Articles.2003-BRJ32 – Society for American Baseball Research

Harry Wright

Mon, 05 May 2003 02:31:51 +0000

The Most Important Baseball Figure of the 19th Century?

In 1999 the Society for American Baseball Research completed a poll that ranked Harry Wright as the third largest contributor to 19th-century baseball.

Though hindsight is often said to be 20/20, that is questionable in this case. In fact, the 19th-century perception of that question was quite different. In a November 1893 edition of The Sporting News, Wright was noted as the most remarkable figure in baseball.

His only competition, according to the paper, was neither Henry Chadwick nor Albert Spalding- named first and second in the SABR poll- but longtime player and manager Adrian “Cap” Anson. It is likely that 20th-century achievements and events have changed opinions over time. Chadwick, recognized as America’s original sportswriter, worked in a profession that has gained quite a bit of status in the past 100 years. Sports writing has since been applauded for its use in popularizing baseball across the country with an in-depth coverage of the game, a style originated by Chadwick. This, coupled with his effect on the changes and developments in rules, has given him credit as a founding father of the game. Though Wright failed in brief attempts at sports writing-

“Composition is out of my line,”‘ he explained – he was as knowledgeable of, and as instrumental in the changing of the rulebook as Chadwick. Contemporary sources rank them as equals in this regard.

In Spalding’s case, much of the reverence for him may have come as a result of his 1911 book America’s National Game, regarded as the first history on baseball. This, of course, is a 20th-century achievement, not a contribution to 19th-century baseball. He was also a phenomenal player and powerful but ruthless magnate who established the successful Spalding sporting goods company. Wright tried his hand at the same venture but failed. However, he himself was an acclaimed ballplayer and a powerful executive of sorts in his own right. While with the Cincinnati Red Stockings, he served as captain, center fielder, general manager, traveling secretary, and public relations department- simultaneously.

Harry Wright, if bested by those men in their areas of expertise, was not truly eclipsed. And as an all-around pioneer, he may have no match.

Though Harry Wright is not a household name today, he was a living legend for several decades in the 19th-century. Newspapers frequently referred to him as either “The Father of Baseball” or “The Father of Professional Baseball.” “You make me feel awful old when you say I am looked upon as the father of the game,” he wrote to National League President William Hulbert. “You must look farther and I am certain you will fare better. There is a gentleman in New York, Henry Chadwick Esq. who is richly deserving of the title father of the game, for the pen is mighty and he has invariably used it for the best interests of the game, as we all know.”2

Wright’s ready deference to Chadwick on the matter was graciously returned. After Wright’s death in 1895, Chadwick regarded him as the “most widely known, best respected and most popular of the exponents and representatives of professional baseball, of which he was virtually the founder.” Wright’s former employer, Col. John I. Rogers, who he was often at odds with, went so far as to note, “It has truly been said, that so identified was he with the progress and popularity of the game that its history is his biography.”

Though the complimentary attitudes of these men may have been heightened in the wake of Wright’s death, it was not uncommon to find similar ones during his baseball days. “Harry Wright is undoubtedly the best known baseball man in the country,” declared one paper in 1886.

So how did Wright achieve this status? “Uncle Harry,” as he was often called, was both a visionary and a pioneer. He created or helped implement numerous changes now integrally linked with the baseball fabric, including the doubleheader, platooning of fielders, batting practice, farm system, pitching rotation, sacrificing of outs for runs, positioning of fielders according to hitters’ tendencies, fielders backing up one another, throwing ahead of runners, relieving of the pitcher in order to upset the batter’s timing, first patented scorecard, and the modern baseball uniform including short knickers and stockings. Due to some of these creations and his way of managing, Wright is often credited as “the originator of teamwork.”

Additionally, he was instrumental in the implementation of: spring training, bunting, the hit and run, hand signals for both batters and runners, long-term contracts, and endorsements, when he lent his name to a turnstile manufacturer in the 1880s.

Of course, each of these carries a story that could be expounded upon further. For example, Wright’s development of the idea of a farm system was done quite unintentionally. During his tenure as manager of the Providence Grays, in 1883, for the first time in baseball, Wright put together a second nine for the club with the intention of developing major league talent.

The second nine, the Providence Reserves, would play on the Providence grounds when their parent team was away. Skeptics argued that this system would saturate the already lean Providence fan base and negatively impact economic concerns. But ultimately Wright was lauded for his brainchild and recognized as “the father of the reserve club’ system.” Though the idea of a farm system was not truly implemented until Branch Rickey took it on decades later, Wright’s status as the inventor of the concept is a matter of record.

Despite his heralded successes, Wright suffered his failures as well, most notably the “flat bat.” Wright developed the idea of a new flattened club in 1880 as a way of lessening the frequency of foul balls and danger to catchers while enhancing scientific batting across the league. Wright’s timing was bad, though, for there was a widespread call for offense at the time.

As a result, the National League owners initially opposed the idea, but in 1885 they admitted its usage, as an optional alternative to round bats. To his dismay, reaction to the innovation was unilaterally unenthusiastic; even George Wright, Harry’s Hall of Fame brother, condemned its chances of success. As he predicted, the idea fizzled and died out quickly.

Perhaps Wright’s most intriguing, enduring, and confusing innovation was spring training. Did he invent it? That is difficult to say. Wright did not originate the idea of traveling below the Mason-Dixon line as spring approached, but he seems to be the first to regard it with the modern perspective. Teams such as the Chicago White Stockings, New York Mutuals, and even Wright’s Cincinnati Red Stockings frequented the South for springtime baseball in the late 1860s to 1870s. But their intention was different. Though the teams were there to get out the winter rust, the true objective of their venture South was for the money, which they could not get playing ball up in the Northern climate at that point. However, Wright saw a different benefit to the “Southern trip,” as spring training was referred to in those days. “I’ll tell you, there’s nothing like it” he said in 1890. “Besides getting in good training, the men all learn each other’s play-get into each other, as it were. In this way they don’t lose the first six weeks of the regular season, as in the case with the teams which began the circuit with raw’ men. I’m satisfied that by another year all the League clubs will play a six or eight weeks’ Florida in February and March.”

In fact, other nines had begun to follow his Philadelphia club’s lead by 1890, including Chicago, New York, Brooklyn, and Philadelphia of the Players League. Wright’s Philadelphians first made the trek to Charleston, South Carolina, in 1886. (The Cleveland and Detroit nines opted for Savannah, Georgia, while Pittsburgh practiced in Nashville, Tennessee.) Wright was tempted to venture farther to Florida the next spring, but settled for Savannah. He was hesitant to travel that far a distance.

The competition in these trips was mostly against. local nines that often included professional talent such as Mike “King” Kelly, who could use the trips as much for profit as training. Practice was daily and games were played a minimum of five times per week.

Players were under no obligation -but a great deal of pressure- to attend. Wright would solicit each player to come along, and each had the option of responding with a letter indicating his willingness to go. In 1887, four Philadelphia players resisted the trip as a reaction to salary disputes. Wright tried to convince his club’s pitcher/second baseman Charley Ferguson to come South, but Ferguson held firm and the club trained without their star player.

While there, each player was constantly occupied.

At 6:00 he awakened to a saltwater bath and a vigorous rub with coarse towels. A half hour later, the team took a brisk three-mile walk along the beach until

7:00. As the sun rose, a large, full breakfast was served. Afterward, they headed to a large hall for indoor practice that Wright had procured. The players exercised by working with “Indian clubs” and dumb bells, as well as their defense on grounders and line drives. After eating lunch, the men took a walk from

3:00 to 4:00. Once supper was eaten, the players sat in their quarters playing checkers and “swapping lies” before bedtime at 10:00.

After an unsuccessful spring in Cape May, New Jersey, Wright accepted Florida as an accessible site in 1889 due to a better financial enticement. “In former years it was rather expensive [to train in Florida], but now the twelve-club Southern League will offer good guarantees to the League team, and I think the trip will be taken by most of the league teams.” Quickly Florida, Jacksonville specifically, became recognized as the “headquarters for winter baseball.” Wright, with his shrewd business sense, readily embraced the city.

“I want the people [of Jacksonville] to understand that the Philadelphians are here to identify themselves with Jacksonville. They mean to uphold the reputation and honor of the city as far as baseball is concerned. For the present, therefore, my team is practically a Jacksonville club.”9

The Southern trip quickly began drawing attention.

As Philadelphia sailed out of a New York port toward Jacksonville in 1889, a cheering assemblage, including Brooklyn club president Byrne, New York manager Jim Mutrie, star pitcher Tim Keefe, and Henry Chadwick, stood on the docks. Two years earlier, the Philadelphia Record had employed Wright to cover Southern trip exhibitions on a freelance basis for $3 a day. Wright could not hide his doubt that people would be interested in a game that essentially meant “nothing” but nevertheless predicted that “the score of each fine winning practice game will be greedily scanned by the enthusiasts here. 10

Hoping to capitalize on the success of these exhibitions, the Philadelphia management-which had been reluctant to permit Wright to take the Southern trip-set up a visit to Los Angeles in November 1887.

Wright opposed the idea from the onset. The players would be drained, he argued, and unfit to play well in

Additionally, he feared–correctly- that players would enjoy the California atmosphere so much that they would settle there and leave Philadelphia behind.

The upshot of the trips was a disaster. The players were drained, some did desert, their lackluster play was criticized heavily in the press, and Charley Ferguson left with a lame arm.

Wright’s instinct for success was evidently keen. He excelled in a wide range of areas, from all spectrums of the baseball operation. As a manager he was heralded as the “best captain that ever took a baseball organization in hand.'” As an athlete, he “gave a superior performance in any kind of physical activity,” according to Harry Wright, Jr., his third son. This included cricket-his first love-baseball, skating, track, hunting, and fishing. In 1872, Wright and his brother George were described as “the best exponents of batting as a science in the country. These players know when to strike, how to strike, and where to put the ball.”13

Wright’s rapid development as a baseball player was quite remarkable. He began as a professional cricketer with the St. George’s Dragonslayers of Hoboken, New Jersey, in 1850 at the age of 15. His father, Sam St., was already a member and one of the best cricketers in the country. Harry discovered baseball in 1858 and quickly honed his skill as a member of the New York Knickerbockers, a club that participated in the first recorded baseball game 12 years earlier. Just 12 days after his debut with the Knicks, Wright headed a New York nine in the famed Fashion Course Matches. The Matches were a three-game series stretched over the summer of 1858 between picked nines of New York and Brooklyn, perhaps best thought of as a vintage All-Star Game. At the time the series was revered for its conversion of many spectators to die-hard baseball fans, but today it is more significant for the unprecedented act of charging an admission fee. The money went not to any players since professionalism was taboo at the time- but instead for groundskeeping.

When money first did-at least openly reach the hands of a player but a few years later, the recipient was Harry Wright, when he earned $29.65 for a benefit game to honor his family.

