But are such dramatic reversals – from last place to first place – just fantasies? Major league baseball bears not one single example of a twentieth-century team finishing last in a given season and attaining first place the following year. But there do exist a select handful of almost as dramatic reversals from which we shall attempt to uncover the real-life Joe Hardys and Roy Hobbses.

For starters, let’s look at the records of Carl Yastrzemski and the Boston Red Sox of 1966-67:

Year B.A. HR RBI Pos.

1966 .278 16 80 9

1967 .326 44 121 1

The 1966 season could only be described as frustrating and tumultuous for Yaz and the ninth-place Bosox. Manager Billy Herman pointedly accused Yastrzemski of not putting out and openly expressed the desire to trade Carl. Those trade rumors persisted after season’s end even though Dick Wilhams was named to manage the 1967 team.

Captain Carl worked out vigorously during the off-season under the tutelage of Gene Berde, former coach of the Hungarian Olympic boxing team. In spring training the great Ted Williams worked with Yaz on hitting for power. Carl was ready for the new season – that “Impossible Dream” campaign. However, the early part of the `67 season was inauspicious enough, with Yaz batting a modest .304 and the Red Sox at 24-23 early in June. Then during a midweek series in Chicago, White Sox manager Eddie Stanky publicized his notorious and derogatory description of Yaz as “an all-star from the neck down.” That did it! Carl responded with a 6-for-9 doubleheader, hitting a home run his last at-bat and tipping his cap to Stanky in the dugout while rounding third base. Yaz went on to Triple Crown accomplishments that had a distinct impact on his team’s success – an American League pennant.

A second example involves Harmon Killebrew and the 1968-69 Minnesota Twins. Consider their records:

Year B.A. HR RBI Pos.

1968 .210 17 40 7

1969 .276 49 140 1

The 1968 season became known as “the year of the pitcher” – the same year that Bob Gibson established his remarkable ERA record of 1.12. Hitters were so dominated that the pitching mound was thereafter lowered by five inches and the strike zone was shortened.

Killebrew, perennially a slow starter in the frosty spring climate of Minnesota, had statistics that were modest at best when the `68 All-Star Game dawned. Then disaster struck. He ruptured a hamstring muscle while stretching at first base for a low throw from shortstop Jim Fregosi. The Killer had to be carried from the field.

“It was the worst injury I ever had,” Killebrew recalled. “I wasn’t sure how it would heal. I wasn’t sure I’d play again.”

The Twins were devastated because Harmon was “the franchise.” He managed to see some late-season action, but a lowly seventh-place finish told the story of 1968 for Minnesota.

A bona fide Hall of Famer, Killebrew was not finished. Strengthening his legs by hunting and hiking his native hill country (along with weight and stretching exercises) during the off-season, he prepared for 1969. The results: Both Most Valuable Player and Comeback Player of the Year awards for Killebrew – and an American League West title for the Twins.

An earlier Joe Hardy/Roy Hobbs performance was achieved by Babe Ruth during the 1925-26 seasons, when he and the Yankees produced these results:

Year B.A. HR RBI Pos.

1925 .290 25 68 7

1926 .372 47 145 1

The famed “bellyache heard round the world” explains in part the lackluster statistics that George Herman Ruth accumulated during the highly-disappointing 1925 campaign. Excessive and careless eating and drinking habits resulted in an intestinal abscess for which he was operated on in mid-April and hospitalized until late May. Without the Babe the Yankees were floundering in seventh place.

His June 1 return to the starting lineup turned out to be premature. He was neither physically nor psychologically ready. The team remained mired in seventh place. To top things off Ruth was fined $5,000 and suspended for nine days late in the season by manager Miller Huggins as a result of flagrant defiances of curfews.

Eating and drinking were not the only excessive indulgences of the Bambino. But Ruth learned a lesson from Huggins and eventually yielded to the manager’s authority. He reformed and his statistics showed it. During the next three seasons (1926-27-28) the Behemoth of Bash averaged nearly 54 homers, 153 runs scored, 150 RBIs and a .349 average.

And what did the lowly seventh-place Yankees of 1925 do during those succeeding three years? Just lead the American League each season while capturing two world championships – as if anyone ever doubted the Babe’s awesome winning influence on the game.

The fourth and final example to be cited here involves Ted Williams and the 1945-46 Boston Red Sox, whose records were as follows:

Year B.A. HR RBI Pos.

1945 Ted in Navy 7

1946 .342 38 123 1

Williams almost certainly would have established hitting and slugging records forever unparalleled had he not missed substantial playing time while serving his country from 1943 through 1945 and later during the Korean conflict. In `43 the Red Sox were coming off back-to-back years of solid second-place finishes behind the Yankees. Ted’s totals for those seasons were awesome – .406 with 37 homers and 120 RBIs in 1941 and .356 with 36 homers and 137 RBIs for the 1942 Triple Crown.

However, accusations of draft dodging were pervasive and eventually, near the conclusion of the `42 campaign, Ted enlisted in the Navy. He went on to become a skilled flier. Without him the Bosox lost, finishing seventh, fourth and then seventh again during the three seasons he was away.

With World War II over and the The Splendid Splinter and his beautiful, powerful swing intact once more, Boston climbed dramatically to an American League pennant in 1946.

Any list of noteworthy reversals must include the 1969 New York “Miracle” Mets, who climbed to the National League pennant from their ninth-place depths of 1968. But no Roy Hobbs/Joe Hardy was evident in the team. Tommie Agee led the club in homers with a meager 26. Likewise for the 1959 Los Angeles Dodgers, who rushed to the N.L. flag from a seventh- place showing the previous year. Gil Hodges paced the Dodgers with 25 home runs. And at least another nine teams have shown a sixth-to-first-place reversal this century, with only Frank Robinson of the 1961 Cincinnati Reds exhibiting a semblance of the Hobbs/ Hardy-type credentials.

Yaz, Killebrew, Ruth, Williams, Hobbs and Hardy – real or imaginary – rank as the great long-ball heroes.

High school baseball programs justifiably take great pride when one of their products reaches the majors. Some high schools such as Fremont in Los Angeles and Beaumont in St. Louis have turned out future major leaguers in great quantities. But it is rare, even for productive schools, to produce two major leaguers in one year – players such as Cleon Jones and Tommie Agee, who played together at Country Training High in Mobile, Ala., and later with the New York Mets. Or the ill-fated duo of Herb Score and Dick Brown from Lake Worth, Fla, who wound up being batterymates with the Cleveland Indians.

In the 1920s Waxahachie (Tex.) High School accomplished something even more unique. It came up with four future big leaguers in one year – Paul Richards, Art Shires, Belv Bean and Jimmy Adair.

Four other high schools have had four future major leaguers on their teams at the same time. They were Roosevelt of St. Louis (John Sturm, George Hausmann, Red Juelich and Al Gerheauser) and Washington High of Los Angeles (Gerry Priddy, Bryan Stephens, Eddie Malone and Cliff Dapper) in the 1930s, Beaumont High of St. Louis (Roy Sievers, Bobby Hofman, Jim Goodwin and Jack Maguire) in the 1940s and Compton, Calif., High (Dick Davis, Gary Ward, Odell Jones and Reggie Walton) in the 1970s.

It is interesting to note that of the 14 high schools which saw two players from one of their 1970s teams go on to the majors 11 are located in California. This points up the salubrious climate that enables schoolboys living in that state to play longer baseball seasons than in many other sections of the U.S.

The accompanying table shows by decades the high school teammates who wound up playing in the major leagues. The name of the high school is shown in parentheses.

(Click images to enlarge)

When the game was resumed two months later, the mercury had risen to 80 degrees and McCoy Stadium was packed to capacity. Just one more inning – the thirty-third – was needed for the PawSox to win, 3-2, on Dave Koza’s bases-loaded single. The final totals -33 innings and eight hours, 25 minutes – were all-time baseball records. Mementoes of the marathon are now buried in a time capsule beneath the field, where they join the five-ton truck that in 1942 sank without a trace into the swampy outfield while McCoy was being built by the WPA.

Baseball is free of the artificial boundaries of time within which the clock confines other sports. This freedom helps to shape the magical charm that is an evening at the ballpark, for fans never know when they may be the first to be enchanted until past sunrise by the first-ever ten-hour, 35-inning slugfest.

Detailed research into late-ending games has revealed that at least 91 games have lasted past 1 a.m. local time. The most frequent cause is extra innings (40 games). Other causes have been extra-inning doubleheaders (16 times), rain-delayed overtime contests (10 games) and rain-delayed doubleheaders (five). Other factors include the Alaska midnight sun and delays caused by various circumstances- fog, an automatic tarpaulin malfunction, a scoreboard fire, blinding sunlight, power failures, needs for a stretcher and an automatic sprinkler system that could not be turned off. Of the 91 games that went beyond 1 a.m., 13 ended sometime after 2 o’clock, seven after 3 a.m. and the Pawtucket record-breaker after 4 in the morning.

Strange things can occur when games go beyond 1 o’clock in the morning. One such event led indirectly to the 1978 American League playoff between the Yankees and Red Sox. In the seventeenth inning of a rain-delayed 1:16 a.m. contest at Yankee Stadium on August 3, Dwight Evans’ long fly into the right field corner curved foul and landed in the seats, eluding Reggie Jackson’s grasp. Jackson was just halfway back to his normal playing position when Yankee pitcher Ken Clay inexplicably delivered the next pitch. Evans lined a single to right that probably would have been caught had Clay waited until Reggie was in position. The hit led to two runs and a 7-5 Red Sox victory. Except for that game Bucky Dent might never have had the opportunity to break millions of hearts in New England with one momentous bloop over The Green Monster.

In 1961 critical early-morning mistakes in the final inning twice led to games ending in 1:15 a.m. ties due to the curfew. In a contest at Fenway Park, Gary Geiger smashed an eleventh-inning triple to drive in the tying run. Thinking his hit had won the game, Geiger dashed jubilantly into the dugout where, rather than being mobbed by his teammates, he was tagged out by the Angels. Carl Yastrzemski then delivered what would have been a game-winning sacrifice fly – except for Geiger’s booboo. Just 20 days later, following a routine pitch with two out in the fifteenth inning, Giant catcher Hobie Landrith’s return throw to his pitcher sailed into center field, allowing Tony Gonzalez to scamper home from third base with the Phillies’ tying run. The batter then grounded out to finish the curfew-halted game.

The most bizarre ending to a post-1 a.m. game, however, occurred in 1984 at Centennial Field in Burlington, Vt. Trailing the Albany-Colonie A’s, 9-6, the Vermont Reds came to bat in the bottom of the seventeenth. At 12:5 1 a.m., with a 1-0 count on leadoff batter Ron Little, an automatic timer turned on the six outfield sprinklers, one of which was located between Albany center fielder David Wilder’s feet. Following a 15-minute delay, during which man’s best efforts to turn off the mechanical beast proved unsuccessful, the game was suspended at 1:06 a.m. The resumption of play the next evening saw Vermont score one run and lose, 9-7. After much deliberation the University of Vermont, owner of the park, decided to tempt fate by leaving the automatic timer unchanged.

Night games were first played in 1930 in both the minor leagues and the Negro leagues and in 1935 in the majors. But the first baseball game at night was played by two amateur teams on September 2, 1880 in Hull, Mass., by Nantasket

Bay on the Sea Foam House Lawn. With the score between Jordan Marsh & Co. and R.H. White & Co. tied at 16-16, the game was called after nine innings to allow the 300 fans to catch the last ferry boat of the evening back to the mainland.

Ever since night baseball began the record for the latest-ending game has been getting progressively later despite the fact that starting times have been moved forward. The typical starting time has regressed from 8:30 p.m. in the 1940s to 8 o’clock in the 1960s to 7:35 in the 1980s.

The first known post-1 a.m. game took place on June 15, 1945 in a 27-inning doubleheader at Griffith Stadium. The Red Sox and Senators struggled to a 13-inning tie called at 1:02 a.m. after Boston had won the opener in 14 innings. The next such late-finisher was literally carried into the wee hours on a stretcher. With two out in the bottom of the ninth inning on July 8, 1949 at Shibe Park, Phils second baseman Granny Hamner doubled to center, scoring Richie Ashburn to knot the score at 1-all. After both teams scored twice in the eleventh, Boston shortstop Alvin Dark was knocked unconscious while running the bases in the thirteenth on a ball thrown by Hamner. Dark had to be carried off the field on a stretcher and was taken to Temple University Hospital, where he was listed in satisfactory condition. Del Crandall’s sacrifice fly off Schoolboy Rowe in the sixteenth inning gave the Braves a 4-3 victory at 1:01 a.m.

Two years later, on June 22, 1951, the Dodgers-Pirates 8:30 p.m. start was delayed two hours, 14 minutes when a power failure darkened Forbes Field’s four outfield light towers. The proceedings were held up for another 36 minutes by rain in the sixth inning, and the game didn’t conclude until 1:56 a.m. Approximately 10,000 of the original crowd of 24,966 stuck around to witness the tired Dodgers, keyed by Jackie Robinson’s homer into Greenburg Gardens, walk off with an 8-4 victory.

The 1:56 a.m. mark lasted a little more than 12 years. On August 9, 1963 the scene again was Forbes Field. After rain delayed start of the doubleheader for 60 minutes, the Houston Colt .45s struggled to a 15-inning, 7-6 victory. By the time Roberto Clemente’s bases-loaded single in the eleventh enabled the Pirates to claim the 7-6 nightcap, only 300 of the original 9,420 fans remained, and the large Longines clock atop the scoreboard in left field read 2:30 a.m. One of those remaining 300 fans who sat throughout the long, rainy evening in the left field bleachers with his father and brother was eventually inspired to write this article.

