The tradition of selecting a Rookie of the Year in the major leagues dates back to 1946. Late that year The Sporting News introduced a new award honoring the top freshman performer and chose outfielder Del Ennis of the Philadelphia Phillies as the initial recipient. The following year the Baseball Writers’ Association of America also began naming the majors’ top rookie. Both the BBWAA and The Sporting News picked first baseman Jackie Robinson of the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1947. Two years later TSN and the BBWAA each began choosing the No. 1 rookie in each league. The Sporting News split the honor even further starting in 1957 by selecting a rookie player and rookie pitcher for each league.

But, many of us wondered, who were the best rookies in the seasons prior to 1946? Were Walter Johnson in 1907 and Babe Ruth in 1915 the outstanding American League rookies for those years? Did National League greats Paul Waner, Mel Ott and Dizzy Dean rate as the best first-year men in 1926, 1927, and 1932, respectively? And what about Carl Hubbell, Lefty Grove, Stan Musial and Ted Williams? Following a conversation several years ago between Marty Appel, then of the Commissioner’s office, and SABR founder Bob Davids, it was decided to conduct a poll to determine who the leading rookies were for each league in each pre-l949 season.

Over the course of several years ballots listing the top several rookies for each year in both leagues were sent to the SABR membership, which responded in a most enthusiastic manner. The winners who were chosen by the collective wisdom of SABR are presented in the accompanying table. The voting was done on a 5-3-1 point basis for first, second and third places, the same method used in the BBWAA’s current selection process. To be considered a rookie, a player could not have had more than 90 official at-bats or have pitched more than 45 innings in previous major league seasons. Thus, Joe Jackson, who batted .408 for Cleveland in his first full year, 1911, was not eligible for consideration because he had accumulated 115 at-bats in the previous three seasons.

The winners have included such Hall of Famers as the aforementioned Ruth, Waner, Dean and Williams, as well as Christy Mathewson, Rogers Hornsby, Joe DiMaggio and others. They also have included such relatively obscure players as Glen Liebhardt, Homer Smoot, Tommy Long and Ed Morris. They have ranged in age from 20-year-olds like Ruth, Hornsby, Mathewson and Chief Bender to Joe Berry, who was 39 in his rookie season of 1944.

For many winners their rookie year was the best they experienced in the major leagues. This category would include American League winners Russ Ford, Scott Perry, Hugh Bedient, Homer Summa, Wilcy Moore and Jake Powell. Some National League winners whose rookie year was their finest were Jack Pfiester, George McQuillan, Larry Cheney, Jim Viox, Hack Miller, Dick Cox and Cy Blanton.

Although Grover Alexander in 1911 had what is considered to be the best rookie season of any pitcher, his selection by SABR voters was not unanimous. Nor were those of Ruth, Williams, DiMaggio, Hornsby, the Waners, Hal Trosky or Joe Vosmik. They are among the winners who were chosen on all but a handful of the hundreds of ballots cast. Some races were so close they weren’t decided until the last few ballots had been counted. Several examples would be Nap Rucker over Mike Mitchell (N.L. 1907), Lefty Williams over Jim Bagby (A.L. 1916), Paul Dean over Curt Davis (N.L. 1934), Hoot Evers over Bob Dillinger (A.L. 1946) and Frank Shea over Sam Mele (A.L. 1947).

It is probably not surprising that pitchers won the award for almost half of the years surveyed- 23 in the N.L. and22 in the A. L. Their dominance was most pronounced in the era of the alleged “dead ball,” with hurlers being selected 13 times in the N.L. and 14 in the A.L. between 1901 and 1919. Pitchers won the award in both leagues each year during the 1907-1912 period.

By contrast, Billy Sullivan of Boston, the National League winner in 1900, was the only full-time catcher so honored. Rudy York, the A.L. winner in 1937, split his defensive duties between catcher and third base. Sullivan’s win was accomplished against a small and mediocre field. The National League had reduced from twelve teams to eight in 1900, resulting in a scramble for jobs and limited opportunities for rookies.

The World War II year of 1944 arguably produced the American League’s poorest rookie crop. Honors went to 39-year-old relief pitcher Joe Berry of the Philadelphia Athletics, who edged 35-year-old pitcher Sig Jakucki of the pennant-winning St. Louis Browns in a close race. However, without a doubt the weakest group ever were the National League rookies of 1919. In this postwar year the winner among three candidates was Cardinal relief pitcher Oscar Tuero, who had a 5-7 won-lost record.

Tuero had pitched 44’/3 innings for St. Louis in 1918 and thus barely qualified as a rookie in 1919. In 1920, after pitching only two-thirds of an inning, he was back in the minor leagues, where he continued to pitch until 1941, finishing with 269 minor league wins.

At the other extreme there were seasons in which many future greats came up to the big leagues together. Such a year was 1925 in the A.L. when future Hall of Famers Earle Combs, Mickey Cochrane and Lou Gehrig ranked 1-2-3 in the voting. Finishing seventh in that year’s poll was the man who would go on to become the greatest lefthanded pitcher in the league’s history – Lefty Grove. Another banner rookie year for the American League was 1929. Behind winner Dale Alexander were Wes Ferrell, Earl Averill, Bill Dickey and Roy Johnson in that order.

In the National League rookie race of 1902 the St. Louis Cardinals’ trio of center fielder Homer Smoot, pitcher Mike O’Neill and left fielder George Barclay finished 1-2-3. This sweep was surpassed by the 1924 Pittsburgh Pirates, who had the top four finishers: Kiki Cuyler (if), Glenn Wright (ss), Emil Yde (p) and Ray Kremer (p). All four also had excellent sophomore seasons in helping the Pirates to the 1925 world championship.

The Cardinals led the N.L. in rookie-of-the-year selections for the 1900-1948 period with 11. The St. Louis club’s domination was especially noticeable in the early 1940s. In 1941 Redbirds Ernie White (p), Frank Crespi (2b) and Howie Krist (p) finished 2-3-4 behind Cincinnati pitcher Elmer Riddle. In 1942 Cardinal pitcher John Beazley was the winner, edging teammate Stan Musial. During the next three years the Cards had two winners – second basemen Lou Klein in 1943 and pitcher Ken Burkhart in 1945 – and one runner-up, pitcher Ted Wilks in 1944. These products of Branch Rickey’s extensive farm system helped lead St. Louis to four pennants and three World Series titles between 1942 and 1946. Notable Cardinal winners from previous years included Rogers Hornsby, Dizzy and Paul Dean and Johnny Mize.

The Cubs, who were the only N.L. team to have the leading rookie in three consecutive years (1921-23), had ten winners in all. Brooklyn had nine and Pittsburgh eight, including the Waner brothers, Paul and Lloyd, who were the picks for 1926 and 1927, respectively.

Following the selection of Mathewson in 1901, the Giants did not have another winner until journeyman first baseman Babe Young was chosen in 1940. Pitcher Bill Voiselle, in 1944, was the only other Giant choice.

Cleveland (with eleven) and the Yankees (with ten) were the biggest winners in the A.L. for the pre-1949 period.

Although no American League team matched the “sweeps” of the 1902 Cardinals and the 1924 Pirates, the 1905 St. Louis Browns came close. In addition to the winner, left fielder George Stone, three other Browns finished third, fourth and sixth. In the closely contested race of 1946, Brownies Bob Dillinger (3b), Chuck Stevens (1b) and Cliff Fannin (p) rated 2-3-4 behind Hoot Evers of Detroit. In the previously mentioned 1925 A.L. race when Combs and Gehrig wound up first and third, another Yankee, outfielder Ben Paschal, finished fourth. The selections of Tony Lazzeri in 1926 and Wilcy Moore in 1927 gave the Yankees the distinction of being the only A.L. team to have winners in three consecutive seasons.

New York’s domination of the American League that produced seven pennants and six world championships in eight years in 1936-1943 can be traced to an exceptional group of rookies that joined the club during that period.

Joe DiMaggio was the runaway winner for 1936. The next year Tommy Henrich and Spud Chandler finished second and third. Joe Gordon was the runner-up in `38, as was Charlie Keller in `39. Atley Donald and Marius Russo also made their debuts that year, and Ernie Bonham did so in 1940. The next three years brought Phil Rizzuto, the winner in 1941, and runners-up Hank Borowy in 1942 and Billy Johnson in 1943.

In only 11 seasons in each league did the Rookie of the Year play for a pennant-winning team, and only in 1927, 1947 and 1948 did both World Series participants have their league’s best rookies.

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This article proposes a way to measure this value. This measure is certainly not perfect (no sport measurement is), but it is useful for comparing lifetime achievements. The overall rating starts with a Batting Factor, to which a Running Factor and a Fielding Factor are added, with adjustments for conditions in various years. Then the overall rating was calculated for all players with at least five years’ experience as a regular major league shortstop and who had a majority of their good years since 1900. Cal Ripken was included in this list even though he had played only four years as a regular shortstop through 1985.

Batting Factor

John Thom and Pete Palmer in their outstanding book, The Hidden Game of Baseball, use “On Base Plus Slugging” (OPS) as a measure of batting achievement. This is the best simple, overall statistic for batting in a given year. It is defined as the On Base Average (OBA) plus the Slugging Average (SA). Here, a true “average” is needed, so the Batting Factor (BF) is defined as OPS divided by 2 or   

OBA + SA
2

Of course, SA=TB/AB where TB = Total Bases and AB = At Bats.  Ideally, OBA should be  

H + BB + HPB + RBE
AB + BB + HPB + SF

where H = Hits, BB = Bases on Balls, HPB = Hit by Pitched Balls, RBE = Reached Base on Error and SF = Sacrifice Flies in those years when they have not been charged as a time at bat. However, RBE is not available in standard baseball statistics so the common version is OBA =

H + BB + HPB
AB + BB + HPB + SF

For some years, HPB was not included in the official statistics, so for those years OBA =

H + BB
AB + BB + SF

Using these definitions, a player’s batting factor for a particular year is defined as BF_iy =

OBA_iy + SA_iy
2

where “i” stands for a particular individual and “y” is a particular year.

In order to compare players from different periods, an adjustment must be made for the year in which the player performed. Obviously, it was easier to achieve a high BF_iy in 1930 than in 1968. The adjustment is based on relating BF_iy to the comparable data for all of the league’s batters that year.  Thus, BF_Ly =

OBA_Ly + SA_Ly
2

where “L” stands for the league and the data includes all non-pitchers. This takes into account the change due to the introduction of the Designated Hitter in the American League in 1973.  An arbitrary norm of BF_L = .375 has been used.  The specific number is arbitrary, but that doesn’t matter because the final results are relative comparisons and not absolute numbers. For these years where HPB is not in the official statistics, this decreases BF_Ly  by an average of .003, so for these years BF_L = .372. Therefore, the final

where BF_L is either .375 or .372 depending upon whether HPB is included in or excluded from the official statistics.

Running Factor

Speed is a plus factor in many ways in baseball. Unfortunately, the only available statistics are Stolen Bases (SB) and Caught Stealing (CS), and for many years Caught Stealing was not included in the official statistics.

So, one must start with what is available. A stolen base is a way of extending a hit. With no one on base, there is no difference between a batter stretching a single into a double and someone hitting a single and stealing second base. However, the former gets two TB in computing SA and the latter gets only one. So net stolen bases (SB – CS) can be viewed as an addition to TB in calculating SA.  Since SA = TB/AB, the base stealing adjustment would be SB – CS / AB.

But SA is one of two components of the Batting Factor.  The other, OBA, is not affected by base stealing.  Because the player’s Running Factor (RF) is an increment to the Batting Factor, it should be

However, this running factor has two limitations.  The first is that a stolen base affects only the one runner, whereas an extra-base hit can advance other runners.  On this basis, the running factor gives too much credit to the player. On the other hand, there is more to running than stealing bases. This formula does not credit a player’s speed for:

• taking an extra base on someone else’s hit or out;
• putting pressure on the defense, resulting in additional RBE’s and errors on stolen base attempts;
• putting pressure on the opposing pitchers by threatening to steal, sometimes disturbing the pitcher’s concentration, and often giving the next batter confidence that he can expect more fast balls;
• avoiding grounding into double plays.

Since these factors are hard to quantify, it is assumed here that they justify the extra credit that the running factor gives a base-stealer. If the necessary data could be produced they would probably show that the upward adjustment factors are somewhat greater than the reverse, and that this formula for RF slightly penalizes the great running shortstops.

RF_iy could also have been adjusted by the average amount of base stealing in a league year the same way that BF_iy was adjusted. However, RF_iy is a very small component of the player’s total rating, and the adjustment factor would have been tiny (less than one percent of the final rating in every case) so, for convenience and ease of computation, it was not included.

One adjustment was necessary. The years where CS data were not available had to be included. In these cases an average base stealing rate of 75% was assumed, which is a reasonable historical figure for players who do a lot of running. It overstates the success rate for players who rarely attempt to steal, but in those cases the effect of the overstatement on the running factor is quite small. A 75% rate means CS = SB/3 and thus, RF_{iy =}    

for years when CS data are not available.

Fielding Factor

Since the start of major league baseball more than 100 years ago, Fielding Average (FA) has been the usual statistical measure of fielding performance. Unfortunately, FA isn’t a good indicator of fielding ability. The positive elements of FA – putouts (PO) and assists (A) – are satisfactory, but the negative element – errors (E) – is only one of two actual negative fielding elements.

The second is that a poorer fielder doesn’t reach a ball that a better fielder would have reached or doesn’t make a throw quickly enough or doesn’t field a bad hop that someone with quicker hands might have fielded. These missed opportunities occur far more frequently than do actual errors and, therefore, are more important in evaluating fielding performances. Unfortunately, there is no direct measure of these missed opportunities.

In an attempt to measure this indirectly, baseball people for many years have used some form of range factor, usually defined as

PO + A
G

where G is games played, or Total Chances Per Game: 

PO + A + E
G

This concept was introduced by Al Wright in 1875. It was revived by Irwin M. Howe, the statistician for the American League, who ranked A.L. fielders this way in 1914. Subsequently, Branch Rickey and many other baseball executives used these measures to evaluate players. This author used the concept in 1969 in The Baseball Encyclopedia and Bill James has used it in his Baseball Abstracts.

