John McGraw was one of the most successful baseball managers ever, leading the New York Giants to ten pennants in his 30 years with the club. His arrival in mid-1902 marked the turning point in the fortunes of the Giants, a team which had been struggling for years. However, despite an influx of new players whom McGraw brought with him to New York, the Giants barely showed any improvement for the balance of the 1902 season, losing over 60 percent of their decisions in that period. This article will review the Giants’ 1902 season and attempt to show why McGraw was unable to make an immediate improvement in the team.

1902 was a season of turmoil not just for the Giants, but for all of Organized Baseball. The National League was at war not only with the American League, but with itself. In its December 1901 meeting, four owners supported a plan proposed by John Brush to convert the National League into a trust which would be owned by all eight owners. This trust would own all eight teams and the contracts of all players. The other four owners supported the candidacy of former league president Albert Goodwill Spalding. Spalding had led the league in its successful battles with the Player’s League in 1890 and the American Association in 1891, and these four owners felt he was the perfect choice to defend the league against the upstart American League.

The two sides couldn’t reach an agreement, and the trust group, including Giants owner Andrew Freedman, left the meeting. The other four owners, claiming a quorum was still present, elected Spalding president. A lawsuit was filed by the trust group and the matter wasn’t resolved until the beginning of April 1902. The season schedule was adopted on April 5, just twelve days before opening day.

The American League, under its strong president, Ban Johnson, had moved into several large Eastern cities in 1901 and declared itself a major league on a par with the NL. While its playing talent was probably not on a par with the NL’s that year, it did succeed in attracting such top stars as Nap Lajoie and Cy Young. Following the 1901 season, the AL took advantage of the chaotic situation in the NL to step up its player raids. Many of the NL’s top players such as Elmer Flick, Jimmy Sheckard, Jesse Burkett, Al Orth, and Ed Delahanty signed with the American League.

Meanwhile, the Giants seemed to be making little effort to resign their players or obtain new talent. By the end of 1901, regulars Kip Selbach, Jack Warner, Charley Hickman, and pitcher Luther Taylor, who had led the league’s pitchers in games started, had signed with American League teams. Most damaging, future Hall of Fame shortstop George Davis, the Giants’ manager in 1901, signed with the Chicago White Stockings. Later, third baseman Sammy Strang jumped ship as well.

The decline of the Giants since they were purchased by the petulant, domineering Andrew Freedman in 1894 seemed to be complete. Once one of the league’s premier franchises, the team had finished last or next to last the past three seasons. Freedman likely expected the trust scheme to be adopted, and that the Giants would get first pick of the league’s stars. Because of the stalemate over that issue, they had to rebuild the club the old-fashioned way. With no National Agreement between the major and minor leagues, there was no draft to provide a cheap source of new talent.

Late in December, the Giants started putting together a team for 1902 by signing minor-league pitchers Roy Evans and John Burke as well as catcher Manley Thurston. They also purchased second baseman/manager George Smith from the Eastern League champion Rochester team. An offer was made to Jesse Burkett, who had just jumped to the AL, but he turned it down. The Giants also tried to woo manager Ned Hanlon away from their crosstown rivals, the Brooklyn Superbas, but that was also unsuccessful. Towards the end of January, Freedman chose Horace Fogel to manage the team.

Fogel’s managerial experience consisted of one season at the helm of Indianapolis of the National League. Otherwise, he made his living as a sportswriter and editor, mainly in Philadelphia. Fogel promised to sign some stars, but all he found were college players, American League rejects, and “Roaring” Bill Kennedy, a one-time star pitcher who had been cut loose by the Superbas. As February neared its end, however, the Giants seized an opportunity when Chicago released first baseman Jack Doyle. Fogel quickly signed Doyle and appointed him team captain, giving him responsibility for the team during games. Doyle had been a member of the champion Baltimore Orioles in 1896 and had spent three seasons with the Giants before 1901. He was a good hitter and aggressive baserunner. However, he tended to make enemies wherever he went, as he was demanding and lacking in diplomacy.

The Giants didn’t go south for spring training, which was not unusual at the time. Fourteen players reported to the Polo Grounds on March 24 to begin working out under the direction of Jack Doyle. More arrived the next few days. As practice began, the team lined up this way: Captain Doyle at first, Smith at second, Walter Anderson at short, Billy Lauder at third, and Frank Bowerman behind the plate backed up by George Yeager. Veteran George Van Haltren would be the center fielder, with several players competing for the other two outfield spots, including Jim Jackson, Roy Clark, Libe Washburn, Jim Stafford, Jimmy Jones, and Jim Delahanty.

The pitching staff was led by the sensation of 1901, Christy Mathewson. Virtually every other pitcher from the prior year was gone. Attempting to replace them were Henry Thielmann (also an outfield prospect), Frank Dupee, Tully Sparks, Burke, Evans, Kennedy, and Bill Magee. Efforts were made to improve the team during spring training; on March 26, it was reported that the manager job was offered to Ed Barrow, then manager of the Toronto team in the Eastern League, and later Red Sox manager and Yankees president. Contracts were supposedly offered to American Leaguers Nap Lajoie, Elmer Flick, Topsy Hartsel, and others, and an unsuccessful attempt was made to purchase shortstop Wid Conroy from the champion Pittsburgh Pirates.

Anderson proved inadequate at short, and after Delahanty and Thielmann were tried there, the Giants signed Jack Dunn, who had been released by the Orioles. The weather was cold and rainy throughout spring training. Only 6 exhibition games were played, against college and minor league teams, with the Giants managing to win them all. Five other games were cancelled due to the weather. When that happened, the Giants could work out with weights or exercise machines in the Polo Grounds clubhouse.

Other players failing to make the grade during spring training were Stafford and Dupee, with Clark returning to complete his studies at Brown University. Bowerman and Van Haltren were injured during training camp; thus when the Giants opened the season at home against the Philadelphia Phillies on April 17, the lineup looked like this:

1. Dunn SS
2. Delahanty RF
3. Jones CF
4. Lauder 3B
5. Doyle 1B
6. Jackson LF
7. Smith 2B
8. Yeager C
9. Mathewson P

Jack Dunn began his major-league career in 1897 as a pitcher. He converted to infield in 1901, playing third base and shortstop for the American League Baltimore Orioles. After his release by that team, he was signed by the Giants to fill their gap at short. He ended the season as a utility player, filling in at second and third and playing more games in right field than anyone else. He even started two games as pitcher, and relieved in another. Dunn spent two more seasons with the Giants as a utility infielder. He is best known today as the owner of the minor-league Baltimore Orioles, where he discovered and developed many players, such as Babe Ruth and Lefty Grove.

Jim Delahanty, one of five brothers to play in the major leagues, was a very good hitter who changed teams frequently during his 11-season AL and NL career, most of which was spent as a second baseman. He had spent the bulk of 1901 playing in the Eastern League. After spring training trials at shortstop and center field, he opened the season as the regular right fielder. This was his second major-league trial; his career would begin in earnest in 1904 as the regular third baseman for the Beaneaters.