The 2:30 finish eclipsed the former professional sports lateness record that had stood for some 27 years. High above the ice at the Montreal Forum way back on March 24, 1936, the clock showed 2:25 a.m. when Mud Bruneteau found the nets at 16:30 of the sixth overtime to lift the Detroit Red Wings to a 1-0 victory over the Montreal Maroons in, the Stanley Cup playoffs after five hours, 44 minutes of elapsed time.

On May 31, 1964 at Shea Stadium the Mets and Giants struggled mightily to break the record, but were unable to overcome the handicap of an early afternoon start as San Francisco took both ends of a twin-bill, winning the nightcap, 8-6 in 23 innings. Del Crandall, still going strong 15 years after having won the 1949 marathon mentioned earlier, delivered the game-winning RBI in the twenty-third, scoring current Giant manager Jim Davenport. Joe Christopher of the

Mets had tied the game at 6-6 in the seventh inning with a three-run homer that bounced off Willie Mays’ glove and over the eight-foot fence in right-center. The time of the game was seven hours, 23 minutes. Including the between-games intermission, the twin-bill lasted ten hours, 17 minutes. Only 8,000 of the sellout crowd of 57,037 remained to the bitter end at 11:25 p.m.

Because the National League twi-night curfew was no longer in effect in 1964, had this Mets-Giants bill been a 6 p.m. twi-nighter rather than a 1 o’clock daylight double-header, an all-time record would have been achieved because the end would have come at 4:25 a.m. rather than at 11:25 p.m. The marathon twin-bill did stand, however, as the record for the latest-ending day games until June 17, 1967 when the current day-game mark was set during a Tigers-A’s doubleheader in Detroit that ran from 2:15 in the afternoon until 12:17 a.m.

Baseball has had many different curfews. In the past curfew times have varied from city to city and have included time limits ranging from as early as 11:40 p.m. to as late as 2:00 a.m. Currently the National League has no time limit, having abolished its 12:50 a.m. curfews for twi-night doubleheaders and for night single games after the 1962 and 1964 seasons, respectively. The current American League curfew, adopted following the 1967 season, does not allow any inning of a night game to begin after 12:59 a.m.

Because the A.L. includes only two types of games in its definition of “night games” – all games starting after 6 p.m. and both games of twi-night bills – there is technically no A.L. curfew for day games or for twilight single games beginning before or at 6 p.m. In addition the A.L. curfew is waived for the final game of the season between two teams in each of the cities. And in Baltimore on Saturday evening play must halt abruptly at 11:59 p.m., no matter what the situation. The latter-type rule used to produce unique consequences as was the case on July 5, 1958 at Yankee Stadium. With the 11:59 curfew approaching in the top half of the eleventh inning after the Red Sox took a 5-3 lead, the Yankees stalled and escaped with a ten-inning, 3-3 tie because under the rule then in effect the score reverted to the final completed inning. Current rules discourage stalling in such situations by providing for resumption of the game from the point of suspension.

On June 14, 1966 a minor league lateness record was set at Al Lang Field in St. Petersburg, Fla. The host St. Pete Cards, managed by current Detroit skipper Sparky Anderson, lost a 4-3 decision to the Miami Marlins in 29 innings as the clock struck 2:29 a.m. An announcement by the umpires and managers at 2 o’clock that the game would not continue beyond 30 innings had been met with jeers and cries of “More! More!” from the 150 nightowls who remained from an original crowd of 740. This minor league record stood until the 1981 marathon at Pawtucket.

The 29 innings in St. Petersburg broke the professional baseball record of 28 innings that has been established during World War II when Taiyo and Nagoya of the Japanese Professional Baseball Federation struggled to a 4-4 tie on

May 24, 1942. Because of early-evening starting times, normally 6 o’clock, no game in Japan has ever gone past 1 a.m. The latest Japanese finish involved a Central League twi-nighter between the Yomiuri Giants and the Kokutetsu Swallows on September 7, 1961 at Korakuen Stadium in

Tokyo. In the top of the eleventh inning of the second game a rhubarb raged for one hour, 52 minutes – the longest known rhubarb in baseball history. The argument focused on whether Giant third baseman Nagashima was guilty of interference on a Swallow baserunner named Tsuchiya in a rundown play between third and home. Tsuchiya was finally ruled safe at the plate with what proved to be the winning run in a 3-2 Swallow victory that ended at .12:11 a.m.

The Forbes Field 2:30 a.m. major league mark was broken on June 12, 1967 as Washington downed the White Sox, 6-5, on Paul Casanova’s bases-loaded single in the twenty-second inning. Only 1,500 of the original 7,236 fans remained in D.C. Stadium until the 2:44 finish. This still stands as the A.L. lateness record. Because it was a weekend game, the D.C. ordinance requiring teams to be off the field by 2:00 a.m. on Saturday evenings – baseball’s latest curfew ever – maintained its distinction of being the only curfew which has never had to be enforced.

As the 1960s came to a close, the 3 a.m. barrier remained secure. But the 1970s proved equal to the late-night challenge, both in “early” starts as well as late endings.

Way back in the, 1930s the record for the earliest starting time had been set in a Negro National League game between the Homestead Grays and Pittsburgh Crawfords at Gus Greenlee Field in Pittsburgh’s Hill District. A Pennsylvania state law prevented Sunday games from continuing past 6:59 p.m. Angered that this “Blue Law” prevented him from booking Sunday evening contests, Craws owner Gus Greenlee scheduled a Monday morning game to begin one minute after the stroke of midnight. Unfortunately, as is the case with other Negro League games, there is no record of the ending time.

Fans attending a twi-night doubleheader in San Diego on September 24, 1971 almost saw the record for earliest start broken. After dropping the lidlifter to Houston in 21 innings, the Padres took the field for the nightcap just a bit late and the teams had to settle for tying the Grays-Craws 12:01 a.m. record. The morning was not without further excitement, however. With the score tied and one man on in the bottom of the ninth inning, San Diego’s Nate Colbert lifted a high fly right to Astro center fielder Cesar Cedeno. Unfortunately he lost the ball in a fog bank. With two runners now aboard, the Padres seemed poised for victory, but play was halted at 2:15 a.m. due to the fog. After a 14-minute wait, during which it became apparent that the swirling, soupy fog enveloping Mission Valley was not about to lift any time soon, play resumed. Ollie Brown promptly brought an end to the long evening’s festivities at 2:29 a.m. with an RBI single to right. Right fielder Jim Wynn not only couldn’t see the ball, but he had trouble even seeing his own infielders.

Texas fans listening to this game on radio couldn’t believe their ears, but they could take solace in the fact that they had just broken the record for latest local-time radio broadcast endings because it was then 4:29 in Houston. The current broadcast record of 4:45 a.m. was set by New York listeners tuned in to the Mets’ 19-inning, 7-3 victory at Dodger Stadium on May 24, 1973. This is the only sunrise service in baseball history because Mets’ listeners near a window watched dawn break in New York 14 minutes before the game ended in Los Angeles.

The 3 a.m. barrier for finish of a game was first broken on September 11, 1974 at Shea. Ken Reitz’ two-run homer for St. Louis with two out in the ninth tied the score at 3-3. The pitchers then took total control for 15 innings.

When Met pitcher Hank Webb’s pickoff throw to first base in the twenty-fifth inning was wild and the relay from the outfield to the plate was dropped by catcher Ron Hodges, Bake McBride scored all the way from first to give the Cards a 4-3 win. Only a hardy thousand of the original crowd of 13,460 still was on hand for the finish of the seven-hour, four-minute marathon at 3:13 a. m. As plate umpire Ed Sudol ruled the sliding McBride safe, he couldn’t help remembering that he had also been behind the plate during two other Met marathon losses -23 innings to the Giants in 1964 and 24 innings to the Astros in 1968. Amazingly, the first base umpire had called a balk on Webb’s wild pickoff. Under a rule that had been revoked several years earlier, McBride would have been required to return to second base and might not have scored – and the game might never have ended.

A year later the Mets again were a party to pushing back the lateness barrier. On September 26, 1975 in the first of what would be three rainy post-3 a.m. baseball evenings in Philadelphia’s Veterans Stadium, the Mets and Phils traded 12-inning decisions. In the nightcap, the third rain delay of the evening halted play for 77 minutes in the third inning. In the bottom of the twelfth Tim McCarver was thrown out at the plate, Rusty Staub to Felix Millan to Jerry Grote, giving the Mets a 3-2 win at 3:15 a.m. History records neither McCarver’s fleetness at that late hour nor how many of the 200 remaining fans were awake.

The Vet seems to love early-morning marathons. Of four documented major league games that went past 3 a.m., three were played at the Vet. Comiskey Park, though, holds the overall record for most post-1 a.m. games at six. By contrast five major leagues cities have had none – Arlington, Kansas City, Milwaukee, San Francisco and Toronto. Wrigley Field, having faithfully served the Federal League Whales and N.L. Cubs in the natural light of day for 71 years, holds the major league record for most consecutive seasons without a post-1 a.m. game. With an effective Illinois noise pollution law, this streak will probably continue forever amidst the sunshine and ivy of the Friendly Confines. The minor league record, 75 years, is held by Birmingham’s Rickwood Field.

The Phillies and Expos established the current major league lateness record on August 10, 1977. Again there was rain at the Vet and the start of the twin-bill opener was delayed 63 minutes when the heavens opened during the playing of “0 Canada.” In the third inning, a second rain delay tasted two hours, 27 minutes, during which the tarpaulin was unrolled and rolled up again four times as the rain played its own games. Beginning at 8:42, hundred of kids played “Slide” on the wet tarp. The nightcap finally got underway at 11:50 p.m., with only a third of the original crowd of 46,664 still present, and was halted in the second inning for one hour, 26 minutes by the evening’s third rain delay. The Phils won both games, 6-1, and 5,000 fans stuck it out to the 3:23 a.m. finish. Extended by three rain delays totaling four hours, 56 minutes, this remains the major league lateness record.

It did, however, have to withstand another rainy, early-morning challenge at the Vet. On June 9, 1980 Steve Canton was hurling a no-hitter against San Francisco as the Phils came to bat in the fourth inning. Two separate rain delays totaling exactly five hours occurred in the bottom of the fourth. The second of these two delays lasted three hours, 32 minutes – the longest known single rain delay ever. As Canton threw the first pitch to start the fifth inning, five hours and nine minutes had elapsed since his last pitch in the top of the fourth, giving him the all-time record for time between pitches by a pitcher in one game. With only 200 of the original 28,702 fans still on hand, the Giants emerged victorious, 3-1, at 3:11 a.m., just 12 minutes shy of the record. That same evening at Riverfront Stadium in Cincinnati, the Reds and Padres had battled to a 6-6 draw in a game finally called at 2:30 a.m. in the bottom of the eleventh after the fourth rain delay.

A major league record for elapsed time of game was set at Comiskey Park on May 8-9, 1984 when the White Sox defeated the Brewers, 7-6 in 25 innings and eight hours, six minutes. Suspended at 1:05 a.m. by the A.L. curfew after 17 innings, the game was decided the following evening by Harold Baines’ home run which just cleared the center field bullpen fence. The White Sox scored twice in the ninth and three times in the twenty-first to tie the game and would have won in the twenty-third except that Dave Stegman was ruled out for coach’s interference when third base coach Jim Leyland helped Stegman to his feet after he tripped rounding third.

This game is rich in “might-have-beens.” Had it been a National League contest with no curfew, it would have ended at 3:42 a.m. and broken the Vet’s record by 19 minutes. Had it been played during either the 1910-1948 or 1976-1980 periods when Comiskey Park had no inner fence in centerfield, Baines’ drive would probably have been caught and the two teams might have broken the major league record of 25 innings by the Dodgers and Braves in 1920. Better yet, had the game been the nightcap of that foggy Astros-Padres twi-nighter back in 1971 which began at 12:01 a.m., it would have finished at 8:07 a.m. and the last few innings could have been covered live by Bryant Gumbel and Jane Pauley on the “Today” show.

Another unusual post-1 a.m. event occurred in 1984 in Fairbanks, Alaska, during the 79th annual Midnight Sun Game. The contest usually begins around 11 p.m. and is held to commemorate the June summer solstice, the longest day of the year. It involves a different opponent selected each year for the host Fairbanks club and features the emotional singing of the Alaska Flag Song during the first change of sides after midnight. Trailing 2-1 in the eighth inning, the host Alaska Goldpanners of Fairbanks snatched victory from the jaws of defeat with a 9-0 forfeit win at 2:08 a.m. when the Chinese Taipei Olympic team of Taiwan refused to send a batter to the plate.

Unless and until someone discovers evidence to the contrary and until they are broken, these records will stand as an enduring testament to the allure of marathon baseball in the wee hours of the morning:

• Latest Major League Finish – 3:23 a.m. at Veterans Stadium, Philadelphia.
• Latest Minor League Finish – 4:09 a.m. in Pawtucket, R.I.

Of course, if Tim McCarver had been safe at the plate at the Vet at 3:15 a.m., the Mets and Phils might still be playing! And every seven innings the fans would still be stretching and singing:

Take me out to the ballpark,
Take me out with the crowd,
Buy me some peanuts and crackerjack,
I don’t care if I ever get back.

(Click image to enlarge)

Record crowds turned out in both major leagues for traditional holiday doubleheaders. In the National, the pennant-bound Pirates, riding an 11-game winning streak, hosted the second-place Chicago Cubs in a morning-afternoon pair which attracted a record 60,000 spectators to Forbes Field. In the opening contest the fans were treated to a bit of baseball history from an unexpected source. While both lineups were studded with future Hall of Famers, it was the Cubs’ Jimmy Cooney, a journeyman shortstop, who captured the day’s headlines by turning an unassisted triple play.