There are two problems with this way of measuring fielding. The first is that its usefulness varies greatly by position. The principle works quite well for shortstops and third basemen. It is not as good for second basemen because they are more dependent on other players than are shortstops or third basemen. For example, the second baseman more often covers second base on steal attempts and most often is the middleman on double play attempts.

For outfielders, this approach is not very good. Putouts by outfielders are significantly affected by the stadium dimensions and by the fact that two outfielders can often reach the same ball so that an outfielder playing alongside a slower teammate will tend to have more putouts than one playing next to a speedy ball hawk. Assists by outfielders are even more unreliable because runners will often not try to advance on the great throwing arms.

For first basemen, this way of looking at fielding is a poor measure. The assists-per-game system is interesting, but it varies with the style of the first baseman. Some first basemen prefer to throw to the pitcher covering the bag on nearly every grounder they field, while others prefer to run to the base and these players do not get an assist. Moreover, much of a first baseman’s defensive skill is in handling poor throws from the other infielders, and total putouts provide no indication of this skill.

For catchers, these measures are useless. Range is simply not a factor. The catcher’s percentage of throwing out opposing base-stealers provides some indication of his throwing arm, but even this is often more a reflection of the pitcher than the catcher. Most importantly, the catcher’s primary defensive skill is handling pitchers, and no one has yet devised a statistical measure for this.

The second problem with these measures is that they are based on the implicit assumption that all fielders at one position get the same number of opportunities to make a putout or assist per game played. This, of course, isn’t true. Even for shortstops and third basemen, the nature of the pitching staff and chance factors will produce some variation in number of opportunities. As a result, these range factors can vary significantly from year to year. However, with the addition of a few modifications discussed later, the range factor does provide a valid measure of a shortstop’s lifetime fielding performance.

The Fielding Factor (FF_iy) calculation starts with the Fielding Range (FR_iy), defined as FR_iy = 

PO_iy + A_iy
G_iy

Of course, all data are for games played at shortstop only. To make this as valid as possible G_iy should be complete game equivalents, or defensive innings played at shortstop divided by 9. This distinction is inconsequential for Joe Tinker or any of the early twentieth-century players. It is, however, very important for a player like Mark Belanger, who was often pinch-hit for and who sometimes entered the game only as a late-inning defensive replacement.

The proper way to calculate G_iy would have been to look at every boxscore where more than one shortstop played for a team and estimate the number of innings played by each. This was done for 1984 and 1985, but it was too monumental a task for the entire project, so for all other years G_iy was figured by analyzing the final season fielding data for everyone who played shortstop for the team and year in question and estimating the number of complete game equivalents for each.

One effect of the pitching staff on a shortstop’s opportunities can be measured and dealt with. If the pitchers strike out a large number of opposing batters, all the fielders will have somewhat fewer opportunities. For this paper, an adjustment was made if the Pitchers’ Strikeouts (PSO) for the team (T) in question exceeded the average for the other teams in the league that year by 0.5 per game or more. It was then assumed that one-sixth of the reduced opportunities would have gone to the shortstop.  Thus, where this adjustment was necessary, FR_iy = 

where  Nl_y  is the number of teams in the league that year.

The next step was to convert the absolute measure, FR_iy, into a Relative Fielding Range (RFR) by comparing the individual data to the league average. Thus, RFR_iy =

This also includes the necessary adjustment for conditions in different years. RFR_iy  is a measure of the number of PO + A per game that this shortstop was able to get compared to the average of his peers in his league for the year in question. This was related to the Batting Factor by simply assuming that each extra putout or assist prevented an opponent’s single and, therefore, is the equivalent of a batter’s single. Thus, the increment to the player’s SA is  

where AB_LY is the total number of At-Bats for the league that year, including pitchers, and the “9” is the number of positions in the batting order. Similarly, the effect on OBA is the same except that Plate Appearances is substituted for At-Bats. Therefore, the Fielding Factor is

Longevity Factor and Lifetime Rating

In trying to calculate a shortstop’s lifetime rating, an important question was – which years should be included? The first and easiest decision was to include only years where the player was the regular shortstop.

However, if that had been the only decision, those players who had many years as a regular shortstop and who continued to play regular shortstop even when their performance declined late in their careers would be penalized while those whose performance tailed off even more and who were switched to third base or first base or who lost their regular jobs completely would not be penalized.

This problem was addressed in two ways. First, if a player’s yearly rating (BF_iy + RF_iy + FF_iy) declined significantly after reaching the age of 35 or after completing ten years or more as a major league regular shortstop, those final declining years of his career were not included. Second, an arbitrary Longevity Factor (LF_i) was awarded based on the number of years actually included in the Lifetime Rating. For each year more than ten, the player was awarded .005 and for each year less than ten .005 was subtracted. Thus, the Lifetime Rating, LR_i =  

where Y is the number of years included and Σ_y means the sum of each year’s factors.

Results

The Lifetime Ratings and the main components, of those ratings are shown in the accompanying table. The results are evident from looking at the table, but a few observations are in order. The first is that anyone who can play five years as a regular major league shortstop is an excellent baseball player, regardless of his ranking on this list. Another thing to note is that several of these players, including Ernie Banks, Harvey Kuenn, Buck Weaver and Toby Harrah, spent much of their careers at other positions. The data shown in the table reflect only their years at shortstop.

The most obvious feature of the results is that they support the reputation of Honus Wagner as the greatest shortstop of all time – and by a wide margin. In fact, Wagner is first in Batting Factor, second in Running Factor and fifth in Fielding Factor – a remarkable all-around player. Behind Wagner are two other Hall of Famers from the game’s earlier years, Dave Bancroft and Bobby Wallace. Looking further down the list, an obvious conclusion is that the Hall of Fame electors have not been as stupid as some of their critics have charged. The 14 shortstops enshrined in Cooperstown are all in the top 19 eligibles on the list. The people who complained about shortstops such as Wallace, Tinker or Maranville being enshrined were, once again, relying on batting statistics only. Moreover, these data suggest that Ray Chapman, Donie Bush and Dick Bartell should join them in Cooperstown.

Finally, we return to Ozzie Smith and his contract. Maybe the Cardinals, like the Hall of Fame electors, aren’t so dumb after all. How many other active players would rank in the top five on an all-time list at their position? The only other player who would probably make such a list is Mike Schmidt, and he is in the same salary range as Ozzie Smith, even though Schmidt, at age 36, may be in the twilight of his career.

DAVID S. NEFT is co-author of The Sports Encyclopedia – Baseball and The World Series.

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Although Bentley is best remembered as a minor league slugger, he actually broke into professional baseball as a pitcher – and in the major leagues, at that. As an 18-year-old in 1913, he appeared in three games with the Washington Senators. In his only start he pitched eight innings of three-hit ball and combined with Bert Gallia to shut out the champion Philadelphia Athletics, 1-0.

John Needles Bentley was born March 8, 1895 to a thriving Quaker family on a farm near Sandy Spring, Md., about 30 miles from Baltimore. In 1912, while attending the George School, a Quaker institution in Bucks County, Pa., with the intention of going to college, he was approached by Bert Conn, manager of the Johnstown team of the Class B Tri-State League, and offered a contract as an outfielder at $75 a month. However, the youngster declined the offer and returned home to help harvest the crops after the school term ended.

Had Bentley signed with Johnstown, his career might have taken a far different course. When he signed with the Senators the following spring, Clark Griffith decided to make him a pitcher, a position Jack had played only his last year in prep school. For most of his pro career he was shifted from pitcher to first base and even to the outfield.

In four seasons with Washington (1913-1916), he appeared in 39 games, winning six and losing ten. The Senators sent him to Minneapolis in 1916, and it was from that team that Jack Dunn of the Baltimore Orioles acquired him.

In 1917 Dunn decided to make Bentley a first baseman, the position for which he always considered Jack best suited. Bentley hit .345 that season and appeared on his way back to the major leagues. However, circumstances, in the form of military service, intervened.

Although Bentley as a Quaker could have claimed exemption from the draft, he entered the Army as a private despite the objections of some members of his faith. Sent to France, he was under fire for more than 60 days in the front-line trenches and rose to the rank of lieutenant. He served for approximately 19 months.

When Bentley rejoined the Orioles in 1920, he became the star of the team and the league. Dunn, who had developed many great major leaguers, considered Bentley the best. Bentley’s records, particularly in 1921, provide the evidence. He hit .412 that season to lead not only the International League but all of the minors. He made 246 hits for a total of 397 bases, scored 122 runs, and hit 24 homers. Pitching occasionally, he won 12 games and lost only one. Although major league teams were eager to buy him, Dunn would not sell him, and speculation increased about how the minor-league Paul Bunyan would do in the majors.

In 1922, Bentley continued to dazzle and was the greatest drawing card the International League had known in years. Playing in every game either as a pitcher or at first base, he won 13 games and lost only two with an ERA of 1.73. He hit .351 with 22 home runs and 39 doubles, drove in 128 runs and scored 109. A tailor in

Baltimore had advertised that he would give a free suit of clothes to every Oriole player who hit a home run. After Bentley had collected eight suits, he suggested a compromise to the tailor. He would take one suit for every four home runs – a suggestion the tailor happily accepted. Bentley explained, “I didn’t want to break the poor fellow.”

All the while Bentley was becoming increasingly frustrated because Dunn, who wanted to retain his stars to bolster Baltimore attendance, declined to sell him to a major league team. Baseball rules at that time prevented drafting players from the top minors, and Dunn kept telling his star that no major league team wanted to purchase his contract.

Jack decided to check Dunn’s veracity. After the International League season of 1922, he went to the Polo Grounds to see John McGraw. The Giants’ manager told Bentley, “I’ve been trying to buy you for three years.”

McGraw gave Bentley a check for $35,000 to take back to Dunn to call his bluff. Negotiations then began to move, and Dunn finally agreed to sell Bentley to the Giants for $65,000 and a couple of players. When McGraw couldn’t supply the players specified, he gave Dunn an additional $7,000. Thus Bentley was in the majors for $72,000, an unprecedented price.

Once Bentley had reached the majors, another problem arose, one which he himself helped to create. He refused to report to the Giants’ training camp in San Antonio, Tex., unless Dunn (or the Giants) gave him $5,000 of the sale price. Dunn had set a precedent by giving some of his former stars a portion of the money he had received when he had sold them. Bentley pointed out that he had been the home-run king as well as the best player in the International League. Both Dunn and McGraw refused to yield, and Bentley remained at his home in Maryland. McGraw, desperate for lefthanded pitching (the only southpaw on the Giants’ staff was the superb Art Nehf), labeled Bentley’s demands outrageous and urged the player to report and work himself into shape pending settlement of the dispute with Dunn.

McGraw wired Bentley, “The sooner you get here, the better it will be for you. A place on the pitching staff is waiting for you, but you must be in condition by the opening of the season.” Bentley wired back, “Tell that to Dunn.”

After he supposedly had received part of the purchase price, Bentley arrived at training camp 20 pounds over his playing weight of 200. McGraw was furious and ordered the latecomer to run miles around the park every day wearing a rubber shirt and sweatshirt under a heavy flannel uniform. Although Bentley trained hard and was in shape by the time the team reached New York, McGraw remembered Bentley’s bold demands.

Bentley’s delay in reporting provided McGraw the opportunity to play several practical jokes on the team’s traveling secretary, Jim Tierney. On one occasion the Giants’ manager registered Bentley at the team’s hotel and had a room assigned to him. Tierney called the room and searched the hotel, thinking the player had arrived. That night McGraw told Tierney to wait near the desk to meet Bentley, who supposedly was to arrive that night. Hours went by with Tierney keeping his vigil. At 2:30 a. m., a telephone call came for Tierney. The voice on the other end was McGraw’s, cleverly disguised, saying, “This is Jack Bentley.” The supposed Bentley went on to say that he was in jail in New Braunfels, Tex., and needed $500 for bail. When he had been stopped for speeding, the caller said, the officer had found several quarts of liquor in the car and had tried to take it, whereupon he (the supposed Bentley) had slugged him. The agitated Tierney promptly rushed to tell McGraw. The manager and several newsmen in his room had intended to go along with the gag, but they could not hold back their laughter at the sight of the flustered Tierney.

When Bentley actually arrived, he impressed his teammates. Broad shouldered, dark, good looking with a ready wit and a booming bass-baritone voice (exercised in amateur quartets back in Maryland), he had the poise of a champion. The veteran Nehf said of Bentley, “I never saw anybody who looked more like a major league ballplayer – or acted like one is supposed to act.”

Bentley’s unusual batting style and pitching delivery also drew attention. He stood at the plate with feet close together, and as the pitcher released the ball, he raised one leg and swung while standing on the other leg. Mel Ott, a later Giant great, hit in much the same way. Bentley’s pitching windup involved what one writer called “a set number of astonishing gyrations” that ended with his turning his back almost completely to the hitter just before he released the ball. One is reminded of the contortions of the much-traveled Luis Tiant.

But circumstances again impinged on Bentley’s career. Because George Kelly had the first base job cinched, Bentley could not play the position for which he felt he was best suited. Nor would McGraw play him in the outfield. He was used only as a pitcher and pinch-hitter. Nevertheless he played an important role in the Giants’ winning the 1923 pennant. More significant than his pitching (he won 13 and lost eight) was his .427 batting average, with ten of his hits coming in 20 pinch-hitting appearances.

In his first at-bat as a pinch-hitter in the World Series against the Yankees, Bentley singled. Although he was hit hard and lost his only decision in the Series, he had three hits in five at-bats, two of them as a pinch-hitter.

In 1924, Bentley’s pitching record improved to 16-5, but he hit only .265. However, in the World Series against the Washington Senators he walloped a two-run homer in the fifth game and beat Walter Johnson, 6-2. In that game, his only World Series victory, he pitched well for seåven and one-third innings before he was relieved.

