Pinder had enlisted right after Pearl Harbor. He had seen action in North Africa and Italy and had been awarded the Combat Infantryman Badge on March 24, 1944.2 Joe Pinder was also a veteran of six minor league baseball seasons. A right-handed pitcher from the Pittsburgh area, he had worked in the Cleveland Indians, New York Yankees, Washington Senators, and Brooklyn Dodgers farm systems. Pinder had notched 17 pitching victories in 1941 but his goal of reaching the major leagues had been put on hold. There was a bigger cask at hand.

Omaha Beach was quickly turning into a disaster. Launched from landing barges still out at sea and designed to swim to shore under their own power, all but five of the thirty-two amphibious tanks expected to provide support for infantry in 1st Division areas sank in the heavy surf.3 Naval fire support had also ceased

so as not co hie American troops landing on the beach. Navy gunners waited anxiously for target co ordinates co be radioed from their fire-control officers who had gone ashore with the initial infantry wave, but those chat did make it to the beach no longer had working radios.4 Historian Stephen E. Ambrose wrote, “The 16th Regiment first and second waves D­ Day was more reminiscent of an infantry charge across no-man’s land at the Somme in World War I than a typical World War II action.”5 Cornelius Ryan, author of The Longest Day, wrote:

They came ashore on Omaha Beach, the slogging, unglamorous men that no one en­vied. No battle ensigns flew for them, no horns or bugles sounded. But they had history on their side. They came from regiments that had bivouacked at places like Valley Forge, Stoney Creek, Antietam, that had fought in the Argonne. They had crossed the beaches of North Africa, Sicily and Salerno. Now they had one more beach to cross. They would call this one “Bloody Omaha.”6

A German artillery shell exploded just a few feet from Pinder’s landing craft, shrapnel punching several large holes in the boat’s hull. As the helmsman fought to control the craft, it started to fill with water.7 The ramp dropped to disembark the men, still 100 yards from the beach. They immediately began taking ma­chine gun fire from the enemy gun installations on the cliffs above the shoreline. Confusion reigned as the men broke for the beach. Some were killed out­right, others stopped to help the wounded. Much of the vitally important radio equipment remained in the boat as the men scattered in the carnage. In his 1994 article, “0-Day Plus 50 Years,” General Gordon R. Sullivan, then Chief of Staff of the United States Army, wrote:

In a time before transistors and micropro­cessors, radios capable of reliable shore­ to-ship communications bulked out at 86 pounds, roughly the weight, size and shape of a modern window air conditioner. Getting one of these beasts ashore under pleasant con­ditions would challenge an Olympian. Wrestling a radio through the tortured surf of Omaha Beach bordered on the impossible.8

General Sullivan devoted a full page of his story to Pinder.

Pinder shouldered one of the big radio sys­tems and staggered forward out of the tilted, smashed landing craft. Head bowed, deliber­ately putting one waterlogged leg in front of the other, he pushed through 100 yards of bullet-torn waves. A German bullet clipped him, and he stumbled. But he rose again, a little unsteady, and kept going. He made it to the pile of stones where his soaked partners lay gasping for breath.9

Pinder sustained several wounds. Second Lieuten­ant Leeward Stockwell said, “Almost immediately on hitting the waist-deep water he was hit by shrapnel. He was hit several times and the worst wound was the left side of his face. Holding the flesh with one hand he carried the set to shore.”10

That trip alone was beyond the power of most people. But Technician 5th Grade Pinder knew that one radio would not be enough in this firestorm. He turned back, heading into the deadly waters. Once again, his comrades marveled as he waded out to the half-sunken landing craft to retrieve a backup radio set and some other items. He managed to get the second load ashore without incident, weaving slowly around rusty obstacles, through geysers and long strings of machine-gun bullets. 11

Pinder’s company commander, Captain Stephen Ralph, said, “He knew the equipment was sorely needed. Three times he made trips into the water and each time drew a deadly hail of fire from the cliffs above. He knew he was critically wounded.”12 Pinder made it back to the landing craft a third time to pick up spare parts and code books.

As he started back, a German machine gunner found the range. Bracketed by water spouts that showed the path of the bullets, Pinder sped up. But his luck ran out. A burst caught him full on and ripped open his side. He fell, somehow got up, and struggled to the beach, and his radios. His fellow communica­tors rook his burden and turned to help him, but Technician 5th Grade Pinder waved them off. He would be all right. Rather than seek a medic, he looked to his radio sets. Pinder seemed fixated on getting them operational. The radioman was still fiddling with the de­vices when he passed out from loss of blood. He died later that morning. But his embattled regiment had found its electronic voice. 13

Early life

John Joseph Pinder, Jr., was born on June 6, 1912, in McKees Rock, Pennsylvania, the oldest of John and Laura Pinder’s three children. John Pinder, Sr., worked in the steel mills and the family moved around Pennsylvania, living in McKees Rock 1912- 1925, Vanport and Coraopolis until 1929, and Butler from 1929 until the family moved to Burgettstown in 1939. Two other Pinder children, Martha and Harold, were born in 1915 and 1922. Martha died in 1996. Harold, who still lives in Pittsburgh, provided much of the information for this article.

Joe Pinder graduated from Butler High School in 1931. His high school yearbook, The Senior Magnet, included a western short story, “On the Road to the Bar X,” that Joe wrote. The yearbook referred to Pinder as John and Johnny, but his brother Harold says that everyone called him Joe.

Pinder spent the next several years pitching semi­ pro baseball in the greater Pittsburgh area. The Depression was in full swing and minor league jobs, like work in general, were scarce.

Joe’s professional debut came late in the 1935 season for his hometown club, the Butler Indians of the Class D Pennsylvania State Association, then the lowest rung of the Cleveland Indians farm chain. Joe was unimpressive in his first game, so nervous that he”couldn’t get his fastball over and his curve swept wide of the plate.”14 Several days later he turned in an excellent mound performance, limiting his opponents to three hits over seven innings. Pinder appeared in eight league games in 1935, turning in a 3-2 won-lost record with 29 walks and 35 strikeouts in 46 innings of work, and Butler reserved his contract for 1936. At least two of Joe’s teammates, Mike McCormick and Oscar Grimes, eventually made their way to the ma­jor leagues.

Cleveland dropped their sponsorship of the Butler team over the winter and the New York Yankees be­ gan what would be a long working relationship with Butler. In 1947, his rookie season in professional ball, Whitey Ford played for the Butler Yankees, then in the Class C Middle Atlantic League.

Joe’s time on the Yankees payroll was short. He ap­peared in only a few games for Butler in 1936 before being released in late May.

Before the release, Butler played exhibition games with the Homestead Grays and the Pittsburgh Crawfords. Pinder drew a start against the Crawfords, whose batting order included Hall of Famers Cool Papa Bell, Judy Johnson, Josh Gibson, and Oscar Charleston. The Crawfords, possibly the greatest Negro League team ever assembled, had little trouble with the Class D club and waltzed their way to an 11- 3 win. Pinder gave up just three hits in his three innings but his teammates booted routine plays and he allowed six runs. Joe retired Gibson both times he faced him, once on a fly to center and then on a rou­tine grounder to the shortstop. Bell was 0-for-1 with a walk, Charleston flied out and singled, and Johnson doubled and walked.

Hard luck

Joe played semipro ball for the remainder of 1936 and all of 1937. He tried out with the Wash­ington Senators’ Class D Sanford Lookouts in the Florida State League in 1938 and made the team. The Lookouts finished last with a 53-87 record, 34-1/2 games out of first place. Pinder turned in nine wins and 18 losses, completing 16 of his 29 starts. His ERA was 4.04 and his strikeout to walk ratio was dead even, 155 passes and 156 strikeouts in 234 innings pitched. On June 23, 1938, the Sanford Herald wrote:

The hardest luck pitcher in the Florida State League or any other league is none other than Joseph Pinder, youth from Butler, Penn., who has lost 12 games this season and won only two. Pinder has gained a consider­able amount of control and has picked up on his pitching in general during the last month or so regardless of the fact he has lost the last 10 games in a row. Each time Pinder walks on the hill his mates make up their minds to win one, and they have come so close that it would be impossible for anything else to hap­pen other than someone dropping dead. Pinder hurled 15 innings against DeLand and lost. Tuesday night he hurled a beautiful game and lost 3 to 2. In Gainesville the other evening he held them scoreless and in the fifth inning had to retire due to a sudden ail­ment in his right arm. So Pinder is still working hard and one of these days we are going to see him walk off the mound with that victory under his belt.

Pinder’s luck, and his pitching, improved dramati­cally after that point in the season. He tossed one-hitters versus St. Augustine on June 30 and the DeLand Reds on July 29. Wildness continued to be his main problem. He beat DeLand on August 10, 11- 1, allowing five hits but passing eleven batters. On July 9, 1938, this article appeared in the Sanford Her­ald:

One of the most promising rookies on the Lookouts squad this season is John Joseph Pinder, ace right-handed pitcher who nearly entered the hall of fame last week when he hurled a one-hitter against the St. Augustine Saints…

Pinder was the workhorse of the Lookouts hurling corps earlier in the season, starting games and also doing a bit of relief work. At the present, however, Joe has become a regu­lar starter and gets his four days rest between hurling duties.

Pinder has a lot of stuff and his curveball is dreaded by the other clubs in the league. His fast ball comes in very handy after he slips a curve ball by and it hops and travels with more speed than one of an average hurler. The youngster has the stamina and courage to make a big leaguer some day and he takes his work very seriously.

Pinder was retained by Sanford for 1939. Former American League batting champion Dale Alexander came down from the Chattanooga Lookouts to man­age Sanford, and the team responded to his leadership by copping the league pennant with a 98-35 record. The team’s strength was its pitching staff which con­sisted of Sid Hudson (24-4), Cleo Jeter (22-9), J. Harry Dean (21-4), and Pinder {17-7). Hudson won the league’s triple crown of pitching, leading in strikeouts (192) and ERA (1.79) as well as wins, and when the season was over the Washington Senators purchased the contracts of both Hudson and Dean. Pinder tossed 211 innings in 35 games. His ERA was 3.94 and he again walked as many batters (115) as he fanned (117). Hudson was Pinder’s teammate in 1938 and 1939. He compiled a major league won-lost record of 104-152 over twelve seasons, then became a successful big league pitching coach. Today, at age 85, he resides in Waco, Texas. On Veterans Day, No­vember 11, 2000, Hudson wrote to the author:

In 1938 Joe Pinder and l were roommates in spring training at Sanford, Florida-at the hotel there.

We got to know each other quite well, but, of course, most of our talk was about baseball­ trying to learn different pitches from each other.

He was a very nice fellow, and a real gentle­man.

We had a four-man starting pitcher staff and he was one of them. We four pitchers won 84 games that year-winning the pennant.

As well as I remember, he had a good curveball, and change, and an average fast ball. I suppose his only problem was his control, at times.

I certainly feel honored to have been asso­ciated with him in baseball.

One other member of the 1939 Sanford club, Hillis Layne, went on to the majors. Layne compiled a mi­nor league batting average of .335 over a career that ran 1938-1958, and he won the 1947 Pacific Coast League batting crown. His major league career con­sisted of 107 games, all with Washington, in the 1940s. While Hudson knew that Pinder had been killed in the war, Layne didn’t. On July 30, 2000, he wrote to the author:

Thanks for your letter as it brings back memories of perhaps my most enjoyable year in baseball. As one who played Class D-C-B­ AA-AAA and the major leagues, the Sanford team of 1939 could hold its own with many of the teams I played with. This club was called the best Class D club that was ever assembled. The club had five pitchers with outstanding ability and all could pitch with any club to­ day. Hudson, Pinder, Jeter, Dean and Al Nixon.

l especially remember Joe Pinder, a stocky built right hander. A real competitor with a live fast ball and good curve. As a teammate of Joe’s, l can see why Congress presented him with the Medal of Honor. Aside from being a fine ball player he was a great person and a good friend.

I have wondered what happened to Joe since we played at Sanford and although I am sorry he is gone, it makes me proud of what he did in the service of our great country.

Oddly, Washington had two minor league teams in the Florida State League in 1939, and on July 10, Pinder faced an Orlando Senators lineup that in­cluded former University of Michigan football and track star Elmer Gedeon. Gedeon appeared briefly in September that year for Washington and, like Pinder,would be killed in action during the war.15

Pinder began this third year with Sanford in 1940. The team had changed its name from the Lookouts to the Semi­noles, and Alexander, Hudson, and Layne had all moved on. Stan Musial played for Daytona Beach in the Florida State League in 1940. Sanford and Daytona Beach met three times in late April and early May but Pinder and Musial never appeared in the same game. On May 14, 1940, the Sanford Herald wrote:

Joe Pinder, for two years one of the main­stays of the Sanford pitching staff, yesterday joined the hurling corps of the Macon Peaches, Manager Whitey Campbell an­nounced as he released the information to the public that he had permitted Joe to leave the Seminole staff to better himself. Campbell said he was sorry to see Pinder go but that if he had an opportunity to rise, he did not want to see him held back.

Macon was in the Class B South Atlantic League, and Joe’s short time there would be his highest level of professional competition. A Brooklyn Dodgers farm team, Macon was managed by former major leaguer Milt Stock. The team’s star player was Stock’s son-in-law, Eddie Stanky.16 Pinder won a game and lose a game for Macon. On June 11, 1940, the Fort Pierce News-Tri­bune announced that the Fort Pierce Bombers of the Class D Florida East Coast League had secured Joe from Macon. Fort Pierce finished the season in fifth place and Pinder turned in just 4 wins against 12 losses. His earned run aver­age, a nifty 2.91, was indicative of his luck that year. Joe arrived in Fort Pierce the next January, hoping to get a jump on the 1941 baseball season. On February 2, the News­ Tribune wrote:

Joe Pinder, the stocky, square-set little Pennsylvanian with the blinding fast ball, is back in town and is ready for the Fort Pierce Bombers 1941 baseball season.

This quiet, amiable and almost shy person, who had some of the toughest luck last sea­son besides a disastrous record of four wins and 12 losses, has spent the fall and winter months in Pennsylvania with his parents where he worked like the dickens and hunted plenty. Joe registered for the selective service while there. Being outdoors most of the time and quite frequently on the pivot end of an axe, Jo-Jo is in tip top condition.

Pinder thinks 1941 will be his greatest year in professional ball and believes Fort Pierce will be high up in the league race. His ambi­tion is to become a major league player and without any flowery ado he will tell you that his whole life is based on reaching the top in pro ball…

A little more about Joe: He hails from Burgettstown, Pa. and went to high school there, later attended Pennsylva­nia State College for one year. Not much of an athlete during his high school days, he stuck to books and don’t think he isn’t smart. However, when 18 years of age, he was clocked at 10 seconds for a 100 yard run-which shows his speed on the local diamond last summer was no flash in the pan.

Joe, despite his bad season, was con­sidered one of the most promising moundsmen Fort Pierce had last sum­mer. The 24-year-old hurler will go places this year if the breaks are 50-50.

Shaving a few years off one’s age is a time-hon­ored tradition in baseball, and at the time this article was written Pinder was 28 years old, not 24. Another biographical sketch on Pinder that ap­peared later in the season gave his birth year as 1917.17

Pinder won 11 games and lost nine with Fort Pierce in a little more than half a season. At the beginning of July, Joe’s contract was optioned to the Greenville Lions of the Alabama State League, another Class D organization. The Greenville manager, former St. Louis Browns pitcher Ernie Wingard, was fired due to the team’s horrible 17-47 record, and Herb Thomas, a native Floridian who had played with the Boston Braves and the New York Giants, was brought in as Wingard’s replacement. Thomas had managed the Fort Lauderdale team in the Florida East Coast League in 1940 and early 1941 and, being familiar with Pinder’s ability, arranged for his transfer.

The Lions went 28-25 after Thomas took over, and Joe’s 6-2 record in just over a month with the team played a vital part.

Joe Pinder has taken part in seven games, winning four and losing one, since he joined the Lions two weeks ago. Had the locals been able to secure him two weeks earlier, the Li­ons would almost have been assured a place in the play-offs. As it is they are making a strong, though belated, bid for a first division berth-with only three bona fide hurlers on the squad.18

Pinder made an “iron man” attempt on August 18 and started both games of a doubleheader. He tossed a shutout in the opener and received a no-decision in the second game. Joe’s last professional game came on August 28, 1941.

Joe Pinder mastered the Tallassee Indians here Thursday night with a 6-hit pitching ef­fort, and his teammates backed him with a 12-hit assault on two visiting hurlers, to tally a 7-1 triumph. Except for a much discussed play in the sev­enth, the little Lion right-hander would probably have scored a shutout. 19

Joe’s final tally in 1941 was 17 wins and 11 losses with a 2.93 earned run average. He struck out 136 batters and walked 125. His contract was still owned by Fort Pierce, but as the team departed for the win­ter, Joe told the Greenville Advocate than he hoped to secure his release and return to Greenville for the 1942 season. He had no way of knowing it at the time, but his professional baseball career was over. His dream of reaching the major leagues would never be realized.

Battlefield

The following information was taken from the history of the 16th Infantry Regiment Asso­ciation:

The 16th Infantry’s mission was “To assault Omaha Beach and reduce the beach defenses in its zone of action, and proceed with all possible speed to the D-Day Phase Line, and seize and secure it two hours before dark on D-Day.”… The assault began in the early hours of 6 June 1944 as the 16th Infantry Regiment moved toward the shore of Normandy. 600 yards offshore, the LCVP’s encountered intense antitank and small arms fire, but continued to move forward without hesitation. As the first elements hit the beaches, it was apparent that many of the enemy’s strong points had not been elimi­nated by the pre-invasion bombardment. Those men who lived to get ashore immedi­ately dug holes in the sand, but waves washed them out as fast as they were scooped. To make matters worse, weapons became clogged with sand, and the enemy had reinforced with an added Infantry division, thus almost dou­bling his firepower. The survivors of the first wave built up a hasty firing line along a low pile of shale. As more men arrived, they found the troops pinned down, congested and trapped … Colonel George Taylor, Regimental Commander, jumped to his feet and said, “The only men who remain on this beach are the dead and those who are about to die! Let’s get moving!” The 16th rallied, and soon, by vicious fighting, much of it hand-to-hand, was pushing toward Colleville-Sur-Mer. Early the following day, the 16th Infantry had seized the beach and an initial foothold that made the invasion a success. 20

While baseball chroniclers may be unaware of the importance of Pinder’s actions early on that long-ago June morning, military historians are cognizant of the strategic value of his deeds and sacrifices. The 116th Infantry Regiment, belonging to the 29th Infantry Division but loaned to the 1st Infantry Division for the invasion, landed on the western half of Omaha Beach. Previously untried in combat, the 116th never got a radio working until late in the day and as a re­sult did not receive effective naval fire support. The best the 116th could do at one point was send blinker Light signals. The 16th attacked on the eastern half of the beach, and General Sullivan’s 1994 historical as­sessment of the situation credits Joe Pinder as being the reason the 16th was able to sidestep the commu­nications problem that haunted the 116th.

Things turned out differently over in the Big Red One’s 16th Infantry regiment, mainly because of the unflagging willpower of one man-Technician Sch Grade John J. Pinder of Pennsylvania. Pinder and the rest of his communications section carried about half of the regimental headquarters’ radio devices in their pitching little landing craft.21

Pinder’s hometown paper, the Butler Eagle, an­nounced his death in July:

Killed in Action.

A former Butler soldier and baseball pitcher, Private First Class J. Joseph Pinder, Jr., of Burgettstown, Pa., has been killed in action in France, it was announced by the War department.

Private Pinder was the son of J. J. Pinder, Sr., and had taken part in three different in­ vasions at the time of his death.

A veteran infantryman, Pinder received his first action in the invasion of North Africa and lacer took part in the invasion of Italy. When the American army landed on the French coast, Private Pinder was with the first assault waves and June 6 was killed in action.

Well Known Here

Private Pinder was well known in Butler and was a graduate of the Butler Senior high school. He signed with the Yankee team of Bueler as a pitcher and lacer pitched in the Florida Stace League.

Entering the army on January 27, 1942, he received his basic training ac Camp W heeler, Ga., Fort Benning and Indiantown Gap and then left this country for England. He left England in November of 1942 and had been in action since that time.