Jim Jones was a fast runner without much hitting ability. Like Dunn, he had begun his career as a pitcher; Jones had played a few games for the Giants in 1901. 1902 would be his final major-league season. He was filling in for the veteran George Van Haltren, who was expected to be the Giants’ regular center fielder in 1902, as he had been since 1894. Van Haltren was nursing a cold and an injured finger. At 36 years of age, he was one of the oldest players in the league, and was frequently referred to in print as “Rip” Van Haltren. 1902 would be his 16th major-league season.

Billy Lauder was a good field, no hit third baseman. According to Ned Hanlon, Lauder was as good a third baseman as had ever played the game. Unfortunately, he had been out of professional baseball for two years, and was never able to regain his hitting eye.

Jim Jackson was a speedster who spent his rookie season in 1901 with the Baltimore Orioles. He had a .291 on base average and a .330 slugging average in 1901. Joining the Giants in 1902, where he had to deal with the foul strike rule, his hitting took a predictable fall. In addition, his fielding average fell from a league-leading .971 in 1901 to .897 in 1902.

George “Heinie” Smith was a slick-fielding, weak-hitting second baseman. Smith played for Rochester in the International League in 1901. At 30 years old, this was Smith’s first year as a regular in the majors after four previous trials. He would soon be regarded as the best defensive second baseman on the Giants since John M. Ward in 1893-94, but his big-league career would end the following year with Detroit. Smith and Lauder were the only Giants to play over 109 games in 1902.

George Yeager was a veteran of five big-league seasons as a backup catcher. 1902 would be his last year in the major leagues. He was filling in for the injured Bowerman.

After a band concert which concluded with “The Star-Spangled Banner,” and the first ball was thrown out by a former fire commissioner, the Giants got their season off to a rousing start with a seven to nothing victory. Over the next few days, they would lose more than they won before rattling off a seven-game winning streak to close their home stand.

As they headed for Chicago, the Giants had a 10-5 record. Their winning streak ended abruptly as Chicago swept the three-game series. However, the first two games were later disallowed by the league as Fogel had discovered before game three that the pitching rubber at West Side Park was two feet too close to home. (Those games were later replayed, with the Giants winning both.) Not including the two protested games, the Giants won four of the first six games on the trip.

On May 16 in Cincinnati, as the new Palace of the Fans was dedicated, George Yeager pinch-hit a two-run single in the ninth to cap a five-run rally and give New York a 14-7 mark. They looked like a pennant contender. However, the good times were over, as the team would lose 43 of its next 51 decisions. A few days after the Giants’ come-from-behind victory, Fogel was quoted in a Cincinnati newspaper making disparaging remarks about golden boy Christy Mathewson. He made a quick retraction, but his days at the helm of the Giants were numbered.

Personnel changes were coming fast and furious. Taylor jumped back to the Giants. Bill Magee was released after lasting only two innings in his first start. Delahanty was dropped after seven games. Steve Brodie, a veteran center fielder and former Orioles teammate of Doyle, was signed, released, signed again, released again, and finally signed for a third time the next day after an injury to the Giants’ latest outfielder.

Indeed, injuries and illnesses would plague the team all season, especially amongst the outfielders. Brodie, despite his multiple comings and goings, was the only person to play more than 67 games in the outfield for New York. The most severe injury occurred on May 22, when Van Haltren broke his leg sliding in Pittsburgh. He missed the remainder of the season, and his major-league career ended the following year.

A shortstop, Joe Bean, who had played with Smith at Rochester in 1901, was signed. Unfortunately, Rochester had an option on his services for 1902 and they got a court injunction against the Giants. This matter was resolved in a few days, with the Giants purchasing Bean’s contract.

Thielman, who was used in the outfield for a trio of games as well as on the mound, was dropped in mid-May as was catcher Thurston, who never got into a game. Outfielders came and went after two or three games. Pitcher Bob Blewett from Georgetown University was given a chance, but he lived up to his name, going 0-2 in five games. Libe Washburn, star pitcher at Brown University, was used in the outfield for a few games but never got a chance on the mound. Roy Clark had rejoined the team, but, like Mathewson and Sparks, didn’t play on Sundays. (This was a problem only when the team was playing in three western cities, since Sunday ball was illegal in the four eastern cities and Pittsburgh.)

After losing fourteen of their last 15 games in May, and rumors of dissension spread, changes were made. On June 2, Jack Doyle was stripped of his captaincy, with George Smith taking over that role. The next day, Fogel left the team due to his father’s death, and he never returned to the helm, with Smith being promoted to manager on June 11. In an effort to end the dissension on the club, Doyle was released late in June. These changes didn’t help the team, as they could only achieve a 5-27 record under Smith.

There had been rumors during the winter about Mathewson having a sore arm. Although he claimed to be fine during spring training and his first pitching appearances were successful, his performance soon fell off. This led to Fogel’s threat to bench him. Due to Matty’s sore arm and the Giants’ infield problems, Smith used him at first base for three games. There was some discussion about converting him to shortstop once his arm healed. While Matty was an excellent fielder on the mound and a good hitter for a pitcher, he proved a flop at first base, making four errors in his three games there, and he returned to pitching.

Meanwhile, on July 1, a new shortstop, Heinie Wagner, joined the team. He had been found playing sandlot ball in New York by Horace Fogel. No one on the team knew anything about him, and some fans thought the Giants had somehow obtained Pittsburgh’s star, Hans Wagner. Alas, Heinie, although later a capable major-league player, was not only not Hans, but also wasn’t ready for this level of play.

Another newspaper interview in early July gave insight into the Giants’ troubles. Jack Hendricks, who had been released after a brief trial in June in right field, spoke candidly to a Chicago Journal writer. He claimed that Bowerman and Yeager did all they could to prevent young players from succeeding and that the team had deliberately played poorly behind Blewett to make him look bad. Hendricks, a Northwestern University graduate who would go on to a long career as a manager in the National League and the minors, also had harsh words for Mathewson, calling him a “conceited pinhead” who constantly moaned when things didn’t go his way. Matty’s teammates rarely spoke to him, and gave him poor support also, according to Hendricks. On the other hand, he had nothing but praise for Doyle, who he said was very helpful to the young players and was a “splendid fellow.” He concluded that Freedman should make certain changes in the team, including the manager.1

In the meantime, over in the American League, the Orioles’ manager John McGraw was having his own problems. McGraw, another veteran of the NL Orioles of the 1890’s, had begun his managerial career with that club in 1899. He quickly established a reputation as a genius by leading the team to a strong fourth-place finish even though most of the club’s stars had been transferred to its sister team, the Superbas. When the American League moved into the east, McGraw was offered part-ownership of the Baltimore franchise. However, Ban Johnson insisted on supporting his umpires, which put him at frequent loggerheads with McGraw, a notorious ump-baiter. By mid-1902, McGraw was fed up with the frequent suspensions and fines handed him by Johnson. As a player, he had been out of action since being spiked by a baserunner on May 24.