It was in the deciding seventh game that circumstances in the form of two of the most unusual breaks in World Series history, both in the twelfth inning, led to Bentley’s defeat and a world championship for Washington. Pitching magnificently in relief, Bentley had retired one man in the twelfth and would have been out of the inning except for two unusual incidents. Muddy Ruel, the Senators’ weak-hitting catcher, lifted an easy foul pop-up. Hank Gowdy, the Giants’ catcher, did not toss his mask far enough away and consequently stepped on it, stumbled and failed to catch the ball. Given another chance, Ruel doubled. Shortstop Travis Jackson then fumbled Johnson’s grounder, an error on what should have been the third out. Next Earl McNeely’s easy grounder struck a pebble and bounced over third baseman Freddy Lindstrom’s head, allowing Ruel to score the winning run. Once again Bentley was the victim of circumstances. The following year Bentley’s pitching record was 11-9. However, he hit .303, including nine hits in 29 at-bats as a pinch-hitter.

In 1926 Bentley’s career went suddenly downhill. Early in the season the Giants sent him to Philadelphia. With the Phillies he received the chance to play first base in 56 games, but hit only .258 for the season. He pitched in only eight games, seven of them for the Phillies, with no wins and two losses and an ERA of 8.49.

Back with the Giants briefly in 1927, he appeared in eight games. One of his two hits was a home run. He then returned to the minors, never having fulfilled his promise. Perhaps he had played his best in Baltimore during the years that Dunn had refused to sell him to the majors.

After his retirement, Bentley had no financial problems. During his major league career he had prospered from selling automobiles and raising hunting dogs during the winter. At one time he had more than 100 in his pack and took pride in the championships they won. Later he became a sales representative for a national company. Nor did Bentley, who according to Lindstrom was something of a philosopher, have any worries or regrets.

In September of 1923 he told an interviewer, “One thing that I have learned to do is don’t worry. In France I never worried. When I was under fire, sleeping on the ground, listening to exploding shells, I used to say to myself, `Well, I might be in the hospital or cemetery!’ You have to take things as they come in baseball as elsewhere.”

On October 24, 1969, Bentley died at his home in Sandy Spring. The next day the New York Times printed a brief obituary along with a photograph. Perhaps, had circumstances been different, Bentley might have achieved the stardom for which he had appeared destined and the obituary would have been more than a few cursory paragraphs. But the player who once said, “I began too early at the top” and “I know I shall never be as good a player as I might have been” wouldn’t have been disturbed that his passing did not receive more attention. With his usual philosophic resignation and good nature, he’d have taken it as the major leaguer he was, both in baseball and in life.

Connie Mack, the sweet-natured owner of the Philadelphia A’s, watched Judy dance around the bag at Shibe Park in the 1920s and sighed. If Johnson were only white, Mack said, “he could write his own price.”

The old Negro leagues produced many great third basemen – Jud Wilson, Oliver (Ghost) Marcelle and Ray Dandridge. But many authorities consider Johnson the finest of all.

Dandridge may have been flashier, but Johnson “was like a rock,” commented ex-outfielder Jimmy Crutchfield, “a steadying influence on the club. Had a great brain, could anticipate a play, knew what his opponents were going to do.” “He had intelligence and finesse,” explained Willie Wells, one of the game’s great shortstops.

Judy was an excellent sign-stealer, too, Ted Page pointed out. “He and Josh Gibson – boy, they trapped more men off third base! Judy’d put a little whistle on to Josh, who was catching, and I’d say, ‘Oh, oh, they got something cooking.'”

In Cincinnati in the 1930s the Crawfords were playing a team of white big league all-stars. Leo Durocher reached third base and began dancing off the bag down the line to rattle the pitcher. Judy gave Gibson “the whistle.”

“Durocher started in toward home,” Johnson recalled, “and I moved up with him. Then I just backed up, put my foot about two feet in front of the base. Josh had the best snap, wouldn’t move to throw, just snapped the ball. I caught it. Here comes Durocher sliding in and the umpire says, ‘You’re out.’ “

Some 20 years later Johnson and his wife were leaving Milwaukee County Stadium, where their son-in-law, Bill Bruton, had just finished playing a World Series game against the New York Yankees. In the crowd they jostled against none other than Durocher. “Leo,” Judy said, “do you remember playing a barnstorming game in Cincinnati back in 1934 or so?”

Durocher stepped back and blinked. “Yes,” he responded, “I remember you, Judy, damn your soul. That’s the day you tricked me.” Johnson was born October 26, 1899 in Snow Hill on Maryland’s eastern shore, not far from the birthplace of another famous Hall of Fame third baseman, Frank “Home Run” Baker.

Judy remembers frosty mornings in Snow Hill. He and his sister slept in a loft which they reached by climbing a ladder and awoke to the smell of country breakfast cooking. His father, a sailor, moved the family to Wilmington, Del., when Judy was about ten.

Johnson recalls his first uniform vividly. His mother sewed a big “D” on the shirt for the team he played on. “I was strutting around at 5 a. m., even though we didn’t play until two in the afternoon,” he said.

After a game he always managed to hang around the team captain’s house to talk baseball – and to steal glances at the captain’s sister, Anita. Somehow he and Anita ended up sitting on the bench in front of the house until her father coughed. “That meant, ‘Get,’ ” Judy explained. “She’d walk me to the corner, and I’d give her a ‘hit-and-run’ kiss.” The two were married for more than 60 years until her death in 1986.

Anita became a school teacher. In later years when Judy went to Cuba to play winter ball, she stayed home, adding her salary to the family income. Without her, Judy said emotionally, “I probably couldn’t have been a ball player. She was a great, great woman.”

Johnson received his first big break when many of the black league stars were summoned into service in World War I and he got a call to play with the Bacharach Giants, at the age of 18, for a salary of $5 a game.

In 1919 he tried out for the famous Philadelphia Hilldales but was rejected as being too small. Judy then joined the Madison Stars of Philadelphia, a training ground for the Hilldales, who were fast developing into the top black club in the East.

The Hilldales had been organized some eight years earlier as a neighborhood amateur club in Darby, a suburb south of Philadelphia. Ed Bolden, a taciturn postal official, took over the club and began signing professional players. By 1920 he was ready to bring up young Johnson, paying the Madison Stars the munificent sum of$ 100. Judy understudied Bill “Brodie” Francis that season and the next spring took over the third base job from Francis.

The Hilldales built up a rapid fan following. “We had our own park in Darby,” Johnson explained, “and our crowds got so large we had to enlarge the park – not just for Negroes, but for white fans, too. Both the Athletics and Phillies were down in the standings and people were getting season tickets to see us. You couldn’t buy a box seat.”

Rookies were at the bottom of the pecking order in those days. “Here, Slacky, take my bats,” catcher Louis Santop ordered Johnson one day after the team had played in New York. While the older players took the subway to Harlem for a little fun, they made Judy catch a train back to Philadelphia laden with Santop’s uniform roll and bat bag plus his own equipment. “I looked like a porter,” Johnson recalled. “I had to hire a taxi to carry those bats. But you had to do it.”

In 1923 Bolden formed the Eastern Colored League with his own team plus the Bacharach Giants of Atlantic City, the Cuban Stars, Harrisburg Giants, Baltimore Black Sox, New York Lincoln Giants and Brooklyn Royal Giants. He also raided Rube Foster’s Negro National League, signing catcher Raleigh “Biz” Mackey, first baseman George “Tank” Can and second baseman Frank Warfield to give the Hilldales the strongest team in the East. Johnson’s contribution was a modest .237 batting average, but he played a strong, steady game at third base.

Judy journeyed to Cuba that winter, along with many black and white stars from the States. Against the stellar pitching of Dolph Luque, Jess Petty, Fred Fitzsimmons and most of the two Negro leagues’ top hurlers, Johnson raised his average to .345.

He hit a solid .327 during the summer of 1924 as the Hilldales repeated as champions. That fall, in black baseball’s first World Series, the Hilldales faced the Kansas City Monarchs, champs of the western or Negro National League. Because of a tie, the best-of-nine series actually went ten games before the Monarchs emerged victorious. Judy led the hitters on both teams with a .364 average. His 16 hits included six doubles, a triple and a home run, the latter an inside-the-park job with two aboard in the ninth inning to win Game 6 for the Hilldales.

The following year the Hilldales captured their third straight flag and grimly entrained for Kansas City for a chance at revenge against the Monarchs. This time the Hilldales, after losing the first two games, bounced back to win the next three and gain the championship. Johnson hit an even .300 in the five-game series.

That winter Johnson joined many other black stars who were finding Palm Beach, Fla., to be a lucrative wintering spot. Two rival hotels, the Breakers and the Poinciana, signed the best black professional ball players to wait on tables and to entertain guests on the baseball diamond. The rivalry between the two hotels was intense, but it was the opportunity to make money that lured many of the players. The pay and tips were excellent. In addition, there were floating crap games and, for the really adventurous, rum running from nearby Cuba to the Prohibitionist but thirsty mainland.

Judy didn’t participate in these off-the-field enterprises, but he observed them – the rum was sometimes stacked against the wall of the dormitories right up to the ceilings. He remembers being awakened one night when several white men burst into the dorm, shined flashlights in his eyes and demanded to know where his “brother” was. They apparently meant outfielder George Johnson and assumed that Judy was related. Judy said he didn’t know, and the men, presumably underworld figures in search of their cut, eventually left. It was a close call.

The Hilldales lost the 1926 pennant to the Bacharachs, but Judy finished with a .302 average. There were compensations for missing out on the pennant, for it meant the Hilldales were free to barnstorm against white big leaguers again and to make a lot more money doing it. Later he sailed back to Cuba for the winter season, hitting .372. Johnson slumped to .228 with the Hilldales the following year and to .231 in 1928. But one year later he hit a robust .416, sixth best in the league. (There were no fewer than four .400 hitters that season.)

The Eastern Colored League folded in 1930 under the impact of the Depression, and Johnson jumped to the independent Homestead Grays, who may have been the best black team in the East if not in the country. That fall Cum Posey, the Grays’ owner, challenged Pop Lloyd’s Lincoln Giants for the mythical championship of black baseball. The Grays won, six games to four, with Johnson hitting .286.

He rejoined the Hilldales in 1931. With the Depression hitting hard, the players waived their salaries to enable teams to make ends meet and instead divided whatever money was left after expenses. They had to bounce from game to game by bus, playing anywhere and any time they could. “We used to play two games every Thursday, two on Saturday and three on Sunday,” Johnson remembered. “I recall times we’d go to New York to play a doubleheader and then a night game. We’d leave Coney Island at one o’clock at night, ride all night on the bus and get into Pittsburgh for a twilight game on Monday. We used to get $1.50 a day eating money.”

During that period an athlete played anywhere he could make a buck. In 1932 Judy jumped back to the Grays. In the middle of the season virtually the entire Grays team jumped to the Pittsburgh Crawfords, the Grays’ bitter crosstown rivals owned by numbers king Gus Greenlee.

The `32 season was a long one. It began with ten days of spring training at Hot Springs, Ark., where the players took the mineral baths. By the end of March they would travel to New Orleans for a doubleheader and then start playing their way north. The season ended late in October when the last of the exhibitions against white major leaguers was over, and the players – the fortunate ones anyway – dispersed for a full season of winter ball.

On their rare days off, Johnson and the Crawfords went to watch the white major leaguers play to see what they could learn. “We never had to pay to go to see the A’s or Yankees,” Johnson said. “The only park where we had to pay was St. Louis, and they us in the Jim Crow section. Other than that, every big league park knew us.”

Judy batted .333 for the Crawfords in 1934 and then improved his average in 1935 to .367, based on incomplete figures. That autumn he found himself in another World Series as the Crawfords tangled with the New York Cubans. Johnson was in a long slump when he came to bat in the ninth inning of the sixth game, the Craws one game down, the score tied 6-6 and the bases loaded. He drove a 3-2 pitch on the ground past first base, and the Crawfords had tied the series. The following day Gibson and manager Oscar Charleston slugged homers to wrap up the title for the Craws.

Johnson’s average slipped to .282 in 1936, and he retired the following year. After Jackie Robinson broke the color line in the big leagues, Judy was hired by the Athletics as a scout. “I could have gotten Hank Aaron for them for $3,500 when he was playing with the Indianapolis Clowns,” he said. “I got my boss out of bed and told him that I had a good prospect and he wouldn’t cost too much, but he cussed me out for waking him at one o’clock in the morning. He said, ‘Thirty-five hundred! That’s too much money.’ Too much for a man like that! I could have gotten Larry Doby and Minnie Minoso, too, and the A’s would still be playing in Philadelphia because that would have been all the outfield they’d have needed.”

From the A’s Judy switched to the Phillies and helped sign Richie Allen. “He lived in Wampum, Pa., about 60 or 70 miles out of Pittsburgh,” Johnson commented. “The Pirates had him at their park I don’t know how many times, but they wouldn’t give a nickel to Babe Ruth if they could get him for nothing, so I told our general manager,`That’s the best looking prospect I’ve ever seen; please don’t lose him,’ and he went out there and signed him.”

Until his retirement from scouting in 1974, Judy went to Florida with the Phillies every spring. “Mr. (Bob) Carpenter, the owner, liked me because I can help the Negro boys, also the white boys. If a kid does something wrong, I’ve got to go through the motions and show him the right way. You can’t just holler at him; you’ve got to show him how the ball is handled, and that’s what my boss liked about me.”

Next to his wife, Johnson’s first love in recent years was teaching baseball. “I’d rather do it than anything,” he often said. “I even coach a sandlot team in Wilmington.”

The late Ted Page, another former Negro league standout, once said he believed the major leagues squandered one of their most valuable resources by not employing Johnson as a manager or at least as a coach. “He had the ability to see the qualities, the faults, of ball players and have the correction for them,” Page remarked. “Several years ago Willie Stargell was continually popping the ball up. He was turning his head. Judy would see things like that. I bet he could have helped Stargell out of his slump. Some have it and some don’t. Judy should have been in the major leagues 15 or 20 years as a coach. He was a scout, but he would have done the major leagues a lot more good as someone who could help develop players.”

