made by pitchers, the International League in 1969 experimented with a system whereby a team could designate another player to hit for the pitcher. Some managers claimed they disliked the idea but, even though the DH was optional, they all used it. Based on the minor league experiments, discussion then centered on possible adoption of this rule change at the major league level. Commissioner Bowie Kuhn, who for several years had insisted that batting averages ought to be higher, favored adoption of the DH. The National League refused to go along with the idea, but the American League decided at its winter meeting in December 1972 to adopt it on an experimental basis starting with the 1973 season.

There was much speculation at the time about whether all clubs would use this opportunity to beef up their attack or would still go with some of their better hitting hurlers. As it turned out, AL managers essentially accepted the DH concept from the first day of the 1973 season when Ron Blomberg of the Yankees made it into the trivia books as the first DH on April 7. With the bases loaded in the first inning, he was walked by pitcher Luis Tiant of the Red Sox. By design or accident, a few pitchers got to hit that season. In 1976, Ken Brett of the White Sox, who was considered the top batter among pitchers, got to bat 12 times, but collected only one hit. In 1978 there was only one at bat by an American League hurler.

In the early years, older players in the twilight of their careers, such as Rico Carty, Tommy Davis, Harmon Killebrew and Tony Oliva, were used. Even such first choice Hall of Famers as Henry Aaron and Al Kaline prolonged and closed out their careers as designated hitters. Later the position became more refined with the utilization of players with speed and power such as Hal McRae, Jim Rice and Don Baylor. Some clubs rotated their right- and left-handed batters as the DH. However, in 1978 Rusty Staub played the full schedule of 162 games as DH for the Tigers and the next year Willie Horton duplicated this feat for Seattle.

The American League managers seemed to be well satisfied with the DH and after a three-year trial adopted a permanent rule in 1976. At the present time every league in Organized Baseball uses the DH rule except the National League. The DH rule has been used in the World Series since 1976 on alternate years.

A review of American League hitting over the past ten years certainly leaves no doubt that run production has been enhanced. This was specifically demonstrated in 1982 when three designated hitters finished the season with more than 100 runs batted in — McRae, Andre Thornton, and Greg Luzinski. However, a closer analysis reveals that the designated hitters still are not at the same level with the other players. We have broken American League hitting statistics into two parts — the on field average (OFA) and the designated hitter average (DHA) and in only two of the ten years was the DHA higher than the OFA. This is shown in the accompanying graph.

Our next step was to compare batting averages of players who alternated during the season as DH and in the field. On 118 occasions in the past ten years a player has gone to bat at least 100 times as a field player and as a DH. In only 37 cases or 31 percent of the time has a player’s DHA been higher than his OFA. We then did the same thing with individual players who played both ways in at least three different seasons. Of the 11 players in that category, only two — Baylor and McRae — hit better as DH. The nine others Cooper, Gamble, Grieve, Reggie Jackson, Lamar Johnson, Piniella, Rice, Yastrzemski, and Zisk — hit better as field performers. Gamble, as an extreme example, hit about 68 points better when playing in the field.

Players Who Played in the Field and DH the Same Year
(Minimum of 100 AB both ways at least 3 seasons)

Although traditionalists are still against the DH rule, it has had some positive effects. Players whose careers might otherwise have been over are still able to contribute. The hit-and-run play is flow being used more at the bottom of the lineup. To my way of thinking, it still proves to be a better method than having the pitcher try to bat.

Not all the results have been positive. It has had an adverse effect on starting pitchers because the easy out has been eliminated. Games prove to be longer now because pitching changes are made more during innings than at the end. Also, the American League seems to be at a disadvantage during the non-DH World Series.

Carried below are the top season and career records for designated hitters. On the next page are listed the 42 players who have batted at least 500 times as a designated hitter since the system was started in 1973.

Designated Hitter Season Records
(Through the 1981 season)

• Games 162- Rusty Staub, Det., 1978; Willie Horton, Seattle, 1979
• At Bats 646 — Willie Horton, Seattle, 1979
• Runs 91 — Hal McRae, Kansas City, 1982
• Hits 189 Hal McRae, Kansas City, 1982
• Doubles 46 — Hal McRae, Kansas City, 1982
• Triples 13 — Jim Rice, Houston, 1977
• Homers 31 — Jim Rice, Boston, 1977; Rico Carty, Tor-Oak., 1978
• Total Bases 332 Hal McRae, Kansas City, 1982
• RBI 133 Hal McRae, Kansas City, 1982
• Bases on Balls 81 Frank Robinson, Cal-Clev., 1974
• Strikeouts 114 — Willie Horton, Texas 1977
• Stolen Bases 17 — Tommy Harper, Cal-Oak., 1975
• Batting Ave. .316 Jim Rice, Boston, 1977
• Slugging Ave. .638 — Jim Rice, Boston, 1977

Designated Hitter Career Records
(Through the 1981 season)
 

• Games — Hal McRae 990; Willie Horton 753; Rico Carty 649
• At Bats — Hal McRae 3818; Willie Horton 2859; Rico Carty 2360
• Runs — Hal McRae 539; Don Baylor 323; Willie Horton 297
• Hits — Hal McRae 1129; Willie Horton 757; Rico Carty 671
• Doubles — Hal McRae 277; Rico Carty 116; Willie Horton 100
• Triples — Hal McRae 37; Jim Rice 27; Willie Horton 10
• Homers — Hal McRae 109; Don Baylor 97; Willie Horton 96
• Total Bases — Hal McRae 1807; Willie Horton 1165; Rico Carty 1042
• RBI — Hal McRae 591; Willie Horton 410; Rico Carty 382
• BA (1000 AB) — Jim Rice .298; Hal McRae .296; Richie Zisk .291
• SA (1000 AB) — Jim Rice .546; Oscar Gamble .475; Hal McRae .473

Their Whitehorse rivals were relative newcomers to the sport. Like other Yukon teams they drew their support and players from the police, the government, and main street merchants. In Dawson, Charlie Lamb, a well known sportsman and miner, was forever “throwing down the gauntlet” to Sheriff Eilbeck’s constabulatory confident that his outside talent would win the day.

Yukon spectators backed their favorites with large bets so the players had to take these games seriously. A 1903 match between the Idyle Hour and Civil Service teams had to be broken up by the riding corps and constables after Captain Bennett and his rival Eldorado Smith became embroiled in a rowdy dispute.

Such fierce local feelings were put aside in Whitehorse for their 1904 “international” series with Skagway. And led by the legendary slugger, Jack Keating, known from Seattle to Dawson, they surprised the visitors, 10 to 9. The cocky Whitehorse fans mocked Skagway as being too windy and Juneau and Douglas as too wet to offer serious competition. To prove their contention they again defeated the Alaskans 8 to 5 in Skagway’s home park on the July 4 holiday.

Baseball was the rage of frontier settlements from Manitoba to the Yukon. Hardly had the first homes and stores been built than informal games of bat and ball began to appear. Such games are among the oldest known to man, are easy to learn, and can be played by virtually all ages.

While the Yukon game was the one we now know, a crude antecedent form of baseball had been around as early as the 1840’s in Manitoba’s Red River Settlement. The game was called “bat” and Red River historian Wilson Greene suspects it was similar to one he played in his youth.

“All but one player dug a shallow depression in which he kept his `bat’, until getting a swipe at the dead or rolling ball in any direction,” writes Greene. “While one was doing this another could slip his stick into the vacated base. In this way the odd player could occupy any vacant `hole’ he found. The game invariably ended in one or more fights. It was based on skull duggery, not sportsmanship, and required no equipment.”

Informal types of ballplaying such as this provided fertile grounds for a more organized style of play which began to develop in the mid-1840’s in New York City. After the Civil War there existed a uniformity of rules and skills in the northeastern United States and Canada which slowly spread to more isolated areas.

Reports of baseball games appeared in the Winnipeg Free Press in 1874. Like all facets of western Canadian life these early contests revolved around the railroads. Completion of the Northern Pacific Line made intercity competition possible and promoters exploited the possibilities.

By 1886 a Manitoba League with connections to the railroad had been formed but it was obviously premature. Both the Portage La Prairie and Canadian Pacific Railway teams folded in mid-season leaving the eventual winners, the Hotel Club, with little opposition. This did not stop other promoters from developing the natural connection between the rails and baseball. In 1902, for instance, R. J. Smith leased River Park in Winnipeg for two years and charged 50¢ for reserved seats and 25¢ for standing room for games in the North Dakota League. Smith represented the Great Northern Railway which benefited from the movement of baseball teams and their supporters. Likewise Joe Page, a former Indianapolis profes sional, was hired as sports representative of the CP Railway and he was instrumental in sponsoring games along that line.

