Monroe was in the northeast corner of Louisiana, the hub of a poor cotton-farming region in the Mississippi Delta approximately 70 miles from the river and 40 from the Arkansas border.1 Its 10,112 African Americans constituted 38.9% of the city’s 26,028 residents. Almost 43% of the black population was out of work, and almost 17% were unable to read. 19,041 of Ouachita Parish’s 54,337 were black. Of those, close to 10,000 were gainfully employed and slightly more than 3,000 were illiterate.2 In 1919, Monroe earned the moniker “lynch law center of Louisiana,” and from the turn of the century to the close of 1918, the region witnessed 30 lynchings.3 As Michael Lomax demonstrated in his study of 19th-century black baseball entrepreneurship, the Negro Leagues as a “unifying element” of a community is so common and self- evident a conclusion that it lacks any tangible edifying power.4 Monroe’s situation, however, served as a paradigmatic example of the need for this “unifying element.” And unlike many small town baseball teams, the Monarchs’ impact extended far beyond Monroe’s city limits.

Fred Stovall wanted his Monarchs to be part of a new league in 1932 rather than the 1931 Texas League, which his team won. A white Dallas native, Stovall came to Monroe in 1917, and by 1932 owned both the Stovall Drilling Company and the J. M. Supply Company, among other enterprises, allowing him to found his black baseball team in 1930 with drilling employees. He never incorporated the team, even after its success led him to hire veteran professionals. Even before the pros arrived, however, Stovall built his team—and the larger black community, many of whom he employed at his various businesses—Casino Park, which included not only a ball field but a swimming pool and dance pavilion. Historian Robert Peterson echoes contemporary reports that the erection of the stadium was largely the product of generosity. (Of course, Stovall was a businessman, and the entry fees of 25 and 50 cents demonstrated that profit was also a motive.)5

Through a series of negotiations, Stovall maneuvered his team into the newly formed Negro Southern League for 1932, with a far more prestigious roster of teams than Monroe had ever faced. The Atlanta Black Crackers, Birmingham Black Barons, Memphis Red Sox, Montgomery Grey Sox, Little Rock Greys, and Nashville Elite Giants were joined by newcomers the Indianapolis ABCs, Louisville Black Caps, and Chicago American Giants (under the new ownership of Robert A. Cole), along with the Monarchs.6

The Monarchs acquitted themselves well the first half of the season. They were 33–7 on the Fourth of July. Chicago’s 30–9 record kept them slightly behind the Monarchs. “All is not well in the Southern League,” the Chicago Defender reported. League President Reuben B. Jackson issued a ruling at the close of the first-half schedule that, due to its use of players claimed by other teams, two Memphis Red Sox games against Cole’s American Giants would be forfeited. Rather than nullifying the outcomes, however, Jackson ruled the games to be Chicago wins. The controversial decision gave Chicago the first-half pennant.7

The Louisiana Weekly acknowledged the league ruling on the games, but declared Monroe the victor anyway. The paper’s coverage noted the protests mailed to the league office by Monroe fans, arguing that the NSL attempted “to give the Chicago nine something they have not rightfully won. All the southern papers as well as some of the northern and eastern papers carry the standing just as it is with Monroe leading and naturally, the fans are not fooled.”8

Various reports of the first-half standings led to uncertainty. The Defender’s first half standings gave Chicago first place with a 34–7 record, while Monroe was 33–7.9 The Morning World reported that the Monarchs’ record trumped Chicago’s 28–9.10 As of mid-August, the remainder of the Southern League season seemed in doubt, with Monroe (according to the Defender) not playing any league games, and Chicago canceling a scheduled trip to Memphis. Montgomery, Atlanta, Little Rock, and Birmingham had already abandoned league play.11

In this confused state, Nashville took the second-half pennant. Although Chicago and Nashville began referring to the NSL championship as the only championship, the Pittsburgh Crawfords (who played games against the East-West and the Southern, not officially joining either in 1932) scheduled a series with the Monroe Monarchs billed in most black weeklies as the “World Series.”12 The season had been as beneficial for the Crawfords as it had for the Monarchs. Gus Greenlee, the team’s owner, took the opportunity created by the financial destitution of the leagues to lure the best players from its Pittsburgh rival, the Homestead Grays. The Crawfords moved from beneath the shadow of Cumberland Posey’s Grays to become a premier team in their own right. When playing at home, the Crawfords played in the newly opened Greenlee Park, which held 6,000 fans.13

The Monarchs opened their World Series in front of a capacity crowd on September 3. “Returns of the games at Pittsburgh will be given at Tenth and Desiard Streets every day starting about 2 o’clock,” announced the Morning World. “This is the first time a Negro southern team has won the right to take part in the Negro World Series and the entire south is pulling for the Monarchs to win the series.” The first game in front of that crowd was unsuccessful for the Monarchs, while the second was a win.