(This article is a condensation of the biography of Judy Johnson which will appear in the book Blackball Stars” by John B. Holway to be published in 1987 by Meckler Publishing Co.)

However, most non-hobbyists, and in fact most card collectors, are unaware of the curious saga of a player depicted on a card issued contemporaneously with the Wagner card and which rivals it in scarcity, if not in value. It was part of a nationally-distributed set featuring the major leaguers of 1912, yet it depicts a man who never played a single inning in the major leagues. The card is that of Irving Lewis, listed as a rookie catcher for the Boston Braves.

The card itself is at once both a challenge and a roadblock to those who seek some record of Lewis, for the biography on its reverse is riddled with errors. It reads: “Irving Lewis, who started the season of 1912 with the Boston Nationals, is a New York boy who was picked up by John M. Ward, president of the club, from the lots of Staten Island. He came to the Braves as a catcher and had played only semi-professional ball before. Manager Kling took Lewis on the Southern training trip, but while he had a good arm and ability in other lines it was evident that he needed more experience before joining a big league team. Boston carried him until June, and then released him to the Lowell club of the New England League.”

In fact, Boston newspaper accounts tell the story of Lewis joining the club on June 18, 1911, having been somehow picked up by them as they returned via New York from a Western trip. Who saw Lewis first and how he came to join Boston are apparently lost in history, but if Hall of Famer

John Montgomery Ward had any part of it, it was purely unofficial. Ward did not become president of the Boston team until December, 1911. Curiously, though the reports of Lewis’ “arrival” referred to him as a top sandlot catcher, it was as a pitcher that he had made his semi-pro reputation. A brief 1912 profile in the Lynn (Mass.) Item says that Lewis had played with the Empire team in Panama in 1909 and a year later was with “the Long Island Independent club,” for whom he posted a record of 17 wins in 17 games.

The Irving Lewis itinerary now suffers the first of its dark gaps. Cryptic references in both an index card file in the offices of The Sporting News and that same Lynn newspaper article suggest that Lewis’ 1911 stint in Boston ended abruptly because of an unspecified illness. In any event, on March 21, 1912, Lewis reported – a week later than this teammates – to the training camp of the newly-christened Braves in Augusta, Ga. This time he was heralded in the Boston Journal as, “Irvine [sic] Lewis, a new pitcher from New York.” Whatever pitching Lewis might have done in camp that spring was purely on the sidelines, for his only two appearances in boxscores came once as a catcher and once as a first baseman, both times in intrasquad games. Lewis batted four times and recorded two hits.

Nevertheless, when the Braves broke camp, they took Lewis with them. If he was indeed a catcher, he was no better than fourth-string. Johnny Kling, a long time Cubs’ standout catcher, had by this time become Boston’s player-manager, and the Braves’ roster also featured youngsters Hank Gowdy and Bill Rariden, both of whom would star behind the plate later in the decade. In addition, Mike Gonzalez of subsequent “good field, no hit” fame joined the Braves toward the end of the season as a catcher.

When Lewis finally appeared in a Braves’ game, it was not behind the plate, but as a pitcher. On April 28, 1912, he defeated the Paterson team of the Inter-State League in a Sunday exhibition game played in New Jersey. Lewis struck out four, walked five and gave up nine hits in the 4-3 triumph. His pitching opponent that day was Paterson’s player-manager, Andy Coakley, a veteran of Connie Mack’s pitching staffs in Philadelphia.

That exhibition game victory and those four spring training at-bats were the extent of Irving Lewis’ major league career, such as it was. Early in June two things happened to Lewis, seemingly contradictory and baffling. On June 5 Braves’ president Ward signed Lewis to what was apparently his first contract, almost a year after he first joined the club. The deal was retroactive to April 10 and called for Lewis to receive $150 a month (about $900 for the season). The following day, June 6, the Braves shipped Lewis to the Lynn, Mass., team of the New England League (not Lowell, as the card reports). The transaction, according to newspaper accounts, was a 15-day conditional one.

In his long-delayed professional debut for Lynn, Lewis yielded only three hits, but errors gave New Bedford a 3-2 triumph. The Lynn News reported, “Lewis pitched fine ball and seems to have something besides a big league reputation.” However, later reviews were hardly so kind.

In a loss to Brockport, his pitching was described as “pretty bad” and “indifferent.” At the end of the two weeks’ assessment time, the Lynn team decided it didn’t want to purchase Lewis and returned him to the Braves on June 22.

The Boston American saluted Lewis’ return to the Braves by calling him “one of the most promising youngsters in the business,” but whatever the promises might have been, they weren’t kept in Boston. Lewis may have remained with the Braves for the remainder of the season or he may have returned to the sandlots of New York; whatever the case, there is no further mention of him in the Boston papers nor does he appear in the official statistics of any minor league for 1912.

However, Lewis’ curious career was not over. He finally made some impact in 1913 when he appeared in 58 games for Kingston of the New York-New Jersey League. He had turned to catching full-time and batted .272 for Kingston.

In 1914 the New York-New Jersey League became the Atlantic League, and Lewis switched to the Poughkeepsie team. He batted .355 as Poughkeepsie won the league title, and he appears in the champions’ team pictures printed in both the Reach and Spalding Baseball Guides the following year.

Had Lewis compiled comparable statistics in Poughkeepsie in 1915, he might possibly have returned to the majors, but during the winter of 1914-15 the Atlantic League folded and he was adrift again. The Sporting News card file traces Lewis back to the New England League in 1915, appropriately enough with Lewiston, but he doesn’t appear in the league’s averages and presumably played in fewer than ten games, if he played at all. The file says Lewiston dropped Lewis in May, whereupon he landed with Fall River of the Colonial League. Lewis’ Atlantic League experience repeated itself: The Fall River team disbanded on July 10, and the entire league   a massive farm club for the Federal League – went out of business along with the Federals in the winter of 1915-16.

That apparently was the finish of Lewis’ pro baseball career. Records of an obscure minor league called the Central Texas list a Lewis catching for the Marlin team in 1916, but the player is referred to variously as “Louis” and “J. Lewis.” Given both that discrepancy and the imposing geographical gap between Fall River, Mass., and Marlin, Tex., it is probably safe to assume that particular Lewis isn’t our hero.

The biographical details on Lewis are just as scarce as his baseball records. Both the surprisingly extant copy of his Boston contract and the Lynn Item listed his hometown (and possibly birthplace) as Hempstead, N.Y. The same paper said he was six feet tall and 23 years old, placing his birth year as 1888 or 1889, and while all indications suggest he was both a righthanded batter and thrower, sources disagree as to his middle initial: either “J” or `”R.”

Some of the mysteries about Irving Lewis, then, are a little clearer, though many remain. Yet it is somehow fitting that his only baseball card is as hard to find as is information about the player himself.

(Research assistance for this article was provided by Lew Lipset and Bob Richardson.)

Barney Dreyfuss, president of the Pittsburgh Pirates Baseball Club, decided in 1908 to seek some land on which to build a new park. He had three reasons to leave Exposition Park, home of the Pirates since 1891. First, a lease that would make it feasible to rebuild the wooden stands could not be obtained. Second, floods hit the park at least six times every year, ruining the field and parts of the stands. (Exposition Park was located in Allegheny, Pa., about 50 yards from the Allegheny River and at almost the exact spot where Three Rivers Stadium now stands.) Third, because of the floods, the field was always damp until midsummer. Early in the season practice could not be held at the damp park because the field would be torn up by the players’ spikes.

On October 18, 1908, Dreyfuss purchased land from the Schenley estate through the Commonwealth Real Estate Co. and E. C. Brainerd. He bought nearly seven acres located next to Schenley Park, about three miles from downtown Pittsburgh. Part of the land was occupied by the Carnegie Technical School (now Carnegie-Mellon University) football field.

The trustees of the Schenley Estate – Andrew Carnegie, John W. Herron and Denny Brereton – fully guarded the interests of the city. They demanded a contract under which Dreyfuss was required to spend a large sum of money to make the ballpark fireproof and of a design that would harmonize with the other structures in the Schenley Park district.

The Dreyfuss purchase was one of the largest real estate deals in Pittsburgh in years. It was criticized by many people. Dreyfuss said they laughed at him because the area had nothing but the Schenley Farms and a few buildings, including Carnegie Museum and Carnegie Technical School. Many did not believe the city would expand that far east, but Dreyfuss saw the location eventually growing into Pittsburgh’s cultural center.

Charles W. Leavitt, Jr., an architect and landscape engineer, was chosen to design and supervise the building of the ballpark. He had planned and supervised the construction of nearly all of the racetrack stands and clubhouses in the eastern United States, including Belmont Park and Empire City Track in Yonkers, N.Y.

The ballpark was to have a seating capacity of 25,000. This was twice the size of Exposition Park and larger than the Polo Grounds in New York City and West Side Park in Chicago. The stands were to be constructed entirely of concrete and steel, a first in ballpark construction. This would make the park fireproof; fires were common in parks constructed of wood.

The location was easily accessible. It was within walking distance of 15 trolley lines and within a 15-minute trolley ride of the nearest railroad station.

On January 1, 1909, the task of filling in Pierre Ravine began. This required 11,155 tons of dirt and fill. Grading of 60,000 cubic yards of dirt was required to make the playing field. A retaining wall using 2,000 cubic yards of concrete was built to hold in the fill.

On March 1, 1909, the Nicola Building Co. began construction of the ballpark. On March 21 the Raymond Concrete Piling Co. completed its contract to put in the piles to support the stands.

In a meeting between Charles A. Marshall, who represented Charles W. Leavitt, Jr.; F. C. Jones, an official of the Pirates, and William Berner, superintendent of the Nicola Building Co., it was decided to have the stands completed and the field laid out by July 1. The Nicola Building Co. also agreed to turn over all the land to landscapers in order to save ten days in work time.

On March 28 the contractors were ahead of schedule, with the bleachers along the left field foul line being completed. The following day the Nicola Building Co. began working two eight-hour shifts a day.

Construction of the park was rapid. On May 9, opening day for the new structure was set for June 30. By May 12 all the steel girders were in place and the grandstand and bleacher seats had been received. Installation of the seats began a short time later.

Architect Leavitt was pleased that the fill had not settled as much as expected. This was because it was put in when the weather was bad and the fill became thoroughly soaked; work on the playing field was able to start ahead of schedule.

By May 9, 120 of the 300 boxes of eight seats each had been sold for the season. Each box bore a brass name plate with the box holder’s name on it.

The advance sale of reserved and box seat tickets for the opening game began on June 7. This was by mail order only and on a first-come, first-served basis. The general admission and bleacher tickets would be sold on the day of the game.

On June 13 little construction remained. The box seats were sold out and the temporary bleachers in center field were finished. By June 16 the entire field was sodded and on June 21 the last of the seats were installed. Except for a few minor touches, the park was finished.

The main grandstand had four general units. The first unit was a great amphitheater of concrete steps, starting eight feet above field level and rising 28 tiers. This unit had 12,500 seats. The seats could be turned up, making it easier to clean the stands. At the rear of the lower stand was a promenade the entire length of the grandstand, with ramps that led to the entrances on street level or to the upper deck balcony.

  The second unit was the balcony. It was the same length as the lower deck and was suspended on steel columns with cantilevered trusses. The front row of the balcony was over the fifth row of the lower deck. The balcony consisted of 12 rapidly rising tiers, providing a good view of the field. The balcony seated 5,500 and was connected to the lower deck by ramps. The Pirates’ offices were located at the rear of the balcony, tucked underneath the seats behind home plate.            

The third unit was a row of boxes located on the roof over the balcony. This was held up by steel supports and connected to the street level by elevators.

The fourth unit was located under the lower deck at street level. All tickets except bleacher tickets were sold here. There were eight ticket windows and ten turnstiles here. Crowds could be inspected from the Pirate office windows. On the right side of the entrance was the umpires’ room, and beyond this were the visiting and home clubhouses. Each clubhouse was equipped with lockers, baths and dryers for clothes. These rooms also had an entrance from the field and a private exit underneath the right field end of the grandstand.

The balcony supporting columns were in a single line and 50 feet apart. The supports in the rear were larger and of a lattice construction. The spaces between the supports were fitted with terra-cotta. The lattice columns were 16 feet apart and were joined by a series of terra-cotta arches enclosed with frames filled with glass and terra-cotta. These formed fronts which on the street side looked like an office building. All the steelwork was painted light green. The terra-cotta was painted a buff white with some blocks painted green as were the ornamental panels.

The bleachers, on the left field foul line, were made of reinforced concrete and rose in a solid bank. The front of the bleachers was in line with the front of the grandstand, but the tiers in the bleachers rose more rapidly than those in the lower deck grandstand. The bleachers had 43 tiers that seated 6,000. Under the bleachers was located a garage for cars. The rear face of the bleachers was made of terracotta with pictures of subjects dealing with the early history of Pittsburgh.

The entrance to the bleachers along the left field foul line was located at the extreme north end of the grandstand and consisted of ticket windows and turnstiles as in the main entrance. The entrance led to an open space of 4,000 square feet under the grandstand for the protection of the fans when it rained.

The temporary bleachers were in the extreme center field area. These were to be used until the ground settled at which time they would be replaced by a permanent stand. The entrance to these bleachers was from the right field side.

In front of the lower deck grandstand were the private boxes. These consisted of three tiers with the front row only four feet above field level.

The lower deck grandstand was made up of reserved seats with the last few rows in the back as general admission seats. The balcony consisted of reserved seats with the front few rows being box seats.

The prices of tickets in 1909 were: $10.00 for a box of eight seats, $8.75 for a roof box of seven seats, $1.00 for a reserved seat, 75¢ for a general admission seat, 50¢ for a left field bleacher seat, and 25¢ for a seat in the temporary bleachers.