As he approached his ninetieth birthday, the former infielder recalled the events which earned him a permanent place in baseball’s book of records. The Pirates were leading, 5-4, in the fourth inning and had runners on first and second with no one out. “Our pitcher, Tony Kaufmann, was trying to pitch outside to Paul Waner, a pull hitter,” Cooney explained. “I was holding Lloyd Waner on second. He was very fast. Kaufmann got one a little too far in and Waner whacked it over his (Kaufmann’s) head. I took a run over and stabbed it one-handed and stepped on second. The guy on first (Clyde Barnhart) thought it was a hit over the pitcher’s head and came sliding into me.”

Jimmy’s quick action shut off the Pirates’ rally and paved the way for an eventual ten-inning, 7-6 Chicago victory.

“Joe McCarthy was our manager,” Jimmy added. “He came running out on the field to shake my hand.”

The play was the sixth of its kind performed in the major leagues up to that point. Incredibly, the seventh occurred the next day in Detroit, where the Tigers’ first baseman, Johnny Neun, duplicated the feat against the Indians. Forty-one years would pass before another unassisted triple play would be seen in the majors.

Although Cooney spent just seven years in the big leagues, most of them partial seasons, he was involved in a number of unusual plays. While playing for the St. Louis Cardinals in 1925, he was the second victim in an unassisted triple play by shortstop Glenn Wright of the Pirates. Jimmy thus holds the distinction of being the only man in major league history to be involved in two of these fielding gems.

A year earlier, in a game against the Phillies, the Cards were down by four runs when the Phils placed their first two batters on base to open the second inning. Bill Sherdel, known as “Wee Willie,” was summoned from the bullpen.

With the Cardinal infield drawn in anticipating a bunt, pinch-hitter Johnny Mokan popped Sherdel’s first offering to the right side. Jim Bottomley, the first baseman, grabbed the ball out of the air and whipped it down to second to Cooney, who relayed it back to Rogers Hornsby covering first to complete a triple killing.

“One ball pitched and three outs,” Jimmy remarked. “I don’t think that’s happened very often.” As for Sherdel, “he was as cocky as a little bantam rooster after that,” according to Jimmy.

To spend an afternoon with Jimmy Cooney is to drift back in time with the most experienced of guides. Scrapbooks bulging with photos and clippings serve as catalysts for a string of delightful reminiscences by the old shortstop, who turns a tale as skillfully as he once turned double plays.

A lifelong resident of Rhode Island, Jimmy was born on August 24, 1894 in Cranston, a manufacturing city next door to Providence. Around those parts the name Cooney long has been synonymous with baseball. His father, Jimmy Cooney, Sr., played professional ball for 13 years, including three seasons in the National League with Chicago and Washington during the 1890s. As the regular shortstop for Cap Anson’s club in 1890-91 the elder Cooney was the top fielder at his position for two consecutive seasons.

Jimmy’s younger brother, Johnny, pitched and later played the outfield for the Boston Braves and Brooklyn Dodgers for 20 years between 1921 and 1944. In keeping with family tradition, Johnny led National League flychasers in fielding in 1936 and 1941. In the latter year, at age 40, Johnny Cooney was runner up to Pete Reiser in the league batting race.

Two other brothers, Harry and Frank, were outstanding semi-pro players. Harry also put in four years with Portland and Worcester of the New England League. At one time an entire team of Cooneys, the four brothers along with several uncles and cousins, performed as a unit against local amateur teams.

An interesting footnote to Jimmy’s career is that both he and his father played shortstop for the major league Cubs and minor league Providence Grays a generation apart.

Jimmy, Sr., passed away at the age of 37, but his influence was felt by his four sons. “My father was the reason we all liked baseball. My brothers and I practiced in the street in front of our house. We broke a few windows, too,” Jimmy recalled with a laugh.

Jimmy’s baseball odyssey began as an 18-year-old in the summer of 1913 when he left the semi-pro ranks to sign with Worcester. His professional debut saw him hit an even .300 in 73 games. This performance was rewarded by his sale to the Boston Red Sox for 1914. The Cranston teenager made the jump from sandlot to the majors in less than five months.

However, a long apprenticeship in the minors, interrupted by military duty during World War I, was to be served before he gained a foothold in the Big Time.

After brief looks by the Red Sox in 1917 and the New York Giants two years later, Jimmy was picked up by the Cardinals in 1924 on the recommendation of their manager, Branch Rickey.

Coming off four outstanding seasons with Milwaukee (American Association), the well-seasoned Cooney responded by hitting .295 in 110 games and led N.L. shortstops in fielding with a mark of .969, then a record.

Although be performed capably for the Cards, he was benched in favor of Tommy Thevenow in 1925. The next year he went to the Cubs, where he teamed with second baseman Sparky Adams to lead the league in double plays. Once again he was the league’s top fielding shortstop and tied Travis Jackson for fewest errors, committing just 24 in 141 games.

Nevertheless, Jimmy faced competition for his job in 1927, this time from Chicago’s high-priced rookie Woody English. Less than a month after his unaided triple play in Pittsburgh, Jimmy was traded to the Phillies. The move from a contender to the cellar did not please the veteran, but he went about his work in typical fashion, capturing his third fielding crown in four years.

An off-season deal sent him back to Boston, where he joined kid brother Johnny with the Braves. The family reunion was shortlived, however. After 18 games Jimmy’s big league days ended with his sale to Buffalo in June, 1928.

At Buffalo Jimmy wore the hats of player, team captain and finally manager. A season of barnstorming along the western seaboard with a group of players knocked out of work by the depression put the cap on Jimmy’s two decades in professional baseball.

Returning to Rhode Island that fall with his wife and two sons, Jimmy went to work for a printing concern. He kept his hand in the game by managing the company team in industrial league play. He also put in 30 years as a reserve patrolman with the Cranston police force.

Having been close to baseball as both participant and spectator for more than 70 years, Jimmy offered some thoughts on the game. “I think it was tougher back then,” he said. “There were more fights. The pitchers would throw at you all the time. Of course, we had no helmets. You got used to it.” He spoke of one well-known hurler who “. . . threw the first ball at your head every time he pitched. It didn’t matter who you were, Hornsby or Cooney.”

One of his greatest thrills came during his short stay in the American League when he faced the immortal Walter Johnson. He recalled the advice offered by his colleagues that day. “Some of the older fellows on the bench told me to start swinging on my way up to the plate,” he related.

“That’s how fast he (Johnson) was! But I was lucky. I got a single off him and a double later.”

Because he played during baseball’s financial “Dark Ages,” his top major league salary was $5,500. “The player who got seven or eight thousand was a rich man. If you got $5,000, you were doing all right,” he said.

Jimmy was managing Buffalo when night baseball made its International League debut in the early 1930s. His best pitcher under the lights was Dave Danforth, a former big leaguer who practiced dentistry during the off-season. Jimmy revealed that Danforth’s strong hands enabled him to raise the seams on a new ball, thereby adding a devastating hop to his fastball. He baffled hitters at twilight, but according to his manager, “He couldn’t get anybody out in the daytime!”

Cooney spent the winter of 1924-1925 in Cuba playing for Marianao. Among his teammates on the island were fellow Americans Jess Petty, Freddie Fitzsimmons and Charlie Dressen and legendary black slugger Christobal Torrienti. Jimmy’s exciting brand of play earned him the nickname “Torpedo.” “I hit .390 down there,” he said. “Maybe I should have stayed there!”

Jimmy played for, with and against some of the greatest players in history. The stories generated by these characters would fill volumes: Hornsby reading a racing form during Rickey’s pre-game meetings; spring training with the Cubs on Catalina Island, where Charley Grimm entertained with his banjo; Joe McCarthy demonstrating the evils of drink to Hack Wilson with a worm and a glass of whiskey; Jimmy’s antics one day in Brooklyn when he continued around the bases after being forced at second, causing an uproar as the harried Dodgers chased him into the visitors’ dugout in an attempt to retire him again; keeping his thirsty Buffalo players in tow during trips to Montreal in Prohibition days.

Jimmy’s stay in the majors was short despite some impressive seasons in the minors. He set an American Association record for assists one season and tied another record with 22 consecutive errorless games. In 1923 he made 12 straight hits in one streak while leading the league with 60 steals.

A number of teams, among others the Dodgers, A’s and Reds, expressed interest in the fielding wizard, but the Milwaukee management demanded $40,000 for his services, a considerable sum for the time. The steep price attests to Jimmy’s worth but probably impeded his return to the majors. He was nearly 30 when he finally secured a regular job with St. Louis. From then on the calendar worked against him.

There is no hint of regret, however, for all the time and effort expended in pursuit of his vocation. “It was a lot easier than working in a mill, playing baseball out in the sunshine,” he said.

Jimmy’s life in and out of baseball has been full and rich. In recent years he has kept busy tending his home on Pettaquamscutt Lake in Saunderstown, R.I. Frequent visits and calls from children, grandchildren and great grand-children keep him smiling. The daily mail usually brings letters from fans around the country. While he no longer attends games in person, Jimmy follows the Red Sox and Boston Celtics closely on television.

He is remembered as one of eight men to make an unassisted triple play, but it should also be known that Jimmy Cooney was a versatile, dependable player highly respected by his peers for the grace with which he consistently made the difficult seem routine.

He made his mark with his glove, setting a season record that was the major league standard for a number of years. He still shares the National League record for double plays started by a shortstop in one game – four, accomplished in 1926. For one whose hitting was always suspect, he compiled a respectable .262 average for his 448 big league games.

The world has been turned upside-down since a teenager from Cranston, R.I., rode a trolley to his first professional baseball job, but the flavor of those distant times has remained alive and well within the memory of James Edward Cooney.

Fans of our beloved Beasts are bitterly disappointed in the showing of- the team in the season just concluded. The expected neck-and-neck pennant struggle with the Toads failed to materialize, the Toads romping home a full nine games in front of our favorites. If this margin is to be made up next year, important changes in personnel are necessary, such as . .

And a year later, neither team having made important changes:

Fans of our terrific Toads are bitterly disappointed in their favorites’ failure, not only to defend their pennant of last year, but even to make it close, losing to the Beasts by the same margin by which they won last year, nine games. Reasons for the debacle are not hard to find. Last year’s batting champ, Ty Hornsby, saw his average plummet by a full 40 points, and he had to surrender his title to Rogers Cobb of the Beasts. The home-run production of Hank Ruth fell from 42 to 30, while stopper Christy Alexander’s ERA soared from 2.40 to 3.00. All these stars of last year, while hardly finished as players, nevertheless appear to have lost a good part of their skills. If the Toads are to reassert themselves next year, important personnel changes are necessary, such as . .

If the margin in these two races had been one game instead of nine, the stories would, of course, have been quite different because everyone recognizes that one game is too small a difference to constitute a proof of real superiority. The question ought obviously to suggest itself: Over a 162-game schedule, how far apart can two teams finish without the result proving that the higher-finishing team has really played better? Can two genuinely evenly-matched teams finish three games apart? Five? Nine? Can a batter’s average rise or fall by ten points without any change in his actual skill? Twenty points? Forty?

The answers to these questions are important, both to fans and researchers trying to interpret baseball statistics and to club executives trying to decide whether a player has lost his skills (or has improved dramatically), whether a major overhaul of a team is in order, etc. It appears that no one has even posed these questions in connection with baseball, much less answered them. Certainly they are not part of the routine discourse of the national pastime.

Questions such as these can be answered, at least in large part, by techniques of probability theory whose use has long been routine in such areas as science, economics, opinion polling and many others. The purpose of this article is to introduce SABR members to some of the principles of these techniques, while avoiding mathematical technicalities, and to give a few results of interest for baseball as examples. To avoid keeping readers in suspense, let me say right now that the two hypothetical pennant races discussed at the beginning of the article could quite easily have taken place between two exactly evenly-matched teams. Swings such as those lamented by our fictitious sportswriters would be commonplace if one had played the seasons on a table baseball game using the same player ratings both times so that there could be no question of any improvement or deterioration in the actual quality of play.

Baseball as a Game of Chance: SABR members may bristle at the heading of this paragraph. Surely our beloved game is one of skill, courage, etc., not one of chance like craps or roulette. Well, yes and no. In baseball, unlike roulette, it is possible to improve one’s chances of success by such things as practice, conditioning and concentration. Like a spin of a roulette wheel, though, the outcome of any particular batter-pitcher confrontation (to take just one example) is completely unpredictable except in a statistical way. Even a tiny change in trajectory of bat or pitch, much too small to be under the control of either player, can make the difference between a line drive and a popup. By improving his skill, a hitter can increase the frequency of his hits, but he still cannot guarantee a hit in any particular at-bat. As far as we are concerned, therefore, each time at-bat must be treated as a chance event, as far as our ability to predict or analyze the outcome is concerned. Even if it is conceded that the outcome is really determined in advance by complicated factors such as the precise configuration of batter’s and pitcher’s muscles, etc., it would not change things as long as the analysis of these factors remains impractical. The outcome of a roulette spin is also presumably determined by the laws of mechanics, but in a way too complicated to be useful. “Chance” is just a word we use for any combination of factors too complicated for us to control or analyze. In this sense, any particular time at bat, or any particular game, is a chance event whose outcome can only be predicted statistically. An accumulation of such events, such as a team’s or a batter’s season record, can be treated by the same statistical methods that are used to analyze large numbers of coin flips, roulette spins, etc.

