Imagine if a young major-league pitcher, like Andy Pettitte of the Yankees, decided, for whatever reason, to become an outfielder in the year 2001. And imagine if he hit over .300 for the next five years, culminating in 2005 by winning the league batting crown. And imagine if, upon his retirement in 2010, he had accumulated more than 1,700 hits and generated a lifetime batting average of over .300 to go along with his 60-plus pitching victories. Imagine all the articles that would be written at the close of the first decade of the twenty-first century calling for Pettitte to be inducted into the Hall of Fame.

There was such a player, born a century earlier than Pettitte. He collected 1,723 hits and became a life­time .303 hitter after he won 61 games as a major-league pitcher. His name was James Bentley “Cy” Seymour, and he is perhaps the game’s greatest forgotten name. Seymour won 25 games and led the league in strikeouts in 1898; seven seasons later, in 1905, he won the National League batting crown with a .377 average. Only one player in the history of the game — ­Babe Ruth — has more pitching victories and more hits than Seymour. The second most versatile player to ever play the game is almost totally unknown!

Of the approximately 14,000 players1 who have made it to the major leagues since 1893, only a tiny number have enjoyed success both on the pitcher’s mound and in the batter’s box. A few well-known players, like Sam Rice, Stan Musial, and George Sisler, began their careers as pitchers but became better known as hitters. Others, like Mike Marshall and Bob Lemon, switched from the field to the mound.

Only a handful, however, enjoyed success as both hitters and pitchers. Smoky Joe Wood’s blazing fastball enabled him to win 116 games before he blew his arm out. In 1918 he switched to the outfield, and he retired with 553 hits and a respectable .283 batting average. Rube Bressler began his career in 1914 as a pitcher, compiling a 26-32 record with Philadelphia and the Reds. Then he became a full-time outfielder, principally for Cincinnati and Brooklyn. Between 1921 and 1932 he collected 1,090 hits and produced a lifetime .301 batting average. Hal Jeffcoat, on the other hand, played the first six years of his career as an outfielder with the Cubs, and the last six as a pitcher with the Cubs and the Reds. He was 39-37 in 245 games as a pitcher, and accumulated 487 hits for a lifetime batting average of .248.

Since 1893, when the pitching rubber was moved back to 60 feet, six inches, only two major leaguers have pitched in 100 games and collected 1,500 hits.2 Ruth (1914-35) stroked 2,873 hits in his career and pitched in 163 games (94-46, 2.28 ERA). Seymour (1896-1913) got 1,723 hits and pitched in 140 games (61-56, 3.76 ERA).

Seymour’s pitching career highlights include that 25-victory season with a league-leading 239 strikeouts in 1898, tops during the transition era of 1893-1900. In addition to his hitting crown in 1905, he led both leagues in hits (219) triples (21), RBIs (121), and slug­ging average (.559). He was second in home runs (8), one behind the leader,3 and he led the National League in doubles (40). He also led the league and the majors in total bases (325), production (988), ad­justed production (175), batter runs (64.7), and runs created (153).

Cy Seymour was a pitcher in the hitting era of the 1890s, and a hitter in a pitching era of the 1900s. Maybe this is why he is forgotten.4

“Balloonist” makes good

The 24-year-old Seymour began his professional career as a pitcher for Springfield of the Eastern League in 1896. He had been playing semipro ball in Plattsburg, New York, for a reported $1,000 a month.5 (His good fortune in Plattsburg, if true, undoubtedly delayed his arrival to pro ball.) His 8-1 record for Springfield earned him a shot with the New York Giants later that year. He won two games and lost four in eleven appearances.

In 1897, he was initially labelled a “balloonist” and an “aerialist” because he was prone to getting wild and excitable.6 The New York Times cited him as “the youngster with a $10,000 arm and a $00.00 head.”7 But the left-hander gradually began to blossom as a major-league pitcher.8 The New York Herald wrote at the end of the season that “Cy is rapidly improving, occasionally he gets a slight nervous chill, but by talk­ing to himself with words of cheer and taking good self advice he lets the wobble pass away.”9

Seymour’s pitching featured a fast ball, a sharp­-breaking curve, a screwball, and a wildness (he led the league in walks from 1897 through 1899) that must have induced a certain amount of terror into the 530 league batters that he struck out over the same period. Veteran catcher Wilbert “Uncle Robbie” Robinson said he had never seen anyone pitch like Cy, who would first throw near the batters’ eyes and then near their toes, causing them “to not know whether their head or feet were in most danger”10

He compiled an 18-14 record with a 3 .3 7 ERA for the third-place Giants (83-48, 9.5 games behind Bos­ton).11 He led the league in strikeouts per game (4.83) and fewest hits allowed per game (8.23), and he struck out 149 batters, second only to Washington’s James “Doc” McJames (156). Batters hit only .242 against him — best in the league. This helped to offset his league-leading 164 walks.

Seymour’s 1897 record indicates that he was be­coming a peer of teammate and future Hall of Fame member Amos Rusie. Of the 21 pitching cat­egories listing the top five performers in Total Baseball, he ranks first in four and second in another. Rusie is first in one category (ERA, 2.54), second in nine, third in one and fourth in one. Future Hall of Farner Kid Nichols of Boston clearly led the league, being first in 10 categories and in the top five in all but three.12

In 1898 Seymour improved his record to 25-19, dropping his ERA to 3.18 for the disgruntled seventh­place Giants.13 He led the league in strikeouts with a total of 239, 61 ahead of McJames. He again led the league in strikeouts per game (6.03). He also began to take the field when he wasn’t pitching, pri­marily as an outfielder. As with Ruth 22 years later, the reason had little to do with managerial insight and more with a combination of injuries and the batting ineptitude of the Giants outfielders.14

Seymour hit .276 in 297 plate appearances, giving rise to speculation that he might be converted to a full-time outfielder despite the admonition by Wm. F. H. Koelsch in Sporting Life: “The suggestion that Seymour be placed in the outfield permanently is more than a rank proposition. As long as Seymour has the speed he has now he is more valuable on the slab than anywhere else.”15 Indeed, the Giants’ manage­ment was faced with a dilemma. His 45 pitching appearances and his 356 1/3 innings were vital. Yet the Giants were an anemic hitting squad that was being carried by the pitching of Rusie (who was also a good hitter) and Seymour.

Seymour’s 25 wins in 1898 were nearly one-third of the New York team’s total. He threw four shutouts (Nichols had five), two one-hitters, one three-hitter, four four-hitters, and six five-hitters. 16 Compare this with another 25-game winner in 1898. Cy Young threw one shutout, two three-hitters, and one five­hitter.17 Some felt that he had supplanted Rusie as the ace of the Giants’ pitching staff. The New York press said he had the best curve in the league, that “he could win with only five men behind him,” and that he had as much speed as Rusie ever had.18 He led the team in innings pitched, starts (43), and wins.19 Natu­rally, he felt he could look forward to a handsome new contract for 1899. But Andrew Freedman stood in his way.

Freedman, a New York City subway financier and Tammany Hall politician, purchased the controlling interest in the Giants in 1895 for $54,000. He quickly antagonized just about everyone in baseball when he attempted to run the team as if it were part of Tammany Hall. He banned sportswriters who were critical of the Giants from the Polo Grounds. When those same reporters purchased a ticket, Freedman had them removed from the park.20 Freedman regarded his team as a play­thing and firmly believed that uppity players must always be put in their place.

In 1897 Rusie held out for the entire season rather than accept a $200 deduction in his 1896 salary for allegedly not giving his best in the concluding games of the season. He agreed to sign for 1898 only after a group of owners got to­gether and paid his legal and “other” costs. Such ac­tions, coupled with a losing team, engendered universal hostility from the world of baseball toward the Giants owner.21

Freedman saw no reason to reward either Seymour (25-19, 3.18 ERA) or Rusie (20-11, 3.03 ERA) for their 1898 performances. Rusie choose to retire.22 Seymour held out for the first month of the season before signing for a $500 raise to $2,000 on May 11.23 Playing for a dispirited Giants team that was to win only 60 of 150 games, he was able to compile a 14-18 record with an ERA of 3.56. He finished second in the strikeout race with 142, three behind Noodles Hahn of Cincin­nati. He led the league in strikeouts per game (4.76).

How good a pitcher?

His pitching career was, for all prac­tical purposes, over. He made only 13 pitching appear­ances in 1900. Historian and SABR member David Q. Voigt has written that “Seymour was converted to an outfielder be­cause of his penchant for free passes.”24 It is true that Seymour walked 655 batters and fanned 584 in his career, a deplorable ratio by today’s standards. But it wasn’t so bad in Cy’s day. Rusie, for instance, struck out 1,934 batters in his career and walked 1,704. Doc McJames, who nipped Seymour for the strikeout crown in 1897 and finished a distant second to Cy in 1898, walked 563 and struck out 593 in his six years in the majors. Even the premier pitcher of the day, Kid Nichols, walked 854 and struck out 1,062 between 1892 and 1900.25

At the same time, Seymour held opposing batters to 67 points below the league average. Seymour’s wildness was partially compensated by his superb abil­ity to strike out batters and severely limit their hitting. It is likely that overwork, not wildness, ended his pitching career. He was, for three seasons, a mem­ber of that elite fraternity of outstanding pitchers.

Why, then, is his record unappreciated? Context. On the one hand, the lack of a foul strike rule kept league-leading strikeout totals lower than we are used to. On the other, walks weren’t as damaging in an era when teams played for a single run as they are in our power-oriented time. A Sporting Life report of a 6-2, four-hit victory serves as an example of how Cy’s wildness may have been used for positive results when it stated: “Seymour was wild at times, [but] was effec­tive at critical moments.”26 Hall of Famer Elmer Flick maintained that the best pitcher he ever batted against, when he was right, was Seymour, who “was practically unhittable. Cy had a wonderful control of his curve ball.”27

All players are subject to the limitations of the con­ventional wisdom of their particular era. An excellent relief pitcher today, for example, would have been no­body in particular 60 years ago.

Leaving the mound

Cincinnati pitcher Ted Breitenstein warned Seymour not to continue using the indrop ball (screwball) because it would leave his arm “as dead as one of those mummies in the Art Museum.”28 Perhaps he injured his arm in spring training, 1900. At any rate, he found himself playing center field for the “second team” in an intra-squad contest a few days before the regular campaign be­gan. 29

Two days before the opener, the New York Times indicated that “Manager Ewing will give par­ticular attention to Seymour”30 to decide if he would start it, since Rusie had failed to report.31 However, Cy did not get his first start until the eighth day of the season, when he was shelled. He was lifted in the sec­ond inning after he gave up four runs, signaling that something was indeed wrong.

He started again in Chicago in the middle of May, but he couldn’t find the plate and was shifted to cen­ter field after giving up ten runs· in six innings. He collected two singles in the 10-8 loss. He started the next game, in St. Louis, in left field. He again hit safely twice, but also made two errors in a 13-5 de­feat.32 He then disappeared from the lineup except for a couple of mop-up appearances in which he was hit hard.33 He won his first game of the season in early June, a 10-3 victory over St. Louis. Ironically, it was announced that very day that he was to be farmed out to Worcester, and that Chicago’s Dick Cogan had been secured in a trade. Then, mysteriously, the Times reports that “Si [a frequent spelling in the press of the time] Seymour put in his appearance again at the Polo Grounds yesterday having been refused by the Worcester management as unfit. It is likely some deal will be fixed up for his retrading [sic] with Chicago.”34

He ended up in Chicago, playing briefly with Charlie Comiskey’s then minor-league AL entry. Suggestions were made that perhaps he would devote his time to playing the outfield, although one newspaper report blames “his prancing about in the gardens”(the out­field) as the primary reason for his lost pitching ability.35 He even had time to pitch for the Scoharie Athletic Club against the Cuban X Giants on August 24.36

By the end of the season, Seymour was still on the Giants’ reserve list as a pitcher, although Freedman was suspicious of his “habits” and demanded that manager Ewing discover exactly “what he is doing.37 If there is not a change in him, and it is due to his habits, he will be laid off.”38

This would not be the only time that Seymour’s “habits” would be noted. There is little doubt that he was a drinker. We have at least one report of him be­ing removed from a game because he was inebriated. It is known that he suffered from severe headaches.39 Occasional reports of bizarre behavior find their way into the sporting pages, like the time he was mysteri­ously sent home from spring training in 1906 because it was simultaneously reported that, (a) he had a bad cold, (b) he needed to rest his tired muscles because the southern climate did not agree with him, and (c) he needed to attend his ill wife. Or the time he was coaching third base for the Orioles and tackled a run­ner who ran through his stop sign.

To McGraw and the bat

By 1901 Seymour was no longer a pitcher, but had jumped to John McGraw’s American League Baltimore Orioles to play right field. In two days in 1898 Seymour had started for the Giants and pitched three games against McGraw’s old National League Orioles. He lost the first game in the Polo Grounds and the first game of a doubleheader the next day in Baltimore, both 2-1. He finally beat the Orioles in the second game, 6-2. McGraw, years later, said that no player, not even Joe McGinnity, de­served the title “Iron Man” more than Cy Seymour.40 Perhaps it was this determination that convinced McGraw that Cy could be made into a good fielder.

The first seasons of the new century saw Seymour emerge as a star, batting .303 with the Orioles in 1901 and then, following the infamous breakup of the Bal­timore team in 1902, going to Cincinnati, where he became the regular center fielder and hit .340 in 62 games. In the following years for the Reds, he hit .342, and .313, before leading the league with .377 in 1905.