The name selected for the new park was Forbes Field. Dreyfuss picked it after receiving a letter from Judge Joseph Buffington which stated the park should be named after General John Forbes, who, along with playing a part in Pittsburgh’s history, was supposedly a good athlete.

The week of June 30 to July 7, 1909, was proclaimed dedication week by Dreyfuss. Special ceremonies were held on opening day beginning at 2:30 in the afternoon. To celebrate dedication week, all railroads leading into Pittsburgh had special rates.

Forbes Field was superior to other parks for several reasons. The seating capacity of 25,000 was larger than that of any other field. Rain would not stop a game unless it were heavy because of the good drainage system and a new type of canvas infield tarp. This tarp would rise from underneath the field in foul territory behind the home plate-third base area and could be rolled over the entire infield in one piece. The rolling out or rolling up of the tarp would be done mechanically, with groundskeepers required only to make sure it was going in or out straight. Ironically, this tarp system, which is now in use at Three Rivers Stadium, was patented by the 1909 Pirates’ manager, Fred Clarke.

Another noticeable difference about Forbes Field was that it was in a nice section of town. Smoke, dust and cinders were absent from the air because Forbes Field was at least a mile away from the factories. There was also no danger of a grandstand fire so common in the wooden parks.

Opening day, June 30, 1909, was a beautiful occasion for a baseball game. The sky was cloudless and the air was warm. Fans began arriving at the park at 9:00 in the morning to wait in line for general admission and bleacher tickets. When the ticket windows opened at 10:00, the people were overflowing into the streets. During this time, as well as during the entire game, there was no violence. At noon the gates were opened, and there was a mad rush of more than 5,000 fans for the unreserved seats.

Fans at Forbes Field enjoyed the view of Schenley Park over the outfield fence. The ballpark itself was a beautiful thing to see. The stands stood majestically, 74 feet high and 889 feet in length. Flags lined the roof of the grandstand. Potted plants and palms decorated the foyer and the club offices.

The crowd filled the stands quickly; it seemed as if everyone from the Pittsburgh area was there. Downtown Pittsburgh was at a standstill with most businesses closed at noon. The crowd grew so large that the outfield was roped off to hold standing-room-only ticket holders.

The dedication ceremonies began at 1:30 with two bands giving concerts. At 2:30, two processions started, one from each foul line in the outfield, each led by a band and consisting of the two teams and dignitaries. Both processions went to home plate, where they joined and marched to the center field flag pole. When the flags were raised, a cheer swept the stands. The procession then broke up; the bands left the field, the dignitaries went to the stands and the teams began to warm up.

There were many women and prominent families in the crowd of 30,338. Among the dignitaries were Mayor William A. Magee of Pittsburgh; John M. Morin, director of the Department of Public Safety; Harry Pulliam, National League president; Ban Johnson, American League president; John K. Tener, U. S. Congressman and ex-ballplayer from Charleroi, Pa.; and Eddie Morris, a member of Pittsburgh’s 1885 Union Association team.

Mayor Magee threw out the first ball to Morin and the game was ready to begin. The umpires were Bob Emslie and Hank O’Day.

The Chicago Cubs started by scoring a run in the first inning. Vic Willis, the Pirates’ starting pitcher, hit lead-off batter Johnny Evers with a pitch. The second batter, Jimmy Sheckard, walked. Solly Hofman then sacrificed the runners along. Frank Chance followed with a single to center field, scoring Evers.

There was no further scoring until the sixth inning as both Willis and Ed Reulbach of the Cubs pitched effectively. The Pirates also had some good defensive plays. In the top of the fourth inning Tommy Leach, the Pirate center fielder, made a spectacular running catch of Wildfire Schulte’s fly ball. In the top of the fifth Pirate third baseman Jap Barbeau made a leaping catch of Reulbach’s line drive.

In the bottom of the sixth inning, the Pirates finally scored. Honus Wagner led off with a single to left field. Bill Abstein moved Wagner to second with a sacrifice and Dots Miller singled to left, scoring Wagner.

The Cubs broke the 1-1 tie with two runs in the eighth inning. Evers singled, Jimmy Sheckard laid down a bunt which Barbeau fielded and threw past first baseman Bill Abstein. With runners at second and third, Chance hit the ball to Pirate second baseman Dots Miller, who threw to catcher George Gibson, but Gibson dropped the ball and Evers scored. Harry Steinfeldt then successfully bunted with two out, plating Sheckard for a 3-1 lead.

In the bottom of the eighth the Pirates scored once. With one out Clarke walked. After another out Abstein hit the ball to Cub second baseman Evers, who booted it. The key play of the game followed. Dots Miller drove the ball into center field, and it rolled into the crowd. Both runners crossed home plate, but the umpires ruled the hit a ground rule double and made Abstein return to third. A heated argument ensued as Abstein had reached the plate about the same time the ball went into the crowd. Ham Hyatt then pinch-hit for right fielder Owen Wilson and struck out to end the inning with Chicago still leading, 3-2.

The Cubs did not score in the top of the ninth. In the Pirate half Gibson, the first batter, walked. Alan Storke then pinch-hit for Willis and sacrificed pinch runner Kid Durbin to second base. Barbeau followed with a grounder to Evers, who bobbled the ball, and the Pirates had runners at first and third with only one out. Leach then flied to shallow left field for the second out, bringing up manager Clarke. He grounded to shortstop for a game-ending force at second base, and the Cubs emerged 3-2 winners, spoiling the Pirates’ debut at Forbes Field.

The most remarkable thing about the construction of Forbes Field was that it took only two months to fill in Pierre Ravine and four months to build the stands. The main reasons for the rapid construction were that the weather cooperated and there were no labor problems. Dreyfuss footed the million-dollar cost himself, thus eliminating any squabbles that might have occurred if more than one person had been involved with the building of the park.

Forbes Field, along with Shibe Park in Philadelphia, which opened earlier that season, launched the era in which the wooden ballpark became obsolete.

In the next five years, ten new parks were built, none made of wood. Today we are in the second age of the “modern” ballpark. It’s been a few years since the demolition of Forbes Field. In its time it was host to four World Series and two All-Star games. Of all of the feats that occurred at Forbes in its 61 years, there never was a no-hitter. The closest was on June 14, 1968, when Bob Moose held the Houston Astros hitless for seven and two-thirds innings.

After the opening of the original stadium there were some additions. Doubledecked stands were added in right field in 1925. In 1938 a third tier, the “Crow’s Nest,” was added behind home plate. Lights were installed in 1940 and on the evening of June 4 the Pirates defeated the Boston Braves, 14-2, in the initial night game. From 1947 to 1953 the bullpens were in left field in an area called “Greenberg Gardens.” This shortened the left field line from 365 feet to 335 and left-center from 406 to 355. In 1959 three rows were added to the front of the field level boxes, making the first row of seats dugout level. At its closing, the seating capacity of Forbes was 35,000.

Today all that remains of Forbes Field are home plate, which is encased in glass on the ground floor of the University of Pittsburgh’s Forbes Quadrangle in the same location it occupied in the ballpark, and a section of the center field wall, complete with ivy and distance marker (457 ft.), located outside of the Quadrangle. On the sidewalk outside of the Quadrangle the left field wall is marked by a small plaque and red bricks tracing its former location from the foul line to left-center field (it ends at the curb). To the older fans in Pittsburgh, of course, Forbes Field remains alive in their memories.

For years the Cape League and its teams have pointed to “a long and proud history dating back to 1885.” Continuing, the publicity exclaims, “Hall of Famers such as Pie Traynor, Mickey Cochrane and Red Rolfe played here before embarking on illustrious professional careers.”

This statement appears year after year in league publicity. But the version is at least careless, if not misleading.

A league publicist, undoubtedly a Yankee partisan, once incorrectly described Rolfe as a Hall of Famer, and the error is perpetuated. Agreed, he was good, compiling a .289 lifetime batting average. Still, he is not a Hall of Fame member. Rolfe, out of Penacook, N. H., played in the league in 1930 as the Orleans team’s shortstop.

The official centennial version can be viewed as misleading because it suggests the league was formed in 1885. Contemporary evidence shows that the Cape Cod Baseball League was organized in 1923. The story behind this discrepancy is intriguing and worth reviewing. But, first, what about Traynor and Cochrane?

Traynor, a native of Framingham, Mass., did play on the Cape in 1919 for the Falmouth team. Yet this was several years before the Cape League was established. Just as he did for the Pittsburgh Pirates a year later, Traynor played shortstop while at Falmouth. One of the team’s best hitters, he displayed his all-around skill in the Labor Day field events that preceded the game at the Heights with the visiting Fall River, Mass., Mohicans. Traynor won the “circling the bases” event in a time of 15 seconds. He also won the 100-yard dash and the “throwing the ball for distance” competition.

The Cochrane connection is more difficult to verify. Cochrane, widely considered among the great catchers of all time, was a native of Bridgewater, Mass. He starred in five sports at Boston University and played semi-professional ball in the summer under the name of Frank King. In fact, when he went to Dover of the Eastern Shore League in 1923, no longer concerned with his amateur status, he still signed as Frank King. If he failed, he thought, he could resume using his real name and get a fresh start elsewhere.

An exhaustive search of game accounts of the period failed to uncover a King (or a Cochrane) playing for any Cape team. However, a King (first name unreported) played shortstop for Middleboro, Mass., in 1920 against Cape teams like Falmouth. Cochrane, in fact, was an infielder at the time. Could this be the basis of the legend?

All of this is interesting, but not too important. The Cape Cod Baseball League has made such a distinguished record in the past two decades that distortion of history is unnecessary.

To illustrate, in 1985, there were 55 major league players who earlier performed in the Cape League. The list runs from Bill Almon of the Pittsburgh Pirates to Chris Welsh of the Texas Rangers. Among the veteran stars is White Sox catcher Carlton Fisk. He played for Orleans in 1966. Baseball’s top lefthanded pitcher in 1985, John

Tudor of the St. Louis Cardinals, was with Falmouth in 1974. Jeff Reardon, the outstanding Montreal Expos reliever, played for Cotuit from 1974 to 1976. Another1985 star, Ron Darling of the New York Mets, was with Cotuit in 1980. And the list will grow. In 1985, more than 60 additional former Cape players signed their first professional contracts.

The general record of recent years ought to be enough to establish the Cape League’s reputation. But to fully understand and appreciate the Cape Cod Baseball League, one must go back to the beginnings, back before 1923.

The suggestion that the league somehow originated in 1885 is more or less accepted as fact. Although nobody ever declared that the league was established in 1885, this is the impression to be gained. What seems to have happened is that an 1885 poster in the National Baseball Museum in Cooperstown came to light. The poster advertised a July Fourth game between Barnstable and Sandwich. From this early but incomplete evidence, it somehow seemed reasonable to trace the league’s traditions to that point.

The hunch was fallacious. The 1885 game, by   contemporary news accounts, was at least the twelfth annual Fourth of July contest for the Bamstable squad.

Furthermore, available records show that Cape town and village baseball teams were playing one another with great intensity as early as 1867. The earliest game report uncovered in the process of researching this account describes a game in Sandwich on August 13, 1867, between the Nichols Club and the visiting Cummaquid team. There is a reasonable suspicion that the first inter town games actually were played in 1866, but this is not confirmed.

A reminiscence in a 1926 edition of the Sandwich Independent asserts that the first baseball game in Sandwich “or even on the Cape” was played opposite the Casino on School Street in November 1865. Absolute statements like this seldom merit outright acceptance, but it is likely that baseball first appeared on the Cape about 1865.

Today it seems odd to play baseball in November. In the early days it was not. On Election Day, November 7, 1867, for example, according to the Barnstable Patriot, the Cummaquids of Bamstable beat the Masketuketts of West Bamstable. As a matter of fact, in the 1870s, Sandwich clubs played baseball on the ice of Mill Pond, every player on skates.

The earliest established nine on the Cape appears to be the Nichols Base Ball Club of Sandwich, formed in June 1866. The team stemmed from the group that had gathered for the “first game” the previous November. The club was named after Captain Edward Nichols, a retired sea captain. None of the farmers in Sandwich would rent a field to the team. Captain Nichols stepped forward and said the team was welcome to use his lot without charge. In return, the club was named in his honor. “For some years it was a wide-awake institution,” reported one newspaper.

Appearance of baseball at this time was related to the Civil War. The game was popularized in the Army camps of 1861-65. Returning veterans spread the comparatively new game throughout the country. For a period, baseball was something of a spectacle. One veteran commenting in 1867 in the Barnstable Patriot said he liked the game even though the pitcher “sent `em in hot,” adding, “Hot balls in time of war are good. But I don’t like `em too hot for fun.” Another local commentator of the period thought, “It is the most radical play I know of, this base ball. Sawing cord wood is moonlight rambles beside base ball.” Nonetheless, baseball fever was raging on the Cape.

Many towns and villages fielded clubs. The Cummaquid Club of Barnstable formally organized in September 1867. The Mattakeesetts of Yarmouth organized in about the same month. Right away their fans thought they compared “favorably with many of the older clubs in the State.” The pair played one another at the annual Cattle Show and Fair in October. “The prize played for on this occasion was a beautiful silver mounted carved black walnut bat costing $15,” reported the Patriot. Cummaquid won, 30-13.

By the 1880s baseball was well entrenched on the Cape, and local teams were holding their own in wider competition. In 1883, for instance, the Barnstable village team claimed the championship of Southeastern Massachusetts after beating Middleboro in the last game of the season, 24-8. There were signs that the game was being taken seriously. The 1885 Barnstable team retained three starters from the Harvard College nine.

Semi Professional teams came on the scene before World War I. As might be expected, financing soon became a dominant concern. In 1919 the Hyannis club addressed the problem by selling season tickets. The price according to news accounts was “$2 transferable, and ladies will be admitted to the grandstand free.” In 1918 Falmouth was unable to afford a team outright. The Board of Trade baseball committee decided to combine with Oak Bluffs on Martha’s Vineyard Island and field a team together. When the players were in Falmouth, it was “strictly a Falmouth team,” noted the Enterprise, and the players “wear our uniform. The days they are in Oak Bluffs they are the Vineyard team. . .”