Like Page, many baseball stars were imported American players. Wes Paulin, an early promoter in Winnipeg, may be the mysterious player named Paul who played three games with the Philadelphia Athletics in the 1876 National League. He used that very name in 1890 when brought into a game for Regina.

Cloak and dagger escapades often surrounded these individuals as various teams sought to improve their chances by hiring outside “ringers”. One such player was Sid Adams of Minneapolis who took the mound for Winnipeg dressed in that team’s familiar all-black uniform. His identity was kept from both the opposition and the fans and only late in the game did people recognize him as the former Grand Forks star. By then his deceptive curve ball had deserted him and Winnipeg lost in the 10th inning.

Baseball, of course, was also popular in eastern Canada at this time and so it was hardly surprising to find players from Ontario playing a prominent role in baseball’s western growth. The 1886 Manitoba League, for example, had at least two graduates of the Ontario-based Canadian League of 1885, Young and Barnfather. James Ross, a member of London’s champion amateur team of 1877, took the game west with him where he became a rancher and later a member of the Canadian Senate. And the 1900 Virden team was led by two western Ontario stars, Jersey Crew and Bill Orr.

Aside from the professionals, this was a game favored by all social classes. Winnipeg was the scene of matches between gangs of rail workers representing the yard and freight sheds. But perhaps the most distinguished graduate of 19th century western sandlots was playing in Manitoba’s neighboring territory.

Saskatchewan’s early baseball story is similar to that of Manitoba. The railroad moved the Regina club during the 1887 summer and led by their ace pitcher and crack batter, Walter Scott, a future editor and Premier of Saskatchewan, they slaughtered Wolseley 41 to 8 in a warm-up to their eventual capture of the Silver Cup in 1888 following a convincing 47 to 24 victory over Moose Jaw.

The highlight of those days were the tussles between farm and town teams. The Country Boys, a team of local farmers, narrowly beat their city slicker rival Regina 45 to 43 in one of the most eagerly awaited matches of 1887.

The flavor of these early sandlot matches is neatly revealed in Barry Broadfoot’s interview with a pioneer settler of Canada’s west.

We used to take a week’s holiday, the bunch of us, me, Gilbert Sedgeman, the three Warner boys, John Jackson, and a few others and we’d go baseballing. Usually we’d send letters ahead of time to the towns around, but if we didn’t, it didn’t matter none because it was about the first week of July. We’d go and there wasn’t much doing around the district, so you could always get a team against you. For money, pass the hat. We used to get pretty good crowds. Everybody played or everybody watched. Baseball was the thing.

In Alberta, baseball developed around formal settings such as the Square in Lethbridge. Sir Alexander Galt, a principle in the coal mining industry in Lethbridge, donated land to the town for recreational purposes. Concern for sport and aesthetics in the park often collided. Locals complained that the catcher’s fence was unsightly and that a net would serve the same purpose. Informal games were played as early as 1886 and by 1889 the Lethbridge club was considered to be the finest of the northwest. All over the province in places like Wiste, Medicine Hat, Sturgeon, and Edmonton, baseball contests became a focus for civic pride.

In 1907 the Western Canada League began in Alberta. Managing the Edmonton team was William “Deacon” White, a graduate of Northwestern University. He had originally visited Fort Edmonton as a barnstorming ballplayer. He liked the place and stayed to become a leading baseball promoter in the west. He also coached two Edmonton Grey Cup football finalists in 1921 and 1922.

The Medicine Hat Hatters were pennant winners in the Western League’s inaugural season. It was a turbulent year in which one player, Egan, the Lethbridge shortstop, was fined $25 for assaulting an umpire.

The league grew to eight members by 1909 and included teams from Saskatchewan and Manitoba. This was a period of fierce inter-provincial rivalry. In keeping with the past, the Regina Bonepilers played in a stadium aptly called Railway Park which was expanded from 300 to 2,000 seats. Imported American pros joined Canadians such as the four who signed on with Edmonton. But the only real winners were the teams’ creditors as all clubs lost money.

Each season attracted new investors willing to lose money for the cause of keeping their city’s name before the western public. How else can one explain the willingness of these people to put up with the aggravations of baseball involvement. In 1913, for instance, a nasty rhubarb between two Saskatoon players and an umpire resulted in the Saskatoon team being ordered to replay a game. They refused and befuddled league executives declared Moose Jaw and Saskatoon co-champions.

The opportunity to associate with future major league stars was also an inducement for investors and fans. Hal Chase, a legendary scoundrel and gambler, who later played with the New York Highlanders and Cincinnati Reds, thrilled crowds in Victoria, British Columbia, shortly after the turn of the century with his acrobatic defensive play around first base.

In 1921 a future Brooklyn Dodgers’ star, Babe Herman, arrived in Edmonton to play with that city’s Western Canada League team. Now a respected citizen of Glendale, California, Herman recalls his Edmonton days.

Edmonton in 1921 was a nice frontier town. They had a great amateur team with the hockey player Duke Keats on it. I remember Heinie Manush hitting the first home run ever over the right-field fence on opening day. They had movies of it and showed them that night at the theatre.

The bat boy for visiting teams that season was an Edmonton youngster named John Ducey. He remembers the era and some of the players and teams.

In those early days as a young fan I remember haunting old Diamond Park. We kids would shag balls for the team during batting practice. Many good players made it to the big leagues from the Western Canada League in those years, including Tony Kaufmann, a pitcher, and Oscar Melillo, a second baseman with the Winnipeg Maroons, and I remember Walter “Cuckoo” Christensen of the Calgary Bronks and first baseman Nelson “Chicken” Hawkes.

Baseball in the 1920s was at a glorious watershed between its boisterous past and a more structured future. Between the two World Wars barnstorming black baseball teams like Chappie Johnson’s Colored Allstars brought their own lights and deft showmanship to villages and towns across the prairies. Southern Saskatchewan was visited annually by an outlaw squad from Minot, North Dakota, whose flamboyant owner, Lee Dillage, drove a Duesenberg touring car. His roster included two former Chicago White Sox stars, Happy Felsch and Swede Risberg, who had been blacklisted from organized baseball for their role in throwing the 1919 World Series.

Baseball was becoming a highly structured sport with a multitude of minor leagues directly subservient to the 16 major league teams in the American northeast. In western Canada these minor leagues usually had short lifespans. Winnipeg lasted two seasons in the Northern Copper Country League. Teams from Brandon, Fort William, and Winnipeg had teams at one time or another in the Northern League. Victoria was a member of the Class B Northwestern League prior to the first war. After the war that city and Vancouver joined the Pacific Coast International League. The Western Canada League referred to above folded and re-formed many times. In the late l940s, Edmonton and Calgary each had two teams in the Big Four League, which was riot in O.B. In the l950s these cities and Victoria and Vancouver were members of the Western International League. Today the Edmonton Trappers and Vancouver Canadians of the Pacific Coast League continue a tradition of good minor league ball in the west.

The minor leagues have survived, but all around them irrevocable changes occurred. For one thing youngsters began to spend less time shagging balls at the local stadium and more time participating in the increasing number of organized parks and recreation, and little league programs. Today almost one-half of the registered baseball players in Canada come from the four western provinces. One well known graduate of organized baseball in Melville, Saskatchewan, is the Houston Astros’ star outfielder, Terry Puhl.

For everything gained, however, something is lost. A pioneer interviewed by Broadfoot lamented. “I watch it on television today. That’s the only place I watch it because there doesn’t seem to be any baseball played around here now.”

And the days when an engineer would leave his train idling in a depot to play a few hours of baseball are like many of those same trains a part of western Canada’s past.

The directors met. . .and shook dice to see whether the Bingos should go or linger and the festive cubes said they should meander. And now we ain’t got any Bings.

The Daily Leader felt the main cause of “the Bingo disfranchise ment was the large crowds of people that didn’t go see `em.” But, it had been quite a year for the Binghamton team: visits to Newark (“the benighted land of malaria and bad hotels”), to the Syracuse “salt marshes,” to “Starch City” (Oswego) and contests against the Rochester “Lushers” a team which would have found the International League Guide useless, “because it doesn’t furnish addresses of saloon keepers.” The Elmira Gazette, which covered the exploits of Binghamton’s closest (though non-league) rival, was subject to almost daily criticism by the Daily Leader. It was written that a man from Elmira happened to stroll by Riverside Park (home of the Bingos) and had asked someone What was going on there — evidently the “cheesy ball” the Elmira papers were “gushing over” had left the man incapable of recognizing a baseball game when he saw one. Or so it was reported in the Daily Leader.