On July 2, McGraw was spotted at the Polo Grounds, and rumors quickly spread that he would take over the helm of the Giants. On the ninth, it became official. The Giants signed McGraw to a three-year contract at $10,000 or $11,000 per year, a munificent sum for the time, when the top player salaries were $6,000-7,000 at best. In his first interview as the Giants’ pilot, McGraw stated that he had been given unlimited authority to improve the team. “The only instructions that I have received,” he stated, “were to put a winning organization in this city at any cost.”2 Although he admitted that first place was out of reach this year, he did expect the team to finish in the first division and then compete for the flag in 1903.

The details of how McGraw left the Orioles, of which he was part-owner, and how he planned to strengthen the Giants, soon became public. He had arranged for a majority of the Orioles’ stock to be sold to Andrew Freedman, who released McGraw and many of the team’s stars, including future Hall-of-Famers Joe McGinnity and Roger Bresnahan, as well as first baseman Dan McGann and pitcher Jack Cronin.3 This quartet joined McGraw and the Giants for his first game as manager on July 19. At the same time, Joe Kelley, who had also played on the Orioles of the 1890’s, signed with John T. Brush to be Cincinnati’s playing manager; joining him was center fielder Cy Seymour. In the ten days between McGraw being announced as new manager and his first game, he was supposedly trying to sign new players, but was in fact being treated for appendicitis, which would plague him for the rest of the season.

McGraw released seven players upon joining the Giants: Yeager, O’Hagen, Blewett, Wagner, Burke, Sparks, and Evans. Roy Clark received his 10-day notice of release two days before McGraw’s signing. In addition to the four Baltimore players, the Giants soon added left fielder George Browne, who had been released by the Phillies, and pitcher Roscoe Miller, who jumped from the Detroit Tigers. Libe Washburn was released on July 25 and Jimmy Jones was suspended and then released after assaulting umpire Bob Emslie on August 6. Bresnahan split time between right field and catcher, while Browne became the regular left fielder. Both were big improvements over the players the Giants had previously tried. McGraw became the new shortstop.

While the Giants lost their first game under McGraw, the team reportedly showed more “life” than they had in some time. After two days off and an exhibition game versus the Orange (New Jersey) Athletic Club, they took three out of five games against the Superbas. However, despite strong performances from some of the newcomers, the team kept on struggling, and finished the season in last place.

Injuries continued to plague the Giants, and one led to a challenge to McGraw’s authority. Frank Bowerman’s foot was hurt by a foul ball on August 2. The next day the team played an exhibition game in Bayonne, New Jersey and Bowerman didn’t suit up. In fact, due to injuries on the Bayonne club, Roger Bresnahan caught all nine innings for both teams. Since Bowerman hadn’t asked permission to sit out, McGraw fined him 50 dollars. Bowerman argued that the fine wasn’t fair, and he refused to suit up again until it was rescinded. He threatened to jump to the American League but gave in and was back in uniform on August 7. In his first game behind the plate after the incident, however, he committed three errors and five passed balls. While it is not known if his poor fielding was deliberate, it so disgusted Mathewson that in the ninth inning, after the final two passed balls, Christy began lobbing the ball over the plate, and a 3-2 deficit quickly became an 8-2 loss. Despite all this, and later rumors of signing with the St. Louis Browns, Bowerman remained with the team through the 1907 season.

John T. Brush sold most of his stock in the Reds in August, and a few days later was made managing director of the Giants. He worked with McGraw in trying to obtain new players. Late in the season, with McGraw aiding in the negotiations, he bought Freedman’s stock and became president of the board of directors. A new era in Giants’ baseball was beginning.

Why didn’t McGraw turn around the Giants’ fortunes in 1902 despite the influx of new talent? The reason seems to be lack of interest. Apparently, he decided soon after arriving in New York that the Giants wouldn’t be able to reach the first division and turned his attention to obtaining players for 1903. In this he was successful; he signed several American Leaguers and the team rallied to second place that year. However, this meant that McGraw was away from the team for long stretches. In all, he missed 20 games due to scouting trips and his appendicitis. The team’s record in these games was 8-12, little different from their overall mark after McGraw became manager. As further evidence that McGraw wasn’t his usual fighting self, he wasn’t ejected from a single game by the umpires with the Giants in 1902. He had promised to contain his temper after coming to New York, and did so. A year later, he was quoted as saying “Baseball is only fun for me when I’m out front and winning. I don’t give a hill of beans for the rest of the game.”4

The Giants continued to be disrupted by injuries as well as rainouts; seven games were postponed between September 9 and October 1. Also, McGraw began the transition from player-manager to bench-manager; 1902 was his last season as a regular player, and he played his last game of the season on September 11. This probably took some getting used to for McGraw.

McGraw made one serious personnel misjudgment, releasing Tully Sparks and signing Roscoe Miller. Miller went just one and eight with a 4.58 ERA. The following season he won two and lost five with a 4.13 ERA. Meanwhile, Sparks was in the midst of a 12-year major-league career which saw him credited with 121 pitching wins and an ERA of 2.79.

The result of the above was that the Giants record under McGraw was just 25-38-2, although 41 of the games were played at home, and they gained only a 1/2 game on seventh place. By contrast, the Cincinnati Reds after hiring Joe Kelley as manager were 36-26, climbing from seventh to fourth.

OF injuries:

4/17 Van Haltren out with cold and infected thumb until 4/19
4/18 Jones hurt sliding / didn’t play again until 5/12
4/22 Jackson out with tonsillitis / back 4/25
5/22 Van Haltren broke leg / out remainder of season
5/28 Jones hurt when Long fell on him / back 6/2
6/2 Clark’s finger injured-played 6/4 but next day thumb operated on, next played 7/2
6/6 O’Hagen hit by batted ball / back 6/20
6/17 Washburn hit by pitch, broken nose / out until 7/19
8/29 Bresnahan in bed with illness / back 9/8

1902 Giants transactions

Sources

The main sources used for this article were the New York Telegram and the Sporting Life. Other newspapers consulted were the New York Times, New York Herald, New York Evening World, New York Press, and The Sporting News. In addition, the following books and other records were used:

Charles Alexander, John McGraw

Joe Durso, Days of Mr. McGraw

Blanche McGraw with Arthur Mann, The Real McGraw

John Thorn and Pete Palmer. eds., Total Baseball, 3rd edition

Craig Carter, ed.. The Sporting News Complete Baseball Record Book, 1994 edition

1902 Official National League Statistics

Information Concepts Inc. records of 1902 season

Thanks to Cappy Gagnon, John Pardon, David W. Smith, Darryl Brock, and Bill Deane for sharing their research, and to Paul Wendt, Frank Vaccaro, and Skip McAfee for their help with this article.

Notes

1 Chicago Journal as reprinted in Sporting Life, July 12, 1902.

2 New York Herald, July 10, 1902.

3 Details of the story vary, with some sources claiming that McGraw had reached agreement with Freedman by mid-June, with team secretary Fred Knowles and possibly John Brush acting as go-betweens. Mrs. McGraw, in her biography of her husband, claimed that the jump to New York was part of a plan between McGraw, Freedman, Brush, and Ban Johnson to put an AL team in New York, but she offers no evidence to support this notion.