The Monarchs broke a 1–1 tie in the 10th inning for what would be their only World Series victory. The following day was Labor Day, and the Pittsburgh fans celebrated “Louisiana Day” in honor of the visiting Monarchs as the team from Monroe lost a doubleheader. “The hustling, whole-hearted assault of the Monarchs, even though behind, made a hit with Greenlee field fans,” reported the Courier. “Rounds of applause greeted their determined efforts to stage a batting rally at two or three different points.” One of the Labor Day doubleheader losses served as an exhibition game, “with gate receipts going to charity,” so the Monarchs returned home down two games to one.14

For the first home game, Stovall made arrangements with area railroads, both the Missouri Pacific and Illinois Central, “for the purpose of bringing spectators from Little Rock, New Orleans, Alexandria, Shreveport and intervening points.” Though Chicago defeated Nashville four games to three to take the “Dixie World Series,” the Monarchs held a Negro Southern League pennant-raising ceremony prior to the opening inning of the first home game against Pittsburgh. The game that followed served as something of an anticlimax as the teams played to a 6–6 tie before darkness halted the contest. The following day, a September 11 Crawfords win made them one short of series victory. On September 12, the Monarchs lost once and for all.15

The Crawfords’ 1932 squad was managed by Oscar Charleston, who also played first base. Josh Gibson, Judy Johnson, Satchel Paige, and Ted Radcliffe were also on the team. Those players are now in the pantheon of Negro Leagues immortals. The Crawfords, too, continued to be a successful franchise even after its stars moved to other teams. Monroe, however, quickly faded away. The team resumed play in a reformulated “minor” Dixie League the following season and dissolved by 1936. But many of its players—who contributed to such a successful season and brought a small Southern town, “the lynch law center of Louisiana,” to the precipice of a national championship (however makeshift it may have been)—went on to successful careers in larger markets.

Indeed, their talent was prolific. Homer “Blue Goose” Curry (a late-season addition from Memphis) played left field and pitched for the team, later enjoying a long and distinguished career with the Baltimore Elite Giants, Philadelphia Stars, and (again) Memphis Red Sox. Catcher Harry Else went on to play in the mid-1930s with the Kansas City Monarchs, making the East-West All-Star game in 1936. Monroe’s shortstop, Leroy Morney, had a well-traveled but substantial all-star career for a variety of Negro National League teams through 1944. Pitchers Barney Morris and Samuel Thompson enjoyed success after leaving Monroe, Morris with the New York Cubans and Thompson with the Philadelphia Stars and Chicago American Giants.

Right fielder Zollie Wright was another former Monarch to become an East-West All-Star, playing for Baltimore, New York, and Philadelphia. Roy Parnell played center field and pitched for the Monarchs. He played on a variety of minor Southern teams before coming to Monroe. His most productive years came with the Philadelphia Stars in the 1940s, and his success earned him candidacy for a special 2006 Negro and Pre-Negro Leagues election to the National Baseball Hall of Fame. Though Parnell was ultimately not included in the final group of enshrined players, his candidacy validates his talent.