This article will cover the 1887 season of the Binghamton Bingos, primarily through the pages of the Daily Leader. Binaghamton’s weekly papers, the Democrat and the Republican, made little mention about baseball. The Democrat, however, did have a story about “Base Ball Lunatics” in its May 12 issue. It is the story of a Connecticut man who was considered insane because all he talked about was baseball. The Democrat added that now there were “about 10,000,000 such lunatics in the country.”

The April 12 issue of the Daily Leader had two items of interest in its “Base Ball Notes” column. The first concerned the prospective unnerving of opponents when they visit Riverside Park since “the Binghamton Gun Club (is) in the next lot.” The other item concerned Frank Grant, the noted black second baseman:

Complaint is being made that Grant. . .is being used as a star player by Manager Chapman of Buffalo. This accounts for the amount of ground he is allowed to cover. . . and no attention is paid to such a thing as another man’s territory.

The Daily Leader was seemingly ambivalent about the black players in the IL. This is best illustrated in its coverage of the release of the Bings two blacks, second baseman John “Bud” Fowler, and a pitcher named Renfroe. The lead note of July 13 read: “Gone coons — Fowler and Renfroe.” But, in the same group of notes is this comment on Renfroe: “He will return to his home in Memphis, whence he expects to join the Topekas of the Western League. Renfroe is a gentlemanly fellow, who deserves to do well.”

Two June visits to Binghamton by the Cuban Giants, a top black independent team, were cause for the Daily Leader to break out the racial epithets. On the ninth, the Bingos defeated the Giants 12-8, with Renfroe hurling a complete game and allowing one earned run. The Giants were referred to as “the snow flakes,” the “dark objects,” and “the simmenian (sic) visitors,” and a suggestion was made that “watermelons at home plate” might help the Giants. On June 30, the Giants returned, and this time emerged victorious, 8-6, in a game called after eight innings. The Daily Leader reported that “the sable, cimmenan (sic), colored Ethiopians, who make their lair at Trenton, N.J., jumped on the peripatetic Bings yester- day, and spilled innocent gore.” Bud Fowler, in his Binghamton finale, went 2 for 5, but committed two of the ten Binghamton errors.

Despite remarks such as those above, which can only be judged today to be cruel and bigoted, the Daily Leader was generally sympathetic to the blacks in the IL. For instance, in the May 14 notes:

If Billy Hoover (umpire) made the remark that is credited to him, that on a close point he would give a decision against a team employing a colored player, he should be driven out of the League at the toe of a boot.

Hoover resigned by the end of the month to manage the Oswego team which soon disbanded.

On July 14, the IL directors met in Buffalo to discuss “the question of black players. Several representatives declared that many of the best players in the League were anxious to leave on account of the colored element, and the board finally directed Secretary White to approve no more contracts with colored men.” The Daily Leader was quiet on this matter until after the season ended. But on October 4 it commented, “We think the International League made a monkey of itself when it undertook to draw the color line.” And, on October 7, “We wonder if the International League proposes to exclude colored people from attendance at the games.” It is obvious where the Daily Leader stood on the question of blacks in the IL.

Bud Fowler had an interesting run at Binghamton. He was one of the stars on the team, usually playing second and, usually batting cleanup. Minor League Baseball Stars lists the righthanded batter’s record as 34 games, a .350 average and 23 steals for the Bingos. The Daily Leader reported on his exploits consistent with the attention his teammates received. Rarely was his blackness referred to in game stories.

Though there is no indication of how Fowler got along with his teammates, it does seem as though a blatant hostility did not exist against him. The Oswego club respected Fowler’s opinion enough to sign black second baseman Randolph Jackson upon his recommendation. On June 4, the Daily Leader reported that

Mr. F. F. Billings offered as a prize a life sized portrait of the member of the Binghamton club who made the greatest batting average during home games of the current week. . . the official score-sheet. . .shows Fowler is the lucky winner of the prize.

With a .500 (8-16) for the week, Fowler beat out ten teammates for the portrait, each of whom hit over .300. One would hardly expect that such a gift would have been given to a despised member of the community. After all, even “official records” could have been altered, but there seemed no reluctance in awarding the prize to Fowler.

Fowler continued to play for the Bingos until June 30, when, according to the Rochester Chronicle, he was released upon the condition he sign with no other IL club. There must have been rumblings of displeasure before then, however. For example, on June 9, the Daily Leader reported that “We are authorized to state that the report of Fowler’s release was entirely without foundation.” Seemingly the forces were in motion which would lead to the banning of blacks in the IL the following month.

On April 21 Binghamton began its exhibition schedule with a 10-3 win over Scranton before some 800 fans. Already there was “a rumor afloat that Binghamton will not finish the season,” which “Cricket” (Sporting Life‘s Binghamton correspondent) adamently denied. Fans were reminded that if a game was to be played, a red flag with “Game” on it flew on Court Street, opposite the stores of Clark and McHenry; a blue flag meant no game. The Bings went 5-0 in exhibition play, with two wins over Scranton and Read ing, and a win over Allentown.

Regular season play began on May 3 and the Bingos beat Utica 8-2. The following day the Utes were soundly drubbed 26-8, with pitcher Ely allowing just one earned run and going 6-6 at the plate. Fowler’s second inning single contributed to a 7-run outburst. On May 9, Buffalo’s Mickey Walsh was the victim of a 7-hit first inning explosion. Fowler was in the middle of the rally which, reported the Daily Leader, gave Walsh a “dose of nux vomica.” Binghamton finished its first homestand 5-5. A trip to Oswego netted three wins in four tries, and the Bings scored 47 runs. Fowler was the starting pitcher and loser in Oswego’s 12-10 win. He gave up five runs in less than two innings, causing the Daily Leader to remark: “Fowler has hitherto been the packhorse between a lame arm and victory. He didn’t get there yesterday.” Two days later, Fowler “got there.” The Bings beat the “Sweegs” 8-3, with Fowler the batting star. In the fourth, “Fowler stepped to the plate, and meeting the second ball pitched fairly in the nozzle drove it over the right field fence for a fourbagger.”

Binghamton traveled to Newark and lost four games in mosquito land, the highlight being George Stovey’s 9-0, 5-hit shutout. It was reported that the Bingos offered “a bushel of peanuts” for Stovey. Black hurler Renfroe (2-4 record) broke in during the afternoon session of a Memorial Day doubleheader with Utica. After winning the opener 20-13, the Bings completed the sweep with a 14-9 victory. Renfroe hurled a complete game in 1:40, striking out nine. The Daily Leader wasn’t concerned with Renfroe’s color that day. In fact, it seemed most concerned with the absence of the clown Juice, left home by Utica, which was accused of penny-pinching.

When Oswego folded at the end of May, Binghamton’s three wins over them were removed from their record. So as June began, the Bings were 8-11, nine games behind first place Newark (17-2). The Bings first June contest was a 12-1 1 win over the Syracuse Stars. Fowler’s two-run double in the eighth provided the winning margin. For the day Fowler was 4-5, with 3 doubles, each good for “two Ottomans.” One June 2, the Bings lost to Syracuse 7-6 in 11 innings. Renfroe, “(who) promises to be a daisy” went the distance allowing no earned runs. The Daily Leader reported that “The `Bings’ did not support Renfroe yesterday and many think the shabby work was intentional.” In addition, Syracuse players were refusing to support Higgins, a black pitcher. On June 4, Renfroe and the Bings lost to Higgins and the Stars 10-4, before 1500 in Syracuse. Scranton joined the league the following day. On June 25 Renfroe pitched the Bingos to an 11-7 win over Utica. The Daily Leader reported that:

the dark skinned twirler of the Bings gave them tricky little geometrical problems full of arcs and tangents. . . toward the final stages of the examination, however, he tried them on some of the rudimentary branches, and found them apt and greedy.

The beginning of July saw Newark still atop the IL at 28-11, Buffalo second with 30-15, Rochester third, 2 1-18 and Toronto fourth, 19-18. Binghamton was ninth at 15-21, 101/2 games ahead of last place Utica. On July 2 it was reported that Mark Twain was scheduled to umpire at Elmira. The 1887 National League champion Detroit Wolverines visited Binghamton on the 6th. Detroit won 6-1, behind the pitching of Burk, a “fat cuss” with an excellent “drop curve.” Hardy Richardson was 4-5 for Detroit and Weidman hit a home run. The Bingos resumed regular IL play the following day with a 3-2 win over Buffalo. Knight had replaced Henry Ormsbee as manager with the Bings’ record 18-22, 11½ games behind first place Newark.