He had to beat out the great Honus Wagner for the batting title, and the two met in a season-ending doubleheader. A newspaper account of the time sounds not unlike modern stories about Sosa and McGwire: “10,000 were more interested in the bat­ting achievements of Wagner and Seymour than the games … cheer upon cheers greeted the mighty bats­men upon each appearance at the plate and mighty cheering greeted the sound of bat upon ball as mighty Cy drove out hit after hit. The boss slugger got 4 for 7 while Wagner could only get 2 for 7,”41 allowing Cy to win the crown by .013 points.

He also led the league in hits, doubles, triples, to­tal bases, RBIs, slugging average, and what we would now call Production, Batter Runs, and Runs Created. He was also a close second in home runs, runs pro­duced, and on-base percentage. This was a benchmark season. His average was the best in the National League, 1901-1919. (In the American League only Lajoie and Cobb topped it.)42 His slugging average of .559 was the best until Heinie Zimmerman’s .571 in 1913. His 121 RBIs weren’t exceeded again until Sherry Magee drove in 123 in 1910. His 40 doubles were the most hit by a National League outfielder until Pat Duncan collected 44 in 1922.

The first decade of the twentieth century brought the simultaneous development of “scientific base­ball”43 and deadball baseball. The hit-and-run play was the hallmark of the era. A standard practice of the day was for batters to move to the front of the batter’s box in an attempt to slap the ball before it be­gan to curve. Seymour eschewed this common practice, staying back in the box44 and waving his bat around,45 stating that it allowed him to “get that much more time to be sure which infielder is going to cover second base. A large portion of my base hits were made in this way.”46 He also used a wide variety of bats, depending on the pitcher. Contrary to con­ventional wisdom, he used a light bat when facing a location pitcher and a heavier one when he was up against a fireballer.47

Ned Hanlon, the Brooklyn man­ager, seemed to sense Cy’s unorthodox approach, and said, “I look upon Seymour as the greatest straight ball player of the age, by that I mean he is absolutely all right if you let him play the game in his own way. But if you try to mix up any science on him you are likely to injure his effectiveness.”48

In 1906, the New York World listed Cy, along with 10 other notables, such as Christy Mathewson, Ed Walsh, Wagner, Nap Lajoie, and Roger Bresnahan as the best in baseball.49 Even in 1909, when he became a part-time player, his .311 average left him atop all the reserve players in the league. Take a look at this comparison of offensive figures taken 1901-1908. Seymour is the only non-Hall of Famer listed.50

From 1901 through 1908 (excluding 1902),51 Seymour consistently ranked among the league’s best offensive players. In 20 categories, he ranked no less than fifth 41 times of a possible 140 (29 per­cent).52 Wagner dominated with 111 of the possible 140 (79 percent). Flick was 62 of 140 (44 percent).53 In contrast, future Hall of Fame third baseman Jimmy Collins was to make the leader category only 19 times (13.5 percent).54

Cy Seymour wasn’t Babe Ruth, but some compari­sons are interesting.

• Each led his league in holding opponents to low­est batting average: Seymour 1897, .242; Ruth 1916, .201.
• Seymour won 25 games in 1898; Ruth won 24 in 1917 and 23 in 1916.
• Each had an 18-game-winning season: Seymour 1897; Ruth 1915.
• Seymour led league in strikeouts (1898); Ruth never did.
• Seymour led league in giving up walks three times; Ruth never did.
• Ruth placed within top five places of league-lead­ing pitcher categories 25 times 1915-17; Seymour placed 10 times from 1897-99. (Twelve major-league teams, 1897-99; twenty-four, 1915; six­teen, 1916-17.)
• Each won one batting championship: Seymour 1905, .377; Ruth 1924, .378.
• Triple Crown eluded both by the slimmest of mar­gins: Seymour in 1905 was one shy of home run title; Ruth in 1924 was second in RBIs, eight be­hind Goose Goslin, and in 1926 was .006 behind Heine Manush for the batting title.
• Seymour stole 222 bases; Ruth 123.
• Ruth led league in RBIs six times; Seymour once.
• Ruth led league in home runs 12 times, but never led league in doubles, triples, or hits; Seymour never led league in HRs but led once each in doubles, triples, and hits.
• Fielding Runs rating: Seymour +81; Ruth +5.

The end of the line

John McGraw is generally cred­ited with the hiring of baseball’s first full-time coach, Arlie Latham. A longtime friend and former Oriole teammate of McGraw, Latham owed his good fortune indirectly at least to Seymour, and, conversely, Arlie was to impact Cy’s career.

In the days prior to the hiring of a full-time coach, players took to the coach’s box. Seymour was coach­ing one day when Harry McCormick attempted to stretch a triple into a home run and ran through Cy’s hold-up sign. This is when Cy tackled his own team­mate. The surprised McCormick scrambled to his feet and was still able to score. When McGraw confronted Seymour about his bizarre behavior, Cy offered a feeble excuse about the sun being in his eyes. From that moment on, according to Christy Mathewson, McGraw realized the need for a full-time coach.55

Latham was, in the opinion of Fred Snodgrass, “probably the worst third-base coach who ever lived,”56 and seemed to ingratiate himself with McGraw with a variety of practical jokes apparently designed in the now time-honored belief that such measures keep a bench loose. During spring training in 1909, Cy took exception to a Latham prank and beat him up, causing McGraw to suspend Seymour from the team for eight weeks.57

In his first game back, Seymour received a career­-altering injury in the first inning. Chasing a long fly ball, he collided heavily with his right-field team­mate, Red Murray, and lay motionless for five minutes. He appeared to have recovered, and he re­sumed his position in center field. He caught a fly off the bat of the next Boston batter, but when he tried to throw the ball home (there was a runner on third) he collapsed. He had to be carried off the field.58 The injury to his leg, according to Mathewson, curtailed his effectiveness for the remainder of his career.59 Ex­actly two months after the injury he was able to play a few innings in left field in a game in Brooklyn,60 but speedy Cy (he averaged 20 steals per year) was never the same player after the accident.

Why forgotten?

Aside from the daily newspaper ac­counts and the sporting trade papers, little has been written about Seymour. 61 A brief survey of the literature reveals that he was, according to Christy Mathewson, one of the best “batsmen” ever. Alas, he was also a wild pitcher, and there is a dubious claim that he was a poor fielder. This is largely the result of his losing a fly in the sun during the one-game play­off between the Giants and the Cubs in 1908. The misplay allowed three runners to score.

The myth was that Mathewson, just prior to pitch­ing to Joe Tinker, had turned and motioned Seymour to play deeper62 and that Seymour refused to move. Mathewson always denied this, saying that Cy “knew the Chicago batters as well as I did and how to play them”63 Mathewson also admitted that day that he “never had less on the ball in my life,” and that Cy would have caught the fly 49 times out of 50.64 In the clubhouse after the game Cy said to Matty: “I misjudged the ball. I’ll take the blame for it.” And abuse he took; sportswriters looking for an easy story took full advantage of his supposed refusal to take direction from the demigod Mathewson.

Seymour certainly was not a good fielding pitcher, committing 104 of his lifetime 252 errors on the mound. Yet it is hard to believe that John McGraw, his manager both in Baltimore and New York, would have put him in center field if he felt Seymour was a liability. In fact, in 1904 Sporting Life claimed that he “is as speedy and graceful as ever in centre field and covers a world of ground out there more than any other centre fielder in the National League.”65 Frank Selee, the Chicago manager called Seymour “a mar­vel and a pleasure to watch,” and was amazed at his range and ability to backpedal.66 In 1907 he made a spectacular diving barehanded catch that was widely reported to have been the best ever seen in New York City.

A comparison to some of his contemporaries indi­cates that he was a better than average center fielder. His Total Baseball Fielding Runs is +58. Compare that to Cobb’s +55, Tommy Leach’s +53, and Fred Clarke’s +61. Then compare it to Elmer Flick’s +24, “Circus”67 Solly Hofman’s +28, Dummy Hoy’s +3, and Socks Seybold’s + 1, not to mention Ginger Beaumont’s -26 or Mike Donlin’s -31.

Of all the regular center fielders68 playing in the National League in 1907 and 1908 only one, Roy Thomas, had a better lifetime rating, +71, than Seymour. Making an error at an inopportune time seems to have established Seymour as a poor fielder despite conclusive evidence to the contrary, a condi­tion that Bill Buckner (+121) would undoubtedly understand.

Many have attempted the impossible task of compiling lists of the best players ever. Some are the all-time versions which are usually laden with recent performers; others attempt to categorize them according to specific eras. Almost no one mentions Seymour. David Voigt does include Seymour along with Turkey Mike Donlin and Buck Freeman as play­ers passed over for Hall of Fame consideration in the 1895-1900 era.

During that particular era he was pri­marily a pitcher and for three of those years he ranked among the best in baseball. Yet he had the dubious privilege of pitching in an era when league batters were hitting at a rate of .282 (1897-99).

Then, in turn, he batted in the Deadball Era (1900-1908) when batters for the entire National League averaged but .256. His peak batting career average was .054 above his league’s average for the 1901-08 period, al­most identical to that of Crawford (.052) and Flick (.058) His league leading .377 was .122 above the National League average in 1905. This differential would not be topped in the National League until Rogers Hornsby’s stupendous mark of .424 in 1924 (.151 above league average).

Personality

It is difficult to assess Seymour’s person­ality from the snippets of data available. Veteran catcher Duke Farrell relates an explosive emotional experience when Cy first started to pitch for the Gi­ants. In Chicago the rookie pitcher was sailing along effectively until the eighth inning when he suddenly became very wild. He gave up nine runs and in the parlance of the day “ascended into the air.” His cheeks turned red, he threw his hat off after a bad pitch, then threw his glove away after another. “Fi­nally,” Farrell states, “Cy was worked up to such a state that after making a pitch he would run to the plate and grab the ball out of my hands, hustle back and without waiting for my sign shoot it back … Nine Chicago runners crossed the plate [before the inning was over] … Seymour subsequently had many aerial flights, but nothing like his Chicago performance.”69

He was not only excitable and high strung, he dressed differently than his teammates and apparently was aloof. All characteristics that would give some fans, sportswriters, and ballplayers the chance to jeer him at the first opportunity.

There is one well-reported incident of him being removed from a game because he was inebriated. A follow-up report suggested, however, that the incident was isolated and that he then played like “a whirl­wind.”70 Another said: “J. Bentley Seymour by his good batting is more than making amends to the Reds management for his one jag.”71 In another incident the Cincinnati Post complained to the Reds owner, August Herrmann, that Seymour threatened a pho­tographer from the Post.72 Reports by Mrs. McGraw and Hans Lobert73 indicate that Seymour was a hard-­playing, hard-drinking player. One might therefore surmise he was subjected to alcoholic binges and leave it at that.

On the other hand, I think that he saw himself as different. In a world that was determined to be right-handed he was very much left-handed. Conven­tional wisdom of the day often forced left-handed school children to write with their right hands. Simi­larly baseball, at the time, could not see left-handed pitchers to be equal to right-handed ones. He was un­orthodox; his pitching and his hitting were contrary to the norms of the day.

Seymour seemed sensitive about his name, and came in for a good deal of chiding because he insisted that he was related to the Duke of Somerset.74 He ap­parently insisted upon being called J. Bentley or James Bentley rather than the nickname Cy (for Cy­clone) that New York sportswriters gave him. He had at least three publicized altercations during his career — an offseason brawl with the ballplaying broth­ers Jesse and Lee Tannehill,75 the Latham affair, and a punch-up with Cincinnati pitcher teammate Henry Thielman during an exhibition game in Indianapolis. Thielman, according to the report, “kid­ded” Seymour about his name.76

On the other hand, he was apparently the person who applied the nick­name “Tillie” to Arthur Shafer. Mrs. McGraw reports that in 1909, when her husband introduced the shy, good looking and young Shafer to the Giants in the Polo Grounds clubhouse, “Big Cy Seymour, an Oriole in word and deed, responded first with ‘We’re all damned glad to meet you Tillie!’ Then came the cho­rus! ‘Yes sir Tillie, glad to see you. Yes sir Tillie, glad to see you. Make yourself home, Tillie! Good Luck, Tillie … Save Your Money Tillie … Get the last bounce Tillie”‘77 Another report of the same incident has Seymour rushing over to Shafer and planting a kiss on Shafer’s cheeks saying “Tillie, how are you?” Shafer hated the nickname, but it stuck with him. 78

Perhaps this incident, coupled with the Latham epi­sode, paved the way for Seymour’s departure to obscurity,79 and may be one of the reasons that John McGraw never mentions Seymour in his book My Thirty Years in Baseball.

Yet while Seymour was playing for Baltimore of the Eastern League in 1911, an opponent, former major leaguer Bobby Vaughn, said that he still had the best batting eye of anyone in baseball. Certainly an exag­geration, but the 39-year-old did hit .296 that year, and one is left to speculate that McGraw and others may have chosen not to employ Cy be­cause of his peculiar personality traits. Vaughn lavishly praised Cy, but then curiously adds: “Many think him a shirker but he is not … Seymour is a con­scientious ball player whatever else may be said.”80

He was also plagued by headaches. In the winter of 1904-05 he sought nasal surgery in an effort to solve his problem.81 Migraines? Occasionally he would ex­hibit strange behavior, like the morning that he decided to take on a lion at the Zoo. Mental illness? Some reports later said he was drunk, which was prob­ably so, but he would not have been the first person to use alcohol as a cover-up of other problems.