Private Pinder leaves his father, J. J. Pinder, Sr., of Burgettstown, Pa., a sister, Martha , of California, and a brother, Lieutenant Harold Pinder, who has been reported missing in ac­tion after a bombing mission over Germany in January of 1944.22

Harold Pinder was a B-24 pilot stationed in En­gland. He was shoe down on a bombing raid enroute to Frankfurt, Germany, on January 29, 1944. He was in a POW camp when he received a letter from his father informing him of Joe’s death.

The War Department issued a press release on January 3, 1945, co announce that Pinder had been post­humously awarded the Medal of Honor. The Sporting News followed suit in its January 11, 1945, issue:

U.S. Honors Ex-Minor Ace Posthumously

One of the nation’s highest awards, the Medal of Honor, has been awarded posthu­mously to John J. Pinder, TS/G, of Burgettstown, Pa. former minor league pitcher, before he entered the Army, January 8, 1942.

The 32-year-old infantryman scorned ter­rible wounds in a race against death to establish vital radio communications on a beachhead in France on O-Day, last June 6, the War Department announced.

Torn by shrapnel and machine gun fire, Pinder lived to see radio parts which he had salvaged from the surf, set up to summon air and sea support.

Pinder’s official Medal of Honor citation reads as follows:

For conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity above and beyond the call of duty on 6 June 1944, near Colleville-sur-Mer, France. On D­ Day, Technician 5th Grade Pinder landed on the coast 100 yards off shore under devastat­ing enemy machine-gun and artillery fire which caused severe casualties among the boatload. Carrying a vitally important radio, he struggled towards shore in waist-deep wa­ter. Only a few yards from his craft he was hit by enemy fire and was gravely wounded. Technician 5th Grade Pinder never stopped. He made shore and delivered the radio. Re­fusing to take cover afforded, or to accept medical attention for his wounds, Technician 5th Grade Pinder, though terribly weakened by loss of blood and in fierce pain, on 3 occasions went into the fire-swept surf to salvage communication equipment. He recovered many vital parts and equipment, including another workable radio. On the 3rd trip he was again hit, suffering machine-gun bullet wounds in his legs. Still this valiant soldier would not stop for rest or medical attention. Remaining exposed to heavy enemy fire, growing steadily weaker, he aided in establish­ing the vital radio communication on the beach. While so engaged his dauntless sol­dier was hit for a third time and killed. The indomitable courage and personal bravery of Technician 5th Grade Pinder was a magnifi­cent inspiration for the men with whom he served.

Joe Pinder was initially laid to rest in Normandy, but his family had his remains returned home in Sep­tember, 1947. The Pinder family plot is in the Grandview Cemetery in Florence, Pennsylvania. There is a special stone commemorating his Medal of Honor.

Close to sixty years have passed since Joe’s death. Time marches on, and, although we shouldn’t, we tend to forget the past. Major league stars today make millions of dollars per year, and chat seems an eternity away from the bloody reality of our army storming ashore that June morning trying to free an entire con­tinent.

Ralph Houk won three pennants and two world championships as manager of the New York Yankees. He also won a Silver Star for leading a reconnaissance platoon across France. Houk, like all men who had experienced combat firsthand, knew that war con­tains a lot more horror than it does glory. In his autobiography he wrote:

Ruined villages, aerial bombardments, strafing, the crackle of snipers’ bullets, corpses, the stink of war-that stuff reads well in magazines and books. lt happened, it was all there, but not in gaudy words. To the indi­vidual soldier nothing mattered except to take orders, to execute chem to the best of his ability-and to survive.23

Houk, in answering a letter about Pinder, wrote to the author:

I did not know or play with Joe Pinder, Jr., but we should not forget what so many people went through in World War Two. l also landed at Omaha Beach a few days after the first wave and it was hard to get through chat alive. Baseball should not forget the Joe Pinders of baseball.24

Allan “Bud” Selig, the Commissioner of Baseball, wrote:

He was a very heroic man who represented his country magnificently. He did what so many other baseball players did, at both the major and minor levels, and that is willingly give up their careers to fight for their country. Joe Pinder stands as a great symbol for future generations of baseball players, for his bravery and courage.25

Few men find themselves participants in events that determine world history. Fewer still are at the fulcrum of that event’s failure or success. Pinder was such a man, an ordinary-Joe selected by face for an extraordinary role.

So here’s to you, Joe Pinder, belated as it may be, a collective tip of our baseball caps, for you will always be baseball’s greatest hero.

Notes

1. Stephen Ambrose, D-Day. June 6, 1944. The Climactic Battle of World War II, 1994, p. 346.

2. U.S. Wor Department press release, January 3, 1945.

3. Cornelius Ryan, The Longest Day, 1959, pp. 194-5.

4. Ambrose. p. 346.

5. Ibid, p. 347.

6. Ryan, p. I96.

7. General Gordon R. Sullivan, “D-Day’ Plus 50 Years.” Anny Magazine, June 1994, p. 26.

8. Ibid.

9. Ibid.

10. U.S. War Department press release, January 3, 1945.

11. Sullivan, p. 26.

12. U.S. War Department press release, January 3, 1945.

13. Sullivan, p. 26.

14. Butler Eagle, August 22, 1935.

15. See Joseph D. Tekulsy, “Elmer Gedeon.” The National Pastime, 1994, p 68-9.

16. The Sporting News, September 10, 1942, r 10.

17. Fort Pierce News-Tribune, June 22, 1941.

18. Greenville Advocate, August 21, 1941.

19. Ibid, September 4. 1941.

20. 16th Infantry Association website, http://16thinfantry-regiment.org/History/WWII/wwii.html.

21. Sullivan, p. 26.

22. Butler Eagle, July. 1944.

23. Ralph Houk and Charles Dexter, Ballplayers Are Human, Too (New York: Putnam’s, 1962), p. 37.

24. Letter from Ralph Houk to author., September 2000.

25. Letter from Allan “Bud” Selig to author, September 18, 2000.

As famed radio news commentator Paul Harvey might expound, “And now for the rest of the story.” What story? The one detailing the how and the who of the long-overlooked run batted in that, 69 years after Hack Wilson accomplished the feat, boosted his one-season major-league RBI record to 191.

It’s a story that from start to finish spanned almost 22 years and took many twists and turns. It also is a product of the effort of numerous SABR re­searchers who provided assistance and deserve credit.

It all started in 1977 during my tenure as historian of the Baseball Hall of Fame, when an envelope ar­rived from The Sporting News, where I had earlier been a member of the editorial staff for 24 years. Enclosed were two letters. One was dated No­vember 17, 1977, written by staff member Larry Wigge.

Dear Cliff: We just received this [enclosed] letter from a reader, and since The Sporting News box scores from 1930 did not reveal RBI totals, there was no way to answer the man. I thought maybe you have come across this be­fore, and Mac [Paul Macfarlane, another TSN staff member] suggested that you had the official boxes and could check into this.

The enclosed handwritten letter was from a James Braswell, who was living in Chicago at the time.

Gentlemen: I believe if you check Hack Wilson’s record from July 24 thru August 5, inclusive, of 1930, you will find Wilson knocked in at least one run in 11 consecutive games, and should be listed in your Baseball Record Book — along with Mel Ott — as the co-holder of this N.L. record [for consecutive games with an RBI].

After making a quick check, my response to Braswell on November 22 (with a copy to Wigge) advised:

Wilson’s day-by-day record for 1930, as kept by the National League’s official statisti­cian, shows that he was credited with RBIs in only 10 of the 11 games during the period you listed. However, an Associated Press box score of the game for which he is shown with no RBIs on the official sheet does in fact credit him with a run batted in. I am now attempt­ing to obtain a play-by-play of the game in question … and will be getting back to you.

Exactly one week later a followup letter to Braswell (a carbon again going to Wigge) declared:

We have received copies of accounts appearing in the Chicago Tribune and Chicago Herald-Examiner of the second game of the July 28, 1930 doubleheader between the Cubs and Cincinnati at Wrigley Field. Both accounts state that Hack Wilson singled home Kiki Cuyler from second base in the third inning. Wilson subsequently moved to third base on an error and scored on Charlie Grimm’s single. In summary, the newspaper accounts indicate that Wilson and Grimm should have been credited with one RBI each in this game — rather than Grimm with two and Wilson with none as is shown on the official records. This would then give Wilson a streak of 11 successive games with an RBI. The Official Baseball Records Committee will be meeting next week, and I will arrange to have this matter presented to the group at that time.

The Baseball Records Committee had been founded in Milwaukee during the All-Star Game break in July 1975, prompted by discrepancies between the Elias Bureau’s Book of Baseball Records and The Sporting News‘s Baseball Record Book, together with the discovery of numerous mistakes in the official records through the years.

With the approval of Commissioner Bowie Kuhn and the concurrence of the two league presidents, Joe Reichler of the Commissioner’s staff arranged to formally organize such a committee. It originally consisted of 10 members, including two from the Commissioner’s staff, the two league public relations directors, three from the Baseball Writers’ Association, the head of the Elias Sports Bureau, and one representative each from The Sporting News and the Baseball Hall of Fame. Later the committee was expanded to 15 members.

My memorandum on the Wilson RBI matter was presented to the Records Committee at its December 7 session during the 1977 major/minor-league meetings in Hawaii. The report included play-by-play-type accounts by Ed Burns in the Chicago Tribune and Wayne Otto in the Herald-Examiner of the two innings in which the Cubs scored while edging the Reds, 5-3, in the second half of the July 28, 1930, twin bill. Both clearly stated that Wilson and Grimm each singled in one run in the third inning. (The box score appearing in the Chicago Herald-Examiner and the one distributed by Associated Press both show Wilson and Grimm with one run batted in apiece. The Chicago Tribune did not include RBIs in its box scores in 1930, while the Daily News and American seldom listed them.)

In a letter dated December 16, I informed Braswell:

Three factors prompted the Committee to defer any action on the [Wilson] findings:

1. Seymour Siwoff [head of the Elias Bureau] pointed out that his Book of Baseball Records already shows a longer NL RBI streak (12 games by Paul Waner from June 2-16, 1927),

2. Additional data is still needed on other discrepancies in Wilson’s 1930 RBI record, and

3. The group simply ran out of time at this particular session [to pursue the matter further].

The letter also noted six other instances where the daily RBI figures that Braswell listed for Wilson differed from the official records. I asked if he was in a position to check Chicago newspapers for play-by-play accounts of these games. About a week later Braswell provided information on the six games and added: “This has spurred me on to doing a complete analysis of Hack’s incredible 1930 RBIs. Needless to say, it will take several months of research, but this is a hobby with me so eventually I will complete it.”

More digging … and diggers

Beginning in late December 1977, my involvement in the Baseball Museum’s major expansion and total remodeling project increased greatly. As a result, my next contact with Braswell was delayed until the following September. He responded that he had not had a chance to do further research, but hoped to be able to in the future. Unfortunately, this was the last I heard from him. Because of the heightened workload resulting from the Museum expansion/renovation program, I didn’t write him again until May 14, 1982, with a follow-up four weeks later. Neither letter brought a response. Braswell, who had joined SABR in 1978, dropped out after 1983, and all contact with him was lost.

I contacted another SABR member living in the Chicago area — Bob Soderman — in January 1981 to ascertain if he might be willing to assist in the research. Ironically, as it turned out, Soderman had been gathering information for several years for a possible biography of Wilson. He advised that his research and writing had carried him through the 1929 season.

Soderman proved to be a key figure in verifying Hack’s 191 RBIs. His background made him an ideal choice. As a young man in the late 1940s, he had been a sportswriter with Chicago’s City News Bureau. Later he joined the advertising department of the Jim Beam Distilling Company and eventually became vice president of marketing and advertising for the firm. In that role he developed a relationship with The Sporting News by placing Jim Beam ads in what then was known as the Baseball Bible.

After retiring from Jim Beam, Soderman became active as a boxing historian and has contributed many articles to boxing publications. In 1980 he helped found the International Boxing Research Organization (IBRO). In addition, he continued as an active baseball researcher and was responsible for discovering a unique record: most consecutive at-bats without a home run — Tommy Thevenow, 3,347 in the National League, and Ed Foster with 3,278 in the American League.

Another who became involved in the Wilson project during this period was Paul Macfarlane of The Sporting News. We had been colleagues for much of my career with that publication. Among his responsibilities as TSN historian/archivist at the time was Daguerreotypes, a book containing the lifetime records of the game’s greatest players. He was TSN‘s representative during the last few years of the Official Records Committee and as a consequence of our frequent contacts was aware of the “missing” RBI, and had even changed Wilson’s RBI total to 191 in the 1981 edition of Daguerreotypes. (A year or two later he changed it back to 190 following Bowie Kuhn’s ruling on the 1910 Cobb-Lajoie batting championship dispute.)

By early summer 1982, Soderman’s research had uncovered numerous mistakes in RBIs credited to 1930 Cub players. It became obvious that it would be necessary to check every Cub RBI in each game that season if there was to be any possibility of acceptance of a revision of Wilson’s total. In a letter dated June 10, 1982, I had asked Soderman whether he’d be willing to do this and reminded him of a day-by-day grid of 1930 Cub RBIs that I had compiled from the official NL records and had sent him. He quickly dug into the assignment full blast. Taking the train or bus from his suburban Mt. Prospect home into the Windy City, he spent days at the Chicago Public Library going through microfilm of four Chicago dailies: Tribune, Times, Daily News, and Herald-Examiner.

Early in May 1983, during a conversation with Macfarlane, Soderman said his research up to that point led him to believe Hack had three more RBIs not just one — for a total of 193. However, his “final report” to me and Macfarlane, dated May 30, 1983, scotched that prospect. The 27-page document included a summary of each 1930 Cub game that listed the opponent, home or away, and final score; a daily log of Wilson’s home runs and RBIs; a game-by-game grid for all 26 Cub players who had an RBI, and play-by-play descriptions of Cub scoring in 17 games where actual or potential RBI discrepancies were found.

The two “dubious” games in which Soderman originally concluded Hack had been deprived of an RBI were those of June 4 at Boston and the second half of an August 19 doubleheader at Wrigley Field which ended in a 16-inning, 6-6 tie. In the first instance, the Tribune‘s game account indicated Hack had driven in a run in the fourth inning as well as in the first inning. The play-by-play in the Chicago Times refuted this, crediting Riggs Stephenson with both RBIs in the fourth inning.

In the August 19 contest, Soderman’s reading of game accounts in two papers originally led him to believe Wilson had driven in Kiki Cuyler in the third inning. As a matter of fact, the Associated Press box score appearing in the New York Times and other newspapers did give Hack an RBI. The subsequent discovery of a play-by-play account in the Chicago Daily News revealed that, with one out and the Cubs trailing, 4-1, Cuyler scored when Phillies second baseman Fresco Thompson booted Wilson’s grounder for an error. Although Cuyler may have taken off for the plate as soon as the ball was hit, Wilson was not credited with an RBI by the official scorer.

Earlier in the season, another Cub player was deprived of an RBI that seemed warranted. It occurred in the second half of a May 30 morning-afternoon bill against St. Louis at Wrigley Field. With the score tied at 8-8, the bases loaded and one out in the bottom of the tenth inning, Riggs Stephenson smashed a grounder to Cardinal shortstop Sparky Adams. He fired to second baseman Frank Frisch, but Frisch’s throw to first attempting to double up Stephenson was off-target. Although the winning run scored on the play, the Associated Press and most newspapers listed no RBI for him, and also had no error for Frisch. At the same time, box scores carried a note saying, “One out when winning run scored,” thus ignoring the forceout at second base.

However, a check of the NL official records revealed the scorer did include that out and also charged Frisch with an error, thus eliminating the possibility of an RBI for Stephenson. Baseball’s official scoring rules in 1930 stated the game summary “shall contain the number of runs batted in by each batsman” but offered no explanation on how to score RBIs in unusual situations.

This seeming oversight was corrected at a meeting of the rules committee on December 12, 1930, when the following definition was adopted: “Runs batted in should include runs scored on safe hits (including home runs), sacrifice hits, infield outs, and when the run is forced over by reason of a batsman becoming a baserunner. With less than two out, if an error is made on a play on which a runner from third would ordinarily score, credit the batsman with a Run Batted In.”

Did the last sentence starting “With less than two out …” represent a new interpretation? The fact that the AP box score credited Wilson with an RBI in the August 19 game would indicate that at least some scorers already may have been following that practice. It’s possible the league presidents had previously issued instructions covering the situation, although to date no evidence has been found.

An editorial in the December 25, 1930, issue of The Sporting News stated:

When the rules makers were revising the code for the future, they discovered to their surprise that no definition had been made in the rules as to what constitutes a run batted in … Of course the major league presidents had their own definition and had instructed the official scorers how to record this play which is presumed to be of such importance to batsmen. … When the new rules make their appearance, the run batted in will be defined and in the future this will help the scorers of all games. It is not a play applying directly to the major leagues, it is for all leagues. … The run batted in is not a suggestion that is modern. Years ago when Henry Chadwick was fathering baseball, he contended that it should be included in the score and wrote line after line about it. … It is with us now, and in the future it is hoped that it will be more valuable than it has been in the past.

The arrival of Soderman’s “final report” coincided with my assumption of the newly created position of executive director of SABR. The need to devote full time to this endeavor — together with Commissioner Bowie Kuhn’s decision two years earlier in the 1910 Cobb-Lajoie batting controversy (“The passage of 70 years, in our judgment, constitutes a certain statute of limitations as to recognizing any changes in the records with confidence of the accuracy of such changes.”) — prompted me to put the Wilson matter aside without even studying and evaluating the results. It would be many years before I pursued it again.

Despite Kuhn’s edict, Macfarlane proposed doing a story for The Sporting News on the Wilson mess. With the Cobb-Lajoie experience in mind, editor Dick Kaegel turned him down. In an inter-office memo dated August 5, 1983, to Macfarlane, with copies to publisher Dick Waters, several TSN staff members and me, Kaegel wrote:

This Hack Wilson RBI research obviously is painstakingly thorough but [there are still] some holes. … Our policy on correcting records — particularly records of this significance — must be to first present the evidence to the Official Records Committee. … When the Kuhn administration ends, perhaps we’ll have better luck with a reorganized Records Committee. One of our first steps should be to impress upon the new commissioner the importance of the records committee and renew our suggestion for implementing a research bureau within the commissioner’s office (or possibly under the supervision of Elias [Bureau], SABR or even TSN). … Obviously because statistics are such an important part of baseball, it is important to have the correct numbers. Hopefully the new commissioner and his people will be more receptive to this concept. Meanwhile, we will continue to list Wilson’s RBIs as 190 for 1930.

Unfazed by the rebuff, Macfarlane proceeded to write an article on the subject for the June 1986, issue of The Scoreboard News — About the Chicago Cubs. I did not learn about this piece until ten years later. The 650-word yarn began: “As long as baseball has been played and will be played, there are people who search for the truth in records. Research is less looking for faults as [sic] it is finding an error while looking for something completely non-related.”

He then claimed to be the first to find Hack’s missing RBI. Completely ignoring Braswell’s role, he gave Soderman credit for “painstaking and timeless research [that] proved that I was correct.” He also listed the other Cub players whose RBI figures Soderman had found to be incorrect, with their revised totals. (Further study resulted in a subsequent revision.)

A sidebar inserted next to Macfarlane’s story by Scoreboard News editors pointed out the possibility that Wilson may have been deprived of another RBI, which would have made his total 192. The sidebar cited the 1978 biography of Wilson written by Robert S. Boone and Gerald Grunska. In it, Clyde Sukeforth, a catcher with Cincinnati in 1930, was quoted as saying Hack should have had 57 home runs that season instead of 56.

According to Sukeforth, one day when he was sitting in the bullpen in Redland Field, Hack “hit one … way up in the seats … so hard that it hit the screen and bounced back [onto the field].” Sukeforth said the umpires, apparently not realizing it had cleared the fence, ruled the ball in play and Hack thus was deprived of a home run and RBI. “Of course, we weren’t going to say anything,” Sukeforth was quoted as saying.