The “lift” provided by the new manager was short-lived, as the Bings quickly lost four straight to Syracuse, allowing 45 runs. The previously mentioned league meeting was held July 14 and in addition to the discussion of black players, it was decided that Wilkes-Barre would take over Utica’s record. The Daily Leader speculated that this “might lead to a reopening of the Oswego matter (where teams’ wins and losses versus Oswego were deleted).” However, the Oswego matter remained closed. In other matters, Jersey City and Newark were censured for playing a Sunday exhibition on July 3, and, umpire salaries were raised from $200 to $250 a month, effective immediately.

On July 25 a meeting was held on the fate of the Bings. It was decided that a benefit game versus Elmira would be played. One thousand tickets at $1 each were to be sold and it was hoped that -“an enthusiastic response will enable the committee to dispose of the entire number” and “keep the franchise in this city.” The Bings lost to Stovey and Newark 4-3 on the 26th. Outfielder Milt West was suspended “without pay by the Binghamton Association for indifferent playing. Justice to this player would seem to demand that he be released.” West was released and eventually signed with Columbus.

As the Bingos moved into August play, the financial difficulties were becoming more apparent. Four players were released on the night of the 6th, following a 7-3 loss to Buffalo. Among those released were season-long hurler Tony Madigan and team stolen base leader Casey, who was hitting about .330. The Daily Leader commented that “maybe too many players were pruned by the Board of Directors.”

“Base Ball Notes” of August 10 spoke to the issue of rowdy fan behavior:

It is scarcely a wonder the club is not successful financially. One would imagine from the conduct of the spectators that only loafers were present. Decent people will feel bound in the interest of self-respect, to stay away. . .if those disgusting exhibitions continue.

By now it was evident that the fans had better start turning out for the games or the team would fold. The fans were admonished daily to “attend the games” and it was hinted that if folks want a warm welcome at the Great White Gate, they should “attend the games this week.” When attendance for a 7-4 loss to Rochester on the 16th was still small, the Daily Leader in its best guilt-inspiring tones, wrote that the turnout was “not such as becomes enterprising Binghamtonians.” The payroll which was causing all of these difficulties was reported to be $2400 a month.

On the 20th the Bingos beat Elmira 18-2, their third exhibition victory in as many tries over their hated rival. As mentioned earlier, the directors met that night and the Bingos folded. After the recent urgings for the fans to turn out, on August 23, the Daily Leader lamented “We are a Bingless people.” The Republican noted that Binghamton was a lively baseball town “for its inches” but had too small a population to support a club.

The demise of the Bingos created a league controversy. Sporting Life reported in its August 1 issue that Binghamton’s games against the teams remaining in the League would count only if a replacement for the Bingos were found. This stand, consistent with the IL constitution, drew the ire of Syracuse, which had defeated Binghamton in 10 of 12 meetings. The Stars, previously hurt when Oswego disbanded, threatened to withdraw from the league should their wins against the Bingos be removed from the standings. A meeting was scheduled for August 30 in Buffalo and, as the September 7 Sporting Life headlined: “Syracuse Wins — Binghamton’s Games to Count.” Rochester, Wilkes-Barre, Newark and Jersey City joined with Syracuse in a 5-4 vote which allowed the games with Binghamton to count, despite the fact that no replacement franchise was found.

The Bingos did re-appear on September 9, with only Ely and pitcher Green remaining from the IL club. The new-look team lost 6-3 to Elmira. In the IL, Toronto won 22 of its last 26 games to capture the pennant. The final standings:

The Binghamton team stole 179 bases, scored seven runs a game, and ranked ninth with a .304 team average. The Bings also ranked ninth in fielding percentage (.893), committing 343 errors, or about 4½ a game. Individually, pitcher Green won 14 games and hurled the team’s two shutouts.

This look back on the 1887 Binghamton Bingos serves as yet another confirmation of the often frustrating maxim “things never change.” Certainly baseball has improved its relationship with the black athlete — perhaps one should be merely grateful for Branch Rickey breaking the half-century old color line, and not question his motives. Certainly many former Negro League players feel today that Rickey’s main reason for signing Jackie Robinson was to lure black fans into Ebbets Field.

But, in other areas, it seems as if 100 years has changed very little. Milt West, earning a fraction of what today’s long-term contract big leaguers make, still could be suspended for “indifferent play.” Big salaries were a concern then, as now. Sporting Life used the Peoria Reds for “a sample of the tremendous increase in player salaries” that was occurring in 1887. Fan violence, supposedly a malady of today’s “permissive society,” plagued the `87 Bings. And, perhaps most poignantly for present day Binghamton baseball fans, this note on the prospects for a team in 1888 in the October 7, 1887 Daily Leader: “Binghamton will have a team.. .if somebody can be found to go behind and push the darned thing.” That “somebody” was found in 1888 and Binghamton had baseball, almost continuously for 80 years. Today, out of organized baseball since 1968, Binghamton is once again looking for someone to push the darned thing. Some things never do change.

In Chicago, horse drawn streetcars rattled along cobblestone streets in front of wooden sidewalks and gas street lights. Nearly half of the city’s 400,000 residents were foreign born, including many Irish, Germans, Jews, Czechs, Poles and Swedes. Other ethnic groups had not yet arrived in significant numbers. And in their first year of existence, the Chicago Cubs — then called the White Stockings — won the National League’s first pennant.

Technically, the team’s ancestry can be traced back a few years earlier. Following the example set by the Cincinnati Red Stockings, Chicago formed its first professional baseball club in 1870. Since the team’s uniforms included white hose, they were called the White Stockings. When the National Association of Professional Baseball Players was formed in 1871, the Chicago team entered and was in close running for the championship until the Chicago Fire destroyed its ball park, situated at Michigan and Randolph Streets. Forced to play their last three games on the road, the White Stockings lost the pennant.

As Chicago recovered from the blaze, the White Stockings lapsed into semi-professional status for the next two years, then re-entered the Association in 1874. During 1874 and `75, the team was strictly of second division status, and the National Association — professional in name only — also became a joke as betting scandals turned the public mood into one of disgust. On February 2, 1876, the National Association was disbanded in favor of the National League of Professional Baseball Clubs, largely through the efforts of Chicago club president William Hulbert, who had purchased the team the previous June. The Chicago club was totally re-organized also; hence the Chicago National League Ball Club, as such, dates from 1876. Since the nickname White Stockings was retained, the Cubs of that era were actually Chicago’s first “White Sox” team. (The nickname Cubs was not coined until 1902 and it took several years before it was universally accepted.)

In that far away and long forgotten age, the White Stockings used only eleven players for the entire season: Albert G. Spalding, pitcher and manager; James “Deacon” White, catcher; Cal McVey, first base; Ross Barnes, second base; John Peters, shortstop; Adrian Anson, third base; John Glenn, leftfield; Paul Hines, centerfield; Bob Addy and Oscar Bielaski, rightfield, and Fred Andrus, substitute. None of them were native Chicagoans and only Spalding, who hailed from Byron, was a native of Illinois.

McVey doubled as pitcher during Spalding’s “rest” days at first base or in the outfield. Spalding, soon to organize the sporting goods firm which still bears his name, later became the club’s owner and president. Anson, known to history as “Cap”, became the team’s first baseman and manager in 1879 (he reigned for 19 years, still the Chicago record) and, like Spalding, was eventually elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame. Addy is often credited with having invented the base slide a decade earlier. Bielaski was the first professional player of Polish descent.

The game these men played bore little resemblance to that of today. Contests were performed exclusively in the daytime, and never on Sundays, which was forbidden by league rules. Games generally began at 3:30 in the afternoon and rarely lasted over two hours, if that long. Double-decked steel grandstands were unheard of, much less domed enclosures or artificial turf.

The pitching distance was a scant 45 feet, which enabled a strong-armed hurler to go 500 or more innings a year and win 40 or more games. Working within the confines of a 4′ by 6′ “box” rather than atop a mound, the pitcher could do whatever he desired with the ball, although trick pitches such as the spit ball, the shine ball, and the emery ball were actually not invented until the turn of the century. Generally, one baseball would remain in use for the entire game, growing dirtier and more raggedy by the inning. Another factor to the pitcher’s advantage was the absence of a balk rule — he could motion to any base without having to follow through.

His pitching, however, was restricted to underhand deliveries, while the batter had the option of calling for a high or low ball. The official National League rules of 1876 stated that “the ball must be delivered to the bat with the arm swinging nearly perpendicular at the side of the body, and the hand in swinging forward must pass below the hip.” An overhand pitch was considered “an unfair delivery”. Foul balls were not counted as strikes, but a foul caught on the first bounce was an out. Nine balls constituted a walk to first base, which was then counted as a time at bat. A fly ball which bounced over the outfield fence was allowed to be a home run, although this seldom occurred. Foul lines were marked only from first and third base into rightfield and leftfield, respectively, rather than from home plate, which then had four sides rather than five, as it does today. Substitutions in the lineup were allowed only until the fourth inning.