4 David H. Nathan, ed., Baseball Quotations (New York: Ballantine Books, 1991).

Gil Hodges’ Hall of Fame fate resides in the hands of the newly constituted Veterans Committee. Much time and energy has been devoted to the Hall, and many fans have opinions about unqualified players who have been inducted and vice versa. Noted Sabermetrician Bill James wrote a book, The Politics of Glory, detailing the history of the HOF, and pre­senting some arguments about which players might or might not merit selection. I will use his 15-point list of arguments as a guideline for Gil Hodges’ case. No one argument makes an entire case, but it is interesting to see how many can be used in Hodges’ favor. The num­bering is based on James’ list:

3. Was he the best player in baseball at his position? Was he the best player in the league at his position?

This is probably the best argument for Hodges’ induction. He was the best first baseman in the NL in the fifties (if we consider Stan Musial an outfielder), and possibly the best in the majors. Hodges led all first basemen of the 1950s in the following categories: HR (310), G (1,477), AB (5,313), R (890), H (1,491), RBI (1,001), TB (2,733) and XBH (585). He made the All-Star team eight times, every year from 1949 to 1955 and again in 1957, the most of any first baseman of the time (again, dis­counting Musial). Hodges won the first three Gold Gloves at his position and was considered the finest defensive first baseman of the era as well. In addition, he was second among all players in the 1950s in HR and RBI, third in TB and eighth in R (fourth in NL).

Hodges was voted by respected baseball statistics organization STATS Inc. as the best defensive first baseman of the 1950s. The organization also retroac­tively selected All-Star teams for all years, both leagues. Hodges was named the retroactive All-Star first baseman four times, tying him for 13th place in number of times selected as a first baseman. Ahead of Hodges and in the Hall are Brouthers, Gehrig, Mize, Anson, Cepeda, Chance, Foxx, Sisler, and McCovey. The only players in the top twelve not in the Hall are Keith Hernandez and Ed Konetchy, while Hall of Fame first basemen such as Tony Perez, Jim Bottomley, and George “Highpockets” Kelly merited fewer STATS, Inc. selections.

In the first edition of The Historical Baseball Abstract, James wrote, “The fifties were packed with first basemen who were outstanding for a few years­ but none was consistently strong throughout the decade.” He also states that Kluszewski, Hodges, and Vic Wertz were the contenders for the best first base­man of the decade. Hodges outpaces them in Boswell’s Total Average (a base-out percentage) and in Palmer/Thorn’s basic Linear Weights. Table 1 gives the player’s career totals, and then his numbers on a per/154 game basis.

(Click image to enlarge)

4. Did he have an impact on a number of pennant races?

In Hodges’ first ten years as a starting player, the Dodgers finished as low as third only twice, finishing in first place or tied for first six times. Hodges created a significant percentage of his team’s runs in the years 1948-1959. By Bill James’s Basic Runs Created formula, he created 12.3% of the Dodgers’ runs over that time. Over a similar period in his Reds career, Hall of Famer Tony Perez created just under 12% of his team’s runs.

Although this category seems to be more about con­tributions of players, Hodges also played a major role in the 1969 pennant race as the manager of the Miracle Mets. The seven-year-old expansion team, which had finished in 9th place at 73-89 the previous year, won 100 games despite having only two players (Cleon Jones and Tommie Agee) who had more than 400 at-bats. 

The picture was taken by a photographer for the Boston Globe and it appeared two days later, on October 5, in the newspaper. The caption read in part that the picture “was taken a few minutes before the game began.” It was commonplace for overflow crowds to stand behind outfield ropes during the games and indeed fans had done so in Game 1 (won by Pittsburgh) and Game 2 (won by Boston) of the series. Balls hit into the ropes would go for ground-rule triples. But on October 3, the fans burst through the restraints and swarmed the field. The story of what took place, captured in the famous photograph, suggests nothing less than what might be called “The Riot at the First World Series.”

Excited by the two games played so far, and stimulated by the balmy weather, not to mention the extra money in their pockets from a Friday payday, fans turned out by the thousands for the Saturday afternoon contest. By 11 o’clock, hundreds of people stood outside waiting for the gates to open. Hour after hour, packed streetcars unloaded fans at the park. The sin­gle, long lane that led to the ticket office was clogged with fans inching forward, eager to buy tickets for the third game in Boston before the series shifted to Pittsburgh for four games.The ticket sellers had no time to place the dollars and coins in the box, so they simply threw the money to the floor. Later, once the game started, there would be time to gather it.

At noon, the gates opened, and a “surging, strug­gling mass ” rushed into the park. By 1:15, all the seats had been sold and the area behind the outfield ropes continued to swell with people who jostled for posi­tion. At 2:00, fans covered the outfield, occupied the terrace, climbed the fences, even found their way to the roof. Ticket speculators made a fortune, offering general admission bleacher tickets for one to two dollars and reserved grandstand seats for as high as ten dollars. Even the peanut vendors and scorecard boys made out by selling buckets and boxes for people to stand on for $1 a piece.

The ticket office closed, and the speculators ran out of seats. Yet people were still arriving. Some 3,000 fans clustered outside the Huntington Avenue grounds and clamored for admission. Once the game started, those in the bleachers called out to those in the street, reporting what was happening on the field.

The official attendance was put at 18,801, but that figure was low. Probably between twenty and twenty-five thousand people jammed themselves into the park. The situation seemed unstable. Anticipating a larger Saturday crowd, Boston’s business manager had arranged for fifty policemen, up from the thirty­-five at the previous game. But as many as 150 officers would have had trouble containing this gathering.

As the crowd swelled, it vibrated back and forth in waves. Fans stood ten deep in the outfield. Suddenly, at a little after 2:00, a few men slid past the ropes in center field. Others started to press toward the field from the third base bleachers. Within seconds, a stampede began. Thousands broke through the ropes and cov­ered the entire field. They “tore across the diamond … drove the two teams from their benches, swept restlessly around and around the entire lot, and they determined to get as close to the play as possible.” “A surging, struggling, frantic crowd,” reported the Boston Post, “a sea of faces, a perspiring mass of humanity that fringed the fences, packed and jammed the stands, encircled the diamond and fought both police and players.”

The scene was unfathomable. In their desire to get closer to the action,the exuberant fans,described as “good natured,” threatened the game, the players,and their own physical welfare. The police, aided by several players, struggled to prevent the mob from invading the reserved grandstand section.Two women, caught in the crush, were rescued by a Boston player and several policemen. The fans packed the field and the police began trying to move them from the infield.

Time and again the police would charge,with their clubs drawn, only to discover that the crowd would rush back to fill each area shortly after it was cleared. Boston’s business manager raced into the dressing room and returned with an armful of bats for the police, who used them against the shins and skulls of unruly fans.The victims grabbed themselves as if poked with a “white, hot brand.” Some fans saw “stars which no astronomer has yet mapped.”

The police could not restore order and clear the diamond. The game would have to be postponed, or worse, forfeited to the Pirates. At 2:45, one hundred additional officers rushed to the grounds, although the mounted unit the police had requested never arrived. One policeman, who weighed nearly three hundred pounds, had a “unique method of pushing back the crowd.” He would “throw his arms in the air and then run like a mad bull into the midst of the encroachers. His efforts had great effect.”

