Not until 1984, in Providence, was the first “convention journal” published. John Thorn and Mark Rucker discovered at the Hall of Fame a series of columns written in June-July 1928 by William Perrin, a sportswriter who was present during the 1870s and ’80s when Providence was a member of the National League. His lively writing, his meticulous research, and his recollections and anecdotes are fascinating to read even after all these years. Mark and John gathered these columns and this became SABR’s first convention publication. By 1986 in Chicago, the publication featured original articles written about ballparks, rivalries, players, and teams of that city. The convention journal was now firmly established.

I have not met anyone who has attended every convention, or at least has every convention journal. Even the SABR office has fewer than half on its shelves. So it is safe to say that no one has read all of these articles. Gathering together a complete set of journals was not easy. I want to thank John Zajc, Len Levin, Lyle Spatz, John Thorn, and Evelyn Begley who helped contribute to this full set. That was the difficult task; reading the articles was enjoyable part.

The two decades of writings represented here include essays by some of SABR’s finest researchers and authors, a number of whom have passed away since these first appeared. These include Bob Davids, Jack Kavanagh, Joe Overfield, and Gene Karst. I am pleased that their essays, as well as the others published here, will now be more widely read.

Something to note. Instead of asking members like David Smith and Norman Macht to supply anecdotal fillers for the occasional half-page blank, which we’ve done for the annual journals, we have used photographs instead. These all have a travel & baseball theme, and are set off from the photos that accompany articles.

• Read online: Click here to read articles online from Road Trips: SABR Convention Journal Articles
• Download the PDF: Click here to download a PDF e-book edition of Road Trips: SABR Convention Journal Articles
• Convention Journal Archive: Find more articles from SABR Convention Journals, 1984 to 2008
• SABR Convention History: Click here for a multimedia journey through the history of SABR’s Annual Convention

— Jim Charlton, editor
April 2004

The evolution of baseball’s playing and scoring rules was a slow and turbulent process beginning in the nineteenth century. Apart from the early establishment of such basics as four bases and their 90-foot separations, there was plenty of experimenting along the way. Nor was consistency in place when the American League broke in in 1901. At various times, the foul strike, infield fly and balk rules differed between the leagues. World Series games, as today, were played by different rules in the NL and AL parks.

The lack of uniformity infected the scoring rules even more. Lacking an authoritative code, individual scorers used their own judgment and predilections, which raises questions of the validity of comparing certain stats from one era to another. There were times and places, for example, where base runners got credit for steals even if the pitch they ran on was put in play by the batter.

Later the leagues differed over what constituted an earned run. There were no standards for assigning wins and losses to pitchers; it was up to the official scorer. The autocratic Ban Johnson sometimes overruled a scorer and changed a WP or LP days or weeks after a game.

In 1913, when the number of complete games declined sharply in the American League, Philadelphia writer William Weart complained, “When there are so many changes in the box as there have been this season, it is more than the human mind can do to figure out who has won and who has lost the game. The won and lost column is bound to lead to ceaseless arguments.”

As if there wasn’t enough chaos, NL president John Heydler once suggested that scorers add errors of judgment to the box scores. The major league meetings in February 1913 were dull. There was little news. The two leagues spent more time discussing ways to speed up the game than anything else. (Truly, nothing has changed in baseball.) Average times in 1912 had been just under two hours.

The baseball writers spent most of their meeting wrangling over the lack of uniformity among the scorers. They agitated for someone to establish standards for pitchers’ wins and losses, and railed against the varying heights of pitchers’ mounds.

But the most contentious issue was the disparate treatment of a play in which the batter hit a ground ball to an infielder, with men on base, and the fielder attempted to throw out a base runner other than the batter, and failed. Example: man on second, one out, grounder to shortstop, runner heads for third, shortstop throws to third, runner slides in safely. Some scorers gave the batter a hit; some called it a fielders choice; some scored it as a sacrifice, since it advanced the runner.

Jack Ryder of the Cincinnati Enquirer was the most outspoken advocate for crediting the batter with a hit. He spoke so earnestly on the subject that the play was quickly dubbed a “Cincinnati Base Hit.”

Fred Lieb, New York Press, supported him. William Hanna, New York Sun, led the opposition, calling the idea “ridiculous.” At least one writer declared that he would never score it as a hit unless the league ordered him to do so.

Chairman Tom Rice, Brooklyn Eagle, appointed a committee to try to straighten out and reconcile the conflicting interpretations of the play. In addition to Rice, Lieb, Hanna and Ryder, the committee included George McLinn, Philadelphia Press. The committee failed to come to an agreement. So, in the interests of uniformity—not reason—Ban Johnson decreed that the Cincinnati base hit would be the official way to score the play. The Sporting News supported the decision, asking only for a clearer definition of the rule.

It lasted for one season.

During its lifetime, the rule resulted in the rare occurrence of a batter singling into a triple play. The Athletics were at Cleveland on May 16. In the bottom of the seventh, Doc Johnston was on third,

Ray Chapman on second, and Ivy Olson at bat. Olson hit a grounder to short. Barry bobbled the ball slightly. Johnston stuck close to third, but Chapman started toward third. Johnston then started for home. Barry threw to the catcher and Johnston was caught in a rundown. The catcher, Thomas, threw to Baker, who chased Johnston and threw to the pitcher Houck, who had come over to the third base line. Houck threw back to Barry who was now covering third. Barry tagged out Johnston. Chapman had held up between second and third. Meanwhile, Olson was heading for second. Barry threw to Collins, who tagged Olson for the second out. While that was going on, Chapman had rounded third and headed for the plate. Collins threw to Baker, who was now standing on home plate. Left fielder Rube Oldring, seeing third base unguarded, raced in from his position, took the throw from Baker and tagged Chapman trying to get back to third.

The official scorer gave Olson a single, one of only three known instances of a batter singling into a triple play.

The last Cincinnati base hit occurred on a play in which Fred Merkle was embroiled in another boner, less-remembered than his fateful 1908 base running adventure. It happened in the last game of the 1913 World Series between the Giants and Athletics. In the top of the third, the A’s had Eddie Murphy on third and Rube Oldring on second with one out. Frank Baker hit a dribbler down the first base line. Merkle raced in and picked it up. Baker started toward first, then stopped. Murphy started toward home, then stopped. A bewildered Merkle held the ball. The action froze like a tableau vivant. Murphy inched back toward third, then suddenly dashed for the plate. By the time Merkle woke up and threw to McLean at home, it was too late. Murphy scored while Baker sprinted past Merkle to first base. The official scorers credited Baker with a single.

The play provoked William Hanna to comment in the Sun,

“The absurdity of the Cincinnati base hit never was more clearly illustrated than in the fifth game of the World Series . . . Under the obnoxious scoring rule, Baker received credit for a base hit, when as a matter of common sense it should have been scored as a fielders choice. The attempt to give batsmen hits under such ridiculous conditions is decidedly unfair to pitchers and the rule has been condemned by practically all the managers and scorers.”

The Sun declared the Cincinnati base hit “doomed.”

And it was.

The Cincinnati Base Hit never made it into the official scoring rules. At the time Ban Johnson decreed it, nothing in the rules could be taken as either permitting or prohibiting it.

That winter the BBWAA conducted a mail vote on several proposed rule changes. The 187 members approved all the changes except the one that would have legitimized the Cincinnati Base Hit. Instead, they approved rule 85 section 4, defining a fielder’s choice in such a way as to seal its doom.

Jack (John Budd) Taylor had already earned his salty nickname, “Brewery Jack,” when he became the property of the Cincinnati Reds before the start of the 1899 season. The Reds’ purchased Taylor from St. Louis. Taylor, only 25 years old, had already appeared in eight major league seasons, achieving 20 or more wins three times (1894-96) with the Phillies. He was released by the Phillies in a trade with St. Louis in November 1897. Unfortunately, one of his hardest working seasons, 1898 (50 games, 47 starts, 42 complete games, 397 innings and a 3.90 ERA) was wasted on one of the all-time worst teams in baseball history, the 1898 Browns. Jack led St. Louis with 15 wins, but he also headed the league with 29 losses. At the end of the season, however, he was one of baseball’s most sought after pitchers.

Cincinnati Reds’ owner John T. Brush was everything that Brewery Jack wasn’t. He was highly self-disciplined, frugal and a man focused on financial success. Brush had started as a major league magnate in one of baseball’s smallest markets (Indianapolis) and would finish in baseball’s largest, as the owner of the New York Giants. He achieved this while afflicted with a painful degenerative spinal disease. As the driving force behind the league’s salary structure of the 1890s, he also crusaded against players imbibing and crafted a “temperance clause,” in all his players’ contracts. This clause called for a $700 fine for a player who could not perform due to the affects of consuming alcohol.

In 1899 the Cincinnatis finished sixth in the 12-team NL with Taylor appearing in only 24 games. He started 18 times and finished with nine wins and 10 losses. Jack’s $2,400 salary was the maximum allowed that year, under the league owners’ agreement. After two defeats, he won his first game at the end of April.

Then, in Cincinnati, on May 28, Jack Taylor had a terrible outing in relief. The supposed reason for his poor performance was alluded to the following Thursday, a day after the Reds started play in New York.

New York, (Wednesday) May 31 — The story from Cincinnati that one of the Reds’ pitchers—undeniably Jack Taylor was referred to—had been out late Saturday night (May 27) and had indulged in the flowing bowl to the extent that he was unable to do himself justice on the rubber in Sunday’s game, has aroused the greatest indignation among Cincinnati players. It also set Captain Ewing [future Hall of Famer, Buck Ewing, then the Reds manager] about making an investigation, which came to a satisfactory result, and by which Taylor was exonerated of the charges. Miller [Reds CF Dusty Miller] and Steinfeldt [Reds 3B Harry Steinfeldt] were the principal witnesses for Taylor, and it was their testimony that Taylor was cleared of the charges. Both men told Captain Ewing that they were in front of the Gerdes Hotel [in Cincinnati] Saturday evening when Taylor and his wife came in and that was a long time before they themselves retired. They claim that they had sat up for a long time after Taylor had gone to his room and that he did not come down again. (Cincinnati Enquirer)

Meanwhile, Jack’s wife remained at their in-season hotel residence in Cincinnati. On Tuesday, May 30, before a large Decoration Day crowd at the Polo Grounds, Jack Taylor started the first game of a doubleheader. It proved to be a hotly contested outing, with Cincinnati losing as the result of a disputed call. After the game, Taylor asked manager Ewing for permission to go to Staten Island (his home community) for that evening.

Jack Taylor failed to appear at the Polo Grounds for the next two games. Then on Friday, June 2, as the Reds were losing their opener in Boston, Cincinnati fans were greeted by the following headline: “Jack Taylor Is In Very Serious Trouble. He Has Been Indefinitely Suspended By Captain Ewing.”

New York, (Wednesday) June 1 — Jack Taylor has been suspended indefinitely . . . . On Tuesday Taylor received permission . . . to spend that night at the home of his mother, with the understanding that he was to be back Wednesday . . . He failed to show up. When Captain Ewing returned to the hotel Wednesday night he found a message there from Taylor informing him that he would spend another night on Staten Island and promised to turn up today [Thursday] . . . Again he failed to materialize.

The following day, Cincinnati fans heard that Reds owner John Brush was, “waiting to see what action Taylor will take.”

Boston, (Friday) June 3 — Jack Taylor has been here and has gone. He arrived on an early morning train, and before the whistle blew for the noon hour he had started back to Staten Island . . . Taylor saw Captain Ewing about nine o’clock and was informed for the first time that he was indefinitely suspended without pay. He tried to explain to Captain Ewing that he had gone fishing off Coney Island in a small sailboat, a calm came up and he could not return to land earlier than to get there this morning. Ewing expressed the opinion that Taylor could have swam ashore in that time, and then proceeded to lay down the law to the recalcitrant pitcher . . . Taylor tried to square himself by saying that he had not been drunk during his absence, but that did not soften Ewing, and he ordered Taylor back to New York, informing him that he would notify him in due time when he would again draw salary from the club. President Brush said that the punishment of Taylor was entirely in Ewing’s hands, and that the club would stand by anything he did. (Cincinnati Enquirer)

Months later, one newspaper revealed that Jack’s two sailing companions that fateful day were none other than the daredevil, Steve Brodie, who survived a jump from the Brooklyn Bridge in 1886 and a well known and popular turn-of-the-century, bantam weight prize fighter, Patsy Haley.

For five weeks the Cincinnati press followed Jack’s suspension. Although Taylor made several promises to reform and pleaded for reinstatement, management held firm. He was not allowed to travel with the team, but was ordered instead to work out at the Brooklyn team’s Washington Park to get into shape. As the weeks passed, Taylor realized the resolution of the Reds’ management and continued to work out in earnest.