Wright’s name is perhaps the one most deservedly linked to professionalism. He was, after all, the manager and figurehead of the first openly all-profession-al baseball club, the 1869 Cincinnati Red Stockings.

Though Wright and the Cincinnati’s were initially condemned in the newspapers for their transition, by the end of their year-and-a-half-long undefeated streak, professional nines had sprung up all over the country.

In that span of time, the Red Stockings traveled from coast to coast, first led by Wright to face all the main competition in the Northeast before taking the revolutionary step of venturing out to California for a Western tour.

Historians note that Wright’s leadership of the professional movement lent a good name to its cause that, if lacking, might have jeopardized, or delayed its existence. A sense of distrust had overtaken the perception of money and baseball working alongside, in light. of frequent scandals and player corruption. Wright’s scrupulous character and reputation helped spur professionalism as an acceptable element of baseball. For the first time it was disassociated from hoodlums and crooks, and instead represented by a man as respect ed as any amateur involved with the game. Wright was far from the archetypal money-hungry professional.

He had no tolerance for gambling; in fact, Wright’s idea of a bet was to “name as a ‘wager’ the pride and superiority in the manly exhibition of our National Game. * In 1882, he upped the ante to a leather medal from Mutrie, hardly incriminating evidence.

Wright was a man of temperate habits who did not swear, smoke, or drink. In fact, he went so far as to station a police officer in the ballpark while with Philadelphia to put a stop to smoking and insults.

Nevertheless, peers admired him for his manner of acting morally without condescension.

Wright was also renowned for his honesty, which he carried onto the ball field even when detrimental to his team’s cause. In an 1868 game between Cincinnati and the Unions of Morrisania, the umpire made an erroneous decision to favor the hometown Red Stockings. Wright knew the call was an effort to appease the crowd, and so he stepped onto the field and overruled the umpire, in what proved to be a Cincinnati loss.

Years later, with Philadelphia, outfielder Ed Andrews took a 20-foot shortcut inside third base en route to a run. To most onlookers, getting this by the umpire-there was only one on the field in those days-was a sign of cleverness. Wright did not have that reaction. When Andrews returned to the bench, his manager was pale. “Ed, he said, staring intently into Andrews’ eyes, “don’t ever let me see you do that again. I don’t want any games won that way. 15

Trust for Wright was so strong that he occasionally umpired National League games–while managing other league teams. As The Sporting News put it,

“There was no figure in baseball more creditable to the game than dear old Harry.” 16

In 1896, the Reach Guide wrote, “Every magnate in the country is indebted to [Harry Wright] for the establishment of baseball as a business, and every patron for fulfilling him with a systematic recreation.

Every player is indebted to him for inaugurating an occupation in which he gains a livelihood, and the country at large for adding one more industry . . . to furnish employment. 17

Wright’s contributions to 19th-century baseball included both specific and general breakthroughs that have been vital to the development of baseball and to its establishment as the national pastime. His achievements as a player, manager, and visionary can still be seen in the game today. Was Harry Wright the most important baseball figure of the 19th century?

“An opinion settles nothing unless the truth of the assertion is either self-evident or demonstrated,” he once said.

“Have I put this so you can understand me? and if so, how does it strike you? 18

NOTES

1 The Chadwick Scrapbooks

2 December 29, 1874, letter to William Hulbert

3 The Chadwick Diaries

4 Ibid.

5 The Chadrick Scrapbooks

6 The Sporting Life, December 12, 1883

7 The Chadwick Scrapbooks

8 The Sporting News, January 13, 1893

9 The Chadrick Scrapbooks

10 Voight, p. 194

11 The Chadwick Scrapbooks

12 The Sporting Heritage, March/April 1987

13 The Chadrick Scrapbooks

14 October 12, 1878, letter to Robert Morrow

15Ryczek, p. 178

16 The Sporting News, October 12, 1895

17 The Chadwick Scrapbooks

18 March 26, 1875, letter to the New York Clipper

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Ryczek, William J. When Johnny Came Sliding Home. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 1998.

Voight, David Quentin. American Baseball: From Gentleman’s Sport to the Commissioner’s System.

Norman, OK: Univ. of Oklahoma Press, 1966.

The Chadwick Diaries

The Chadwick Scrapbooks

The Harry Wright Correspondence

The Sporting Heritage

The Sporting Life

The Sporting News

Coincidences: Unique Line Scores

Wed, 09 Apr 2003 23:29:47 +0000

On August 8, 1979, the visiting Milwaukee Brewers defeated the hometown Baltimore Orioles 8-4. The visitors scored a run in the top of the first inning, but the home team came back with three runs in the bottom half. Slowly, with a run in the fourth and another in the seventh, the visitors fought back to tie the game. Each team scored once in the eighth, but the visitors broke it open with four runs in the ninth to take the victory. The line score was:

A good game, close until the ninth, but remarkable.

There are 6,370,650 different line scores that result in an 8-4 nine-inning win by the visiting team such as this one. An earlier article, “Let Me Count the Ways,” (BRJ, No. 30, 2001) discussed the number of different line scores that could result in a game where each team scores nine runs or less. A small table summarized the number of “ways” for a team to score a given number of runs in nine innings (that is, for that number of runs to be distributed among the nine innings). Here is an expanded version:

In this article, “nine innings” means a game which featured between 51 and 54 outs; this includes games which go to the bottom of the ninth where either the home team is ahead (and they do not bat) or where they score the winning run with one or two outs.

Using the 8-4 game above as an illustration, there are 12,870 ways for the visitors to score eight runs and 495 ways for the home team to score four, so there are 12,870 X 495 = 6,370,650 ways to get an 8-4 visiting team victory (in nine innings): over six million ways! See the earlier article for more details.

This number not only exceeds the number of games ending in an 8-4 road win but also far exceeds the number of games in major league history. Such results led the authors to hypothesize that games in which nine or more runs have been scored may have line scores unique in the history of major league baseball: that is, line scores in such relatively high-scoring games have never been duplicated.

In order to determine the probability that a line score is unique, more information is needed: the actual number of games played that resulted in the given score. For instance, how many nine-inning 8-4 games that resulted in visiting team victories have actually been played?

To address this issue, an analysis was conducted using a data set downloaded from Retrosheet; this online resource contains line scores from all major league games for the period 1978 to 2000 (inclusive). A number of analytic procedures, mainly scripts to be run in a Unix environment, were written. Their pur pose was to determine, within the data set:

The number of games with a given final score
The probabilities for matching (duplicate) line scores for each given final score
The number of matching line scores for each given final score

One focus, in particular, was to uncover matching line scores from games with high run totals (especially nine or more runs), where such matches might not be expected to occur. A match which is relatively unlikely to occur (but does) will be called a “coincidence.”

To understand how to calculate the probability of a coincidence, consider an application of a mathematical concept often called the ”birthday paradox.” Suppose there are 25 people in a room (a party, classroom, etc.). What is the probability that at least two of them share the same birthday (month and day)? It’s easier to first calculate the probability that no one shares a birthday. Choose someone and note the birthday. Then randomly choose another person. The probability that the second person has a different birthday is 364/365 (we’ll ignore leap days for simplicity). The probability that a third person has a birthday different from the other two is 363/365. And so on. Thus, the probability that all 25 people have different birthdays is given by the product:

which is approximately p – .43; that’s the probability of no birthday matches. We subtract this figure from 1 (because a probability of I is the highest possible, and means it’s certain) to obtain the probability of at least two people in the room sharing a birthday: I – .43 = .57. In other words, there is a 57% chance that at least two people will share birthdays, a result which may seem surprising with only 25 people.

The same technique was applied to determining the probability of finding, or not finding, a coincidence in line scores for each given score. For this analysis, figures were tabulated separately for visitor wins and home wins. Only games with nine or more runs are considered here. Matches on line scores occur more often for low-scoring contests. For some scores, it is certain that matches will occur. For instance, there are only nine different line scores for a 1-0 home victory, but 462 such outcomes were found in the available data set, so inevitably there are many matches.

Table 2 presents the findings for home team victories. The first two columns give the different possible outcomes, such as a 9-0 home win. The column gives the number of possible line scores with that outcome. The fourth column shows how many such scores are known, based on the computer search. The fifth column shows the probability that no duplicate line score, or coincidence, will occur; this was calculated using the birthday paradox approach and the figures from the previous two columns. Finally, the last column gives the number of actual coincidences that were found in the search.

The hypothesis presented in “Let Me Count the Ways” proved to be incorrect! There have been a handful of coincidences among games with nine runs. Note that there have been so many 5-4 home team victories (over 1,000), despite over 637,000 possible line scores with that result, the probability is less than 50% that there would be no matches. Indeed, there is one. Keep in mind that the probability of matching a particular 5-4 line score would be very small, just as the probability of someone else in a room of 25 people sharing your birthday is quite small. The probability reported in Table 2 considers any 5-4 road win line score matches, not of matching one in particular.

What is more surprising is that we find line score matches among the 8-1, 7-2, and 6-3 home victories, which we do. None of these matches was likely, although none was unlikely to the extent found in higher-scoring games.

In passing, it’s worth noting that within any of the “total runs” categories (9, 10, 11, and 12), the number of known games increases as the outcome gets closer. For example, among nine-run contests, there are 87 9-0 outcomes, but the number of occurrences increases substantially as the score distribution changes to 8-1, 7-2, 6-3, and finally 5-4. Another way of stating that result, based on the findings presented here, is that the more possible ways to reach a given score or run total, the more times it has actually occurred.

As we move to 10, 11, and 12-run home team victories, Table 2 shows that the probability of a coincidence for a given case is quite small. Nonetheless, in an 11-run game where the probability of no matches is 95.5, we find a coincidence!

In Table 3 are the corresponding figures for visiting team victories. We find two coincidences for nine total runs, both happening in 6-3 games. However, the real surprise comes further down the table, where there are matching line scores in 12-run games.

On June 3, 1988, the visiting Houston Astros defeated the hometown San Francisco Giants 8-4. The visitors scored a run in the top of the first inning, but the home team came back with three runs in the bottom half. Slowly, with a run in the fourth and another in the seventh, the visitors fought back to tie the game. Each team scored once in the eighth, but the visitors broke it open with four runs in the ninth to take the victory. The line score:

It was a good game, close until the ninth, but not really remarkable. Except for one thing: this was the exact description, the exact line score, that had occurred in the Brewers-Orioles game nine years earlier. One chance in six million: now, that’s a coincidence!

PETER UELKES got a Ph.D. in particle physics and is currently working as a business analyst for the Vodafone group. He is a SABR member since 2001. RON VISCO works in the education department at the National Baseball Hall of Fame and has been a SABR member since 1983.

Another Look at Runs Created

Wed, 09 Apr 2003 23:27:33 +0000

One of the many things that make baseball great is the ability to both objectively and subjectively compare which players are the best. These comparisons range anywhere from scholarly research1 to radio talk show discussions to barroom arguments.