A patrolman brought out a long length of rubber hose and,with four men on each side, the police used it as a battering ram to force the crowd back. With a concerted push, they cleared the diamond. Then they moved to the outfield where “inch by inch the swaying mass fell back. … Forty feet was gained in 20 minutes.” At the same time,”the members of both nines, anxious to get together in the decisive battle of the local series, were using their bats in much the same manner as the police did the hose.” The best the police could do was to move the crowd about 50 yards behind the diamond. Along the base lines on first and third, the crowd was packed to within fifteen feet of the playing field. Behind the catcher, a space of about thirty feet was cleared, and men lined up ten deep in front of the backstop. The players were closed off from their benches and sat on the grass to the side of the catcher. The fans who crowded in front of the stands would be dangerously close to the action, but the patrolmen decided to leave them there “know­ing that a few foul balls would clear this part of the field better than the most strenuous suasion.”

The Pirates came out to warm up. Second base was missing. Manager Fred Clarke threw his cap down as a substitute, much to the amusement of the crowd. Finally, a “230 pound policeman gained fame by res­cuing [the bag which] had been stolen by a 57-pound newsboy.” After a few hit balls, the fans again drifted onto the field. The bell rang for Boston’s turn, and the Pirates came off the field having handled fewer than twenty chances. Screaming and waving his arms, Boston manager Jimmy Collins urged the crowd to give the home team more room. A little after 3:00, Collins, Clarke, and Umpire Connolly met to discuss ground rules. Connolly once remarked that “the con­stant woes of an umpire’s life are the height of a pitch, rain, and darkness.” He neglected to mention the fans. The group decided that balls hit into the outfield crowd, which stood only about 150 feet beyond the base paths, would count for doubles.

Remarkably, the game began only fifteen minutes late, but the presence of the fans, so close to the action, would have an effect. The Pirates scored a run in the second when, with two out, second baseman Claude Ritchey came to bat and lifted a ball into the crowd in center field, a ground rule double. The ball fell only a few yards from the outfielders. The fans groaned, perhaps in self-remorse, because outfielders Patsy Dougherty or Chick Stahl would have caught the ball easily had the crowd not shrunken the dimensions of the field. Jimmy Sebring walked and Eddie Phelps hit the ball into the left field crowd for another double, scoring Ritchey. Pitcher Deacon Phillippe grounded out, but his team now held a one-run lead.

In the top of the third, the Pirates struck again. Boston pitcher Tom Hughes started to come undone. Boston’s number three hurler walked Ginger Beaumont on four consecutive pitches to begin the inning. Clarke then doubled into the crowd in left. Tommy Leach quickly singled, scoring Beaumont. The formidable Honus Wagner was due up,with run­ners on first and third, and nobody out. The score stood 2-0, and Collins had seen enough. He started arguing with the umpire in a ploy to buy some time for a relief pitcher to warm up. As the argument concluded, the crowd that was jammed against the grandstand “trembled, then parted with a loud sound.” Out walked a large man with tawny hair. The fans recognized him at once. “In a second every one of that gang of 25,000 was swinging hats wildly and yelling ‘Cy! Cy!’ and it was he, Young was rushing to the rescue.”

Collins needed the extra time because, while Hughes was getting into trouble, Young was still in street clothes, sitting in the club’s office, helping to count the day’s take.

When play resumed, Wagner stepped in. Young’s first effort was a wild pitch that put Leach on second, but did not roll far enough away to allow Clarke to score from third. Wagner fell behind in the count with two strikes. Young then came with a hard curve ball that failed to break early enough and drilled the superstar in his left shoulder. Wagner’s face “crinkle[d] like an old ash-dump boot,” and he stormed around for a few moments.

“Hully gee,” yelled a young man, “but Wagner must be hard as nails to take such a swat as that.” Another cupped his hands together and screamed “Kill ’em Cy, that’s the only way they can be done up today.” The shortstop said his arm went to sleep. If so, remarked one writer, “it was the only part of Hans that did any sleeping during the remainder of the game.” Young stood motionless. He retrieved the ball, rubbed it in his glove, glared at first, and “began swaying like a Sioux squaw in a death dance, for another delivery.”

Bases loaded, no one out. Young induced the strug­gling Bransfield to foul out to first. Ritchey hit a hard shot to third, which Collins handled and threw to Lou Criger to force Clarke at home. The bases were still loaded, but now two were out. It looked as if Young would escape from the jam. Sebring had two strikes on him when he hit a swift, skipping shot to Fred Parent. The shortstop partially stopped the ball. Leach scored, but Wagner got caught rounding third and was tagged out by the catcher in a run down. The Pirates had jumped ahead 3-0.

After Pittsburgh went down in the top of the fourth, the police managed to move the outfield crowd back another 30 feet. The Boston partisans couldn’t help but think that had the police done so in Pittsburgh’s second or third time up, “a different tale would possi­bly be told.” Boston scratched out a run, to make the score 3-1, but Young and Phillippe settled into a pitch­ers’ duel. Each team added a run in the eighth, but the game by then had taken on an air of inevitability. In the ninth, after Pittsburgh went down in order, few thought a rally against Phillippe, who had kept the ball down in the strike zone all afternoon, was possi­ble. And it wasn’t. Parent popped up to second. Candy La Chance grounded to Wagner. Hobe Ferris struck out, but won a momentary reprieve when Phelps dropped the ball. An instant later, with the throw to first, his at-bat, as well as the game, came to an end.

No one had left the grounds before the final out. Whereas prior to the game, some fans on the field had tried to climb into the stands, now those in the stands emptied onto the field. For ten minutes, “it was impossible to see one bare inch of turf.” As the fans shuffled away from the grounds, “gloom and silence” marked their demeanor. They admitted that the “Pittsburg aggregation is almost in a class by itself” and conceded that “Boston’s chances for the champi­onship look very dim indeed.”

If the commotion prior to the game had turned the contest into a battle of nerves, then Phillippe demon­strated that he could not be shaken. Twice, a hit would have led to runs for Boston, and twice the Deacon “showed his ability, once by a strike-out and the sec­ond time by compelling the batsman to hit a grounder to the infield.” He was pitching from inside “a great ring of humanity, 40 deep, sitting, standing or lying around the entire field within 200 feet of the bases, yet in nine full innings he allowed only two balls to be hit into the crowd.” Hughes, by contrast, became rat­tled when he saw “those dumpy, illegal hits” fall not further than ten feet from his outfielders. The Pirates also ”backed up their pitcher at every point, and time and again cut off seeming base hits by apparently impossible plays.” Wagner alone “was everywhere and anywhere [and] three of his stops were labeled sure base hits.”