Meanwhile, Mrs. Taylor remained in Cincinnati, the loyal wife lobbying for Jack’s reinstatement:

Ever since Jack’s suspension the loving wife has been trying to have Jack restored to the good graces of the club. She has written a number of letters to President Brush asking that Jack be given another trial. Yesterday, [June 23] Mrs. Taylor received a letter from President Brush to the effect that Jack would be allowed to join the Reds when they start on their Eastern trip…on the 11th of July . . . . Mrs. Taylor was at the game yesterday. She was overjoyed at the news. She will leave for her home at Staten Island tomorrow. (Cincinnati Enquirer)

True to his word, John Brush reinstated Taylor, who pitched his first returning game July 12. Back from suspension, Jack began pitching nearly as good as he ever had in his career. He continued to do so for most of the remainder of the season. About a week after returning, however, Taylor publicly complained that the Cincinnati management had been overly punitive and that he wanted to be traded:

Jack Taylor is bent on getting away from the Cincinnati team. He realizes that the only way he can get his release is by the trading route. He said yesterday [July 23] that he intended to do such good work for the Reds from now on that he would be in demand. “I’ll pitch good ball and do my best,” said Taylor. “I have worked during my vacation and I am lighter now than I have been this season. The report about my [sic] suspension cost me is all wrong.” “In what way?” was asked. “The reports have it that I lost $500 by my suspension.” was the reply. “That isn’t a marker. It isn’t half what that lay off cost me. I am out just $1,200.” “In what way?’”was asked. “Well, I lost $100 a week for the five I laid off,” said Taylor. “Then the Cincinnati Club is holding out $700 to enforce the temperance clause. Captain Ewing tells me I will lose that also. Do you blame me for wanting to get away from Cincinnati? Twelve hundred is pretty expensive for a little fun. (Cincinnati Enquirer)

In late August, Jack was being revered on the Cincinnati sports pages. He recorded a save against the Giants, the team for which he pitched his very first game, nine seasons before:

Jack Taylor is back again in the good graces of the rooters. Jack jumped in and took Phillips’ place on short notice. He pitched in the last three innings in excellent style. His command of the ball was first class. He did not allow a batter to get him in the “hole.” Right over the center of the “pan” was his object, and he did it nicely . . . . Taylor seems to be himself again. When he is right there is no pitcher in the country that has anything on the big pitcher. On Labor Day, Taylor squared off against Cleveland in the second game of a doubleheader played before a huge crowd. Jack Taylor and the Reds won by a score of 8 to 1. The win was the big pitcher’s 120th and final career victory; (against 117 career losses). (Cincinnati Enquirer)

JACK TAYLOR’S DEATH

On Tuesday, September 12, 1899, Jack Taylor took to the rubber for his last game. It was in Washington, against the Nationals. Taylor got off to a rough start; he struggled into the fourth inning and gave up four runs (three earned) on five hits. Then suddenly, “he was pitching, as usual, and had just entered the box and was preparing to throw the ball when his right arm fell powerless to his side and the ball rolled from his fingers. A physician was called and it was learned that he strained his right side. He was taken to his hotel and was compelled to stop playing for the remainder of the season.” The following evening, “Jack Taylor was sent back to Cincinnati . . .”

By season’s end Jack Taylor returned to his home in Staten Island. He died the following February. Several accounts of his death indicated that he was still pursuing a trade, and many speculated that he was going to get one. One Cincinnati writer at the news of Jack’s death reported that he had seen Taylor at the annual meeting of the NL in New York in December [1899] and that Jack “was in excellent health” (undoubtedly, John T. Brush was there too). Another report stated that Taylor had written to Ewing only a few days before his death requesting the Reds to trade him to the New York club.

Some clues to understanding the cause of Taylor’s death may be connected to the death of his 64-year-old mother, Phoebe Ann Taylor, who resided with the ballplayer and his wife. Some evidence indicates that Jack’s mother had been ailing in mid-August. Phoebe Ann Taylor died of pneumonia on January 20, 1900, just seventeen days before her son Jack’s death. On Wednesday, February 7, 1900 Jack Taylor died at age 26 years, 8 months and 16 days. The cause of death was “Brights Disease”, (acute nephritis, kidney failure). One local Staten Island paper reported the following:

John B. Taylor, aged 27 [sic], otherwise known as “good natured” Jack for several years a prominent baseball player in the National League, and a resident of West New Brighton, died on Wednesday morning in the Smith Infirmary from a complication of diseases, after a brief illness. His mother died two weeks ago, and after that Taylor began to complain of feeling unwell, but did not think he was seriously ill. On Wednesday of last week [January 30th] he was taken worse and a physician was called in. His condition became serious and it was decided to remove him to Smith Infirmary, where an operation was performed, and death ensued in a few hours afterward. Taylor began playing ball 13 years ago with the old Corinthian team. Five years later he joined the Lebanon team in the Eastern League, and two years later he signed with the Philadelphias as a pitcher and afterwards played with the St. Louis and Cincinnati teams. Late last September he played his last game with the latter team in Washington, DC. Several weeks afterward he returned to his home to recuperate. He was expecting to sign with the Cincinnatis this year, and the day that he was removed to the hospital he was looking for his new contract. He leaves a widow, but no children. The Funeral was held yesterday afternoon at his late home. The interment was in Fairview cemetery. (Staten Islander, Feburary 10, 1900)

In Cincinnati, Reds fans read in part:

ONE Of THE REDS IS MISSING — The Death of Pitcher Jack Taylor. His End Came Suddenly and Was Unexpected . . . Poor Jack was his own worst enemy. Although nearly 30 years of age his conduct was that of a youngster just starting in his professional career. He never got over “being a boy,” and he was in his best humor when in company with a party of congenial spirits. His good fellowship and love of fun cost him dearly with the Cincinnati Club last season. Although he signed a “limit” contract with the Reds he did not get over half of $2,400 for his services. Poor Jack lived up to the requirement of his strict temperance contract fairly well until the team started on its first Eastern trip. At New York Jack fell from grace. He was a New York boy, and a return to the old atmosphere was too much for him. Jack joined a yachting party . . . missed the train and did not go with the team to Boston.. Although Taylor was on the Cincinnati Club’s reserve list, it is hardly likely he would have played here this season. In all probability he would have been found with the New York club . . . Taylor was one of the best pitchers in America when in condition and in the humor to give his club his best services . . . . For five or six years he was the crack pitcher of the Quaker City team…On account of his habits his work with the Reds last year was a big disappointment. (Cincinnati Times-Star)

On Saturday, October 15, 1892, Charles Leander Jones of Cedarville, Ohio, pitched a no-hitter for the Cincinnati Redlegs against the Pittsburghs. It was Jones’ first major league game and the first National League no-hitter for the Reds. Additionally it was the last game of the last season with a pitching distance of 50 feet. Yet this highly noteworthy event earns less than a line of print in Harry Ellard’s classic history Base Ball in Cincinnati (1907). Is it any wonder that local, oral historians took over to spin a fanciful tale about this fellow know as “Bumpus”?

The legend begins with Jones as the local, teen-aged, hero who pitched for his town team and struck out 27 batters on the rival West Jefferson team. He would later pitch for Cedarville College and also hire out his talents to other town teams for $7 or $8 a game. One version of the tale has him playing a Cincinnati semi- pro team. The tale has the under educated Bumpus, either 3rd or 4th grade, working at the local lime company stoking wood into the kilns. In the summer of 1892, the legends insists, Jones was recruited by a Wilmington, Ohio, team to pitch an exhibition game against the Reds on the 4th of July. In true Hollywood fashion he won! Here the tale takes two diverse paths. In one version, Red manager Charles Comiskey travels by train to Cedarville to take Jones out of the kilns to come to Cincinnati to pitch for the Reds. Another version has the audacious lad walking into the Reds locker room announcing himself ready to pitch in the majors.

No matter how Bumpus got to the Reds, the tale turns to historical reality, when Jones hurls his no-hitter in his first major league game, and becomes the toast of the town. He is immediately signed to a contract and tours with the Reds around the state for the rest of October.

In the Spring of 1893 his career takes an immediate slide. He is beaned in a pre-season game by Tony Mullane. Unable to regain his form, he runs up a 1-3 record in regular season games with an astronomical ERA and is released to the New York Giants. He pitches horribly in his only start and never appears in the major leagues again.

Then the legend continues to assert that in the big city, tortured by headaches from a blood clot, the country lad falls prey to the evil of drink In 1920 he is discovered destitute in the county home in Dayton, Ohio. A benefit exhibition is held for him and a small pension provided and he lives out his years in Cedarville and remains a hero to the local youth.

This fascinating tale appears in various Reds’ histories over the decades and makes an appearance every 10-15 years in the Dayton Daily News, most recently on June 29, 2003. As with every legend, some facets stir curiosity. One “red flag” is the re- ported 4th of July exhibition. The Reds would never schedule an exhibition against a team town on the 4th holiday when they could receive a decent gate with a major league opponent. (In fact on that 4th they split a doubleheader with Boston.) It is also implausible that Bumpus could come from “nowhere” and spin a major league no-hitter.

I determined to seek out the “truth” behind the legend as best I could. Lonnie Wheeler’s book, The Cincinnati Game, has a vignette concerning Bumpus which mentions he was still a hero to local school boys when he died in 1938. I began my search meeting with some of those “school boys” who by the mid 1990s had become the “old timers” but still spoke of Bumpus with great respect. Curtis Hughes had played in a town game in the 1920s and was awarded a bat from Bumpus for his efforts. The bat was treated like the Holy Grail by the remaining contingent of Bumpus admirers.

At a breakfast meeting, these gentlemen recounted the legend, with embellishments, and offered some clues where to start the search for Jones. It seems he was not the only baseball star in Cedarville in the late 1880s. A lad named Cal Morton was his catcher and the locals thought they went to Illinois together. It was hard to imagine Bumpus in college, but the first stop in the journey did begin in Monmouth, Illinois, where Morton was enrolled in college in 1890 and Jones pitched for the local team. Jones started the season with Monmouth in the Illinois-Iowa League, and was the winning pitcher on May 15. Sometime in June, Bumpus joined the Aurora team and is reported to have had a successful season. It was now clear that Bumpus did not appear from “nowhere” in September 1892 to pitch his no-hitter.

In 1891, Jones returned to the area and opened the season with Ottumwa, despite claims from Aurora that he was rightfully their property. Bumpus pitched for Ottumwa for about three weeks, with a 3-2 record. He also pitched in relief and played center field. League President Nic Young was asked to settle the dispute with Aurora and suspended Jones pending a decision which prompted a May 22 ditty in the Ottumwa Daily Democrat:

There is a young pitcher called Bumpus
Who has raised a considerable rumpus.
But Ottumwa, you know, don’t wish him go
As without him the other clubs thump us.

A few days later Young’s decision awarded Bumpus to Aurora, a team with a losing record of 3-18 when Bumpus arrived. They were poor batsmen and even worse in the field. Jones debuted on May 28 in a loss to Joliet, but won his next three games to raise the hopes of Aurora fans. Problems arose when the manager left and the team resumed their slide. The final straw come on June 17 when Jones allowed league-leading Quincy only six hits, yet lost 9-8 when his team committed 11 errors that led to nine unearned runs. The team directors disbanded the team the next day. Jones had a 3-3 record with Aurora.

Bumpus and Aurora catcher Brandenberg were signed within hours by league-leading Quincy. In his first appearance Jones struck out 14 Joliet batters but controversy continued to haunt him. Reports say he had promised Ottumwa he would return if Aurora folded. Once again, Jones’ fate was in the hands of President Young. Bumpus pitched six games for the Quincy Ravens with a 5-1 record before Young sent letters to all franchises awarding Jones to Ottumwa. Quincy hoped to ignore the decision but the Joliet team prevented Jones from pitching against them by producing a copy of Young’s letter. Jones went to Ottumwa in early August and earned a 4-3 record before his sale to Portland, Oregon of the Pacific North West League for $200. His travel across the U.S. must have been a grand adventure for the 21 year old from Cedarville.

Bumpus was immediately thrust into a pennant race as Portland chased Spokane for the league title. Jones pitched very well but had only a 5-6 record. Portland settled for second place. Lost amidst all the team-shuffling is the fact that Jones won 20 games in 1891.

In 1892 Bumpus was back in the Illinois-Iowa League with Joliet who had put together a dominating ball club. Jones was in top form and by the end of June was 15-0 with six shutouts. His fast ball was blazing (“as hard to find as a match in a dark room”) and his curve ball left batters shaking their heads. Joliet lead was so large, the league redrew the schedule, declared Joliet the first half champs, allowing all teams to start even for the last half of the season. Joliet lost their touch, played .500 ball, but Bumpus was still overpowering. When Joliet folded in early August Jones has a 24-3 record. The Joliet directors anticipated the demise of the League and sold two players to the Chicago Nationals for $1,000 and after the season’s premature end six players went to the Southern League, Bumpus among them.

As was his custom, Jones was again in an “ownership dispute.” While making arrangements to play with Atlanta, he accepted a salary advance from Montgomery. He went to Atlanta and Montgomery filed a complaint with the league office which pushed it up to the National League President who ruled in Atlanta’s favor, possibly because Jones returned the advance to Montgomery.