On the other hand, there are reports that Seymour was “as straight and clean as the Bank of England,”82 and unlike some other players, he never took advan­tage of owner Garry Hermann’s generosity. Hermann attended Seymour’s wedding,83 added $100 a month to Cy’s $2,800 contract when he arrived from Balti­more, and arranged an offseason “job” which according to a newspaper report required him to do little more than walk the streets clad “in swell clothes.”

Cy certainly seemed the dandy. Sprinkled through­out the Seymour scrapbooks that reside in the Hall of Fame Library in Cooperstown are accounts and pic­tures, some of them mocking, about Cy’s sartorial splendor. Like many athletes, then and today, he of­ten seemed to take himself too seriously. Be it his dress, or his insistence that he be referred to as J. Bentley84 rather than Cy, or his reluctance to be pho­tographed, he seemed very much the prima donna.

The 1906 sale of Seymour from the Reds to the Giants for $10,000 was one of the largest in baseball history.85 After playing but one game for the Giants ­in which he made a sensational catch — he demanded that he receive a portion of the $10,000 that he in­sisted Garry Herrmann, the Reds owner, had promised him if the sale was completed. Herrmann denied that a promise had been made. Cy threatened to go on strike. John McGraw was able to convince Seymour to reconsider, and Organized Baseball may have avoided a precedent similar to professional soc­cer, in which a player transferred from one club to another receives a percentage of the transfer fee.86

Seymour was not devoid of humor. Upon his first return to Cincinnati in a Giants uniform after the trade, he wore bright red false whiskers as a disguise that allowed him to receive front page headlines in the Cincinnati Post. Descending from the team car­riage the bewhiskered Cy announced to the multitude “Cy Seymour I am pained to relate, ladies and gentle­men, is not coming to the park today. He is afraid that the Cincinnati fans will lynch him.” When he grounded out his first time at bat he was jeered and cheered by the local fans.87

Typical of aging stars of the day, Cy played minor-league ball in 1911 and 1912, for Baltimore and Newark. A newspaper report of his release in Balti­more stated that “although he played good ball his habits were such that it was decided that he would no longer play on the team.”88 Apparently able to correct himself, he was to make it, briefly and unsuccessfully, back to the majors with the Boston Braves in 1913.

The only remaining correspondence89 written by Seymour are two job enquiries made to Herrmann re­garding managerial positions in 1913 or thereabouts. A letter written on November 28, 1913, gives some insight into the character of the man. He saw himself as a loner, but capable of making managerial decisions without being influenced by the press or hangers-on.

His letter also suggests that he may have been re­garded as an odd character, because he told Hermann: “I may seem funny to you the way you know me. I am different on the inside than on the out & I know if I had half a chance I will make good. I am not much of a talker & [don’t] go around talking about myself.”90 On the other hand, his letter suggests that Herrmann be wary of baseball writers’ opinions, and is bold enough to say: “I am going to give you a tip now and always remember it. It takes [two] to run a ball club. The manager and yourself.”91 What Herrmann thought of the tip we cannot be certain, except that Cy did not get the job and found himself, at age 41, effectively out of Organized Baseball.

Seymour apparently contracted tuberculosis while working in the shipyards of New York during the First World War. He died in New York City on September 20, 1919. His death was overshadowed by the talk of the World Series involving Cincinnati and the now-­infamous Black Sox. One obituary claimed that he worked on the docks because he was unfit for military service.92 Yet he was able to play 13 games for Newark in the International League during the 1918 season, when he was 46 years old. It might be assumed that he was an alcoholic; he was also ru­mored to have been penniless.93

Sporting Life said of Seymour “that he was one of the most brilliant though erratic pitchers the game ever produced. “94 Christy Mathewson said that he “was a mighty batsman … one of the best ever.”95 John McGraw thought he deserved the title of “lronman.” Former slick-fielding second baseman turned sports­writer Sam Crane wrote in the New York Journal that Seymour “proved himself to be one of the best out­fielders in every department” and that Cy “put to rest the notion that pitchers could not hit well.”96 Now he is all but forgotten — the victim of being a pitcher in a hitters’ era and a hitter in the Deadball Era.

His burial was a simple one: his boyhood chums acted as pallbearers, and although a large throng attended the service, no one from Organized Baseball did.97 A search of the rural cemetery in his home town of Al­bany, New York, serves as a final irony. He is buried in the family plot, but no stone marks the accomplish­ments of the second most versatile player that the game has ever known.98

Sources

In addition to the sources cited in the Notes, the author also consulted:

Demaree, Al. “Tough Customers,” Collier’s, May 14, 1927.

Hertzel, Bob. “Baseball’s Hall of Blunders,” Baseball Digest, January 1973.

Mathewson, Christy. “‘Outguessing’ the Batter,” Pearson’s Magazine (American Edition), May 1911.

Mathewson, Christy. Pitching In A Pinch: Baseball From the Inside. (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1994).

Rothgeber, Bob. “When Hitting Became a Science: Cy Seymour,” Cincinnati Reds Scrapbook. (Virginia Beach: JCP, 1982).

Notes

1 Thanks to Tom Ruane for this information. He reports that 13,561 have played ball from 1893 until through the 1998 season.

2 David Nemec, Great Baseball, Feats, Facts & Firsts (New York: Signet Sports, 1989), 331.

3 See Total Baseball, 3rd ed., John Thorn and Pete Palmer, eds. (New York: HarperCollins, 1993), 1932-33.

4 Prior to 1893 Al Spalding (252 wins and 613 hits), Hoss Radbourne (309 wins and 585 hits) Scott Stratton (97 wins and 379 hits) posted significant pitch­ing and hitting records, yet none of them had two distinctive careers. Only the great John Montgomery Ward (164 wins and 2,105 hits) was able to challenge the accomplishments of Ruth and Seymour. And although Ward played until 1894, he was an infielder for the last ten years of his playing career. Thanks to Larry Gerlach for pointing this out to me.

5 See the Albany (New York) Times-Union, September 21, 1919. An unusually large sal­ary considering that he only made $2,000 playing for the Giants in 1899! The report indicates that the Northern New York League was supported by millionaire sportsman, Harry Payne Whitney. Prior to playing in the NNYL he played for the Ridgeway team in his hometown of Albany, New York.

6 Seymour Scrapbook, 1896. These eight volumes, which are housed at the Hall of Fame Library, Cooperstown, New York, contain comprehensive press clippings of Cy’s career apparently compiled by his mother or father, arranged in a fastidi­ous chronological order that is only marred by the fact that the names and dates of publications of the clippings have been eliminated by the compiler. My guess is that his father, Theodore, was the compiler. Correspondence from a Baltimore publisher is addressed to him. Thus, future reference to the scrapbooks shall read as, e.g., SSB 1897, except when the exact date or name of the publication is known.

7 New York Times, September 5, 1897.

8 The New York Times report does not jibe with Amos Rusie’s view. Rusie took Seymour under his wing in Cy’s rookie season and reported that Seymour was “a willing youngster and a good pupil,” See Amos Rusie file, HOF, “Fireball Rusie …Tells How He Held Out … “

9 New York Herald, September 19, 1897.

10 “Cy Seymour’s Pitching Arm,” SSB, July 27, 1898. Sam Crane, among oth­ers seemed to think his small hands was an important factor causing his wildness.

11 Total Baseball has him at 18-14 while Bill Weiss’s stats have him at 20-14. Personal correspondence, Weiss to Kirwin, November 1998.

12 See p. 1920 of Total Baseball, 3rd Ed.

13 Again, Weiss has him at 25-17.

14 Boston manager Ed Barrow once said: “I would be the laughing stock of the league if I took the best pitcher in the league (Ruth) and put him in the outfield.” See Jonathan Fraser Light, The Cultural Encyclopedia of Baseball (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland, 1997), 579.

15 Sporting Life, October 15, 1898.

16 A typical 1898 victory saw Cy throw a four-hitter and collect two hits and score one run himself in a 6-2 win over Cleveland on May 30th, striking out seven and issuing as many walks.

17 Nichols had five shutouts, one three-hitter, one four-hitter and six five-hit­ters.

18 HOF SB 1898.

19 He also again led the league in walks with 213.

20 James D. Hardy, Jr., The New York Giants Baseball Club, The Growth of a Team and A Sport, 1870-1900 (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland, 1996), 157-161.

21 Seymour himself experienced Freedman’s parsimony when as a rookie he was fined $10 for leaving a ticket booth that he was occasionally required to man in order that he might watch his teammates play!

22 He did return to major-league baseball in 1901 to pitch in three games for Cincinnati. In exchange for Rusie, Cincinnati sent the Giants an obscure young pitcher — Christy Mathewson.

23 New York Times, May 12, 1899. It is of note that Freedman said a year ear­lier he would not trade Seymour for $10,000.

24 David Quentin Voigt, The League That Failed (Lanham, Maryland: Scarecrow Press, 1998), 123.

25 Cy Young, of course, was a notable exception: although his won-loss record (72-48 vs. 57-51) was not radically different from Seymour’s during the 1897-99 seasons, Young walked only 134 batters during the three years in question, seventy­-nine fewer than Cy during the 1898 campaign alone! On the other hand, Young, who had won the strikeout crown in 1896, only managed to strike out 300 batters from 1897-99 while Seymour struck out 534 in the same period.

26 Sporting Life, June 4, 1898.

27 HOF SB 1902. Flick added, “I have asked many baseball players who bat­ted against him the days past, and they all agreed that he was the star of them all when in condition.”

28 HOF SB 1898.

29 New York Times, April 8, 1900.

30 New York Times, April 17, 1900.

31 New York Times, April 19, 1900.

32 New York Times, May 16 and 18, 1900.

33 New York Times, May 19 and 29, 1900.

34 New York Times, June 12, 1900; see also June 8, 1900.

35 HOF SB 1900.

36 Ibid.

37 Historian Bob Hoie hypothesizes that Seymour probably injured his arm or attempted to take something off his pitches to improve his control and that the Giants merely suspended him because of his arm problems. Personal correspon­dence, Hoie to Kirwin, December 28, 1998. Also, David Voigt in personal correspondence reflects a changed opinion regarding the pitching demise of Seymour, now believing that it probably had more to do with his arm problems than wildness. Personal correspondence, Voigt to Kirwin, undated, 1998.

38 Andrew Freedman to William Ewing, May 21, 1900; see James Bentley, “Cy” Seymour file, HOF.

39 Sporting Life, “The disappearance of ‘Cy,’” March 11, 1905.

40 See HOF Seymour file clipping “Cy Seymour’s Iron Man.” See also New York Times, October 13, 1898; McGraw thought the games were in 1896 or ’97 and that the second game of the doubleheader was a shutout. In 1897 Seymour pitched

both games of a doubleheader win against Louisville.

41 SSB 1905.

42 Lajoie hit .426 in 1901 and .384 in 1910. Cobb equaled Seymour’s .377 in 1909 and batted .383 in 1910.

43 The uses of the bunt, hit-and-run, Baltimore chop, and cutoff man were developed by Baltimore manager Ned Hanlon.

44 Bob Rothgeber, “When Hitting Became A Science,” Cincinnati Reds Scrapbook (Virginia Beach, Virginia: JCP, 1982), 36.

45 Sporting Life, January 6, 1906.

46 Rothgeber, “When Hitting Became A Science.”

47 Ibid.

48 HOF SB 1905.

49 New York World, September 22, 1906. The other five were Art Devlin, Giants; George Stone, St. Louis Americans; Johnny Kling, Chicago Nationals; Hal Chase, New York Highlanders; and Rube Waddell, A’s.

50 Almost as an afterthought, Seymour was added to the Cincinnati Reds Hall of Fame in 1998. Most of the media attention of that day focused on Tony Perez, who was also inducted.

51 During the 1902 season he ranked high in both RBIs and HRs in the com­bined league totals. See Top-Five Leading Categories.

52 If one wanted to stretch the case, the claim could be made that Seymour had the fourth highest number of home runs in 1904. The number is correct; however, six players had more home runs that he did. A similar case could be argued for 1906 triples. I choose the more rigid interpretation of including only the top five players wherever possible.

53 Since 1907 was Flick’s last year as a regular player, the 1900 season, his second best in category leadership (14) was used for comparison purposes. In 1902 his name does not appear in any of the categories. In the 1901-1907 seasons Flick’s category dropped to 34 percent.

54 1897-1904, excluding the 1902 season when he only played in 108 games.

55 Christy Mathewson, Pitching in a Pinch (Lincoln, Nebraska: Bison Books, re­print 1988), 120-21.

56 Charles C. Alexander, John McGraw (Lincoln, Nebraska: Bison Books, reprint 1988), 143.

57 New York Times, April 27, 1909.

58 Ibid.

59 Mathewson, Pitching in a Pinch, 135-36.

60 New York Times, June 26, 1909.

61 Even that his sale of 1906 from the Reds to the Giants for $10,000 (some reports claim it was $12,000) was one of the largest in baseball history up until that time has been ignored.

62 See Rube Marquard, The Life and Legend of a Baseball Hall of Famer (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland, 1998), 5l.

63 Mathewson, Pitching in a Pinch, 186.

64 Ibid., 186-88.

65 “National League News,” Sporting Life, June 18, 1904.

66 Seymour HOF SB 1902.

67 Arthur Frederick Hofman was well known for his circus catches and was named after a comic strip character. See James A. Skipper, Baseball Nicknames (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland, 1992), 127.