But the player who would become the most famous on the team did not join it until late August, when he came to Monroe from the Austin Black Senators. Hilton Smith’s impressive showing against the Monarchs convinced the team to purchase his rights for the remainder of the season, and he would stay in Monroe for two more years. Smith would become a powerful pitcher for the Kansas City Monarchs in the 1930s and 1940s, though his career was often overshadowed by fellow Kansas City pitcher (and former 1932 World Series foe) Satchel Paige. He is now a member of the National Baseball Hall of Fame.16

The statistics of these players and the rest of the 1932 Monarchs that follow are necessarily incomplete. The statistical inconsistencies of the Negro Leagues were only exacerbated in the Monarchs’ situation by (1) a newly created league struggling to stay afloat in the face of the Depression and (2) the realities of a small-town Southern team two years from its inception and four from its eventual demise. Monroe had a viable black press in 1932, though its Southern Broadcast did not begin until the middle of the year. Sherman Briscoe founded the Broadcast, which remained a solvent publication until 1939. Though Briscoe went on to serve as a press officer for the U.S. Department of Agriculture and Executive Director of the National Newspaper Publishers Association, his paper’s longevity did not match his own. Only scattered editions of the Southern Broadcast from 1936 and 1937 now exist.17

Many of the surviving box scores of the Monarchs’ 1932 season come from the town’s white newspapers, the Monroe Morning World and the Monroe News Star, which, when compared with far larger mainstream newspapers in far larger markets, gave a significant amount of coverage to the local black team. Though many African-American papers throughout the nation published reports of the Monarchs’ games, fewer carried box scores. The Louisiana Weekly, Memphis World, Atlanta Daily World, Chicago Defender, and Pittsburgh Courier were among those who did.

What follows is an attempt to take some of the raw data from those papers and from other sources to create a statistical archive of the 1932 season—a measured documentation of a team whose prior appearances in scholarly work has been scarce and woefully unmeasured.

Part 2 of this study provides the Monarchs’ schedule and results, along with win and loss totals divided by month and by team played. It compares Monroe’s played schedule with the print- ed schedule as announced by the Negro Southern League. Finally, the section compares the author’s results to other statistical tallies from encyclopedic accounts that are incomplete and incorrect. Part 3 provides a timeline of player and personnel acquisitions prior to and during the season.

Part 4 catalogues the Monarchs’ 1932 roster and compares the complete roster to the accounts of other encyclopedic treatments that are incomplete and incorrect. The fifth and final part provides a statistical analysis of the available data for the Monarchs’ 1932 season. It includes an evaluation of the statistics of Monarchs’ opponents and leaders from other leagues to gauge the comparative success of the team.

Throughout most of the 1930s, the Monroe Monarchs remained on the periphery of Negro Leagues baseball. But the 1932 team proved a success. A questionable midseason decision by the president of the Negro Southern League kept the Monarchs from a pennant, but their participation in what most of the nation considered the black baseball championship for 1932 gave the team its proverbial 15 minutes of fame. What follows is an attempt to document those 15 minutes of fame, to return them to black baseball’s historical memory.

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THOMAS AIELLO is a doctoral candidate in the Department of History at the University of Arkansas.

Notes

1. Fifteenth Census of the United States: 1930, vol. III, part I, Alabama–Missouri (US Government Printing Office, Washington: 1932), 979.

2. Fifteenth Census, vol. III, 965, 982, 990, 999, 1003.

3. New Orleans Item, May 6, 1919; New Orleans Times-Picayune, May 12, 1919; “The Monroe Lynching,” Southwestern Christian Advocate, June 12, 1919, 1–2; National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, Thirty Years of Lynching in the United States, 1889–1918 (New York: Arno Press, 1969), 71–73, 104–105; and Papers of the NAACP, Part 7: The Anti-Lynching Campaign, 1912–1955, Series A, reel 12 of 30 (Bethesda, MD: University Publications of America, 1982), 348–352, 354, 356, 373–380, 383, 393.

4. Michael E. Lomax, Black Baseball Entrepreneurs, 1860–1901: Operating by Any Means Necessary (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2003), xv–-xvi, xvii.

5. Robert Peterson, Only the Ball Was White: A History of Legendary Black Players and All-Black Professional Teams (New York: Oxford University Press, 1970), 122; DeMorris Smith, interview, September 2, 2004; “The Realty Investment Co. Ltd. to J.M. Supply Co. Inc.—Mortgage Deed, Sale of Land,” Record 79482, April 23, 1927, Conveyance Record, Ouachita Parish, Book 157, pp. 775–778, Ouachita Parish Clerk of Court; “J.M. Supply Co., Inc. to the Realty Investment Co., Ltd.—Mortgage Deed, Vendor’s Lien,” Record 79482, April 23, 1927, Mortgage Record, Ouachita Parish, Book 129, pp. 707–710, Ouachita Parish Clerk of Court; “J.M. Supply Co., Inc. to Fred Stovall—Cash Deed, Sale of Land,” Record 139386, May 21, 1930, Conveyance Record, Ouachita Parish, Book 20, pp. 435–456, Ouachita Parish Clerk of Court; Philip J. Lowry, Green Cathedrals: The Ultimate Celebration of All 271 Major League and Negro League Ballparks Past and Present (Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley Publishing Co., 1992), 81; and Who’s Who in the Twin Cities (West Monroe: H.H. Brinsmade, 1931), 167.