A somewhat similar version appeared in “The Fans Speak Out” section of the August 2001 edition of Baseball Digest. According to the writer, then living in Wroclaw, Poland, Wilson allegedly hit a drive into the seats with a runner aboard, but the ball bounced back on the field and Hack wound up with a double instead of a two-run homer. Sukeforth supposedly told Wilson about the incident in 1933, when both were with the Dodgers. Unfortunately, no newspaper reference has been found to confirm Sukeforth’s recollection.

As a matter of fact, Sukeforth was the Reds’ catcher in eight of the 11 games played against the Cubs at Redland Field that season. In one of the eight, the first half of a July 6 doubleheader, the Cincinnati Enquirer stated Wilson smashed homer No. 24 “into the right field seats, which is Hack’s favorite spot on this field,” and then in the second game drove a ball over right fielder Harry Heilmann’s head that “hit close to the top of the screen (but) Hack was held to a single on account of preceding baserunners” [English on second and Cuyler on first], who “feared Heilmann was going to catch the ball.” English scored on the hit, but Cuyler was thrown out at the plate and “Hack had to be satisfied with probably the longest single ever made on the [Cincinnati] grounds.”

Of the three 1930 Chicago-at-Cincinnati games when Sukeforth conceivably could have been sitting in the bullpen, Wilson had only one hit — a triple on July 9. Accounts in Cincinnati newspapers indicated there was nothing unusual about the hit.

Reawakening

For me, the Wilson dispute remained dormant until SABR’s 1996 annual convention in Kansas City. After sitting in on the SABR Records Committee meeting, I mentioned the Wilson matter to committee chairman Lyle Spatz. He immediately expressed deep interest. Another who did was Dave Smith, head of Retrosheet, the group whose goal has been to locate play-by-play accounts of every major league game ever played.

This prompted me to dig out the files and resume evaluating the research that had been done. I looked closely at Soderman’s “final report” of 1983, and contacted him directly. His further research clarified matters and led to a few revisions of the figures he had originally provided (and which Macfarlane had listed in The Scoreboard News story).

At the 1997 Louisville convention, Spatz asked me to make a presentation on the Wilson matter at the SABR Records Committee meeting. Although a few details still remained to be untangled, the members in attendance seemed convinced that 191 should be accepted. With the assistance of Spatz and another committee member, Joe Dittmar, who on visits to Washington checked accounts in newspapers in the Library of Congress, we tied up the remaining loose ends.

The next significant step in the process was to compile: (1) a box score of the second game of the July 28, 1930, Reds-Cubs doubleheader (in which Wilson’s RBI was “missed”) from the data shown in the NL official records; (2) another from the play-by-play account; and (3) compare the two results with the box scores that appeared in the four Chicago newspapers.

There was, incidentally, an obvious mistake in the play-by-play carried in the Chicago Daily News. With one out in the Reds’ final at-bat, the account stated: “Lucas batted for Ford and singled to left. Callaghan batted for Ford and singled to left.” After tapping out the last sentence, the Western Union operator obviously realized his mistake and followed with “Callaghan batted for Durocher and singled to right, Lucas stopping at second.”

The process revealed that besides the Grimm-Wilson RBI mixup, the official records for this one game include eight other mistakes. A box score comprised of figures taken from the official National League player and team sheets is shown below.

Based upon the play-by-play in the Chicago Daily News and the box scores appearing in various newspapers, the official NL data contain the following mistakes:

• Wilson had 1 RBI (instead of 0);
• Grimm had 1 RBI (not 2);
• Blair had 4 assists (not 3);
• Chicago had 13 assists (not 12);
• Gooch had 4 AB (instead of 3);
• Cincinnati had 34 AB (not 33);
• Ford had 0 hits (not 1); Callaghan had 1 hit (not 0);
• Cincinnati had 6 LOB (not 5); 10 — Bush faced 36 batters (not 35).

Following are the figures from the official National League records:

(Click image to enlarge)

When I presented this report at the SABR Records Committee meeting during the 1998 convention in the Bay Area, the unanimous feeling was that enough evidence had been developed to justify changing Wilson’s total.

Soon after my return home from the convention, an enterprising young journalist named Owen S. Good heard about it while chatting with a staff member of the Baseball Hall of Fame Library. Good, who at the time was employed by The Daily Star of nearby Oneonta, promptly called and said he’d like to interview me for a story on the subject. At the time, Cleveland’s Manny Ramirez was on pace to threaten Wilson’s record just as Juan Gonzalez of Texas had been at the All-Star break a year earlier.

Under the headline “WILSON’S LOST RBI HAS HISTORIANS BOTHERED,” Good’s 1,200-word article appeared at the top of the first sports page of the July 15, 1998, edition of the Oneonta paper. It quickly caught the attention of the Associated Press, which proceeded to send out a brief item to its clients throughout the country. Because of my long friendship with Seymour Siwoff, head of the Elias Bureau, I immediately called to inform him how the publicity developed. His reaction was that he would need to see play-by-plays of all 1930 Cub games before he could consider supporting a change in Wilson’s RBI record.

Siwoff subsequently contacted Retrosheet’s Dave Smith. Retrosheet already had complete play-by-plays of 107 of the Cubs’ 1930 games and partial accounts of eighteen others. Smith forwarded them to Siwoff, and the Elias Bureau staff began its own study. In December Smith advised that he had sent Siwoff a short note saying “it seems inescapable that Hack’s correct total for 1930 is really 191.”

Most of the games for which play-by-plays were still lacking involved the second half of Sunday or holiday doubleheaders. In the 1930s it was not unusual for large metropolitan newspapers to publish several editions every day. While the earliest Monday editions usually carried play-by-play accounts of the Sunday games, subsequent editions often replaced them with other sports news, and the files maintained by local historical associations as well as the newspapers themselves usually contain only the later editions.

At this juncture, two other SABR members made significant contributions to finalizing the research effort. They were David Stephan of Culver City, California, and Walt Wilson of Chicago. Stephan, a mathematician who has his own consulting business, asked Wilson to search Chicago newspapers for the remaining play-by-plays. Having heard about the dispute, Walt had already worked up his own compilation of Wilson’s 1930 RBIs, and had arranged for his friend Eddie Gold to distribute copies at the 1998 SABR Records Committee meeting. (An article by Walt that includes Hack’s game-by-game RBI production of 1930 appeared in the 2000 Baseball Research Journal.)

Walt’s efforts, over the next eight or nine months, in digging up most of the missing play-by-plays proved to be a clinching factor. Three other SABR members who assisted in this phase were Mark Stangl of St. Louis, Bill Hugo of Cincinnati, and Denis Repp of Pittsburgh. Stangl was able to dig up data on several Cub games played in St. Louis. Hugo checked out Cub games in Cincinnati and found nothing to corroborate Sukeforth’s reference to a phantom homer by Wilson. Repp provided a play-by-play from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette of the Cubs’ August 3 game in Pittsburgh.

For the record, the list of mistakes in 1930 NL official RBI statistics of Cub players is presented below. It should be emphasized that it would be unfair to change the season totals for the players involved other than Wilson’s record 191 — without performing similar research on the entire league, as well as for other seasons. The revised totals of those affected follow, with the original figure in parentheses: Wilson 191 (190), Cuyler 134 (no change), Hartnett 124 (122), Stephenson 69 (68), Grimm 64 (66), English 62 (59), Blair 55 (59), D. Taylor 36 (37), Beck 35 (34), Kelly 53 as a Red and Cub (not 54), Hornsby 17 (18), and Bush 6 (7).

It is worth noting that of the 13 games in which RBI mistakes were found, all except the last two were played in Chicago. Following are the Cub RBI errata by date, with the correct figure shown first and the number credited by the league statistician in parentheses:

• June 23 — Cuyler 2 (3), Bush 2 (3), Stephenson 4 (3), Blair 4 (2), Hartnett 1 (2), Grimm 1 (2), Beck 1 (0);
• July 28 (2nd game) — Wilson 1 (0), Grimm 1 (2);
• August 1 — English 1 (2), Hartnett 3 (2);
• August 2 — Blair 0 (1);
• August 10 (2nd game) — English 1 (0), Cuyler 4 (3), Blair 1 (3);
• August 14 — Blair 0 (1);
• August 16 (1st game) — Cuyler 2 (3), D. Taylor 1 (0);
• August 22 — Hartnett 5 (4), Kelly 1 (2);
• August 24 — D. Taylor 0 (2), Hartnett 2 (1);
• August 29 — English 2 (1), Blair 0 (1);
• August 30 — English 2 (0), Blair 0 (2);
• September 6 — Hornsby 2 (3), Blair 1 (0);
• September 12 — Cuyler 3 (2).

Official recognition

The wheels of justice often move slowly. This time, though, the Elias Bureau was simultaneously concerned about a possible mistake in one of the Babe Ruth records that was being threatened. This contributed to quick consideration of the evidence in the Wilson case.

My first inkling that a change in Wilson’s 1930 RBI total was going to be officially recognized came on June 17, 1999. Jerome Holtzman, recently named Major League Baseball’s official historian following his retirement as a sportswriter for the Chicago Tribune, and a longtime friend, called to inform me of the decision. He requested some background information for use in a press release.

The story was given to the media on June 22, the second day of the SABR convention in Scottsdale, Arizona. “I am sensitive to the historical significance that accompanies the correction of such a prestigious record, especially after so many years have passed,” Commissioner Bud Selig declared, “but it is important to get it right.” The same news release also disclosed that extensive research by the Elias Bureau had discovered six additional walks for Babe Ruth, boosting his record career total to 2,062. The pressure to accept that discovery was driven by the fact that Rickey Henderson was approaching the record, which he exceeded early in the 2001 season.

A week following the official approval of Wilson’s 191st RBI, Holtzman posted a story on www.majorleaguebaseball.com explaining why the record was corrected after 69 years and pointing out that “a mystery [still] remains: Where is James Braswell?” He had been living at 1334 W. George Street in Chicago back in the late 1970s and early ’80s. Telephone calls made by David Stephan to the current resident of that address and also to several neighbors failed to develop any leads. A check of telephone listings on the internet revealed there are more than 150 men named James Braswell in the U.S. Calls to those shown as living in Illinois and seven nearby states failed to locate the real James Braswell.

At the 2001 SABR convention, Holtzman told Records Committee members that about six months after Wilson’s record was officially approved, he received a call out of the blue from Braswell, who mentioned he had been attending Northwestern at the time. Unfortunately, Holtzman had no recollection of the location from which Braswell called, and officials at Northwestern were unable to find any record of him. And so, as Holtzman noted in his 1999 article on the internet, “the only missing piece of the puzzle is the whereabouts of James Braswell, the hero of the story.”

Even Paul Harvey almost certainly would be intrigued by the story.

CLIFFORD S. KACHLINE (1921-2010) left an indelible mark on the world of baseball research. For 24 years he worked at The Sporting News, writing hundreds of features and articles and editing many of their standard reference works. After the death of Lee Allen, in 1969 he became the official historian at the National Baseball Hall of Fame, a post he held for 14 years while working tirelessly with major league teams to secure archives and records that otherwise would have been thrown out. He also was a founding member of SABR in 1971, and became its first Executive Director in 1982.

Sidebar 1: Run Batted In Rule

The evolution of the runs-batted-in rule has never been fully documented. Henry Chadwick, the first well-known baseball writer, is said to have originally come up with the concept of such a statistic as far back as 1879, but major league baseball did not officially accept it until some forty years later.

Prior to the 1891 season, baseball’s governing board adopted “a new and most important rule” that specified the summary of al games should include “the number of runs batted in by base hits by each batsman.” The proviso apparently proved unpopular. Not only did the National League and American Association averages of 1891 fail to contain any RBI data, but the rule was eliminated the following winter.

In 1907 Ernest J. Lanigan, then a baseball writer with the New York Press, suggested to the paper’s sports editor, Jim Price, the idea of compiling and publishing RBI data. The proposal was enthusiastically accepted, and Lanigan worked up runs batted in figures for players in both leagues from 1907 through 1919, starting with the Press and later moving on to the Tribune, World, and finally the New York Sun.

Runs batted in became an official statistic starting in 1920, but the scoring rules from then through 1930 simply stated: “The summary shall include… the number of runs batted in by each batter,” and provided no specifics whatsoever. While the league presidents or the Baseball Writers’ Association itself may have issued some scoring instructions during that period covering unusual circumstances, no such interpretations have yet been located.

Baseball’s rules committee finally rectified the situation in December 1930, by adopting a description of a run batted in that is essentially the same as that in effect today. The only significant change became effective 1939 when it was specified that no RBI should be credited when a runner scores as the batter grounds into a double play. That later was expanded to include situations where an error was charged on the second part of a potential double play.

Sidebar 2: Why So Many Records Are Wrong

Like Ivory soap, today’s major-league averages are 99.44 percent pure, that is virtually 100 percent accurate. By contrast early statistics of both the American and National Leagues, especially for the pre- 1950 period, are fraught with mistakes.

The reasons are numerous. First, although many of the sportswriters who served as official scorers were diligent and dedicated, some were incompetent and careless. While the official league statisticians supposedly balanced box scores, they had no way to spot compensating mistakes. It also is obvious that those who entered the figures onto the official sheets sometimes copied them improperly.

Newspapers began barring their baseball writers from serving as official scorers some 30 years ago. The parties who now fill that role are on balance doing a more accurate job.

Another factor was the absence of any crosschecking. Prior to the 1950s few clubs had anyone on their staff who compiled their team’s figures. For the past 30 or 40 years all clubs have maintained daily updated stats, and there has been constant contact between the clubs and the league statistician to make certain any differences are immediately resolved. Fans of earlier eras paid far less attention to statistics than they do today. Mistakes in the figures weren’t readily observed, so there was less pressure to be thorough and accurate.

While we hope that data for most pre-1950 major-league games were entered correctly, the ten mistakes found in the so-called Hack Wilson 191st RBI contest are dwarfed by those discovered in another game. The questionable listing of a triple play by the New York Yankees during an 11-inning, 11-10 victory at Boston on September 25, 1929 — the day Yankee Manager Miller Huggins died — prompted me to research that game. Not only did the Yankees not make a triple play as the official American League statistics proclaim (they had two double plays, each coming with one out), but play-by-play accounts indicate the official records for that game contain 22 mistakes involving 10 players. In the early 1900s, the final official league averages were listed as having been prepared by each league’s president or secretary. Except for an occasional newspaper, few other sources compiled player stats. There was little opportunity for comparison.

In 1912, the American League hired Irwin M. Howe of Chicago to serve as its statistician. He and the Howe News Bureau produced the official AL figures almost every year through 1972. Sports Information Center then purchased the Howe Bureau and handled the AL averages, 1973-1986.

The National League first went outside its own staff in 1923, when Al Munro Elias of New York was appointed league statistician. The Elias Bureau has filled that role ever since. For years both Howe and Elias also compiled averages of the rival league each season to sell to client newspapers. In 1987, the Elias Sports Bureau became the American League’s official statistician, and it has handled both leagues the past fifteen years. Elias receives a play-by-play and official scorer’s report of each game via fax shortly after the final out. These are checked before being entered on the computer.

Up until the 1950s and 1960s, most major-league cities had four or more daily newspapers. Some of them prepared their own box scores in order to meet deadlines. The wire services — notably Associated Press and United Press — also produced and distributed box scores. They and the telegraphers for some newspapers tapped out their own play-by-play accounts. This multiplicity of independent sources often resulted in discrepancies, especially in situa­tions where a paper’s writer ruled error on a play, unaware the official scorer called it a base hit (or vice versa) — or when the official scorer changed a decision following the game. Differences of this type may well be involved in the question of whether Nap Lajoie had 229 hits or 232 in his banner 1901 season. The American League official team and player stat sheets for 1901 disappeared more than 50 years ago and thus are no longer available as a source against which to check.

Because of the frequency of mistakes in the official records, it has been suggested many times that averages should be recompiled from boxscores. The immensity and expense of such a task have effectively squashed such proposals. Furthermore, as Seymour Siwoff, head of the Elias Sports Bureau, points out: “It would be illogical and impractical to undertake such a project because newspaper boxscores of the same game often differ and even play-by-play accounts sometimes disagree. In most instances there would be no way to reconcile those differences. In cases where the official league statistician’s sheets exist, the only logical and practical approach is to limit changes to singular records where mistakes of omission or commission can be readily verified from credible sources.”

The final score does not tell us in what innings the runs scored or whether the home or visiting team won. These questions are answered by examining the line score, the inning-by-inning account of the game. For example, here is the line score for the third game:

Examining the line scores for this and the other 1915 games raises the question: Given a 2-1 score, how many line scores could there be? How many ways could those three runs be distributed among the nine innings? We disregard extra-inning games, because then the number (in theory) becomes unlimited.

The team scoring one run may do so in any of its nine half-innings, so we’ll say there are nine “ways” to score one run. For the team scoring two runs, there are 45 ways to do so: there are 45 distinct distributions of two runs over nine half-innings. To see this, first count the ways to score two runs assuming that the first run scores in the first inning: the second run may score in any of nine innings (the first inning on): nine ways under that condition. If the first run scores in the second inning, the second run may score in any of eight innings (the second inning on): eight more ways. And so on, to the case where the first run scores in the ninth; then the second run must also score in the ninth, and that adds one way. So the total ways to score two runs in nine innings is 9 + 8 + 7 + 6 + 5 + 4 + 3 + 2 + 1 = 45. 

The team that scores two runs may be the visiting team or the home team, and the corresponding reverse case for the team scoring one run. The line score from the second game of the 1915 World Series will illustrate:

Imagine Boston as the home team, which would “flip-flop” the line score and create a second way to have a 2-1 game with the same half-inning tallies for each team. Putting it together, the number of ways to get a 2-1 game is 9 x 45 x 2 = 810.

The fifth game of the 1915 series was another dramatic contest, ending 5-4 in Boston’s favor. There are dramatically more ways to get a 5-4 score than a 2-1 score. We can use the method above, but other statistical techniques work, too. Let’s simply summarize the ways for one team to score a given number of runs (up to nine) in a nine inning game.

Then (with a minor exception noted) we may calculate the number of ways to get a given score: multiply the number of ways given for the run totals in question (say, under 5 and 4), and then double that product (for the home-visitor factor). In the case of the 5-4 fifth game in 1915, take the product of 1,287 and 495, then double that: you get 1,274,132. That’s right, there are well over a million ways to get a 5-4 score: over a million different line scores ending in a 5-4 game. The fifth game of the 1915 World Series was one of them.

Two points of clarification should be made. First, if the home team has the lead entering the ninth and therefore does not bat, it has the same effect on counting ways as if zero runs had scored; the calculations are not changed. Second, there does have to be a slight adjustment (which we will not do here) if the score differential is greater than four runs. Consider the example where the final score is 8-2 in favor of the home team. Then we know from the rules of baseball that the home team did not bat in the bottom of the ninth inning; the game would have ended before that. So we cannot multiply the 12,870 ways (given under 8 runs in the chart) by the 45 ways (under 2 runs) by two. That would overestimate the total ways, since some would be impossible, although that number would be small relative to the total. Note that the visiting team can win 8-2. Of course, 6-2 (for instance) is always possible (under modern rules), since the game could end on a grand slam in the bottom of the ninth.

Let’s consider the most complex case offered by our chart above: a 9-8 game. Such a game was played in the great 194 7 World Series between the Dodgers and Yankees. There are 24,310 x 12,870 x 2 ways to reach such a score: 625,739,400 ways.

This number of possibilities is almost unimaginable. Think of it this way: Suppose a team of ten (crazy) people works at writing down possible line scores for 9-8 games (without duplication) at the rate of one every thirty seconds. The team is relieved when necessary so that the task continues around the clock, ten people working constantly. lt would still take about sixty years to record all the possible 9-8 outcomes. So if you or I were not familiar with the third game of the 1947 World Series, yet tried to guess when the runs were scored, it’s unlikely we could do so in our lifetimes.

Certainly, line scores for 1-0 games have been duplicated. Most, though possibly not all, line scores for 2-1 games have occurred more than once. But what about a 5-4 contest? Or any game in which, say, nine or more runs have been scored? Have two such games ever resulted in identical line scores? The author would invite readers to report any such identical outcomes. The results presented here suggest that the vast majority of games with a considerable number of runs will have line scores unique in the history of major league baseball.