In this article, it will always be assumed that each at-bat, game, etc., is an independent chance event; for instance, that a batter’s chance of getting a hit is the same in every at-bat. This is close enough to the truth to give a lot of useful information, but there are at least two reasons why it isn’t the whole story. First, his chances actually vary somewhat according to the skill of the pitcher, weather conditions, injuries, etc. Second, his chances in a given at-bat may be influenced to some extent by the results of his last few tries, for instance through gain or loss of confidence. With enough research and work, it would be possible to include these factors, but I’m not doing it here, and I’m quite sure that they would not substantially affect the conclusions.

Fluctuations: If a coin is flipped 100 times, it ought on the average to come up heads 50 times, but in a particular try it might come up heads, say, 53 times. In this case, one says that the fluctuation, the difference between the actual outcome and what one would expect on the average, is three. Similarly, a .300 hitter ought on the average to get three hits in ten at-bats, but in a particular string of ten at-bats he might get, say, five instead, a fluctuation of two hits. What statistical theory can tell us is the size of the fluctuations, whether in number of heads in 100 coin flips or in the season record of a player or a team, that are likely to happen “just by chance,” that is, without any tampering with the coin or change in the skill of player or team.

The Standard Deviation: The quantity that measures the size of the likely fluctuations is called the standard deviation (SD). In all cases of interest to us here, and in virtually all where a fairly large number of events are involved, it is really all we need to know to study the likelihood of fluctuations, so that fluctuations up to about one SD are fairly common, but fluctuations much greater than that are rare. More precisely: The fluctuation will be less than one-tenth of an SD 7.9% of the time, less than half of an SD 38.9% of the time, less than .68 SD 50% of the time, less than one SD 68.5% of the time, and less than two SD 95.3% of the time.

Many baseball statistics can be reduced to a series of events, each one of which can be classified as either a success or a failure. For instance, an at-bat is a success (for the hitter) if he gets a hit, otherwise a failure; a game is a success if one’s favorite team wins, otherwise a failure, etc. For things like this, the calculation of the SD turns out to be quite easy.

The result is:

For example, consider a .300 hitter who comes to bat 500 times in a season. On the average, he should have 150 hits (successes) and 350 failures. To get the SD in the number of hits, we multiply 150 by 350, getting 52,500, divide by 500, getting 105, and finally take the square root, getting 10.2. To get the SD in the batting average, the SD in hits must be divided by the number of at-bats, 500 in this case, giving .020, or 20 points in the batting average. About 68.5% of the time, therefore, our .300 hitter will actually hit between .280 (one SD below the expected result) and .320 (one SD above). The remainder of the time he’ll bat either above .320 or below .280. In fact, about 20 points is typical for the SD in the season batting average of a regular player. Note that the result would be different for a career: In 10,000 at-bats, our hypothetical .300 hitter would expect 3,000 hits and 7,000 failures. Repeating the same calculation, we get 45.8 for the SD in hits, .005 for the SD in batting average. Just as one expects, the chance of large fluctuations in the batting average gets smaller the more at-bats are taken; contrary to what many people expect, though, the SD in the number of hits actually gets bigger as one includes more at-bats.

Some other season standard deviations (SD’s) are:

• Home runs by a slugger who averages 36: 6
• ERA of a pitcher with about 250 IP: about 0.30.
• Games won by team over a 162-game schedule: 6
• Difference in games won by two evenly-matched teams (taking into account the fact that they play each other part of the time): 9 games.

These fluctuations doubtless are greater than most people expect. In particular, the events described at the beginning of the article can easily be accounted for by fluctuations and would not necessarily imply any change in the actual skills of players or teams. The hypothetical changes in team standings, batting averages, home runs and ERA all correspond to fluctuations of one SD in one direction in the first year and in the opposite direction the next, something that could very easily happen if both seasons had been played with the exact same teams using a table game.

If we define a regular non-pitcher as one with 300 or more at-bats and a regular pitcher as one with 150 or more innings pitched, then there are about 200 regular non-pitchers and 100 regular pitchers in a typical year. This is a large enough number that even relatively rare large fluctuations can happen a few times. In a typical year, one would expect that: About 30 regulars will have batting averages 20 points or more above what they should be; of these, about four will bat 40 points or more higher than they should.

About 15 regular pitchers will have ERAs 0.30 or more below what they should be; of these, about two will have ERAs 0.60 or more below.

About four teams will win six (or more) games above the number they should win. About once in two years, one of the 26 teams will win 12 (or more) games above the total it deserves.

Obviously, results such as these are important for the understanding of baseball statistics. If a player’s batting average in a given year is 20 points above his previous lifetime, average, it does not necessarily indicate real improvement, but could equally well be a fluctuation (owners negotiating with players’ agents, please note). The same holds for all deviations from what we expect which are not much more than one SD in either direction. In particular, analyses such as the hypothetical stories with which we began this article are nonsense.

Which records are hardest to break?

As an example of the application of these methods, I’ve done some calculations which should shed some light on the perennial question of which records are hardest to break. A lot of hot air is expended arguing about this. The analysis using probability theory provides information which is certainly relevant, possibly decisive. For ten offensive categories, I’ve compared the modern (post-1900) season record with the best performance in the period 1974-84, omitting the strike-shortened season of 1981 so that there are ten full seasons. The best performance in a ten-year period is taken as a measure of the best that can be accomplished without fluctuation under present conditions (i.e., without a fundamental change in the game, or the appearance of a truly extraordinary player), so that further improvement must come about by fluctuation. It is then a straightforward matter to calculate the chance that a table game card programmed to duplicate the best recent performance could equal or surpass the record.

The key quantity in all these calculations is what I’ve called the standard deviation distance, or SDD. It is just the number of SD’s by which the best recent performance falls short of the record. For example, consider the category of home runs. The record, as we all know, is 61 by Roger Maris. The best total in the 1974-84 period was 52, by George Foster in 1977. Using the formula, together with his AB total for the year, we calculate Foster’s home-run SD for that year to be 6.9. He was nine homers short of the record, nine divided by 6.9 is 1.30, so his SDD was 1.30, i.e., he was 1.30 SD’s short of the record.

Using tables which are available in books on statistics, one can find the odds against something coming out 1.30 or more SD’s above what it should be on the average. The answer is 10.3 to one, and these are the odds against a player hitting on the average like the Foster of `77 reaching 61 or more home runs.

Putting it another way, it is the odds against a 1977 Foster table game card reaching 61 or more home runs in the same number of at-bats.

In the accompanying table are listed the modem season record, best in the 1974-1984 period, SD, SDD and odds against for ten offensive categories (hits, batting average, doubles, triples, home runs, total bases, slugging average, runs scored, runs batted in and stolen bases). The hitting streak has been included for good measure because it’s often mentioned as a virtually unbreakable record. It is not susceptible to the SD approach, but the odds against can be calculated. For the best in 1974-84 in the hitting streak category, Rod Carew of 1977, who had the most hits per game during the period, was chosen because a high hits-per-game total gives the best chance of a long hitting streak.

(Click image to enlarge)

Some miscellaneous remarks on the table:

In using the formula for SD, the stats for the player best in 1974-84 were used, with that player’s actual number of successes and failures. Each time at bat was considered an attempt in all categories except runs scored, RBI and stolen bases. For these, each plate appearance was considered an attempt.

For total bases and slugging average, the SD’s for singles, doubles, triples and home runs had to be calculated and combined. For RBI, the number of plate appearances resulting in two or three RBIs had to be estimated, the SD’s calculated, and these combined. For stolen bases, the possibility of one plate appearance leading to two or more stolen bases was ignored.

Because the best performance in a category in a ten-year period is probably itself a fluctuation, my values for odds against are probably conservative, but the rankings should be about right.

Looking at the table, some readers may find some surprises, while others may just find previous opinions confirmed. For me, there was a little of both. The records divide themselves pretty well into four classes: First, the records for runs, slugging average and triples, for which the odds against are several thousand to one, may to all intents and purposes be considered unbreakable under present conditions. They could only be endangered by some basic change in the way the game is played (such as a rule change greatly favoring the offense) or by the appearance of a player so extraordinary that he simply can’t be judged by the same standards as even the greatest stars of the present (Babe Ruth in his day may have been such a player). The records for RBIs and hitting streak, with odds against of a few hundred to one, are hard to break, but there is a slight chance if a player has a really outstanding season and also enjoys a large fluctuation. Then there are five categories with the odds well under 100 to one, for which the chances of breaking might be rated as fair. It would not be too surprising if one of these records were to fall within the next decade. Finally there is the record for stolen bases, which was set during the 1974-84 period and is thus by definition vulnerable to an outstanding player of that period.

The case of stolen bases emphasizes, however, how a change in the way the game is played can affect the vulnerability of records. If this same calculation had been done in 1940, about the time I first really began following baseball, a different situation would have been encountered. The record for stolen bases then was 96 held by Ty Cobb. The best total in the 1930s was 61 by Ben Chapman in 1931. His SD was 7.45, and his SDD was 4.70, making the stolen-base record at that time even tougher to break than the runs scored now! And indeed, as long as managers’ attitude toward the stolen base remained as it was in the `30s, Cobb’s record was virtually untouchable. Now the game is played differently, players like Rickey Henderson are eagerly sought and given the green light, and there is no guarantee that the present record will last long.

It is my hope that this article will stimulate interest in the use of probability theory in the analysis of baseball statistics because I think it can provide a lot of useful information. Much work remains to be done, but it certainly can be done if a few people become interested in this (to me, at least) fascinating area.

Conlin cited the National League’s recent domination of the All-Star Game and a list of American League stars who were National League castoffs – Amos Otis, Mike Torrez, Miguel Dilone and Willie Randolph among others – as additional evidence of N.L. superiority.

The reaction, of course, was vehement. Many American League fans properly pointed to George Hendrick, Bill Robinson and Dave Collins as American League “expatriates” who more than held their own in the National League. The controversy rages on.

Recent N.L. dominance of the All-Star classic is puzzling if “parity” exists between the leagues. Beginning in 1963 and ending with 1982, the senior circuit won 19 of the 20 games between the two major leagues. Baltimore’s former manager, Earl Weaver, when asked a few years ago about the N.L. `s recent domination of the midyear classic, responded: “The only explanation I can give is they (the N.L.) end up with more runs.” However if the two leagues are truly equal, the American League should “end up with more runs” about half the time.

Take a series of coin flips as an analogy. If “parity” exists between the two sides, heads should appear as often as tails. So if the leagues are truly equal, a series of 19 N.L. wins in 20 All-Star Games should happen about once every 50,000 years!!

Since recent All-Star Game results are unlikely to be due to chance alone, a scientific examination of the possible causes of National League dominance is desirable. The most obvious possible cause, and the cause to which this research is addressed, is that the N.L. has a higher level of competition than the A.L.

Because of recent A.L. expansion, one might expect to find evidence of a slightly higher level of competition in the N.L. However, if overall N.L. superiority is the underlying cause of recent N.L. performance in the All-Star Game, then we should find overwhelming evidence of this superiority.

The only meaningful way to address this issue is to study the players who have played in both leagues and attempt to measure the relative performances of each player in each league. The procedure, however, must be put into perspective. First, it would not be fair to include the differential league performance of players such as Willie Randolph, who only had a “cup of coffee” in the N.L. Players like these suffered growing pains on the bench in the N.L. and matured later. So the sample was restricted to players who performed for at least two full seasons in each league.

Second, factors such as league expansion, rule changes, changes in the elasticity of the baseball, etc., affect a player’s performance from year to year. For example, the lowering of the pitcher’s mound and the shrinking of the strike zone that took place in 1969 had, of course, a positive effect on hitters and an adverse effect on pitchers. Hitters who were active in 1968 would probably (all other things being equal) have performed better subsequent to 1969, irrespective of the league in which they were playing. Conversely, pitchers should have performed better prior to 1969. In order to take cognizance of changes which affect the performance of all players, the performance of an individual player will be measured relative to a league average or median.

Measurement of relative performances is affected by the use of the designated hitter (DH) in only one league. Over the first eight years subsequent to the advent of the DH in the A. L., batting averages were 21 points higher (.262 vs. .241) and ERAs 48 points higher (3.85 vs. 3.37) than in the eight years before the DH. In the N.L. during this time, batting averages went up only six points (.257 from .25 1) and ERAs went up by 15 points (3.66 vs. 3.51).

With respect to hitting, the deployment of the DH increased team averages but had no effect on the raw averages of any other player.

Yes, we have ignored the fact that pitchers’ performances may deteriorate during a game because there are no creampuffs in the lineup, thus aiding other batters in the late inning. But this effect is probably negligible and generally not measurable. Since team averages are higher, while the raw averages of the eight other players in the lineup are unchanged, relative batting averages will be lower. Unless some adjustment is made to the league averages the results of this study would be biased toward a finding of A.L. superiority (for hitters).

This bias is not present in relative pitcher performances. True, the DH increases the league ERA, but also increases individual raw ERAs as well, leaving relative ERAs unaffected.

The use of the DH in only one league implies, for pitching, higher league ERAs, higher raw individual ERAs, and stable relative ERAs. For hitting, it implies higher league batting average, unchanged raw individual batting averages and lower relative batting averages. Hence no adjustments need be made to the league averages for pitchers, but in order to obtain a consistent measurement of relative batting averages the A.L. averages for hitters have been adjusted to generate an estimate of what that average would have been had pitchers batted in the A.L. For example, for batting averages (BA) the adjustment was computed as follows:

Adjusted A.L. league average = (Actual AL BA x (1 -Pct)) + (NL pitchers BA x Pct).

The “Pct” is an estimate of at-bats by pitchers as a percentage of total at-bats. This estimate is computed by simply taking the at-bats by designated hitters, subtracting the difference between the number of at-bats by pinch-hitters in the A.L. and N.L. (with an adjustment after the 1977 A.L. expansion), and dividing the result by total A.L. league at-bats. The N.L. pitchers’ average was estimated each year by computing the average for a sample of ten pitchers.