Jones made his debut with Atlanta in a September 1 game versus Macon. The Constitution reported, “every lover of baseball . . . is enthusiastic over the little pitcher. He is very speedy, with a good head and a hard worker.” A ninth inning Macon home run spoiled his debut. His next outing, also at Macon, came a day after a near riot at the ball park when umpire Crowell made several calls against Atlanta, and refused to umpire the next day. Macon brought in a local umpire. Bumpus was breezing along with a 3-0 lead when suddenly everything changed in the sixth inning. The Constitution reported, “Then the fun begins, Every ball Jones pitched was called a ball. Instead of retiring Macon with no runs nine were scored and Atlanta robbed of an honestly earned victory.” Late in September, Jones returned to Cedarville.

He was probably working again in the kilns when the Wilmington Clintons recruited him to pitch an October 12 exhibition with the Redlegs. Clintons pitcher David Reese started the game and gave up nine runs before Bumpus took the mound. He held the Reds hitless the last three innings and the Wilmington Democrat stated that Jones was invited by Comiskey to come to play in Cincinnati. The October 13 Cincinnati Commercial Gazette made the same claim.

Three days later Bumpus pitched his historic no-hitter against the Pittsburghs, noted in the Bumpus legend as “the best hitting team in the league.” Once again the legend overreached. Pittsburg finished ninth in 1892 with a .236 team batting average. No matter, a no-hitter will always be the highest measure of pitching excellence. Jones walked two batters in the first inning before settling down. According to the Commercial Gazette, “after the first Bumpus was all wool and a yard wide.” The only blemish was in the third inning when Bumpus walked Patsy Donovan, then made a throwing error that allowed him to score. The Commercial Gazette mentions there were only two tough plays, both line drives that center fielder Bug Holliday hauled in. Comiskey and George Smith were the batting stars in a 7-1 Reds victory.

The Reds immediately made plans for Jones on the squad in 1893. They embarked on a two week exhibition tour and Comiskey, a wise showman, put Bumpus in charge of the game in Springfield, Ohio, ten miles from Jones’ home town. Bumpus tossed a seven- hitter and won 12-0. Estimates of the crowd ranged from one to two thousand.

The 1893 season introduced the plate at 60 feet, six inches. The Redlegs opted to train in Cincinnati with exhibitions in the mid-west. On April 9 Bumpus faced St. Louis and won 12-3. The Commercial Gazette reported he pitched a “splendid game” with good speed on his “inshoots” that foiled the visitors. In his first regular season action, Jones could not loosen up and was quickly yanked. Three days later he threw a complete game against Chicago but lost 7-1. It was decided he should go home and get “the kinks out of his arm.”

When he returned he pitched poorly throughout May and June, with many days of inaction. With the Reds ahead of Louisville 14-0 on June 18, Bumpus was called in to mop up so starter Chamberlin could be rested. Despite his lackluster performance, six walks and many hits, the Reds won a lopsided 30-12 win. It was Jones’ second major league victory and his last game for Cincinnati.

In mid-July, the Giants added Bumpus to their roster. He started against Cleveland and Cy Young on July 14 with mediocre results. Jones walked ten, hit a batter, made and error on way to a 6-2 loss. He remained with the Giants through July but never saw action again. His major league career was over with two wins and four losses. And a no-hit game.

But Bumpus’ career as a baseball professional was not over. He left the New York Giants to join the Providence Grays of the Eastern League who needed pitching in their struggle to get out of the league cellar. Bumpus did not report when expected after signing his contract which may have been caused by a drinking binge following his departure from the big leagues. On August 11, he was reported to show “terrific speed” but also poor control with nine walks leading to an 8-4 loss. Three more appearances left him with a 1-2 Eastern League record and on Sept 2 the Providence paper reported Jones had jumped to Reading. But the Reading papers show no evidence of Jones taking the field.

Jones had become a baseball vagabond. He played for at least seventeen teams, several of them more than once with other teams in between. One reason may have been his reputation as a “hot weather” pitcher, a notoriously slow starter. Another may be his reputation as a player with a drinking problem. What was not under his control was the frequent demise of some teams.

From 1894 through 1899 Bumpus played in Ban Johnson’s very competitive Western League, with periods of considerable success in a league known as a hitter’s circuit. In 1894 he was with Sioux City as the number three pitcher behind Bill Hart and Bert Cunningham, both with major league experience. By mid- June Sioux City was 31-9 and Bumpus was 8-4. When traded near the end of the season to Grand Rapids, he was 13-14. In seven games with Grand Rapids he had a 3-3 record including a revenge win over Sioux City when he hit a three-run homer in a 23-2 rout.

Bumpus’ longest stay with one club was 1896-1899 with Columbus. In his first year he was again mediocre and earned a dedicated acerbic critic, Salvator of the Columbus Dispatch. His remarks included, “Bumpus had nothing but a slow ball and a wild pitch” and “two out-of town writers say Bumpus was at his best today (in a 12-8 win), if this be his best pray tell what is his worst.”

Finally the tide turned and Jones had the two best years of his professional career. In 1897 he went 17-6 with an ERA of 1.45 and became an undisputed ace in 1898 winning 27 games and losing 13. After the 1897 season, the Detroit Free Press sponsored a Cup Series between Indianapolis and Columbus, won by Indianapolis three games to two. It was reported the Columbus players received $75 each for the series. To Bumpus it meant rent for six months. Opening Day of 1898 Bumpus beat Connie Mack’s Milwaukee team with a four hitter, and in August twirled a one hitter against St. Joseph.

Ban Johnson was determined to move his Western League to major league status and changed the league name to American League in 1900. It would not happen until 1902 but the Western, now American League, was by far the strongest minor league. Bumpus moved from Columbus to Grand Rapids, and to Cleveland in 1900. He was the first player to report to the Lakeshores, trained in Cleveland in horrible weather and was named the starting pitcher for the first game. Bumpus became the winner in Cleveland’s first game in the newly named American League.

By May, however, he was released to Ft. Wayne of the Interstate League. He pitched well but in early August was released. The Sentinel reported that he and others were let go because their behavior had not been “suitable,” hinting the players were enjoying the nightlife too often. In 1901 his career ended after two starts with St. Paul and a stay in the hospital. There were reports of benefits to raise money for his hospital expenses in varied papers, but his hometown paper, the Cedarville Herald, was surprisingly silent about his plight.

Knowledge about Jones’ final 19 years is sketchy. Writer Fred Marshall of the Dayton Journal Herald wrote the story about Jones being destitute in the county home in 1920. For the remainder of his life he lived mainly in Cedarville. His death on June 25, 1938 was the result of complications from a stroke he suffered in the mid-1930s.

A poorly-educated kiln worker parlayed his baseball talents into an 11 year career, with three 20-win seasons. He played with the likes of Pete Browning, Connie Mack, John McGraw, Rube Wadell and Cy Young. And he pitched a no-hitter in his first major league game.

Since opening in April of 1995, Denver’s Coors Field has received accolades for its architectural design and downtown location. The ball park echoes the scale and materials of adjacent brick warehouses and replicates the urban accessibility found in early 20th century ballparks like Wrigley Field and Ebbets Field. Yet, Coors Field, home of the Colorado Rockies, has acquired a much less favorable reputation as a place to play baseball. In fact, it has gained national notoriety as the ultimate home run hitter’s park—a launching pad of historic proportions. Coors Field led all major league ball parks in both total home runs and home runs per at-bat during seven of its first eight seasons (James 1995- 2001; STATS Inc. 2001; Carter et al. 2002).

Nearly all observers, from noted physicists to veteran players to casual fans, attribute the dramatic home run output at Coors Field to the effect of thin air on the flight of a baseball. In theory, the ball should travel about 10% farther in Denver (elevation 5,280 feet) than it would in a ball park at sea level, an elevation-enhancement that prompted prominent sports columnist Thomas Boswell to call Coors Field “a beautiful joke” that “turns the sport into a third-rate freak show” (Boswell 1998).

These comments are hardly atypical. Nationally syndicated radio talk show host Jim Rome routinely refers to the ball park as “Coors Canaveral.” Former Philadelphia manager Jim Fregosi calls baseball at altitude “arenaball” (Armstrong 2003). Throughout the nation, Coors Field is viewed as a curious anomaly that distorts our cherished national pastime and transforms mediocre hitters into stars.

But does the ball really fly that much farther in Denver? And, is thin air really to blame for the large number of home runs hit at Coors Field? We decided to put these assumptions to the test and came up with some surprising results: fly balls simply don’t travel as far as they should in Denver. In fact, the effect of thin air on the flight of the baseball at Coors Field is overestimated, owing to the influence of prevailing weather patterns in and around Coors Field. Altitude clearly plays a role in Coors Field’s home run rate, but it is not the only factor and it is perhaps not even the most important factor. Based on our research, a re-evaluation of the ball park’s reputation is in order.

HOW FAR DO BALLS FLY IN NATIONAL LEAGUE BALL PARKS?

According to scientists Robert Adair and Peter Brancazio, a baseball hit 400 feet at sea level should travel 440 feet in Denver—10% farther.2 Of course, not all National League ball parks are situated at sea level, so comparing Coors Field to the rest of the league requires an adjustment to reflect actual elevations around the league. Compared to the elevation-adjusted average of the other National League ball parks, the ball should fly 9.3% farther in Denver.

In order to determine if these theoretical relationships hold true on the field, we analyzed fly ball distance data for 14 National League ball parks for the years 1995-1998.3 These data provide an estimate of the distance traveled by every fly ball hit in fair territory for every game played in those ball parks over those four seasons. This is a total of nearly 8,000 fly balls per ball park and over 100,000 fly balls overall, more than enough to detect any systematic enhancement of fly ball distance due to altitude.

The fly ball distance data was obtained from STATS Inc. STATS records a wide range of information for each baseball game played in the major leagues, including the distance traveled by every ball put into play. Our analysis focuses only on fly balls, as these are the type of batted ball most affected by atmosphere and weather. In every major league ball park, STATS estimates the distance that each fly ball travels by locating the final position of the ball on a chart of the field.

This method yields estimated distance, not precise distance. However, we believe that this data is reliable because a consistent method is used at each ball park, and because the sample size is more than large enough to account for any individual errors in fly ball measurement (that is, cases of over-estimation or under-estimation will cancel each other out).

While this reduction is significant, keep in mind that the boosting effect of altitude in Denver is further minimized by the generous outfield dimensions at Coors Field, the league’s most spacious ball park. Indeed, in order to come up with a measure of just how much more likely it is for home runs to occur at Coors Field due to low air density, one must take into consideration actual field dimensions around the league. We made this adjustment by calculating average fly ball distance as a percentage of average outfield dimension for 14 National League ball parks (Table 2).4

This calculation yields a measure of how far the average fly ball travels relative to the average position of the outfield fence in each ball park. As the table shows, when field dimensions are taken into account, the effective difference between Coors Field and the other National League stadiums is not even 6%—it is just 3%. Moreover, the difference between Coors Field and the stadiums in Philadelphia, Los Angeles and Atlanta is minimal, while the average fly ball actually carries closer to the outfield wall at St. Louis’ Busch Stadium than it does at Coors Field.5 Faced with these numbers, the facile assumption that elevation enhancement of fly ball distance alone is responsible for the large number of home runs in Denver vanishes into so much thin air.

This raises two important questions. First, why do baseballs not fly 9.3% farther in Denver as the laws of physics would predict? And, second, if altitude enhancement of fly ball distance is not the only factor, what else explains the impressive home run statistics at Coors Field?

COORS FIELD METEOROLOGY: SOMETHING IN THE WIND

To answer the first question, we explored the possibility that shorter than expected fly ball distances at Coors Field could be explained by baseball factors alone. After all, no two at-bats are alike, and the distance that any batted ball travels is the result of a complicated and unique set of circumstances having to do with the particular pitcher and batter involved. It depends, for instance, on the pitcher’s skill level and orientation (left or right handed), the type and speed of pitch thrown, the batter’s orientation, the batter’s hand-eye coordination, and so forth. For these reasons, we would expect fly ball distances to vary somewhat from ball park to ball park over the course of several seasons. To determine the influence of this routine, baseball-driven variation in fly ball distance, we analyzed average fly ball distances for just those National League stadiums located at sea level, thus eliminating the elevation factor. We found a standard deviation of plus or minus 6 feet in fly ball distance for this set of ball parks over the four- year study period, which is far short of the 18.3 foot difference between average fly ball Coors Field distance and average fly ball distance at the other National League parks. According to our statistical analysis (a single tailed student’s t-test) this means that the lower than expected difference between Coors Field and the other National League ball parks does not derive from baseball variables alone (at the 90% confidence level).

Next, we turned to an explanation based in the ball park’s geographic situation, particularly its weather. We set up two meteorological stations inside Coors Field for the duration of the 1997 baseball season.6 These stations were constructed atop concession stands along the rear concourse of the ballpark. One station was located down the left field line, while the other was in straight away center field just beyond and above the bullpens (Figure 1).