Uniforms and equipment were different also. The baseball, containing a solid rubber center, was a “dead” one, making home runs a scarce sight. Bats were heavy, usually weighing 45 to 50 ounces. When a team took the field, the only man wearing a glove was the catcher, whose “glove” was often little more than a fingerless padding strapped across the palm of his pitching hand. Other than that, the catcher’s only protection was his mask, chest protectors and shin guards having not yet been invented. Small wonder the receiver caught the ball on the bounce 10 or 12 feet behind the plate rather than in the batter’s box.

The typical uniform of 1876 (and for over a quarter-century thereafter) consisted of long-sleeved, wide-collared jerseys which were laced up the center, heavy woolen socks, and knickers which extended just below the kneecap. Flat-topped caps, wide belts, and high-topped shoes extending an inch or more above the ankles rounded out the field attire, and it was not uncommon for players to wear neckties with their uniforms as well. Batting helmets were non-existent. Most players also wore handle-bar mustaches, so perhaps times have not changed that greatly after all.

With only one umpire officiating the game, he could not keep his eye on every move. This made it easy for a baserunner to “cut” second base on his way to third if the arbitrator had his back turned. When such an incident occurred, it was one team’s word against the other’s. Unless he had seen the runner “cutting” the base himself, the umpire usually gave the verdict to the home team, fearing intimidation by the local mob. Physical abuse from players and fans was part of the umpire’s life in those times. In order to survive, he had to be a pugilist as well as a decision maker. Shouting bouts, shoving matches, and fist fights between opposing teams were just as frequent. This rowdiness, which grew worse after 1890, reigned supreme well into the 20th century.

It was in this youthful, undisciplined atmosphere that the Chicago White Stockings and the National League began operations over a century ago. Other clubs in the league included the New York Mutuals, the Cincinnati Red Stockings (sometimes abbreviated to Reds), the Athletics of Philadelphia (listed as Athletics in the standings), the Hartford Blues, the St. Louis Brown Stockings, the Boston Red Stockings, and Louisville — simply called the Louisvilles. The Boston, St. Louis, and Philadelphia clubs were no relation to the latter day Red Sox, Browns, and Athletics of the American League (founded 1901), their similarity in nicknames not withstanding.

The 1876 schedule called for 70 games, with each team meeting its seven opponents ten times apiece. The White Stockings played their season opener at Louisville, April 25, with Albert Spalding scattering seven hits to blank the southerners, 4-0. It was the first shutout game pitched in the new league, with the result that shutouts were known as “Chicago games” for the next 30 years. When a team was shut out, it was “Chicagoed.”

Another “Chicago first” came on May 2, when Ross Barnes, in the Chicago Tribune‘s words, “made the finest hit of the game, straight down the left field to the carriages, for a clean home run.” The first round trip blast in the National League history, it was one of 39 hit in the circuit that year.

After winning their first four contests, the White Stockings were cooled off in St. Louis May 5, when the Brown Stockings edged them, 1-0, behind George “Grin” Bradley, who went on to win 45 games for the season, 16 of them shutouts. Since Chicago had been shut out, the St. Louis Globe-Democrat gloated that “A Chicago chicken comes home to roost.”

With their record standing at six wins and one loss, the White Stockings played their first home game May 10, as Spalding white-washed the Cincinnati Reds, 6-0. A crowd estimated at between 5,000 and 6,000 witnessed the contest, performed in a single-decked, tiny wooden structure bounded by State Street on the east, Dearborn on the west, 23rd Street on the north, and 24th on the south. A portion of the outfield fence had been blown down in a terrific storm a few days earlier, and was only partially repaired for the opener. But the team was victorious and the Chicago Tribune boasted the following morning that “It looks as if the Chicago club management has done at last — had selected a club to fitly represent this city, and therefore to excel all other clubs in the West, if not in the country.” Third baseman Adrian Anson, then 24 years old, was called “the sure-handed Iowa infant.” Twenty years later, the press would affectionately refer to him as “Pop.”

With their record standing at 10-2, the Chicago upstarts began their first Eastern tour May 23. At Boston May 30, a crowd of 14,000 attended the first Chicago-Boston contest of the year. It was a “blood match” in every sense of the word. Four Chicago players — Spalding, Barnes, McVey and White — had played for Boston in 1875 and had been the deciding factor in that club’s winning its fourth straight championship. When word had leaked out to the press in July 1875 that the four had signed with Chicago for the following year, they were promptly labeled “seceders” still an insulting epithet barely a decade after the Civil War. As Anson recalled years later in his autobiography, A Ballplayer’s Career:

. . . long before the hour set for calling the game had arrived, the people were wending their way in steady streams toward the scene of action. Every kind of conveyance that could be used was pressed into service, from the lumbering stage coach that had been retired from active to the coach-and-four of the millionaire. Streetcars were jammed to suffocation and even seats in an express wagon were sold at a premium.

. . . it seemed to me as if all Boston had determined to be present on that occasion . . . . finally it was found necessary to close the games in order to keep room enough on the grounds to play the game on. With the gates closed, the crowd began to swarm over the fences and the special policemen employed there had their hands more than full of trouble.

The “Big Four” were given a great ovation . . . and of course the whole team shared in the honors. . . The game that followed was played under difficulties, but thanks to the excellent pitching of Spalding and the fine support given to him by the entire team we won by a score of 5 to 1, and the Hubbites were sorer than ever over the Big four’s defection.

Chicago went on to take nine out of ten from Boston in `76, much to the chagrin of Eastern sportswriters.

By July 1, Chicago had won 25 and lost 5, holding first place by a 1½ game lead over Hartford. The White Stockings’ fury reached its peak between July 20 and 27, when they scored 88 runs in four games, a record which has withstood the passage of a century. The Scores were: July 20, Chicago 18, Louisville 0; July 22, Chicago 30, Louisville 7; July 25, Chicago 23, Cincinnati 3; July 27, Chicago 17, Cincinnati 3.

Imposing as these figures were, they appear less impressive when viewed against the reality that of the 88 runs scored only 37 were earned. In the July 22 contest alone, Louisville was charged with 37 “errors,” the main reason being that the fielders wore no gloves. Also, the scorekeepers of that era did not consider any ball to be “too hot to handle.” But whether the scoring record was dubious or not, Chicago had won, which was all that mattered in the standings.

As the season progressed, the White Stockings continued their winning pace — with Hartford and St. Louis snapping at their heels all the way. On August 2, the Tribune remarked that “the cover was knocked off the ball.” These words have since become a cliche, but at that time they had a literal meaning, since “a new one was substituted.”

By August 22, the Tribune felt it safe to say that the White Stockings were “the strongest nine ever gathered,” in spite of their having forfeited a game to St. Louis the day before. The sting of the forfeit was erased five days later when Chicago crushed the Missouri team, 23-2.

On September 26 the White Stockings clinched the pennant by edging Hartford, 7-6, at Chicago, surviving Hartford’s four-run uprising in the ninth inning. The Tribune proudly — if not a bit self-righteously — announced that “they won everything if they won, and lost nothing to speak of if they lost. But they won and now, despite every combination, every abuse, every unfairness, they have played themselves fairly to the front, and so cleanly that nothing can throw off the grip they have on the flag.” Such was Chicago’s way of thumbing its nose at the East and its previous dominance of baseball. The pennant had been a signal victory for the prestige of teams in Chicago and the Midwest.

Not surprisingly in that Victorian era, the papers made no mention of any “victory celebration.” But ballplayers were human even then, so there was probably plenty of liquor in the Chicago clubhouse that night.

After beating Hartford again the next day, the White Stockings finished the season with 52 wins and 14 losses for a won and lost percentage of .788. Since the flag had already been clinched, four previously postponed games were not made up. The only team to hold the season’s edge on them were the St. Louis Brown Stockings, who beat Chicago six times out of ten.

Individual performances were equally as impressive. Albert Spalding won 47 and lost 13 to lead the league with a .783 percentage. His win total also led the league, while his 529 innings pitched ranked third.

Ross Barnes, whose .403 batting average topped the league, also led in hits (138), doubles (21), triples (14), and runs scored (126). His stock in trade was the “fair-foul” hit, which was a legal safety only for that season. Any ball which bounced in fair territory when first hit, even though it might roll foul going down the baseline, was ruled a “fair-foul” single if the batter made it safely to first base. Even the partisan Chicago press regarded some of Barnes’ hits to be “questionable”, and that type of hit was reduced to an ordinary foul the following year. Deprived of his livelihood, Barnes dropped to .272 in 1877, and never again crossed the .300 mark.