Four performance measure – two each for pitchers and hitters – were examined. The earned-run average (ERA) and the ratio of strikeouts to walks (K/BB) serve as the pitcher’s measure of performance, while the batting average (BA) and slugging percentage (SA) serve as the benchmarks for hitters.

From the 1981 edition of the Baseball Register published by The Sporting News a list was compiled of all players who were active in 1980 and met one of the following criteria:

1. At least 800 at-bats in each league;
2. At least 375 innings pitched in each league;
3. At least 200 pitching appearances in each league.

A total of 68 players, 31 pitchers and 37 players, met the criteria. Next the two performance measures for each player were converted into relative lifetime measures of performance for each player in each league. For batting averages, this was accomplished by computing a relative batting average for each player for each year through 1980 (player batting average/league batting average), weighting each year’s relative average by the number of at-bats the player had that year and summing these (weighted) relative averages over the number of years that the player performed in the league.

Analogous formulae were used for each of the three other performance measures. The lifetime relative adjusted performance for hitters is computed relative to the major league average which is set at .260 for batting average and at .380 for slugging percentage. For pitchers, the major league KIBB ratio was set at 1.50 and the ERA was set at 4.00. The relative performance measures adjust for the effects of strike zone changes, league expansions, designated hitting and other changes that affect the raw performance measures. If the N.L. is truly superior, then we should find that many more players perform better (after adjusting for league averages) in the A.L. (against inferior competition) than they do in the N.L.

The accompanying table lists the raw (actual) and relative performance measures through 1980 for the 37 hitters and 31 pitchers who spent a good deal of time in each league. Twenty-one of the 37 hitters had better (or equal) relative batting averages and 20 had better relative slugging percentages in the A.L. For pitchers we find that 21 had better K/BB ratios and 16 had better relative ERAs while in the A.L.

When changing leagues, some players had one relative performance measure increase while the other decreased. To minimize ambiguity, let’s omit players who had performance measures changing in the opposite directions (i.e., BA improved but SA decreased in the N.L., etc.). Players who unambiguously performed better in one league vs. the other are identified in the table by a V after the slugging percentage or ERA in the league of superior performance. Twenty-eight of the 37 hitters were at least as good or better in both BA and SA for one of the two leagues. Sixteen were better in the A.L., 12 in the N.L. For pitchers, 15 turned in better performances in the A.L. while nine performed better in the N.L. Thus of the 52 players who gave unambiguously superior performances in one league as opposed to the other, 31 gave superior relative performances in the A.L. while 21 performed better in the N.L. Although these results are in the direction one expects given recent All-Star Game results, they are not significantly different from what we would expect by chance alone. Thus there appears to be no scientific evidence of N.L. superiority.

Because all players included in the sample had to “survive” in the second league for some period of time (i.e., 800 ABs ot 375 IP), the sample may be biased toward poorer performances in the league in which the players started. If the sample contains a high percentage of players who started in the A.L., better N.L. performances could be explained by this survivorship bias.

However, when the sample is broken up according to the league in which the players started, we see that 28 of the players identified by the V started in the N.L. while 24 started in the A.L. or about 55 percent of the total. Thus a survivorship bias cannot explain these results.

However, the reader will note that there is a survivor effect. For pitchers, ten performed better in the league in which they started while 14 performed better in their second league. For hitters, only nine did better in the league in which they started while 19 performed better in the second league.

Although more players performed better in the A.L. than in the N.L., the results are not significantly different from what we would expect if the two leagues have equal levels of competition. Thus the evidence is not supportive of N.L. superiority over the 10 to 15 years ending with 1980. I would speculate that the small difference observed might be due to the fact that the A.L. expanded to 14 teams in 1977 while the N.L. did not. More marginal players entered (or hung on in) the A.L., thus slightly reducing the overall quality of player performance. I am not speculating, however, when I state that NL. “superiority,” if it indeed exists, cannot explain 19 N.L. wins in 20 All-Star Games. I am not sure what the real explanation is (please do not claim “that’s baseball”), but with the superiority argument dispensed with, columnists and other researchers are free to pursue more plausible reasons for recent All-Star domination.

(Click image to enlarge)

Then in his fourth major league season, the Milwaukee Braves’ star catcher was enjoying one of the best seasons of his 17-year career. Torre, only 24 in 1964, batted .321, hit 20 home runs and drove in 109 runs while leading the league’s receivers with a .994 fielding average.

Although the 1964 Phillies were not an outstanding team, general manager John Quinn and field manager Gene Mauch had over a period of several years carefully brought together a number of good players who that season jelled into a solid, winning combination, including several stars.

The Phillies had two of the National League’s most feared hitters in 1964. Outfielder Johnny Callison hit 31 homers and drove in 104 runs, while rookie Richie Allen smashed 29 homers and compiled a .318 batting average. Pitcher Jim

Bunning, obtained the previous winter from the Tigers, won 19 games while losing only eight. Chris Short, a relief pitcher the first part of the season, posted a 17-9 record with a 2.20 ERA, third best in the league.

Only ten of the 232 members of the Baseball Writers’ Association in a pre-season poll picked Philadelphia to win the pennant, but the Phillies and Giants dominated first place during the first half of the season. At the All-Star break, the surprising Phils held first place with a 1½-game lead over San Francisco. Losing the lead temporarily, Philadelphia regained first place on July 16 and remained there for 73 consecutive days until September 27.

Although St. Louis had started poorly, the Cardinals began a drive on July 25 during which they played at a .687 pace, winning 46 games against 21 defeats. In spite of the Cardinals’ surge, the Phils continued to lengthen their lead, winning 19 out of 26 games at one stretch. On September 21 Philadelphia led the red-hot second-place Reds by 6½ games.

With Bunning and Short continuing to pitch well and Dennis Bennett apparently back at his best, the Phils’ pitching rotation appeared in good shape for the stretch drive. But then Bennett developed a sore shoulder. In desperation, Mauch felt he had to start both Bunning and Short three times each with just two days’ rest during the season’s final three weeks.

On September21, the Phillies began their final home stand of seven games, three against Cincinnati and four against Milwaukee. Art Mahaffey lost a heartbreaking 1-0 decision to the Reds’ John Tsitouris in the first contest. The Reds went on to win the next two games, 9-2 and 6-4, to sweep the series. And then Joe Torre and the Milwaukee Braves arrived in town.

The Braves were the most potent offensive team in the National League with four of the league’s top 11 hitters – Rico Carty .330, Hank Aaron .328, Tone .321 and Lee Maye .304. Milwaukee led the circuit in batting average, runs, total bases and doubles. Moreover they had five players who hit 20 or more home runs. What Milwaukee lacked that year was pitching, ranking ninth in a ten-team league with a 4.12 ERA.

Bunning, who had won his last six starts at home, opened for the Phillies in the first game on September 24. Torre drove home Eddie Mathews with a triple in the second inning to put the Braves ahead, 1-0, and later hit another triple to drive in two more runs. Bunning was chased from the mound in the sixth as the Phils lost, 5-3.

Short pitched well enough in the second game before a huge Friday night crowd of 30,447 in old Shibe Park. He left in the eighth inning, and at the end of nine it was a 3-3 deadlock. But in the top of the tenth Torre hit a two-run homer to put the Braves on top, 5-3. The Phils came back to tie the score in their half of the tenth inning, but the Braves won it in the eleventh, 7-5. Tone had three hits in the contest and once again drove in three runs.

The Phils led the Braves, 4-3, going into the ninth inning of the third game but once again lost, 6-4, when Carty hit a three-run triple in the top of the ninth. Veteran Bobby Shantz had come on in relief of Art Mahaffey and was tagged with the loss. Although he did not drive in any runs in the game, Torre once again had three hits, all singles. The loss cut Philadelphia’s lead to a half-game over Cincinnati.

Bunning, who had pitched a long six innings in the Thursday night defeat, was nominated by Mauch to start the Sunday game. Clubbed by the Braves for ten hits and seven runs, the durable Bunning left in the fourth inning with no one out. The Braves, led by Tone’s twentieth home run and two hits, emerged 14-8 victors, dropping the Phils into second place behind the Reds.

The crowd of 20,569 sat in stunned silence at the game’s conclusion. Although Callison had hit three home runs, the Phillies were never in contention. A cloth sign, lettered “HELP,” fluttering from the right-field stands appeared to voice the fans’ thoughts.

During the four-game series, Torre had 11 hits in 19 plate appearances for a .579 average. The burly Milwaukee catcher’s 11 hits included two triples and two home runs; he also drove in seven runs.

The Phillies then journeyed to St. Louis, where, playing in a daze after their weekend pummeling by Torre and the Braves, they lost three straight games to the Cardinals. This extended their losing streak to ten games.

The Phils received some meager joy in defeating the Reds in their two final games of the season, but by then it was too late. The Cardinals, winning eight straight games during the closing weeks of the season, captured the pennant, finishing a game ahead of both Philadelphia and Cincinnati in a race that was not decided until the final day of the season. With the fourth-place Giants only three games out, the 1964 National League race proved to be one of the tightest pennant chases of all time.

Although the final two weeks of the season were truly disastrous for the Phillies, they did have the satisfaction of a number of solid accomplishments. They finished higher in the standings than they had in 14 years and their 92 victories constituted a club record at that time, surpassing the 91 wins of both the 1916 second-place team and the 1950 pennant-winner.

Torre went on to play thirteen more years in the National League, enjoying perhaps his greatest season with the 1971 Cardinals when he batted .363, drove in 137 runs and gained the MVP award. Certainly one of the highlights of his long career, however, has to be the weekend when he destroyed Philadelphia’s pennant hopes.

The seventh and deciding game of the semi-final series of the Dominican Republic’s 1983-84 winter league season had begun. Las Aguilas (the Eagles) from the northern city of Santiago versus Las Estrellas (the Stars) from San Pedro de Macoris for a berth in the finals and a chance to represent the island in the Caribbean Championships in Puerto Rico.

For Pena, the Pittsburgh Pirates’ All-Star catcher who lives in Santiago, 100 kilometers from the farm in Monte Cristi where he grew up, it was about the 260th time in the past year that he had suited up for a game. But if he was tired, it didn’t show. “You’ve got to play hard every day,” he had commented in the dugout before the game. “You’ ye just got to – especially here.”

Baseball is more than a game on this Caribbean island which the Dominican Republic has shared with French-speaking, soccer-playing Haiti since the 17th century. “It’s a way of life,” Aguila manager Winston Llenas explained. The Dominican Republic, with a population of only five million, is the leading supplier of baseball talent in the world after the United States. More than 25 Dominicans play major league ball, and they are only the vanguard of a potentially larger invading force.

Ask just about anyone familiar with Dominican baseball where the best players come from and the answer will be San Pedro de Macoris. Cocos frios, cangrejos and some of the best ballplayers in the world you can get them all in San Pedro. The cold coconuts and masses of slowly-moving crabs can be bought along the palm-lined road leading into town, the ballplayers inside their pastel-colored homes.

San Pedro currently produces more ballplayers per thousand residents than any other town has at any time in history. A city of perhaps 100,000, including its surrounding sugar mill towns, San Pedro counts among its favorite sons Pedro Guerrero, Joaquin Andujar, Toronto’s keystone combo of Alfredo Griffin and Damaso Garcia as well as Jorge Bell and phenom Tony Fernandez, Atlanta’s Rafael Ramirez, Philly’s Juan Samuel and Cleveland’s Julio Franco.

Sugar is the reason San Pedro’s ballplayers are so sweet. “It’s just like it was in Cuba,” Dodger scout Ralph Avila noted. “Sugar country is where you’ll find the best baseball because the sugar centrales put money into it.” In San Pedro, with its six sugar mills, baseball received a large infusion of company support in the 1930s. This legacy can be found on the scores of diamonds where company-supported teams still play.

Aguila shortstop Nelson Norman grew up in Consuelo, a few kilometers outside of town. His father, a Virgin Islander, has worked at the Consuelo centrale for more than 30 years. Norman talked about sugar and baseball in the dugout, switching effortlessly between Spanish and the fluent English with a West Indian lilt he learned from his father.

“Consuelo is a bit like Pittsburgh,” he laughed, “except the mills are not steel but sugar.” In Consuelo, oxen haul the trash wagon and horses are as evident as cars. The people, he pointed out, work for the mill or hardly at all. And for five to six months a year during the tiempo muerto or dead season when the cane requires little attention, it is hardly at all. They have the time, especially then, to play ball.

Winter ball in the Dominican is a study in contrasts. Palm trees tower over the outfield fences against tropical Maxfield Parrish skies, yet the stadium showers often run only cold if at all. Major leaguers like Pedro Guerrero and Mario Soto with their annual salaries as long as telephone numbers play along-side Dominican youths making 500 pesos or about $225 a month. While armed soldiers protect the dugouts and sometimes frisk the fans for bottles, before the game four-year-old Omar Moreno, Jr., familiarly known as OJ, jogged next to his graceful, long-legged father along the outfield grass, his cap falling down over his eyes and then off his head completely. As his father chatted, OJ practiced hook slides in center field. With the game only minutes away, Omar Sr. pulled up his son’s pants and rolled up the cuffs before handing him over the railing to his mother.

On the mound, minor leaguer Stu Cliburn, working on only two days’ rest, set San Pedro down in order. The opposing pitcher responded in kind, beginning the inning by retiring first baseman Dave Hostetler on a called third strike. Hostetler whirled and snarled something at the umpire before stalking back to the dugout, punctuating a long string of expletives by cracking a batting helmet in half with his bat. It had been a frustrating winter for him. In 1982, Hostetler hit 22 home runs for the Texas Rangers. But he slumped in 1983 and had come to the Dominican to regain his form. His wife and ten-month-old son had accompanied him but left after the latter got an ear infection. Lonely and not particularly pleased with his performance, Hostetler wanted out. “Damn!” he had shouted earlier while leaving the batting cage. “I want to go home.”