Measurements taken included temperature, relative humidity, barometric pressure, and wind as recorded by equipment that provides three-dimensional modeling of air flow. Measurements were taken continuously during game time and averaged every 15 minutes. For each game for which weather data was collected, averages of temperature, relative humidity, barometric pressure and wind were determined. This weather data was then related to average fly ball distance data for the same game.

There have been several previous attempts to link weather and baseball (Kingsley 1980; Skeeter 1988; Kraft and Skeeter 1995). These studies did not show any significant relationship between weather variables and fly ball distance. The results of our meteorological analysis indicate that of the measured variables, wind—especially the east-west vector—is the only statistically significant weather variable that is correlated with fly ball distance in Coors Field. In fact, almost 20% of the variation in fly ball distance at Coors Field can be attributed to differences in winds along the east-west vector.7 Average fly ball distances decreased with easterly winds (approximately 290 feet with easterly winds versus over 303 feet with a western component).8 Not surprisingly, easterly winds inside Coors Field were twice as strong as westerly winds—blowing at 12 versus 6 miles per hour.

A look at the regional wind pattern shows that easterly winds do indeed predominate in the vicinity of Coors Field daily from 12:00 p.m. to 10:00 p.m. (the time period in which almost all Rockies games are played) throughout the baseball season (April through September). These seasonal winds result from the daily upslope and downslope flow of air along the Colorado Front Range (Toth and Johnson 1985). The heating of the east-facing foothills in the morning hours causes air to flow up the South Platte River valley in the late morning through the evening hours. This flow reaches a peak in downtown Denver at around 4:00 p.m. Thereafter, winds weaken and eventually shift direction down the valley, becoming westerly around Coors Field between 10:00 p.m. and midnight. This downslope pattern persists until the process reverses itself the following morning (Figure 2).9

Certainly, westerly winds do occur, as we found during our data collection inside Coors Field. But these westerly winds are the exception to the rule, occurring due to local thunderstorms or the passage of frontal systems. Thus, westerly winds seem to be relatively brief events followed by a return to the “normal” upslope-downslope pattern.

Our assessment is that these daily easterly winds suppress fly ball distances at Coors Field.10 Easterly winds flow up the South Platte River valley and enter the vicinity of the ball park from the northeast. Within Coors Field, northeasterly winds blow from center field toward home plate into the face of the batter and into the path of batted balls hit to all parts of the outfield (Figures 3 and 4).

The expected advantage of playing at mile-high elevation (as far as home runs are concerned) is decreased substantially under such conditions. However, when the winds are out of the west, the full advantage of altitude is realized, and then some. Thus, the effect of the wind is variable; during some games, the enhancement of altitude on fly ball distance will be realized and in other games it will be suppressed. However, it is our conclusion that over the course of a season—or several seasons—easterly winds act to minimize the effects of low air density and thus account for the shorter than expected fly ball distances at Coors Field.

THE COORS FIELD “EFFECT”

Now let’s turn to the second question: if not just thin air, then what else explains the impressive home run statistics at Coors Field? After all, during the 1995 through 2002 seasons, Coors Field witnessed a rate of .044 home runs per at-bat, while the combined average of the other National League parks was just .029 home runs per at-bat. In other words, home runs occur at Coors Field at a rate that is 52% greater than at the other ball parks—far more than would be expected even if the mile high atmospheric enhancement was realized to its fullest (James 1995-2000, STATS Inc. 2001, Carter et al. 2002). We believe that the answer to the question has to do with two factors: first, the personnel make-up of the Colorado Rockies ball club in terms of both hitters and pitchers; and, second, the general problems of pitching at altitude.

During the first several seasons played at Coors Field, the Rockies team was stacked with notable power hitters. Simply put, they were a team designed to produce large numbers of home runs. However, over the past several years, these “Blake Street Bombers” were traded or allowed to leave via free agency as team management shifted focus from home run hitters to high- average hitters with less power. This personnel shift is verified in the record of Coors Field hitting statistics. Since 1995, there is an overall downward trend in the number of home runs per at-bat—a trend that is accounted for by a reduction in the number of home runs hit by the Rockies (the trend in home runs per at-bat for the opposition at Coors Field has risen) (Figure 5).

In fact, during the 2000 season, Coors Field was surpassed in home runs per at-bat by both Busch Stadium in St. Louis and Enron Field in Houston. Thus, the large number of home runs hit at Coors Field can be attributed, in part, to the specific group of hitters assembled early on by the Rockies. Once the franchise changed the character of the team, the pre-eminence of Coors Field as the league’s ultimate home run ball park was somewhat diminished.

The Rockies have also lacked successful pitching for most of their history. Colorado pitchers have had more than their share of problems over the past eight years, both at home and on the road. Between 1995 and 2002, the team was either last or next to last in most pitching categories, leading the league in home runs allowed seven times. Had the Los Angeles or New York staffs pitched at Coors Field for 81 games per year, the ball park’s home run totals would most likely have been significantly less. Put Atlanta’s pitching staff in Denver for half of their games and this reduction is a virtual certainty. Remember that Atlanta’s Fulton County Stadium was known as the “launching pad” until the Braves put together the league’s premier group of pitchers in the early 1990s.

But perhaps the most important factor in explaining the home run numbers in Denver is the “Coors Field Effect”—the not so subtle influence of the ball park on pitchers from both the home and visiting teams. Most of these professional athletes are clearly intimidated by Coors Field. As one player recently observed, the ball park causes “an identity crisis” for pitchers, leading them to change their approach to the game, move away from their strengths, and ultimately lose confidence in their abilities.11 Even the league’s best pitchers often come unglued in Denver. Pitching is undeniably more difficult in Coors Field than in other National League ball parks because of the very limited foul ground and the cavernous outfield spaces. This field configuration gives hitters more chances, allows more balls to drop in front of outfielders, and permits more balls to find the gaps for extra-base hits. Yet, beyond this, most pitchers are beset with a range of other problems once they take the mound. Chief among these are a sudden lack of control, breaking balls that don’t break, and sinker balls that don’t sink. The result is more pitches thrown straight and over the heart of the plate, and more balls hit high, deep, and out the park. Thus, what we suggest is that more home runs are hit at Coors Field not because routine fly balls carry farther, but because a higher percentage of pitched balls are hit harder than in other ball parks.

These pitching problems in Denver have also been attributed to low air density. Theoretically, thin air reduces ball-to-air friction, cutting down on ball movement between the mound and home plate and thus decreasing the overall control of the pitcher and the effectiveness of the pitches thrown. In addition, the low relative humidity at altitude promotes evaporation from the baseball itself, making the ball lighter, drier, and more slick in Denver than in other parks around the league. Because of this, pitchers at Coors Field have a very difficult time getting a proper grip on the ball, which, in all likelihood, further reduces their control as well as the movement on their pitches.12 During the 2002 season, in an effort to counteract the presumed effects of thin air on pitching, the Colorado Rockies began using a “humidor” to store baseballs at Coors Field; this device maintains the balls in a controlled environment of 90 degrees and 40% humidity. According to the Rockies organization, the intent of the humidor is to ensure that the baseballs do not shrink to a weight less than the 5.0 to 5.25 ounce range specified by the league. The Rockies ball club also believes that these baseballs—having not yet lost water content to evaporation when they enter play—are easier to grip, and thus will ‘level the playing field’ for pitchers in Denver. But this might be just wishful thinking: a comparison of the statistics for the 2002 season versus the previous seven seasons indicates that the humidor had little if any effect upon games played at Coors Field.13

Ultimately, these altitude-related issues may prove to be important contributors to the poor pitching in Denver, but, for now, difficulties on the mound would seem to be more the result of the fragile psychology of pitchers faced with the imagined specter of baseballs floating out of Coors Field like weather balloons. Based upon the analysis presented above, we believe that the answer to why so many home runs are hit at Coors Field lies as much on the field as it does in the air.

COORS FIELD: KEEPER OF THE FLAME?

In 1998, the Colorado Rockies hosted the Major League All-Star Game. It was a very high-scoring affair won by the American League team. Upon departing Coors Field, the national sports media complained vociferously about the style of baseball played at the ball park. Baseball reporters and commentators focused on the large number of “cheap” home runs, and on the ways in which the ball park’s spaciousness allowed too many runners to circle the base paths.

Chief among these critics was Boswell of the Washington Post. He stated: “When baseball is played a mile in the air, all the game’s distances are suddenly off. Instead of being a thing of beauty, baseball suddenly becomes not only distorted, but actually defaced and displeasing. The activity conducted in Coors Field is simply not baseball any more. And, worse, it’s not some kind of new, novel, fun variant on baseball, either. What the All- Star Game put on display for tens of millions to see was a 20th century commerce-driven practical joke played on a 19th century American heirloom” (Boswell 1998: 6D). Thus, for Boswell—and for the many others that share these views—baseball played in Denver is “a confused, capricious mess” because it violates the game’s perfect dimensions.

There is no denying that the game played at Coors Field is a high-scoring, offensive brand of baseball. As we have shown, this is not the simple and direct result of Denver’s rare atmosphere, allowing routine fly balls to become home runs, but has as much or more to do with the personnel of the home team, the size of the outfield, limited foul territory, and assorted pitching problems. Yet, to dismiss Coors Field as an affront to baseball tradition is ludicrous and more than a little hypocritical. After all, what is Fenway Park’s beloved “Green Monster” if not a complete aberration of baseball’s perfect dimensions? Why is a short fly ball that ricochets off Fenway’s left field wall for a double thought to be charming while a bloop single in front of an outfielder at Coors Field is considered to be “an abomination”? To take this further, what was perfect about routine fly balls dropping for home runs over a short, waist-high right field wall at Yankee Stadium in its original configuration? And, could Willie Mays have made the most famous catch in baseball history anywhere but in the horribly distorted center field of the Polo Grounds?

In our view, the self-appointed guardians of baseball tradition like Boswell miss the point entirely. The very heart and soul of the game’s tradition lies not in some homogenous set of outfield dimensions, but in the individuality and distinctiveness of major league ball parks. This point was made forcefully when much of the game’s appeal was destroyed by the proliferation of multi- purpose stadiums in the 1960s and 1970s. Most of these “cookie- cutter” venues had perfect dimensions but had absolutely no character or soul, and are now being replaced by ball parks explicitly designed to recall the variation and peculiarity of turn- of-the-century fields.

Sure, baseball played at the Denver ball park is a little different by virtue of its location. But, in this sense, Coors Field is anything but an aberration; it represents a continuation of a long-standing and cherished tradition of quirk-filled ball parks, which gives baseball a unique charm in every city where the game is played.

Sources

Adair, Robert K. The Physics of Baseball. New York: Harper Perennial, 1990.

Adair, Robert K. The Physics of Baseball (2nd Ed.). New York: Harper Perennial, 1994. Armstrong, Jim. “Still Solving the Big Mystery.” The Denver Post, March 30, 2003: 3J. Boswell, Thomas. “Coors Field is a Mistake That Mustn’t be Repeated.” The Denver Post, July 10, 1998: 1D, 6D.

Brancazio, Peter J. SportScience: Physical Laws and Optimum Performance. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1984.

Carter, Craig, Tony Nistler, and David Sloan. Baseball Guide, 2003 Edition. 2002, St. Louis: The Sporting News.

Chambers, Frederick, Brian Page, and Clyde Zaidins. “Atmosphere, Weather, and Baseball: How Much Farther do Baseballs Really Fly at Denver’s Coors Field?” 2003. The Professional Geographer.

James, Bill. Major League Baseball Handbook. 1996-2001 Editions. Skokie, IL: STATS, Inc., 1995.

Kingsley, R.H. “Lots of Home Runs in Atlanta?” Baseball Research Journal 9. (Society for American Baseball Research, 1980): 66-71.

Kraft, Mark D. and Brent R. Skeeter. “The Effect of Meteorological Conditions on Fly Ball Distance in North American Major League Baseball Games” (1995). The Geographical Bulletin 37 (1): 40-48.

Moss, Irv. “Braves Contend Coors Baseballs are Slicker.” The Denver Post, May 9, 1999: 18C.

Renck, Troy. “Neagle Staying True to Form.” The Denver Post, March 5, 2003: 14D. Skeeter, Brent R. “The Climatologically Optimal Major League Baseball Season in North America” (1988). The Geographical Bulletin 30 (2): 97-102.

STATS, Inc. Major League Baseball Handbook 2002. Skokie, IL: STATS, Inc., 2001.

Toth, James J. and Richard H. Johnson. “Summer surface flow characteristics over northeastern Colorado (1985).” Monthly Weather Review 113 (9): 1458-1469.

In the second part of his 1997 PBS video, Lewis & Clark, American documentarian extraordinaire Ken Burns had his narrator declare that on June 8, 1806, Meriwether Lewis and William Clark and other members of the Corps of Discovery played a game of bat and ball with the Nez Percé indigenous peoples in what is now Idaho. The soundtrack ran as follows: “The men ran foot races with the Indians and taught them a new stick and ball game called base.”1

Ah, Kenny, would that it were so! We baseball historians, who are always on the lookout for examples of pre-Abner Doubleday Myth, pre-1839 baseball and baseball-type games, could have celebrated mightily that these games so associated with the East went West so rapidly.2 What a pity! There were already the famous “nine young men from Kentucky” along on the journey— a ready-made nine, if ever there was one! Would their boss back in Washington, Thomas Jefferson, have approved? He had written in 1785, “Games played with the ball and others of that nature, are too violent for the body and stamp no character on the mind.”3 What position would Sackagawea have played? Center scout? Oh, to be able to remark as well that the game crossed a racial divide and indigenous people took to the game so early.