Blunt and independent, Hornsby feuded with St. Louis’ Sam Breadon, New York’s Charles Stoneham, Boston’s Emil Fuchs, Cincinnati’s Gabe Paul, and the Bill Veecks — elder and younger — at Chicago and St. Louis. In 1926, with the Cards, became the only manager ever to be dismissed after a World Series championship. He was too blunt-speaking to remain.

In 1953, Puss Ervin, a Fort Worth Press columnist, invited me to sit with him and Hornsby at a Texas League game at LaGrave Field. Having heard so much of his rank rudeness, l was hesitant to say much and certainly not to ask baseball questions. However, Hornsby could not have been more cordial. In about the fifth inning, I summoned enough courage to inquire if he thought Stan Musial would hit .400. He replied, “He just might do it. He’s damn sure good enough hitter.”

Around home, Rogers Hornsby seems not to have displayed the prickly attitude that made him so tough for baseball executives to deal with. The late Claude McAden, co-owner and GM of the 1950 Gulf Coast League Galveston White Caps: “I met a different Hornsby to the one I had read about. In baseball he was a Hall of Farner and I, a nobody, but he treated me as an equal.” Others had similar memories.

The late attorney Sol Greines, who as a boy captained a team that opposed one led by Hornsby: “Often we were opposing pitchers, he for the team composed of boys living on the east side of North Main against my west side bunch. Rogers never forgot where he came from.”

Ed Smith, retired Tarrant County purchasing agent: “My dad and mother grew up with Hornsby and liked him. When my mom died, he flew down from Chicago for the funeral.”

The late John Reeves, for twenty years a front office fixture for the Fort Worth Texas League Cats: “Hornsby could handle a team on the playing field better than any manager we ever had. Also, he never smoked or drank — in that respect, a fine example for people of any age.”

The late Milton Price, respected minor league executive and assistant to TL president J. Alvin Gardner: “Mr. Gardner thought so highly of Hornsby that he tried to buy the Phillies from Gary Nugent in 1941 and give Hornsby the dual role of manager and general manger. We got outbid.”

With the press, Flem Hall remembered Hornsby as a straight shooter: “He never embroidered the facts. I don’t think Rogers ever lied to anybody. His personal habits were circumspect.”

The late Walter Morris was a legend in his own time, president and organizer of numerous leagues. At the time Hornsby was growing up, Morris, assisted by Paul LaGrave, was operating the Fort Worth Cats. He had this to say: “As sure as the sun came up, this skinny kid was at the park every day, shagging flies and asking questions. There never was a kid so determined to be a ballplayer. In my many meetings with Hornsby over a lifetime of years, I never saw that ‘blunt manner.’ I liked him as a boy and as a real man.”

Umpire Len Roberts, who would become a National Leaguer, worked the Texas League in 1950 during Homsby’s successful Beaumont season: “Rogers Hornsby was a true gentleman on the field — he never questioned a decision. I don’t think there was a dishonest bone in his body.”

In addition to Fort Worth and Beaumont, Hornsby also managed Oklahoma City in the Texas League. Owner Jimmy Humphries recalled: “I thoroughly enjoyed Rogers, and he was one of the best, if not the best, manager I ever had. We both enjoyed the ponies.”

Turbulent moments often prevailed during the exciting life of Rogers Hornsby, but back home in Texas he left a more positive image than he did in the big league cities of the north and east. But he was, indeed, his own man, and he had the brash confidence of the supremely gifted. This is the fellow, after all, who reputedly said: “I never saw a pitcher I didn’t feel sorry for.” 

Mays’s career accomplishments from 1915 through 1929 exceed those of all of his contemporaries except Walter Johnson and Grover Cleveland Alexander. He is the forgotten star of his era. Why?

Perhaps it is the albatross created by the Chapman accident. Perhaps it is the allegation first introduced by noted baseball writer Fred Lieb that Mays “threw” a game in the 1921 World Series. Perhaps it was his dour, morose personality. The true reason will never be known). The writers who saw him play and failed to extol his virtues are now gone. The batters who stepped gingerly up to the plate against him have met the same fate. In short, there is no one left to ask.

Let’s do the best we can with the information available.

Call him “Sub”

Mays’s famous sidearm/underhand motion was his recipe for success. He got so low on his pitches that his pitching hand sometimes dragged along the mound. This was not, however, his natural motion. When he started his pro career, he threw hard with the conventional overhand motion.

That changed in 1913. Mays was in spring training with the Portland club of the Northwest League. His first day of practice was uneventful. The next day, though, he came up lame. He thought a few days off rest would alleviate the throbbing pain, but it did not. In that era, teams had no room for sore-armed pitchers. Mays felt desperate and began to look for ways to compensate.

Finally, he found a way thanks to “Iron Man” Joe McGinnity, who that year was player-manager for Tacoma. McGinnity threw underhand and with ease. Mays decided to give the submarine motion a fling. When he did, he found he was able to whip the ball without pain. For the rest of the season, Mays practiced the new motion an hour a day. He gradually became more proficient and more comfortable with it. He also found that the lower he dropped his arm, the more “action” he got on his pitches. Along the way, he earned the nickname ”Sub.”

This funky motion undoubtedly provided Mays with an advantage. The underhanded, whip-like arm action gave his pitches a queer spin that allowed them to dip and dive on their flights to the batter. One of Mays’s longtime catchers, Muddy Ruel, put it best when he said Mays’s pitches took “remarkable shoots, jumps and twists.” Mays mastered the submarine motion; he became an excellent control pitcher, though he hit many batters during his career.

Finding hope in Providence

The off-season between 1913 and 1914 was tumultuous for Mays. He spent that winter in Portland, with Franklin Pierce Mays, a distant relative and a lifelong mentor. During the off-season, Mays was sold to the Detroit Tigers along with Harry Heilmann. Mays was not pleased with the thought of going to Detroit. Almost before he was able to voice his displeasure, he was released to Providence of the International League. His spirits plummeted, but his ruffled feathers were smoothed when the Providence club sent a contract paying him $300 per month. Paying a man more money in one month than he had ever seen at one time in his life has a way of curing many ills.

During his stay in Providence, Mays was the stopper of the staff, winning 24 games. He helped the Providence club to the 1914 International League pennant. At the conclusion of the season, he moved up to the Red Sox along with a teammate named Babe Ruth. Mays saw no action for the Red Sox during the remainder of the 1914 season.

The Boston experience

Mays’s major league debut came on April 15, 1915, in a relief role in which he picked up the victory. His first start came a few days later against Walter Johnson. Mays lost, 1-0. Despite pitching brilliantly, he left that game in the sixth inning with a bruised foot caused by a slide into home. Returning to the lineup three weeks later, he appeared in 38 games, starting only six. He won six games, and, using modern calculations, collected a league leading seven saves.

The 1916 season started Mays’s ascent to the top of the class of starting pitchers. He appeared in 44 games, more than half of which he started. He won 18 games in his split role for the pennant-winning Red Sox. His star continued to rise in 1917 and 1918, when he won 22 and 21 games respectively. Then came the crash of 1919.

Mays’s temperament is partly to blame for his troubled 1919 season. He had a reputation as a hothead and a headhunter. Teammates disliked him because he refused to carouse or drink with them. He sulked when things did not go his way and raged at players who made errors behind him, alienating himself even further. Partly, of course, this stemmed from the professional athlete’s intense desire to succeed.

Mays’s hothead reputation was exceeded only by his reputation as a headhunter, for which he was despised by opponents.

Mays was beset by personal and professional problems throughout the 1919 season. Spring training started on a sour note with a contract squabble. Then, on March 26, he received notice that the house he built for his mother had been destroyed by fire, along with the personal belongings, which he had stored there. Mays had insured the house for only a fraction of its value; the fire ruined him financially. In need of money, he grudgingly signed on the Red Sox’ terms.

Baseball offered no solace from this personal tragedy, as he suffered a series of demoralizing defeats. The Red Sox either scored no runs while he was pitching or allowed a slew of unearned runs. With each defeat, Mays became more sullen and more frustrated.

His temper boiled over on July 13 against the White Sox. Chicago scored four first inning runs on Red Sox fielding gaffes. At the end of the second inning, he Mays walked off the mound and shouted that he was not going to pitch for the Red Sox again. He stomped into the clubhouse, tore off his uniform, stormed out, and hopped the next train to Boston. Upon his arrival, he announced to a reporter that he was going fishing. His record was 5-11.

Mays’s vacation lasted seventeen days. Red Sox owner Harry Frazee, in the midst of the 1919 version of the salary dump, wanted desperately to peddle Mays so that he could raise some much-needed cash. Five teams (the Yankees, White Sox, Senators, Indians and Tigers) were interested in the AWOL star.

American League president Ban Johnson directed the Red Sox to suspend Mays for his insubordination. Johnson was not about to allow a disgruntled player to essentially demand a trade or sale. Frazee refused. He wanted the money Mays’s sale would bring in. Johnson won temporarily, as the interested clubs agreed to back off.

Finally, though, the aggressive Yankees, determined to build a winner, broke ranks. They worked out a deal directly with Mays, almost as if he were a free agent. Yankee co-owner “Cap” Huston then contacted Frazee and agreed upon terms. The Red Sox would receive $40,000, and two pitchers, Allan Russell and Bob McGraw.

Johnson found out about the trade when he read the headlines in the next day’s paper. Enraged, he immediately suspended Mays, infuriating the Yankees and the Red Sox in the process.

The league split into two factions. The pro-Johnson group was made up of the Senators, Indians, Tigers, Browns and A’s. The Yankees, the Red Sox, and the White Sox (whose owner, Charles Comiskey, hated Johnson for his own reasons), were allied on the other side. Johnson voided the Red Sox-Yankees deal, then called a league meeting to iron matters out.

The meeting only solidified hard feelings. The Yankees were determined to use their new pitcher in the pennant race, and they obtained a temporary injunction against the implementation of Johnson’s ruling in each city in which Mays pitched for them. Mays went 9-3 with New York.

The Mays debacle, which spilled into the 1919-20 off-season, effectively ended Johnson’s tyrannical rule over baseball. It reminded baseball executives that they had to observe limits to their power if they wanted to retain their control over players. The Mays acquisition helped propel the Yankees to their dynasty-and helped put an end to any hopes that the Red Sox might become the game’s dominant club.

Ignominy in New York

Mays’s 1920 season was filled with triumph and tragedy. He won 26 games and helped keep the Yankees in the pennant race. New York finished third, three games behind the Indians and only one game behind the second-place White Sox. Mays was the ace of the staff. His . 703 winning percentage far exceeded the team winning percentage of .617.

But August 16 became a day that forever changed the baseball world’s perception of Mays, and his perception of it. The Indians and the Yankees were in the middle of the hot pennant race when they squared off.

The Indians carried a 3-0 lead into the fifth inning. Ray Chapman, the Indians’ regular shortstop, led off the fifth. Chapman was affable, well-liked, and highly regarded by teammates and opponents-the antithesis of Mays. Chapman worked the count to one ball and one strike. Catcher Muddy Ruel called for a fastball low in the strike zone. As Mays reached back to throw, he saw Chapman shift his back foot as if to prepare to lay down a push bunt. Mays did the usual-he changed the location of his pitch to high and tight to make it more difficult to bunt.

Chapman crowded the plate, much like many modern players. For some reason, he froze as the pitch bore down on him. The ball struck him squarely on the left temple, hitting him so hard that it made a crack similar to that of bat hitting ball. The blow caused a fatal double skull fracture.

After the game, Mays sat in front of his locker with his head in his hands, visibly shaken. When he learned that Chapman had died, he became depressed and withdrawn. He later stated that “it was the most regrettable incident of my career, and I would give anything if I could undo what has happened.”

Because of his reputation as a headhunter, opponents and fans turned on Mays, calling for his expulsion from baseball. Old nemesis Ban Johnson joined the cry. Mays was never officially punished but, the strain of the incident: took its toll. Mays pitched poorly in four of his next six starts, probably costing the Yankees second place and possibly the pennant.

Mays rebounded in 1921 to win 27 games and help lead the Yankees to their first pennant. Mays was far and away the ace of the staff, with a. 750 winning percentage for a .641 Yankee club.

The storm clouds returned in 1922, when Mays was only 13-14. Nine of his losses occurred when the Yankees scored two runs or less. Nonetheless, manager Miller Huggins seethed over Mays’s losing ways. Huggins’s disenchantment was solidified when Mays lost Game 4 of the World Series. The manager’s caldron of disenchantment boiled while the weather chilled. During the off-season, Huggins placed Mays on waivers to teach him a lesson. When other clubs tried to claim the pitcher, his name was withdrawn. Mays remained a Yankee, but in 1923 he collected more splinters than wins. He was rarely used, pitched in only 81 innings and won only five games all season. Fred Lieb described the Huggins-Mays feud in his book, Baseball As I Have Known It:

In 1923 Huggins really made Mays suffer. While Carl claimed he was in fine physical condition and that his arm felt as strong as ever, he got almost no work, despite being one of the highest salaried pitchers on the club. Sometimes two or three weeks would go by, and then Huggins would let him finish a losing game.

In Martin Smelser’s book The Life That Ruth Built, he described Huggins’ conduct toward Mays in 1923 as a public shaming. Huggins would not permit Mays to pitch batting practice or even warm up in the bullpen. Catchers were ordered to refrain from catching him. The height of humiliation happened on July 17, when a rusty Mays started a game against the Indians and was allowed to absorb a 13-0 shellacking. The Indians pasted Mays for 20 hits and four walks. This “Huggins show” so disgusted shortstop Everett Scott and first baseman Wally Pipp that they walked off the field during a game. Huggins began telling anyone that would listen that Mays had lost some on the fast one.

Banished to Cincinnati

Huggins’s dislike toward Mays knew no bounds. Mays was waived again after the 1923 season. Cincinnati gladly claimed him for $20,000. Huggins took one last jab at him with a letter to Reds president, Garry Herrmann. He acknowledged Mays as one of his best pitchers, saying he did not want Mays pitching against the Yankees (that is why he would only accept inter-league waivers on him). He said he did not want Mays because he was a tough man to handle, and that Herrmann should cut his salary in half because of this. Perhaps the best explanation for Huggins’ conduct lies with his character. In The Life That Ruth Built, Smelser described Huggins as a brilliant talent evaluator, yet small-minded, mean, and subject to throwing tantrums.

Mays regained his focus for the 1924 season. He won 20 games for the fourth-place Reds, and won a $2,000 raise for 1925. Meanwhile, the Yankees lost the 1924 pennant to the Senators by two games. Mays might well have made the difference in the Bronx. In 1925, Mays suffered all season with a sore arm and appeared in only 12 games.

Mays returned to health for most of the 1926 season. On September 14, with eight games to go, Mays collapsed during pregame warmup, prematurely ending his season. Earlier in the season, Pirate outfielder Kiki Cuyler hit a vicious line drive off Mays’s shin. The blow to the leg had somehow become infected. Without their ace, the Reds were unable to overtake the Cardinals and lost the pennant by two games.

Injuries marred 1927, too. Mays suffered a double hernia and pitched sparingly. When he returned, he had lost the zip off his pitches and was through as a regular starter. He got into only 14 games for the Reds in 1928 ( 4-1), and though he appeared 3 7 times for the Giants in 1929 (7-2), 29 of those appearances were in relief.

World Series play

Mays participated in the Series of 1916, 1918, 1921, and 1922 (he rode the bench for the ’23 Series). He compiled a mediocre 3-4 record, but he built a 2.20 ERA and permitted only 47 hits in 57 innings.

Mays’s role in the 1921 World Series became controversial after the publication of Fred Lieb’s history of the Yankees in 1947.

Mays started Game 4 on October 4, and breezed through the first seven innings without allowing a run. In the eighth, he seemed to tire, and lost command of his pitches. With the Yankees leading, 1-0, the Giants’ Irish Meusel led off with a triple and scored when the next batter, Johnny Rawlings, singled him home. Frank Snyder laid down a sacrifice bunt that Mays tried to field, when he fell. Snyder was safe at first and Rawlings moved to second. Phil Douglas sacrificed the runners to second and third. George Burns followed with a double that scored Rawlings and Snyder. Mays then retired Bancroft and Frisch, but the Giants emerged from the inning with a 3-1 lead and eventually won the contest, 4-2.

Lieb blew the dust off this “suspicious” game a quarter century after it took place, and it has since haunted Mays’s reputation almost as much as the Chapman accident. According to Lieb, a man (unidentified) approached the reporter a few hours after Game 4 and accused Mays of throwing the game. Lieb, accuser in tow, rushed to Commissioner Landis’s hotel suite and reported the story to him. Landis hired a detective to investigate and to tail Mays for the remainder of the Series. At the conclusion of the Series, Landis told Lieb the private investigator was unable to corroborate any of the allegations and was unable to observe Mays engaging in suspicious conduct. Mays was cleared by the Commissioner’s investigation, but Lieb’s publication of this episode has forever sullied his reputation.

Career perspective

Mays was among the top pitchers of his era. He collected 207 wins while compiling a .622 winning percentage. The teams for which he played compiled a winning percentage of .578. Mays’s career winning percentage translates into almost 20 more career wins than the average pitcher who pitched for these clubs.

During his tenure, the league batted .272 against the competition, but only .257 against him. The pitchers of this period allowed an average of 3.57 runs per nine innings. Mays’s ERA over that period was 2.92.

Mays also consistently ranked in the top five of various pitching categories. His top five rankings are as follows:

1. Twice in saves (by modern calculations)

2. Six times in wins

3. Six times in winning percentage

4. Six times in complete games

5. Four times in fewest hits allowed per game

6. Three times in ERA

7. Twice in shutouts

8. Four times in innings pitched

9. Once in strikeouts

10. Twice in games pitched

He was clearly among the elite pitchers of his era.

Mays played partly in the Deadball Era and partly during the live ball era. Excluding Walter Johnson and Grover Cleveland Alexander, who were in a class of their own, eight pitchers who spanned similar years are enshrined in the Hall of Fame. The “elite eight” are Stan Coveleski, Red Faber, Jesse Haines, Waite Hoyt, Rube Marquard, Herb Pennock, Eppa Rixey, and Burleigh Grimes. Mays compares favorably with each of these men, and in some cases exceeds their accomplishments.

The elite eight exceed Mays in total career wins, but they also played more seasons. His three career interruptions clearly affected Mays’s win total.

On average, Mays had 13 .8 wins per season. This figure exceeds Faber’s (12. 7 ), Haines’s (11 ), Hoyt’s (11.3), Marquard’s (11.2), Pennock’s (11), Rixey’s (12.7). Only Coveleski (15.4) and Grimes (14.2) have higher averages.

Mays’s career winning percentage is higher (significantly so in many cases) than that of each of the elite eight. It is three percent higher than Coveleski’s .602. It is four percent higher than Pennock’s .598, nine percent higher than Haines’s .571, ten percent higher than Hoyt’s .566 and Grimes’s .560, 13 percent higher than Faber’s .544, 17 percent higher than Marquard’s .532, and 20 percent higher than Rixey’s .515.

Mays’s ERA far surpasses that of all but Coveleski, whose 2.89 career ERA is slightly better than Mays’s. Marquard’s 3.08 career ERA is six percent higher than Mays’s. Rixey’s 3.15 and Faber’s 3.15 career ERAs are seven percent higher. Grimes’s 3.53 is 17 percent higher. Pennock’s 3.60 and Hoyt’s 3.59 careers ERAs are 18 percent higher. Haines’s 3.64 is a whopping 20 percent higher than Mays’s.

Mays was one of the best pitchers of his era, a vital cog for two of the game’s early dynasties. He played a role (albeit unwittingly) in shaping baseball’s approach to labor and its very power structure. His on-field exploits are shadowed by a bad attitude, terrible tragedy, and what could fairly be called character assassination. But what a fascinating man. What a wonderful career. It is now time to begin the oral tradition-pull up a chair, son. Have you ever heard of Sub Mays? You haven’t! Well, listen closely …

Sources

McGarigle, Bob. Baseball’s Great Tragedy.

Sowell, Mike. The Pitch That Killed.

Lieb, Fred. Baseball As I Have Known It.

Smelser, Martin. The Life That Ruth Built.

This was a weird one. Only on the last day of the season could something as truly remarkable as this happen. And, of course, it had to involve the Cubs. In a meaningless game that had no possible effect on the pennant races, the 67-94 Chicago Cubs visited the 74-86 St. Louis Cardinals, as the Cubs’ Steve Trachsel (8-18) took to the hill against the Cards’ Larry Luebbers (2-3).