6. Atlanta Daily World, 20, March 22, 1932; Pittsburgh Courier, March 19, 1932; and Birmingham Reporter, 12, March 26, 1932, April 2, 1932.

7. Chicago Defender, 4, 11, June 25, 1932.

8. Louisiana Weekly, July 9, 1932.

9. This is the formula generally repeated in historical accounts. Peterson’s Only the Ball Was White sets the standings as follows: Cole’s American Giants, 34–7, .829 winning percentage; Monroe Monarchs, 33–7, .825 winning percentage. The account of Dick Clark and Larry Lester is the same for the two front-running teams. John Holway’s The Complete Book of Baseball’s Negro Leagues offered a season total for the Southern League teams, and wrongly noted “Nashville was awarded the first half, Chicago the second.”: Chicago American Giants, 52–31, .627 winning percentage; Monroe Monarchs, 26–22, .542 winning percentage. Chicago Defender, July 23, 1932; Robert Peterson, Only the Ball Was White; Dick Clark and Larry Lester, eds., The Negro Leagues Book (Cleveland: Society for American Baseball Research, 1994), 164; and John Holway, The Complete Book of Baseball’s Negro Leagues: The Other Half of Baseball History (Fern Park, FL: Hastings House, 2001), 288, 292–293. See Part 2 for further details.

10. According to the Morning World, the first-half standings looked like this: Monroe, 33–7, .825 winning percentage; Chicago, 28–9, .756 winning percentage. The Pittsburgh Courier’s first-half standings as of July 3 tallied eight losses for Chicago: Monroe, 31–7, .816 winning percentage; Chicago, 31–8, .795 winning percentage. In contrast to Holway’s 26 wins and 22 losses for the season, the Courier tallied Monroe’s total as 60 wins and 22 losses. Monroe Morning World, July 6, 1932; and Pittsburgh Courier, July 9, 1932, September 3, 1932.

11. Monroe Morning World, July 28, 1932; Pittsburgh Courier, July 16, 1932; and Chicago Defender, July 9, 1932, August 13, 1932.

12. For more on coverage of the series by the African-American press in 1932, see Thomas Aiello, “Black Newspapers’ Presentation of Black Baseball, 1932: A Case of Cultural Forgetting,” NINE: A Journal of Baseball History and Culture 15 (Fall 2006).

13. Jim Bankes, The Pittsburgh Crawfords: The Lives and Times of Black Baseball’s Most Exciting Team (Dubuque, IA: William C. Brown Publishers, 1991), 23, 26–27; Chicago Defender, July 2, 1932; and Pittsburgh Courier, April 9, 1932, August 27, 1932.

14. Much of this brief treatment of the 1932 World Series comes from Thomas Aiello, “The Casino and Its Kings Are Gone: The Transient Relationship of Monroe, Louisiana with Major League Black Baseball, 1932,” North Louisiana History 37 (Winter 2006): 15–38. Though one of the Pittsburgh games was scheduled to be played in Cleveland, all took place at Greenlee Park. Pittsburgh Courier, September 10, 1932; Chicago Defender, August 27, 1932; Monroe Morning World, August 31, 1932, September 10, 1932.