But, alas, even the the quickest consultation of the primary sources reveal that Lewis and Clark et al. did not play a baseball- type game. They played a game called “prisoner’s base,” a long- time children’s game that much more resembled hide-and-seek than baseball. Both Lewis and Clark in their respective journals are clear about what recreation they enjoyed that day. Here is the actual excerpt from Meriwether Lewis:

Sunday, June 8th, 1806

Drewyer returned this morning from the chase without having killed anythingseveral foot rarces [sic] were run this evening between the indians and our men. the indians are very active; one of them proved as fleet as [our best runner] Drewer and R. Fields, our swiftest runners. When the racing was over the men divided themselves into parties and played prison base, by way of exercise which we wish the men to take previously to entering the mountain; in short those who are not hunters have had so little to do that they are getting rather lazy and slothfull . . . . after dark we had the violin played and danced for the amusement of ourselves and the indians.4

William Clark’s entry was somewhat less detailed, but it clearly paralleled Lewis’s:

Drewyer returned this morning from the chase without killing any thing … in the evening. Several foot races were run by the men of our party and the Indians; after which our party divided and played at prisoners base until night. after dark the fiddle was played and the party amused themselves in dancing.5

Sergeant John Ordway, in his journal entry for the same day, noted the same activities: “Our party exercised themselves running and playing games called base.”6 The next day the assembly continued their frolicking. As Lewis noted about his group on June 9th: “[T]hey have every thing in readiness for a move, and notwithstanding the want of provision have been amusing themselves very merrily today in running footraces pitching quites [quoits], prison basse &c.”7 Clark echoed him in his own journal entry: “… amuse themselves by pitching quates [quoits], Prisoners bast running races &c.”8

None of the other Corps of Discovery journals cover this day or time period or discuss the recreational events of these days. Unless Ken Burns and his research staff have uncovered some source hitherto unknown to historians, the “sad” truth is that the groups played prisoner’s base.

Accounts of medieval and early modern sport occasionally refer to or describe prisoner’s base. Although there is a bit of fuzziness in some of the descriptions, it is clear that the game mixed early elements of hide-and-seek and Capture the Flag. None of the accounts mentioned balls, bats, sticks, or baseball-type bases. One description should suffice, this one from historian Sally Wilkins:

In Europe, base, or prisoner’s base, was a game played by both girls and boys. Players divided into teams and defined the playing area—a street, field, or courtyard. Each team had a tree, pillar, or rock designated as their “base” and another as their “prison.” The teams lined up, linking hands, each chain with one player touching the base. One by one the players at the ends of the chain let go and chased each other. If one caught the other, the captive was brought to the prison, and soon chains of players were strung from each prison. Now the runners leaving their bases would try not only to capture new prisoners but also to liberate their teammates by touching the chain of prisoners. Once freed, prisoners ran back to their own bases, where they were safe until they set off again.9

Elijah Harry Criswell pointed out in his 1936 dissertation on Lewis and Clark’s linguistic influences that Clark used a newer version of the term (“prisoner’s base”) and Lewis stuck with the older term (“prison base”).10 But clearly prison base, or prisoner’s base, was not a baseball-type game. The lesson here for baseball historians is that whenever we encounter an early reference to base, such as George Ewing’s celebrated diary entry at Valley Forge in 1778, we have to be cautious assuming, without corroborating evidence, whether or not the game was baseball or prisoner’s base.

NOTES

1. Lewis & Clark, A Film by Ken Burns (New York: Florentine Films, 1997), part II.
2. See my research in Thomas L. Altherr, “’A Place Level Enough to Play Ball’: Baseball and Baseball-Type Games in the Colonial Era, Revolutionary War, and Early American Republic,” NINE, v. 8, n. 2 (Spring 2000), 15-49.
3. Thomas Jefferson to Peter Carr, August 19, 1785, in Julian Boyd, ed., The Papers of Thomas Jefferson, 23 vols. (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1953), v. 8, 407.
4. Meriwether Lewis, June 8, 1806, reprinted in Gary E. Moulton, ed., The Journals of the Lewis & Clark Expedition March 23-June 9, 1806 (Lincoln, Nebraska: University of Nebraska Press, 1991), 346-347.
5. William Clark, June 8, 1806, reprinted in Moulton, , The Journals of the Lewis & Clark Expedition March 23-June 9, 1806, 347.
6. John Ordway, June 8, 1806, reprinted in Gary E. Moulton, ed., The Journals of the Lewis & Clark Expedition: The Journals of John Ordway, May 14, 1804- September 23, 1806, and Charles Floyd. May 14-August 18, 1804 (Lincoln, Nebraska: University of Nebraska Press, 1995), 320; although Ordway simply referred to the games as base, there’s not enough evidence here to contradict Lewis and Clark’s more specific description of the game as prisoner’s base.
7. Meriwether Lewis, June 9, 1806, reprinted in Moulton, ed., The Journals of the Lewis & Clark Expedition March 23-June 9, 1806, 349.
8. William Clark, June 9, 1806, reprinted in Moulton, ed., The Journals of the Lewis & Clark Expedition March 23-June 9, 1806, 349.
9. Sally Wilkins, Sports and Games of Medieval Cultures (Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 2002), 122-123.
10. Elijah Harry Criswell, Lewis and Clark: Linguistic Pioneers, The University of Missouri Studies, v. 15, n. 2 (Columbia, Missouri: University of Missouri, 1940), 68.

In San Jose, California, a bronze mural stands as a memorial to the Japanese and Japanese-Americans relocated from their homes on the West Coast during World War II. The memorial, documenting the relocation and subsequent internment in concentration camps contains images of events and elements of importance to those who endured the experience. On the panel entitled “Hysteria of War” is the depiction of Japanese playing baseball.

The inclusion of baseball in the memorial is a testament to the importance that Japanese placed on the sport in their communities, and reflects the role that baseball played in recreating as normal a social/cultural environment as possible behind barbed wire with guards patrolling the perimeter of the camps. Japanese immigrants to America always embraced baseball. What distinguishes them from other ethnic groups arriving in the United States in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries was that they had made baseball their own prior to their arrival in the United States. In 1872, an American educator introduced the game to Japan and by the turn of the century, baseball had become Japan’s most popular sport with teams vying in national championship competitions. The popularity of baseball in Japan has been attributed to its compatibility with Japanese cultural values of harmony and self-restraint.1

The period of Japanese immigration to the United States coincided with the development and booming popularity of baseball in Japan. Japanese arrival in the United States began around 1890 and continued until 1924, when the Johnson-Reed Act effectively curtailed Asian immigration. During these years approximately 260,000 Japanese came to United States, first establishing themselves on the Hawaiian Islands and later migrating to the West Coast of the United States mainland. Until 1910 the vast majority of the immigrants were males engaged in agricultural employment, and in their masculine communities they quickly instated the baseball leagues that were so popular in Japan.2 In the process, they achieved what most ethnic groups seek to accomplish: replicating in their new homeland, the cultural elements they most value from their country of origin. Ironically, bringing baseball to the United States as something they had come to embrace was a Japanese, not an American, pastime.

By 1899 Japanese immigrants in Hawaii formed the Excelsiors baseball club. The pattern replicated itself on the West Coast with the arrival of the Issei. The Fuji Club became the first mainland baseball club founded in San Francisco in 1903. With continued immigration, baseball teams proliferated in the immigrant communities, and at the conclusion of the first decade of the 1910s cities with significant Japanese populations such as Los Angeles, Seattle, San Jose, and Honolulu had Japanese baseball leagues.3 As communities formed in the Rocky Mountain region, the Issei began baseball programs there as well. In Colorado, Japanese baseball had a firm hold by the 1920s in the communities of Denver and Las Animas, where sizable Issei communities had developed.

Historians focusing on the role of baseball in immigrant communities adhere to the thesis that baseball was an entree into mainstream society, a means to achieve respect and recognition from the dominant white society. This model was developed in large part through studies of European immigrant groups and fits well for urban groups such as the Italians and Jews. When research into Japanese-American baseball began, the Americanization, mainstreaming thesis was adopted. In They Came to Play: A Photographic History of Colorado Baseball, Mark Foster and Duane A. Smith maintained that “Japanese Americans in Colorado adopted the national pastime with enthusiasm” and that “baseball offered them a door to mainstream society.”4 When assessing the specific functions fulfilled by Japanese-American baseball the major variation on the central thesis comes from Gary Otake, who argued that in the face of racial discrimination and race-based legislation, baseball united the Issei and Nisei community and “brought Japanese people into the mainstream, but ironically also built bridges back to Japan.”5

Applying the interpretation that baseball provided Japanese an avenue to mainstream society, however, is not the only way to interpret the meaning of baseball to Japanese immigrants, and it may not provide the best understanding of how the sport functioned within the Japanese community. One initial fact that leads to questioning about the viability of the thesis is that during baseball’s peak period of popularity among Japanese immigrants, 1920-1941, there was essentially no opportunity for the Japanese to utilize baseball to gain access to the dominant white society. The Japanese on the West Coast and in the Rocky Mountain region faced discrimination, both legal and social, and as a result participated only in segregated leagues competing against other Japanese teams. These teams and leagues flourished, providing a focal point of community pride and cohesion. Significantly, baseball attained its greatest following among the Issei and the older Nisei, the generations least inclined toward an assimilationist perspective. The experiences of the Japanese indicate that baseball may have been more a component of Japanese cultural preservation than assimilation. Having brought baseball from Japan, the immigrants established the sport they thought of as the Japanese team sport.

During World War II, with the implementation of Executive Order 9066, the federal government removed all Japanese, citizen and alien alike, from the coastal regions of California, Washington, and Oregon. With little time to make arrangements, property and businesses were hastily sold for less than market value, and in the rapid departure for the assembly centers the Japanese left behind many belongings.6 The cultural shocks continued upon arrival at the internment camps. Camps such as Amache, Colorado, Heart Mountain, Wyoming, and Gila River, Arizona, were located in isolated areas with climate and geography alien to what the Japanese had experienced on the West Coast. The government provided crude barracks for the internees with each family allocated a living space of approximately twenty by twenty-five feet.7

Under these circumstances the Japanese sought to re-establish their social/cultural order as quickly and to greatest degree possible. To the Japanese this meant schools, churches, and baseball. At the Gila River Internment Camp at Butte, Arizona, Kenichi Zenimura, an experienced baseball park designer from Fresno, with the help of volunteers built a ball field. The endeavor in the inhospitable Arizona desert required digging an irrigation ditch and laying a water line of nearly three hundred feet. The field served as home to thirty-two teams.8 At Amache Internment Camp, Colorado, before the first winter ended plans for baseball and softball leagues had been made and were announced in the Granada Pioneer, the camp newspaper.9 By the end of March, 1943, competition had already begun.

The standard interpretation offered is that under these extraordinary conditions the Japanese sought to attain a level of “normalcy” and baseball became a critical element in that endeavor. It is of primary importance, however, to determine whether “normalcy” meant seeking access to mainstream society and gaining approval from white America or did it mean preservation of Japanese culture. When faced with catastrophic events and uncertainties, people tend to hold onto the reassurance of traditional elements more dearly. Because of the United States government’s official recognition, the Japanese American Citizen’s League (JACL), noted for its adamant assimilationist stance, exerted tremendous influence in the internment camps. This would seemingly provide support for the mainstreaming/ normalcy thesis, however, the JACL’s influence was primarily political, not social.10 The meaning of baseball to the communities could not be dictated by one favored organization.

The idea that baseball provided cultural preservation rather than assimilation can be illustrated by the rivalries that developed within and between the camps. The possibilities of attaining admission into mainstream society, while minimal before the war, were further diminished with internment. The teams within the camps competed fiercely with each for camp honors at several age and skill levels. Within the Rocky Mountain region, the top teams from Amache, Heart Mountain, and Gila River competed with each other before crowds of between four to six thousand fans. Through organized baseball the Japanese maintained a sense of pride, community, and self-respect in the face of the fears and racism that had uprooted them from their homes and separated them from participation in the mainstream.