The most amazing event that took place that day was (pick one):

A. Both Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa homered in the same game.

B. McGwire’s homer came against Trachsel, who also gave up McGwire’s historic, record breaking sixty-second home run in 1998.

C. Rookie Rick Ankiel picked up his first, and perhaps his only, major league save.

D. None of the above.

The correct answer is “D.” The game featured two rain delays and was called after the fifth inning, resulting in a rain-shortened 9-5 win for the Cardinals. Although scoring 14 runs in 4-1/2 innings is impressive enough, even more amazing is that Cardinals’ starting pitcher Larry Luebbers was credited with the win for pitching four innings. The Cards’ complete pitching line score is repeated below:

How could Luebbers have been credited with a win for pitching only four innings in a game in which he was the starting pitcher? This surely flies in the face of the immutable rule, learned by all fans in their youth, that the starter must go at least five innings to pick up the win. How many times have we watched a starting pitcher nurse a one-run lead, struggling with one or two out in the fifth inning, as his manager nervously fidgets in the dugout, hoping that he can avoid making that fateful call to the bullpen that will deny his starter a chance for the “W”?

On October 25, 2000, starting pitcher Denny Neagle was pulled with two out in the fifth inning of Game 4 of the 2000 “Subway Series,” in favor of an aging David Cone, who had been tragically ineffective all year. Yankees’ manager Joe Torre clearly dreaded pulling Neagle, but felt that strategic considerations compelled him to do so at that time. The team’s success obviously had to be a higher priority to Torre than the possibility of Neagle’s embellishing his career statistics with a World Series win.1

The answer to this apparent contradiction is to be found in Rule 10.19 of the Official Rules of Baseball.

The part we all know is:

Winning and losing pitcher—10.19 (a) Credit the starting pitcher with a game won only if he has pitched at least five complete innings and his team not only is in the lead when he is replaced but remains in the lead the remainder of the game.

But the arcane and seldom used part of the rule follows immediately thereafter:

(b) The “must pitch five complete innings” rule in respect to the starting pitcher shall be in effect for all games of six or more innings. In a five-inning game, credit the starting pitcher with a game won only if he has pitched at least four complete innings and his team not only is in the lead when he is replaced but remains in the lead the remainder of the game.

So Luebbers qualified for the win because of the exception to the rule regarding a starting pitcher’s needing to go five complete innings to qualify for a win: when the game itself is only five innings, the starter need go only four complete.2

This got me to wondering whether there were any other exceptions to the rule. There are. Subsection (g) of this rule provides that in “some non-championship games,” such as the major league All-Star Game, a starter who pitches “a stated number of innings, usually two or three,” may qualify for the win. This scoring rule is commonly used in exhibitions at various levels of play.

I had also heard rumblings that there was recently a time during which a starting pitcher could qualify for a win while pitching less than five innings in a regular season major league game. Yes and no. In recounting the end of the 1990 lockout, Kenneth M. Jennings noted that in the spring of 1990 the players and owners agreed to the following working condition: “Starting pitchers in the regular season’s first two weeks could earn a victory by pitching only three or four innings instead of the previously required five, unless the official scorer deemed they did not pitch effectively.”3

However, the April 3, 1990, New York Times reported that “The [players and owners], however, did not resurrect the rule modification that would have enabled starting pitchers to receive credit for victories even if they pitched only three or four innings instead of the required five. “4 An examination of the box scores for games played during the first week of the 1990 season also indicates that in no instance was a starting pitcher credited with a win for pitching fewer than five innings in a game that went six or more innings.

Therefore, Rule 10.19 is alive and well. Starting pitchers had better be prepared to go five or more innings if they want to garner a win. Unless, of course, it’s overcast and Larry Luebbers is on the mound …

Postscript

On June 1, 2001, in New York, Cleveland Indians’ rookie lefthander C.C. Sabathia was credited with a win against the Yankees in a game that was called after 5-1/2 innings due to rain. Sabathia continued the tradition of starting pitchers’ poor performances in their wins of less than five innings by allowing a run in each of the four innings he pitched, while yielding four hits and five walks. 

Notes

1. Things ended well for the Yankees as Cone retired the one batter he faced. Neagle fled from the Yankees to the Rockies via free agency two months later.

2. Only two other occasions since 1987 have starting pitchers been awarded wins in starts of less than five innings. On July 20, 1987, the Orioles’ Mike Griffin gave up one run over four innings in a rain-shortened 4-1 win over the White Sox. On July 20, 1992, Richie Lewis, also of the Orioles, picked up a win while pitching 4 1/3 innings against the Red Sox. (Lewis was sent to the minors the next day.) The author wishes to thank David Pinto for his research in identifying these two games.

3. K. Jennings, Balls and Strikes: Moribund Labor Relations in Professional Baseball (Westport, Conn: Praeger, 1997), p. 15.

4. New York Times, April 3, 1990, p. 8, B-13.

Twenty-first century researchers now have the pleasure of sifting through an entire century’s worth of complete “modem baseball” statistics, uncovering oddities and investigating the stories behind them. Such is the case of 1951 ‘s “small-time losers” in the AL, who unknowingly combined to set a double record. Neither stat has been approached since.

Through the AL’s first fifty years, the pitcher(s) with the most losses each season averaged just over 20. Seventy percent of the time, one pitcher would be the unlucky leader in this category, though in 1924 and 1949 three hurlers shared the unwanted record. Their 17 losses also happened to be the second lowest number. (Sixteen “led” in 1946.)

In 1951, a record six American League hurlers tied for the “honor” by losing a record low 14 contests. They were Cleveland’s Bob Lemon (17-14), White Soxer Billy Pierce {15-14), Philadelphia’s Alex Kellner (a 20-game loser in 1950, 11-14), Tiger duo Paul “Dizzy” Trout (9-14) and Ted Gray (7-14), and poor Brownie Duane Pillette (6-14). Lemon’s mound mates for the second-place Indians, Early Wynn (20-13) and Mike Garcia (20-13), nearly joined the crowded circle.

Each pitcher took a different route to his 14 losses. Below are some of the practical statistics to compare them by, in addition to the normal differences in the strengths of their respective team offenses and defenses. The “Years” column equals how many 50-inning major league seasons they pitched before 1951. Ages are calculated from start of season.

Some Particulars

Cleveland 93-61. Lemon was 5-5 in June and 9-9 by mid July when he won seven straight games. He finished by losing four of five and had only one start left after losing number 14. Chicago and New York each beat him three times; each AL squad beat Lemon at least once. The Hall of Farner lost 14 games three times in his career and 15 games in 1953.

Chicago 81-73. Pierce started off very well, 7-2 by early June. Then he went 2-7 for a 9-9 record as August began. Already having 14 losses by September 8, the youngster won his final three starts to avoid winning the Loser’s Derby. Every team beat Pierce at least once, but the champ Yankees did it five times. He lost 15 twice (rookie 1949 and pennant 1959) and 16 in 1950.

Detroit 73-81. Veteran Trout was 2-2 before losing nine of 10 games through July 4. He didn’t pitch much in July and lost one game in August. He then lost his final game on September 29 to Cleveland, placing himself in the Derby. Trout lost to all clubs except New York. Cleveland beat him four times. Trout lost 18 in 1942 and 15 in 1945. Gray was 3-10 by July 13 and had lost number 14 by September 12. He rallied to defeat Washington and St. Louis to avoid that fifteenth loss. Though Philadelphia didn’t beat Gray, the Red Sox did-five times. He lost 17 in 1952 and 15 more in 1953, his last full season.

Athletics 70-84. Kellner was 20-12 as a 1949 rookie but fell to 8-20 the next year-his 20 topped the league. He was 7-8 as August 1951 began, the month in which he lost five straight. Losing his fourteenth game on September 3 to New York put Kellner in a good position to take the Derby but he won three straight to end the campaign. Kellner lost five to New York, and at least once to the six other teams. He was 6-17 in 1954, the A’s final year in Philadelphia.

St. Louis 52-102. Playing for the worst team by far, Pillette had 14 losses by August 25, but he managed to avoid the “special” fifteenth in his seven later appearances. In 1954 (10-14), he won the first game ever for the new Baltimore Oriole franchise, but in 1951 his consecutive mid-June complete-game wins over New York and Washington were his only highlights. He defeated Cleveland for his first 1951 win and never lost to them. Chicago beat him four times, New York and Detroit three times each. Of the three clubs that did not have a pitcher on this small roster, the Yankees managed to take 19 of their 98 victories from the Derby squad, while Boston had 14 of 87 wins and the Senators 10 of 62. 

AL facts

From 1952 to the end of the century, the highest number of season losses slowly decreased, dramatically, since 1982. The shortened strike year of 1981 is the only time that 13 losses was the high (2-win rookie Juan Berenguer of Kansas City and Toronto, 7-game Blue Jay winner Luis Leal, and 4-win Jerry Koosman with Minnesota and Chicago. In the 1990s, the average highest loss number was 16.

Pedro Ramos of the Washington Senators-Minnesota Twins holds a “loser” record by being top dog four straight years (18-19-18-20, 1958-1961). Bobo Newsom also led the AL in defeats four times but they were far from consecutive. John “Happy” Townsend of Washington (5-26, 1904) and rookie Bob Groom (7-26, 1909) also for Washington, share the single-season high-loss mark, according to Total Baseball‘s revamped stats for that era. Red Ruffing holds the post-1920 record with 25 losses for the 1928 Red Sox. He added a league high 22 in 1929 for an unchallenged two-season, twentieth-century mark of 47.

NL facts 

Over in the National League, the smallest number of defeats to lead the league was 17 until 1958, when Pirate Ron Kline led with 16. The NL leader had 14 losses during the strike years of 1981 and 1994. In 1981, Met Pat Zachry was 7-14, and Padre Steve Mura was 5-14. In ’94, Padre Andy Benes was 6-14.

The NL pitchers who tied in that strange year of 1951, were Ken Raffensberger (16-17) of Cincinnati who was 12-17 when September began; teammate Willie Ramsdell (9-17), who was 9-10 on August 3; and Cubbie Paul Minner (6-17), who was 6-11 in mid August with three shutouts-two over Ramsdell. Pittsburgh’s workhorse Murry Dickson was 20-16.

In 1952, 1953, and 1954, Dickson led the NL in losses for Pittsburgh and then Philadelphia ( 19-20- 20). Comparing their four-year totals, Ramos (49 wins) tied Dickson (54 wins) with 75 defeats. In 1905, Boston’s Vic Willis set the modern National League record with 29 losses. Paul Derringer struggled through 27 for St. Louis (0-2) and Cincinnati (7-25) in 1933, giving us the post-Deadball mark.

In The Politics of Glory: How the Baseball Hall of Fame Really Works, Bill James devoted an entire chapter to Kachline’s near fourteen-year tenure as the Hall of Fame’s historian, from 1969 to late 1982.

Kachline, a native of Quakerstown, Pennsylvania (a town of about 7,000, thirty-five miles north of Philadelphia), began his career in 1940 as a $7-a week printer’s apprentice and writer with his hometown weekly. Shortly after taking the job he almost lost his right hand in a printing press accident. Despite winding up with a stiff, slightly-crooked right wrist, he quickly learned to type rapidly and accurately. The following summer he became a full-time correspondent for a nearby daily, the Bethlehem Globe-Times. In the fall of 1942, he was named sports editor of The North Penn Reporter, a daily in Lansdale.

Early in 1940, The Sporting News carried an advertisement promoting the first edition of its new Baseball Register. The ad showed the year-by-year stats of two prominent players as they were to appear in the Register. Kachline noticed three mistakes in the record of one player — Frank McCormick, the 1939 National League MVP — and dashed off a letter to publisher, J. G. Taylor Spink, in hopes that the errors could be corrected before publication.

Within a matter of days, Spink wrote back to ask if Cliff would be interested in proofreading the entire Register. He jumped at the opportunity and soon received a huge package containing galley proofs of the major and minor league career records of 400 players. The book was due to go to press, so he had only a week to check the material.

The following winter, by then recovering from his hand injury, he was again asked by Spink to check the records. Now armed with a copy of Who’s Who in Baseball and other sources, he spent four weeks at the family’s kitchen table with the help of his mother, comparing and reviewing the latest proofs and correcting many errors and typos. Early in April, 1943, Spink invited the twenty-one-year-old Kachline to come to St. Louis to work full-time on the publication’s staff. In those days, The Sporting News covered major and minor league baseball only, and nearly all its reference books were baseball oriented.

For nearly a quarter century, Kachline wrote countless features and news articles, credited and uncredited, for TSN, and by the early 1950s his byline began appearing on front page news stories as well as on features on the inside pages. For much of that time, he also edited all of The Sporting News standard reference books, including the annual Official Baseball Guide, the Baseball Dope Book, Baseball Register, Knotty Problems and others. These annuals are now collector’s items, and it doesn’t take the baseball hobbyist long to find out that vintage editions in good shape sell at many, many times their cover price.

The Official Baseball Guide represented a prime off, season assignment for him starting in 1948. Spalding and Reach had published guides from the early 1880s through 1939. In 1940 and 1941 they joined forces to produce a single annual. In 1942 The Sporting News took over the publication of the annual and has continued to do so to this day. For the first few years, the TSN guides rated a bit below the caliber of the old Reach and Spalding annuals, but once Kachline got fully in harness in St. Louis in the late 1940s, the contents were much improved.

TSN guides of that period are now considered classics. The 1954 volume, for example, contains 576 pages, lots of photographs, the official averages of the majors and the thirty-eight minor leagues, and the official playing and scoring rules. The few full-page ads are primarily from sporting goods companies. The price of the publication was $1, but as Kachline noted: “I don’t think Taylor Spink was too concerned about making any real profit from the Guides.”

In its earliest issues, TSN cut down on the space given to obituaries of baseball figures, but under Kachline, the obit section of the guide contained accounts of anyone who played even a single game in the majors. Each year starting in 1947 he collected dozens of interesting and noteworthy filler items to round out the pages, wrote special features, and created a detailed account of the history of the preceding major league season, an account that dominated the forepart of the TSN guides.

Kachline was also a stickler for getting his stats straight. For example, when Bob Feller, Cleveland’s fireballing righthander, struck out 348 batters in 1946, his accomplishment was thought to be the all-time major league strikeout record for one season, surpassing the 343 K’s chalked up by lefthander Rube Waddell of the Philadelphia Athletics in 1904. Kachline, however, researched Waddell’s 1904 season boxscore by boxscore, and proved that Waddell had actually fanned 349, a figure that was eventually accepted by the baseball establishment. (Waddell’s record was subsequently broken by Sandy Koufax and Nolan Ryan, though he still holds the single-season American League record for a lefthander.)

“You’d be surprised at the number of mistakes that official scorers make when they turn in their scoresheets,” Kachline emphasized. “Lots of times they’re under deadline pressure to complete those scoresheets, and they don’t bother to check out all the key stats.”

In 1983, The Sporting News received game-by-game breakdowns of Nap Lajoie’s 1901 batting record, which two researchers from different parts of the country had compiled from boxscores. For years Lajoie had been listed with 220 hits and a .405 average for that season instead of the .422 with which he was originally credited. One of the researchers came up with 229 hits, the other with 232. Spink turned the matter over to Kachline. Because the official American League statistical compilations no longer existed, this presented a problem similar to that involving the Waddell strikeout total.

Since the league’s president, Ban Johnson, and statistician were both headquartered in Chicago, Cliff figured the final official 1901 averages would first have been published in Chicago newspapers. He arranged to obtain photocopies; they credited Lajoie with 229 hits and a .422 average. Kachline, with his knowledge of printing, realized that type-set proofs of the averages could easily have had a smudged “9” that was interpreted as a zero, thus explaining the erroneous 220 hits instead of 229.

More recently Kachline was involved in the research of several other records which were in dispute, including Hack Wilson’s major league RBI record. In 1999 the Commissioner’s office formally endorsed the finding that Wilson had 191 RBIs — rather than 190 — for the Chicago Cubs in 1930.

The two standard references in recent years — The Baseball Encyclopedia and Total Baseball — have disagreed on the stats of numerous players. Kachline believes there should be one authority to rule on discrepancies-such as the Official Records Committee that functioned from 1975 through 1982 with the approval of the Commissioner’s office.

In the mid-1960s Kachline served a two-year term as president of the St. Louis chapter of the Baseball Writers’ Association of America. He was the first TSN staff member ever to hold that position. BBWAA officers are usually affiliated with metropolitan dailies based in and around major league cities. He remains an honorary BBWAA member.

On to the Hall of Fame

In May 1967, Kachline left The Sporting News after twenty-four years to become public relations director of the newly-formed United Soccer Association, then headquartered in New York City. The owners of several major league baseball clubs, including Roy Hofheinz, Gabe Paul, and John Allyn, as well as such sports entrepreneurs as Lamar Hunt and Jack Kent Cooke, had teams in the league. Late that year, following a merger with a rival circuit, the league was renamed North American Soccer League. After two seasons, it folded, and Kachline found himself in the job market.

When Lee Allen, historian of the Baseball Hall of Fame, died in May 1969, Hall president Paul Kerr contacted former baseball Commissioner Ford Frick for his recommendation of someone to fill the position. Frick recommended Kachline, and he occupied the role of Hall of Fame historian for nearly fourteen years before being dismissed at the end of October 1982 in what Bill Madden, prominent New York Daily News baseball writer, termed “a surprise move that reeks of in-house politics.”

The Hall of Fame historian post wielded considerable influence through the whole baseball community. Because Kachline possessed a strong personality and an encyclopedic knowledge of the sport, he helped to make the position more significant than ever before.

One important and time-consuming chore involved responding to the hundreds upon hundreds of letters and phone calls from fans, visitors, writers, major league clubs, and even former players seeking information.

He developed a booklet that detailed the history of the Hall of Fame, and included historical and statistical information on each member. He also prepared the inscriptions for the bronze plaques of newly elected HOF inductees. When a major $3,000,000 expansion, renovation and updating of the institution was begun in the mid-1970s, he was given the assignment of coordinating efforts with the design firm and editing the captions of the new exhibits.

The contacts he had developed with many baseball officials during his years at The Sporting News proved of immense benefit to the Hall of Fame. During his first year there he realized that many major league teams were storing historically valuable material such as correspondence, contracts, financial records, and old publications, and that this material might eventually be disposed of. He wrote to all twenty-six clubs suggesting that the Hall would be interested in looking over such material and salvaging important items for the Hall of Fame archives.

Dick Wagner, Cincinnati’s assistant general manager, was the first to respond. The Reds were preparing to move from old Crosley Field to new Riverfront Stadium later in the season, and Wagner invited Kachline to come to Cincinnati to sift through the storage area under Crosley’s stands. After a quick look, he realized he had come across a veritable goldmine of baseball players, both major and minor league. The cards, dating back to 1902 and compiled under the aegis of club president Garry Herrmann, listed the clubs to which the player belonged each year.

Kachline visited many clubs during the next few years, before his involvement in the museum expansion forced him to change his focus. Among his other acquisitions were Yankees’ financial ledgers from the 1920s and 1930s, historic documents from the files of the Commissioner’s office, and the player card files that the National Association no longer needed when the minor league headquarters were moved from Columbus, Ohio, to Florida.

“With the materials we found on those scavenging expeditions and those donated by various clubs and the Commissioner’s office, the Hall of Fame Library grew into an enormous collection of valuable source material, such as team yearbooks, roster guides, World Series programs, World Series films, photographs, old scorecards, documents and similar items,” Kachline commented. “And almost all has been liberally used by researchers.”

Kachline quickly realized that the number of visitors to the Hall of Fame fell far short of what he felt it should be. Attendance during his first year there (1969) was reported as 191,000. With the approval of the Hall’s higher-ups, he worked with Tom Dawson, then director of radio and TV for the Commissioner’s office, to arrange for free promos for the Hall on Game of the Week telecasts, and he induced the individual clubs to run the spots, too. The museum’s attendance began rising steadily.

Noting that almost no major league club officials ever visited Cooperstown except when their team played in the annual Hall of Fame game, Kachline suggested in 1973 that an attempt be made to get the general managers to hold their annual fall meeting in the so-called “Home of Baseball.” At the time the village’s only hotel, which like the Hall of Fame was controlled by the Clark family, closed before the World Series ended, but he nevertheless was given the okay to pursue the idea.