68 See Total Baseball, 3rd Ed., 2327-30. Does not include players who did not play at least 300 games in the outfield.

69 SSB 1903, “Seymour’s Airship.”

70 Sporting Life, August 15, 1903. Another report, probably in a Cincinnati newspaper, said that he had called in claiming he was sick when in fact he was drunk, requiring him to miss several games. The record indicates that he played in 135 of the 141 games the Reds played that year.

71 Sporting Life, August 29, 1901.

72 Ray Long to August Hermann, Seymour HOF file, January 31, 1906.

73 Lawrence Ritter, The Glory of Their Times: The Story of the Early Days of Baseball — Told by the Men Who Played It (New York: Vintage, 1985), 192.

74 “Seymour the Straight,” Seymour HOF file, November 17, 1906.

75 Reported, apparently, in the Albany Times Union in 1903, citing a Cincin­nati dispatch stating that Seymour walked away unmarked from a battle with the two Tannehill brothers. They in tum both required hospital assistance. See HOF SB 1903.

76 Sporting Life, October 11, 1902.

77 Mrs. John J. McGraw and Arthur Mann, The Real McGraw (New York: David McKay, 1951), 227. Thanks to Darryl Brock for this source.

78 James K. Skipper Jr., Baseball Nicknames: A Dictionary of Origins and Meanings (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland, 1992), 252.

79 Ironically Fred Snodgrass, who was to soon replace Cy as the Giants regular center fielder, was also introduced that day.

80 HOF Seymour file, “Bobby Vaughn Talks of Cy’s Batting Eye.”

81 “The Disappearance of Cy,” Sporting Life, March 11, 1905.

82 “Seymour the Straight,” Seymour HOF file, November 17, 1906.

83 Sporting Life, December 27, 1902.

84 He picked up the name Cy when he first arrived in New York. The name referring to his pitching style derived from the word ”cyclone,” and was a rather common sobriquet applied to pitchers of the day. He may have wanted to put his pitching days behind when he resisted being called Cy, yet on the other hand it may have been simply to clarify the fact that he was not a Jew. A letter to the New York Globe asks “is Seymour a Hebrew or an Irishman?” and receives the follow­ing answer, “He is an American of English descent.”

85 Some reports indicated that it was $12,000.

86 Seymour certainly seemed to be not unaware of the upcoming sale, openly saying to the press, “Tell ’em I’m going away.” Whether by design or preoccupa­tion, his indifferent play prior was reflected in his .257 batting average.

87 SSB 1906, Cincinnati Post, August 25, 1906.

88 SSB 1908. This scrapbook contains several items after 1908.

89 See “Cy Seymour in Disgrace,” SSB 1903.

90 Seymour to Hermann, HOF File, November 28, 1913.

91 Ibid.

92 New York Times, September 22, 1919.

93 Rothgeber, “When Hitting Became a Science,” 37.

94 Sporting Life, June 17, 1905.

95 Christy Mathewson, “’Outguessing’ the Batter,” Pearsons Magazine, May 1911.

96 HOF SB 1902.

97 Albany Times-Union, September 23, 1919.

98 Albany Rural Cemetery visit, June 5, 1999. Thanks to John Buszta for his help.

Less known is a four-game sweep in August, 1929, when the Browns piled up a 22-2 composite score and shut out the defending world champions in three of the four games. The series effectively ended what re- mote chance the Yankees had of catching the Philadelphia A’s and gave hope (eventually dashed) that St. Louis would garner its second third-place finish in a row.

By 1927 only four members of the Browns’ great 1922 team remained: shortstop Wally Gerber, first baseman George Sisler, pitcher Elam Vangilder, and outfielder Ken Williams. Over the following offseason, owner Phil Ball and manager Dan Howley, who had brought the ’27 team in seventh, overhauled the club. By the time it assembled in West Palm Beach, Florida, in February, 1928, only Gerber was still around-and he was gone by April 25. The new Browns had Lu Blue at first base, Otis Brannan at second, Red Kress at shortstop, Early McNeely in left, and Heinie Manush in right. Catcher Wally Schang, third baseman Frank O’Rourke, center fielder Fred Schulte, and Kress (only seven games in 1927) were holdovers. The pitching was upgraded with the acquisition of Sam Gray, Jack Ogden, and George Blaeholder.

The revamped team finished third at 82-72, nineteen games behind pennant winning New York. It was a remarkable turnaround from the prior year. Manush was second in AL hitting at .378, was first in hits with 241 and tied Lou Gehrig in doubles at 47. The pitching was superb. Holdover Alvin “General” Crowder finished at 21-5, for a league-leading winning percentage of .808. Gray was 20-12, Ogden 15-16, and Blaeholder 10-15. Attendance improved dramatically: 339,497 came out to Sportsman’s Park, compared to 227,879 the year before. In 1929 Oscar Melillo took over at second, Frank McGowan moved into center, and Rip Collins joined the pitching staff.

By the time the Yankees arrived in St. Louis on August 22, they were fourteen games behind Philadelphia. The Browns were in fourth, percentage points behind Cleveland. New York seemed to have lost its magic, as manager Miller Huggins admitted to a Cleveland writer: “… I don’t think the Yankees are going to catch the Athletics. I don’t think these Yankees are going to win any more pennants, certainly not this one. They’re getting older and they’ve be- come glutted with success.”

Still, the Yankees had taken twelve of fourteen games from St. Louis, and a sweep just might revive the pennant race. Howley sent Gray out to pitch the first game, and he responded with a brilliant seven-hit shutout. St. Louis scored two runs in the first inning, four in the third, knocking out starter Waite Hoyt, and added two more in the fifth and eighth. Schang was out, replaced by Clyde Manion. Schulte and Manush had been injured in an outfield collision the day before, so rookie Red Badgro took over in right, with Frank McGowan in center. Badgro, who would to on to a Hall of Fame career in pro football, responded by going four for five with three RBIs. The 10-0 victory produced fifteen hits as 3,500 watched. Huggins had dropped Gehrig and Lazzeri to sixth and seventh in his batting order, moving Bill Dickey up to the third spot. The move had no effect in this game or the two that followed.

Game 1: Thursday, August 22
St. Louis 10, New York 0
WP: Gray. LP: Hoyt.

New York Times writer William Brandt said that “Missouri’s traditional blistering sun was in mid-August form” and the Browns continued their own hot streak the next day before 2,500. This time they confined their activity to the fourth inning when they produced five runs. Except for this inning, Yankee starter Herb Pennock would pitch almost as fine a game as St. Louis hurler George Blaeholder. With two runs already in, Lu Blue clinched the game for the Browns when he doubled with the bases loaded. Blaeholder gave up only five hits, and the Browns won, 5-0.

Game 2: Friday, August 23
St. Louis 5, New York 0
WP: Blaeholder. LP: Pennock.

On August 24, Howley gave the ball to Al Crowder, and he proved even better than Gray and Blaeholder. Before 9,000 delighted fans the General gave New York only two hits, both by Gene Robertson, a former Brown who had been a utility man with the 1922 team. The Browns got three of their runs in the second inning on a walk to McGowan, a single by Kress, and successive doubles by Manion and Crowder himself. The final St. Louis run came in the sixth, when Kress’s third single scored McGowan. The 4-0 win featured Crowder retiring twenty straight batters after walking Lazzeri in the second inning.

St. Louis Post Dispatch writer James Gould could hardly conceal his delight when he led his story of this game: “Just what kind of meat the Browns have been feeding on that they have suddenly become so great is not known, but whatever it is, the diet is entirely successful. … Shutting out the Yankees three times in a row has been for years one of the things that just wasn’t being done.”

Game 3: Saturday, August 24
St. Louis 4, New York 0
WP: Crowder. LP: Sherid.

The Browns had moved into third place with their second victory, and this win put them a game up on Cleveland, which had split with Boston. The success of the past three days brought 15,000 fans to the Sunday finale on August 25. The shutout streak ended, but the victory run did not. St. Louis’s only lefty, Walter Stewart, gave up only six hits in the 3~2 win. Two of these were home runs by Ruth (who had gone one for ten in the set), his thirty-fourth and thirty-fifth of the season. Huggins had moved Gehrig and Lazzeri up a notch in the batting order, given Dickey the day off, and moved Ruth into the third slot.

The visitors finally ended their scoreless streak on Ruth’s solo shot in the fourth, but the Browns tied it in the fifth. In the eighth, the home team went up, 3~1, when McGowan scored on O’Rourke’s double and O’Rourke was singled in by Melillo. Ruth made it close in the ninth with his second poke over the right field fence onto Grand Avenue, but Stewart got the side out to hold on to the victory.

Game 4: Sunday, August 25
St. Louis 3, New York 2
WP: Stewart. LP: Wells.

The Yankees limped home to New York with little hope of overtaking Philadelphia, but St. Louis couldn’t hold third place. They finished in fourth at 79-73-2 despite improved individual performances from Blue, Melillo, Kress, and Schulte. Kress hit .305, Schulte .307. Manush “dropped off” to .355. Kress was the team leader with only nine home runs. (Blue and Manush had 14 and 13, respectively, in 1928.) The pitching continued strong as four hurlers won in double figures: Gray, 18-15; Crowder, 17-15; Blaeholder, 14-15; and Collins 11-6.

Huggins would die a month later, the stock market would crash a month after that, and the Browns would not see third place again until 1942. But for four days in August 1929, life couldn’t have been better in St. Louis.

ROGER A. GODIN is team curator of the NHL’s Minnesota Wild. He admits that hockey is his first love, followed by an affection for the St. Louis Browns. He is the author of The 1922 St. Louis Browns: Best of the American League’s Worst. He lives in St. Paul, Minnesota.

Sources

1. Borst, Bill. Still Last in the American League. West Bloomfield, Mich.: Altwerger & Mandel Pub., 1992.

2. Meany, Tom. The Yankee Story. New York: E. P. Dutton & Co., 1960.

3. New York Times, August 23, 24, 25, 26, 1929.

4. St. Louis Post Dispatch, August 22, 23, 25,1929.

5. The Baseball Encyclopedia, Tenth Edition, New York: Macmillan, 1996.

I defined a team switch as any time a player plays for two different major league teams (obviously!) I used the team history section in the fifth edition of Total Baseball to determine exactly what a team switch was. Any team that switched a city or a league, but was the same franchise (such as the Brooklyn Dodgers moving to Los Angeles or the Milwaukee Braves moving to Atlanta) is not considered a switch. In a well-known twentieth century instance, the city and league remain the same but the franchise is different (Washington Senators, 1960 and 1961—three players played for both teams, and each was credited with a team switch.) A midseason switch is counted when a player accumulated statistics for different major league teams during the same year.

For every player who has ever appeared in what I consider a major league game (National and American Leagues, National Association, American Association, Players’ League, Union Association, and Federal League), I compiled the player’s debut year, the total number of seasons played, the number of times the player switched teams, the number of times the player switched teams in midseason, and the final year the player appeared in a major league game. For example, a player’s “switch history” would look like this: Jim Kaat, 1959, 25, 4, 3, 1983. Translated, this means that Jim Kaat debuted in 1959, appeared in twenty-five major league seasons, switched teams four times (Washington, 1960 to Minnesota, 1961 is not counted as a switch), three times during a season, and played his final game in 1983.

Categorization

I divided the 15,215 players who played major league baseball during the span I studied into four eras of baseball history: Nineteenth Century (1871-1902, 2,263 players), Golden Age (1903-1960, 6,820 players), Expansion (1961-1974, 1,786 players), and Free Agency (1975-1999, 4,346 players). I put players whose careers crossed eras into the era in which they played most. If they played the same number of years in each era, I put them in the more recent era.

I also categorized players by career length. The divisions: One Shots (one-year career, 4,571 players); Short Timers (two- to four-year careers, 4,812 players); Journeymen (five-to nine-year careers, 3,312 players); and Stars (ten-year careers or longer, 2,520 players). I also developed a subset of Stars, Superstars (fifteen-year careers or longer, 747 players). Obviously not every ten-year player is a true star, but career length correlates reasonably well with ability.

Table 1 is the summary of the compiled data. It shows the number of players by era and by career length sorted by the number of team switches during the players’ careers. As you can see, one player switched teams sixteen times during his major league career. No one else is close to this guy’s record. Keep reading to discover the name of this guy who perpetually had his bags packed.

Team switches through history

Historic averages of years played per team switch are shown in the top third of Table 2. Columns represent average career length; years played per switch; years played per midseason switch; average numbers of switches; and midseason switches per player. The numbers in parentheses represent the total number of players used to calculate the averages in that category. To explain the data: the average player who has appeared in the major leagues has a career length of 4.8 years and switched teams every 3.8 years.

Nineteenth Century players were the most mobile by far. Teams and leagues were moving into and out of existence, enticing or forcing players to move around. The average career was short and players switched teams about every 2.4 years.

The data supports the nostalgic idea that Golden Age players switched teams less frequently than modern players, but the difference isn’t that dramatic. An average player during the Golden Age switched teams every 4.4 playing years, while the average player in the Expansion era switched every 3.8 years and the average Free Agency era player switched every 3.8 years—only thirteen percent more frequently than during the Golden Age. Also, during the last quarter century, the average player made midseason switches less frequently then in any other era. Modern teams don’t move players during the season as often as those Golden Age teams did.

What about those ten-year Stars? Baseball fans reminiscing about their favorite teams never seem to remember these players leaving their favorite team. The data doesn’t support this. The middle third of Table 2 shows Stars switched teams about five percent less frequently (4.0 years vs. 3.8 years) than the complete set of major leaguers.