During the period the Cape semi pro teams played clubs representing the larger communities of eastern Massachusetts. Teams from Boston, Bridgewater, Brockton, Canton, Fairhaven, Hull, Middleboro, New Bedford, Plymouth, Taunton and Weymouth were regular opponents. All of this cost money, some $170 per game by 1921.

Then, in 1921, the Agricultural Society decided to limit its County Fair baseball tournament to Cape teams to obtain “more local interest.” The Cape baseball championship would be determined each year at the Fair. Falmouth won the first time. In 1922 Osterville was the champion. But a brief series was not enough of a measure.

After 55 years conditions had evolved to the point that a Cape league was logical and desirable. Baseball had a large and faithful following on the Cape. A formal league, featuring natural town rivalries, would draw on this interest. Increased fan support would generate more income, including town appropriations. At the same time some economy would follow. Travel costs could be reduced.

With the time right, in 1923 the Cape Cod Baseball League was established. William Lovell of Hyannis was voted president. Other officers were J. Hubert Shepard of Chatham, Harry B. Albro of Falmouth and Arthur R. Ayer of Osterville.

Four teams – Chatham, Falmouth, Hyannis and Osterville – constituted the league. The teams were “made up mainly of college and semi professional players.” A number of former minor leaguers, particularly from the New England League, found their way to the new circuit. Falmouth won the first league championship.

The first year was considered a success in the other towns as well. Before the 1924 season, Barnstable town meeting for the first time appropriated money for its two teams (Hyannis and Osterville). The Patriot supported the funding because baseball “helped our hotel keepers and merchants.” As a sign of things to come, the paper said some of the visitors attracted by league play “have expressed a wish to buy land and build. . . .”

During the 1920s and 1930s, as today, a number of players besides Rolfe used the Cape League as a stepping-stone to the majors. Some were regional favorites. Blondy Ryan, a Lynn native, comes to mind. Ryan played shortstop for Orleans in 1928 and Osterville in 1929. A year later he was in the Chicago White Sox infield.

There also were forgettable players who made the jump. One was Haskell Billings. He began 1927 pitching for Falmouth. Part way through the season he was pitching for the Detroit Tigers.

A great favorite was Danny MacFayden. The only Cape Cod native ever to make the big leagues, MacFayden was born in North Truro although he grew up in Somerville, Mass. Known locally as “Old Reliable,” he helped pitch Osterville to the 1924 Cape League championship. The next year he was on the Falmouth team. And in 1926 he was on the Boston Red Sox staff. MacFayden closed his career with the 1943 Boston Braves.

The league varied during its first two decades. Towns were in one year and out the next. In addition to the original four, entries from Barnstable village, Bourne, Chatham-Harwich, Harwich, Orleans, Provincetown and Wareham participated. Teams did not limit themselves to league play, however. City clubs commonly were engaged. In 1929 Falmouth even took on the Boston Braves, losing an 8-7 exhibition. The Enterprise earlier had commented, “The caliber of ball in the league is being recognized by all the Boston experts as about as good as can be found outside the Big Show.”

Cape baseball peaked in the late 1930s. There is little likelihood the game ever will regain the wide-spread popularity of the period. In addition to the Cape League, there was a Barnstable County Twilight League and a Lower Cape League. Both were comparable town team leagues made up of local players. Hyannis even had a special “road team” as well as an Industrial League. A number of independent teams existed. The sport was so popular that a small town like Brewster had two teams at once.

While baseball in general had a substantial following, the Cape League annually had financial troubles. Barnstable could not afford a team in 1938. Orleans stepped in. In 1939 Orleans was out and Barnstable returned. Halfway into the season Hyannis area restaurateurs saved the league from collapse by donating daily meals for a dozen or so Barnstable players. Admission of 25 cents was charged, and this helped pay salaries and defray expenses. Despite the appeal of the sport and the league’s tenuous condition, Barnstable town meeting repeatedly declined to vote funds for the town’s entry.

On July 19, 1939, a novel approach was tried. The first Cape League night game was played under portable lights in Falmouth Heights. Barnstable played Falmouth before 1,200 fans, 643 counted as paid admissions. The lights were poor. Balls were lost in darkness as well as in the glare.

The Barnstable scorekeeper asked manager Pete Herman how to record a drive which was knocked down by an infielder but lost in the shadows. Herman replied, “Make a note of the fact that he got through the play alive.”

But the league did not survive. Barnstable in 1940 again refused to appropriate funds for baseball. The league disbanded. Twilight League competition seemed to fulfill fan interest. And energies were being diverted to war mobilization.

After a six-year hiatus, the Cape Cod Athletic Association “revived” the Cape Cod Baseball League early in 1946. In reality, the revived league was the descendant of the County Twilight League and the Lower Cape League. The old town team leagues came back, joined together and assumed the Cape League’s name. The new league prohibited paid players and required all players to be “bona fide residents of Cape Cod.” For several years the league, consisting of Upper Cape and Lower Cape divisions, enjoyed some of the popularity of old. Teams from Bourne to Eastham participated. The Massachusetts Maritime Academy, Otis Air Force Base and the Cape Verdean Club also entered teams.

By the early 1960s interest waned and rules were amended. The league began to lose its local image. College players from other areas returned to the forefront. Finally, in 1963, the break was completed. The league became a summer collegiate circuit. Sanctioned by the National Collegiate Athletic Association, the Cape Cod Baseball League quickly developed to the point that former New York Times sportswriter Steve Cady said it was “generally regarded as the country’s best summer test for amateurs.” A local writer recently termed the league “a national gem.”

The major leagues recognize its value, supporting the league with a $60,000 annual grant. In 1985, part of the funding was earmarked for wood bats. The ever present big league scouts believe wood is a better indicator of hitting potential than the less expensive and widely used aluminum bats.

An indicator of the level of play took place in June 1984. Stars of the Cape League lost, 5-4, in the ninth inning to the touring U.S. Olympic baseball squad.

Chatham, Cotuit, Falmouth, Harwich, Hyannis, Orleans, Wareham and Yarmouth-Dennis currently are members of the league. Each team plays 42 games – a total of 168 for the league. The longest trip is 45 miles. A day contest and a night game and half of the teams can be covered easily on one date. This adds to the league’s attractiveness to the scouts, among others. Yet the attraction is deeper. As Bill Enos, Boston Red Sox area scout, puts it, the Cape League is “the best organized non-professional league I’ve seen.”

With such a colorful heritage and solid reputation, it would seem it was unnecessary to gild the lily with a questionable centennial.

Can’s statement certainly applies to historians or researchers who are trying~ to recreate the events of nineteenth-century baseball. The “facts” that have been passed down to us about nineteenth-century baseball are a mixture of folklore, myth, legend, misinformation and, of course, truth. Any accurate recreation of a pre-1900 baseball event or a player’s life will involve some careful selection from among the available “facts,” if any are available.

Any baseball researcher investigating the early decades of the game will immediately realize that baseball before the turn of the century is poorly documented; the National League’s first 25 years, important years, are often relegated to an introductory chapter in baseball histories. Indeed some baseball histories begin in 1903, the year that the American League was officially sanctioned. Moreover, those who ran the game in the 1800s, or who covered it in the newspapers or magazines, did not have quite the same fascination with statistics as today’s baseball chroniclers have; as a result, records were often not kept or were kept haphazardly.

Furthermore, the researcher examining baseball records of the 1870s or 1880s must realize that scoring was different from the scoring of today. For example, at one time a pitcher was credited with an assist for a strikeout and charged with an error for a base on balls. Baserunners were once credited with a stolen base when going from first to third on a single.

What’s the researcher to do? Indeed researchers must exercise a great deal of care and judgment when they investigate the salad days of the American Pastime. If they are careful and judicious in their approach and if they use the right research materials, researchers can enrich our sport by accurately recreating these early decades of the game’s history. Indeed the renewed interest in nineteenth-century baseball by members of the Society for American Baseball Research, by academics and by historians with national reputations suggests that this recreation is well underway.

Let me use a personal experience to illustrate the problems faced by nineteenth-century baseball researchers and to suggest some tips and strategies for those undertaking similar research projects.

Early in 1983 I began collecting information on Charles “Old Hoss” Radbourn and the 1884 Providence Grays. (My research led to the publication of an article titled “The Greatest Season a Pitcher Has Ever Had” in the “Views of Sport” column in a Sunday edition of the New York Times in June 1984.) By now the story of the Providence Grays’ 1884 season is well known: Radbourn won a record 60 games, the team won the National League pennant and the season ended with the Grays whipping the New York Metropolitans of the American Association in baseball’s first “World Series.”

Also well known is the controversy in July of 1884 which almost led to the Grays’ disbanding. Radbourn, whose recalcitrant reputation was already well established, was suspended in mid-July for purposely blowing a game against the Boston club, the result of an argument with an umpire over a balk call. Charles Sweeney, the hard-throwing young pitcher who alternated with Radbourn, also was suspended several days later and left the club for the St. Louis team of the Union Association.

It is the Sweeney suspension that will serve as an example of the hazards facing the historian who tries to recreate baseball events of the nineteenth century. The story of the suspension of the Grays’ two best pitchers in the middle of a pennant race was a story that could not be left out of any article recreating the events of that season, and I was determined to find out as much as possible about that event. Unfortunately, the answer was unclear: Baseball lore had given me three different versions of the Sweeney suspension.

Many baseball histories merely state that Sweeney deserted the Grays to pitch for St. Louis, which had made him a financial offer that he could not refuse. To me, that explanation made sense; roster wars were common in those years. Even Radbourn was rumored to have entertained offers from teams in rival leagues. But in Baseball’s Best: The Hall of Fame Gallery, Martin Appel gives a different version of the story. In a short biography of Radbourn, Appel wrote: “During Radbourn’s suspension, Sweeney got drunk, was also suspended and jumped the club, joining the St. Louis team of the Union Association.” In his highly respected American Baseball, David Q. Voigt makes a similar statement: “. . . Sweeney, too, was temperamental, as well as a drunkard. When Bancroft [the Grays’ manager] berated him for an all-day drinking spree, Sweeney packed up and jumped to the Unions. . . .”

The Providence Evening Bulletin reporter who covered Sweeney’s last game with the Grays, however, tells a different version of the story. He attributes Sweeney’s troubles to an act of flagrant insubordination in the seventh inning of the Grays’ game against Philadelphia on July 22. According to that reporter, Sweeney started the game in the pitching box for Providence, and manager Bancroft put Cyclone Miller, a pitcher signed to replace the suspended Radbourn, in right field with the intention of having him relieve Sweeney if the Grays got a big lead. Without Radbourn, Bancroft did not want to overwork Sweeney in a lopsided win, and Bancroft also wanted to see Miller’s pitching abilities.

The Grays indeed led, 6-2, at the end of seven innings, and Bancroft saw no need to work Sweeney any longer. He summoned Miller to the pitching box and ordered Sweeney to right field. When Bancroft ordered the switch, Sweeney, according to the Bulletin‘s report, “`kicked’ and with abusive language positively refused to go onto the field, retiring from the game altogether, obliging the home club to continue the game with but eight men.” The Bulletin article concluded: “Action of the management of the home club in the matter of Sweeney’s insubordination resulted in the expulsion of Charles Sweeney from the National League.”

I decided to use the Bulletin‘s version of the story in my recreation of the season of 1884. The Bulletin‘s report, after all, was written by an observer who saw the game first hand, not by a historian writing several decades later. Furthermore, the same explanation for Sweeney’s departure was given in a New York Times article covering the game of July 22. The Times reporter stated that Sweeney “became very angry and left the field” when Bancroft ordered him to right field and that when Bancroft followed him to the dressing room and again requested him to play right field Sweeney “most villainously refused.”

What really happened to Charles Sweeney? My New York Times article stated that “Sweeney was also suspended (and then expelled from the National League) when he refused manager Frank Bancroft’s order to leave the pitcher’s box and move to right field in a game against Philadelphia.” The booklet on Providence baseball of 1875-1885 that was distributed by the Society for American Baseball Research at its 1984 convention (held in Providence to commemorate the Grays’ achievement) stated that Sweeney “packed up and left the team, joining St. Louis of the Union Association.” An article by Thomas L. Carson in the October 1984 issue of Yankee reads: “During Radboum’s suspension, Sweeney got drunk and was also suspended. He quit the team in a huff.” Was Sweeney drunk? Insubordinate? Or was he merely leaving the Grays for better pay in St. Louis?

An article by Andrew Kull in the April-May 1985 issue of American Heritage identifies greed and drunkenness as the causes for Sweeney’s departure. Kull reports that a representative of the St. Louis Maroons had been in Providence all week tempting Sweeney and other Grays with big money. Kull also reports that during his final days with the Grays Sweeney “had taken to sneaking a shot of whiskey in the dressing room between innings. On his last day with Providence, Sweeney had arrived late at the ballpark, declaring to Frank Bancroft, the Providence manager, `I was drunk and was sleeping it off.’ He was ‘drunk and acting stupid’ when he quit the field, and after the game he `staggered out of the park with two women holding him up.’ ” (Unfortunately, Kull gives no source for his quotations about Sweeney’s behavior, and I did not come across that episode in my research.)

Frederick Ivor-Campbell, perhaps seeing legitimacy in all three versions of the Sweeney story, chose to use “all of the above” in his report on the season of 1884 in the spring 1985 issue of The National Pastime. According to Ivor-Campbell, Sweeney was drinking between innings in an exhibition game in Woonsocket, R. I., on July 21, reported late and hungover for the game on July 22, pitched seven innings of that game, then left the field and the team when Bancroft ordered him to right field. And in the parenthetical statement after his report on the Sweeney suspension, Ivor-Campbell wrote: “There is some reason to suppose Sweeney acted deliberately to provoke his dismissal. Once freed from his league contract obligations, he promptly signed with St. Louis of the outlaw Union Association for higher pay; winning 24 games for them in the half season that remained, he completed 1884 with a combined record of 41-15.”