Through his contacts with Frank Cashen, then with the Baltimore Orioles, a proposal to have the general managers meet in Cooperstown the following year was approved at the GMs’ October 1973 session in Scottsdale, Arizona. Unfortunately, when Kachline relayed word of the decision, Hall president Paul Kerr changed his mind about keeping the hotel open a few extra days to accommodate the group. As a result, Cooperstown did not host an official meeting of major league executives until the owners’ meeting there in the fall of 1999.

An indication of the respect which baseball officials had for Kachline was exhibited when he was asked to serve as editor of the Official World Series program. Prior to 1974, each World Series team produced its own program. With expansion and the divisional playoffs, there were occasions when eight or more clubs spent considerable time and money preparing a program, only to fail to reach the Series. To eliminate the wasted efforts, it was agreed that the Commissioner’s office would handle production of the Series programs. Kachline served as editor from 1974 through 1977 before the Commissioner’s office decided to handle the entire project in-house.

Another tribute to Kachline’s abilities and dedication came late in 1979. A dozen years after he had left The Sporting News, the publisher called to inquire if he would again write the lengthy Review of the Year that he had made an important feature of the Official Baseball Guide. Chicago writer Jerome Holtzman had handled this assignment during the intervening twelve years but had decided to discontinue doing so. Kachline’s accounts appeared in the Guides of 1980 through 1991 before he chose to relinquish the role.

Other significant innovations which Kachline was responsible for during his tenure with the Hall of Fame included the Baseball Today exhibit and having Museum attendants outfitted in distinctive red jackets. “The Museum had attendants available to assist visitors who might have questions, but it was almost impossible to distinguish them from visitors,” Kachline said. “On a scavenging trip to St. Louis, I spotted a long rack of red jackets. It turned out the ushers at Cardinal games wore them one season, but complained it was too hot for jackets. The Hall of Fame arranged to buy a dozen or so from the Cardinals.”

As for the Baseball Today exhibit, the Museum previously had essentially no display devoted to the current teams. The new exhibit featured the uniform, player, manager, and stadium photos, of each major league team and proved to be extremely popular, especially among younger visitors.

Shortly after Kachline’s departure from the Hall of Fame in 1982, he sent an open two-page letter addressed “To the Commissioner, league presidents, general managers, PR directors and other interested parties” detailing events that led up to his dismissal. The strongly-worded letter concluded with this statement: “If all of this has you puzzled, you can appreciate my bafflement. After 40 years of close association with baseball-dating from my start with The Sporting News in 1943-developments at the Baseball Hall of Fame have left me wondering whether the best interests of baseball are always being served.”

Since Kachline’s departure, the title “Hall of Fame historian” has also disappeared. Functions of that office are now spread out among several members of the Hall of Fame staff.

SABR

Early in 1983, Cliff accepted the newly-created position of executive director of the Society for American Baseball Research (SABR). He was one of sixteen baseball aficionados who gathered for the organization’s founding meeting in the Hall of Fame Library in August 1971. By the end of 1982, SABR membership had risen to 1,800 and the Board decided that a full-time paid administrator was required. In his three years as executive director before retiring, he saw membership climb to 6,200.

Prior to Kachline’s appointment, founder Bob Davids had written SABR’s bimonthly newsletter and edited the annual Baseball Research Journal as well as most other SABR publications. Once Cliff was named administrative head of the organization, Davids turned those writing and editing chores over to him. Many of the early SABR publications are now regarded as baseball classics and rate as prime collector’s items among those who specialize in baseball publications.

Cliff and his wife Evelyn, who handled the SABR financial records and membership rolls from 1975 through 1985, own a home on a two-acre property on the outskirts of Cooperstown. Among their prized possessions are four reddish-orange seats from old Sportsman’s Park, the one-time home of the St. Louis Cardinals and St. Louis Browns. The Kachlines have two married daughters: Jeri, who lives in suburban Atlanta, Georgia, and has two boys, and Joyce, who resides in central Illinois and has two girls.

1906 was in the midst of the Deadball Era. Offenses had plummeted from the high scoring 1890s. Just ten years earlier, the Boston Nationals had scored 1,025 runs in 135 games. The National League’s batting average in 1897 had been .292, and the average team scored 793 runs. In 1906, with two leagues and sixteen teams, it would have been reasonable to expect even more offense in the face of diluted pitching talent. But in ’06, the average National League team hit . 244, with an average of 549 runs scored. The American League hit .249 per team, with an average of 562 runs scored.

Several things had happened to help reduce the scoring. In 1900, home plate was changed from a twelve-inch diamond, pointing toward the pitcher, to the present five-sided plate, seventeen inches wide. This did not expand the strike zone, but it did give the umpires a better look as pitches crossed the plate. Walks per team dropped by 17 percent from 1899 to 1901. The National League adopted the modern foul strike rule in 1901. Before this time, foul balls counted as nothing. The American League followed suit in 1903. Strikeouts per team rose 54 percent from 1899 to 1903.

Pitchers were perfecting the use of foreign substances. Twirlers used spit, slippery elm, paraffin, rosin, or anything imaginable to cause the ball to change its course. Balls were rarely taken out of play, and often only two balls were used during a game. Balls hit into the stands were returned to the umpire. Balls with soft sides, cuts, flat spots, were used to the pitcher’s advantage. Shutouts per team jumped from 4.2 per team in ’97 to 17.6 in ’06. The White Sox hurled a record 32 shutouts on the season.

Players were becoming more adept defensively. Errors dropped from an average per team of 335 — 2.5 per game — in 1897, to 265 — 1.7 per game — in 1906. Sacrifice hits jumped from 94 per team in 1897 to 168 per team in 1906.

Interestingly, stolen bases dropped from an average of 223 per team, in a 134 game season in ’97, to 187 per team in 1906, for a 154 game season. Managers were hesitant to steal, potentially losing a valuable baserunner if caught. As the number of runs scored decreased, the value of a single baserunner or run increased.

Deadball Era players bunted for hits, sacrifice bunted, worked delayed and double steals, essayed hit-and-runs and bunt-and-runs. The squeeze play was still being perfected. Hitters were more defensive than offensive. They protected the plate, slapped at the ball, and played for one run.

In the field, the prevalence of the bunt required agile and skilled glovesmen at the corners, so the best defensive players usually manned first and third base. Catchers needed to be quick, with accurate arms.

Player-manager Fielder Jones embodied the White Sox. Jones would teach his team to play inside baseball, called by David Anderson in More Than Merkle, (University of Nebraska Press, 2000) “A mental game … a form of unrestrained psychological warfare from the first pitch to the last out.” Inside baseball was the use of any play or ploy to gain an advantage.

Strong on the mound

The White Sox finished in second place in 1905, on the strength of the AL’s best pitching staff. The team finished the season with a 92-60 record, just two games behind Philadelphia. Frank Owen paced the team with a 22-14 record, posting a 2.10 ERA. Nick Altrock finished with a 1.88 ERA and a 21-11 mark. The Sox led the AL with a 1.99 team ERA. Frank Smith won 19 games with a 2.13 ERA. Doc White added 18 victories with a 1.77 ERA. Ed Walsh was still perfecting his new out pitch in 1905. Used sparingly, Walsh had an 8-3 record and a 2.17 ERA.

Jiggs Donahue led the team with a .287 average and 76 RBIs. His RBI total was third best in the AL. Donahue also stole 32 bases. The Sox had a few players who stood out offensively in ’05. Frank Isbell, in the role of utility player, hit .296 in 94 games. George Davis hit .278 with 31 stolen bases. Catcher Ed McFarland hit .280 in 80 games. But the Sox had four regulars who hit .201 or less.

Fielder Jones lost 75 percent of his outfield for 1906. He was the sole holdover. Danny Green, Ducky Holmes, and Nixey Callahan were gone. Green was banished to the minors after hitting .243. The thirty-six-year-old Holmes left the team after hitting just .201 to manage in the minors. Callahan left to play with and manage a semipro team he owned in the Chicago area. Callahan had been the most productive of the three, hitting .272 with 26 stolen bases and 43 RBIs.

The Athletics were the favorites going into the 1906 season as they returned virtually the same championship team. First baseman Harry Davis led the A’s. Davis paced the American League in ’05 in home runs, doubles, runs scored, and RBIs. They also had veterans Socks Seybold and Danny Murphy. The pitching staff had three 20-game winners: Rube Waddell, Eddie Plank, and Andy Coakley. The A’s also had a 16-game winner in twenty-two-year-old Chief Bender.

The Tigers, the third-place finishers, returned most of the same team and expected to have nineteen-year old Ty Cobb for the full season. Cobb would team up with another future Hall of Farner, Sam Crawford. Detroit returned a pair of 22-game winners in George Mullin and Ed Killian. Boston, the fourth-place finisher, returned two of the Al’s top starters, Jesse Tannehill and Cy Young. Player-manager Jimmy Collins led the Pilgrims in batting and RBIs.

Cleveland’s performance suffered in 1905 as Nap Lajoie played in just 65 games. Lajoie’s .329 average would have led the American League had he played more games. Lajoie was the best hitter in the AL and his availability for the full season made the Naps stronger. Lajoie, the team’s player-manager, would have Elmer Flick in the outfield. Flick led the AL in batting, slugging, and triples in ’05. Cleveland had Addie Joss to lead the pitchers.

The Highlanders struggled in 1905 but had two of the league’s best twirlers in Jack Chesbro and Al Orth. Chesbro was just one year removed from his 41- victory season. The New Yorkers also had a fine young hitter in Hal Chase, and veterans Wee Willie Keeler and Kid Elberfeld. On paper, only St Louis and Washington didn’t look competitive. Going into the 1906 season, the Sox had pitching and defense but little offense.

Position players

The White Sox were a strong defensive team. Jones led the team from center field with George Davis anchoring the infield. Davis, a future Hall of Farner, played shortstop and hit cleanup in 1906. Davis had started his major league career in 1890 with Cleveland. He proved to be an outstanding hitter early, hitting .355 in 1893. Davis hie over .300 for nine straight seasons, 1893-1901, all with New York. He led the National League in RBIs with 134 in 1897. He started his career in the outfield, moving to third base in 1893, and to shortstop in 1898.

Davis quickly became one of the best defenders in the game. Total Baseball‘s runs saved formula says Davis led the National League in that category in 1899 and 1900. According to those statistics, he saved 33 and 43 runs more then the average National League shortstop during those years. NL great Ozzie Smith, in comparison, saved 43 runs above average in his best season.

Davis was a clutch hitter. Total Baseball’s clutch hitting formula claims Davis led the major leagues in 1906 with an index of 179. This shows that Davis’s RBl total was 79 percent higher than expected. Davis led the team with 80 RBIs and 25 doubles. His .277 average was second on the team. Davis, who turned 36 during the season, was the oldest player on the roster. His experience helped anchor both the defense and offense.

The team’s leading hitter for average in 1906 was Frank Isbell. Isbell played where he was needed, covering every position during his career. At second base in ’06, this career .250 hitter paced the team with a .279 average. He also tied for second on the team with 57 RBIs and had a team-high 37 stolen bases. He hie 18 doubles and a team leading 11 triples. Not known for his power, he did set a World Series record, tagging four doubles in one game. Isbell was the team’s weakest defensive player. He made five errors in the World Series.

The team’s third baseman was Lee Tannehill, brother of Boston pitcher Jesse Tannehill. In 1906 Lee supplied less offense then any of his teammates with 100 at bats. Tannehill hit .183 with eight doubles, three triples, 33 RBIs, and seven steals. Tannehill was a career .220 hitter. Despite this offensive ineptitude, four different managers kept him in their lineups at shortstop and third base because of his great range and soft hands. Total Baseball’s formula says Tannehill saved a league high 27 runs above average at third base in ’06-in just 99 games. Tannehill led American League third basemen in assists four times and double plays twice. At shortstop in 1903, Tannehill led the league in double plays.

Jiggs Donahue manned first base, and batted .257 with 57 RBIs, 24 extra base hies, and 36 stolen bases. Like Tannehill, he played because of his defense. He led the league in fielding percentage 1905-1907, set, ting records during 1907 with 1,846 putouts and 1,998 total chances. He once recorded 21 putouts in a nine-inning game. The National Game, published in 1911, lists Donahue and Fred Tenney as the best first basemen of the day.

Jiggs was one of the stars of the ’06 World Series. He hit a team-high .333, and had the only Sox hit in Game 2, breaking up Ed Ruelbach’s no-hit bid. Donahue played nine years and had a career batting average of .255.

The team’s utility infielder was George Rohe. Rohe played mostly at third base during ’06, hitting .256 with 25 RBIs. He was not a power hitter, getting just six extra base hits. Rohe, like most of the infield, excelled on defense, though he was the offensive star in the first two Sox World Series victories. When George Davis missed the first three games, Rohe started at third, with Tannehill moving to short. His heroics were such that when Davis returned to the lineup in Game 4, Rohe stayed at third base, with Tannehill going to the bench. Rohe’s .333 average tied Donahue for the best in the Series. Afterwards, owner Charles Comiskey promised, “Whatever George Rohe may do from now on, he’s signed for life with me!” Rohe was released after the 1907 season when he hit .214.

The Sox struggled when Billy Sullivan was not catching. During the Jones years, Sullivan was the principal catcher and the White Sox finished no lower than third place. In the years when he missed major portions of the season, the Sox finished over 30 games behind. Like so many other Sox, “Sully” was not in the lineup for his offense. His lifetime average of .212 is second lowest of all players with 3,000 at bats. He hit .214 in 1906 with 24 extra bases, 33 RBIs, with two home runs. But he was one of the finest defensive catchers of the day. Ty Cobb called him the best catcher “to ever wear shoe leather.”

“Sully” missed 36 games in 1906, due to food poisoning and a hand injury. While Sullivan was out, the Sox tried four others to fill the spot. Ed McFarland got into seven games, hitting .136. Hub Hart caught 15 games, hitting .162. Frank Roth caught 15 games, hitting .196. Babe Towne, the most successful of the backups, hit .278 in 13 games.

To rebuild the outfield, the Sox brought in two journeymen. Bill O’Neill, a switch hitter, was entrusted with the leadoff spot early in the year, stole 19 bases, but his on-base percentage of .287 was unacceptable. O’Neill totaled just six extra-base hits and batted .248. He would be the team’s fourth outfielder by midsummer.

Rube Vinson was purchased from Cleveland. He was the opening day left fielder, but made four errors in four games in the field and was gone after eight games.

On May 9, with the team’s record at 8-8, the Sox acquired Ed Hahn. Hahn came to majors with New York at age 30 in 1905, played in 43 games, and hit . 319. He started the ’06 season hitting .091, though, and the Highlanders released him. Jones inserted him into the leadoff spot. Hahn was the sparkplug the Sox needed. He hit just .22 7 for the Sox but finished third in the league in walks and led the Sox in runs scored with 80.

Hahn was a sure-handed fielder without great range, who would lead the American League in fielding percentage in 1907. On a team with a pitching staff that induced ground balls, Hahn set a record that year for fewest putouts and chances for a full-time outfielder. Center fielder Jones was a speedy takecharge outfielder, so it is clear that Hahn conceded his manager any fly ball within reach.

Patsy Dougherty joined the team after being claimed off waivers. He had jumped the Highlanders in a contract dispute, hitting .192 at the time. After joining the Sox in late July, he hit .233 the rest of the season. He added 11 stolen bases, driving home 27 runs. He also hit one of the team’s seven home runs. Like Fielder Jones, he was a good, fast outfielder, and he finishing just one percentage point behind his league-leading manager in fielding percentage.

Patsy was the first American League player to hit two home runs in a World Series, doing it for Boston in 1903. He was also, after the 1906 Series, the first AL player to appear on two championship teams.

The Sox unsuccessfully tried a few other players during the season. Frank Hemphill played 13 games in the outfield and hit .075. Shortstop Lee Quillen played in four games, going three of nine at the plate. Gus Dundon saw action as a backup middle infielder, appearing in 33 games, getting 96 at bats, and batting .136.

Leadership

In 1906 manager Fielder Jones, a lifetime .285 hitter, batted a career low .230, but he finished second in the league in walks. He had 28 extra-base hits including two homers. He also swiped 26 bases. He was considered, offensively and defensively, one of the best outfielders in the game. While he never led a league in any offensive category, he finished second in runs scored twice and second in walks four times. Jones stole 359 bases in his career, finishing in the top ten five times.

Jones took over the managerial role with the White Sox on June 8, 1904. T he Sox had been sputtering with a 22-18 mark under Nixey Callahan, who was considered too soft on the players. Jones demanded discipline, and led the Sox to a 67-4 7 record to finish the season in third place. The Sox would finish no worse than third in the seasons he managed.

Defensively, Fielder lived up to his name. His career fielding percentage is 17 percentage points higher then the league average during his years. In comparison, Tris Speaker, known for his defensive prowess, finished his career with a difference of ten points above the league average. Mixing modern computations with traditional statistics, Jones’s range factor is 18 percentage points higher than league averages. He led his league in outfield double plays, fielding percentage, range factor, and putouts, twice each. The STATS All-Time Baseball Sourcebook selected Jones as one of the Gold Glove outfielders for the decade from 1901 through 1910.

The ballpark and the pitchers

The Sox played at the 39th Street Grounds (a.k.a. South Side Park), four blocks south of the new Comiskey Park. The ball yard was similar to others of the day with an extremely large outfield. The Sox kept the infield grass long and the ground soft to slow down ground balls. In 1906 the park was very good to the team. The White Sox had a winning percentage of . 701 at home, as opposed to .527 on the road. The park helped cut down on home runs and scoring. The White Sox hit just two home runs at the 39th Street Grounds in ’06. Their opponents tallied just one. While on the road, the Sox hit five roundtrips, while allowing ten. The Sox scored equally at home and on the road, tallying 275 runs at home compared to 295 on the road.

The large ballpark did help the team’s pitching staff. Sox hurlers allowed just 180 runs at home, while giving up 280 on the road. Chicago finished second in the league in ERA with a 2.13 mark. The staff tossed 32 shutouts-a record that still stands. Over a third of the team’s victories came from shutouts. The rest of the American League averaged 15 shutouts per team.

Righthander Frank Owen led the staff with 22 wins, appearances with 42, starts with 36, and innings pitched with 293. For the year, Owen had a 2.33 ERA. Owen was a workhorse for three years, 1904- 1906, winning 64 games. He would earn just 18 more victories during his career, which ended during the ’09 season. He finished with a lifetime 2.55 ERA and an 82-67 record.

Guy “Doc” White was a graduate of Georgetown University, with a degree in dental surgery. He led the league in ERA in 1906, with a 1.52 ERA in 219 innings. White started 24 games, appearing in 28, going 18-6. Ty Cobb, who hit a lifetime .197 against White, called the lefty the toughest pitcher he ever faced. White’s mark of 65 innings pitched without issuing a walk was once an AL record. He won thirteen 1-0 shutouts during his career and once held the major league record of tossing 45 consecutive scoreless innings. His lifetime record was 187-156 with a 2.39 ERA. Like his teammates, White was a good fielder. He twice led American League pitchers in fielding percentage. He is certainly one of the best pitchers not in the Hall of Fame.

Future Hall of Farner Ed Walsh emerged as a star in 1906, when he mastered the spitball. Sam Crawford, in The Glory of Their Times, described Walsh and what it was like to hit against him, “Great big, strong, good-looking fellow. He threw a spitball-I think that ball disintegrated on the way to the plate and the catcher put it back together again. I swear, when it went past the plate it was just the spit went by.” Walsh understood the psychology of the spitter. He would use the spitter to set up his other pitches. The threat of the spitter once got Nap Lajoie to strike out looking with the bases loaded. Lajoie watched a fastball cut across the heart of the plate while expecting a spitter to dip low and out of the strike zone.

ln 1906, “Big Ed” appeared in 41 games, starting 31, and went 17-13 with a 1.88 ERA. Walsh led the league with 10 shutouts and the team with 171 strikeouts. Walsh’s lifetime ERA of 1.82 is the lowest in the history of the game.