Pittsburgh spent the afternoon “outbatting, outfielding, and, yes, ‘outnerving'” their opponents. Some would say “outlucking” them as well. “Luck is Quite a Factor,” claimed a headline in the Boston Globe. “Luck, that inscrutable dogma of the fatalists, was romping” with the Pirates all day long. The prob­lem was the ground rule established prior to the game. “Right here,” reporters noted, “was where Boston lost the game before ever it was started.” Of four Pirate base hits in the first three innings, doubles into the crowd by Ritchey, Phelps, and Clarke would have been easy outs. The two runs resulting from these hits was the margin of the loss. A third run as well, scored in the eighth, came off of yet another “fungoe,” a lazy fly ball hit by Wagner just beyond the outfielder. And LaChance’s shot in the bottom of the second “would have been a clean home run” rather than a ground-rule double. “With a clear field,” wrote one writer, “the final score would have been three to one in favor of Boston.” Difficult as it was to admit, the fans’ behavior prior to the game had to be viewed as “the main cause of the local team’s defeat.”

There were “plenty of excuses and ifs to offer” for the results of the game. If only Young had started, many thought Boston would have won. If only the Boston bats had broken through in the fourth and the eighth innings, they might have emerged victorious. If Young and Collins had not made those errors in the eighth, the Pirates would have had one less run. If only the crowd had been a few feet further back. It was a game of feet. “Baseball is full of uncertainties,” reasoned one writer. The famous photograph of that day captures the uncertainty, but also the glory that was baseball at the first World Series.

LOUIS P. MASUR teaches history at the City College of New York and is the author of Autumn Glory: Baseball’s First World Series (Hill & Wang, 2003), from which this account is adapted.

MEASURING POST-SEASON EXPERIENCE

Common baseball wis­dom says that one factor in achieving post-season suc­cess is having post-season experience. The thinking is that because the World Series is such a unique event, those players who have not been there before are more likely to fall victim to nervousness, lack of confidence, or other conditions that would adversely affect their play. This sounds like a reasonable theory. The success of the Yankees in recent post-season play would be one piece of positive evidence, but then this last World Series had young Lackeys and Rodriguezes all over it.

The big question is: How do we tell if the theory is true? We could analyze by team or individual success. From a team standpoint, we could compare the winning percentage of teams who have played in the playoffs more recently than their opponents. A difficulty with this method would be controlling for the quality of the team, particularly the different mix of players from year to year. So I chose to focus on individual performance. The obvious decision here is looking at hitters or pitchers. Here I determined that using pitchers would be a better choice, for many reasons:

1. Ease of choosing a measuring stick. For batters, we can use some standard measure such as OPS, but in a short series, clutch hitting can be more important than overall performance. So one could easily argue that runs and RBI, broken down into game situations, are the best measure. For pitch­ers, ERA seems to be the obvious best measure, and it is easy to obtain.

2. Sample size. In a playoff series, starting pitchers often face 70 batters or more. Hitters rarely get more than 30 plate appearances in series of seven or fewer games.

3. Pressure. I decided to use pitchers who started games. A pitcher named by his manager to take the mound is obviously the focal point on the field for his team that day (exception: 2002 version of Barry Bonds).

SELECTING THE DATA

The post-season has changed over the years: from a single World Series to two, and now three, sets of playoffs. Because of the difficulty in defining “post-season pressure” or “experience” with mixed sets, I decided to use only pitchers who started World Series games, and whose first World Series start was prior to 1969, the year that divisions were created. This yielded 65+ years of World Series play.

I created two sets of data for each pitcher. The data from “experienced” hurlers were those innings thrown by pitchers who made at least one start in their first World Series appearance. In other words, if a pitcher first appeared in a World Series as a reliever only, he was ineligible; this was done so I did not have to decide whether a relief appearance counted as “expe­rience.” Then I used his combined total of all other World Series innings as “experienced” data, as long as he made at least one more start in a succeeding World Series. Pitchers who did not start any games in any successive World Series were again not used.

I was surprised when collecting the data that there are many discrepancies among sources for pitchers’ ERAs in the early part of the century. I eventually chose the baseball1.com database as my standard ref­erence.

THE RESULTS

This method yielded 97 pitchers who combined for 3,710 innings pitched in World Series play. Fifty-four pitchers (56%) had a lower ERA in their initial Series appearance than in future games. Forty-two pitched better when they were experienced in Series play. One had identical ERAs: Dutch Leonard threw 9 innings of one-run ball in both cases. Raw data totals:

Possibly a more accurate way of determining the “experience effect” would be to create matched sets of data rather than combining all of the data into one pool. As an example, suppose the entire data set con­sisted of only two pitchers. Their mythical totals are listed below:

Pitcher A was much worse in future games, B was the same, yet overall, there is no difference! This is because of the disparity in innings and in performance. Pitcher A was better overall, or possibly pitched in an era when it more difficult to score runs. Clearly, it is possible that in the instance above, one could interpret the combined results to say that the pitchers were better in their initial World Series appearances.

To combat this situation, I created matched sets of data for each pitcher, weighting the difference in ERA by how many innings each pitcher threw. I used the harmonic. mean of each pitcher’s first and future innings as the weight for each pair. The data for the first three pitchers is alphabetically listed in Table 1.

Grover (Pete) Alexander’s weighted IP are found by 2 / (1/18 + 1/25) = 20.9. The ERA difference and weighted IP are multiplied for each pitcher to get the right-most column. Then, 83.7 divided by 39.8 yields a composite ERA difference of 2.11 for the first three pitchers.

Alexander is one of the more memorable World Series performers. At age 28 he threw two fine games for the 1915 NL champ Phillies against the Red Sox. He won game 1, but lost game 3 by a 2-1 score. Much later, in 1926, hurling for the Cardinals, he faced the Yankees. Pete won games 2 and 6 with fine efforts, and then came in relief the next day, striking out Lazzeri with the bases full and recording a save. However, his post-season career finished in 1928, against the Yanks again, and this time the New Yorkers lit up Alex in game 2, chasing him in the third, and then hit him hard again in relief in game 4.

Overall, his first World Series effort was far superior to his combined later appearances.

The pitcher with the most weighted innings in World Series play is Christy Mathewson, who famous­ly tossed 27 shutout innings in his initial 1905 appear­ance, and then threw 75 more innings with an ERA of 1.44 later in his career.

When combined using this method, there is a total of 1,374 weighted innings. Pitchers as a whole had an ERA that is a full 0.64 runs per game higher in their “experienced” Series play than in their first outings. That is almost a full year’s worth of innings pitched for an entire team, and the experienced pitchers were .64 runs per game worse.

While not being beyond the bounds of statistical significance, these results clearly show no apparent advantage of post-season experience in the first two-thirds of the 20th century.

Further investigation could be performed to attempt to account for age differences, park effects, or other factors, but I reason that the chance of these other influences is very unlikely to be large enough to sway the results of this study. Experienced pitchers have done no better in the pressure cooker of the Series than first-timers. Tell that to your favorite announcer.

TOM HANRAHAN, age 42, lives in Lexington Park, Maryland. He is employed by the Department of Defense, working to save airplanes from crashing and pilots from getting killed, wasting everyone’s hard­ earned tax dollars. Tom has a wife and three teenage children. With all due respect to Lou Gehrig, Tom con­siders himself the luckiest man on the face of the earth.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Rob Wood was kind enough to review my data, cor­rect lots of missing or bad information, and pointed out the data differences in various sources.

The conventional wisdom about Forbes Field is illustrated by the following quotations taken from var­ious ballpark books:
“No no-hitter was ever pitched here. Given the fact that the Pirates, Grays, and Craws played here for 62 years, that is an incredible statistic,” wrote Philip Lowry in Green Cathedrals.