In comparing players, many times researchers have developed new statistics in an attempt to find one all-encompassing number and more objectively assess the value of one player versus other players of their eras. This number can then be adjusted to league averages and for park effects to compare players of all eras. Nowadays, the number most often used in this vein is OPS (On-Base Percentage plus Slugging Average, also known as Production).

This measure is popular mainly because it is a “simple but elegant measure of batting prowess, in that the weaknesses of one-half of the formulation, On-Base Percentage, are countered by the strengths of the other, Slugging Average, and vice versa.”

Another such statistic, Runs Created (RC) was developed by Bill James, based upon the fact that the “best hitter is the hitter who creates the most runs.”3 Over the years James has introduced several more complicated versions of the RC formula, each adding more statistics not available in all eras (e.g., hit-by pitch), to more closely associate the value to runs.4

However, one of the disadvantages of developing a single number is that you lose the component numbers and traditional statistics, which are, arguably, more fun to compare. At the same time, comparing players of different eras is quite difficult using many of these component statistics, simply because many are next to impossible to adjust due to such large differences in league averages over the years.5

In his New Historical Baseball Abstract, Bill James created two algorithms for adjusting these component statistics using his RC formula. In his Willie Davis comment (pp. 740-43), James used the first algorithm for adjusting Davis’ statistics as if each of the teams he was on had scored 750 runs per year.6 In his Sam Crawford comment (pp. 795-96), James expands on the first algorithm by including a second algorithm to convert Crawford’s Deadball Era statistics as if he had started his career in 1920 instead of 1900.7 Rather than using a constant 750 runs per year, James used what ever amount the team Crawford was on in a particular year had scored 20 years later.

Using the Sean Lahman Baseball Archive Database (v. 5.0) available online at www.baseball1.com, and Microsoft Access Basic/SQL, I created a hybrid of James’s two algorithms to adjust all player statistics (1876-2002) as if their teams had scored 750 runs per year, as well as adjusting for the Deadball Era conversion, and park factors. By adjusting for each of these factors, we can then better compare players’ traditional statistics across eras and teams.

Methodology

As in James’ algorithms, all counting batting statistics rise and fall with hits. Therefore, the RC formula is adjusted as the elements relate to hits. Thus, the formula becomes:

From there, you solve the equation for H. Without going into the algebra to make the quadratic equations that result, the formula to solve for H is:

For each season prior to 1920, the program first converted the appropriate statistics using James’ 1920 algorithm. Then, for each season the program converted the RC based upon the players’ team scoring 750 runs,8 adjusting for park factors.9 The adjusted runs created (RC_ADJ) were then substituted into the hits formula above, using the old ratios (with the conversions for pre-1920, where appropriate) for all other elements in the formula. This then gives us H_ADJ.

The ratio between H_ADJ and H was then used to compute BB_ADJ, TB_ADJ, and most other counting statistics. The ratio between RCADJ and RC was then used to compute R_ADJ, and RBI_ADJ. As with James’s algorithms, games played, batting outs (AB – H) and strikeouts remained the same.

Discussion

Not surprisingly, the players with the most change were the pre-1920 players, due to the Deadball Era algorithm (especially players in the early years of baseball, who because teams of that era scored so many runs, had their statistics decrease dramatically — except home runs, of course, which due to the Deadball Era algorithm still rose greatly).

Of post-1920 players, the players most affected on the negative side were not surprisingly, players of the 1920s. On the positive side, also not surprisingly, players of the 1940s-1950s and 1960s-1970s were most affected.

The players of today were not so greatly affected (except for park effects) because, except for a few exceptions in recent years, average runs per team in the leagues have been close to 750 runs per year. In addition, players who have played for longer have had any big league-wide run-producing years offset by lower league-wide run-producing years.

For post-1920 players, the most affected negatively overall seems to be Jimmie Foxx, who moves out of the 500 home run club (Real: .325/534/1,922/1,038 OPS (note OPS calculation includes hit by pitch, but not sacrifice flies) vs. Adjusted: .3ll/496/1,717/993 OPS). Foxx has the third largest decline in OPS (-45) among players with at least 1,000 career ABs — the first two being Todd Helton (-53) and Earl Averill (-52).

The most affected positively overall seems to be Dick Allen (Real: .292/351/1,119 914 OPS vs. Adjusted: .311/387/1,305 974 OPS). The players closest to their original stats are probably Ted Williams (Real: .344/521/1,839 1116 OPS vs. Adjusted: .344/522/1,830 1117 OPS), Cal Ripken (Real: .276/431/1,695 791 OPS vs. Adjusted: .276/431/1,690 791OPS), and Sammy Sosa (Real: .278/499/1,347 897 OPS vs. Adjusted: .279/497/1,347 897 OPS).

In terms of famous records, Hank Aaron’s HR record becomes 811. Three players join the 600 home run club (Frank Robinson (627), Harmon Killebrew (614), and Reggie Jackson (600)). Willie Mays just misses the 700 home run club with 699. Pete Rose gets 4,610 hits, 362 more than Ty Cobb (4,181). Hank Aaron comes much close to Cobb than in real life with 4,044 hits. Overall, 25 players now have at least 3,000 hits. This includes Frank (3,151) and Brooks Robinson (3,091); the only players to move into the 3,000-hit plateau who are not there in real life. Two players move out of the 3,000-hit plateau: Wade Boggs (2,982), who had 3,010 hits in real life, and Cap Anson (2,637), who had 3,418 hits in real life (a difference of almost 23%). Ty Cobb still leads in career average (still at .366). Tony Gwynn moves all the way up to fourth (.350), and Rod Carew moves to sixth (.341).

(Click image to enlarge)

Table 1 shows the top 10 career leaders in various categories. Table 2 shows the leaders in various single-season categories (which are discussed below).

The top five pre-1920 players (defined for career leaders as those players starting their careers before 1910 or ending their careers before 1920), with their position in the overall leaders, are included in the career and single-season home runs list.

(Click image to enlarge)

In both of the tables, I’ve also included the rest of the real top 10 and their position on the adjusted list, if they did not appear on the adjusted list already. Triples are included in both tables because they are, without question, the most affected statistic (in terms of leaders) due to the Deadball Era algorithm.

For single-season records, no asterisk was necessary for Roger Maris, who now hits 63 home runs in 1961, five more than Babe Ruth’s 1927 total of 58. The closest to Ruth before Maris is now Ralph Kiner, who still hits 54 in 1949. Of the other players who came closest to Ruth in real life, Jimmie Foxx’s total of 58 in 1932 becomes 53, Hank Greenberg’s 58 in 1938 becomes 52, and Hack Wilson’s 56 in 1930 becomes 49. Mark McGwire still hits 70 in 1998, but the current record is now 74 by Barry Bonds instead of 73.

For RBI, Hack Wilson’s former total of 191 in 1930 is now no better than a tie for 13th with George Foster in 1977 (155). Lou Gehrig has the top two spots in RBI (169 and 168 in 1931 and 1927, respectively). Sammy Sosa is now tied for third place with Tommy Davis (161 in 2001 and 1962, respectively). Based on the Deadball Era algorithm, five players hit 40 home runs or more prior to 1920 (Babe Ruth (46 in 1919), Buck Freeman (45 in 1899), Frank Schulte (44 in 1911), Chief Wilson (42 in 1912), and Gavvy Cravath (42 in 1915).

Only four players hit .400 in a season (rounded to the nearest thousandth) a total of six times. Rogers Hornsby leads with .428 in 1924, 15 points ahead of George Sisler’s .413 in 1922. Hornsby and Sisler do it twice; Hornsby hits exactly .400 in 1921 and Sisler, in 1920, hits .401. The other players to hit .400 are Harry Heilmann (.401 in 1923), Ty Cobb (.401 in 1922 — while Cobb only hits .400 once, he hits over .390 no less than eight times), and Ted Williams (.3995) in 1957 (would Williams have considered that hitting .400?).

Williams also hit over .399 in 1941 (.3991 — Williams probably wouldn’t have been happy about that, either). In recent years, Tony Gwynn’s 1994 average becomes .397, George Brett’s average in 1980 becomes .393, and Rod Carew’s average in 1977 becomes .391. Also, Joe Torre hits .385 in 1971 and Barry Bond’s 2002 average becomes .382.

See Table 3 for a comparison of real and adjusted statistics for selected players.

FRANK CHIMKIN is Data Manager/Analyst for the Division of General Pediatrics, Columbia University. He has been a SABR member since 1993. He dedicates this article to his better half, Michele; his father, Stuart; and his late maternal grandfather, Irving Weisman.

(Click image to enlarge)

Notes

1. In the 2003-04 McFarland Baseball Books catalog alone, more than one dozen books are available which compare players and/or teams from one era to another.

2. Thorn, John, et. al., Total Baseball, 6th Edition, Total Sports, 1999, p. 2,534.

3. James, Bill, “Runs Created,” in Bill James, et. al., Bill James Presents Stats All-Time Major League Handbook, Stats, Inc., 1998, p. 7.

4. Note that, in this paper, the basic RC formula ((H+BB)x(TB) + (AB+BB)) is used for all years, regardless of the availability of data to complete the more advanced runs-created formulas.

5. For example, without going into the numbers, for many years of Babe Ruth’s career if you try to adjust his home runs to league averages and then compute them for a typical home run year in baseball history, Ruth comes out with more home runs than at-bats.

6. The algorithm is:

Games played remain the same
Batting outs (AB – H) remain the same.
The relationship between productivity as a hitter and the league average remains exactly the same.

To complete (3) find the difference between the team’s runs scored vs. 750. Multiply this index by the player’s real runs created to get the adjusted runs created. Then adjust this for park factor (which is modified based on the fact that half of the games are not played in that park). From there you enter the adjusted runs created in the hits formula (see methodology) to find the adjusted hits. Counting statistics rise and fall with hits. Productivity statistics (e.g., RBI, runs scored) rise and fall with runs created.

7. The Deadball Era algorithm includes the three elements of the first algorithm plus:

4. 67% of triples become home runs.

5. 3% of batting outs become home runs.

6. 2% of batting outs become doubles.

7. 50% of stolen bases disappear.

8. Hits are pegged at whatever level creates the appropriate level of offense (the change in runs created).

9. Everything else rises and falls with hits or total bases (as in the first algorithm).

10. Note that in order for the hits to come out right, you also must assume that 5% of batting outs are taken away from singles (in order for the batting outs to remain the same, those 5% of batting outs which have been allotted to doubles and triples must come from somewhere). James does not mention this in the text, however, so it is possible that he might have figured out some other way to account for the change in batting outs.

8. James arbitrarily chose 750 runs as what seemed to him to be a “normal context” for runs scored. However, according to my calculations since 1920 the average number of runs scored per team in both leagues is very close to 700 (699.6). I used 750 anyway to remain consistent with James. Note that for players who switched teams during the year, the runs scored for the entire year are used even though a larger or smaller proportion of the runs may have been scored during the time the player was with the team. Also, the 750 runs are based upon 162 games; so in games-shortened seasons (such as for strike, war, or pre-expansion years), players will not have their statistics altered as if a 162-game schedule was played.