Hostetler might have been unhappy being there, but most of his Dominican teammates were not. For many, playing for Aguila was a dream come true. Pirate farmhand Tomas Martinez had hardly played all season, but as he walked down the dugout alley he was all smiles, knocking hats off his teammates sitting in a row along the dugout steps. Nor were Hostetler’s fellow Americans disappointed to be playing baseball in January.

With two out in the fourth, Hostetler singled over a leaping Alfredo Griffin, whose manos dulces (sweet hands) had repeatedly robbed Aguila players of hits. Cuban-born Barbaro Garbey then doubled to the wall in left, scoring Hostetler and coming around himself a batter later. Garbey smiled briefly as he accepted the slaps of his teammates but took a seat away from the clamour and pulled a pack of Montecarlos out of his back pocket. Tossing aside three crumpled cigarettes, he finally found one intact.

Of all the Aguila players, Garbey’s path to the majors has been the most perilous. He made it to Cuba’s top league in 1974 as a 17-year-old and played for Cuba’s world champion team. But in 1978, his reputation was shattered by implication in a game-fixing scheme. Banned for life from Cuban baseball, Garbey tried to join the Mariel exodus in the spring of 1980. He was recognized and stopped twice, but finally made it on his third attempt.

Signed out of a refugee camp, Garbey had progressed through the Detroit organization to its top farm club when the game-fixing allegations surfaced. He argued he only helped keep down the margin of his team’s victories, but Cuban sports officials countered that he had admitted throwing games, not just shaving runs.

Minor league ball put Garbey on probation and later briefly suspended him after a post-game altercation with a fan who had been razzing him about the betting charges. Since then Garbey has limited his conversations with the press and was reticent to talk about Cuba. A teammate explained that Garbey’s wife and daughters were still in Cuba and that the government was preventing them from leaving.

Cuba, once the chief source of Latin talent, stopped exporting its ballplayers after the 1959 revolution and the resulting U.S. blockade. The Dominican Republic stepped into the void, but not until the demise of Rafael Trujillo in 1961.

“En este letrina, Trujillo es el jefe” is written on the door to the bathroom by the visitors’ dugout at Quisqueya Stadium in Santo Domingo. It’s about the only place he still has clout. Rafael Trujillo gained his spurs during the Marines’ occupation, seized power in 1930 and spent the next 30 years as el caudillo. Trujillo’s meglomania knew few bounds. He renamed the highest mountain on the island, two provinces and even the capital city after himself. By the end of his reign the entire country had become his private estate.

From the 1930s and the inception of league play until his death, Trujillo cast a shadow over the country’s favorite pastime. “He wouldn’t let guys play for anybody but his own team if he thought they were good,” Aguila coach Octavio Acosta asserted. “He threatened players, their families and even stopped them from playing abroad.” Each stadium in the county was named for either Trujillo or a relative, and championships almost always were won by one of the two Ciudad Trujillo teams.

But in 1961 the CIA helped terminate Trujillo. “When Trujillo went down,” Acosta smiled, “Aguila went up.” By 1970, Aguila was a contender and went on to win five pennants in the decade. More importantly, Trujillo’s death unstopped a current of Dominican players to the U.S. as Ossie Virgil, Julian Javier, Juan Marichal, Rico Carty and the Alous (Felipe, Matty and Jesus) were joined by Winston Llenas’ generation.

With Garbey, the Pirates’ Marvell Wynne and Panamanian-born Moreno, the Aguila outfield had a multi-national caste. Garbey and Wynne lived with Cliburn and lefthanded reliever Chuck Cary in a residential section of Santiago, replete with ESPN and MTV.

Garbey and Wynne had come to baseball from working-class neighborhoods in Santiago de Cuba and Chicago, respectively, Cliburn from Jackson, Miss., and Cary from San Francisco’s suburbs. What amazed Cary was that so many Dominican ballplayers “were as good as those in the States,” but without the chances he and his American compatriots had to make it. And American players, he added, made a minimum of $3,000 a month plus a 750-peso living allowance, free housing and a rented car while the Dominican substitutes made just 500 pesos a month.

Five hundred pesos a month, however, is not all that bad in a country where the average household head makes barely 200 pesos a month. Nor are the options that attractive. When asked what he’d be doing if not playing ball, one benchwarmer stared and said, “Nada.” Others, when asked why Dominican ballplayers were so good, answered, “Por que no hay trabajo.” Because there is no work.

Aguila led 2-0, but with two out in the top of the fifth inning Ruben Robles, the muscular San Pedro centerfielder who moonlights as a fashion model, beat out a slow hopper and the next batter walked on four pitches. Manager Llenas visited Cliburn on the mound and Cecilio Guante began throwing in the bullpen.

Winston Llenas has the good looks that Michael Nouri brought to his managing job on the short-lived Bay City Blues television series. But unlike Nouri, Llenas starred for Aguila in the 1960s, later played for the California Angels and took his managerial baptism with the Mexican Diablos Rojos.

With two on and Griffin at bat, Llenas considered his options. San Pedro’s fans, meanwhile, chanted “Wah,” led by a boy who teased each “Wah” out of them with a snap of his Estrellas banner. On a 2-0 pitch, Griffin hit a screamer foul toward the bullpen which Guante calmly snagged as he stood watching. When Griffin walked, loading the bases, Llenas signaled for the reliever.

Guante sparkled in relief for Pittsburgh in 1983 and did little to tarnish his promise during the winter. He was the loosest on a loose club. In the locker room before the game, with his muscled torso bare to the waist, Cecilio dipped and bobbed to the sounds of Boy George and the Culture Club on a teammate’s tape deck. During the game he often appeared to be in a different dimension, gazing into the stands and joking with the soldiers in the bullpen. But once in the game Guante was serious for the first time all evening. After falling behind Manny Castillo in the count, he induced the San Pedro infielder to ground into a rally-killing out. Signs along the Dominican roadside read “Cristo Viene,” but at the ballpark it’s Guante who saves.

The stands erupted and the band began to play “La Lena,” the Aguila merengue. Led by a man in a paper mache and feather eagle costume, the band snaked through the crowd. On the dugout a self-appointed cheerleader in an orange cowboy hat, leisure suit and a

Dominican flag T-shirt danced with 16-year-old Juan Baltazaar, Aguila’ s midget mascot, who during the inning had sprawled on the dugout roof, one leg provocatively raised.

On cue Nelson Norman singled. A single by Moreno, a sacrifice fly by Pena and an error led to two more runs. In the sixth Norman’s third hit of the night gave Aguila a 5-0 lead.

San Pedro had exploded in game three with a ten-run inning and a triple play. Their first two batters in the seventh reached base, and when Ruben Robles lofted a foul behind the plate,

Pena and the ump ran into each other. The ball, which could have been caught otherwise, fell to the ground a few feet away. Several players on the Aguila bench shouted “Coho!” the all-purpose Dominican baseball expletive, while another murmured, “Eso es una Pena colida,” and then ducked as balls and gloves came flying his way. With everyone on the bench standing, Guante retired the next three batters. As he walked into the dugout, a coach slipped a towel and jacket onto his pitching arm with valet precision.

San Pedro began the eighth in similar fashion, but this time when Ramirez hit a foul pop, Pena reached into the stands to catch it inches from midget Baltazar’s face and only a few feet away from where his son, Tony Jr., sat smiling in the arms of pitching coach Rick Peterson’s wife, Betsy.

Rick first came south in 1966 at the age of 13 when his father, Harding, now the Pirates’ general manager, was managing Aguila in winter play. His initial memory is the bullet holes in the taxi that drove the family from the airport into Santo Domingo, just months after the Marines had helped put down a rebellion against the autocratic hangover of Trujillo’s regime. Now a Pirate coach, Rick pitched for Gulf Coast College and then in the minors until injuries ended his career.

Unwilling to leave the game, he sought work as a pitching coach, a trade he plied in the minors during the summer and in Colombia, Venezuela and the Dominican each winter.

Like most Americans with winter league experience, Peterson preferred the Dominican. Not only is the competition better, he asserted, but the players are treated better, too. In Venezuela, he recalled, “I coached third base and when I held up a runner or when one was called out at the plate that I sent, I’d have to duck the corn cobs, rocks and bottles that fans would be throwing from the stands. After games we won away, their fans would be rocking the buses and cursing us.”

Earlier Peterson had confessed, “There’s no way we should have done so well this season.” Indeed, Aguila had been in first place from day one, despite the loss of several key pitchers.

Some of the Americans had not returned after going stateside for Christmas, and in January the team was stunned by the arrest of Atlanta Braves ace Pascual Perez on cocaine charges.

In the stands the vendors, sensing the end of the game, furiously peddled the last of their rum and beer, dispensed in plastic cups, along with peanuts, fried plantains and yucca. A magician performing tricks between innings began to collect a hat full of change for his efforts. The little boy in the Mickey Mouse T-shirt who sold demi-tasse cups of hot, sweet strong Dominican coffee for 15 centavos to the players during the game was ushered out of the dugout by an officer with a black pith helmet and a chrome-plated revolver.

Guante set the last three batters down on two strikeouts and a pop-up and the crowd spilled onto the field. The final score: Aguila 5, San Pedro 0. In the locker room, as beer sprayed in the air, Omar Moreno stood quietly in the doorway, a half-smile on his face.

The cache of beer soon exhausted, the players filed out of the locker-room, reuniting later at discos across the city. The roommates partied till four, dancing to a mix of merengue and new wave. While Wynne and Garbey slept the next day, Cliburn and Gary accompanied two writers traveling with the club to Sosua, a nearby beach town established by Jews fleeing Germany in the 1930s.

When the ballplayers’ car pulled up to the beach, it was surrounded by a corps of prospective car washers and watchers. Gary asked for Marcos, a youth of 12 years with whom he had negotiated on previous excursions. Marcos appeared moments later and assigned each of the foursome a “secretario” for the day. The secretario’s job was to guard personal possessions and go for beer, barbecued chicken and other whims.

Walking along the beach with Marcos, Gary chewed a foot-long section of sugar cane and conversed in Spanish. Gliburn, meanwhile, basked in the sun and the memory, of his four and two-thirds shutout innings. Stu’s secretario worked double-time, bringing him two beers at a time. Gliburn, a fast worker on the mound the night before, was an even faster worker on the beach, romancing a young Dominican girl with beers and a necklace he bought from a beach vendor. By late afternoon, they had disappeared. When they made it back by sunset, the secretarios convulsed in adolescent envy.

On the way back to Santiago that night, their car was pulled over by the police. The driver, one of the writers, walked back to the cop, who shook his hand and asked him how he was doing before pointing out that a headlight wasn’t working and that a ticket was in order. The writer already knew that from a previous encounter with the police outside of San Pedro which had ended in a five-peso contribution to the policeman’s “gas fund.”

This time, however, the policeman wanted to know who else was in the car. “Turistas?” he asked. “No, senor,” the writer responded. “Son peloteros (ballplayers) de Aguila.” The policeman smiled and asked which ones. Hearing the name Cliburn, he nodded and said “Si, es bueno.” When Cary’s name came up, the cop grimaced and asked if he was not the reliever who had given up three consecutive doubles in the sixth game. The writer confessed that Cary was indeed the culprit. After introductions, the cop once again shook hands and cautioned the driver to get his headlight fixed. No ticket – no contribution to the policeman’s gas fund.

Dominican baseball is, in some ways, like baseball used to be in the United States. Local boys shag flies alongside their favorite players in the outfield before games and youngsters play catch with home-made cardboard carton mitts along the roadside, dreaming of careers as peloteros. Only in the highlands does the game take a back seat to any other sport. There, where there is no place flat enough to play, cock-fighting is the principal passion. As one grizzled aficionado in Pedro Garcia, when asked what sport was the most popular in his mountain village, explained, “Aqui, las mujeres, los gallos y la pelota.” Here, women, cockfighting and baseball. But elsewhere, it is pelota.

The celebration outside the stadium continued as the band played “La Lena,” and revelers danced the merengue. Old ladies in bandanas did a brisk trade in barbecued chicken, fried sausage and flour cakes which they grilled on braziers made out of steel drums. Overhead the Big Dipper stood straight up, a giant question mark pointing the way north. For most Dominican players, making it northward to baseball’s promised land is a question yet to be answered. But not for all. A few yards from the Aguila dressing room, Tony Pena stood holding his son, surrounded by circles of fans. Still dressed in his uniform with the number 14 on it – his

Aguila, not his Pirate number – Pena joked with his compatriots.

“He could be president of this country some day,” an admiring Cary speculated. Perhaps he could. The Pirates did not want Pena playing winter ball, preferring that he rest instead.

“How could I do that?” Pena protested. “It would be like hitting the people in the face.”

While Grant was a remarkable player and enjoyed three productive seasons in Buffalo, his impact on the city and on the franchise was not extraordinary. Easter, on the other hand, not only became the most popular in the Bisons’ long history, but also in 1956, 1957 and 1958 almost single-handedly enabled baseball to survive in the Queen City.

In the fall of 1955 baseball was practically dead in Buffalo after 79 consecutive seasons. The baseball Bison was about to disappear, as had its four-legged namesake of the western plains, a victim not of wanton slaughter, but of such strange ailments as television, race tracks, open-air movies, major league radio and television broadcasts and the lack of parking facilities at Offermann Stadium. Or so the pundits said.