Other .300 hitters in the lineup were Peters (.348), McVey (.345), Anson (.343), White (.335), and Hines (.330). (In 1976 — and for that year only base on balls was counted as a time at bat without a hit. Under today’s rules, the averages would have been Barnes .429, Anson .356, Peters .351, McVey .347, White .343, and Hines .331.) The Tribune was especially lavish in its praise of Anson, speaking highly of “the nervy, hard, hang-on, stubborn grit of that rugged, skillful, and intense player, Anson, who has won more games this year than any other man in the business.”

The laudatory words were not wasted. Anson went on to collect 3,041 hits with a lifetime batting average of .333. Appointed manager in 1879, he led the White Stockings to five pennants during the 1880’s. By 1905, he was elected City Clerk of Chicago. He died there at age 70 in 1922.

In the time that has passed since the White Stockings took the National League’s first pennant, several generations of players have come and gone. Catcher Jim White, the last survivor of the 1876 Chicago champions, died in 1939 at age 91, and everyone who saw them perform is also long dead. Today’s Cub fans need not be reminded that their favorites have not finished on top since 1945. But in 1876, at least, Chicago was baseball’s “First City.”

“I could have been as good as Rose,” said Averill, who believes he could have been a top hitter for several more seasons. “I was having a hell of a year in 1937 until my back went haywire in Philadelphia.” Averill, after batting .378 in 1936, was hitting .394 on June 26 when his back gave out. At the end of the season he had fallen to .299. In 1938 he had one more good year with a .330 average, but his power had declined to 14 homers and 93 runs batted in. “My back affected my swing,” the former slugger recalls. It was later discovered that his tailbone and spine had never been fully joined; surgery in 1960 required six pins to join the two properly.

Averill split the 1939 season between Cleveland and Detroit, then served as a utility outfielder on his only pennant-winning team, the 1940 Tigers. After a few games with the Braves and a half season with Seattle of the Pacific Coast League in 1941, he retired from baseball and went home to Snohomish, Washington, where he has lived all his life.

Howard Earl Averill now lives with his wife Loette — they celebrated their 60th anniversary May 15 — in a nice apartment in the pleasant country town about 35 miles north of Seattle. Walking into the Averill home, one immediately notices the mementoes of an athlete who had a great career — the pictures, the plaques, the signed baseballs. It’s a little like being in a room at Cooperstown.

Although he has been fully retired for 13 years, Averill looks much younger his 80 years. He has wavy white hair and looks to be in pretty good condition, not much over his playing weight of 172 pounds. At 5’9½” it is easy to see that his power came from the shoulders, the arms and the wrists. Nicknamed “Rock,” he was a line-drive hitter who lacked the size of some of his slugging contemporaries.

After going through the local public schools, the young slugger played several seasons for the semi-pro Snohomish Pilchuckers before being purchased by San Francisco. Averill spent three full seasons with the Seals in the Pacific Coast League, who were reluctant to sell his contract to a major league team. Playing in San Francisco from 1926 through 1928, Averill hit .348, .324 and .354. In the long PCL season, his `28 campaign was awesome — 270 hits, 53 doubles, 36 home runs, 178 runs and 173 runs batted in. Despite his .354 average, “I was low on the team. Roy Johnson hit .375 and Smead Jolley hit .404.” Averill recalls his third game in 1926 when he got a pinch hit to win the game. When he hit three homers in a doubleheader in Portland, “centerfield was my job,” beating out future Hall of Famer Lloyd Waner. For the Seals, Averill once won both games of a doubleheader with home runs, both 1-0.

Purchased by Cleveland for the 1929 season, the left-handed slugger was handed the centerfield position. “All I had to do was hit,” Averill recalls. And hit he did. In his first major league time at bat he hit a home run off Earl Whitehill. “1 am the only Hall of Famer to hit a homer in his first time at bat,” he states with pride. In 1929 the Earl of Snohomish played every game, hit .331, clubbed 18 home runs (then a club record) and drove in 97 runs. He also led the circuit’s outfielders with 388 putouts. Despite the presence of batting champion Lew Fonseca (.369), future Hall of Famer Joe Sewll and pitchers like Wes Ferrell and Willis Hudlin, the Indians finished third.

But that’s the way it was throughout Averill’s career. Despite outstanding seasons from Averill and a few teammates, some other club always had more overall talent and superior performances.

From 1929 through 1931 the Athletics’ great dynasty swept three pennants behind stars like Jimmie Foxx, Al Simmons, Mickey Cochrane and Lefty Grove. “All their batters hit,” Averill recalls, “and they had great pitching.” In `30 and `3 1 the Indians finished fourth with very good ball clubs. In 1930 Averill hit .339 with 19 homers and 119 RBIs. Teammates Eddie Morgan and Dick Porter hit .349 and .350 respectively. In 193 1 while Averill had one of his best years with a .337 average, 32 homers and 143 RBIs, Simmons hit .390 with 128 RBIs and Grove went 3 1-4. Even the Yankees — with Ruth and Gehrig hitting 46 homers each and the Iron Horse knocking in a league-record 184 runs — couldn’t catch the awesome A’s. After the 1931 season, Earl toured with the Babe Ruth All-American team.

The Yankees did win the pennant in 1932, with the Athletics, led by Foxx’s awesome 58 home runs and 169 runs batted in, on their heels. The Indians? Fourth again, despite Averill’s 32 home runs, 124 RBIs and .314 mark. The Tribe remained fourth in 1933 when the Washington club battled to the pennant.

The next two seasons saw the rise to prominence of Detroit, led by Hank Greenberg, Charlie Gehringer and pitchers Schoolboy Rowe and Tommy Bridges. The Indians finished third both years, despite the addition of Hal Trosky, a vastly underrated slugger. In 1934 Averill and Trosky between them belted 66 homeruns and drove in 257 runs. Both had off years in 1935.

The next four seasons belonged to the Yankees, who added Joe DiMaggio to give them the nudge they needed to remain atop the highly competitive American League. In 1936 Averill had perhaps his greatest season, hitting .378 with 28 home runs and 126 RBIs; Trosky hit .343, clubbed 42 homers and led the league with 162 RBIs. Amazingly, the Indians dropped to fifth place, 22½ games off the pace. Averill seemed well on his way to the batting title, leading Luke Appling by 10-12 points late in the season, when the White Sox came into Cleveland. “We decided to slow up on him,” Averill remembers, “but he hit one into the left field stands.” Appling went on to rip 13 hits in 16 times at bat and coast into the championship with a .388 average. “That 13 for 16 did it,” Averill rues. The Indian star did lead the league with 232 hits and 15 triples.

It was during the next season that the back problems began. Despite good statistics for the `37 and `38 seasons, the Averill swing had lost its potency, and he was traded to Detroit during the 1939 season, no longer the dangerous slugger of the previous ten seasons. A lifetime .3 18 hitter, during those ten years Averill averaged 189 hits, 37 doubles, 12 triples, 23 home runs, 115 runs, 108 runs batted in, and a .534 slugging average. Only once in the ten seasons did he score fewer than 100 runs (140 was his high), and five times he drove in better than 100 runs (with a high of 143). He played in 673 straight games from April 14, 1931 to June 28, 1935, when he was injured in a fireworks accident.

Averill was selected for the first six All-Star games, 1933-1938, the only outfielder in either league so honored. He was the hitting star of the 1934 classic, with a double, a triple and three RBI in his league’s 9-7 win. He is better known, of course, as the man who hit Dizzy Dean’s toe with a line drive in the `37 contest. Averill recalls having breakfast with Dean that morning on the train to Washington. Later in the game, Averill remembers Dean yelling to him, “You didn’t have to hit me.” Averill lays the blame for Dean’s ultimate career-shortening injury on the Cardinal manager, Frank Frisch, who pitched Dean too soon after the injury. “His manager thought he’d been joking,” Averill remarked. “If he’d waited a couple more days he’d probably been ready.”

The highlight of his playing career, Averill says, was a doubleheader in Washington on September 17, 1930, when he hit four home runs and drove in 11 runs, then an American League record. “When I played,” he commented, “they went by where you could last see the ball. I hit two or three more that went out over the screen. A couple could have been called fair.” The umpire ruled that a ball that cleared the screen fair, then hooked foul was a foul ball, thus costing Averill not only four homers in the first game, but six in the doubleheader, which no one has ever done. Another career highlight was hitting for the cycle on August 17, 1933. He was on the Sporting News All-Star team for both leagues four times – 1931, 1932, 1934 and 1936.