Additional support for the cultural-preservation view is provided by the popularity of baseball not only among the more acculturated urban Japanese, but among the more traditional rural Japanese. Amache had two profoundly different cultural factions and the camp was marked by rural-urban tensions. One segment of the population had come from the Los Angeles area and to Amache via the Santa Anita Assembly Center. These Japanese had adopted many of the ways and mannerisms of white urban Los Angeles. Long exposed to and participating in Japanese baseball leagues in the Los Angeles area, the “Santa Anitans” seemingly supports the standard thesis. The other faction at Amache was rural agriculturists from central California. These Japanese lived in a more traditionalist culture with strong intergenerational ties.11 Among this group, baseball proved equally popular. It had been a well-established feature in the agricultural communities, and once at Amache teams like the Livingston Dodgers resumed competition.12

Baseball like other social/cultural activities exists not only as a feature of “American culture” but it has occupied an important place within many American subcultures. It is the specific ethnic context that gives the sport meaning within immigrant and racial groups. In the case of the Japanese a unique meaning and functioning emerged born of Japan’s early introduction to the sport and the extreme racism faced by Asians in the West. During World War II, when confronted by uprootedness and “otherness” the internees turned to the Japanese cultural elements they valued the most to unite and preserve what it meant to be Japanese. Baseball was central to this process.

NOTES

1. Charles Vascellaro, “Nisei: The Early Japanese-American Ballplayers,” <thediamondangle.com/archive/aug01/nisei.htm>, and Gary T. Otake, “A Century of Japanese American Baseball,” <www.nikkeiheritage.org/research/bbhist.htm>.
2. Vascalleros, 2-3, and Otake, 2-3.
3. Ibid.
4. Duane Smith and Mark S. Foster, They Came to Play: A Photographic History of Colorado Baseball (Boulder, Colorado: University Press of Colorado, 1997), 52, 38. Also adhering to this perspective was Page Smith in his Democracy on Trial: The Japanese American Evacuation and Relocation in World War II (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1995): 80, 350.
5. Gary Otake, cited in Vascellaro, 3.
6. Executive Order 9066 was ostensibly a response to national security concerns. Approximately 120,000 Japanese, two-thirds of whom were American citizens, were removed from the West
7. Roger Daniels, Concentration Camps USA: Japanese Americans and World War II (New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1971), 42-73.
8. <niseibaseball.com/htl1%2Barbed%20Wire/Zemura%20Field.htm>.
9. Granada Pioneer, 1, nos. 13-50, Winter 1943.
10. For insight into the JACL, see Bill Hosokowa, JACL: In Quest of Justice: History of the Japanese American Citizen’s League (New York: William Morrow, 1987). For a critical assessment of the role the JACL played in internment camp politics, see Emiko Omori’s multiple-award-winning film, Rabbit in the Moon (Hohokus, New Jersey: New Day Films, 1999).
11. Valerie Matsumoto, Farming the Home Place: A Japanese American Community in California, 1919-1982 (Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1983). Matsumoto does not discuss baseball, but her analysis in conjunction with other resources provides a useful theoretical framework for examination of the game.
12. For a photograph of the Livingston Dodgers, see Vascellaro, 4.

In the so-called deadball era, the Western League supplied fans with some exciting pennant races. In 1902, Denver finished one and a half games behind pennant-winner Kansas City—but found themselves in fourth place in a six-team league! Both Colorado teams figured in the 1904 Western League race, with Denver half a game behind second-place finisher Colorado Springs and two games behind Omaha.1

THE “ANGEL” OF THE LEAGUE

Pueblo, Colorado had two entries in the Western League during the deadball era. The Colorado Springs franchise relocated to Pueblo in 1905 and played there for five years, with indifferent success on the field, before moving along. In 1911, however, Pueblo had a second chance.

In 1911, the Western League adopted a 168-game schedule. Playing ball from April 21st through October 8th, the league generally enjoyed pleasant weather and good attendance. The trouble with fitting a 168-game season into a 171-day time span, however, is that it is impossible to play such a schedule profitably without scheduling Sunday games.

That was a problem in Wichita, Kansas, which forbade Sunday ball. The club owner and manager was Frank Isbell, the former Chicago White Sox first baseman and one of the 1906 “Hitless Wonders.” Isbell had spent too much money and effort fighting the anti-Sunday-ball forces in Wichita, and he was tired and broke. Boosters of Pueblo, Colorado, eager to get back into the league, approached Isbell with a juicy offer. On May 22, 1911, the Wichita ball club moved to Pueblo, Colorado.

When they moved, the team’s record was 15-9 and they were on top of the league. They played well in Pueblo, and the town was, at first, feverish over its new team, even on the Sabbath. The young Red Faber was on the mound for 29 of Pueblo’s games, posting a 12-8 record. Pitcher W.E. Ellis went 22-11 (with four agonizing ties) and earned a look from the White Sox, who took him in the September draft that year. Pueblo had little pitching depth beyond this, however, and relied on their powerful hitting attack. They could not maintain their early pace, and finished the 1911 season in third place.

Still, even facing the loss of Ellis and shortstop Joe Berger in the draft, Pueblo fans could dream of a pennant in 1912. Those dreams ended when Isbell sold his franchise to a stock company of 300 businessmen in Wichita for $25,000.2 Isbell and Sioux City business manager Tom Fairweather then purchased the Des Moines club from Isbell’s old boss, Charles Comiskey, who had bought the failing club to keep it alive near the end of the 1911 season.3

Pueblo boosters threatened an injunction to prevent the move to Wichita. Isbell, it was claimed, had signed an agreement to keep the club in Pueblo for five years; for this he had been paid a $5,000 bonus. The Pueblo fans and press barbecued Isbell, and even the national press took notice.

“[Pueblo] has been the ‘angel’ of the league,” wrote The Sporting News correspondent “Mile High” in the January 25, 1912 issue. “Twice it has stepped to the front and taken over a club which was not securing support elsewhere. It has loyally patron- ized base ball, whether its team be in first place or last, and a ‘turn down’ now would be poor return for such loyalty.”4

Isbell produced the documents he had signed, however, which showed that he had not signed a five-year deal, and in fact he had reserved the right to remove the franchise after the 1911 season. The $5,000 bonus was for the first year in Pueblo only; the agree- ment included bonuses for each successive year, which Isbell agreed to forfeit if he moved the team. Isbell claimed that he had been open to offers from Pueblo interests for the Western League franchise, but received none that were on par with the Wichita offer. The Sporting News wrote, on February 1st, that “[Isbell’s] books show that even with the sale of two players to the Chicago White Sox his stay at Pueblo would have netted a financial loss had it not been for the $5,000 bonus.” League President Norris “Tip” O’Neill agreed, and the league approved the transfer of the franchise to Wichita.5

Isbell took Red Faber with him to Des Moines, and made plans with Fairweather to open the season. The Jobbers returned to Wichita to find that town suddenly willing to let them play a schedule full of Sunday home games.6 Perhaps to the glee of the citizens of Pueblo, the Jobbers finished the 1912 season in seventh place.

Pueblo fans tried to work up enthusiasm for their entry in the new Rocky Mountain League. The league, alas, did not live to complete the season. Isbell had to stay out of Colorado during the summer of 1912 to avoid service of papers in a lawsuit for $20,000, but that threat subsided.

When the Western League approached Pueblo later in the year to take on the ailing Topeka franchise, the league received a sound rebuff. The “angel” of the Western League did not return to the fold until 1930.

“IT’S ANYBODY’S FLAG”

Few people expected the 1912 Western League pennant race to be close when the season began. By July, though, all eyes were on the Class A league and the fierce contest raging across the Great Plains. The previous year, under fiery manager Jack Hendricks, Denver had romped to the Western League pennant with a record of 111-54, an astonishing eighteen games over the St. Joseph (Missouri) Drummers. The 1911 Grizzlies featured outfielder Harry Cassidy, who batted .333, and pitcher Buck O’Brien, the league’s best pitcher with a 26-7 record and 261 strikeouts. Most observers felt Denver would hoist the 1912 flag as well, assuming Denver remained in the league. During the winter league meetings, rumors flew that Denver might find its franchise moved to another city.

The Western League, under President Norris L. O’Neill, was a progressive league in many respects. The eight-team circuit played a 168-game schedule and used two umpires for games. In 1912, they considered the startling idea of putting numbers on players’ uniforms.7 Perhaps most surprising, O’Neill proposed a revenue-sharing system. In this system, the league would have pooled a percentage of gate receipts to assist struggling teams. The Lincoln, Des Moines, Wichita, and Topeka clubs had each suffered financial difficulties in recent seasons. O’Neill wanted to make sure clubs in financial straits could at least complete their league schedule.

Denver owner James McGill opposed the scheme, because he felt Denver was already bearing too much of the league’s financial burden. Denver was the most isolated city in the league. It was so far away from the other seven cities that under league rules Denver had to pay visiting teams 15 cents per paid admission, two and a half cents more than the other seven teams paid their visitors, to cover the added travel expense for those teams.8 McGill pointed out that Denver was the most populous city in the league (225,000), and generally had the best attendance, so the visitors’ share would have been substantial even at the league standard.

O’Neill, from the league office in Chicago, dropped hints. “It is an actual fact,” said McGill, “that we could make more money by putting in a club on the river, at say Burlington, Iowa, than we can under the present conditions by coming to Denver.”9 Other writers reported that the league would drop Denver in favor of a Chicago franchise that would play at Comiskey Park while the White Sox were on the road. Nothing came of these rumors, but McGill and other Western League owners became more wary of Chicago baseball interests.

Manager Hendricks, in Hot Springs, Arkansas, with his pitchers and catchers in late March, was more concerned about the team he could put on the field. He had lost two of his best pitchers, O’Brien and Casey Hagerman, to the Boston Red Sox. Hendricks asked Red Sox manager Jake Stahl, who was also in Hot Springs, to farm some of his prospects to Denver during the season. (St. Joseph and Des Moines both made similar arrangements with the Chicago White Sox.) Stahl loaned him Hubert “Dutch” Leonard, a promising pitcher who, Stahl felt, needed more seasoning.

Hendricks had other hopes for pitching. David “Barney” Schreiber, who had gotten into three games with the Cincinnati Reds in 1911, had not joined Denver until mid-season but posted a 15-7 record. Hendricks looked forward to a full season from Schreiber. Ed “Big Moose” Kinsella had shown potential. Denver fans hoped for a comeback from longtime Grizzly pitcher Henry Olmstead, who missed the bulk of 1911 due to his wife’s illness and death. Olmstead, with Cassidy, had been with the club since the beginning of the 1907 season, and was a fan favorite.

Denver started well, but St. Joseph kept pace. The Drummers, sometimes called the Hollanders after owner-manager Jack Holland, featured several future major leaguers, including outfielders Edward “Dutch” Zwilling and Ray “Rabbit” Powell and first baseman William “Babe” Borton. The St. Joseph players had the batting and base running skills to go with the nicknames. Fans and press alike were amused to note that ten of the seventeen St. Joseph players were married, which was apparently unusual for Class A ball.10

Denver’s pitching faltered early. Leonard was unhappy with Denver, and it showed in his work. Schreiber and Kinsella started slowly. Olmstead had control problems; in a May 14th game, he hit three Sioux City players in a row, all of whom scored.

The hitters picked up the slack for a while. During one seven- game stretch in Denver in May, 14 home runs were hit, 12 of them by Denver players. “As a tobacco company gives five pounds of smoking for every home run knocked on Western League parks,” noted The Sporting News, “this means that the tobacco company has been stuck for 70 pounds of tobacco in a week at Denver.”11 Hendricks knew he couldn’t count on that forever.

St. Joseph swept Denver in a series in late May, and took over first place. Then Omaha, Sioux City and Des Moines slipped past the Grizzlies. Hendricks, in fifth place on June 2nd, decided that he had seen enough. Hendricks sold or released six players, including Olmstead.12 He spent $750 to get catcher George Block from St. Paul, and another $300 to get a former Grizzly outfielder, Grover Gilmore, back from Buffalo.13 Charlie French arrived from Montreal and took over second base. Later in the month Hendricks suspended the “sulking” Leonard and purchased Casey Hagerman back from Boston.14 Even Harry Cassidy, who had not missed a game in five years, was rumored to be on his way out. The club got the message.

The rest of the league gave little ground. Wichita rode pitcher W.E. Ellis’s 13-game winning streak. Sioux City picked up outfielder Josh Clarke (the brother of Pittsburgh’s Fred) in mid-season, and watched him bat .323 the rest of the way. Omaha’s Marc Hall, building a 25-9 record, led the Rourkes’ pitching staff. St. Joseph’s Borton led the league in batting average, hitting .400 for a while and finishing at .364, while Zwilling provided power (including a three-homer game versus Sioux City on Sunday, June 30th). The front-page of the July 18th Sporting News carried the headline “IT’S ANYBODY’S FLAG” and proclaimed the Western League race “one of the best races in the country.”15 The top five teams, St. Joseph, Omaha, Sioux City, Denver, and Wichita, were separated by only five games.

Two weeks later, Ellis’s magic was gone and the rest of the Wichita club could not pick up the slack.16 Des Moines replaced Wichita in the cluster near the top, though, and it was still a five-team race as August began.

Western League officials were elated. At a meeting of minor-league presidents that summer, Norris O’Neill was the only one to report his league’s attendance was up.17 “A mixture of bad weather and politics served to cut down the attendance all over the country,” The Sporting News reported, “and the Western League has probably suffered less than any other from both causes.18 Of course, the close race kept the turnstiles spinning, too.