The Detroit Tigers had owned the franchise for four unprofitable seasons. After sixth-place finishes in 1954 and 1955 had attracted just 120,621 and 126,351 fans, respectively, the Tigers announced they were pulling out. With no purchasers in sight, it seemed that Buffalo would be without baseball for the first time since the summer of 1877. Certainly this would have been the case had it not been for the vision and enterprise of John C. Stiglmeier, a veteran baseball front-office man, and Harry Bisgeier, a local businessman who at one time had operated the Jamestown club of the Pony League.

They conceived the idea of community ownership, financed by an offering of stock to local fans for $1.00 a share. Of the 250,000 shares Offered, 182,000 were sold; not a smashing success, but sufficient to allow Stiglmeier and Bisgeier to exercise their option to purchase the franchise from Detroit for $75,000. Seventy years earlier, by a strange quirk of baseball history, there had been another franchise sale involving Buffalo and Detroit. In September of 1885, Frederick K. Stearns of Detroit had bought the Buffalo National League franchise, including the famed “Big Four” of Dan Brouthers, Deacon White, Jack Rowe and Hardy Richardson, for just $7,000. In each case it was a bargain for the purchasers. Bolstered by the Buffalo players, Stearns’ team finished second in 1886 and won the pennant in 1887. As for the later purchase, it led to a revival of baseball in Buffalo and brought it to heights it had never reached before.

For their $75,000 Stiglmeier and Bisgeier received only a franchise and nine players considered expendable by Detroit. With no working agreement and Triple-A players hard to come by, the outlook was bleak indeed. The Bisons did have a place to play, however. Jacobs Brothers, owners of Offermann Stadium, agreed to lease the park for $1.00 a year, retaining, of course, concessions privileges. Underfinanced as they were, the new operators were in no position to spend a lot of money on player acquisitions. They did, however, gamble $7,500 of their meager cash reserve on the purchase of Luke Easter from Charleston of the American Association. The ex-Cleveland Indian with the suspect knees had hit 30 home runs and batted .283 for Charleston in 1955. “We are building a team to fit Offermann Stadium,” said Stiglmeier in announcing the purchase of the supposedly 34-year-old slugger. In Stiggy’s mind was Offermann Stadium’s friendly right-field wall, measuring 297 feet from home plate to foul pole and just 12 feet high. In the next three years Stiglmeier was to learn, to his delight, that when Big Luke connected the short porch was never a factor.

Stiglmeier was also to learn that Easter, by his personality, his showmanship (his duels with his old antagonist of Negro League days, Satchel Paige, were classics) and by his performance on the field, was literally to save the game in Buffalo. The first year (1956), for example, Luke never stopped trying, even when the Phil Cavarretta-managed team of over-the-hill veterans and untried youngsters became hopelessly mired in last place. He led the league in home runs (35) and RBIs (106) and batted .306. On August 6 he hit a home run off Jerry Lane of the Havana Sugar Kings that is still talked about with awe by old-time Bison fans. The blow cleared the right-field light tower (not to mention Stiglmeier’s 12-foot wall), crossed Woodlawn Ave., soared 30 feet over a two-story dwelling, struck the roof of a house on Emerson Place, the next street over, and finally came to rest in the street. Counting the roll, it had traveled 550 feet.

Easter’s gimpy knees and apparent awkwardness notwithstanding, he did a creditable job in the field, handling 1,261 chances and erring just 12 times for an average of .991.

But more important than his statistics was his, charisma. He instilled in Buffalo fans an enthusiasm for the game that had disappeared under Detroit’s absentee ownership. Whenever Easter came to the plate, the fans would yell “Loooooook, Loooooook,” while Bison announcers Bill Mazer and Roger Baker explained that these were not boos. The fact is, despite his frequent strikeouts, Easter was never booed in Buffalo. Attendance that first year of community ownership was not earth shaking, but the 186,811 total was 60,000 ahead of 1955 and was sufficient to insure another season of baseball. The books showed an operating loss for the year of just $36.00!

The modest improvement of 1956 was just a prelude. A working agreement with the Kansas City Athletics brought the 1957 Bisons such players as Mike Baxes, Ray Herbert, Ray Noble, Walter Craddock and Glen Cox. The team was competitive all the way, finishing second, just a half game behind Toronto. The Bisons then defeated Richmond and Miami in the playoffs to qualify for the Junior World Series. Good as they were, the Bisons were no match for Ralph Houk’s formidable Denver Bears, losing the series four games to one.

But what a season it had been! Attendance skyrocketed to 386,071, best in the minors for 1957. The playoffs drew 43,693 and two Junior World Series games attracted 23,071, making a grand total for the year of 452,835, best in Buffalo history and one of the highest ever in the minor leagues up to that time.

Shortstop Mike Baxes was the league’s Most Valuable Player, Joe Caffie batted a league-leading .330 and lefty Walt Craddock won 18 games to become Rookie of the Year, but the big story for the Bisons was Luke Easter. In two short years he had become the most visible man in the city, known to everyone as “Luke.” His last name had become a redundancy. His .279 batting average was misleading. Despite continuing problems with his eyes and knees, he played every one of Buffalo’s 154 games, led the league in home runs (40), walks (100), total bases (300) and RBIs (128).

But again statistics were not the whole story. From the time it was built in 1924 up to June 14, 1957, an estimated 2,735 regular season, playoff and Junior World Series games had been played at Offermann (flee Bison) Stadium, not to mention numerous semi-pro, amateur, Negro League and exhibition games. Assuming a conservative 75 at-bats per game (counting International League-related games only), 205,125 batters had come to the plate and looked at the massive 40-foot scoreboard slightly to the right of dead center-field. No one, including non-league players, had been able to clear it. Bob Thurman of the Newark Bears came closest in 1949 when he hit, but did not clear, the advertising sign on top of the board.

In the second game of a doubleheader on the warm, hazy evening of June 14, 1957, Luke Easter did the impossible. Lefthander Bob Kuzava of the Columbus Jets delivered a knee-high fast ball over the outside of the plate – “A perfect pitch,” Kuzava said later. Luke’s timing was perfect, and he met the ball with all the strength of his six-foot, four-inch, 230-pound frame, sending it soaring to deep center field. As the ball cleared the barrier, there was a second of stunned silence, followed by the loudest and longest ovation anyone could recall in that old ball park. Plate umpire Ed Sudol and Bison skipper Phil Cavarretta agreed they had never seen a ball hit harder. Said Luke, prophetically, “If my legs hold out, I’ll do it again. Besides, the one last year against Havana was harder hit.”

“The Home Run” was the talk of the town for days. How long was it? The figures were fed into a computer at one of the local utility companies. “Workhorse,” as this early IBM monster was called, declared that the “hang time” of the drive had been five seconds before it hit the roof of a

Woodlawn Ave. house and then bounced down to its upper porch, and that it had carried exactly 506.4 feet. According to the record book, Luke was just six weeks short of his thirty-sixth birthday when he hit his epochal home run. At the time he admitted he was fudging a bit on his age. How much? Even “Workhorse” could not answer. The truth was to come out later under tragic circumstances.

Two months later on August 15 Luke, as he had predicted, cleared the scoreboard again, this time against righthander Willard Parsons of the Richmond Virginians. Again it was a low pitch, and when it was hit it took off like a liner for the first 60 feet and then began to climb until it hit the soft drink sign on top of the scoreboard and dropped down. The ball was never found, which did not disturb Luke in the least. As he told Cy Kritzer, veteran Buffalo Evening News baseball writer, “I just hit `em and forget `em.” Later that year in the playoffs, this time off hard-throwing Jim Coates, also of Richmond, Easter hit another tremendous blast that cleared the center-field wall, just to the left of the scoreboard.

The next season, 1958, was to be a down year for the Bisons. The drop from second to seventh place, plus growing dissatisfaction with the managerial tactics of Cavarretta, dampened the euphoria of the previous year. Nevertheless, the Bisons drew an acceptable 286,480 fans, best in the league. Easter continued to perform well. His batting average improved to .309 and his 38 home runs and 109 RBIs were second only to Rocky Nelson’s 43 and 120 totals.

In three seasons with Buffalo, Easter hit 113 home runs, scored 251 times, drove in 343 runs, amassed 880 total bases, walked 313 times and averaged .297. What he did on the field was thus easily translated into facts and figures; what he did for baseball in Buffalo can never be measured. Thanks largely to him, the city’s most identifiable possession – its baseball team – was kept alive. Under Detroit’s lily-white ownership, black fans had deserted Offermann Stadium. Luke Easter brought them back. He spread the gospel of the game off the field, as well. His usual response when asked to attend a function was, “What time do you want me there?” He helped to prove that minor league baseball could survive, even prosper, in spite of major league broadcasts and telecasts, race tracks, open-air movies and a lack of parking at Offermann Stadium. In retrospect, what Easter and community ownership did for baseball in Buffalo was only a delaying action. International League baseball was to expire there in 1970, or 11 years after Luke played his last game for the Bisons.

By all that was right and proper, Easter should have finished his career in Buffalo. But the game can be harsh at times. By 1959 the Bisons had a new manager, Kerby Farrell, and a new working agreement, this time with the Phillies. The parent club had a prize young first base prospect by the name of Frank Herrera and wanted him to play that position. Cognizant of the importance of Easter to Buffalo baseball, the Phillies allowed Farrell to try Herrera at third base and then at second. But the experiments failed. In addition, Easter had a difficult time getting started. Two weeks into May he was batting .176, had but one home run and was hurting the team in the field. A front page story in the Buffalo Courier-Express of May 14, 1959, told it all: “THERE IS NO JOY, LUKE IS RELEASED.”

As was his style Easter took the news without complaint. “I had three good years here, and the fans were great to me,” he said. Within a few days he signed with Rochester, where in six more seasons as a player and coach he was to become just as much of a legend as he had been in Buffalo. On Thursday, March 29, 1979, Luke Easter, by then a union steward for the Aircraft Workers Alliance at TRW, Inc. of Cleveland, was accosted by two men as he left a branch office of the Cleveland Trust Co. in Euclid. When he refused to give up the cash he had in a shopping bag, he was hit fatally above the heart by a shotgun blast. The money in the bag was not his. It was from checks he had cashed for fellow workers.

At the time of his death, it was announced that Easter was 63. Yes, he had “fudged” on his age. When he joined the Bisons in 1956, he was thus 40 and not 34; when he hit his monumental home run off Bob Kuzava in 1957, he was 41, not 35, and when he went to bat professionally for the last time in 1964, he was 48, not 42.

It was a tragic end for a man who had given so much to baseball, and who could have given so much more had he not been 33 when he began. Easter has not been forgotten in San Diego, Cleveland, Ottawa, Charleston, Rochester and especially not in Buffalo, where as the first black player in the city’s modem baseball history he helped so dramatically to save the franchise.

Anyone listening to Richter’s remarks and knowledgeable about baseball’s “steady progress” since 1876 could not help but think of Albert Goodwill Spalding in connection with the development of the game as a stable, well-organized business. Nor would they have been wrong to identify his voice as one of many of his generation that promoted baseball and sport in general as a means of guaranteeing American progress while alleviating the tensions and fears that seemed part and parcel of a modernizing American society.

Late nineteenth-century middle-class Americans, whose dominant value structure celebrated self-reliance and aggressive individualism, all buttressed by a social Darwinist framework that emphasized the survival of the fittest and civilization’s inexorable forward march, looked back with pride on their ancestors’ ability to carve a nation out of a seemingly boundless frontier. At the same time, the basic facts of American development, including those that had marked their own contributions to progress – the close of the frontier experience, internal migration and the growth of large cities, European immigration, the growth of industry and clashes between labor and capital – also raised doubts about America’s future. What would take the place of the violent testing ground of the frontier to shape American character? What forces would counteract the tendency of sedentary, urban, middle-class life from softening the basic tissue of America’s dominant class? What could be done to prevent the appearance of East European immigrants from diluting the purity of the American stock and from challenging the very foundations of liberal capitalist society?

Responses to these fears, as we know, were wide-ranging. They involved an increasingly aggressive foreign policy, a variety of efforts, some tinged with violence, to control and acculturate new immigrants, and a search, as one historian has put it, for “intense” experience to mold character and to counter the banality and pace of middle-class urban culture. Most importantly, in terms of A.G. Spalding, they also included the promise of sport as such experience and as commercial venture.

Particularly for urban, middle-class Americans, the last quarter of the nineteenth century witnessed a virtual explosion of popular interest in sport. Whether measured by the bicycling craze of the 1890s, the growth of professional baseball or the astounding success and expansion of the sporting-goods industry – activities all close to Spalding’s heart – acceptance of sport as legitimate leisure-time pursuit and economic enterprise marked these years. A major factor in that success was the promotion of sport as an activity that served significant social purpose.

In an atmosphere where sport was referred to as “artificial adventure, artificial colonizing, artificial war,” it is not surprising to find it encouraged as an activity that might produce “a more stalwart and better-formed race” or to find one writer extolling the growth of country clubs as a “safety-valve of an overworked nation.”

While Spalding was hardly original in articulating the connections between sport, ideology and social purpose, no one expressed them with more style and flair than he did.

Baseball in particular, as he waxed alphabetically, was “the exponent of American Courage, Confidence, Combativeness; American. Dash, Discipline, Determination; American Energy, Eagerness, Enthusiasm; American Pluck, Persistency, Performance; American Spirit, Sagacity, Success; American Vim, Vigor, Virility.”

Just as important, Spalding recognized baseball’s ability to incorporate values and character traits associated with America’s frontier experience to the demands of an urbanized society without causing chaos or destruction. After all, as he put it, baseball was a game that taught “the man of tomorrow the absolute necessity of self-control” and the need to play by the rules as a member of a larger team, be it as baseball nine or society. The game’s “basic principle,” he emphasized, was “subordination to the rule.”