The bottom third of Table 2 presents the numbers for Superstars (15+ year career players). Superstars continue the trend of less frequent team switching (nineteen percent less frequent than average), but even in the Golden Age, the average Superstar switched teams more than three times during his seventeen-year career.

I hear you argue, “Maybe the players who crossed eras are skewing the data. Those Golden Age players who spent some time in the Nineteenth Century and others who spent time in the expansion era, are making the Golden Age years per switch go down.” To eliminate this bias I threw out all players whose careers crossed eras (such as a player whose career went from 1899-1910) and present the data in Table 3. Average career length is shorter because players with longer careers are more likely to play in two eras. Nineteenth Century players show even more mobility and Golden Age players show less. Removing the bias pushes the Golden Age Stars to 4.8 years per switch and the Golden Age Superstars to 5.6 years per switch, while Free Agency Stars and Superstars are at 3.7 and 3.9 years/switch.

How many more players stayed with a single team during their whole career during the Golden Age then in other eras? I present data in Table 4. The top half of the table shows the raw numbers of players in each category, while the bottom half shows the percentage of players in the category. Only 1.4 percent of Nineteenth Century Stars stayed with one team for a full career, while 8.2 percent of Golden Age Stars, 7.3 percent of Expansion Stars and 6.5 percent of Free Agency Stars stayed with their teams. In other words, for every hundred Stars, about two fewer stayed with the same teams for a whole career in the modern era than in the Golden Age. One-team players have always been rare—on average, only seven of every 100 Stars stayed with one team during their entire career.

Individual Kings of Switching Teams

Who is that perpetual packer, that moving madman who switched teams sixteen times in a twenty-year playing career? You might think it was a player driven by modern free agency, but the king of player movement played in the Golden Age, the era when team switches were lowest. Table 5 shows all fifteen players who switched teams ten or more times during their careers. And there’s your answer: Bobo Newsom! He is the Travelin’ Man. His twenty year pitching career followed this tortured path (* denotes midseason switch): ’29 Dodgers, ’32 Cubs, ’34 Browns, ’35 Senators*, ’37 Red Sox*, ’38 Browns, ’39 Tigers*, ’42 Senators, ’42 Dodgers*, ’43 Browns*, ’43 Senators*, ’44 Athletics, ’46 Senators*, ’47 Yankees*, ’48 Giants, ’52 Senators, ’52 Athletics*. Poor Bobo; he had five different stints with the Washington Senators and three with the St. Louis Browns. His longest length of time with any club was 2-1/2 years with the Athletics (1944-46).

Of the remaining players on the list, nine of them are Nineteenth Century, two are Expansion era, and three are Free Agency era. Only one active player appears on the list—Mike Morgan. He added to his career team switches by moving from the Texas Rangers to the Arizona Diamondbacks in 2000 and he is currently tied for third all time. If he can hang on a few more years (with a couple of different teams), he’s got a shot at being the second most mobile player of all time!

There are some current players who have a real shot at getting the ten switches needed to break into this elite group (Player/Career Years/Switches): Mark Whiten/10/9, Terry Mulholland/14/9, Gregg Olson/ 13/9, Mike Maddux/15/9, Willie Blair/11/8, Dennis Cook/13/8, Doug Jones/16/8, Geronimo Berroa/ll/7, Chuck McElroy/12/8, Charlie Hayes/13/8, and Roberto Kelly/14/8.

Method

I used Sean Lahman’s baseball database files (which are available on the Internet at www.baseball1.com) as the source of my data. I ran scripts written in Perl (a shareware scripting language) to search the database files and sort and extract the data I was interested in. Then I used Excel to further sort the information and perform all the calculations.

The Perl logic used to count switches may fail when a player switches teams during midseason. The logic fails because the database information does not list a player’s career in order of teams played for (and I didn’t have the time to go back and correct the 77,000 record hitters database and the 32,000 record pitchers database!) A purely fictional example that confuses my Perl logic:

John Smith

• 1978 New York 500 AB
• 1979 St. Louis 125 AB
• 1979 New York 130 AB
• 1980 St. Louis 550 AB

This player made three switches including one midseason switch. However, in the database, the player lines may look like this:

John Smith

• 1978 New York 500 AB
• 1979 New York 130 AB
• 1979 St. Louis 125 AB
• 1980 St. Louis 550 AB

The logic would count this as one switch and one midseason switch. Another error is possible when a player switches teams midseason two years in a row. Depending on how the player’s statistic lines are listed, the logic may over- or undercount the total number of switches. I checked over 200 players who were most likely to have this kind of switch counting problem (players with multiple midseason switches) and found that undercounting and overcounting evens out, leading me to believe the data is accurate.

BRIAN FLASPOHLER is a manufacturing engineer by day and a baseball fanatic the rest of the time. His aspiration is to be the GM of the St. Louis Cardinals.

In July 1908, Hugh Bedient, a recently graduated high school star, spent his summer days playing semi-pro ball with the Falconer Independents. (Falconer is a suburb of Jamestown, New York, in the southwest corner of the state). The Independents played teams from nearby Jamestown and Chautauqua, New York, and Youngsville and Corry, Pennsylvania. In a game in mid-July, Bedient struck out seventeen men in a nine-inning game against Youngsville, winning, 7-3. However, all eyes were on the upcoming games with Corry, with whom Falconer had developed an intense interstate rivalry. The New York team won the first game, played at home, 2-1. The second game, played at Corry, was a fifteen-inning tie.

The July 23 Jamestown Evening Journal stated: “A hair-raising game is expected to take place next Saturday when Falconer goes to Corry for the third game with the team of that place. A large number of Falconer fans will accompany the team.” Falconer arrived on the afternoon train from Jamestown accompanied by over a hundred supporters. The Corry Journal of July 27 covered the event: “As was expected, the game drew a thousand people to the grounds, who, as the battle progressed, became a frenzied, excited mass of humanity.” This wasn’t just a ball game. It was also an economic adventure. “The Corry fans had some money to bet and backed the home boys believing that the visitors would be overcome. All bets offered were covered, although a few backed up, and a large amount of money changed hands on the game.”

There was a great deal of confidence, and “rumor had it that the home team was loaded for the fray.” Three outfielders — fine fielders and batsmen — had been secured from Erie, Pennsylvania, to play for the Corry team. In its game report, the Journal reported, “They were the former but could not hit. They claimed to never have faced such a pitcher as Bedient, which shows just what invincible ball the visiting twirler was pitching.”

Corry scored first in the bottom of the seventh inning, with Falconer matching the run in the top of the eighth. Thereafter, Bedient limited Corry to only six hits during the twenty-three innings, struck out the astonishing 42, and, amazingly, allowed only a single walk. His counterpart, Charles Bickford, struck out 16 men, allowed 13 hits and gave up two walks.

Both teams had opportunities to win in extra innings, but Falconer finally took the lead for good in the top of the twenty-third inning when the bases were loaded with two outs. A grounder was sent to the third baseman who, instead of throwing to first for the final out, threw wildly to home plate and two runs came in. Bedient, with adrenalin flowing, fanned all three batters in the bottom of the twenty-third. The line score showed Falconer: 3-9-5 and Corry: 1-6-6. Bedient struck out 42 of the sixty-nine men he faced.

After the wire services picked up the story of Bedient, offers poured in — nineteen in all — from clubs from Maine to California. Ultimately, Hugh signed a professional contract and found his way to Boston in 1912. His 20-9 record made him a Sox favorite, and he performed heroically in the World Series against the New York Giants, beating the great Christy Mathewson, 2-1, in Game 5, and pitching Matty even for seven innings in the decisive Game 8, (one game ended in a tie) in a ten-inning game won by the Red Sox.

Bedient jumped from Boston to Buffalo in the Federal League in 1915. His major league record was 59-53, with 420 strikeouts, 236 walks and a 3.08 ERA. After the Federal League collapsed, he played in Toledo in 1917, where he developed a sore arm. He came back to Jamestown to rest and to register for the draft. Both Connie Mack and Miller Huggins sought his services, and he tried out for the Yankees in 1919. But his arm troubles kept him our of the majors. He played again for Toledo in 1921, 1922, and 1923. He went to Portland, Oregon, in 1924. He ended his professional career in 1925 with Atlanta of the Southern Association. The end came on an unusual note. He had a 2-0 record on Decoration Day when he took the mound against the Memphis Chicks. Irked by an umpire’s decision, Memphis fans showered the field with pop bottles, cushions, fruit, and programs. The game was forfeited to Atlanta and Bedient’s professional career closed on a three-game winning streak. According to the Jamestown Journal, “He returned home to Falconer during the summer in answer to an exceptionally good offer from local interests that were striving to build a top semipro team.”

Bedient himself later said, “It looked more like security — guarantees of a job and all — than anything Triple-A ball could offer.” Bedient played semipro ball with the Jamestown Spiders. He and former Washington Senators pitcher “Swat” Erickson faced various barnstorming teams, including Babe Ruth’s All-Stars, the Homestead Grays, the Pittsburgh Crawfords, the House of David, and various touring major league teams. When his pitching days were over, he worked for various local manufacturers and owned a garage. Upon retirement, Hugh could be seen attending local ball games and encouraging his grandson. Hugh Bedient died on July 21, 1965.

Frank Hyde, sports editor of the Jamestown Post Journal for over forty years, tried to discover if there had ever been a comparable strikeout feat. In 1951, he wrote a letter to George Trautman, the president of the National Association of Professional Baseball Leagues, inquiring whether this was a world record. Trautman wrote back as follows: “Thank you for calling my attention to the 42 strikeouts of Hugh Bedient in 1908. As far as all records available show, this is a world record for any type of baseball.” To check the amateur ranks, Hyde inquired of the National Baseball Congress, which listed a 36-strikeout caper by a pitcher during a twenty-inning state tournament game in Oklahoma. He concluded that Hugh Bedient’s 42 whiffs was indeed a record.

GREG PETERSON is an attorney in Jamestown, New York, who is gathering an oral history on Jamestown professional baseball (P.O.N.Y. and NY-Penn. League).

When Rose was driving for the number one spot, he attracted a lot of attention. After all, at that time only Ty Cobb had more than 3,800 hits and only Cobb and Henry Aaron had more than 3,650. Since Cobb was a legendary hitter, with the highest lifetime batting average in history (.366), passing Cobb represented great hitting to a lot of casual fans and content-hungry media types. But the truth is, Pete Rose is the second worst 3,000-hit man ever and, over all, a merely average offensive player.

A close study of Rose’s career reveals that his specialty was volume. He collected games, at bats, and singles at an unprecedented rate. And he kept it up for twenty-four years. But, as many argued during his heyday, Pete Rose contributed very little to his teams’ ability to win. The facts show that Pete Rose simply did not make his hits count. The most surprising outcome of this study is that Rose, known for scoring runs and racking up hit totals, was not exceptional in turning his hits into runs, either through scoring himself or through RBIs. To paraphrase Shakespeare, Rose provided a lot of sound and fury signifying very little.

3,000-Hit Players

To date, twenty-two major league baseball players have amassed 3,000 career hits.1 Seventeen of them played the bulk of their careers before 1920, which is the watershed for batting performance. Here is the list:

Post-1920

• Pete Rose
• Henry Aaron
• Stan Musial
• Carl Yastrzemski
• Paul Molitor
• Willie Mays
• Eddie Murray
• George Brett
• Paul Waner
• Dave Winfield
• Cal Ripken Jr.
• Tony Gwynn
• Rod Carew
• Lou Brock
• Wade Boggs
• Al Kaline
• Roberto Clemente

Pre-1920

• Ty Cobb
• Tris Speaker
• Honus Wagner
• Nap Lajoie
• Eddie Collins

See Chart A for raw stats.

(Click image to enlarge)

Pete Rose was by far the greatest collector of hits in the history of the game, with 4,256. Among modern players, 485 hits separate him from Aaron, the number two man on the list. To find that big a gap behind Aaron, you have to go to number six on the list, Willie Mays, with 3,283.3

The best way to sum up Pete Rose’s career is to acknowledge that he was the greatest singles hitter of all time. 75.54 percent of his hits were singles. That makes 3,215 singles and very little else. Among 3,000-hitters, only Tony Gwynn (78.74 percent) is worse, and only Rod Carew (78.74 percent) and Lou Brock (74.33 percent) are close to this miserable standard.4 Yet all three had higher slugging percentages.

Rose’s weak bat shows up, of course, in the slugging stats. He and Lou Brock share last place on the list of modern and old time 3,000-hit men, at .409 for Rose and .410 for Brock. Only Carew at .429 and Boggs at .443 are close. Molitor’s SLG is .448 and Ripken’s is .451. Everyone else is at or over .460.

Rose was also a weak RBI man: he and Boggs are the only 3,000-hit players with fewer RBIs than walks.5 Among the moderns, he and Brock are lowest in RBI per hit (0.30). Even Carew and Boggs (10 percent) and Gwynn (20 percent) are better. Nine are over 0.50 and the other four are at or above 0.40. The RBI per game stats are even worse. Of the seventeen, Rose and Brock are below 0.37, five are over 0.60, six others are over 0.50 and four others above 0.40.

Big deal, Rose’s devotees reply. So what if he didn’t hit with power? He got on base a lot and helped his team in other ways. Well, let’s see if that’s true. In on-base percentage Rose and Aaron are tied for ninth among 3,000-hit players at .377. Behind them are Brett, Molitor, Murray, Clemente, Winfield, Brock, and Ripken. All of them except Brock hit with significant power. Rose did not. For modern 3,000-hitters, Rose is in the bottom half in OBP. He was not exceptional among this group.