The Hall of Famer says Lefty Grove was the best pitcher of his era, but he suggests that Grove might not be so successful today. “He was a high ball thrower. Today they’d holler like hell if they called a strike up around the shoulders, but that’s what we had to put up with.” Averill also praises Lefty Gomez as a great pitcher, but “he didn’t bother me a bit.”

Other than the smaller strike zone, Averill doesn’t see many differences in the game today. “Anybody should be able to hit today with the strike zone.” He noted the smaller gloves of players in his era. “A glove couldn’t measure more than ten inches when I played.” Though he played very few night games in his career, he also never had an air-conditioned hotel room and had to travel by train. “The rest of the game itself, I don’t see any difference.”

Averill played for six managers in his career: Roger Peckinpaugh (1929-1933), Walter Johnson (1933-1935), Steve O’Neill (1935-1937), Oscar Vitt (1938-1939), Del Baker (1939-1940) at Detroit, and, briefly, Casey Stengel in 1941. Although Averill liked O’Neill the most, he considers Peckinpaugh his best manager. “He knew more baseball than the rest of them put together.” The Indians had good, solid clubs throughout Averill’s tenure. But playing against the powerful Athletics (“the best team I ever saw”), the Tigers and the Yankees, something always seemed to go wrong. “We always had one bad road trip. I remember one year we only won two of 21 games on a crucial, late season trip,” the Indian great recalls.

Averill’s career — the 1930’s in general — spanned what was probably baseball’s greatest era. He played against Sisler and Ruth in the latter part of their careers. He played against Gehrig, Foxx, Simmons, Grove, Cochrane, Dickey, Greenberg, Gehringer, Appling and so many others at the peak of their great careers. And in the latter part of his career, Averill played with or against DiMaggio, Feller, Williams, Boudreau and other stars launching great careers through the forties and into the fifties~ He says the greatest player he ever saw was Charlie Gehringer, the Tigers’ “Mechanical Man.” “He was a great fielder and he could sure hit,” Averill recalls.

Back in Snohomish in 1941, Averill first operated a greenhouse with his brother Pud. In 1949 he opened the Earl Averill Motel, long a landmark on the town’s north end approach from Everett. He witnessed with pride the career of his son Earl, a catcher-outfielder with a seven-year career in the majors (1956-1963). The highlight of the younger Earl’s career was in 1961 when he hit 21 home runs for the Angels. An outdoorsman, Averill loves hunting, fishing and trapshooting. “I was a pretty good trapshooter at one time,” he boasts. He sold the motel in 1969. In 1975 he was finally named to the Hall of Fame by the Veterans’ Committee. He is one of three Cleveland players to have his uniform retired; the others are Bob Feller and Lou Boudreau. He was thrilled in March of 1981 to be invited to the White House to a luncheon and reception hosted by President Ronald Reagan for Hall of Famers.

Outside of Snohomish, where baseball is played at Earl Averill Field, his name may not be a household word. However, he still receives a great deal of mail, mostly from autograph-seekers. Unquestionably, he was a great player in his day, one of the best when there were so many great ones. Roger “Doc” Cramer, another rookie centerfielder in 1929 who had a longer career, says of his long-time opponent: “Earl Averill was a great hitter and a fine outfielder all around . . . whatever you write about Earl won’t be enough.”

Great Indian pitcher Mel Harder says Averill can be described in three words, “Great, great, great!” Besides praising his great hitting, Harder also comments on his fielding. “He was a fine defensive centerfielder and saved many games for me. He is a true Hall of Famer.”

The Earl of Snohomish has earned his place among the royalty of baseball’s rich history. His name also looks good among those who had the highest season batting average in the last half century.

1941  Ted Williams, Red Sox                .406

1980  George Brett, Royals                    .390

1957  Ted Williams, Red Sox                .388

1977  Rod Carew,Twins                         .388

1936  Luke Appling, White Sox             .388

1935  Arky Vaughan, Pirates                 .385

1939  Joe DiMaggio,Yankees                .381

1936  Earl Averill, Indians                     .378

1948  Stan Musial, Cardinals                 .376

1937  Joe Medwick, Cardinals               .374

To the citizens of Houma, Louisiana, the 1946 season seemed little short of perfection. The city, a fishing and refining community of some 30,000 about 45 miles southwest of New Orleans, was not expected to field a team in the Evangeline League in 1946. In the reformation of the league following World War II, a team was projected for Opelousas, but businessmen there were unable to raise funds. With only a month before the season was to open, Gibson Autin and his associates in Houma organized a corporation, sold stock to the public, and arranged for use of the American Legion Field, even though the facility had neither stands nor lights. Tom Smith was appointed business manager. The club apparently took over the uniforms of the stillborn Opelousas club; the team played with caps lettered with a cursive 0 throughout the season. Although the club was independent, it adopted the name “Indians,” memorializing the Houma Indian tribe, for which the city is named.

Smith’s problem of assembling a team on minimal notice was facilitated by the relocation in baseball following World War II. Teams in the higher minors had struggled through the war largely with older players in whom they had little interest once younger men became available. In particular, the Brooklyn Dodgers engaged in a thorough housecleaning of the Mobile farm club of the Southern Association. After going to a 1-9 start, Mobile assigned to Houma four players: second baseman Mike Conroy and pitchers William C. Thomas, Edward Burkett “Pat” Patterson, and Tom Perry. In this single transaction, as it proved, Smith acquired the Evangeline league’s batting champion of 1946 and the team’s entire starting rotation. Thomas was by far the most important. A sidearming righthander with an excellent curve and superb control, he had already run up a record to beggar the term “rubber-armed.” In 1926, his first season in Organized Baseball, he won 15, lost 12 and led the Blue Ridge League in games, innings and hits. His entire career had been consistent, annually showing large numbers of games, innings, wins, losses, hits and runs. He typically struck out about twice the number he walked, but he was not a power pitcher and never recorded outstanding strikeout totals. He peaked in the late 1930s, pitching in the Pacific Coast League from 1937 to 1943. His best single year had been 1939 when he pitched 49 games for Portland, winning 20 and losing 17. At Mobile in 1945 he had gone 20-13, winning 20 for only the second time in his life. He arrived in Houma with a lifetime record of 296-293. He was 41, and had never played a game in the major leagues.

Patterson, who was 37, had pitched professionally since 1930, but he had alternated between Organized Baseball and semi-pro ball in southern industrial leagues, and did not have outstanding lifetime totals. Perry, a lefthander, had no record at Mobile in 1945, but in Class D he proved extremely effective. In a separate transaction with Mobile, Smith picked up a strong centerfielder, Lanny Pecou. Only 24, Pecou had been in Organized Baseball since 1943, first as a pitcher with Olean and New Orleans, then in 1945 as an outfielder with Mobile. Finally, Smith acquired from Mobile outfielder Mal Stevens, older brother of Dodger first baseman Ed Stevens. As third baseman, Smith signed Alvin W. Kaiser, who was prominent in semi-pro ball in New Orleans. In a single season of Organized baseball, 1941, Kaiser had risen from Cambridge, Maryland, in Class D to Rochester of the International League, where he played 11 games before going off to war. Kaiser secured his release from Rochester and signed with Houma, mainly because he could continue living in New Orleans and travel to games in his car. As manager of the team, Smith signed Paul Fugit, a fine fielding first baseman released by the New Orleans Pelicans on the opening day of the 1946 season.

Houma opened the season at home on April 24, 1946, with Thomas winning 11-3. Stands had not even been erected, but bleachers were shortly built. Lights were not installed until June 20. Most teams assembled in such haste do well to avoid last place, but this one proved little less than a worldbeater. It turned in a record of 92-38, .708, and won the pennant by 6½ games over the Natchez Giants. Thomas pitched 353 innings in 47 games. He proved able to start on alternate days if required, he could pitch without warming up, and he could pitch in both games of a doubleheader. His season record of 35-7 led not only the Evangeline League but all of Organized Baseball. Patterson proved the league’s second leading pitcher at 24-9. Perry turned in a 15-5 mark. Conroy led the league in batting with .372. Fugit led in runs batted in with 130, and Pecou in stolen bases with 53. Irv Clement of Abbeville led in home runs with 25 the only major category which a Houma player did not dominate. The league drew 575,000, leading all Class D loops in attendance.