Walsh’s spitter was said to head towards the plate and then “dart two feet down or out.” An example of how many ground balls the pitch created comes from Walsh’s 1907 season. Walsh set a record for handling 262 chances, registering a total of 22 7 assists. He tied a record, set by Nick Altrock, for most chances by a pitcher in a game with 13. A comparison between Walsh and Nolan Ryan shows how the game has changed. Ryan, who pitched 27 years, had a career total of 546 assists, or about 20 per season. Walsh had a career total of 1,207 assists. From 1906 to 1912, Walsh averaged 12 7 assists. STATS lists Walsh as their Gold Glove pitcher of the decade.

The Sox other 20-game winner in 1906 was Nick Altrock, who, like so many of his teammates, was a fine fielder, twice leading American League pitchers in putouts and double plays. Altrock posted a 20-13 record and a 2.06 ERA. He tossed 288 innings, walking just 42 batters, which is just 1.3 walks per nine innings. The lefthander had won a total of 42 games in the two previous seasons. The lefty’s 62 wins during that three-year span were 75 percent of his career totals. 1906 was Altrock’s last good year. Many of his later appearances came while he was coaching with the Senators. His last appearance, in 1933, was a stunt to give him appearances in five decades. His career record was 83-75 with an ERA of 2.67.

The fifth Sox hurler during 1906 was Roy Patterson. Patterson was signed after he pitched a sandlot team to victory against Comiskey’s St. Paul Saints. In 1901, Patterson went 20-16 for the Sox. He won 19 games in 1902 and 15 in 1903. Patterson has the distinction of having won the first ever American League game. He finished his major league career in 1907 with an 81-73 record and a 2.75 ERA.

Patterson showed some of his former brilliance during the 1906 season. He started 18 games, pitched in 21, and posted a 10-7 record with a 2.09 ERA. In 1906 the Sox allowed a league-low 255 bases on balls (1.66 per nine innings), as opposed to the league average 354. Patterson led the Chicago staff, allowing just 1.07 walks per nine innings.

Frank Smith was the sixth pitcher on the staff. Smith pitched in 20 games, starting 13. He went 5-5, with a team-high 3.39 ERA. Despite his two career no-hitters, and his two career 20-win seasons, Smith was not popular. He crossed up his catchers so often that they feared for their safety.

During the season, Jones also gave a few innings work to twenty-one-year-old Lou Fiene. Fiene got into six games, starting two. He had a 1-1 record on the season and a 2.90 ERA. He played in parts of four seasons, compiling a record of 3-8 with a 3.85 ERA.

The pennant race

The Athletics started 1906 strong. They had the league’s best record through July. The A’s four starters drove the team’s early success. The Highlanders settled in as the league’s second-best club. Cleveland started strong when Bob Rhodes and Otto Hess proved that Addie Joss wasn’t alone on the staff.

The White Sox sat in sixth place at the end of May, improved to fifth in June, and to fourth by the end of July. They caught fire in August. The “Hitless Wonders” won 19 straight games, starting with back-to-back-to-back shutouts by Doc White, Ed Walsh, and Roy Patterson. The streak, which set an American League record, vaulted the Sox from nine games back into first place. The Highlanders and Naps kept pace as the A’s fell out of contention.

During the win streak, the Sox scored 97 runs, an average of 5.1 per game — 1.4 over their season average. Opponents scored just 31 runs. The Sox beat league leaders New York and Philadelphia for 13 of their 19 wins, defeating Cy Young (twice), Chief Bender, Rube Waddell, Eddie Plank, Jack Chesbro, Al Orth, and Jesse Tannehill. Walsh carried the Sox, winning seven games, four by shutout. One of the keys to the streak was that Jones finally had a set lineup after a season of injuries.

The Highlanders caught and passed the Sox three times in September. But Chicago, who won 21 of their 25 August games, stayed hot. They closed out the season going 22-12 in September and October, finishing three games in front of New York and five in front of Cleveland. Chicago, out of the race at the end of July, battled its way to the pennant. In the National League, the cross-town Cubs, dominant, moved into first place late in May and stayed there.

The Sox started slowly because they were plagued with small, nagging injuries, which at one point forced them to hire the trainer from the University of Chicago. Only one Sox player, Jiggs Donahue, stayed healthy for the entire season.

To win the pennant, the Sox defeated two powerful rivalss that were similar in many ways to the potent cross-town Cubs. The Highlanders, for example, had the two winningest pitchers in the league: Al Orth with 27 and Jack Chesbro with 24. The New Yorkers also finished second in the league in runs scored and batting average. Hal Chase, Willie Keeler, and Kid Elberfeld all hit .300.

The third-place Naps were an even closer match to the Cubs. Cleveland led the league in batting, slugging, and runs scored. It had four .300 hitters, led by Nap Lajoie’s .355. Claude Rossman, Bunk Congalton, and Elmer Flick also hit .300. The Naps pitching staff had three 20-game winners and the league’s best ERA.

The method

Playing and managing in the Deadball Era, Jones’s managerial style was designed to take ruthless advantage of his opponent’s mistakes and weaknesses. On defense, the 1906 White Sox were the second-best fielding team in the American League, making 2 7 fewer errors then the league average. They also allowed the fewest unearned runs in the league. The team was dubbed the “Hitless Wonders” because of their league-worst .230 batting average. The Sox were also last in slugging, 70 points behind the leader.

The Sox did have some punch, as measured in Deadball terms. They finished third in runs scored and also did well in walks (first), hit by pitches (first), stolen bases (third) and sacrifices (first). Nonetheless, this was a team that did more with less. They scored 570 runs and allowed 460. Applying these statistics to a modern formula, STATS estimates that the Sox should have had a record of 84-69, rather than their actual 93-58. The team overachieved by nine games.

Again using individual statistics and a modern formula, Total Baseball estimates that the 1906 White Sox should have scored a total of 531 runs, a total they surpassed by 39 runs. Total Baseball’s modern clutch-hitting index implies that this improvement was largely due to good hitting under pressure. The White Sox had an index of 111, the best in the majors.

Addie Joss, Cleveland Hall of Farner, described playing against Chicago, “The Sox are game to the core. They can stand the gaff with the best of them. They have the spirit and they make the inside play. When you go in the box against Chicago, you know you’ve got to pitch. That is the greatest secret of their success. They always make the pitcher pitch. Hahn, Dougherty, Jones, and that bunch won’t swing at anything unless it’s right over the plate. A pitcher who can cut the plate can beat them.” Few could.

The Series matchup

On paper, the 1906 World Series was a mismatch. Frank Chance, the Cub first baseman, hit .319 compared toJiggs Donahue’s .257. Cub third baseman Harry Steinfeldt hit .327 to Lee Tannehill’s .183. But the White Sox were about to demonstrate that the matchups to be concerned with are pitchers and defense against hitters.

Only one sportswriter, Hugh Fullerton, understood that the White Sox could beat the Cubs. Fullerton’s editor refused to run a column before the Series in which he predicted a Sox victory. Fullerton’s theory was that the Sox played with brains first, and then feet and hands.

The Sox were 3-1 underdogs going into the World Series. The Cubs led the National League in ERA (1.76), batting average (.262), runs scored, slugging, and stolen bases. They set a never-to-be matched record of 116 victories in a 154-game season. But they had not faced the same strength of opponent as the Sox.

Five teams in the American League had played . 500 ball or better in 1906, and only two were truly bad teams. The American League’s sixth-place team had a better record then the National’s fourth place team. Only three teams in the Senior Circuit played .500 ball or better.

Jones had instilled an aggressive nature into his team. The Sox may have been hitless, but they knew how to manufacture runs. The Sox could scramble for runs whereas the Cubs were used to bashing their way to victory. Bue the White Sox were unlikely victims for a bashing. The Cubs hadn’t faced a pitching staff like that of the Sox. Jones felt that the Cubs were susceptible to lefthanders and spitballers. On the season the Cubs had faced just four lefties who ultimately had double-figure victories and a winning record. Nick Altrock, Doc White, and Ed Walsh were pitchers who fit the bill to defeat the Cubs.

Jones knew that his players, who had just come through a grinding pennant race against two tough clubs, would not be in awe of the team from the West Side. He also felt the Cubs would be overconfident. Cubs’ manager Frank Chance proved that by announcing before the Series that “we’ll use our second-string pitchers.”

Chance was not yet the field general Fielder Jones was. The Cubs’ “Peerless Leader” had a great eye for talent but underestimated the Sox. He was known as a hunch manager and one who would fight to force players to do it his way. Jones, on the other hand, was an innovator and a great motivator. He is credited, for example, with creating the motion infield to defend against bunts. He created the “body-twist slide.” He carefully and successfully positioned his fielders according to batter, pitcher, and situation.

The National Game mentions a game in which the St. Louis Browns had loaded the bases against Jones’s White Sox, with no outs. Jones warmed up all his pitchers and brought in a different one to get each of the next three hitters. The Sox escaped without a run being scored. The article indicates this was the first time this tactic had been used.

The 1906 World Series

The World Series captured Chicago’s imagination, and the city almost ground to a halt. The series was to be played on consecutive days, alternating from park to park. Many expected the powerful Cubs to sweep, especially since the Sox would be missing shortstop George Davis, who was out with a sore back.The Cubs won the coin flip for the home field advantage. The Cubs opened the Series with their ace Mordecai “Three-Finger” Brown in West Side Park. Brown dominated the NL, going 26- 6 with a 1.04 ERA on the season.

The Sox countered with lefthander Nick Altrock. The two twirlers were perfect through three innings. The bitter October cold added to the batters’ troubles. The Sox scored first in the fifth as George Rohe tripled to left. He scored on a comebacker to the mound by Patsy Dougherty when catcher Johnny Kling couldn’t handle Brown’s throw to the plate. The Sox scored again in the sixth. Altrock walked, was sacrificed to second and tried to score on a Jones single. Altrock was out at the plate with Jones going to second on the play. After moving to third on a passed ball, Jones scored on a single by Frank lsbell.

The Cubs mustered a run in the bottom of the frame, getting two men on, with one scoring after a sacrifice and wild pitch. The Sox held the lead to win, 2-1. Altrock and Brown both tossed great games, each allowing just four hits and one walk. The Sox pitching shut down the Cub offense, while the offense scratched out enough runs to win. Fielder Jones was heard to say, “This should prove the leather is mightier than the wood.”

Game 2 moved to the South Side, where Ed Reulbach and Doc White faced off. Reulbach had a strong second season with the Cubs, going 19-4 with a 1.65 ERA. He pitched the biggest game of his career, while White struggled in the cold, gave up three runs in the second, another in the third, and was gone. Frank Owen pitched the final six innings, giving up three more Cub runs.

In classic Sox fashion, they scored in the fifth without a hit. Donahue led off with a walk. After a force out at second on a grounder from Dougherty, Johnny Evers threw wild to first, allowing Dougherty to move to second. With two out, Joe Tinker booted a grounder, allowing the run to score.

Reulbach took a no-hit bid into the seventh inning before Jiggs Donahue slapped a single to center. It was the only Sox hit. The 7-1 victory allowed the scribes to gloat that the Cubs had hit their mark and were ready to finish off the Sox. Future commissioner Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis asked Sox fans, “What league is it your team plays in?”

Game 3 moved back to West Side Park, as Ed Walsh took the mound against rookie Jack Pfiester. Pfiester had gone 20-8 with a 1.51 ERA. The Cubs threatened with two hits in the first but a caught stealing took them out of the inning. That would be the only Cub scoring opportunity. Walsh did not allow another hit.

The game was scoreless through five. Pfiester had little trouble with the Sox until the sixth when Lee Tannehill led off with a single. After Walsh walked, Pfeister hit Ed Hahn with a pitch. The lefty bore down with bases loaded, getting Jones to foul out and fanning Isbell. Next up was fill-in Rohe. Kling taunted Rohe, calling him “busher,” saying he wouldn’t get a pitch to hit. Rohe responded with a triple. Walsh retired nine of the next ten batters to seal the 3-0 victory.

The Sox only had four hits and two walks, but, as they had done all season, found a way to score when needed. The National League’s best-hitting team got just two hits and a walk off Walsh, who fanned 12.

Game 4 featured the pitching matchup from Game 1, only this time at the White Sox home field. The Sox were buoyed by the return of George Davis. Altrock pitched a fine game, allowing seven hits, a walk, and a single run. But Three-Finger Brown was better. The future Hall of Farner allowed just two hits and two walks. The Sox got just one runner to third.

The Cubs threatened early but baserunning mistakes took them out of innings. They finally got to Altrock in the seventh. Hahn lost Frank Chance’s fly ball in the sun for a single. After being sacrificed to second and third, Chance scored on Tinker’s two-out single. The Cubs’ 1-0 victory was the fourth for the visitors in four games.

After Game 4, Fielder Jones tongue-lashed his team, especially Isbell. The Sox had just 11 hits in four games. Isbell was 1 for 16 at this point and had committed three errors. Jones himself was just 1 for 15. Yet the Sox had split the first four games. Sox pitching, with the exception of Game 2, had held the powerful Cubs to 13 hits and two runs.

Ed Walsh was given the start in Game 5, as Jones passed over Doc White. The Cubs countered with the curveballer Reulbach. The Sox scored one in the top of the first, as Isbell doubled home Hahn. The Cubs struck back with three in the bottom of the frame, taking advantage of two errors, including another by Isbell.

The Sox tied the game in the third with two doubles, one being Isbell’s second of the game, and a perfect double steal. Reulbach exited. The “Hitless Wonders” exploded in the fourth, scoring four runs on four hits, including three doubles, and two walks. Isbell hit his third double of the game during the rally. Down 7 -3, the Cubs got a run back in the fourth on a double steal, with Tinker stealing home. The Sox got that run back in the sixth when Isbell hit his fourth double of the game, scoring on a Rohe single.

Walsh was knocked out of the game in the sixth, when the Cubs scored two on a bases-loaded double by “Wildfire” Schulte. Doc White finished the game for the Sox, saving the 8-6 win. The “Hitless Wonders” scored eight runs on 12 hits, walking four times. The Sox had eight doubles in the game, including lsbell’s record four. Jack Pfiester and Orval Overall mopped up for the Cubs after Reulbach was removed.

Chicago was in a state of shock. The upstarts from the South Side had beaten the mighty Cubs three times in their own park. For Game 6, Frank Chance passed over a couple of rested pitchers to throw his ace, Brown, on one day’s rest. The Sox countered with White, even though he pitched three innings the day before. Fielder Jones still wanted the lefty against the Cubs.

The Cubs got to White in the first as Solly Hoffman singled, and scored on a double by Schulte. But Brown clearly didn’t have his best stuff. He was tagged for three runs in the bottom of the first and knocked from the box in the second, when the Sox scored four more runs. The “Wonders” ripped Brown and reliever Overall for 14 hits and three walks.

George Davis drove in three runs on two hits. Jiggs Donahue drove in three runs, going two for four. White went the distance, scattering seven hits and four walks, as the Cubs stranded nine baserunners. The White Sox won easily, 8-3. The World Series Championship was theirs.

Peter M. Gordon gives a more complete account of the series in the 1990 edition of the Baseball Research Journal. The journal’s editor titled Gordon’s article “The Greatest World Series Upset of All Time.” But was it an upset? Fielder Jones clearly underst0od what it took to win. He had disciplined his team to win against all odds. The Sox played the same style of ball that they were successful at during the season. The Cubs had their style of play taken away from them.

Chance’s team had opportunities during the Series but wasted them with mental errors like baserunning mistakes. Nor could the Cubs take advantage of Sox mistakes or get a timely hit. The White Sox “outhit” the Cubs on the Series, .198 tO .196. The Sox pitchers finished the series with an ERA of 1.50, t0 the Cubs’ ERA of 3.40. The White Sox put 55 runners on base via hit or walk, stranding 33. The Cubs put 54 men on base via hit or walk, stranding 36. The White Sox had poor defense during the Series, making 15 errors compared to seven for the Cubs. The Sox scored 22 runs in the six games while the Cubs scored 18.

Fielder Jones was a daring, aggressive player and manager. His team possessed the same qualities. The aging Henry Chadwick noted that the White Sox “won on generalship alone.” Cubs manager Frank Chance honored the Sox victory, but also said, “There is one thing I will never believe, and that is the White Sox are a better ball club than the Cubs. We did not play our game, and that’s all there is to it.” Chance was right, the Cubs didn’t play their game. The Sox didn’t let them.

Fielder Jones said of his team, “They were a club that a manager could depend upon. Called the ‘Hitless Wonders,’ it is true that their batting was light. But they hit at the right time, as you will notice if you look up the record. Every man knew his business. Baseball was at their fingertips. They won games because they were good ballplayers, and a good ballplayer can’t be manufactured out of batting averages.”

The Cubs were a dominant team of the era, going to the World Series three times in the next four years, winning two championships. But the White Sox were also a strong team, not by any means a fluke. They averaged 90 wins per season in the Jones years while the first-place American League teams averaged 92. In 1905 and 1908, the Sox lost chances at pennants when the first place teams played fewer games.

The Sox were built to play and win in the Deadball Era. The Sox played inside baseball, and used their talents to the utmost. Fielder Jones also taught the Cubs and Frank Chance a lesson: don’t take anything for granted.

During the 1940s and 1950s, Musial was the National League’s rival to Ted Williams. While Ted led the American League in batting seven times and slugging nine times, Stan was atop the NL in batting seven times and slugging six times. The most impressive stat in Stan’s career is his total bases mark of 6,134, second all-time to home run king Henry Aaron’s 6,856. Stan is also fourth all time in hits (3,630), third in doubles (725), tied for nineteenth in triples (177-the most since Paul Waner retired in 1945 with 191), fifth in RBIs (1,951) and seventh in runs scored (1,949). He walloped 475 homers and retired after twenty-two years in 1963 with a batting average of .331. Only Tony Gwynn has retired with a higher batting average since.

Stan rang up this amazing collection of stats with one of the oddest looking batting stances of all time. A lefty, he dug in with his left foot on the back line of the batter’s box, and assumed a closed stance with his right foot about twelve inches in front of his left. He took three or four practice swings and followed up with a silly-looking hula wiggle to help him relax. He crouched, stirring his bat like a weapon in a low, slow moving arc away from his body. As the pitcher let loose with his fling, “The Man” would quickly cock his bat into a steady position, dip his right knee and twist his body away from the pitcher so that he was concentrating at his adversary’s delivery out of the corner of his deadly keen eyes. He would then uncoil with an explosion of power. His line drives were bullets.

The package

Musial wasn’t just a great hitter; he was the complete package, a hustling ballplayer who came up through the tough St. Louis Cardinals farm system. But for all his accomplishments, Musial has become an overlooked man among baseball’s post World War ll greats, and his astonishing 1948 season is seldom mentioned among the great campaigns.

Like Babe Ruth, Musial started out his pro career as a pitcher, with Williamson of the Class D Mountain States League. In 1938 and 1939 his record was a combined 15-8 with an ERA around 4.50. In 1940 the Cardinals sent him to their Daytona Beach team in the Class D Florida State League. The team was managed by former Chicago White Sox pitching star Dickie Kerr. Under Kerr’s tutelage, Stan posted an 18- 5 record with a 2.62 ERA.

Kerr also used Musial in the outfield, and Stan responded by hitting .311 with 70 RBIs in 405 at bats. In late August of 1940 he injured the shoulder of his pitching arm attempting to make a diving catch in the outfield. He was never an effective pitcher again.

In 1941 the Cardinals sent him to their Springfield Class C team as an outfielder. Stan pounded the ball for a .379 average with 26 homers and 94 RBIs in 87 games. He was promoted to the Cards’ top minor league team, Rochester, in late July. In 54 games, Stan hit .326. When the Red Wings season ended, he received a wire telling him to report to the St. Louis Cardinals. The Cards were in the midst of a fierce pennant race with Leo Durocher’s Dodgers. Musial rapped 20 hits in 12 games and batted .426, but Brooklyn edged the Redbirds out for the flag by 2-1/2 games.

In 1942, Stan proved that he was no fluke. He batted .315 as manager Billy Southworth’s Cards won 43 of their final 51 games to post 106 victories and overtake the Dodgers by two lengths. There was no stopping the Redbirds as they rolled over the heavily favored Yankees in the World Series in five games. Musial became a superstar in 1943, leading the league in hits (220), doubles (48), triples (20), batting average (.357), and slugging (.562) as the Cards won 105 games and another pennant. In 1944 the Cards won 105 games again for their third straight pennant and then topped the crosstown Browns in the World Series. Stan led the NL in hits (197), runs (112), doubles (51), and slugging (.549). He also hit .347.