9. When I attempted to check some of my results against those of James’s, the adjusted runs created were slightly off (59 for my analysis; 63 for James), thereby causing differences in the corresponding statistics. You can see these differences by checking the Adjusted Career Stats for Davis in Table 3 versus those in the James book on page 743. I believe this was due to the way James calculates park factors vs. the way the Lahman database does (I know that the Lahman database uses three-year park factors). When I plugged in the BPF for 1965 that James used for Davis (76 vs. 93 for the Lahman database) the adjusted runs created came out the same. Since 1965 was the only season that James mentions the BPF he used, it was the only season I could check.

Normalized Winning Percentage (NWP): Eddie Lopat vs. the Indians, Frank Lary vs. the Yankees

Wed, 09 Apr 2003 23:25:40 +0000

It was recently reported that Eddie Lopat, who pitched for the Chicago White Sox, the New York Yankees, and the Baltimore Orioles, compiled a phenomenal 40-13 W-L record versus the Cleveland Indians during his major league career (1944-1955).1 For the years that he was a full-time, full-season player (from 1944 through 1954), his W-L record against the Tribe was 40-12 (which yields a .769 winning percentage). How does this exceptional individual performance compare with that achieved by Lopat’s mound mates as a group?

To answer that question, one can make use of “Normalized Winning Percentage” (NWP). NWP, devised by Bill Deane in 1983, projects how a pitcher might perform on a .500 team, thus putting all hurlers, past and present, on an even plane of comparison.2

NWP is defined in Equation 1, where WAT is the pitcher’s Wins Above Team, and PD is the Pitcher’s Decisions (i.e., wins plus losses). WAT is the number of wins a pitcher garnered beyond those expected of an average pitcher for that team.3 WAT is defined in Equation 2, where P% is the pitcher’s winning percentage and T% is the team’s adjusted winning percentage (i.e., the winning percentage obtained after subtracting the pitcher’s wins and losses from the team’s overall wins and losses).

My reason for wanting to determine Lopat’s NWP versus the Cleveland Indians arose from my interest in Frank Lary’s spectacular won-lost record versus the New York Yankees.4 Lary (known as “The Yankee Killer”) twirled for the Detroit Tigers and fashioned an amazing 28-11 W-L ledger (which affords a winning percentage of .718) against the perennial pennant winners during an eight-year stretch (1955-1962).5

Based on standard winning percentages, Lopat (.769) seems to have been somewhat better versus the Indians than Lary (.718) was against the Yankees. Accordingly, I was curious how their corresponding Normalized Winning Percentages would compare.

Table 1 collects the pertinent WAT and NWP results (obtained via a Microsoft Works spreadsheet treatment) for Eddie Lopat versus the Cleveland Indians in the 1944-1954 period. Table 2 collects the pertinent WAT and NWP results (obtained via a Microsoft Works spreadsheet treatment) for Frank Lary versus the New York Yankees for the 1955-1962 period.

Inspection of Table 1 reveals that without Eddie Lopat on the mound, his teams (either the White Sox or the Yankees) were better than .500 against the Indians, .514 and .513, respectively. During Eddie’s tenure with the Pale Hose (1944-1947), which includes two World War II seasons, his NWP against the Tribe was a glowing .863. And for his full-time string with the Pinstripers, his NWP was an impressive .723. Overall, he produced a NWP of .763.

Examination of Table 2 suggests that Frank Lary’s NWP performance against the Yankees (who captured the AL pennant in seven of the eight years from 1955 through 1962) was virtually the same as Lopat’s versus the Indians. “The Yankee Killer” compiled a fantastic .761 NWP in his confrontations with the Bronx Bombers. The Tigers, on the other hand, without Lary on the hill had a dismal .411 winning percentage against the Yankees.

So, in summary, it is seen that Lopat and Lary each outperformed their collective mound mates — in an enormous way — in their respective battles against the Indians and Yankees, achieving nearly identical NWPs of .763 and .761, respectively.

As a kid, HERM KRABBENHOFT attended and scored four games that Frank Lary pitched against the Yankees (at Briggs Stadium).

Acknowledgments

Thanks to Bill Deane for his interest and helpful comments on my NWP research.

Notes

1. Spatz, Lyle.”Ed Lopat and the Cleveland Indians,” SABR Committee newsletter, p. 1 (February 2003); the material presented was based on contributions from Steve Gietschier, Pete Palmer, and Zita Carno.

2. Deane, Bill. “Normalized Winning Percentage,” The Baseball Research Journal, No. 25, pp. 42-44 (1996), and “Normalized Winning Percentage Revisited,” By the Numbers, vol. 9 (No. 2), pp.6-7 (May 1999).

3. Thorn, John, Pete Palmer, and M. Gershman, eds., Total Baseball, 7th ed., Total Sports Publishing, Kingston, NY, p. 2,501.

4. Krabbenhoft, Herm. “The Phenomenal Achievement of Frank Lary: Premier Yankee Killer,” Baseball Quarterly Reviews, vol. 1 (No. 3), pp. 65-81 (Fall 1986).

5. In an injury-plagued 1963 season, Lary was 0-2 against the Pinstripers, which gave him a career 28-13 W-L mark versus the Bronx Bombers. In the 1964 season, Lary started with the Tigers (and did not face the Yankees), but was sold to the New York Mets and then traded to the Milwaukee Braves. In 1965 (Lary’s last season in the majors), his contract was again purchased by the Mets, who later traded him to the Chicago White Sox (with whom he faced the Yankees three times, each a relief appearance, and had no decisions.

Cap’s Bats: The Baseball Bats of Captain Adrian C. Anson

Wed, 09 Apr 2003 23:23:01 +0000

Adrian C. Anson was the venerable captain of the famous Chicago White Stockings when they were the kingpins of the baseball world in the 1880s. Anson is more popularly, although slightly incorrectly, known to today’s fans as “Cap.” In his own time, Anson was identified in the press, variously, as “Ans,” “The Big Swede,” and “Baby.” It wasn’t until 1879, when he was appointed captain and manager of the Chicago Nine, that his name appeared in print prefaced by “Captain,” and sometimes “Capt.” but almost never as “Cap.” True, players of that day normally addressed the team captain as “Cap,” but that was a familiarity not usually taken by the reporters. In the last stages of his 26-year career, Anson was known as “Uncle Anson,” “Your Uncle,” “Pop,” “The Old Man,” and finally after he retired in 1897, “The Grand Old Man.” Incidentally, his wife called him “Pop.”

One of Uncle Anson’s many claims to fame is as a hitter. He was the first major league hitter to collect more than 3,000 base hits, including those he accumulated in the National Association. This was despite the fact that during his career the schedule never approached·154 games per season. Between the years 1871 to 1897, Anson participated in a low of 29 games (1871) and a high of 134 games (1889) for a grand total of 2,523. Anson played 247 games in the Association and 2,276 in the League.

Players of the 19th century indulged themselves in an abundance of superstitions. Many players named their bats, and some, notably Pete Browning, believed that each bat contained only a given number of hits. Once all the hits had been knocked out of the bat, you might as well throw it away. A hitter knew exactly when he had exhausted the quota of hits in any given bat — because the base hits just stopped coming. It was a sure sign you needed to change your bat. And that is just what many players did.

But instead of putting the now hitless bat in the trash, hitters who held such mystical beliefs, such as Browning and Anson, retired it with honor to their basements and preserved it. Anson treated his bats with awe and reverence that bordered on superstitious behavior. A bat was not just an inanimate hunk of wood. No, it was a living entity that had to be treated with respect if it was to do its intended work — lining out base hits on a regular basis.

The size and weight of bats in Anson’s time were unique to that period. Following his career as a brilliant hitter George Sisler became a very effective hitting instructor. In addition to performing this service for several major league clubs, Sisler wrote detailed instructional booklets on the art and science of hitting. In 1935 he made the following comparison of bats of that day to bats of the past:

“Have you ever seen specimens of the bats used in the early days of baseball? Veritable wagon tongues they were, not much longer than modem bats but much heavier and much thicker in the handles. The bat used by Pop Anson, whose record, as a leading batsman, almost equals that of Ty Cobb, was 36 inches long and weight 48 ounces and its handle had a circumference of 4 inches.”

John Phillips, in The Riotous 1896 Cleveland Spiders, provides this description of Anson’s bat:

“Tacks Parrott of the Browns uses the longest bat in the League. Uncle Anson, of course, uses the heaviest. Ans says it’s easier to place hits with heavy bats than with light ones. He knows what he’s talking about. His bat is made of hickory and could be broken only by a rock crusher. Nobody would ever steal it because nobody else could swing it.”

On July 9, 1884, The Sporting Life published the following report on what was reputedly a revolutionary technique in bat design and construction:

Anson’s New Bat – Something New
A Bat Which is Calculated to Flatten Batting Averages

Captain Anson in the game of the 23rd made a trial of a new style of bat just made as an experiment. The bat is made of several pieces of ash, jointed and glued together lengthwise, while in the center is inserted a rattan rod about one inch square, and composed of twelve strips of rattan firmly glued together, running from end to end of the bat. The handle is wound with linen cord. This wrapping of the handle, however, is technically a violation of the rule, which requires the bat to be made “wholly of wood,” but it is a rule which nobody will object to changing if the wound handle proves to be an improvement. The object of the glue joints and the rattan rod in the center is to make the bat less liable to break and at the same time to give it more spring. That both of these objects are accomplished there can be no doubt. The first ball hit by Anson with the new bat was a terrific liner to left field for two bases, and he used it throughout the game with great success, Captain Morrill having agreed to waive any objection to the wrapping of the handle. Heretofore bats have been made of a single stick, and the improvement adds materially to the expense of manufacture. Players who have tried it say that the ball can be driven 25% farther by the exercise of equal force than the common bat. Anson certainly made a remarkable record in the two games in which he used it. On June 23, Buffington pitcher, in three times at bat he made a single and a double; on June 24, Whitney pitcher, four times at bat, two singles, one double, and a home run. The cost of the new bat will be about $5 each.

The premium wooden bats of 1884 cost from $1.00 to $1.25 each, so the proposed cost of Anson’s new bat, five dollars, was extremely high. The matter of wrapping the handle with linen cord was but a trifle to deal with. In 1885 the rules were amended to allow the bat to be wound with twine for a distance of 18 inches from its end so that objection disappeared.