While Spalding sincerely believed in the social promise of sport, he was not a professional reformer, recreationist or moralist. Although he shared many of the sentiments and goals of such people, he was above all a flamboyant entrepreneur out to enhance his personal fortune by encouraging popular interest in sport. No effort better demonstrates all these tendencies than his world tour of professional baseball players engineered between October 1888 and April 1889 – an achievement that Henry Chadwick called “the greatest event in the modern history of athletic sports.”

Viewing himself and his ballplayers as missionaries -“representatives of the great Western Republic” – A. G., as his friends called him, hoped to spread American manliness and virtue by introducing baseball to the world in dramatic style. Baseball was also his business and Spalding intended to mix idealism with practical calculation. As he bluntly told one reporter, his reason for going to Australia was “for the purpose of extending my sporting-goods business to that quarter of the globe and to create a market for goods there.”

Spalding’s original itinerary included Australia as the only major international stop on the tour to be preceded by a brief visit to Hawaii and by a series of exhibitions in the United States both to cover expenses and, as he noted, “to make enough noise in this country so that . . . Australian people . . . will have no difficulty in hearing us long before we reach their shores.” Leaving detailed arrangements in the hands of a professional theatrical manager, he devoted his attention to assembling his entourage and publicizing his mission.

As president of the Chicago White Stockings, Spalding had little trouble securing the services of his regulars. Although he had fervently hoped that his boys would win the pennant in 1888 so that he could advertise his expedition as including the champions of America, he had to be content with a team that finished second to New York. Still it did include Cap Anson and Jimmy Ryan, who together held just about every National League batting title for the season.

Opposing the Chicago nine were the “All-Americas,” drawn predominately from other National League clubs. Although the team fielded John Ward and Eddie Crane from the first-place Giants, The Sporting News charged that Spalding had signed fourth-rate players because he was too cheap to offer the kind of money that would attract the best. Charlie Comiskey, then playing for the St. Louis Browns, noted that if he had been extended “anything like a fair inducement” he might have gone. As it was, the “figures were not even enough for cigar money,” according to Comiskey. A. G. scoffed at such criticism, noting that the paper attacked him because he had withdrawn his business advertisements from it. Besides, as Spalding remembered, the chief criteria in picking Chicago’s opposition had to do with their character and deportment. “It was absolutely essential,” he claimed, that all who . . . go should be men of clean habits and attractive personality, men who would reflect credit upon the country and the game.”

Having assembled his players, Spalding obtained a brief farewell meeting for himself and the White Stockings with President Grover Cleveland at the White House. Although disappointed in not receiving formal presidential endorsement for his venture, he did come away with an ink drawing of the event from which he had 5,000 copies made, as he put it, “for use upon the trip.” Always the businessman, Spalding also hired a hot air balloonist, one “Professor” Bartholomew, to accompany the tour just in case baseball itself was not enough to bring out the crowds.

No such problems arose during the baseball missionaries’ month-long swing through the United States. Enjoying, as the Chicago Tribune noted, the “novelty of traveling in nabob style,” the “Chicagos,” bedecked in light grey shirts, knee britches and black stockings, and the “All-Americas,” dazzling in white flannel with a silk American flag draped over their shoulders, brought out the crowds from Omaha to San Francisco in such numbers as to more than cover Spalding’s projected expenses for the entire Australian venture. And on November 17 after a San Francisco banquet that included such delicacies as petits pate a la Spalding and mashed potatoes a la softball, A.G. and his boys set off for Hawaii, on course for the land Down Under.

Spalding’s careful plans for the American “visitation” to Australia were not in vain. Enthusiastic receptions complete with greetings from local dignitaries, parades and bands playing “Yankee Doodle Dandy” preceded baseball games and cricket exhibitions from Sydney to Melbourne during the tourists’ three-week stay there. Although one Australian suggested that Professor Bartholomew’s balloon ascents provoked more interest than the exploits on the diamond, most observers were more appreciative. One correspondent for the Melbourne Punch, after noting that the “life and dash” of baseball would make it popular with his local countrymen, added that the game’s introduction in Australia would be but the “first link of a mutual friendship between the two continents.”

Comparing his country and the United States as nations of “go,” he hoped that Australia’s acceptance of baseball would guarantee that America “will always be on our side helping us on the onward path.”

American commentators offered similar appraisals. Newton MacMillan, for instance, in his Christmas day story for the Chicago Tribune, praised A.G. for achieving “a distinct coup for himself, his game and his country. The red, white and blue are the fashionable colors here just now,” he continued, “the baseball bat is mightier than the cricket paddle, and Americans are the princes of jolly good fellows.”

Nor did Spalding ignore such sentiments when he attempted to market his wares. In a special Australian version of his baseball guide, A.G. dedicated the book to the “sportsmen of Australia” and reminded them that “all those essentials of manliness, courage, nerve, pluck and endurance characteristic of the Anglo-Saxon race” were embedded in baseball. Hopeful that Australians busy in developing a large country would find baseball a quick game conducive to encouraging such traits, Spalding filled the guide with detailed playing instructions, advertisements for his baseball goods, and the location of stores in Sydney and Melbourne authorized to distribute Spalding athletic goods.

The remaining portion of A.G. `s around-the-world gambit proved cause for less ambitious plans. In the works since November but not announced publicly until December 29, 1888, Spalding proposed to introduce America’s National Game to the “crowned heads, nobles and peasantry in the Old World” by galavanting through Ceylon, Egypt, Italy, France and the British Isles. At best, however, the post-Australian excursion offered mixed results.

After leaving Melbourne early in January the tourists suffered a three-week journey across the Indian Ocean to Colombo, Ceylon, that beset them with boredom and rough seas. Hot weather, according to one reporter, left them “panting in the sun like so many lizards.” Their arrival in Ceylon went virtually unnoticed although a five-inning exhibition brought out some native spectators who “looked at us as though we were so many escaped inmates.”

From Colombo it was on to Cairo for a game at the Pyramids before “long-sheeted Bedouins” and “white-robed sons of the Desert.” After the game, according to

Spalding, the players climbed onto the Sphinx for photographs, much “to the horror of the native worshippers of Cheops and the dead Pharoahs.” No less disconcerting must have been unsuccessful efforts of several ballplayers to throw baseballs over the sacred Egyptian tombs.

Spalding’s desire to publicize his venture by playing baseball at historic sites met frustration in Italy. Astonished archeologists and Roman officials resisted his resourceful efforts to book a game in the Coliseum. Even offers of $5 ,000 along with the donation of gate receipts to local charity were to no. avail. An attempt to obtain an audience with the Pope also failed. The best A.G. could hustle was an exhibition played before the Italian King and other state officials on the stately grounds of the Villa Borghese in Rome.

Games followed in Florence and Paris, but Spalding’s thoughts were fixed on England. Rekindled were memories of 1874, when, as an advance man and young pitcher for the Boston Red Stockings, he had participated in an abortive attempt to convince the British that baseball was a better game than cricket.

His second effort produced similar results. Altogether, the “Chicagos” and the “All-Americas” played 11 games during their two-week stay in England, Ireland and Scotland. Throughout their visit the ballplayers received warm receptions, first-class accommodations, special acknowledgement in the House of Commons and even a meeting with the Prince of Wales. Less well-received, however, was the game itself. Typical were the remarks of one British observer who pronounced baseball unquestionably inferior to cricket and as much out of place in England “as a nursery frolic in the House of Commons.”

However unsuccessful Spalding’s efforts were at convincing the British of baseball’s virtues, America’s response to the tour’s homecoming softened the blow. Although

National League and American Association clubs were well into their spring exhibitions when the travel-weary band of baseballers arrived in New York after a six-month trek involving 42 games played before an estimated 200,000 people, Spalding’s contracts with the players mandated their participation in a two-week swing through nine eastern and midwestern cities before they could return to their regular jobs.

A.G., who delighted in public adulation, enjoyed every parade, banquet and testimonial from New York to Chicago. Arriving in New York to a harbor reception reported as unequaled in the city’s history, Spalding joked about how happy he was to be “back in the land where I can eat pie.”

More seriously, he told one reporter of the “Keen delight. . . which swelled through my breast this morning when I stepped ashore. I am proud to be called an American . . .”

An exhibition baseball game and a night at the opera followed, but for a man who cultivated the company of society’s finest and who strongly believed in the role of sport as an incubator of American character, Spalding must have been particularly pleased with the “notable gathering of American manhood and brain” that celebrated the tour’s return at a banquet at exclusive Delmonico’s in Manhattan.

Walls decorated with large photos of the ballplayers in Rome and Egypt reverberated with the applause of 300 guests, including Teddy Roosevelt, Mark Twain, local politicians, baseball officials, Yale undergraduates and “popular members of the New York Stock Exchange” as they paid homage to Spalding’s “feat of pluck.”

Perhaps overwhelmed by a dinner “served in nine innings,” A. G. did no more than reiterate his pleasure in being home. A host of toastmasters, however, praised his exploits in ways consistent with its intended purposes of promoting sport’s social value and of extending an American presence in the world. Proclaimed as “representatives of American manhood and citizenship” and as “gladiators . . . covered with their American manhood,” the players received praise as devotees of “manly sports” and as men ” a country that holds liberty dear must have . . . men of athletic spirit” that make “a race fit for peace and war.” More amusingly, Mark

Twain commented on the incongruity of bringing baseball, “the very symbol, the outward and visible expression of the drive and push and rush and struggle of the raging, tearing, booming nineteenth century . . . to places of profound repose and soft indolence.” He also thanked the baseballers for unshrouding the mystery surrounding the imaginary line around the world known as the equator. The “boys,” as he put it, had made it visible by “stealing bases on their bellies” around the world, “leaving a nice deep trench along the way.”

While speakers at other stops on the homecoming were not able to match Twain’s wit or eloquence, their remarks remained consistently praiseworthy of Spalding’s efforts, his game and of the social promise of sport. Typical were those of A.K. McClure of the Philadelphia Times. Speaking at a banquet in his city, McClure applauded the character and morality displayed by the Chicagos and “All-Americas” and baseball itself for nurturing such traits. “I bid you Godspeed,” he told the ballplayers, “for an institution that teaches a boy that nothing but honesty and manliness can succeed must be doing missionary work every day of its existence. It will not only make a high standard of baseball men, but the world better for its presence.”

Chicago provided the last stop on the homecoming and the city turned out en masse to cheer the returning heroes when they arrived at Union Station on the evening of April 19. Illuminated by a display of fireworks, a huge escort of representatives from more than 130 businesses and athletic organizations – among them cricketeers, lacrosse players, 1,000 bicyclists “mounted on their metal steeds,” and a special honor guard composed of employees of A.G. Spalding & Brothers – accompanied the world tourists as their carriages wove along a parade route crowded by an estimated 150,000 people on the way to the Palmer House for one final round of speech-making and revelry. As the Chicago Tribune described it, “the streets were thronged” with people from “all classes. Businessmen were in it, toughs and sports . . . also a great many ladies. And they went fairly crazy.”

Once again Spalding left it to others to draw the proper lessons from his missionary venture in ways that reinforced notions about the social purpose of sport that he believed in and that promoted his interests. More than equal to the task was Henry L. Turner, a major in Chicago’s National Guard, who praised the ballplayers for doing “grand work in attracting men away from offices and desks (and) out into the light to breathe heaven’s pure air.” Invoking baseball’s role in making “men we are proud of,” Turner proclaimed America as a “country mighty in people in courage” and urged his audience to “help . . . God in building up a country of men all powerful in protecting a country such as this. Long life to baseball and athletics,” he concluded.

Although Spalding lost $5,000 on the tour, sentiments such as Turner’s only reinforced his never-ebbed confidence in himself and his accomplishments. Never once did he doubt that the tour had laid the groundwork for the future international success of baseball, the spread of American values and the expansion of his business. Indeed, with characteristic immodesty, his 1889 Baseball Guide praised his leadership for undertaking “a bold and plucky” venture that “did in six short months what so many years under ordinary circumstances would have failed to accomplish.”

Whether orchestrating the invention of baseball as America’s immaculate conception, making speeches before P.S.A.L.’s on behalf of his friends in the organized play movement or promoting his autobiographical account of the history of baseball, America’s National Game, published in 1911, Spalding remained consistent in his efforts to offer middle-class Americans encouragement and justification for baseball and other sport as acceptable leisure-time pursuits that provided positive social purpose. Even his unsuccessful bid to capture a U.S. Senate seat in California in 1910 hinged on a campaign that credited his baseball career as making him fit to hold office. In an age of true believers about American exceptionalism and superiority there is no question that Spalding honestly saw the game he helped organize as an expression of such sentiments and as a vehicle for its promotion.

Five years after his Senate defeat, on September 10, 1915, as one newspaper reporter put it, Spalding “was called out”- dead from apoplexy at the age of 65. Baseball fans from coast to coast,” the obituary continued, “and tens of thousands of small boys, who remind each other on the vacant lots to ‘hold the bat with the Spalding up,’ will feel a personal loss in the death of the ‘father of baseball.’”

A.G. would have liked that touch. Nor would he have minded the inscription on his plaque at Cooperstown – “the organizational genius of baseball’s pioneer days” and the organizer of base ball’s first round the world tour.”

Spalding was an empire builder, and his imperial vision like many of his time – stretched to the corners of the globe.

Baseball surely was not American in origin, but its persistence as our national pastime and the establishment of sport as a significant social and commercial institution of American life, for better or for worse, owes much to Albert Goodwill Spalding, who had a nose for business and a knack for promoting himself and his game.