In late July and early August, Denver reeled off a 13-game win streak of its own. Kinsella and Schreiber pitched like machines. Leonard, over his sulk, struck out 17 batters in an August 5th two-hitter.19 Even Denver outfielder Lester Channell’s broken ankle didn’t slow them down. Grover Gilmore stepped in. The streak put Denver back in first.

Pundits gave Denver the edge down the stretch, noting that the balance of schedule had Denver playing mostly at home.20 They also took new notice of Jack Hendricks, after the manager’s mid-season shakeup began to pay off. “Toss him in any league, with any material,” wrote one correspondent, “and up he comes from the ruck in speedy time. They are ‘dippy’ about him in Denver and pay him a lot of money to sojourn—otherwise he might be winning battles in big league company.”21

Injuries hampered Des Moines, and Sioux City faded. Omaha moved into second place. St. Joseph lost Babe Borton and pitcher George “Chief” Johnson to the White Sox in September, but moved Zwilling to first base and kept close behind.

Denver clinched the pennant on Friday, September 27th, with two days left in the season, when St. Joseph defeated Omaha. The Drummers then swept Omaha in a doubleheader on the last day of the season to snatch second place from the Rourkes.

The league season was over, but Denver had one more challenge. The American Association champion Minneapolis Millers came to Denver for a best-of-seven series on October 5th. The Grizzlies surprised the heavily-favored Millers four games to one, largely behind the workhorse pitching of Barney Schreiber and Dutch Leonard. Minneapolis ballplayers had the financial edge, though. Denver hosted the whole series, and club management had struck a deal with the players to split the proceeds. They also split the expenses, and after the bills were paid Denver players found their share for the five-game series amounted to only $131.55 per player. The visiting Millers, who didn’t have to share expenses, took home about $300 apiece.22

Harry Cassidy, who scored the game-winning run in the final Millers game, suffered less than his teammates. When he completed his sixth straight season without missing a game, Denver fans took up a collection to give him an automobile.23

The close race gave other Western League teams hope for 1913. Denver lost four stars, including Leonard, to major league clubs, and observers thought a dark horse could win the race. It wasn’t close. Hendricks rebuilt the team and Denver won the 1913 flag by ten games over Des Moines.

After the 1913 season, James McGill purchased the Indianapolis American Association ball club, and then he moved Hendricks to Indianapolis to manage the Indians.24 Otto Floto, the Denver Post sports editor, bet American Association president George Tebeau that Hendricks would win a pennant within three years in that league. “I never saw a manager like this guy,” said Floto, “but he must get out of Denver. He has ruined the Western League.”25

Floto lost his bet, but only by one year; Indianapolis won the American Association pennant in 1917.26 The following season, Hendricks found himself in “big league company” at last, managing the St. Louis Cardinals.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Thanks to Rex Hamann, Dan O’Brien, Marc Okkonen, and Dick Thompson for their assistance.

NOTES

1. Lloyd Johnson and Miles Wolff, , The Encyclopedia of Minor League Baseball. Baseball America, Inc. (Durham, North Carolina, 1993): 104,107.
2. The Sporting News, January 18, 1912: 1.
3. Christian, Ralph, “Never on Sunday: The Controversy over Sunday Baseball in Des Moines, Iowa, 1887-1912,” presentation at SABR 31, Milwaukee, July 12, 2001.
4. The Sporting News, January 25, 1912: 4.
5. The Sporting News, February 1, 1912: 3, 4.
6. The Sporting News, February 22, 1912: 1.
7. The Sporting News, February 1, 1912: 1.
8. The Sporting News, February 29, 1912: 5.
9. The Sporting Life, March 9, 1912: 13.
10. The Sporting News, May 5, 1912.
11. The Sporting News, May 30, 1912.
12. Olmstead signed with the pennant-winning Oakland club of the Pacific Coast League, appearing in 10 games and winning two (Richter, Francis , ed. The Reach 1913 Base Ball Guide. A.J. Reach Company (Philadelphia, Penn., 1913): 263.) The year 1913 appears to have been his last season in professional baseball.
13. The Sporting News, August 22, 1912.
14. The Sporting News, June 27, 1912: 1.
15. The Sporting News, July 18, 1912: 1.
16. The Sporting News, August 1, 1912.
17. The Sporting News, July 25, 1912.
18. The Sporting News, October 3, 1912.
19. The Sporting News, October 3, 1912.
20. The Sporting News, August 8, 1912.
21. The Sporting News, August 15, 1912.
22. The Sporting News, October 24, 1912: 6.
23. The Sporting News, September 26, 1912.
24. David Reddick and Kim M. Rogers, The Magic of Indians’ Baseball: 1887-1997 (Indianapolis, Indiana: Indianapolis Indians Baseball Club, 1988): 23.
25. The Sporting News, October 23, 1913: 4.
26. <indyindians.com/archives/year_by_year.html>

On Saturday morning, May 1, 1920, Joe Oeschger looked up from the newspaper and laughed. “The weather forecast says fair today,” the 6’1”, 195-pound Boston Braves pitcher said to his roommate, outfielder Les Mann. They both glanced out the window. It was raining steadily, a cold, gray, wet, and windy morning, not unusual for the first day of May in Boston.1

They went down to the dining room of the Brunswick Hotel, where they shared a room when the team was home, ordered breakfast, and divided the newspaper. Oeschger read the Globe’s account of the Friday game. Braves pitcher Hugh McQuillan had shut out the Brooklyn Dodgers, 3-1. The game had taken just over an hour and a half. “Who’s pitching for the Dodgers today, if we play?” Mann asked.

“It looks like Leon Cadore. Golly,” Oeschger said, “I’d like to get even with him.” Ten days earlier the two had hooked up in an 11- inning duel, Cadore winning it, 1-0. There was no mention of the Boston starting pitcher.

Manager George Stallings liked to wait until just before game time to name his starter.

Oeschger checked the standings. Brooklyn, managed by Wilbert Robinson, was 8-4, in second place. They were fast, had some good hitters led by Zack Wheat, and a top-flight pitching staff. They had won the pennant in 1916 and some experts predicted they would give the favored Giants a run for it in 1920.

The Braves were 4-5. They had gotten great pitching so far, were strong defensively, but weak at the plate. Nobody was hitting over .250. Since their miracle finish and upset sweep of the Philadelphia Athletics in 1914, they had slid into the second division. “Looks like a day off,” Mann said. “What do you want to do?”

“Guess we’ll go to a show.”

They finished a leisurely breakfast at noon and went out on the porch. The rain had stopped. The cold wind had not. Stallings had a rule: All players had to report to the clubhouse even if it was pouring. So Oeschger and Mann went up to their room for sweaters, then walked up Commonwealth Avenue to Braves Field. Oeschger watched the trainer, Jimmy Neery, put a clean bandage on shortstop Rabbit Maranville’s left hand. Maranville had continued to play with a bruised, lacerated hand. He’d had a few shots of whiskey already; it was never too early in the day for the Rabbit to down a few. Then Oeschger had a rubdown.

At 2:30 there was a brief, heavy shower. Then the clouds scudded quickly out to sea. About 3,500 hardy fans had huddled in pockets scattered about the 38,000-seat stands. Just 15 minutes before the 3:00 game time, they decided to play the game. It was just one Saturday afternoon, early-season game, but it would put two sub-.500 pitchers into the record books forever.

George Stallings was very superstitious and given to playing hunches. Bats had to be placed in exact order and kept that way, especially during a rally The drinking cup had to hang just so on the water cooler. Before the game, a Brooklyn player casually walked past the Braves dugout and scattered some peanuts. A few damp pigeons swooped down.

“Get those birds out of here,” Stallings roared. He hated pigeons, and the other teams knew it. He wore out his bench-warmers’ arms throwing pebbles to chase the birds. On the road—there was no Sunday baseball in Boston—he usually pitched Oeschger, a regular churchgoer, on Sundays.

A southern gentleman who had gone to Johns Hopkins intending to be a doctor, he usually wore street clothes in the dugout. Stallings held a meeting to go over the opponents lineup before every game. Today he gave the ball to Joe Oeschger to pitch.

In the visitors clubhouse Wilbert Robinson was entertaining the writers with stories of the good old Baltimore Orioles days. The popular, easygoing Uncle Robbie wasn’t much for pregame meetings.

Both Joe Oeschger and Leon Cadore had been their teams’ most effective hurlers in the early going. Oeschger, a power pitcher, had given up two earned runs in 35 innings. Cadore, a curveball artist, had pitched 35 scoreless innings against the Yankees coming north from spring training. He had shut out Boston in that 11-inning game on April 20, but had lost his last start against the Giants.

The umpires were William McCormick, a second-year man, behind the plate, and Robert F. Hart, a rookie, on the bases. The temperature was 49 when Oeschger threw the first pitch.

They ran off four fast, scoreless innings. In the top of the fifth, Oeschger dug a hole for himself. He walked catcher Ernie Krueger. Cadore then hit a sharp bounder to the mound, a perfect double- play ball. In his rush to get two, Oeschger juggled the ball and had to settle for the out at first. With a two-strike count, Ivy Olson hit a broken-bat blooper over Maranville’s head that scored Krueger.

When the inning ended, Oeschger stalked off the mound muttering to himself for his clumsiness. As if to make up for his misplay, he led off the bottom of the fifth with a long double, but was left stranded at second.

Outfielder Wally Cruise, first up in the bottom of the sixth, lined a triple off the scoreboard in left. Walt Holke then blooped a Texas Leaguer back of shortstop. Zack Wheat raced in and speared it off his shoe tops just beyond the infield dirt. Cruise, thinking it might drop in, was halfway to home plate. The third baseman had gone out after the ball, so there was nobody on third to take a throw from Wheat, and Cruise made it back safely. Tony Boeckel followed with a single to center, scoring Cruise with the tying run.

Maranville laced a double to right center. Wally Hood chased it down and threw home as Boeckel rounded third. Cadore cut off the throw and relayed it to the plate in time to nip Boeckel. The Brooklyn catcher, Krueger, was spiked on the play. Rowdy Elhott replaced him.

Joe Oeschger went out for the seventh inning even more angry with himself. But for his poor fielding in the fifth, he would have a 1-0 lead now, and the way he was going he was confident that would have been enough. He bore down and retired the side on three pitches.

Cadore had been hit hard, but was saved by several fielding gems. In the eighth, Mann led off with a single. Cruise sacrificed him to second. Holke lined one back through the box; instinctively down and threw him out. Twice more he stopped line drives that would have scored a run. Wheat and Nets were pulling off impossible catches.

The Braves, too, were on their toes. Catcher Mickey O’Neil picked off two runners at first base. Boston looked like they would win it in the ninth. Maranville led off with a base hit to left. Lloyd Christenbury pinch-hit for O’Neil and bunted down the first base line. Cadore fielded it, but the throw hit the runner in the back as he stepped on first. Oeschger sacrificed them to second and third. Ray Powell walked. With the bases full and one out, the Brooklyn infield played in. Charlie Pick hit a sharp hopper toward right. Second baseman Ivy Olson stabbed it, swiped at Powell coming down from first, and threw to first for the double play Powell had gone out of the baseline to avoid the tag and was called out.

So they went to the 10th, the 11th, the 12th, the 13th, the 14th. Three up, three down for the Dodgers, little more for the Braves. Hank Gowdy, one of the heroes of the 1914 world champions, replaced O’Neil behind the plate in the 15th. He had trouble holding on to Oeschger’s pitches, boxing the ball, dropping it more often than catching it. Gowdy went to the mound. “What the hell are you throwing?” he asked.

“Just a fastball.”

“God almighty, it’s breaking one way one time and somewhere else the next time.”

“Well,” Oeschger replied, “I don’t know which way it’s going to move, either.”

It began to drizzle in the 11th. Wind blew in from center field. It was getting colder. Necks, backs, and arms were chilled by the cold and dampness. Muscles tightened. Between innings, players on both benches put on heavy sweaters.

The Braves threatened in the 15th. Cruise walked. Holke hit a little dribbler toward third. Johnston’s throw to second was too late. Two on, nobody out. Boeckel put down a bunt, but the ball stopped dead on the soggy third base line. Elliott picked it up and forced Cruise at third. Maranville hit a comebacker to Cadore, and Holke was forced at third. Gowdy flied out.

Oeschger led off the 16th determined to win his own game. He hit a shot that looked like it might clear the left-field scoreboard. Wheat, using the fence for a springboard, leaped up and caught it. Oeschger kicked at the dirt near second base as he headed back to die dugout.

As they took the field for the 17th, Rabbit Maranville, never silent at shortstop, chirped, “Just one more inning, Joe. We’ll get a run for you. Hold on.”

Oeschger was beginning to tire. Still, he thought, if Stallings asks if I want to come out, my answer will be an emphatic no. Stallings never asked. “Hold them one more inning, Joe,” was all he said. “We’ll get them.”

The Dodgers came close to winning it in the 17th. Zack Wheat opened with a single to right. Hood sacrifced him to second. First baseman Ed Konetchy grounded sharply to Maranville, who couldn’t handle it. Base hit. First and third, one out. Chuck Ward bounced one to Maranville, who threw to third hoping to catch Wheat off the base. But Zack was wary and scrambled back ahead of me throw. Bases loaded, one out.