An interesting aspect of Anson’s “new” bat of 1884 is that it wasn’t really a “new” concept. Henry Chadwick, of the New York Clipper, reported on May 3, 1874, that he was shown a new type of bat at George Wright’s sporting goods store in Boston. This bat was made with a cane fitted through the whole length of the bat. The purpose of this cane was two-fold: to prevent the bat from breaking, and to impart elasticity, which drives the ball farther. It was claimed that the bat would last the entire season. The bat only weighed thirty-two ounces, extremely light for the time. It was also very expensive, costing $4.00. Wright’s bat of 1874 sounds almost identical to Anson’s bat of 1884.

Specific follow-up reports of George Wright’s bat being used in games, or subsequent use of Anson’s similar bat of 1884, have not been uncovered at the present time. The rule governing bat design in 1884 simply stated that the bat was to be made wholly of wood so that both Wright’s bat and Anson’s bat were in compliance. It wasn’t until 1940 that the rule governing bat construction was amended to specify, “The bat must be made entirely of hardwood in one piece.” Clearly, Anson’s bat met all the applicable rules of 1884.

A discussion on the use of multi-wood bat construction appeared in the Spalding Official Base Ball Guide for 1925, long after Anson’s time in baseball. The 1925 guide included an article about Jack Pickett, who had passed away in Chicago during the summer of 1922. Pickett had been the chief bat designer for the Spalding factory, and it was claimed that he had designed more baseball bats than any other man in the world.

“The heaviest bat that Pickett ever put together was one that was used by Anson, and those who recall Anson in his prime will also remember that the bat which he took to the plate with him was left severely alone by the other players. They couldn’t swing it. Anson had a core of hickory in the bat and over it was split bamboo, or occasionally ash. The bat was so heavy that players who were fast swingers with light sticks could not get Anson’s hardwood war club around in time to meet the ball.”

From this account, it is reasonable to infer that Anson used bats of laminated construction throughout his career, although not exclusively, as he used many bats of traditional design, and fashioned from a single piece of hardwood.

Pop was continually experimenting in an attempt to find the perfect piece of lumber with which to sting the ball. Legend has it that he would drive his horse drawn rig throughout the countryside, keeping a sharp eye peeled for candidate lumber that was properly seasoned. Sometimes an old fence post caught his fancy; other times he became enamored of a fallen log or a stump. Anson would then strike a bargain with the farmer on whose land he discovered the raw material for his new bat, load the lumber into his rig, haul it home, and have it converted to a war club. Over the course of his 26-year career, Anson constantly changed bats, but he never disposed of a single one. Anson “retired” his bats to his basement.

On March 24, 1906, The Sporting Life carried the following report:

In a private letter now on file in the National Baseball Library in Cooperstown, NY, dated February 20, 1957, Jack Corbett1 of the Hollywood Star Base, tells this tale of Anson’s devotion to his lumber: “Anson had over 400 bats in his cellar when he quit playing. All were oiled and dusted every day except Sunday up until 1907. While we were playing poker at Cap’s home one evening [in 1907] Mrs. Anson told me that there would be a present for me outside one of the cellar windows when I left for home. There was — one of the Cap’s bats that he had sworn he would never part with.

“I took it to the old Spalding bat factory and Jack Pickett put it in a lathe and turned off just enough to make it look fresh. When I stepped out on the clubhouse porch with it Cap was sitting in the stands at least fifty yards off. He looked at me and then the stick – he got up and roared at me – “Where did you get that bat?” I told him I had swiped it out of the cellar and after kicking that around a little he said, ”Well, now that you have it, use it and be sure you get some hits with it.”

Corbett continued with his tale of Cap’s bats:

“When we later played Callahan I let Mike Donline use it. He showed it to Callahan and Jimmy got hold of the Cap and gave him $7.00 per bat for all he had.”

This evidently was the fate of the bats Anson had stored in his cellar. The Old Man must have been hard-pressed for money in order to sell his most cherished possessions in that manner.

As Anson’s career wore on, speculation abounded each winter over when The Old Man would retire from the diamond. By 1893 Anson had achieved the ripe old age of 42, and more than half of the summers of his life had been spent in professional baseball. On February 5, The Sporting Life carried the following report:

Although Anson was forced into retirement at the end of the 1897 season, his legendary bats continued to do their work on the diamond well into the 20th century. On May 25, 1911, The Sporting News reported the current use of one of Anson’s bats:

“John Titus, the Philadelphia right fielder, is using a bat that has some history connected with it. In 1894 Captain Anson discovered a piece of timber that is considered ideal wood for a baseball bat and he proceeded to have it turned into a cudgel. Anson in his day merely had to swing it and the ball would go to the fence. It is so heavy, however, that many an ordinary player would hardly care to handle it. When Pop Anson retired from the game he retained this great stick as a treasure. At last, when the former star’s belongings went under the hammer Pat Moran purchased this bat, and when Pat was bought from the Cubs he brought it to Philadelphia. Titus coaxed and finally, Moran consented to let him have the bat. His first hit was a home run over the fence off Bob Harmon, of St. Louis. Titus has been batting consistently ever since he came into possession of Pop’s old lumber.”

John Titus played in 76 games in 1911 and posted a .284 batting average, not much over his .282 lifetime mark. However, he achieved career highs for both slugging average and home runs. How much credit for this performance was due to Pop’s old bat?

BOB SCHAEFER is retired from the aerospace industry. He is a long-time contributor to SABR publications.

Notes

1 SABR member Daniel Ginsburg relates that Jack Corbett was a lifetime baseball man. He played in the minor leagues, as well as outlaw leagues, for 14 years, mostly during the Deadball Era. Later Corbett owned teams in Atlanta, Jersey City, Syracuse, and El Paso.

Who Made the Most Triple Plays?

Wed, 09 Apr 2003 23:19:09 +0000

The Detroit Tigers take credit for having made the most triple plays.1, 2 But is this correct? Actually, it is a very complicated question, and the correct answer depends on multiple definitions and positions taken. The complex answer to this seemingly simple question depends on three further questions.

First, do triple plays made only in the 20th-century count? Should triple plays in the 19th century count? What about triple plays made in the 21st century? Second, should franchise shifts count as one team, or should each individual city be a separate team? The answer to this question significantly changes the answer to our original question.

There is no simple agreement on this. Most people consider the California Angels to be the same team as the Anaheim Angels or the Los Angeles Angels. However, what about the San Francisco Giants and the New York Giants? Are the three Braves locations (Boston, Milwaukee, and Atlanta) one team or three? What if a team merely changes its name without changing any location such as the Houston Colt .45s to the Houston Astros? Are they the same team?

Finally, if a team switched leagues, do their records in the other league count? Most baseball fans consider the Milwaukee Brewers in the National League to be the same team as the Milwaukee Brewers in the American League. However, what about the American Association teams that jumped to the National League? Should their triple plays count? Also, after the merger of the American Association and the National League following the 1891 season, should their previous statistics be combined?

Of the present American League teams, the Detroit Tigers have made the most triple plays (33). However, the Baltimore Orioles franchise can claim a grand total of 36. They made 12 as the Baltimore Orioles (1954-present), 23 when they were known as the St. Louis Browns (1902-1953), and 1 when they were the Milwaukee Brewers (1901). Note that this does not include the three TPs made in 1901 and 1902 by the Baltimore Orioles who in 1903 became the New York Highlanders/Yankees. The Minnesota Twins franchise is third with 30 triple slaughters. As the original Washington Senators (1901-1960) they made 20, and ten more since moving to Minnesota (1961-present).

Of the present National League teams, the Chicago Cubs have made the most with 40 triple plays. Eleven of these were in the 19th century and 29 from 1901 forward. The Giants with 33 triple plays in New York as the New York Giants and six as the San Francisco Giants3 have 39. Thirteen of the New York total were in the 19th century and 20 in the 20th century.

The Braves franchise has made four as the Atlanta Braves, 30 as the Boston Braves, and three as the Milwaukee Braves, for a total of 37. Sixteen of the Boston triple plays were performed in the 19th century. Of note, the Braves and the Cubs are the only two continuous franchises from the original eight-team National League of 1876. The 1876 Cincinnati, New York, St. Louis, and Philadelphia teams are unrelated to the current major league teams.

The National League’s Pittsburgh Pirates and the St. Louis Cardinals have made 35 and 36 triple plays, respectively. The Cincinnati Reds have made 29 triple plays in the National League. However, they jumped from the American Association after the 1889 season. Cincinnati made five triple plays while in the American Association (1882-1889). Thus, the continuous Reds franchise4 has made 34.

A similar argument can be made for the Pittsburgh Pirates having made two more triple plays. As a member of the American Association (1882-1886), they made a pair. After the 1886 season, they too jumped to the National League. Thus, the team can claim 37 triple plays.

The merger of the American Association and the National League after the 1891 season resulted in a twelve-team league. The St. Louis Brown Stockings, Baltimore Orioles, Washington, and Louisville teams joined the National League, while the other four American Association teams folded. These Baltimore, Washington, and Louisville teams are unrelated to present-day major league baseball teams. However, should the present-day St. Louis Cardinals get credit for six triple plays they made in the American Association?5 This would raise their total to 42.

There is also the issue of what to do about the St. Louis Terriers and the Chicago Whales of the Federal League. After the 1915 season, there was a “merger” of the Federal League and the American and National Leagues. The Terriers were merged with the St. Louis Browns, while the Chicago Cubs and Whales combined. Of note, present-day Wrigley Field was the Whales’ ballpark. Should the Chicago Cubs receive credit for the one Whales triple play and the present day Baltimore Orioles receive the two Terriers’ triple plays? This does not seem appropriate.

Giving credit for all franchise shifts, but staying in the. same league, the top teams for triple plays (excluding Federal League figures) are presented in Table 1.

The top teams — including league transfers — for triple plays are listed in Table 2.

Excluding 19th-century triple plays, the top teams for triple plays from 1901 through the present are given in Table 3.

Table 4 presents the top teams for triple plays from 1901 through 2003 without franchise shifts.

Finally, to be complete, Table 5 lists the top triple play-makers from the other four major leagues.

So, who has made the most triple plays?

It could be the Cubs with 40 (Table 1); or the Cardinals with 42 (Table 2); or the Orioles with 36 (Table 3); or the Tigers with 33 (Table 4). It depends on your point of view!

STEPHEN D. BOREN, MD, Ph.D. is a long-time contributor to SABR publications and is a practicing physician.

JAMES A. SMITH, a retired computer operator, joined SABR in 1983. Besides baseball, he has many dedicated research interests, including submarines, the Civil War, and calendars from various cultures and eras.

HERM KRABBENHOFT, who has not yet seen a ML triple play in person, is presently researching the uniform numbers worn by players on his favorite team, the Detroit Tigers.

Notes

1. “Tigers Best at Triple Plays,” RJ Gonzalez, The Baseball Research Journal (p. 76, 1972). The article states: “Since 1901 when the American and National Leagues began operating simultaneously, there have been a total of 374 triple plays in the majors, 188 in the AL and 186 in the NL. Detroit leads all teams with 30, followed by the Cards and Pirates with 26;” It is also noted that the Detroit Tigers issued a press release (February 5, 1974) in which it was stated, “The Tigers can claim the triple play championship of the major leagues. They have made more triple-killings than any other club in modern baseball history, according to Raymond J. Gonzalez, a baseball statistician from Woodside, NY, who has tracked down every triple play made since 1900 for the Society for American Baseball Research.”