Which of us contemporary baseball researchers has accurately recreated the events of July 22, 1884? For that matter, did Babe Ruth really call his shot in the 1932 World Series? Did some youngster really come up to Joe Jackson after the Black Sox scandal and say, “Say it ain’t so, Joe”? I am unable to supply definite answers to these questions, and I am the first to admit that baseball flourishes partly because of lore and legend and that to recreate events accurately sometimes destroys the sacred myths that have contributed so much to baseball’s popularity. Nonetheless, researchers who are determined to uncover the “facts” of seasons past should be encouraged to do so, and for such fans I have included some research strategies and tips:

1. Trust primary sources rather than secondary sources. A newspaper account of a game is less tainted by hearsay and folklore than a recreation of the event written 40 or 50 years later. So the researcher should be prepared to spend countless hours in front of microfilm machines reading newspaper accounts of the daily games. Nonetheless, keep in mind that the newspapers of 100 years ago did not delve into the personal lives of players as do today’s newspapers. Therefore, I would not discount the reports of Charles Sweeney’s drinking habits simply because it was not reported in the Providence Evening Bulletin or the New York Times. The scribes who reported baseball games in the summer of 1884 probably could not mention a player’s drinking habits.

2. Though they can be considered primary sources, mistrust books written by ballplayers. Many are indeed accurate, but some are self-serving and distort the truth. The granddaddy of all such books is A. G. Spalding’s America’s National Game, and baseball historians have long known that Albert Goodwill told a few “stretchers” (as Mark Twain would call them) in that book. Descendants of Spalding’s book include works like Jim Bouton’s Ball Four and Graig Nettles’ Balls. Both are splendid books in many ways, but I am not sure that one should accept every statement in these books as gospel. Would you be more likely to accept Babe Ruth’s version of an event of the “1927 season or Robert Creamer’s version reported in his authoritative biography of the Bambino? Would you believe a report by Ty Cobb or one by Charles C. Alexander in his book on Cobb? I would trust a good baseball historian before I would trust a good baseball player. Especially distrust those quickly produced mass-market paperbacks that never appear in hardcover.

3. When confronted with several versions of the same story in baseball histories, accept the version of the story by the writer who acknowledges sources and presents and resolves conflicting views of the same event. The historian who presents several versions of a story, with sources provided, is a historian who has done his research, one who probably has considered all possibilities and come to the most logical and reasonable conclusion about what really happened.

4. For statistics, use the The Baseball Encyclopedia published by Macmillan. Yes, it contains errors, but it is the best available source for statistics. Furthermore, if you want to publish your work, you might have to document your statistics, and the Macmillan publication carries authority with editors. My statistics on Charles Radbourn’s 1884 season differed from those listed in the Macmillan book, but Arthur Pincus, the New York Times editor who accepted my article, informed me that the statistics presented in my article on Radbourn would have to agree with those in the Macmillan publication.

The problems faced by baseball historians are no different from those encountered by other historians. The “facts” are indeed as elusive as fish in the sea, as E. H. Carr suggests. But if baseball researchers fish, the right waters with the right tackle, they are likely to bring to the surface schools of “facts” about the early decades of the game of baseball that will enhance our appreciation of the sport.

If baseball has a frontier, Venezuela is its southernmost boundary. And there each winter, from the Maracaibo oil basin to the Andean highlands, Venezuelans play and watch the game with a zeal that goes beyond mere passion.

“The fans make Venezuelan ball what it is,” Magallanes manager Tommy Sandt explains. “They’re incredibly in love with the game.”

“They’re closer to it than fans in the States,” interjects pitcher Jack Lazorko. “Nobody’s blasé here. Every game means something. They know their baseball, too, and they’ll let you know if you’re dogging it. That makes playing here pretty intense.”

Muttering “coño,” Dimas Gutierrez slaps a domino down and pokes a teammate in the shoulder. Salsa interspersed with Spanish sounds from the chicos in the back of the bus. In front of them, Pirate farmhand Chris Green peers out the window from behind smoked glasses, slowly nodding to sounds on a headset only he can hear. Three U.S. teammates hunker over a makeshift table, playing spades with the manager’s son. And in the front of the bus, skipper Tommy Sandt slouches across two seats, reading Fatal Vision while his coaches peruse The Sporting News and racing forms.

Few pay the driver any mind as he makes blind passes on mountain curves. Nor do they notice the flowery tops of cane swirling in the wind or the girls with bags of manderinds and the jugo de caña stands by the roadside. They’ve made this trip too many times. But the young horseman notices them, as do the boys playing ball with sticks of cane for bats on the outskirts of town and the motorcycle cops who swing in front of the bus as it makes its entrance to the stadium. Almost everyone in Venezuela takes notice of béisbol.

It’s Monday night in Caracas and the capital’s team, Los Leones, is destined for the cellar, but the joint is rocking. Fans wait in line for tickets three hours before game time while thousands already inside impatiently await batting practice.

Few ballparks anywhere match the majesty of El Estadio Universitario, which nestles in the valley of Caracas with the coastal mountains towering over the outfield fences. Lazorko, Magallanes’ starter that night, leans against the backstop and comments, “This is the first stadium in Latin America I’ve seen with a clock.”

The recently-installed timepiece is only part of the westernization of Caracas. Signs for Jordache Jeans, Fuji Films and Pepsodent line the stadium walls. The action in the stands, however, is anything but western. Mestizo women hawk empanadas criollas, fried platanos and canyo de quesa, thin rolls stuffed with baked ham and cheese. An army of vendors sells Polar Cerveza. And during the game bettors wager on each pitch, even on bullpen warmups.

On the field Magallanes takes infield practice while pitchers run wind sprints and half a dozen baseballs crisscross in the air. The fans spill onto the field and a few lucky chicos shag fly balls. A chorus of senoritas in back of the dugout shouts at Benny Distefano in a mix of English and Spanish, and a few blow kisses at this Brooklyn kid.

Forming a circle, a half-dozen players flip the ball at each other with their glove hand. A player who catches the ball in his mitt or fails to field a throw is out, The pelota whizzes from player to player, often after a detour around a back or under a leg. The only gringo to participate is Mike Anderson, a veteran knuckleball pitcher.

Lazorko, bathed in sweat, sits on the bench through the top of the first, a towel around his neck. Then he goes out to pitch. The first Caracas batter reached base on an error, but Lazorko ends the inning by striking out Tony Armas, the Boston Red Sox slugger who led the majors in home runs in 1984.

An international paladin, Lazorko has taken his “Have Arm-Will Pitch” style from Alaska to Cape Cod and into five Caribbean-basin countries. He’s in Venezuela hoping to spark greater interest in his free-agent status after having been cut from a Puerto Rican squad. The only hits against him through the first five innings are balls that don’t get out of the infield.

Street-wise and liberal with his observations during previous games, Lazorko is silent for the first time all week. Each inning he observes the same ritual. Walking off the mound with his face down, he sits at the end of the dugout bench. The attendant hands him a cup of water and drapes a towel over his pitching arm. Lazorko sets his cap atop his glove, sips the water and spits some of it out – inning after inning.

He runs out to the mound in the sixth as the first big fight of the night erupts in the stands. The scuffle starts a Venezuelan wave: Fans swarm toward the action, then scurry away when the fisticuffs get too close. No seventh-inning stretch is needed, for such tiffs cause more than enough standing. Finally, the fans surrounding the combatants start chanting “Que se besen (Let them kiss)” till the fighters sheepishly stop punching and start hugging.

Caracas gets its first legitimate hit that inning, but rightfielder Steve Lyons almost throws the batter out at first. “Who does that cat think he is, Roberto Clemente?” someone cracks in the Magallanes dugout. A first-round Red Sox draft pick out of Oregon State, Lyons was a standout in the International League in 1984 but failed to stick in the Puerto Rican winter league. “Rather than sit around and brood, I figured I’d come down here for another shot,” he explained. Tall and rangy, Lyons had been making the most of his second chance. (After his winter in Venezuela, Lyons spent the 1985 season with the Boston Red Sox, batting .264 in 133 games.)

Lazorko strikes out Armas again to end the threat and deviates from his routing long enough to slap five with third baseman Dimas Gutierrez for a slick play. Earlier Lazorko had watched Dimas batting and laughed. “The kid’s already got a major league wriggle,” he comments. Young Latin players often emulate the veterans, he noted. “You’ll see them rolling up their sleeves like Cesar Cedeno or high leg kicking like Marichal.” Dimas looks like a young José Cruz.

As both Lazorko and his Caracas counterpart mow the opposition down, the crowd shouts “Uno-Dos-Tres! Uno-Dos-Tres!” The fans are split fairly evenly in their loyalties, for although Magallanes is from Valencia, a few hours away, it once played in Caracas and has a national following. The most popular team in the country, it is often considered the Brooklyn Dodgers of Venezuela, according to Branch Rickey III, the Pirates’ minor league director.

Before the bottom of the ninth, with the game still scoreless, Lyons turns to Distefano and says, “I’m betting on a lion’s roar right here.” He gets it as the stadium loudspeakers unleash a ferocious growl, Los Leones’ cheer. “Strictly awesome,” Lyons says to himself as he trots out to right. But Lazorko retires Caracas without incident and heads for the showers, his labors over for the evening. He had thrown under 100 pitches and completed his thirty-third consecutive inning without his team getting him a run, but his performance had not hurt his prospects of making it back to the majors.

Lyons bunts for a single in the top of the tenth, diving headfirst into the bag, but goes no further. The Magallanes relievista comes in the bottom of the inning and throws out two pitches. Andres Galarraga lines the second one into the left field stands. As the lion’s roar reverberates and hundreds of chicos storm the field, the Caracas fans stand on their seats and chant his name. They are still there an hour later, dancing and shouting to a salsa band, as the Magallanes bus pulls out.

On the ride back, the team dines on barbecued chicken and yucca, wrapped in corn leaves and tied with a rubberband. The card game resumes with Pirates Distefano and Joe Orsulak versus Houston farmhand Nelson Rood and Tommy Sandt, Jr., who wears a T-shirt with a photo of his dad hitting his last major league homer stenciled on it.\

Distefano and Orsulak have played and roomed together since Colombian winter ball several years ago.

Benny, who could join Orsulak on the Pirates within a few seasons, had been struggling through a series of injuries and at the plate. Perusing his hand, he keeps repeating to himself: “Benny, you’re the greatest,” a reference to a letter from Branch Rickey III telling him to keep his head up through his slump. His teammates rag him about it at every occasion.

 While Benny had been sinking, Orsulak was among the league leaders. “Slack is a base-hit man and a great defensive player,” Distefano argues. “He might look like he’s casual,” manager Sandt adds, “but watch him play – dominos, cards, baseball, anything – he wants to win. He’s gotten more out of winter ball than anybody. He’s always working out.”

Nelson Rood flicks a card down and says, to no one in particular, “You know, being back in the States will be like heaven. Being able to go down to the 7-Eleven and get some dip, yeah.” Chewing tobacco, a commodity in short supply, is almost as prized to Rood as the Spanish-language Bibles he carried on trips to hand out to those who’ll take them. Not blessed with great size, Rood compensates with effort. In the locker room after games, he lifts weights and talks nutrition with the trainer.

Rood may never make it to the bigs, and Mike Anderson probably won’t either. But Anderson, or

“Mongo Congo”, a burly thirtyish knuckler with a Fu Manchu mustache, has already made it in Valencia. After four years out of baseball, Anderson signed with Milwaukee in 1980 to give it one more shot.

“Mike’s a hard-luck pitcher,” Orsulak comments. “He just doesn’t get that much support in the field or at bat, but the people here love him.” Rocked in his last start, Mongo received a nice hand as he left the field. From the bunker-like dugout, he whirled and yelled an expletive at the ump before overturning the batrack and yelling again. Lyons winced. “He’s murder on those bats.”

But this Sunday in Valencia, he was staying in the game, despite falling behind 2-0 in the first inning and filling the bases with Zulia runners. Each gringo who plays winter ball makes his accommodation to the culture or doesn’t last long. Anderson has more than made his peace. One morning four years ago, he wandered over to a field near his Valencia apartment and began catching the local kids. “It was a rocky field and I decided to try to fix it up.” Every morning for a month Anderson picked up trash and carted off rocks, his young compañeros helping. “I just hated to see kids playing on rocks.” Hiring a tractor to level the grounds and investing about $700 in equipment, Anderson built a field, complete with a mound he leveled himself. A league formed as did a baseball camp for boys from age five to 15. Two of his proteges have since had pro tryouts.

But against Zulia, Anderson has malice in his heart. Two earlier games against the Maracaibo team resulted in fights after spikings. Some anticipate a third tonight. Mongo escapes a bases-loaded jam in the fourth when Lyons grabs a blast that almost carries over his head. Walking back to the dugout, Anderson pats his heart in exaggerated relief.

Zulia’s hurler is perfect the first time through the order, but as the sun sets, Magallanes’ bats come alive and tie the score against a background of drums, disco whoops and the Somos Magallanes chant.

A cluster of chiquitas sits behind the dugout, their attention divided between the ballplayers and the game. Venezuela boasts the highest proportion of female fans in Latin America, a fact most players mention with a grin. A coach passes plastic demi-tasse cups of café through the screen to them between innings.

Tommy Sandt glances at the crowd and then gazes at the orange and blue skies. The 1984 Pacific Coast League Manager of the Year, he is a blonde version of Phil Garner, with whom he played in the minors and then with the Oakland A’s. In his eighth year of winter ball, 34-year-old Sandt is a likely candidate for a coaching job in the majors, at least if his players’ opinions matter.

In the seventh, Rood triples in two runs and the fans shake the screens behind the dugouts. A procession carrying a coffin marked “Zulia” with candles atop follows a salsa band snaking through the stands. Anderson gives way to a reliever in the ninth and Zulia puts the go-ahead run on, but Magallanes holds on to win. Sandt leaps in the air with both fists clenched and the fanaticos celebrate as if their team had clinched the pennant.