“It was one of the most spacious parks in baseball, so much so that when slugger Hank Greenberg’s con­tract was sold to Pittsburgh in 1947, he refused to report unless the team moved the fences in” and “… the park remained a nightmare for many hitters including the great Roberto Clemente,” Eric Enders wrote in Ballparks: Then And Now.

“Strangely a no-hitter was never pitched in the entire history of Forbes Field,” Larry Ritter wrote in his Lost Ballparks.

Much of this conventional wisdom reflects two facts: (1) Forbes Field was spacious, more so than the average NL park in the time period 1909-46, and (2) during this period the park was not conducive to the hitting of home runs. How spacious was Forbes Field relative to the other NL parks? When it opened in June 1909, only Redland Field in Cincinnati was larg­er. In the ensuing years, parks in other NL cities var­ied in size, but Forbes Field’s overall size changed very little and was never less than 457 to center field. A comparison of the average outfield distances for Forbes Field and the entire National League is shown in the following table.

Table 1. PARK SIZE 1910-46
AVERAGE OUTFIELD DISTANCES (ft)

The second item which leads to Forbes Field’s reputa­tion as a poor park for hitters was the undisputed evi­dence of relatively few home runs being hit at Forbes Field.The concept of a park Home Run Factor has been developed to measure the number of home runs at a given park relative to the league average for that season. The determination of the park Home Run Factor adjusts for the home team’s hitters’ and pitch­ers’ proclivities for hitting and giving up home runs. By definition, the league average Home Run Factor is equal to 100.The following table shows the Home Run Factors for Forbes Field:

Table 2. HOME RUN FACTORS-FORBES FIELD

Compared to the average NL park, Forbes Field was about 40% below average in home runs. By contrast, Forbes Field was always regarded as a good park for triples. How much above the average NL park has not been known. Indirect evidence supporting the view of Forbes Field as a good triples park includes: (1) Owen Wilson of the 1912 Pirates set the major league single­ season record for triples (36) while playing half his games in Forbes Field, and (2) in 18 seasons (1921-37) the Pirates led the NL in triples 14 times.

Except for the Home Run Factors, all of the above evidence consists of data that is either indirect or merely suggestive. Recent research into NL Home/Road batting by park has made available some direct evidence that bears on the question: Was Forbes Field a poor park for hitters?

DEADBALL ERA

For the last three years of the Deadball Era (1917-19), Park Factors were computed for six bat­ting categories based on the batting data for the Pirates and their opponents in games at Forbes Field vs. data for Pirates games in all other NL parks. The resulting Park Factors are as follows:

Table 3. FORBES FIELD PARK FACTORS 1917-19

*All categories are rate data; (e.g., 2B are 2B per AB)

Note that despite being dead last in home runs, Forbes Field was the second (behind Philadelphia’s Baker Bowl) best park for slugging. This result is due to the marked superiority of Forbes Field for triples — 50% better than the average NL park. In general, in the deadball era triples had a greater impact on offense than home runs. For the three deadball seasons studied, the NL seasonal average was 67 triples per team, nearly three times the average per team for home runs (23).

LIVELY BALL ERA

For the nine-year time period 1928- 1936 Park Factors were computed for six batting cate­gories based on the batting data for the Pirates and their opponents in games at Forbes Field vs. batting data for the Pirates games in all other NL parks. The resulting Park Factors are as follows:

Table 4. FORBES FIELD PARK FACTORS 1928-36

*All categories are rate data; (e.g., 2B are 2B per AB)

In this era of the lively ball Forbes Field ranked sec­ond in batting average, on-base percentage, and again first in triples. Ranking first in triples was no surprise. What was more interesting is how a spacious park like Forbes Field ranked second in batting average, and on-base percentage. Had other NL parks been modi­fied to make them larger, and thus Forbes Field became relatively smaller? The answer is no. The trend in the other NL parks in the 1920s and 1930s involved closer fences and smaller dimensions. In par­ticular, Braves Field in 1928 was greatly reduced in size, and Redland Field in Cincinnati was downsized in 1927 by moving home plate 20 feet toward center field. In fact, despite Forbes Field being slightly small­ er after 1925 (when right field was reduced by the extension of the grandstand), the relative size of Forbes Field actually increased from the deadball era to the 1930s. Based on the data shown above in Table 1, Forbes Field was 3.4% larger than the NL average park in 1920; by 1930-35 it was 4.4% larger than the NL average.

FORBES FIELD: LEFT-HANDED VS. RIGHT-HANDED BATTERS

Between 1925 and 1947 Forbes Field was a clearly asymmetrical park as the left field distance was 365 while right field was 300 ft. However, overall the aver­age right field distance was only 3% less than the aver­age left field distance. Did this 3% difference provide an advantage to left-handed batters? Pittsburgh team batting data for left-handed (LH) and right-handed (RH) batters are now available for 1927-37 and 1940-42. A comparison was made between the home and road batting data for both LH and RH batters.6 A sample (the 1929 season) of the data is shown:

LEFT-HANDED BATTERS

RIGHT-HANDED BATTERS

One inherent problem in comparing LH and RH bat­ters’ performances is that LH batters are generally better hitters — LH batters hit better than RH batters at home and on the road. The H/R ratio for LH and for RH was used to measure how LH and RH batters performed relative to their performance at other NL parks. The comparison for the years 1927-37 and 1940-42 was based on the three categories of batting average, on-base percentage and slugging percentage and is shown below:

Table 5. FORBES FIELD LH/RH BATTING 1927-42 HOME/ROAD (H/R) RATIOS

The above data clearly show that LH batters had no advantage at Forbes Field — relative to other NL parks in any of the three offensive categories. The average H/R ratio differential (RH-LH) was 2.9 points. However, there is a catch. The average NL ballpark in this time period favored LH batters. Available data show the average NL park (1928-36) had a RF average distance some 7% less than the average LF distance. Thus RH Pittsburgh batters could be expected to have a larger disadvantage in road games than at home. As a result, the RH batters should hit relatively better (measured by the H/R ratio) at home when compared to LH.

The data conforms to this expectation — the differential between RH and LH batters (2.9 points of H/R ratio) is about the same as the relative LF/RF average distance relationship between the average NL ballpark and Forbes Field (107% to 103%). The con­clusion is that Forbes Field slightly favored LH bat­ters, but to a lesser degree than the average NL park in this time period.

RON SELTER is an economist who lives in El Segundo, CA. A member of SABR since 1989, he has done research on the minor leagues and on ballparks.

SOURCES

Lowry, Philip J. Green Cathedrals, rev ed. Reading MA; Addison-Wesley, 1986: 218.

Enders, Eric. Ballparks Then And Now. San Diego, CA: Thunder Bay Press, 2002: 128.

Ritter, Lawrence S. Lost Ballparks. New York, NY: Penguin, 1992: 65.

Total Baseball 4th ed. Thorn, John and Pete Palmer, eds. New York, NY: Penguin, 1995: 2,245-46.