2.”Tigers Hold All-Time Triple Play Lead,” The 2003 Detroit Tigers Information Guide (p. 7). The information box states: “The Tigers’ all-time total of 33 (triple plays) is more than any other team in major league history. The Pittsburgh Pirates and the St. Louis Cardinals are tied for the National League lead with 31.” The Detroit Tigers have had such a statement published in their annual media/ information guides every year since 1978 (although for the guides from 1978 through 1982 the qualifying statement “since 1900” was included).

3. It can also be argued that the Troy Trojans, who played in the National League from 1879 through 1882, were the direct precursors to the New York Giants, since four of the 1882 Troy players were regulars in the 1883 New York lineup. And since the Troy team made two triple plays, the grand total number of triple plays pulled by the Troy-New York-San Francisco conglomerate is 41.

4. The original 1876 Cincinnati team was a distinct team from the present Cincinnati one and did not make any triple plays. Similarly, there was a short-lived Cincinnati franchise in the American Association that replaced the original AA Cincinnati team; they also did not execute any triple plays.

5. The American Association St. Louis club also pulled a triple play in the 1887 World Series against the National League Detroit Wolverines. Including this post-season TP gives St. Louis franchise a grand total of 43 three-ply killings.

Career .300 Batting Averages

Wed, 09 Apr 2003 23:17:24 +0000

The magic number for a batting average is .300. When a player hits .300 or better, he has had a good season. A .299 average just doesn’t look as good. Many record books list players with a career average of .300, but they usually their lists to players with 1,000 or more hits. What about the .300 hitters with less than 1,000 hits? You would think that a player who can maintain a .300 average should be able to stick around long enough to accumulate 1,000 hits. Let us look at these in greater detail.

The following table is broken down into nine groups: from players with 900-999 hits down to players with 100-199 hits. Obviously, a player with 100 hits should not be bracketed with a player with over 900 hits.

(Click images to enlarge)

The best explanation for not sticking around is death. Three players died during their active major league careers. Austin McHenry died of a brain tumor shortly after the end of the 1922 season. Willard Hershberger, playing for the Cincinnati Reds, committed suicide in August 1940, while the Reds were making a successful run for the National League pennant. Lyman Bostock was killed in 1978 when he was accidentally shot while riding in a car. The shot was meant for one of the other passengers.

There are nine active players on the list; some of these players would go on to bang out 1,000 hits while maintaining a .300 average and thus get into the record books. Others would fall below .300 as their careers wound down. Duke Snider dropped from .300 to .295 during his last two seasons. Mickey Mantle slipped from .302 to .298 during his last season.

Six players — Ross Barnes, George Hall, Dick Higham, Cal McVey, Levi Meyerle, and Lipman Pike — played in the National League in 1876, Many historians consider this as the first major league season. All six of these players had played for five years in the National Association of 1871-75 and had played on independent clubs prior to that. Barnes had an overall average of .390 in the NA, Meyerle .365, McVey .362, and Pike .332. It can be said that the careers of these players were already on the way down. George Hall was banned from baseball after the 1877 season for throwing games.

For the 1887 season, bases on balls were counted as hits, which really inflated batting averages. Myron Allen, Bob Caruthers, Otto Schomberg, and Ed Swartwood all played in 1887, and they greatly benefited from this rule. By recalculating their career averages by taking away their hits as a result of bases on balls, the averages for all four players drop below .300 (Swartwood to .2994).

The Federal League of 1914-15 is listed in most baseball books as a major league. However, it was a notch below the other two major leagues of its time in the quality of play. Benny Kauff led the league in batting for both years of its existence with averages of .370 and .342. Benny was called the “Ty Cobb of the Federal League.” Without his Federal League numbers, Kauff’s major league average was .287. Ted Easterly and Bill Kenworthy would also slip below .300 without the benefit of their Federal League stats.

A fourth Federal Leaguer, Vin Campbell, is an interesting character. He played in the National League for several years prior to jumping to the FL. His overall average in the NL was .306. He had a good rookie year with Pittsburgh in 1910 but then quit to enter the brokerage business in St. Louis. He had a change of heart and rejoined Pittsburgh in the middle of the 1911 season. The Pirates traded him to the Boston Braves, and he had another good season in 1912. He refused to report in 1913, and it is not known how he spent that summer.

In 1914 he signed a three-year contract for $25,000 with the Indianapolis club in the Federal League. The club moved to Newark for the 1915 season, and the league folded before the 1916 campaign. As part of the peace agreement, Newark owner Harry Sinclair was allowed to sell many of his players to Organized Baseball Clubs. Campbell was sold to the St. Louis Browns in late February, but he never reported. Instead, he went into the auto business in Pittsburgh. He sued Sinclair for his 1916 salary and collected.

As all fans know, the level of play really dropped during World War II. Two players on the list played during the war. John Bolling hit .351 in 1944 after hitting .289 in 1939, his only other season in the majors. Augie Bergamo hit .286 in 1944 and .316 in 1945 for an overall average of .304 for his two major league seasons. Bob Dillinger had a very good season at Toledo (American Association) in 1942. He then spent the next three years in military service before going up to the St. Louis Browns in 1946. He surely would have garnered the 112 hits that he needed to push him over the 1,000 mark had it not been for the war. Joe Harris, with 963 hits, certainly would have reached the 1,000 level, but for the fact that he spent 1918 in military service.

There are four pitchers on the list. Three of them — Bob Caruthers, Tom Parrott, and Walter Thornton — played during the 19th century. Many pitchers in those days filled in as position players from time to time. This was the case with Caruthers, Parrot, and Thornton. However, they were getting paid to pitch, and their stay in the majors depended on how well they performed on the mound. Caruthers did stick around long enough to win 218 games. Erv Brame, the fourth pitcher, played in the 20th century and was used only as a pitcher.

Catchers do get into many more games than pitchers, but still not as many as other position players. Two catchers on the list — Willard Hershberger and Ted Easterly — have already been mentioned. Four additional catchers — John Bassler, Bubbles Hargrave, Babe Phelps, and Earl Smith — all played for at least nine years in the majors. They just didn’t get into enough games to reach the 1,000 mark.

Three all-time minor league greats — Buzz Arlett, Ike Boone, and Smead Jolley — had brief stays in the majors. Arlett had a minor league career batting aver age of .341 with 2,726 hits, 598 doubles, 432 homers, and 1,786 RBI. Boone hit .370 with 2,521 hits, 477 doubles, 128 triples, 217 homers, and 1,334 RBI. Jolley hit .366 with 3,037 hits, 636 doubles, 336 homers, and 1,593 RBI.

These players were stuck with the good-hit, no-field label. It is hard to imagine them being that bad as fielders. After all, Zeke Bonura (who was a notoriously poor fielder) lasted long enough in the majors to collect 1,000 hits. Dick Porter spent eight years with Baltimore of the International League (1921-28) before reaching the majors. During that period, Baltimore players were not subject to the major league draft and the club held back a number of good players. Other players who, for some reason, took a long time to reach the majors were Eddie Brown, John Frederick, Ben Paschal, Lance Richbourg, and Earl Webb.

Jay Kirke was an interesting and, some say, eccentric person. He played for Joe McCarthy in Louisville and Joe loved to tell funny stories about him. Kirke played in the minors for 21+ years in addition to one full season and parts of six others in the majors. An anonymous quote might explain one reason why Kirke didn’t stay longer: “He can hit, but as a fielder, he can only retrieve.”

Emmet Hendrick quit baseball to go to work on the railroad. By coincidence, his brother was the president of the railroad. Could there have been a salary increase involved?

A number of other players on the list had long and successful minor-league careers. Were they all bad fielders? Among other long-time minor league players on the list are Jim Bannon, Del Bissonette, Pat Duncan, George Fisher, Bill Keister, Bill Lamar, Cliff Lee, Jack Lelivelt, Fred Nicholson, and Babe Twombly. Was Keister a bad fielder?; the answer is yes. Bill holds the major league record for lowest fielding average for a shortstop in 100 games or more games with a mark of .861. Playing for Baltimore in 1901, he made 88 errors in 114 games.

Maurice Archdeacon is another interesting story. Ty Cobb had scouted him and reported that he would never hit in the majors. However, the White Sox paid a hefty price for him. He went up to the Sox in late 1923 and hit .401 in 22 games. Johnny Mostil beat him out of the center field job the following year but missed a number of games due to illness and injuries. This gave Archdeacon playing time, and by August 1 he was hitting .386. His career average at that point was .391, possibly the best start for any player in history. But that was his high point. He hit .185 for the balance of his major league career, and the White Sox practically gave him to Baltimore in early 1925. Archdeacon’s main asset was speed, although he was not a great base stealer. He beat out many grounders, and infielders probably would have learned how to play him.

Then there are those players who were asked the question, ”Yeah, but what have you done recently?” These players started their major league careers strongly but slumped during their last year or two and earned a one-way ticket back to the minors. Tuck Turner hit .418 in his second season in the majors. He hit .243, .291, and .199 in his last three seasons. Other players who had a poor final season were Charlie Hollocher, Sam Leslie, Dusty Miller, Ed Morgan, Fred Nicholson, Ernie Orsatti, Harlan Poole, and George Stone. Hollocher missed a great deal of time due to various illnesses. He had a reputation of being a hypochondriac and he eventually committed suicide.

Louis Sockalexis (what a great name for a slugger) is a sad case. He was a Penobscot Indian from Old Town, Maine, and he starred in baseball at Holy Cross College. With much fanfare, he went directly to the majors with Cleveland in 1897. He proceeded to hit .338 in 66 games. He soon began to drink heavily. The club put up with his problem for two more years but finally had to let him go. He died at the early age of 42.

Harry Moore was a mystery player until recently. He played a full schedule for Washington in the Union Association of 1884. Yet the record books have no biographical data on him. Two researchers have been working on him and have uncovered a great deal of information. His correct name is Henry Scott Moore and he was born around 1862 in California, probably in San Francisco, where he spent his early childhood. He started his pro career with Reading of the Interstate Association in 1883. After his stint with Washington in 1884, he played for Washington and Norfolk of the Eastern League in 1885. Other stops in the minors were at Atlanta, Topeka, Sacramento, Stockton, and San Francisco.

Cuckoo Christensen and Glass Arm Brown made the list. Is there any connection between their nicknames and the fact that they didn’t last long in the majors?