Rowdy Elliott was up. The catcher hit back to the mound. This time Oeschger fielded it cleanly and threw home to force Wheat. Gowdy’s throw to first was over Elliott’s head and to the right of the base. Hoike dove to his left and knocked the ball down as Elliott crossed the bag. Konetchy rounded third and bolted for home. The left-handed first baseman Hoike threw home while going down to the ground. The throw was on the first base side of the plate. Gowdy reached out and caught it and lunged through the air across home plate, the ball in his bare hand, into the spikes of Konetchy sliding in. Koney bumped the ball with his shin, but Gowdy held on and the threat was over. It was the last one for the Robins.

Ordinarily fans like to see plenty of hitting and scoring. This day they were getting more than their money’s worth of pitching and fielding thrills. Despite the damp chill, nobody left the park. After the 18th inning they cheered each pitcher as he left the mound or came up to bat.

In the Brooklyn dugout, veteran pitcher Rube Marquard, who had pitched plenty of long games himself, said to Cadore’s roommate, utility infielder Ray Schmandt, “I hope Leon won’t be affected by this strain. I hate to see him stay in this long.”

“Caddy is pure grit,” Schmandt said. “He’ll win out.”

Uncle Robbie didn’t have the heart to take him out. And Cadore wouldn’t have come out if he had been asked. Cadore had been hit hard and often, and had at least one runner on base in each of the first nine innings. But now he was aided by the enclosing twilight and the soiled, discolored ball that remained in play.

Oeschger had allowed nine hits, all singles. He was tired, but he had been more fatigued in some nine-inning games when he had to pitch out of a lot of pinches. This was an easy outing. He seemed to grow stronger as the game went on. He figured he had the advantage in the deepening dusk and did not want the game to be called. He was a fastball pitcher, Cadore a curver. The hitters would have more trouble seeing his stuff. He saved his strength by bearing down only when he had to, which wasn’t often. The Dodgers went out in order more often than not. After the 17th Oeschger pitched a nine-inning no-hitter, giving up a walk in the 22nd.

Neither pitcher was looking for strikeouts, which take a lot of pitches. And their control was good. Oeschger wound up walking three, striking out four. Cadore walked five, struck out eight. They wasted little time or motion, routinely taking only three or four warm-up pitches at the start of an inning. Every inning might be the last, would probably be the last, they thought.

The feeling grew on both benches that it would be a shame for either pitcher to lose such a game. Even the home plate umpire, McCormick, later admitted that after the 22nd inning he hoped the game would end in a tie.

The fielders never flagged. Holke took away extra base hits by snaring foul-line-hugging smashes in the 21st and 24th.

At the start of the 26th, somebody in the Braves dugout wondered how long Oeschger could pitch. “He could pitch 126 innings without running any risk,” said Dick Rudolph, the pitching hero of the 1914 sweep of the A’s. “He’s in great shape.”

In the last of the 26th, with two men out, Holke beat out a bunt but Boeckel flied out. It was 6:50 by the clock atop the scoreboard as the Dodgers came off the field. Umpire McCormick took off his mask, stepped in front of home plate and looked up at the sky. It still looked light enough to play, but for how long7 Another whole inning?

Cadore watched the umpire out of the corner of his eye as he walked toward the dugout. Ivy Olson ran toward the umpire, one finger high in the air. “One more. One more.” His shrill voice carried all the way to the press box above the grandstand. Olson wanted to be able to say he had played the equivalent of three nine-inning games in one afternoon.

Both pitchers were willing and able to go one more inning. But McCormick said no. The game was over. The fans booed. The other players had had enough. Zack Wheat said, “I carried up enough lumber to the plate to build a house today.” Charlie Pick’s batting average had suffered the most; he went 0 for 11.

The darkness descended quickly at that point. Up in the press box there were no electric lights. The writers knew they were in for hours of work. In addition to the Boston writers, only Eddie Murphy of the New York Sun and Tommy Rice of the Brooklyn Eagle covered the game. As the innings had rolled by and other New York newspapers heard about it, the two writers were deluged with requests for special reports and stories. Somebody went out and bought a couple dozen candles. The official scorer, the writers, and the Western Union telegraphers worked into the night by candlelight. James C. O’Leary typed out his lead for the Boston Globe:

It was one of the greatest games ever played, but 0n account of the threatening weather only about 4,000 turned out. They stayed til the end. And saw the most wonderful pitching stunt ever performed, and some classy playing and thrilling situations. It was a battle of giants until both were exhausted practically, but neither gave a sign of letting up. There was glory enough for both and it would have been a pity for either one to have been declared the loser.

Cadore had pitched to 95 batters, an average of fewer than four an inning. Oeschger faced 90. Cadore had 13 assists, a one-game record for a pitcher. Oeschger had 11. Oeschger had set a record for consecutive scoreless innings in one game: 21. Cadore had 20.

Boston first baseman Walter Holke had 32 putouts and one assist. Only three Dodgers had reached third: Krueger, who scored, and Wheat and Konetchy, who were erased in the double play in the 17th.

They didn’t count pitches in those days. Cadore later estimated that he had thrown close to 300. Oeschger guessed about 250. Game time was 3 hours and 50 minutes.

That evening Joe Oeschger and Les Mann went to a restaurant they frequented. Nothing posh, just a neighborhood place with good food. It was later than usual for them, and the staff had heard about the game. The waitresses brought out a special cake they had made for the occasion. The Robins had to hurry back to Brooklyn for a Sunday game against the Phillies. They were due back in Boston to play on Monday. Cadore stayed in the hotel with Ray Schmandt, Sherry Smith, and Rube Marquard.

On Sunday morning both pitchers received a telegram from National League president John A. Heydler. He congratulated them and said he was particularly gratified because the pitching was done under the new rules: This was the first year the spitball, emery ball, shine ball, and other trick pitches were banned.

The Sunday Boston papers filled their front pages with big headlines, photos, and box scores of the game. It was the talk of the city, and the baseball world.

It has been written that, when the Dodgers returned on Monday, Cadore was still in bed, since Saturday night. But in fact he had kept pretty much to his hotel until Sunday afternoon, when he and his teammates went downtown to dinner, then to a picture show.

“I was a bit tired,” Cadore later admitted in a classic understatement, “and naturally my arm stiffened. I couldn’t raise it to comb my hair for three days. After seven days of rest I was back taking my regular turn. I never had a sore arm before or after the game. I suppose the nervous energy of trying to win had given me the strength and kept me going.”

When Oeschger awoke Sunday morning, he was lame all over. His arm ached no more than his other limbs. His leg and back muscles had worked as hard as the arm ligaments. There was a little more soreness than usual around his elbow. Oeschger stayed in the Brunswick Hotel all day. He knew the cold, damp winds would do more injury to his body than twice the innings he had worked Saturday.

There was much speculation at the time as to what effect the long game would have on the two pitchers. Rube Marquard said, “I’ve been lucky. I’ve been in a lot of overtime games without being much affected. But the physical and mental makeup of pitchers is not all the same. I pitched a 21-inning game against Babe Adams in 1914 . . . . It didn’t bother me. Three days later I shut out the Reds. But Adams was out of the big leagues the next year. He went to the American Association where he got his arm back, then came back with the Pirates and pitched until he was 43.

“It would be good judgment,” concluded Marquard, “to have both men sit on the bench for at least 10 days. They should work out a bit but not get into a game before then.” Cadore felt he never had the same stuff again. He finished that year with a 15-14 record, then won 13, 8, and 4. At 33, he was finished.

It has also been written that Oeschger, too, was never the same. But the immediate aftermath doesn’t support that. “The 20-inning game with Brooklyn last year may have hurt my arm,” he said the next day, “because I was not in the best of condition. I had passed the winter in the east and had not been able to enjoy hunting and fishing and working on my dad’s ranch in California. … But I’m in good condition this spring and do not expect any ill effects from yesterday’s game.”

Oeschger won 15 games that year, and had his best season in 1921, winning 20 and losing 14 with a second-division team. He pitched 299 innings each year. He fell off to 6-21 and 5-15 the next two years, was traded to the Giants, then the Phillies, and ended his career with a 1-2 record in—of all places—Brooklyn.

Both pitchers were remembered for that one afternoon’s work for the rest of their lives. Ironically, but for his own fielding error, Joe Oeschger would have gone home happy with a nine-inning 1-0 win and never been heard of again when his playing days were over. But for the next 66 years he continued to receive requests for autographs and interviews from all over the world. He had a box score of the game printed and signed them and mailed them out.

Cadore experienced his fame in unusual ways. “I’m in a San Francisco bar one day in 1931,” he recalled, “and the guy next to me is chewing the fat with his pal about extra inning ball games.

” ‘Yeah,’ says the guy. ‘Once a bum in Brooklyn pitched 26 innings. Cuddle or Coodoo or something like that.’

” ‘You’re nuts, ‘ says his pal. ‘Nobody could pitch that long.’

“I nudged the guy sitting next to me. ‘You mean Cadore?’ I said.

” ‘Yeah, that was the bum. Cadore.’

“I took out my lifetime pass and let him look at it. ‘I’m Cadore. I pitched that game.’ He almost toppled off his stool.”

When Cadore was in the hospital in 1958, the doctor told him they couldn’t locate a vein. “A man your age,” the doctor said, “should have a vein sticking right out, especially in that right arm that pitched those 26 innings.” “Doc,” said Cadore, grinning, “I pitched that game with my head.”2

Notes

1. All quotations and references to Oeschger’s actions and thoughts are from interviews by the author with Oeschger at his home in California in the early 1980s. Other details are from contemporary Boston newspapers.

2. Newspaper accounts at the time of Cadore’ s death, March 16, 1958.

The AL’s Longest Games

There must be something in the air or the beans or the brown bread in Boston: In addition to the 26-inning NL game of May I, 1920—major league baseball’s longest—the first two record-length games in American League history that were completed in one afternoon also took place in Boston. As was true of the 26-inning job, every starting pitcher in those games went the route. And both games involved the Philadelphia Athletics.

On the afternoon of July 4, 1905, Rube Waddell started against Cy Young. At 38, Young had already won over 400 games. Boston touched up Waddell for two quick runs in tl1e first. The A’s tied it in the sixth when Bris Lord singled and Harry Davis hit one of his league-leading eight home runs. At the end of nine it was still 2-2.

When fatigue set in, it was tl1e Boston infield, not Young, who succumbed. Danny Murphy led off for the A’s in the top of the 20th and hit a grounder to Jimmy Collins at third. Collins booted it. Young, who had not walked a batter, then threw his most erratic pitch of the day, a one-strike fastball that hit Jack Knight on the hand. Monte Cross ran for him. First and second, no outs. Ossee Schreckengost popped a bunt toward second.

Second baseman Hobe Ferris hesitated, uncertain whether to stay on the bag and let Cy Young take it or go after it. When Young made no move for it, Ferris made a belated attempt. It fell at his feet. Bases loaded.

Rube Waddell hit a grounder. The throw went to third, forcing Cross, as Murphy scored. Danny Hoffman then singled in the second run. The A’s won, 4-2. Game time: 3:31.

A’s catcher Ossee Schreckengost caught all 29 innings that day, still a major league record. Three days later both pitchers were in the box again in Philadelphia. Cy Young pitched for another six years, Rube Waddell another five.

*****

Of the three record games played in Boston, the 24-inning battle on Saturday, September 1, 1906, was by far the most exciting. Although no baserunners crossed home plate from the seventh to the 24th, there were 31 hits—including two doubles and six triples hit into the overflow crowd of 18,000, eight walks, a hit batter, and seven stolen bases. Both pitchers spent the day working out of jams. Spectacular fielding plays helped to stave off defeat for both teams.

Twenty-four-year-old righthander Joe Harris started for Boston against Jack Coombs, a June graduate of Colby College. The A’s took a 1-0 lead in the third. With one out, Coombs hit a swinging bunt down the third-base line. Harris fell trying to pick it up. Coombs stole second, went to third on an infield out, and scored on a single by Topsy Hartsel.

Boston tied it in the sixth. Fred Parent tripled into the crowd and scored on Chick Stahl’s single.

From then on the tension built and broke with the regularity of ocean waves breaking on a beach. Every inning seemed to bring one or both teams to the brink of defeat. It was getting dark as Harris began the top of the 24th by striking out Coombs. Hartsel singled and stole second. Lord struck out for the second out. Schreckengost singled over second and Hartsel scored. Joe Harris suddenly ran out of steam. Seybold and Murphy tripled into the outfield crowd for two more runs.

Coombs had no trouble retiring the weary Pilgrims in their last at-bats. Altogether he struck out 18; Harris fanned 14 and walked two. Time of game: 4:47.

In 1910 and 1911 Jack Coombs won 59 games and pitched almost 700 innings. Illness, not arm injury, ultimately curtailed his career.

Joe Harris couldn’t win before that game and couldn’t win after it. He was 2-21 for the year and 0-7 in 1907.

— Norman Macht