Under the circumstances, the playoffs promised to be an anticlimax. The Associated Press preliminary story stated that Houma “should have no trouble winning.” So it proved to be. In the first round, Houma defeated fourth place Alexandria 4 games to 1, losing only the fourth game. Houma began the final round by losing a game to Abbeville, but then won four straight to take the championship about as anticipated. Thomas was 5-0 in the playoffs. In the final round, he pitched in all four games that Houma won, winning the second and fifth games of the series with complete games, saving the third for Perry and winning the fourth game in the tenth inning in relief of Patterson. He was made righthanded pitcher on the league all-star team. Fugit, Conroy and Pecou were also all-stars. Columnist Harry Martinez of the New Orleans States characterized Houma as the best team in the history of the Evangeline League, and probably the best Class D team in the country.

Such euphoria as the season induced in Houma’s fans was shortlived. On October 23 the Evangeline League held a formal meeting at Baton Rouge at which it voted to remain in Class D ball, but to expand to 10 teams in 1947 by admitting Opelousas and Lake Charles. At this meeting I. N. Goldberg, owner of the Abbeyule club, presented the allegation that several members of the Houma club had arranged to lose the fourth game of the first round of the recent playoffs, to lose the first game of the second round, and to win the fourth game of the second round. Gambling, though illegal, was widely practiced in the state. Goldberg alleged that after Houma won the first three games of the opening round, a bookmaker in Alexandria had arranged with unidentified Houma players to lose the fourth game. Since Alexandria had lost three of its best players in an automobile accident, Houma was a heavy favorite. Goldberg alleged that the bookmaker had phoned around the league, accepted bets at any odds, and cleaned up on the game. Goldberg claimed that the same bookmaker had then rigged the outcome of two games in the final round. No Alexandria players were accused, but necessarily one or more Abbeville players were suspected.

Initially, as many as seven players were thought to be under suspicion. Judge W. G. Bramham, President of the National Association of Professional Baseball Leagues, the minor leagues’ governing body, summoned the suspected players, who had not yet been identified, to his office in Durham, NC, for a hearing on January 10-11, 1947. Bramham, as it proved, had received phone calls and letters from J. Walter Morris, President of the Evangeline League, since October 1, 1946, during the second round of playoffs, reporting association of players with gamblers, and possible rigging of games. Bramham, who was approaching retirement, was eager to dispose of the case quickly. Harry Owen, president of the new Opelousas club, demanded that the names of the suspected players be revealed so that he could name a manager from among players with clean reputations.

On January 18, 1947, Bramham issued his findings and decision. Five players were named: Thomas, Pecou, Kaiser and Fugit of Houma and catcher Don Vettorel of Abbeville. It was alleged that Thomas and Vettorel had been in contact with gamblers who entreated them to throw games. Thomas testified that Kaiser had introduced him to a bookie who had suggested Thomas might lose three or four games during the season, but Thomas had refused and had not even learned the man’s name. Kaiser and Pecou were accused of working for the bookie and on one occasion resetting his clock so as to bet on a completed horserace. Vettorel was accused of flashing $600 in a bar, saying that he had won it rigging the outcome of games. Specific accusations of misplay were limited. This was, after all, Class D ball, and nothing outstandingly untoward had occurred. Fugit was alleged to have played too far off first base to draw Kaiser’s throws off base. Pecou let a ball drop in front of him on one occasion, but reported it had merely been bad judgment. There were no allegations of misplay by Thomas, and no specific ones against Vettorel. One of the allegations before Bramham was that after the automobile accident to the Alexandria players, bookies endeavored to gather $6,000 to pay off Houma players to lose a game, but the money could not be raised, and Houma won the game.

There were more general accusations of relations between gamblers and players. Money was reportedly passed directly between the stands and the dugout during games. Indeed, it was alleged that the Houma team was so strong because the players, who were good enough for higher levels of ball, were willing to play in Class D for the benefits of dealing with the gamblers in Louisiana. While Houma was playing daytime ball, some of the players were alleged to have played as “ringers” in semi-pro ball in New Orleans, winning money in association with local bookies. (If Thomas was moonlighting in semipro while winning 35 games for Houma, the mind boggles!) Even some owners in the Evangeline League were accused of relations with gamblers.

Bramham’s view was that specific allegations of game-throwing could be substantiated only by confession of one or more of the players, all of whom adamantly maintained innocence. His decision left little doubt as to his actual opinion:

In the case of the investigation here dealt with, there are positive allegations and circumstantial evidence to support them. On the other hand each of the players enter (sic) a vigorous denial. I have a very definite personal opinion in the premises, but do not find itnecessary to predicate any finding of guilt as to this allegation based upon that opinion. There is sufficient other conduct detrimental to baseball established by the record to justify the decision now rendered.

Bramham placed all five players on the ineligible list. All five threatened suit. Thomas was particularly adamant, since with his 5-0 record in the playoffs, he could not possibly have thrown a game. Thomas and Pecou petitioned the National Association for reinstatement at six month intervals, but the rest seem to have drifted out of baseball and lost interest in returning. Pecou was young and thought quite promising. Thomas was apparently a man with few alternatives to baseball. Upon his suspension, he became a roustabout at Texaco’s Houma refinery, and then went off to pitch in southern industrial leagues. Given his age, he could hope to return only to the lower minors, but he continued his efforts and at length succeeded. Thomas and Pecou were restored to eligibility by George M. Trautman, Bramham’s successor, on August 22, 1949, and were allowed immediately to return to Houma, which was in a hot pennant race. Pecou’s ability had apparently atrophied during his layoff, but Thomas helped win the 1949 pennant with three victories in the last 12 games of the season. With Houma and Lafayette in 1950 he was 23-8 at the age of 45. He continued for two seasons, bringing his long career to a close at age 47 at Owensboro in the Kitty League in 1952 with a lifetime record of 383-346.

In retrospect, do the allegations appear valid? Was justice done? Research on the scandal is made difficult by the low level at which it occurred. Houma and Abbeville did not have daily newspapers, but Alexandria had a very good paper, the Daily Town Talk, and the Baton Rouge Advertiser followed the Evangeline League closely. Newspaper accounts of the individual games do not appear to verify Goldberg’s allegations of throwing of three games. In the game of September 16, which Goldberg alleged that Houma threw to Alexandria, utility man Copeland Goss pitched for Houma, losing on a clean single over the head of shortstop Danny Seiler in the ninth. Seiler made two errors in the game and Conroy made one, but none of the accused players made any. None of the accused players did anything untoward notable enough to be mentioned in the newspaper accounts. Houma did leave ten men on base, and the entire team was said to have wasted numerous scoring opportunities.

The game of September 29, which Goldberg alleged that Houma threw to Abbeville, Patterson pitched, losing 7-1. He pitched a complete game, losing when he gave up six hits and four runs in the sixth inning. Seiler, Pecou, Conroy and Goss (who was playing third base) made errors. It is noteworthy that the only pitcher under accusation, Thomas, did not play in either of the games that Goldberg alleged Houma lost intentionally. It is, of course, possible that conspirators arranged to lose only when one of their number was not pitching.

The game of October 2, which Goldberg claimed had been rigged for Houma to win, was a 10-inning contest, which Houma did win 4-3. Houma came from behind to tie it with two runs in the ninth, and then won it on two hits and a walk in the 10th. Vettorel, the only Abbeville player accused, made an error which was not described in press accounts, but this does not appear to have occurred in the course of Houma’s tying or winning the game. Indeed, Vettorel’s play in the other games of the series leave little ground for suspicion. In the third game of the final round, which Houma won 3-2 with three runs in the third inning, Vettorel made a poor play at the plate on a throw from the outfield, allowing the second run to score. Otherwise there seems nothing exceptional about his play.

There seems little doubt that Bramham was correct to reject Goldberg’s allegations. No direct evidence was brought forth to substantiate them, and they do not appear plausible on the basis of surviving accounts. On the other hand, Bramham was clearly satisfied that some illicit activity was going on. I interviewed one member of the Houma team who was not accused in the scandal. He told me he had been approached — by whom he did not state – to participate in a conspiracy, but he refused. He said that the non-participating players for Houma were aware that something untoward was going on, but he stated that no games were actually thrown. He said that Houma actually won the games that were rigged for it to lose. One of the conspirators, he said, had doubled while swinging wildly trying to strike out.

Whether the conspiracy involved exactly the five players who were accused is impossible to say. When the penalties were announced, President L. E. Lapeyrouse of Houma expressed surprise that only one player from Abbeville had been suspended. Of the players suspended, only Pecou is thought to be living. Efforts to locate Thomas proved fruitless. He clearly suffered most from the suspension. Given his willingness to pitch at the lowest level of the minor leagues, he could probably have won at least 50 games in the two-and-a-fraction seasons he was suspended. There is little doubt that he would have passed 400 victories, at minimum. Since Thomas was not accused of throwing a game, Trautman doubtless acted correctly in lifting the suspension. Perhaps winning 52 games between ages 44 and 47 after the suspension is accomplishment enough.