The following are interesting bits of information about players on the list:

Tuck Turner played in the great Philadelphia out field of 1894 (Turner .418, Sam Thompson .415, Ed Delahanty .404, Billy Hamilton .403).
Red Wingo, the brother of Ivy, played a career-high 130 games in the Detroit Tigers outfield of 1925 (Harry Heilmann .393, Ty Cobb .378, Wingo .370, Bob Fothergill .353).
Ross Barnes led the NL in batting in 1876, George Stone led the AL in 1906, Benny Kauff led the FL in 1914 and 1915, Bubbles Hargrave led the NL in 1926, and Dale Alexander led the AL in 1932.
Pat Duncan was one of the stars of the 1919 World Series, and Joe Harris starred in the 1925 Series.
Oscar Ray Grimes had a twin brother, Roy, who played in the majors. His son Oscar Jr. also played in the majors.
Earl Webb holds the major league record for most doubles in a season with 67, set in 1931.

There are, no doubt, stories to be told about the other players on the list. Maybe SABR members can dig up some of them.

BOB MCCONNELL lives in Wilmington, Delaware, and is a founding member of SABR. He was the first recipient of the Bob Davids Award, SABR’s highest honor.

Historical Trends in Home-Field Advantage

Wed, 09 Apr 2003 23:16:07 +0000

From 1901 to 2002, the average seasonal difference between a team’s home-winning percentage and its road-winning percentage was .082.1 But has it changed much over the last 100 years and has the change been significant? What teams have enjoyed an especially good home-field advantage?

There is a slight downward trend over the century, but quite a bit of year-to-year variance. The average home advantage in 1931 was .164 and then fell rapidly and dramatically afterward. Then there is the huge spike to .146 in 1978, the biggest advantage since 1931. A decade-by-decade summary might be a little more interesting. This is given in Table 1 which clearly shows that the home-field advantage has declined over time.2

Yet the second decade has the second lowest average. So there is a trend, but anomalies as well. Has the change been statistically significant? Yes.3 But is it significant in a baseball sense? When the average advantage is .103, it means a home-winning percentage of about .552. When the advantage is .07, it means a home-winning percentage of .535. This difference over 81 games is 1.36 wins. I leave it to each reader to decide if that is significant in a baseball sense.

The third column projects how many more games a team would win at home above an even split. For example, in the first decade, an even split would give a home team 38 wins. But with a .1042 difference between their home and road percentages (a .552 home winning percentage), they would win 42.51 games at home. Decades from the 1960s on use 81 games.

Homestands are not as long as they used to be, and teams now travel by plane. This might account for the historical trend. But notice that the difference between the 1940s and 1950s is not too great and that the 1980s was higher than the 1970s.4 The average from 1901 to 1950 was .091, and since it has been .076. This seems like a small difference.

The lowest home advantage belongs to the Baltimore Orioles, at .051.

Has a big home-field advantage been an aid? Not really. The overall winning percentage of the teams with the 25 highest single-season home advantages is .492. For the 25 worst teams it is .498. The only one of the best 25 to win a pennant was the 1987 Twins.

Despite the trend toward a lower home field advantage, 2003 saw a fairly big one. The average home field advantage was .099. There were also seven teams that had at least a .160 advantage, which is just about twice the historical average. With 23.33% of the teams being above the .160 mark, this is the highest percentage since 1986, when seven of the 26 teams were above .160. This past season was the 25th-highest percentage of teams going above .160.

CYRIL MORONG is a professor of economics at San Antonio College in San Antonio, TX. He is originally from Chicago and is a lifelong White Sox fan.

Notes

1. This is just a simple average, adding up every team’s single-season advantage and dividing by the number of team seasons. Seasons with longer schedules are not given extra weight.

2. Again, this is just a simple average. The overall home field advantage is added up for each of the 10 seasons and then is divided by 10. Seasons with more teams or games don’t get extra weight. The low figure for the 1911-20 period is not affected much by the Federal League, which had about a .084 advan tage during its two seasons.

3. Using the means test, the difference between the first decade and the last is significant, with a z-score of 3.97. Also, here is the standard deviation for all teams for each decade: 0.0914, 0.0848, 0.0769, 0.0787, 0.0857, 0.0855, 0.0831, 0.0837, 0.0773, 0.0810. This shows that the dispersion in home field advantage across teams has not changed much since 1901. The correlation between year and the average yearly h0me advantage is -.247. It has a t-value of -2.55, which is statistically significant.

4. The advantage listed for teams that changed parks in their respective decade only includes data from the park they played the most seasons in. Only one of those teams, the Indians of the 1930s, actually did not have the biggest advantage when only their most commonly used stadium was considered. The Reds would then actually be a little higher, at .1188. The following are the teams that changed parks and their home advantage for the entire decade: Philadelphia (01-10), .2021; Cleveland (31-40), .1234; Houston (61-70), .1783; Minnesota (81-90), .1438; Colorado (91-2002), .1433. For all of them, except Cleveland, they would still have the highest yearly average even if all years of the decade are used.

Hall of Fame Batteries

Wed, 09 Apr 2003 23:13:51 +0000

Mike Piazza of the New York Mets and Ivan Rodriguez of the Florida Marlins, each selected to the All-Star Game ten times, are generally acknowledged to be today’s best catchers. Both of them seem to be on the road to baseball’s Hall of Fame.

One question we might ask about Piazza and Rodriguez is: Have either of these two been fortunate enough to catch pitchers who might join them in Cooperstown? Piazza has caught Pedro Martinez, Orel Hershiser, and Tom Glavine, all of whom have reasonably good chances to get inducted; back in the early 1990s Rodriguez caught Nolan Ryan, who already has a plaque in the Hall.

So it looks like Piazza and Rodriguez might very well find themselves in familiar company should they end up joining baseball’s immortals in Cooperstown. How common is the Hall of Fame battery, though? Do the Piazza and Rodriguez cases stand out as highly unusual or relatively common?

Baseball fans can readily dip into their knowledge of baseball history to name quickly some prominent catcher/pitcher pairs: Johnny Bench and Tom Seaver (Cincinnati); Yogi Berra and Whitey Ford (New York Yankees); Mickey Cochrane and Lefty Grove (Philadelphia Athletics); Bill Dickey and Lefty Gomez (New York Yankees). Those, of course, are the easy ones. But how many other batteries of Hall of Famers can you name?

The Cooperstown inductee who caught the most fellow Hall of Famers was a 19th-century standout, Jim “Orator” O’Rourke, who caught seven of them, despite the fact that O’Rourke caught only 209 games in his career (he was primarily an outfielder, playing on the grass in 1,377 games). The Hall of Famers who pitched to O’Rourke were Pud Galvin (Buffalo), Monte Ward (Providence), Tim Keefe, Amos Rusie, Mickey Welch (all three with New York), fellow New York Giants catcher Buck Ewing (for one game in 1885), and “Iron Man” Joe McGinnity, whom O’Rourke caught in the only Giants game of 1904 in which O’Rourke appeared-when he was almost 54 years old!

Three catchers were fortunate enough to be the receivers for five Hall of Fame pitchers. One of those three was Ewing, who, like O’Rourke, also caught Keefe and Ward (while with both Troy and New York) and Rusie and Welch (New York). The fifth Hall of Famer to pitch to Ewing was John Clarkson, for only one Cleveland game in 1893 (in that game, incidentally, Ewing moved to right field after the second inning; Cy Young came in to pitch in the third inning, so Ewing just missed having caught a sixth Hall of Famer!)

Another 19th-century receiver to have caught five Hall of Famers was Mike “King” Kelly, who, like Ewing, also caught Rusie (New York) and Clarkson (Chicago and Boston). The other immortals who pitched to Kelly were Kid Nichols and “Old Hoss” Radboum (both with Boston), and, amazingly, Hall of Fame first baseman Cap Anson for one game in 1884 while both played for Chicago. The third Hall of Fame catcher to handle five Cooperstown pitchers was Bill Dickey, who caught Lefty Gomez, Burleigh Grimes, Waite Hoyt, Herb Pennock, and Red Ruffing, all the while with the Yankees.

There have been five Cooperstown catchers who caught four fellow Hall of Famers: Roger Bresnahan, Ray Schalk, Al Lopez, Ernie Lombardi, and Carlton Fisk. Bresnahan caught McGinnity (Baltimore and New York), Vic Willis (St. Louis), and the great Christy Mathewson (New York), as well as Rube Marquard for one game in the Giants’ memorable 1908 season (in which they lost the NL pennant to the Chicago Cubs on Fred Merkle’s ”boner”).

Schalk was behind the plate for White Sox teammates Red Faber, Ted Lyons, and Ed Walsh, and for Carl Hubbell for one game in 1929 when Schalk moved to the Giants for the final year of his career. Schalk just missed adding a fifth Hall of Fame pitcher to his list when he was removed from a game in 1925 before fellow Cooperstown enshrinee “Chief” Bender came in to pitch the ninth inning (it was Bender’s first and only appearance since 1917).

The Hall of Fame pitchers who pitched to Lopez were Hoyt and Dazzy Vance (when Lopez was with Brooklyn), and Bob Feller and Bob Lemon, who were Lopez’s teammates with the Cleveland Indians in 1947.

Lombardi was on the receiving end of pitches from Hubbell (New York), Vance (Brooklyn), Eppa Rixey (Cincinnati), and Warren Spahn, but in Spahn’s case, it was for only one inning in a Boston Braves game against the Dodgers, during Spahn’s rookie year in 1942.

The last Hall of Fame catcher who caught four Hall of Fame pitchers was Fisk, who had the good fortune to catch Ferguson Jenkins and Juan Marichal while with the Red Sox, and Seaver and Carlton while with the White Sox.

One of the catchers who caught three Hall of Fame pitchers was 19th-century Chicago star Anson, normally a first baseman, caught Al Spalding, John Clarkson, and Clark Griffith. Another catcher who made up the receiving half of a Hall of Fame battery for three pitchers was Wilbert Robinson, more famous as the Brooklyn Robins manager than as a turn-of-the-century catcher, but who caught Joe McGinnity (Baltimore), Cy Young (St. Louis), and young Roger Bresnahan, who, while with the Baltimore entry in the new American League of 1901, started out as a pitcher before himself moving behind the plate.

Gabby Hartnett was another Cooperstown inductee who was lucky enough to catch three immortals: Grover Cleveland Alexander, Dizzy Dean, and Burleigh Grimes, all while with the Chicago Cubs. Hartnett missed an opportunity for a fourth, Carl Hubbell when the two played for the Giants in 1941. The two caught and pitched on the same day four times in ’41, but in each case, it was in different games of a doubleheader.

Rick Ferrell caught Lefty Grove and Herb Pennock while with the Red Sox and Early Wynn when Ferrell played for the Senators. The last of the five catchers who caught a trio of Hall of Fame pitchers were Brooklyn Dodger great Roy Campanella, who caught two star pitchers before they became stars (Sandy Koufax and Don Drysdale), and one Hall of Famer who ended up in the Hall because of his managerial skills, not his pitching (Tommy Lasorda).