Musial spent 1945 in the Navy, where he was assigned to ship repair duty at Pearl Harbor. He returned triumphant in 1946 to lead the Cards to their fourth pennant and third world championship in five years. He paced the NL in hits (228), runs (124), doubles (50), triples (20), batting (.365), and slugging (.587). Musial began the 194 7 season in a horrendous slump, and in early May was diagnosed with acute appendicitis. The attending physician in New York recommended immediate surgery. Stan was flown back to St. Louis, where he was examined by team doctor Robert Hyland. Hyland suggested that it might be possible to put off surgery until season’s end by freezing the diseased appendix. Stan agreed and was back in the lineup five days later. He came back too fast, however, and on May 19 was hitting a feeble .140. By June 15, he had lifted his average to .203, then turned it all around over the last 104 games.

‘The Man” smacked the ball at a .469 clip in 315 at bats. He finished the season at .312 with 183 hits, 95 RBIs and 113 runs scored in 149 games. At season’s end he underwent surgery on his appendix-and his tonsils.

Stan had played first base for most of 1946 and all of 1947. In spring training 1948, St. Louis manager Eddie Dyer moved him back to the outfield to make room for highly touted prospect Nippy Jones at first base. (In his career he played 1,016 games at first base and 1,890 games in the outfield.)

Sensing the big year

Stan recalled in his autobiography (Stan Musial: “The Man’s” Own Story as told to Bob Broeg), “From the moment I picked up a bat in 1948, healthy and strong after off-season surgery, I knew this would be it, my big year …. I was 27 now, at my athletic peak and healthier than I had been for as long as those low-grade infections had been gnawing at my system. Stronger too, when I picked up a bat and swung it. The bat felt so light that instead of gripping it about an inch up the handle, as I had in the past, I went down to the knob.”

On April 20, opening day in St. Louis, the Cards’ Murry Dickson scattered ten hits in shutting out Cincinnati, 4-0. ln the third inning the Reds’ Hank Sauer let a fly ball by Stan fall for a gift RBI double, his only hit on the day. Two days later, Stan stung a single, double and triple against Cincinnati, but the Reds won in the ninth inning, 4-3, when catcher Del Wilber juggled Stan’s perfect throw to the plate.

On April 24, Stan slashed an RBI triple in Chicago for his 1,000th career hit. St. Louis Post-Dispatch sportswriter Bob Broeg teased Stan afterwards, “Look, Banji [short for the ironic nickname Banjo, meaning a weak hitter], if you’re going to talk about hits, what about trying for 3,000.”

Stan had not even considered getting 3,000 hits back then but told Broeg, “That’s a long way off. Too many things could happen. Keep reminding me. This is a team game and I play to win, but a fella has to have little incentives. They keep him going when he’s tired. They keep him from getting careless when the club is way ahead or far behind. It’ll help my concentration.”

On April 30, in Cincinnati, Stan had the first of his four five-hit games of 1948. He ripped an RBI single in the first inning. He cranked a two-run homer in the fifth frame. He torched a seven-run rally in the seventh with a double, then capped the uprising with a two-run single. In the ninth inning he doubled again, bringing his average at the end of April up to an even .400. The Cards won, 13-7.

“The Man”

Brooklyn arrived in town on May 4, and home runs by Musial and Enos Slaughter helped top the defending league champion Dodgers, 5-4. Stan ended the game with a sensational tumbling catch with two runners on base.

Musial was always double trouble against the Dodgers. In fact, he received his lasting nickname of “The Man” from Dodger fans during a three-game series at Ebbets Field in 1946. Stan ripped eight hits in 12 at bats in the series. In the final game, writer Broeg had heard Brooklyn fans chanting something whenever Stan came to the plate, but couldn’t quite decipher the words. That evening he asked traveling secretary Leo Ward if he knew what the Flatbush fans were saying. Ward told Broeg, “Every time Stan came up they chanted, ‘Here comes the man!”‘ Broeg informed his readers of the chant in his column the next day and one of the most famous nicknames in baseball history was born.

At Ebbets Field in 1948, Stan smashed 25 hits in 48 at bats for a .521 average. The 25 hits consisted of 10 singles, ten doubles, a triple and four home runs. Stan said, “If I could have hit all season at Ebbets Field or the Polo Grounds or, for that matter, if I could have played the 1948 season on the road, I might have hit .400 and ripped the record book apart.” In fact, he hit .415 on the road, .334 at home.

The Cards arrived at Ebbets Field for the first time on May 18. Musial singled and doubled off Ralph Branca as St. Louis took the opener, 4-3. The next night before 32,883 fans, they tagged five Brooklyn pitchers for 18 hits in a 13-5 laugher. The Dodgers couldn’t get Musial out. “The Man” singled three times, doubled, tripled, and walked, scoring five runs and knocking in two. In the final game, the Cards routed four Dodger twirlers, 13-4. Musial singled once, doubled twice, and hammered a seventh-inning homer off Hugh Casey. In the series he went 11 for 15.

During the series Durocher’s pitchers sent Slaughter to the dirt to avoid a head high pitch, drilled Whitey Kurowski in the back and beaned Del Rice, forcing him out of action. Such incidents were commonplace during Brooklyn-St. Louis battles in the 1940s. Scan did his share of ducking too. In his book, Nice Guys Finish Last, Durocher recalled a game in 1948 when his star, Jackie Robinson, was sent sprawling by a Cardinal pitch. Leo’s pitcher retaliated by knocking down Musial with two successive pitches, the second one of which hit Stan’s bat. He was thrown out while still flat on his back. According to Leo, Stan stopped him on the field a couple of innings later and said, “Hey, Leo, I haven’t got the ball out there. I didn’t throw at your man.” Leo recalled telling Stan, “You’re the best player I know on the Cardinals. For every time my men get one, it looks like you’re gonna get two.” Durocher ended the story by saying, “We never had any more trouble with the Cardinals as far as Mr. Robinson.was concerned.”

In 1948, however, St. Louis had to be worried about the Boston Braves as well as the Dodgers. Billy Southworth had moved from St. Louis to manage the Braves and he had them playing good ball. On May 21, Warren Spahn beat Harry Brecheen and the Cards, 3-1, despite Musial’s eighth-inning homer. The next night the Cards turned the tables and sent Johnny Sain to the showers on the way to a 6-4 win. St. Louis was in first place by 2-1/2 games. Spahn, Sain and the Braves would not go away, however. They would win their first pennant since 1914 despite Stan’s gargantuan year.

Before a Wednesday night crowd of 44,128 at the Polo Grounds on May 26, Stan slugged his eighth and ninth homers, but the Giants exploded for eight runs in the eighth to triumph, 10-7. The Cards lost eight of nine before beating Brooklyn, 4-1, on June 3. Stan bashed a two-run homer in the first inning off Preacher Roe, and Brecheen made it stand up by hurling a four-hitter. From June 15 to June 18, Musial was on fire, lacing ten hits in 11 at bats, including two doubles, a triple and a homer as the Cards beat the Phils twice at Shibe Park, 2-1 and 4-1, then won, 12-8, over the Giants at the Polo Grounds.

On June 22 at Braves Field, Stan tied a National League record with his third five-hit game of the season in a 5-2 win. All five hits were singles, including a bunt. Before he went up to the plate in the ninth with the bases loaded, manager Eddie Dyer jokingly hollered out to him, “Hey boy, we’re going to have to send a hitter up for you.” Stan did a double take and the Cardinal bench laughed. He then socked Clyde Shaun’s first pitch up the middle to drive in two runs and decide the game.

Three days later Musial again tore apart the Dodgers at Ebbets Field, with two singles, a double and his sixteenth homer. The Cards beat Joe Hatten, 6-3. The next night Brooklyn hurler Preacher Roe interrupted a St. Louis clubhouse meeting to tell the Cards that he had finally figured out how to get Musial out. The lefthander born in Ash Flat, Arkansas, revealed his formula. “Walk ‘im on foah pitches an pick ‘im off first,” he drawled before ducking out the door amidst chuckles. The Dodgers did manage to get Musial out three times, but in the seventh inning he homered off Paul Minner as the Cards triumphed, 6-4.

By July 1, Musial had rapped out 101 hits in 252 at bats for a .401 average. Taking into account his tremendous finish in 1947, he had hit safely 249 times in his last 567 at-bats, for a .439 average over 169 games.

The relatively new phenomenon of night games was not hurting Stan. He was hitting .462 at night, and .437 against lefthanders. Over in the American League, Ted Williams had bashed 92 hits in 229 at bats for a .402 average. On the Fourth of July, the Cards split a doubleheader at Crosley Field in Cincinnati. Musial banged out five singles and a double in ten at bats to raise his average to .405. Nonetheless, St. Louis went into the All-Star break a full six games behind the Braves.

Top All-Star

The 6-foot-1, 175-pound Musial was flexing his muscles as never before. He slammed his twentieth homer (a career high, though he would average 31 per season for the next ten years) on July 9. Musial was the leading NL All-Star vote getter amassing 1,532,502 votes. At the break his average had shot up to .415. He was called into co-owner Robert Hannegan’s office and given a $5,000 raise to $36,000.

Stan delighted a home town All-Star Game crowd of 34,009 at Sportsman’s Park with a first-inning two-run homer into the right field pavilion, but the American League won, 5-2. Before he retired in 1963, Stan would hold All-Star records for most games played (22), hits (20), total bases (40), homers (6), and at-bats (60), sporting a cool .333 average. He decided the 1955 midsummer classic in Milwaukee with a twelfth-inning homer off Frank Sullivan.

In Brooklyn the Dodgers had fired Durocher and rehired Burt Shotton as manager. “Leo the Lip,” despised for years by the fans at the Polo Grounds, now was hired by Horace Stoneham to replace their idol, Mel Ott. Durocher’s Giants came into St. Louis in late July and the Cards took two of three from them. In the final game Musial capped a six-run Redbird outburst in the seventh inning with a two-run homer that gave his team a 6-5 lead. “Big ]awn” Mize tied the game for the Giants with a solo shot, but the Cards prevailed on Nippy Jones’ RBI single in the thirteenth, 7-6.

Southworth’s Braves arrived next, and the Cardinals slowed them down by winning three of four to get within five games of the top. Musial went seven for 16 in the series with a double and triple. Encouraged by their recent showing against the Braves, the Cards began a long road trip with a three game set in Brooklyn. Musial was his usual destructive self, with six hits in 12 at-bats, including four doubles, but the red-hot Dodgers won all three to drop the Cards back down to fourth place.

At Braves Field a crowd of 37,071 greeted the Cards on July 30. Musial ignited a five-run rally in the eighth inning with a double as Brecheen bested Sain, 6-2, on the way to a 20-win season. Stan tripled and homered the following afternoon against Spahn, but Sibby Sisti drilled a triple with the bases full in the ninth inning to power the Braves to a dramatic 7-6 victory.

The third stop on the road trip was back at the Polo Grounds. Durocher’s Giants had won seven straight and passed the Dodgers into second place. The Cards were not impressed. In the opener they pulverized Leo’s hurlers, 21-5. Musial doubled, homered and scored three times. Two days later the series resumed with the Cards sweeping a doubleheader, 7-2 and 3-0. Musial slammed a two-run homer off Sheldon Jones in the first game and Brecheen outpitched Larry Jansen with a two-hitter in the nightcap.

The Cardinals always seemed to play Durocher’s teams tough. Musial explained why in his autobiography: “Leo liked to play the game rough, liked to make it a game of intimidation. His tactics turned us from tabbies into tigers.” Stan was the most ferocious St. Louis tiger against the Giants in 1948, tagging their moundsmen for 11 homers. On May 2, 1954, he would belt five home runs and sock a single in a doubleheader against Durocher’s eventual world champion Giants.

Pittsburgh’s Forbes Field proved to be a chamber of horrors for the Cards in 1948, however. The Pirates came up with four runs in the ninth inning to upend the Redbirds there on August 13, 5-4, despite a triple, two doubles, and a single by Musial. Stan’s defense helped beat the Bucs back in St. Louis on August 20. In the first inning he made a sixty-yard sprint and circus catch of a Ralph Kiner blooper with a man on base. In the second inning he made a somersaulting grab of a drive by Danny Murtaugh, then came up throwing to double Ed Stevens off first base. The Cards won, 7-4, and climbed to within a game of first place the following day by drubbing the Bucs, 9-2. ”The Pounding Pole,” as The Sporting News called Stan, singled twice, doubled, knocked in another run and scored two. The win was the Cards’ seventeenth in twenty-three games.

Nonetheless, the Braves arrived in St. Louis on August 24 with a 2-1/2-game lead. Musial slugged a two-run homer off Sain in the first inning and made another diving catch of Phil Masi’s liner to center in the sixth, but the Braves wore out Cardinal pitching, winning, 9-3. The next night Spahn applied a coat of whitewash, 2-0, and the Cards slid 4 1/2 games out. They weren’t ready to fold just yet. Musial rallied his team to a doubleheader sweep of the Giants on August 26, deciding the second game with a two-run ninth-inning homer, 7-5. The Cards then swept another twin bill from the Giants, 5-4 and 7-6, as Stan won the lidlifter with a home run in the thirteenth inning.

Fading pennant hopes

The beginning of the end came on August 29, as the Dodgers came into town and took over first place by sweeping a doubleheader. Musial singled, doubled, and homered in the opener, but the Bums kayoed Brecheen with four runs in the first inning on the way to a 12-7 win before 33,826 fans. In the second game Musial tripled in two runs in the ninth inning to knot the score at 4-4, but Brooklyn got key pinch hits from Pete Reiser and Arky Vaughan in the tenth to win, 6-4. Shotton’s Dodgers increased their lead to 1-1/2 games over Boston twenty-four hours later with another doubleheader sweep. Musial played with a wrenched knee, caused when he slipped on the dugout runway before the first game when he was besieged by a crowd of well-wishers and autograph seekers. He went hitless in six at-bats, dropping his average to .377.

Just when Shotton’s magic seemed to be working wonders, the Dodgers went into a tailspin, dropping four of five in Chicago and then losing three of four to the Giants back at Ebbets Field. Durocher knocked his old team out of first place on September 3. The fate of the Dodgers and Cards was then sealed on September 6. Pittsburgh swept two from the Cards in the Smoky City, 2-1 and 4-1, while the Braves took two from the Bums in Beantown, 2-1 and 4-0. The next day Stan lined a 3-2 pitch from Fritz Ostermueller into a first-inning triple play in still another loss at Forbes Field.

Boston took a four game bulge over the new second-place team, Pittsburgh. The Braves would never be seriously challenged again, but Musial enjoyed a big September, leading the Cards to a second-place finish. On September 9, he was four for four with a double and triple knocking in two runs and scoring on a double steal as Brecheen blanked the Reds, 4-0. The next day Stan beat the Reds once more, 6-5, with an RBI single in the ninth inning, his 200th hit of the year.

In the Cards’ last visit to Brooklyn, Stan didn’t manage a hit in four at-bats yet highlighted a 4-2 win by raking three hits away from Dodger batsmen with his glove. In the third inning he tumbled to the turf and rolled over to rob Jackie Robinson of a double. In the sixth frame he sprinted over to the exit gate in left center and flung his glove up to make a desperate grab of Pee Wee Reese’s drive, stuffing a probable leadoff triple by the Dodger captain in his mitt. Then with two on and two out in the ninth, Brooklyn’s Tommy Brown looped a short fly to center for an apparent two-run game-tying hit. But “The Man” raced in, dove hard and snatched the ball off the blades of the grass to preserve the victory.

Stan always took great pride in his fielding, and he played all three outfield positions in 1948. He told Bob Broeg, “Over the years, I’m proud to say, I had some of my best days defensively when I wasn’t hitting. I never said much, but I thought my share about players who would let their chins drag when not hitting so that their fielding was affected, too. If I couldn’t beat ’em with my bat, I certainly hoped to try with my glove.”

Stan had jammed his left hand making the circus catches but was in the lineup the next day. Dodger rookie Carl Erskine struck him on the right hand with a pitch early in the game, but Stan tied the score at 2-2 with his thirty-sixth homer in the eighth inning. Musial left Brooklyn with injuries to both hands. (Years later Erskine would answer the question of how he pitches to Musial by quipping, “I just throw him my best stuff, then run over to back up third base.”)

September 22 at Braves Field was one of those rare days in which the wind was blowing out toward the small right field bleachers, nicknamed “the jury box” by Boston scribes. At the batting cage before the game, Broeg pointed to the flag at the right field foul pole and said to Stan, “A great day for the hitters, Banj.”

Musial then decided to rip the tape that had been protecting his injured wrists off and attempt to play without it. In the first inning he dumped a single to left off Spahn, punching the ball to the opposite field to lessen the strain on his wrists. In the third, Stan went to left again off Spahn, this time driving the ball over Mike McCormick’s head for a double. In the fourth, new Braves’ pitcher Charley Barrett tried to puzzle Musial with a changeup. Stan saw it coming and said to himself, “To hell with the wrists!” He pulled the ball into the jury box for a two-run homer. In the seventh, Stan grounded a single between third and short off Clyde Shoun for his fourth hit of the game.

Stan was well aware that he needed just one more hit to tie Ty Cobb’s major league record of four five-hit games in a season. Braves hurler Al Lyons missed badly with his first two pitches to Stan in the eighth. Lyons’ third offering was just a bit outside but Stan hooked it between first and second for a seeing-eye single. In protecting his wrists, Scan had taken the minimum five swings to get his five safeties. In an earlier five-hit day that season, he had knocked out all five hits with two-strike counts.

As October opened, Musial slashed three more hits in a 6-4 win over the Cubs, breaking his previous personal best total of 228 safeties in a season. The next day, Stan broke Rogers Hornsby’s single-season team record of 102 extra base hits by ripping his 46th double. The Cards clinched second place by drubbing the Cubs, 9-0.

Baseball’s Perfect Knight

In games in which Musial hit safely, the Cards posted a 73-48 record. With a hitless Stan, the Cards were 12-21-1. It was said back then, “As Musial goes, so go the Cardinals.” Musial led the NL in every hitting category except home runs. Red Schoendienst remembered, however, that Stan hit a ball at Shibe Park one day that struck the P.A. system above the fence and bounced back on the field. Umpire Frank Dascoli called it a double but Red was sure it should have been ruled a home run. With that homer Stan would have tied Kiner and Mize for the crown and led the league in everything. Scan also had a homer rained out in 1948.

In 1949 the Cardinals battled Brooklyn in another torrid pennant chase down to the last day of the sea, son before missing the flag by a single game. That was St. Louis’s last real pennant race for seven years. Musial, though, kept turning in great performances. He led the league in batting in 1950 (.346), 1951 (.355), 1952 (.336), and then again in 1957 (.351) at age 36. He was named The Sporting News Player of the Decade in 1956. Along the way he played in 896 consecutive games, establishing a new National League record, later broken by the Cubs’ Billy Williams in 1969. In 1962, at age forty-one, Stan challenged for his eighth batting crown, finishing at .330. He also tied a major league record by hitting four home runs in succession that year, including three in one game against Casey Stengel’s Mets.

Stan the Man was never thrown out of a major league game. He didn’t berate writers or sound off in the press. He didn’t second-guess his many managers and never got into fisticuffs on the field. Despite his calm demeanor Musial was a man of quiet toughness and stoic endurance. He did not scare easily. In 1953 Rogers Hornsby, then managing the Reds, ordered pitcher Clyde King to knock Musial down. King protested, “Rog, over the years I’ve gotten Musial out, I guess, as good as anybody, and there’s no point in knocking him down.”

But Hornsby was adamant. King then recalled, “Sure enough, l knocked him down. The ball went right up here (under the chin) and the bat went one way and his body went another way. And he hit the next pitch on the roof in right field. Home run! He killed it!”

In 1968, an eight-foot bronze statue of Musial was unveiled in front of the Cardinals’ Busch Stadium. The inscription on the statue reads simply, “Here stands baseball’s perfect warrior. Here stands baseball’s perfect knight.” That indeed was “Stan the Man.”