In the locker room, players sit in various stages of undress, joking and drinking beer, almost oblivious to the shrieks outside. The trainer coats Anderson’s big toe, on which he pushes off each pitch, with merthiolate. Distefano, ever helpful, flicks it repeatedly, then solicitously inquires of Anderson how he feels, Mongo Congo ignores him and lights up a cigar. Lazorko asks, “Who do you think you are, Red Auerbach?”

Caña, a locker room attendant, chases three boys out of the room with a bat. Smiling, Caña then asks a foreign journalist if he’d like a negrito, the strong black café he brews daily. A player warns the writer not to drink too much of it for Caña is rumored to spike it with amphetamines to get the players up for games.

Valencia isn’t the big leagues, but it’s not Keokuk or Macon, either. U.S. minor leaguers make far more money in Venezuela than they do in the states and get a free apartment and a daily stipend. Most pass their days poolside at the Intercontinental or a nearby hot springs and their evenings at the ballpark. In addition, they’re treated like demi-gods and play before enthusiastic, knowledgeable fans.

Sometimes, however, this dream-life turns into a nightmare. Last December, the U.S. ballplayers staying at the Anauco Hilton in Caracas were awakened at gunpoint. “I woke up with a machine gun in my face and a bunch of guys tossing my room,” Caracas trainer Brian McClanahan recalls. “They were looking for drugs, but I didn’t know that. I thought my time had come.” The predawn raids, which followed soon after the shooting of a U.S. player in a purported drug deal, revealed no drugs, but McClanahan, among others, was ready to bid adios to winter ball.

Not far from the stadium, in Carabobo, Simon Bolivar defeated the last of Spain’s South American armies. The North Americans, who introduced baseball here late last century, represent a second, more felicitous invasion. “But Venezuela never felt like béisbol was imported,” explains Rudolfo Mauriello, sportswriter for El Nacional. “We felt like it was created here. When Richard Nixon visited Caracas, the students threw rocks at him and shouted `Yanqui, go home!’ but these same students came to the stadium and never shouted `Yankee go home!’” Negro Leaguers and major leaguers helped make Venezuela baseball respectable, he argues, and “We remember them for that.”

Venezuela eventually responded in kind, shipping Luis Aparicio, Vic Davalillo, Dave Concepcion, Manny Trillo and Tony Armas north. Almost a dozen play in the majors and more are incubating on Venezuelan sandlots. While peloteros will never rival oil as Venezuela’s chief cash crop, they’ve already won the hearts and minds of their compatriots.

“Petroleo es el enimigo de Venezuela,” asserts Dr. José Antonio Prieto in Puerto Colombia, a small coastal town. “Because of oil, we’ve neglected agriculture and failed to diversify.” Similarly, the importing of U.S. ballplayers stunted Venezuelan baseball’s progress, allowing fewer playing opportunities for native athletes. But the drop in oil prices and the severe devaluation of the bolivar have led to a limit of nine U.S. players per team.

“That was the best thing that could have happened,” exclaims Hall-of-Famer Aparicio, who now broadcasts games. “Right now is the best time ever for baseball here and quien sabé, maybe we’ll be as good as the Dominicans in a few years.” Others, like Tommy Sandt, agree but doubt that Venezuela will ever reach the level of ball in the Dominican Republic. “Dominican players are just plain hungrier,” Sandt says. “It’s much more prosperous here.”

At times Venezuela seems a perpetual aerobics class. Traffic is frenzied and fans hardly cease moving from the moment they enter the park. Every five years, the country convulses in an orgy of politicking that sees some 90 percent of the electorate vote. During last year’s campaign the stands were an ongoing pep rally, with rival party stalwarts chanting political slogans along with their cheers and whistles. In between elections, Venezuela turns its passions over to béisbol and music.

Saturday night in Puerto Colombia, the lyrics of “Cazafantasmas” (Ghostbusters) blast along the malecon, the walk along the sea, as a few Izodized adolescents keep time. A hundred meters away, a much later group clusters around two tambores, five-foot long drums made of avocado trees, played by two pairs of tamboreros. A black man in cutoffs wails the verses of this cumaco music and the 80 or so in the chorus shout in refrain. A few feet from the drummers, but inside the circle, a couple dance – rapidly, closely and sensually. Every couple of minutes, someone cuts in and one of the dancers leaves without protest. Each of these cumaco songs, the music of the runaway slaves from the Araugua Valley cotton plantations who peopled the town centuries ago, lasts for ten to 20 minutes. Then a new set of drummers and lead singer get their chance. The revelers give off a scent of intoxicants, perfume and sweat that can be detected from afar. From ten at night till four the next morning, the drumming and singing overpowers the surf crashing against the malecon.

Just as the chorus of shouting, hand-clapping spectators drives the tamboreros and dancers on, the fans power Venezuelan baseball. “I’ve never seen anything like it in the States,” Distefano remarks. “Every pitch seems like it’s a matter of life and death.” “Si, Benny,” Dimas Gutierrez replies. “Remember, amigo, this is béisbol venezolana.”

Bud Fowler (real name John W. Jackson) was already a well-traveled veteran when he was recruited for the Stillwaters by the team’s chief spokesman and operating officer, Charles P. Gregory, a local attorney. Behind Gregory were a group of businessmen and other civic boosters who had become stockholders in the Stillwater Baseball Club. Fowler’s name first appears in a boxscore in 1875, as pitcher for the Live Oaks of Lynn, Mass., a white team. The article accompanying the boxscore mentions that he was colored, but does not otherwise indicate that his presence was extraordinary.

He presumably spent the years between 1875 and 1884 plying his dual trades of ballplayer and barber, as he did in Stillwater, playing wherever his color permitted. If, as is now believed, he was born in New York State in 1858, he was 26 when he somehow made contact with Gregory and joined the Stillwaters.

The Northwestern League, which added Stillwater among other cities when it doubled its membership to 12 teams for 1884, was fairly fast company, possibly the best which Fowler had entered to that point. Several players, such as Fowler’s teammate, Frank Jones, Bob Caruthers of Minneapolis and Dave Foutz of Grand Rapids, went directly from the Northwestern League to National League or American Association teams. The Milwaukee team, in fourth place when the league folded in September, afterward joined the Union Association and won eight of 11 games in that circuit. Stillwater (population 15,000) faced the double handicap of being much the smallest city in the league (Bay City, Mich., was next smallest at 27,000) and of being remote from sources of available players.

To fill his roster Gregory engaged various Easterners such as Fowler and Chicago-area players unable to catch on with teams closer to home. Minneapolis and St. Paul both fielded teams in the Northwestern League, and thus Stillwater’s advantage of having two natural rivals in the field was offset by rivalry for the limited pool of local talent; only Joe Visner of Minneapolis was persuaded to cross city limits. Of the 13 players signed by Stillwater before the beginning of spring practice on April 15, four were sent home before the season started May 2, and four more were dismissed or left before the team folded, forcing management to employ other teams’ rejects. By the time the team dissolved, 27 players had worn Stillwater’s cardinal-and-white colors.

The playing field was also a major problem. Extensive renovation of the existing field was necessary for league play, and this was not completed until June. As a result, the team played its first 26 games on the road.

Under the circumstances, a player of Fowler’s capabilities must have seemed a godsend and a prodigy – or should have. He wasn’t in the lineup, however, for the opening game, a 15-0 disaster against Peoria in which the team made ten errors and had only five hits. Fowler had been one of the first signees and was in town early in March, working out when possible and barbering in the meantime. He roomed at an establishment called the Live and Let Live House and presumably did his best to get along in what was then (and remains) an overwhelmingly white community. Integration very definitely had its limits, and his name doesn’t appear in an April newspaper article listing ballplayers who had attended the big event of the spring, the opening of the new roller skating rink. Fowler had been signed as a catcher. He had been a pitcher-catcher since starting his pro career, though he would soon turn to the infield, winning a reputation as a top fielding second baseman. Stillwater was relatively well stocked with catchers, so the versatile Fowler played where needed, pitching or playing the outfield and sometimes catching and playing third base.

Fowler’s benching, if it was that, was short-lived. He made his debut the next day, May 3, in a 12-8 loss to Peoria. He contributed a triple and single in five at-bats, playing center field and catching. The team suffered a jolt that day when field manager Joel May, a former railroad superintendent, requested his release so he could accept a position with the Northern Pacific. His request was denied, and the team stumbled on, losing game after game under May’s unwilling direction, until the losing streak reached 15 on May 22. Manager May was finally liberated and replaced by Joe Miller of nearby White Bear Lake, a National Association alumnus.

The losses in the streak ranged from the ridiculous (21-9 to Bay City and 16-0 to Quincy) to the exasperating (1-0 to Peoria on a dropped fly ball, a loss in which Fowler lined into a triple play). Aside from the triple play, Fowler stood aloof from the futility.

He made his pitching debut on May 7, holding Quincy to one run in three innings after starting the game in left field. A foot injury suffered May 8 hampered him for a while; he returned to the box on May 16, losing his first start to Bay City by a respectable 4-0 score. Finally, on May 25, he posted the team’s first victory, 13-7 over Fort Wayne. He was, meanwhile, receiving favorable reviews in the press. Newspapers in Bay City, Quincy and Peoria praised his outfield play, his hustle and his fast pitching, and the Stillwater Sun lauded him on May 13 as the “colored bonanza.” He was earning a reputation as an exciting player. More tangibly his win over Fort Wayne also netted him a bonus from admirers in Stillwater – $10 and a suit of clothes.

The baseball bubble in Stillwater, however, had been considerably deflated by the losing streak and the team’s prolonged absence from home. Criticism and sarcasm replaced the optimistic expectations of April, despite a turnaround following the initial victory. With Fowler pitching regularly and with the addition of new players, notably future major leaguer Otto Shomberg, the Stillwaters swept three-game series from Fort Wayne and Terre Haute. By the time they returned to Stillwater for the June 9 home opener against Minneapolis, they were 7-19 and in tenth place. Fowler had accounted for five of those six straight victories, pitching six complete games in nine days, and was 9-for-24 at the plate with four doubles.

Fowler was allowed to rest his arm after the winning streak ended June 3 and was available to pitch in the two opening home series against Minneapolis and St. Paul, which were virtual standoffs. Fowler split two decisions against Minneapolis, recording 17 strikeouts, as Stillwater won two of three, and took a less active role in the St. Paul series, where two of three were lost. Judging by the amount of attention Fowler was getting in the local press, he had become a local favorite. The rave reviews in out-of-town papers were reprinted by the daily Sun (until it folded on June 1), and the weekly Messenger commented on June 14, at the end of the Minneapolis and St. Paul series, “Fowler is our baseball Mascot.” This was a somewhat left handed compliment when it is considered that black mascots in that era were usually young boys kept as batboys and good luck pieces. It does indicate an affectionate regard and, one would hope, respect for Fowler’s prowess.

The earlier winning streak, which produced enthusiasm for Stillwater’s homecoming, and the series of close, exciting games against their home-state rivals were the zenith of Stillwater’s season. Though the team later posted four-game and five-game winning streaks, they remained in tenth place or worse, and their record from that point never was better than 11 games under .500. Additional home games against Minneapolis and St. Paul weren’t scheduled until August, too late to help attendance. The town’s decision in June to ban Sunday baseball didn’t help either; the team resorted to scheduling games in White Bear Lake.

Manager Miller compounded matters by resigning on June 15. An ex-umpire named Fred Gunkle replaced him, only to leave before month’s end in favor of ex-Chicago infielder Johnny Peters. Peters accomplished a brief revival, leading the club to extra-inning victories at Minneapolis on July 1 and 2 that, according to Sporting Life, “set the citizens of Stillwater wild.” Fowler did not resume his pitching heroics, presumably because of arm trouble. He pitched only sporadically in the team’s last 32 games, playing instead in the outfield. He put together a torrid streak at the plate from June 26 to July 14, going 16-for-31, but also drew a $10 fine for a wild throw.

Meanwhile, rumors of dissolution had begun. The Messenger denied such a report on June 28, stating the team was making expenses. By July 12 many speculated that the team would disband at the end of the year, and the stockholders were assessed to raise operating funds. Roster changes and financial problems – some paydays were probably missed – were keeping things unstable on the field as well. The team lost six straight in mid-July, turned around and won four, then resettled into its losing ways. Fowler, after pitching in four of five games between July 9 and July 18, didn’t play in five of the next seven; he perhaps still had a sore arm. Players continued to come and go rapidly as the month drew to a close, and financial losses mounted. The Messenger noted on July 26 that costs per game were $100 plus salaries, while receipts varied between $25 and $100. Stockholders were failing to pay the assessment levied on July 12.

Faced with a shambles on the field (the team lost its last six games by a combined score of 59-12) and off, the directors finally voted to disband, effective August 4, making Stillwater the fourth Northwestern League club to go under. The players were paid off. Losses totaled about $7,500, and the team’s last battles were fought in court, where stockholders who had paid their July assessment sued those who had not. Sporting Life, down on the team and the town in general since the daily paper had folded on June 1, fired a farewell salvo on August 13:

This club should never have been admitted to the league … the one-horse character of the village can best be gleaned from the fact that it was not able to sustain a daily newspaper. A fine town truly for a baseball club.

Bud Fowler apparently had no immediate plans. His presence in Stillwater was noted a month after the dissolution; he had returned to barbering. He could call his performance with the Stillwaters a success – a batting average of .302 and a 7-8 pitching record for a team that finished 22-41. Johnny Peters eventually helped him catch on with the Keokuk team of the Western League for 1885. That year proved no more stable for him – he played on three teams, each of which disbanded. He continued to play on largely white teams, performing well above standard but was denied a major-league shot. In 1890, when growing intolerance ended the brief history of black players in nineteenth-century Organized Baseball, he lost his last chance to play in the major leagues.