Two catchers caught two fellow inductees: Chicago Cubs star Frank Chance, who began his career as a catcher before moving to first base, caught Clark Griffith and Rube Waddell, and Mickey Cochrane, who caught Lefty Grove and Waite Hoyt while playing for the Philadelphia Athletics. The four remaining Hall of Fame catchers who caught other Hall of Famers are Connie Mack, much more famous as a manager than as a catcher (he caught Pud Galvin while with Pittsburgh); Jimmie Foxx, who caught Lefty Grove with both the Athletics and the Red Sox; and the two mentioned at the beginning of the article, Yogi Berra of the Yankees (who caught Whitey Ford) and Johnny Bench of the Reds (who caught Tom Seaver).

The accompanying table lists all the batteries in baseball history that featured a Hall of Farner catching pitches thrown by another Hall of Famer, even if it was only for a single inning. The list contains a total of 20 different catchers and 45 different pitchers, who combined for a total of 65 Hall of Fame batteries.

(Click image to enlarge)

If things had turned out slightly differently, there would have been a few more batteries added to the list on the following page, but instead, these pairs will have to remain classified as near-misses. The close calls of Buck Ewing-Cy Young and Ray Schalk-Chief Bender were mentioned earlier, but there were three other such near-misses in baseball history.

In the last game of the 1898 season, Hall of Fame slugger Hugh Duffy went behind the plate for a few innings in the middle of the game, but returned to the outfield before another Cooperstown inductee, Kid Nichols, came on in relief in the seventh inning.

Hall of Fame shortstop and manager Lou Boudreau took over the catching duties of the Cleveland Indians for the final two innings of a game in the Indians’ championship season of 1948, right after pitcher Bob Lemon had been lifted for a pinch-hitter in the top of the eighth inning.

The most remarkable near-miss occurred in a game in August 1940, when the “Splendid Splinter,” Ted Williams, pitched the final two innings of a game against Detroit, a game in which fellow Hall of Fame member of the 500-home run club, Jimmie Foxx, had earlier caught a few innings. A Foxx-Williams battery, now that would have been something!

JEAN-PIERRE CAILLAULT a Professor of Astronomy at the University of Georgia. He has published articles in Baseball Digest and the Baseball Research Journal and is the author of A Tale of Four Cities and the forthcoming New York Clipper Biographies: The Complete Collection.

Hall of Famers Who Never Played in the World Series

Wed, 09 Apr 2003 23:12:14 +0000

The Chicago Cubs’ latest pennant near-miss continues to deny Sammy Sosa, a certain Hall of Famer, an appearance in the World Series. Sammy may yet share the dubious distinction of fellow Cub Ernie Banks, the best-known example of a Hall of Fame player who never played in the World Series. Actually, there have been 31 Cooperstown honorees with playing time since 1903, when the modern World Series was inaugurated, who never participated in the fall classes.

Seventeen of these players had major league experience prior to 1903. The following chart lists them and the number of years they played from 1903 on:

Five players were 19th-century stars whose appearances from 1903 on were cursory. Jim O’Rourke and Dan Brouthers played for the 1904 New York Giants with the encouragement of John McGraw, O’Rourke suiting up for one game, Brouthers for two. Similarly, Sam Thompson appeared in eight games for the 1906 Detroit Tigers. Hugh Duffy and Hughie Jennings played occasionally after each had become a coach or manager, Duffy in 34 games over three seasons, and Jennings in 11 games between 1903 and 1918. Jennings did manage the 1907 to 1909 Tigers, who played in and lost three consecutive World Series.

Ed Delahanty was a regular with the 1903 Washington club, but his career was cut short by his mysterious death at Niagara Falls in the midst of the season. Kid Nichols, Jake Beckley, Jesse Burkett, and Joe Kelley played three to five seasons from 1903 on, but they were on the downside of their careers and on teams that did not win pennants.

By contrast, six players played at least half of their careers after 1903. Three, Addie Joss, Nap Lajoie, and Elmer Flick, were Cleveland teammates from 1902 to 1910. Despite their presence, the closest the club came to winning a pennant was 1908, when it finished a half-game behind the Tigers because Detroit was not required to make up a rainout.

Jack Chesbro suffered from bad timing: he jumped from the Pittsburgh Pirates to the New York Highlanders (later the Yankees) before the 1903 season, the year that the Pirates won the pennant and played in the first World Series. Then in 1904, Chesbro made the infamous wild pitch that cost the Highlanders a chance at the pennant on the last day of the season.

His teammate that day was Wee Willie Keeler, who spent seven of his eight post-1902 seasons with the Highlanders, which would not appear in a World Series until 1921. Bobby Wallace played 16 years for the St. Louis Browns and Cardinals from 1903 on. The Cards played in their first World Series in 1926, the Browns in 1944, long after Wallace had retired.

Perhaps the most agonizing near miss, however, happened to Rube Waddell. He was the ace of the 1905 Philadelphia Athletics staff, going 26-5 to lead them to the American League pennant. Unfortunately, late in the season he got into a scuffle with a teammate and hurt his arm. He did not pitch in the Series as the A’s lost to the Giants.

The Hall of Fame credentials of Joss, Lajoie, Flick, Chesbro, Waddell, and Wallace were largely compiled after the commencement of the modern World Series, and thus they represent the first wave of players whose careers were not capped by an appearance in the Fall Classic. More were to come.

Fourteen Hall of Famers played their entire careers in the modern era without appearing in the Series:

Ted Lyons and Luke Appling share with Ernie Banks the distinction of HOFers playing their entire careers with a club that never won the pennant. Lyons and Appling were also longtime teammates on the Chicago White Sox, which went 40 years between World Series appearances.

To date, the Chicago Cubs have gone 58 years since their last fall classic appearance in 1945. That lack of fortune affected not only Banks but also Fergie Jenkins and Billy Williams, longtime Cubs and teammates of Banks. Their trades to other clubs never made up for those years of futility with Chicago.

Similarly, Harry Heilmann spent 15 of his 17 years in the majors with the Detroit Tigers during a period when the club went 25 years between pennants. And Ralph Kiner spent eight seasons of his brief ten-year career with the Pittsburgh Pirates during a period when that franchise went 33 years between pennants.

By contrast, from 1929 to 1947, Rick Ferrell played for the Browns, Red Sox, and Senators. Each club won one pennant during this period, but Ferrell was never on the right team when it cashed in. George Kell played for five teams from 1943 to 1957, but the nearest he ever came to a World Series were three second-place finishes with Detroit, finishing no closer than three games out in 1950.

George Sisler came closest to the Series in 1922 when the St. Louis Browns finished one game behind the New York Yankees. Jim Bunning was a member of the 1964 Philadelphia Phillies, thought to be locks for the pennant until their late-season collapse.

With the introduction of division play in 1969, players like Rod Carew, Phil Niekro, Billy Williams, and Gaylord Perry actually made it into the post-season, but Carew was on the losing side in four League Championship Series, Niekro on two, and Williams and Perry on one apiece.

Gaylord Perry’s nearest miss, however, was not in the LCS. In his rookie season of 1962, the San Francisco Giants won the pennant and met the Yankees in the World Series. Gaylord had spent most of the season in the minors before his call-up in September. He contributed three wins to the San Francisco effort that year and played a part in helping the Giants overtake the Dodgers, with whom the Giants finished in a tie at the end of the regular season before beating them in a three-game playoff. But Perry had been called up too late to make the post-season roster! He pitched batting practice during the Series, but he was not eligible to play. Perhaps even Ernie Banks would have preferred not coming that close.

A member of SABR since 1984, BOBBY FONG is president of Butler University, Indianapolis, Indiana.

A World Series Without Hall of Famers?

The flip-side of Bobby Fong’s article is all of the World Series in which no Hall of Famer participated. The first occurrence of this came in the 1890 Series between the NL champion Brooklyn Bridegrooms and the American Association champion Louisville Colonels. The Players’ League champion of 1890, the Boston Reds, were not invited to participate in the Series; if they had, then their Hall of Fame triumvirate of Dan Brouthers, Charlie Radbourn, and King Kelly would have prevented 1890 from having this dubious distinction.

Other World Series with no Hall of Fame players are recent ones in which most players are not yet eligible for election. The Series with the lowest chance of having a participant end up in the Hall was the 1997 edition between the Marlins and Indians. The best candidates from those teams were Gary Sheffield, Manny Ramirez, Jim Thome, and Kevin Brown, none of whom is a certainty.

If we examine World Series champions only, then the first championship team not to have anyone in the Hall was the 1981 Dodgers (the 1890 WS ended in a tie, three wins apiece). The 1984 Tigers (Jack Morris?), the 1988 Dodgers (Orel Hershiser?), 1997 Marlins, the 1998 Yankees (Derek Jeter? Mariano Rivera?), and the 2002 Angels(?) are excellent candidates to join the 1981 Dodgers on this list.

Excluding the most recent Series, there have been 11 champions with only one player enshrined in Cooperstown — the winners of the very first World Series in 1884, the Providence Grays, with Radbourn as their sole representative; the 1886 St. Louis Browns (Charley Comiskey); the 1919 Reds (Edd Roush); the 1940 Reds (Ernie Lombardi); the 1943 Yankees (Bill Dickey); the 1944 Cardinals (Stan Musial); the 1979 Pirates (Willie Stargell); the 1982 Cardinals (Ozzie Smith); the 1985 Royals (George Brett); the 1986 Mets (Gary Carter); and the 1987 Twins (Kirby Puckett).

The championship team with the most Hall of Famers was the 1932 Yankees with nine (Earle Combs, Dickey, Lou Gehrig, Lefty Gomez, Tony Lazzeri, Herb Pennock, Red Ruffing, Babe Ruth, and Joe Sewell). There have been seven champions with six Hall of Famers who participated in the World Series: the 1888 and 1889 New York Giants (Roger Connor, Buck Ewing, Tim Keefe, Jim O’Rourke, John Ward, and Mickey Welch); the 1927 Yankees (Combs, Gehrig, Waite Hoyt, Lazzeri, Pennock, and Ruth), the 1928 Yankees (Combs, Leo Durocher, Gehrig, Hoyt, Lazzeri, and Ruth); the 1934 Cardinals (Dizzy Dean, Durocher, Frankie Frisch, Jesse Haines, Joe Medwick, and Dazzy Vance); and the 1936 and 1937 Yankees (Dickey, Joe DiMaggio, Gehrig, Gomez, Lazzeri, and Ruffing).

The most Hall of Fame players on a World Series losing team was seven, infamously achieved by the 1924 Giants (Frisch, Travis Jackson, George Kelly, Fred Lindstrom, Bill Terry, Hack Wilson, and Ross Youngs).

And the most Cooperstown inductees from both teams in one World Series occurred in 1932 when the Chicago Cubs added four (Kiki Cuyler, Burleigh Grimes, Gabby Hartnett, and Billy Herman) to the Yankees’ nine to make a likely never-to-be-broken record of 13.

— Jean-Pierre Caillault