On batting average, he fares little better. At .303, he ranks tenth, in the bottom half, virtually tied with Aaron and Mays, and 10-20 points ahead of Brock, Murray, Winfield, Yastrzemski, and Ripken. Four of those seven were huge power hitters. The others, except for Brock, had good power. All the old-timers also out-hit Rose. He is eighth among modern 3,000-hit players in hits per game and runs per game, and in the lower half if the old-timers are included.

But, his devotees cry, he was Charlie Hustle! He made up for these weak offensive numbers in little, intangible ways, working hard in the field and on the base paths. Well, the numbers don’t show this either. Using Thorn and Palmer’s measurement for Fielding Runs6 and Stolen Base Runs,7 Rose does not look very good. In Fielding Runs, his rating is -71. Every other 3,000-hit player is in positive territory, except Musial (-38), Molitor (-21), Brett (-17), and Carew (-2). This is an interesting stat, since it is the sluggers you would expect to contribute little in the field. Clemente’s rating is +113, Mays’ is +96, and Aaron and Kaline are at +70 and +69 respectively. Yastrzemski contributed as many runs to his team through his fielding as Rose lost for his teams in the field.

Charlie Hustle? The stolen base stats are even worse. At -30, Rose is dead last in Stolen Base Runs among modern 3,000-hitters. The next worst is Yaz at -19. Clemente, Musial and Kaline are close to zero, with sluggers like Aaron and Mays at +28 and +40, respectively. Of course, Brock is off the chart at +97.

Rose shows up particularly poorly on “combination” stats that attempt to capture a player’s overall accomplishments. Thorn and Palmer have developed Total Player Rating, which is a seasonal measure and can be positive or negative. For careers, they total the annual TPR. Among 3,000-hitters, Rose is next-to-last at 24.7 for his career. (Brock is lowest at 12.7.) None of the others is close to Rose. Twelve players cluster from 39 to 50. Musial is at 70, Mays at 86, and Aaron at 90.8 On an average basis, Rose’s rating is abysmal: he averages 1.0/year, lowest except for Brock, while Molitor, Murray, Winfield, Brett, and Waner range from 1.65 to 1.95. Everyone else is over 2.0, with Aaron and Mays at 3.9 and Musial at 3.2.

Bill James uses Secondary Average (walks plus stolen bases plus extra bases, divided by at bats), a very powerful stat measuring the things a player does beyond his batting average.9 For their careers, Mays, Aaron, Musial, Yaz, and Kaline are over .340. Rose is last at .232. Finally, although he ranks third in the group in Runs Produced (runs scored plus runs batted in minus home runs), he ranks last in runs produced per hit and per at-bat, and next-to-last (ahead of Brock) in runs produced per game.

Among 3,000-hit players, Rose’s closest comparable is Brock. Carew and Waner, who might be considered lightweights among 3,000-hit players, dominate Rose in most categories, even those involving hits and runs, for which Rose became famous. See Chart B.

(Click image to enlarge)

Rose among his peers

Despite his 4,000 hits, it is clear that Rose (together with Brock) is out of place in the company of career 3,000-hitters. Whether they hit for average or for power or both, the offensive impact the others had on the game was in a different universe. Let’s be fair, though. This group of seventeen players is tough competition. Rose deserves to be compared to other leading players generally.

Pete Rose holds some impressive places on the all-time lists: first in games, at-bats, and hits; second in doubles; fourth in runs scored; sixth in total bases; eighth in Runs Produced;IO eleventh in walks and Runs Created;ll seventeenth in extra-base hits; and sixty-fifth in RBIs.12 But it must be noted that these are all purely volume related accomplishments, products of Rose’s extraordinary longevity. He played for twenty-four years, racking up 3,562 games and 14,053 at-bats. These numbers are truly amazing, rivaled only by names such as Aaron, Yastrzemski, Cobb, Musial, Mays, and Brooks Robinson. To put this volume in perspective, consider that Rose had 26 percent more games and 38 percent more at-bats than the number eleven man on each list. The question this study addresses is: How much impact did he have while running up those numbers?

Sad to say, when you get to the impact stats, Rose does not stand out. He is not in the top 100 players all-time in RBI/game, batting average, on-base percentage, slugging percentage, stolen bases, or runs/game. Since scoring runs was one of Rose’s main claims to fame, this last item is startling. He scored 0.6078 R/G, behind Mays, Molitor, Aaron, Musial, Waner, Boggs, and Brock among modern 3,000-hitters.10 The men tied at 100 on the all-time list (Frankie Frisch, Kip Selbach, and Cub Striker) had 0.66. So does Tim Raines. Ron Leflore had 0.67, Roy Thomas 0.69, Dam DiMaggio 0.69, and Tommy Henrich 0.70.11

Even more damning is the evidence of Rose’s secondary average, an important impact stat. During his best years, 1966-81, Rose’s secondary average trailed his team’s, which implies that the average player on the team contributed more than Rose did in that area. Worse yet, for seven of those sixteen years, the secondary average for the entire league was better than his.12 This is like saying that a supposedly great hitter for average batted less than his team average and less than the league average 45 percent of the time. Over the entire period, Rose was five percent worse than his teams as a whole and only seven percent better than the league as a whole. A seven percent gap is not outstanding: it’s like batting .278 in your prime, when the league is batting .260.13

The runs/hit data yield similar results. Rose was no better than the rest of his team in runs/game for seven of the seventeen years. For the whole period, he outproduced his team average by only 2.7 percent.

The facts show that Rose neither scored nor batted in runs with any frequency, did not get on base exceptionally, seldom hit for extra bases, and was a liability in the field and on the base paths. Apart from doing these things for a very long time — and hitting a ton of singles — Pete Rose accomplished very little with his 4,256 hits and 3,215 singles. All he did was collect them; he did not make them count. He did not help his teams dramatically. In his time, he was a good player, not a great one, with the good fortune to play on teams that were prodigious run-producers. He certainly should not be considered one of the great players of the century. If you want a couple of terrific players compared to Rose, I give you Minnie Miñoso and Tim Raines.

Minnie Miñoso and Tim Raines

Chart C presents the career stats for Pete Rose and two good ballplayers who overlapped his career: Minnie Miñoso and Tim Raines. As far as I know, no one is clamoring to put either of them on the All-Century Team. But both of them exceed Rose in game-by-game impact in every category.

(Click image to enlarge)

Rose leads the group in batting average at .303, five points ahead of Miñoso and eight ahead of Raines. In all the volume categories (total hits, runs, walks, RBI, doubles, etc., but not home runs), Rose is way ahead. One would expect this of a twenty-four-year man. But in all the impact stats, including those measured on a per-game or per-hit basis, he is way behind. He is last in home runs, slugging, OBP, RBI/hit, and RBI/game. Rose is also last in Stolen Base Runs and Fielding Runs. His Total Player Rating is the worst of the group and, most telling, he is last in average seasonal TPR, where he averaged .83 per year, while Miñoso and Raines were 85 percent and 200 percent better, respectively. The career secondary averages for both men are higher than Rose’s in his best year.

In runs scored, the area in which Rose is usually considered outstanding, he lags behind both Miñoso and Raines in runs/game, although by less than ten percent, and in runs/hit by a whopping 14 percent and 20 percent, respectively. Even during his banner years14-Rose led the league in runs and doubles in 1974, 1975, and 1976, in hits in 1968, 1972, 1973, and 1976, and scored 120 runs in both 1969 and 1970-his runs/hit ratio was 0.518, which ranks significantly behind the ratios of Miñoso and Raines.15

Both these players had careers that were better than Rose’s best years. If you could have signed one of these players and could guarantee that he could play out his entire career for you, Rose would have been the worst choice of the three.

Pete Rose’s amazing accomplishment

Longevity and consistency. Until he made an embarrassment of himself by hanging on to stagger past Ty Cobb’s all-time hits record,16 Pete Rose churned out half a run per hit for over twenty years. His lifetime ratio is within two percent of the ratio for his best years. Now, half a run per hit is not that exceptional, but he did keep it up for a long time.

Rose’s main (and, in my opinion, only) claim to fame is his 4,256 hits. Among modern players, he dominates the 3,000 hit club. But the peculiarity of Rose’s career is that his single-minded pursuit of this goal did not generate collateral offensive contributions to his teams that were outstanding in any particular. The reason the 3,000 hit club is meaningful is that, historically speaking, only great offensive players reach that plateau. Once the plateau was established, however, it became an end in itself for Pete Rose, who put together 3,000 hits with less effect than anyone who preceded (or followed) him, with the possible exception of Lou Brock. Compared to these peers, Rose did not produce runs, did not hit for extra bases, did not get on base much, fielded badly, and didn’t get that many hits per game. Essentially, he was carried by good teams, in relation to whom he was not a particularly outstanding player.

Oh, yes — he did run out bases on balls.

PHILIP SILLER is president of Hexagram & Co., a venture management firm. He lives in Toronto, Canada, and — to his perpetual dismay — roots for the Giants.

(Click image to enlarge)

Notes

1. Unless otherwise noted, all statistics have been taken from Total Baseball (6th ed.), J. Thorn, P. Palmer, M. Gershman, and D. Pietrusza, Eds. (Total Sports, 1999). Up-to-date stats for Boggs, Gwynn, and Ripken are from the Major League Baseball official website (www.majorleaguebaseball.com/u/baseball/mlb/players).

2. The list does not include Ted Williams who had 2,654 hits in 19 seasons. Since he was averaging around 180 hits per season during the WWII years and somewhat less in the years he missed for the Korean War, he probably would have added 800 to that total and finished with around 3,500. Adding him to the list of 3,000-hit players would only strengthen the points made in this essay.

3. Mays is number 10 on the full list.

4. Eddie Collins’s percentage is 79.76 percent. I am not a big fan of Collins, but it is easy to prefer him to Rose. His OBP was almost 50 points (12.5 percent) better than Rose’s and he hit 30 points higher (IO percent). In the field, Collins was worth 40 runs more than the average player at his position; Rose cost his teams 60 runs. And so on and so forth.

5. OK, Carew had 1,018 walks and 1,015 RBIs. Rose had 20 percent more walks than RBIs.)

6. Basically, how many runs a player saves his team in the field compared to an average player at the same position.

7. Again, the number of runs contributed by the player beyond what a league-average base stealer might have gained. I don’t claim that Stolen Base Runs or Fielding Runs totally capture the intended effect. But I do believe they are meaningful data and are certainly useful for comparison among supposedly outstanding players.

8. For those interested, Ruth is at 105, Cobb at 90, Williams at 98, Lajoie at 85, Tris Speaker at 80, Mike Schmidt and Rogers Hornsby at 77, and Honus Wagner at 75. With Aaron and Mays, these players round out the top ten. All seventeen 3,000-hitters are in the all-time top 35 except for Brock and Rose, neither of whom makes the top 100!

9. “As it happens, the league Secondary Average in most seasons will be about the same as the league batting average — about .260. But individual totals will swing Wildly, which is what makes it interesting.” Whatever Happened to the Hall of Fame?, James, B. (Simon & Schuster, 1995), p.69.

10. Total Baseball, J. Thorn and P. Palmer, Eds. (Warner Books, 1989). The 1999 edition does not contain this list. For the years 1961-76, Rose was eighth in runs/game, ahead of Kaline and Carew and behind Mays, Bonds, Aaron, F. Robinson, Dick Allen, Morgan, and Brock, in that order.

11. I do not put a lot of stock in the top 100 in this category. Old-timers dominate the list. But the great modern hitters for average and power are there. For careers ending before 1989, the list includes Gehrig (12), Ruth (14), Rolfe (31), DiMaggio (32), Williams (37), Gehringer (43), Foxx (44), Greenberg (46), Cobb (51), Mantle (72), Mays (79), Ott (84) and Bobby Bonds (85). (Total Baseball, Thorn, J. and Palmer, P., Eds. (Warner Books, 1989))

12. See Chart D.

13. Considering that the variation in secondary average across the league runs as high as 100 percent on the upside, these deviations must be taken as pretty trivial.

14. 1968-1979, the years Rose either scored 100 runs or had 200 hits.

15. Note, too, that Miñoso started late: he was 27 years old for his first full year in the majors, and it is likely he exaggerated his youth to the official statisticians.

16. In his final three years, Rose batted .262 and slugged .314, with an OBP of .365. He scored 118 runs on 266 hits, to put him 66 hits past Cobb.

Sixteen players have hit 500 or more career home runs. Seven of them played at least five full seasons in the ’50s. An eighth man hit his first 73, and a ninth his first 25.

Of the twenty-six sluggers with seventeen or fewer at-bats per home run, seven (27 percent) logged at least six full campaigns in the ’50s. Three more were active for one to four years.

The 1948 and 1949 seasons were harbingers of the coming explosion. Scoring numbers began to rise after the immediate postwar years. Five teams drove in more than 800 runs. Three players exceeded 150. None of those marks had been reached in the previous eight seasons.

It was the 1950 Boston Red Sox, though, with over 1,000 runs scored and almost 1,000 driven in, who set the power table at which almost all teams would dine for the next ten years. The three tables below illustrate the surge.

(Click image to enlarge)

There had been quantum leaps in offense earlier, most notably in 1930-32, when extra-base hits increased 8 percent, home runs 18 percent, and the home run percent of extra-base hits from 20 percent to 23 percent, but thereafter the homer growth rate was more moderate. Over the next ten years, through 1941, it was 10 percent.