This well-confirmed fact is all the more surprising when it is remembered that a pitcher is supported by eight other fielders, whose only jobs are to convert as many batted balls as possible into outs while minimizing advancement of any baserunners. Surely there are differences in fielding skill, even though it has proven very difficult to measure these differences and to assess their values to their teams. For example, from its very first recording date during 1981 spring training, STATS has emphasized trying to directly and systematically gather observational data that would allow them to “rate fielders.” But the Zone Ratings that have resulted are little more convincing than Range Factors.

Could it be that the small differences that do exist in “batting average per batted ball in play” (BABIP from now on, as suggested to me by Rob Neyer), among pitchers and among teams, are more strongly affected by the fielders’ skills than by the pitchers’ skill? This research report describes four studies to address this question. In summary, three of the four results obtained agree in strongly suggesting, “Yes. Fielders collectively seem to have a much greater effect on BABIP than do the pitchers”, while the fourth result is not inconsistent with this statement.

Many of the following studies share a methodologi­cal point of view. Effects are real if they tend to correct­ly predict future effects. Effects that are not persistent are the results of random chance, or luck — in this case, the at-’em screamers or wind-blown bloopers, which actually seldom even out in 162 games. To decide whether or not an effect is predictive, we may ask whether an effect that shows up in a particular year, say, 1997, is observed again in the next year, 1998. And we look at all the examples we can find, for the small effects that haven’t been established in 162 games may become significant over a decade of major league play. In baseball analysis, this general “persistency” approach seems to have first been applied to “clutch hitting” in the early 1970s, when only two seasons of relevant data existed.

Of course, this point of view is also that of most sci­entists and statisticians in addressing many practical questions, such as “Is this new drug better than that old one?” A widely used yardstick when statisticians compare two sets of numbers (such as 1997 vs. 1998) is r, the Pearson correlation coefficient, which varies from 0.0 (no relationship between these sets) to 1.0 (there is an exact relationship) and has a sign that will be either positive (the numbers tend to vary in the same way) or negative (the relationship is consistent but backward-for example, the relation between ERA and WHIP among pitchers). It is also useful to square r (r X r or r²), because the resulting r² expresses the proportion of the differences among one set of numbers that can be predicted by knowing the other set.

A second underlying point of view here, conceptual­ly the same as par runs in Total Baseball, is a focus on team or player performance above or below the league average. As Pete Palmer was the first to stress, teams win or lose games not, say, because their team batting average is .270, but because their team batting aver­age is better or worse than the other teams’ batting averages. Here we will be considering only the numBer of hits yielded, above or below the “expected” or league average value. Expressed as a formula, for a pitcher- or team-season, this value is calculated as:

Hits Prevented =

Lg. BABIP x (3 x IP – K + H – HR) + HR – H

where Lg. BABIP =

(Lg.H – Lg.HR) (3 x Lg.IP – Lg.K + Lg.H – Lg.HR)

Hits Prevented will be positive whenever the defense is more effective than average (whether because of superiority in fielding, in pitching, in home park effect, or in luck) and will be negative for weaker than average performance. The sum of Hits Prevented
over all the pitchers or teams in a league will be zero. (This formula differs a bit from McCracken’s, but not in any way that affects the conclusions.)

Finally, the scope of these studies was the 11 seasons from 1991 to 2001, including the strike season of 1994. These seasons provided 10 consecutive-season comparisons.

To begin with, the question of whether the pitchers themselves have any effect on BABIP was reexamined. There were 945 instances in which an individual pitcher worked a total of 200 innings in consecutive seasons, all for the same club (the 945 were identified by hand, almost certainly yielding an undercount, but an unbiased one). The r of Hits Prevented over these 945 paired pitcher seasons is .162, so pitchers do have a statistically significant effect on BABIP. However as a practical matter that effect is very small. Squaring r yields the predictability of Hits Prevented in year 2, given the result in year 1, as a value of .026 or 2.6%.

RESULT 1

Hits Prevented can be compared for consec­utive team-seasons as well as for consecutive individ­ual pitcher seasons. There are exactly 308 such com­parisons for these seven consecutive seasons. The r over these 308 paired team-seasons is .369, consider­ably higher than pitcher-seasons, especially when r is squared to yield a 13.6% predictability. So the persist­ence of Hits Prevented from one season to the next is about five times greater for teams than for individual pitchers. I have shown directly that this increased team persistence is not caused by the individual pitch­ers. And turnover in pitching staffs is rather high any­way. It seems reasonable to attribute the much higher persistence of team Hits Prevented to a less variable influence on BABIP, the skill of the fielders. 

Park effects also play an important role. For exam­ple, removing the most extreme park effect, the Rockies’ eight comparisons, yields r = .323, or a 10.5% predictability, for the remaining 299 cases. Also the consecutive team-season correlation for park effects has a relatively large r of .535 (307 cases, excluding the Astros move).

Then could the park effect account for all of the sea­son-to-season persistence of team BABIP? The STATS Major League Handbook has presented complete home/away team statistics for the last decade. So these calculations were repeated for 1992-2001 away data only, excluding 1995, which for various reasons was not available. The r for the resulting 199 away­-team BABIP persistence was .300, a 9.0% pre­dictability.

Summarizing, from the r² values for all these various correlations, there is an overall team BABIP season-to-season persistence of 13.6%. If the smaller set of away-game BABIP data, with the park-neutral persistence of 9.0%, is considered sufficiently representative, then the average home park effect on BABIP persistency becomes 4.6% (the difference). The individ­ual pitcher season-to-season persistence of BAB IP is 2.6%, an overestimation of the “pure pitching” effect since the much larger park and fielder effects that must affect individual pitcher BABIP persistence were ignored. The only other persistent entity appears to be the fielders, so they are left responsible for the remaining 6.4% (9.0% minus 2.6%) of persistence in BABIP, the largest single factor.

Perhaps the most important point to note about BABIP is that 86.4% is not persistent at all. For the most part, differences among teams in their hits yielded, per ball in play, appear to be random variations, in “lucky bounces” and “at-’em balls.” Pete Palmer reports that this conclusion is also expected on the basis of statistical theory. League BABIP rates are currently about 0.290 (in other words, the league-average bat­ter currently hits about .290 when he puts the ball in play, excluding home runs). However, the BABIP off an individual pitcher in a season will randomly vary, just as the number of heads in 100 actual coin flips will usually not be exactly 50. Pete Palmer has recent­ly calculated that the actual historical variations in BABIP for individual pitchers behave indistinguish­ably from variations in coin flips (for the same distri­butions of sample sizes). (However, just to avoid any possible confusion, year-to-year persistence is rela­tively much greater in individual batting statistics, or in walks, strikeouts, and home runs off pitchers, or in traditional fielding statistics — and again in accord with statistical theory, because for all these other sta­tistics the variations among individual players’ totals are much larger than the theoretically expected ran­ dom variations.)

DICK CRAMER is best known as founder of STATS, Inc., and creator of much of its software. He is a past VP and board member of SABR. For the last twenty years his day gig has been Chief Scientific Officer of Tripos, and currently on most Santa Fe Saturday afternoons he can be found playing Dixieland jazz at Evangelo’s.