After the initial leaps in the categories as the ’50s began, performance — except in home runs — leveled off. The number of teams with 120 or more home runs in 1946-47 was four; in 1950-51, all sixteen reached that level. By 1953-54 total output rose to over 4,000 in the two-year period, the highest ever.

In 1946-49 one team hit more than 200 home runs in a season — the ’47 Giants of Mize, Cooper, and company, with a record 221. Those Giants were also the only team to surpass 180 in that period. From 1950-60 fourteen teams finished a season with more than 180, three of which were over 200 and one of which (the ’57 Braves) came up one shy at 199. The ’56 Reds tied the ’47 Giants record.

At the same time, “speed” numbers declined. Players went “station to station,” waiting for the big hit. Managers and coaches took off the running signs. There were 1,587 triples in 1946-47. By 1957-58 there were only 1,320, a 16 percent decrease in a decade and a direct contrast to the 60 percent rise in homers over the same span. The Buddy Lewises, Phil Cavarettas, Dale Mitchells, Bob Dillingers, and Harry Walkers were phased out in favor of slow-moving sluggers like Hank Sauer, Gus Zernial, Ted Kluszewski, Joe Adcock, and Roy Sievers. Eventually, we began to see all those Hall of Famers in the 500 club: Mays, Mathews, Mantle, Aaron, Banks, and Frank Robinson. At the same time, Ted Williams, Ralph Kiner, and Johnny Mize continued their long power patterns, and Musial was … well, Musial. But even he caught the long-ball fever: in his first seven years, in the ’40s, he averaged 20 homers per season. In his first seven years in the ’50s, his annual output rose to 30.

Base stealing also became less of a priority. In 1946- 47, over 1,600 sacks were swiped. By 1953-54, steals had dropped to 1,363 (-15 percent). Just as we see so many from that decade high on the home run list, so also do we see few names in the speed categories. Of those who have hit 150 or more triples, only two, Musial and Clemente, played at all in the 1950s. Of the roughly three dozen players with more than 400 career stolen bases, only one, Luis Aparicio, was a ’50s performer.

Even the mobile Dodgers put on the brakes. The Brooklyn pennant winners in 1947 and 1949 averaged 48 triples and 102 steals. The 1956 titleists hit 36 triples and stole 65 bases. Home runs? A jump from 117 to 180.

The only team to buck the power trend successfully was Chicago — the memorable “Go-Go” White Sox. Throughout the decade, they finished second or third in the American League, and finally made it to the top in 1959, becoming the only pennant-winning team of the ’50s with more than 100 stolen bases. They were also the first club in eleven seasons to win a title with fewer than 100 homers and the first team in twenty-five seasons to be a champion with fewer than 100 homers and more than 100 stolen bases.

No position better illustrates the shift than that of catcher. In 1946-47 backstops hit 170 homers (Walker Cooper and Ernie Lombardi hit a third of them). In 1957-58, men behind the plate more than tripled their output to 520. Certainly, new spark plugs Berra and Campanella were big factors, but don’t forget Lollar, Seminick, Crandall, Westrum, Lopata, Sammy White, and, a bit later, Bailey and Triandos. The typical catcher in 1946-47 — scrappy defense, .240-.250, five homers, 40-45 RBIs — didn’t have a job seven or eight years later.

SABR colleagues will not find much support in this corner for overuse of the Home Run/RBI Ratio. It is a suspect statistic in many ways, but it does provide some confirmation of the ’50s style. In an attempt at levity in the midst of the Cold War nuclear arms race, wags in Congress and elsewhere talked about achieving a “Bigger Bang for a Buck.” How did that apply to baseball? Below is a list of the HR/RBI ratios of the important, but non-Hall of Fame, 100-RBI men. Aside from the familiar Hall of Famers, there weren’t any more 100-RBI people in 1946-49 except for four who logged a lot of service before and after 1950 — Gil Hodges, Bobby Thomson, Carl Furillo, and Del Ennis — all fine run producers who exhibited the traits of both periods.

Like Evers and batting champions Dixie Walker and Mickey Vernon, the exciting Minnie Miñoso was the kind of slash hitter who could drive in 100 runs with less than 20 homers. He was an oddity in his time.

The ’50s gave us many more bombers, including Wally Post (3.0 ratio), Larry Doby (3.55), Jim Lemon (3.2), Vic Wertz (3.7), Frank Thomas (3.2), and Roger Maris (3.25). Finally, there was Dale Long (3.23). He never drove in 100 runs, but he set a record with eight home runs in eight consecutive games in 1956.

Not mentioned yet is the player who hit the most long balls in those days: Duke Snider, with 326 homers from 1950 through 1959, including five consecutive seasons at 40 or more. The man with the highest annual output over the most years was fellow Hall-of-Famer Mathews, who averaged 37 from 1952 through 1959, with four 40+ campaigns. Their ratios, however, match the ’50s pattern, with Snider a little over, and Mathews slightly under, 3.0.

When Ted Williams hit his 521st home run in his last at-bat in 1960, the shot not only capped his career, but also closed out ’50s-style baseball. The Yankees, in the next (Maris) year, hit it out 240 times, but expansion muddied comparisons. And the ’60s soon turned to speed and defense, highlighted by the Dodger teams of the ’60s, and the ’68 season in which Bob Gibson, Denny McLain, and others held all teams under 700 RBIs.

Was ’50s big-bang baseball a reflection of the society and the politics of the day? Almost every aspect of life was tied to power and size: Incredibly devastating bombs, hordes of people in military service, expanding corporations, huge automobiles, a vast highway system, increasingly potent aircraft, booming urban areas, and some sense of endless progress. Speculation can be shredded; supposition is safer. And so let us suppose that, yes, there was a connection.

Sometime soon, someone will analyze the “Home Run Derby” that was baseball in the ’90s — not only the McGwire-Sosa races and the big 70, but also the growing number of folks who went deep 45, 50 times. It was the greatest long-ball era ever, but it had a pure and hardy ancestor over forty years before when the motto was: “Fire Away!”

PAUL L. WYSARD is a life-long resident of Hawaii who first saw major leaguers play in military service during World War II. A retired private school administrator, he was also a contributor at the 1998 SABR Convention.

Nearly all baseball research is drawn in some way from the printed word. Whether you’re researching a player profile, statistical analysis, fan memoir, manager’s biography, team history, or an economic study, you will almost inevitably end up referring to the written works of others. As a baseball researcher, you know that finding the information you need can be difficult and frustrating. The finding tools available to baseball researchers have been shallow and recent in their coverage. If you want something to help you navigate the ocean of baseball literature from before 1980, 1985, or even 1990, your options are limited, to say the least. The Baseball Index (formerly known as RBI) was created to address this deficiency.

What is The Baseball Index?

It is a SABR-owned index to baseball literature. An index, of course, is something that helps you find where something is located within a text or body of literature. Perhaps you use a computer product like InfoTrac1 or ProQuest2 to find magazine articles on a particular subject. Or, you may recall using the old Reader’s Guide to Periodical Literature. Whether paper-based or electronic, these indexes guide you to the information you need. The Baseball Index works much the same way, except that its focus is on baseball. The importance of such finding tools cannot be overstated. The difference is knowing where to find your information versus guessing where it might be. It is the difference between a few hours’ work versus a few days or even weeks. Finding tools like indexes can give you certainty instead of serendipity.

How Does it Work?

The Baseball Index is the largest bibliographic baseball database available with over 150,000 records encompassing books, magazine articles, programs, pamphlets, films, recordings, songs, cartoons, and anything else that may be of interest to the baseball fan or researcher. When we index books or articles for The Baseball Index, we gather a variety of information that not only helps researchers locate the information they need, but also gives you an idea as to the content of each source:

• Author
• Title
• Statistical Content Type
• Photo or Illustration Content Type
• Named Persons (significant mention)
• Topics
• Publication/Publisher Name
• Publication Information (copyright date, issue date, volume number, issue number, size, indexes, bibliography, footnotes, and pagination)
• Additional information for poems, songs, book reviews, etc.

You can look up information with The Baseball Index. using any of these categories. For example:

• I need a list of all the articles you have by Roger Kahn. (You look this up under the “Author” category.)
• Who wrote the novel The Year the Yankees Lost the Pennant? (Look it up under the “Title” category.)
• What is there on Jake Powell? (Look him up under the “Named Persons” category.)
• I’m looking for anything on the Black Sox Scandal. (look it up under the “Topics” category.)

You can also look up information in The Baseball Index by combining categories. For example:

• I need articles on Willie Mays that were published in “Jet” or “Ebony” magazine during 1954 and 1955. (Look up “Mays” in the “Named Persons” category combined with “Jet” and “Ebony” in the “Publications” category combined with “1954” and “1955.”)

Some examples of records from The Baseball Index:

• Author(s): Klem, Bill; with William J. Slocum
• Title: I Never Missed One in My Heart
• Statistics: n
• Photos/Illustrations: c:(1); bw:(1)
• Document Type: Article
• Named Person(s): Klem, Bill; O’Loughlin, Silk; Tighe, Jack; O’Rourke, Jim; McCreery, Tom; Clymer, Bill; Pulliam, Harry
• Topic(s): Biographies; Umpires; Umpiring; Bad Calls; Anecdotes
• Publication Name: Collier’s
• Copyright Date: 1951
• Issue Date: March 31
• Volume: 127
• Issue Number: 13
• Page(s) in Article: 30(6)

• Author(s): n
• Title: Jury Disagrees in Bush Case
• Statistics: n
• Photos/Illustrations: n
• Document Type: Article
• Named Person(s): Bush, Joe; Miller, Louis
• Topic(s): Litigation; Trials; Death; Automobile Accidents
• Notes: Bush is sued for killing man in auto accident; brief article
• Column or Series Name: Late News Items
• Publication Name: The Sporting News
• Copyright Date: 1916
• Issue Date: June 15
• Volume: 62
• Issue Number: 15
• Page(s) in Article: 1(1)

• Author(s): Lieb, Frederick G.
• Title: The Boston Red Sox
• Copyright Date: 1947
• Statistics: n
• Photos/Illustrations: bw:(15)
• Document Type: Hardbound Book
• Named Person(s): Mack, Connie; Collins, Jimmy; Young, Cy; Criger, Lou; Stahl, Chick; Speaker, Tris; Wood, Joe; Ruth, Babe; Carrigan, Bill; Frazee, Harry; Taylor, John I.; Quinn, Bob; Yawkey, Tom; Somers, Charlie; McGreevey, Nuf Sed
• Topic(s): Boston Red Sox; Fenway Park; Owners; Executives; Fans; Historical Knowledge; Huntington Avenue Baseball Grounds; Socks; Suicide; Popularity; World Series; 1901; 1903; 1912
• Publisher: (New York): G.P. Putnam’s Sons
• Size: 21,14.5
• Index: n
• Bibliography: n
• Pages in Book: 261
• Footnotes or Sourcenotes: n

How is it accessed?

Accessing The Baseball Index is not difficult. It is available through the The Baseball Index Data Service3 to anyone. You need not know anything about computers, much less searching computer databases. Simply describe to us your research project and the kinds of information you need. We will use this information to search The Baseball Index for relevant source material, then get back to you with the total number of source references The Baseball Index lists on your topic, along with a fee schedule if you would like us to list them for you. This much of the service is entirely free.

Before sending in your request, think carefully about what you need. The better you can describe your topic, the more accurate we can be in finding the appropriate information. If you decide to purchase the list of source references you can choose to have them sent electronically via email, or mailed as a printout on paper. Paper is slightly more expensive and takes a few more days. Payment may be sent either directly to The Baseball Index address or to the SABR office.

Orders may also be charged through the SABR office. Your list of references will be sent to you promptly upon receipt of payment. Baseball Index fees are a fraction of the cost of similar specialty database services, and SABR members enjoy a further substantial discount. We are not trying to turn a profit or fill SABR’s coffers, even though we have collected over $6,500 in receipts. We charge a fee to demonstrate that researchers are willing to pay for this kind of information and also to limit the number of requests we have to process. The Baseball Index is a completely volunteer effort. No one in the project receives any compensation for his or her work. The Baseball Index is the exclusive property of SABR. The complete Baseball Index database is also available for purchase as a data file for use on your own computer.4 Using commonly available commercial software — such as Microsoft Access or Excel — you can readily search the database for sources on any baseball research topic.

In the fall of 2000, SABR entered into an agreement with the IdeaLogical Company of New York to provide access to The Baseball Index through IdeaLogical’s Baseball Online Library on CBS Sportsline (http://cbs.sportsline.com). This will provide free access to up to 100 source references. Researchers will be able to search using Topic, Named Person, or Author’s Name. As we go to press, the web site is not yet up and running, but up-to-date information on developments may be found at http://www.sabr.org/dataserv.shtml.

Finding your sources

Now that you have your list of sources, how do you find the sources themselves? The Baseball Index contains many cataloged materials that you may find it difficult to locate.

Your logical starting place is an area library — the larger, the better. An excellent guide to library holdings in the United States and Canada is OCLC’s WorldCat.5 This electronic resource is available through many libraries. On the state or regional level, there are many “union catalogs” which allow you to search hundreds or even thousands of library catalogs at once. In my state of Minnesota, for example, there is a catalog called MNLink6 that encompasses the holdings of hundreds of public and academic libraries around the state.

Academic libraries, particularly those at large universities, often house excellent collections of books and periodicals. State historical societies are also fine sources for baseball publications. But even if you live far from large population centers, you can often order a publication through Interlibrary Loan (ILL) at your local library. It sometimes takes weeks for your request to be filled, but you can obtain many sources this way, often at low or no cost.

If you can’t get your materials through ILL, you might want to try a fee-based research service, which can locate your sources, photocopy, and send you the information you need. This approach can be expensive, but it may be worthwhile, especially if you need only a few things.

Finally, if your local library finds the source you want at a library in another city but is unable to borrow it for you, you can travel to the source itself.

The Baseball Index depends on volunteers

The Baseball Index is an entirely volunteer effort. Dozens of individuals have contributed to building this huge database, but more needs to be done. There are many opportunities for working on The Baseball Index.

You might index a new book you’ve just finished reading, or the latest issue of a magazine you subscribe to. Perhaps you have a small collection of baseball books, or past issues of magazines. You may have ready access to a local library’s baseball collection. Any and all of these may be good candidates for adding to The Baseball Index.

Indexing is not difficult or time-consuming, and we require no long-term commitments from our volunteers. The Baseball Index has already helped hundreds in their research. By helping to build The Baseball Index, you are working to facilitate and advance baseball research.

If you think you might like to work on The Baseball Index, please contact either project director Ted Hathaway or Andy McCue, or the SABR office.

TED HATHAWAY is the originator and principal director of The Baseball Index. A SABR member since 1988, he has contributed research presentations and articles on several baseball subjects. He has also been active in promoting and facilitating the Society’s use of the Internet. He is the author of The Senior Professional Baseball Association (1992), the bibliography for The Senior League Encyclopedia (1998), and a co-author of SABR’s research guide How to Do Baseball Research. He runs INFORM Research Services in Minneapolis.

Notes

1. http://www.galegroup.com

2. http://www.umi.com

3. http://www.sabr.org/dataserv.shtml

4. http://www.sabr.org/merchandise/rbi.shtml

5. http://www.odc.org

6. http://www.mnlink.org

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

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

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

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

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

“I am Mike Donlin”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

To the Giants

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Oh you Mabel’s Mike!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Vaudeville success

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

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

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

Back to the game

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Hollywood

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Individual greatness is all about performance over time, so some longevity is vital, but a couple of super seasons aren’t sufficient to make any of these lists. Likewise, a few mediocre summers shouldn’t necessarily kill a chance to be a decade leader. And even those with relatively short careers have a chance here to make an honor list.

Career leaders are often rewarded by simple longevity, but here a good ten-year run can put a guy among the elite. Bob Elliott, for instance, had just six 100-RBI seasons in his fifteen years in the big leagues. His best season was 1947 with 113, and he never led his league. But in the ’40s he topped the majors with 903 RBIs.

Guys like Elliott, Gus Suhr, and Ellis Kinder aren’t anywhere near the Hall of Fame, but for one shining decade in baseball history they were the best around in some category. So just who were these stars, the best over a full decade?

The degree to which Honus Wagner dominated the twentieth century’s first decade is seen in his top spot in no fewer than eight of ten batter categories. Same goes for Ty Cobb in the teens.

A fellow named Babe Ruth led in five categories in the ’20s, and in fact set all-time decade records in four of them. Jimmie Foxx in the ’30s, Ted Williams in the ’40s, Hank Aaron in the ’60s and Pete Rose in the ’70s were each leaders in four categories. Rogers Hornsby in the 1920s and Roberto Clemente in the ’60s were leaders in three.

Among pitchers, Walter Johnson in the teens, Hal Newhouser in the ’40s and Jim Palmer in the ’70s were “triple crown” winners.

Over all the years, though, only three performers were statistical leaders in more than one decade:

Williams, whose name appears six times over two decades despite missing about a third of the games while he was injured or in the military, was tops in batting and slugging averages in both the ’40s and ’50s. Stan Musial led in total bases in the ’40s and ’50s, to go along with two other appearances in the rundown. And Nolan Ryan led the majors in strikeouts in both the ’70s and ’80s. Twenty-two decade leaders on the list are not found in the Hall of Fame, led by Pete Rose, of course, who was banned for gambling infractions.

Other inactive notables who’ve been decade leaders but aren’t in the Hall include Willie Wilson, Dale Murphy, Maury Wills, Jack Morris, and John Tudor. Eddie Murray, the ’80s leader in RBIs, will soon be eligible for election.

Some who compiled top totals in a decade never led their league in a given year within the time frame. They include Mark Grace, still active, and Lou Boudreau in hits; Rose in total bases; Nellie Fox in triples; Tudor in ERA; Jeff Reardon in saves; and Bob Feller and Jim Palmer in winning percentage.

Sometimes ten also-ran performances will win the decade title.

Surprisingly, a quartet of major league career record holders never led the way for a decade in their specialty:

Hank Aaron, who owns one of the most notable marks, 755 home runs, hit 375 of them in the 1960s, but Harmon Killebrew slugged 393 in that period. Cy Young’s 511 pitching victories lead the all-time career list by nearly 100, but just 232 of them came in the 1900-1909 period when Christy Mathewson won four more. (Young won 265 games in the 1890s, not covered in this study.) Ed Walsh owns the career ERA record of 1.82, but his 1.68 mark for the century’s first ten years was second to Mordecai Brown’s 1.63. And though Lee Smith holds the career saves record of 478, he had just 239 of them in the ’90s, while John Wetteland posted 295. Smith had 358 saves in the ten years 1986-95, but that doesn’t count here.

Ruth’s remarkable roaring ’20s produced not only five decade titles but all-time decade records in four categories: home runs (467-that’s a 46.7 average for ten years!), runs scored (1,365), total bases (3,613), and slugging percentage (.740).

In addition, the ’20s saw Hornsby generate the best decade ever for hits (2,085) and doubles (405). In the teens Walter Johnson recorded the best decade in this century for wins (265) and ERA (1.60).

Other all-time records for a decade: Cobb’s amazing .387 batting average for the teens, Sam Crawford’s 167 triples for the first ten-year period, Foxx’s 1,403 RBIs in the ’30s, Rickey Henderson’s 838 stolen bases in the ’80s, Lefty Grove’s. 724 winning pct. in the ’30s, Ryan’s 2,678 strikeouts in the ’70s, and Wetteland’s 295 saves in the ’90s.

Interestingly, Hornsby is the only all-time decade record holder to spend all or most of his career in the National League. Ranking decade leaders in the fifteen stat lists points to the ’20s as tops, the ’30s as runner-up and the ’90s in third place. The ’40s through ’60s produced no all-time decade leaders.

Different season lengths appear to have had little effect on records over the decades. However, each team did play about fifty-three more games per decade in the ’20s through ’50s than in the first two decades. Seventy-two or so games per decade were added in the ’60s and ’70s, but strikes canceled about sixty games in each of the past two decades.

All these numbers, of course, reflect production over a specific ten-year period and ignore the claim that a decade runs, for instance, from 1991-2000. Any of the marks listed here might be exceeded within an indefinite ten-year window. But that’s another story.

Two batters and two pitchers made an especially heavy impact on cumulative baseball statistics of the 1990s. Mark McGwire in home runs and slugging, Mark Grace in hits and doubles, Greg Maddux in wins and ERA and Randy Johnson in shutouts and strikeouts were tops in the decade just past.

McGwire had the third best decade in history with 405 circuit clouts, despite missing 400 games because of injuries and player strikes. (He hit just nine homers in both 1993 and 1994.)

Grace never led the National League in hits in the 90s but compiled 1,754 in ten years. In doubles, he edged Craig Biggio by two, 364-362.

Maddux beat teammate Tom Glavine 176-164 for the ’90s victory title, and won the ERA crown (2.54) by a good margin over Pedro Martinez (2.83), who had the best win-loss percentage (.682) of the decade.

Johnson edged Roger Clemens in shutouts in shutouts, but had over 400 more strikeouts than runner-up Clemens.

Tony Gwynn, who batted .332 in the ’80s, second to Wade Boggs’ .352, easily led the ’90s with a .344 mark. Barry Bonds and Lance Johnson were likewise big winners in runs scored 0,091) and triples (13), respectively, while McGwire had 23 more homers than Ken Griffey.

Griffey led in total bases with just five more than Rafael Palmeiro, and Albert Belle beat out Griffey in RBIs, 1,099-1,091.

Johnson’s 2,538 strikeouts in the ’90s is second only to Nolan Ryan’s all-time decade mark of 2,678 in the ’70s. Fourth best decade marks are claimed by Bonds (runs scored), Belle (RBIs), Griffey (total bases) and Maddux (ERA).

While Rickey Henderson set the all-time decade mark of 838 stolen bases in the ’80s, he lost the ’90s crown to Otis Nixon, 478-463. John Wetteland set a new all-time decade record for saves with 295, just a pair more than Dennis Eckersley, who retired after the 1998 season.

Griffey, just thirty-one years old, and Martinez, twenty-nine, appear to have the best chance to make marks in this decade. Belle, Bonds, Grace, Johnson, McGwire, Maddux and Wetteland are all in their mid-thirties. Gwynn is forty.

Henderson, nearly forty-two, is a story by himself. Not only did he set the standard for stolen bases in a decade in the 1980s, but he scored 1,122 runs, the most since Lou Gehrig in the ’30s and the third highest ever. In the ’90s he scored 932 times, just 33 short of making the top five for the period.

In the ’90s rundown of the top five performers and ties, Bonds, Belle, Griffey and Palmeiro each appear in five of ten lists. Among starting pitchers, Johnson appears among the leaders in all five categories, Maddux and Clemens in four and Glavine in three.

SCOTT NELSON is a retired high school teacher in Mankato, Minnesota. He recently published a family history on his wife’s side and a 115-page history for his church’s 50th anniversary. But the best of times are those at the family cabin in Northern Minnesota.

But what if you were asked to select a team based upon the century’s best season at each position? This sounds like it might be a more difficult task, fraught with endless arguments. Actually, though, I had relatively little trouble coming up with the offering that follows. (The second team was a different story, particularly since I restricted its members to players who did not appear on the first team. There have been too many great players to let one or two — specifically Ruth and Hornsby — hog spots on both squads.)

First Base: Jimmie Foxx, 1932

Foxx’s 1932 season is almost as legendary as the Beast himself. This was the year that rainouts and recent changes in certain ballparks probably cost Jimmie the seasonal home run record. In addition to his awesome offensive numbers, he also led the league in fielding average (.994) at his position. Double X was inexplicably, inexcusably, left off MLB’s All-Century Team, but he finds redemption here. (Asterisk indicates league leader.)

Second Base: Rogers Hornsby, 1922

Although he was the National League’s greatest offensive force throughout the 1920s, he outdid himself in 1922. Had he led the league in triples, he would be the only player in history to finish first in batting average, slugging average, hits, doubles, triples, home run percentage, runs, and RBIs. No second baseman will ever have a better season. Ever.

Shortstop: Alex Rodriguez, 1996

Rodriguez combined Wagner-type average with Banks-type power. Along with his league-leading .358 batting average, he set a record for shortstops in doubles (54) and extra-base hits (91). He also scored more runs than any shortstop in history, and his 379 total bases tied Banks’ 379 in 1958 for best ever.

Third Base: Mike Schmidt, 1980

Leading the Phillies to their only World Series victory is almost enough to put the preeminent third sacker on this list. As was the case for his career, the power/fielding combination rates ahead of anyone else. An MVP, Gold Glove, and World Series winner in 1980.

Left Field: Ted Williams, 1941

A batting average over .400, a slugging average over.700, and an on-base percentage of .551 make this an easy choice.

Center Field: Ty Cobb, 1911

His inclusion may be bad for team chemistry and clubhouse morale, but in 1911 he led the league in batting average, slugging average, runs, RBIs, and stolen bases. It was an accomplishment that was never duplicated — except by himself in 1917.

Right Field: Babe Ruth, 1921

The player is obvious, the year much more difficult. The game’s all-time greatest player put up many of the all-time greatest seasons, but I’ll take this one because of the runs and RBI totals.

Catcher: Roy Campanella, 1953

His runs total and higher batting average give him the edge over Bench’s 1970 season.

Left-Handed Pitcher: Sandy Koufax, 1965

With all due respect to the great seasons of Lefty Grove, Sandy’s 1965 is simply superior. And the next best is probably his 1963. This season rates higher because of the strikeout record and the World Series ERA of 0.38.

Right-Handed Pitcher: Pedro Martinez, 1999

Adjusting for conditions is tricky business, but in the greatest age of hitting (particularly power hitting) ever, Martinez put up Deadball Era numbers. His strikeout-to-walks margin is scary, and he came within one walk of becoming the first pitcher to lead his league in most strikeouts per nine innings, fewest hits per nine innings, and fewest walks per nine innings.

Relief Pitcher: Dennis Eckersley, 1990

Not only was the Eck nearly unhittable, but you could barely coax a walk out of him. His WHIP ratio equaled his ERA, a near-ludicrous 0.61. Two saves and a 0.00 ERA in the LCS edge out his 1992 effort, which was almost as dominant.

Second Team All-Century

• 1B: Lou Gehrig, 1934
• 2B: Nap Lajoie, 1901
• SS: Ernie Banks, 1958
• 3B: George Brett, 1980
• LF: Hack Wilson, 1930
• CF: Joe DiMaggio, 1941
• RF: Chuck Klein, 1930
• C: Johnny Bench, 1970
• LHP: Lefty Grove, 1931
• RHP: Walter Johnson, 1913
• RP: Bobby Thigpen, 1990

TED FARMER is a historian who lives in Blacksburg, Virginia.