15. Monroe Morning World, September 13, 1932.

16. Two years later, another Hall of Fame player would come from Shreveport to start his career with the Monroe Monarchs. Willard Brown played shortstop for the team before being purchased by J.L. Wilkinson to play for the Kansas City Monarchs. The same special 2006 Hall of Fame election that failed to elect Roy Parnell did elect Brown for induction. Much of this brief account comes from Riley’s Biographical Encyclopedia, 206–207, 209, 266–267, 568, 569–570, 605, 723–725, 781–782, 884–885. Additional information from “Hilton Smith Autobiographical Account,” Player File: Smith, Hilton, A. Bartlett Giamatti Research Center, National Baseball Hall of Fame, Cooperstown, NY; Tri-State Defender, April 13, 1974; “Pre-Negro Leagues Candidate Profile: Roy A. ‘Red’ Parnell,” National Baseball Hall of Fame, www.baseballhalloffame.org/hofers_and_honorees/parnell_red.htm, accessed February 21, 2006; “Pre-Negro Leagues Candidate Profile: Willard Jessie ‘Home Run’ Brown,” National Baseball Hall of Fame, www. baseballhalloffame.org/hofers_and_honorees/brown_willard. htm, accessed February 21, 2006; and Steve Rock, “Former Monarchs Pitcher Hilton Smith Elected to Baseball Hall of Fame,” Kansas City Star, March 7, 2001.

17. Jessie Parkhurst Guzman, ed., 1952 Negro Year Book: A Review of Events Affecting Negro Life (New York: William H. Wise & Co., 1952), v; Who’s Who Among Black Americans, 1977–1978, 2nd ed., vol. 1 (Northbrook, IL: Who’s Who Among Black Americans Publishing Company, 1978), 98; and Southern Broadcast, July 11, 1936, February 6, 1937.

18. The exhibitions were against the Rube Foster Memorial Giants—often confused, even in contemporary press reports— as the Chicago American Giants. A series of articles in the Kansas City Call in early April report on both teams and make their differences clear. Kansas City Call, 1, April 8, 1932.

19. The game total by this count is 42, with 35 wins and six losses (minus the exhibitions). This differs from any other account, contemporary or historical, of the season’s first half. I stand by this count. The selective presentation by newspapers and the overall confused state of Negro League Baseball in 1932 both argue for the necessity of a new count. The contemporary and historical controversy over the first half standings, if nothing else, discredits any consistency in former counts. See below for a catalog of other tallies and for the Monarchs’ original schedule as announced by the Negro Southern League in March 1932.

20. Available box scores come from the following sources: Monroe Morning World, March 27, 1932, April 4, 5, 11, 12, 1932, May 7, 8, 9, 15, 22, 1932, June 12, 13, 14, 19, 20, 21, 1932, July 3, 4, 5, 1932, August 1, 2, 8, 9, 29, 30, 31, 1932, September 5, 11, 12, 1932; Monroe News Star, May 16, 17, 23, 1932; Memphis Commercial Appeal, May 1, 2, 3, 1932, July 10, 11, 12, 1932; Pittsburgh Courier, September 10, 1932; Kansas City Call, April 22, 1932; Chicago Defender, June 11, 1932, July 2, 16, 23, 1932; Atlanta Daily World, June 30, 1932, Afro-American, July 23, 1932; and Louisiana Weekly, September 17, 1932.

21. The four final games with the Lincoln Giants of Alexandria, Louisiana are considered exhibition games, as they take place after the close of the World Series.

22. Pittsburgh Courier, 19 March 1932; and Atlanta Daily World, March 22, 1932.

23. Pittsburgh Courier, July 16, 1932; and Chicago Defender, July 9, 1932.

24. Robert Peterson, Only the Ball Was White: A History of Legendary Black Players and All-Black Professional Teams (New York: Oxford University Press, 1970), 269; and Dick Clark and Larry Lester, eds., The Negro Leagues Book (Cleveland: Society for American Baseball Research, 1994), 164.

25. John Holway, The Complete Book of Baseball’s Negro Leagues: The Other Half of Baseball History (Fern Park, FL: Hastings House Publishers, 2001), 288, 292–293.

26. Monroe Morning World, July 6, 1932.

27. Pittsburgh Courier, July 9, 1932, September 3, 1932.

28. Pittsburgh Courier, September 3, 1932.

29. Louisiana Weekly, March 5, 1932; and Shreveport Sun, March 19, 1932.

30. Murray never played for the Monarchs in the first half of the season. He somehow made his way to Memphis, before returning to the Monarchs in late August. See below. Monroe News Star, March 24, 1932.

31. Chicago Defender, April 2, 1932.

32. Monroe Morning World, April 8, 1932.

33. Monroe Morning World, April 9, 1932.

34. Monroe Morning World, April 21, 1932.

35. Louisiana Weekly, May 21, 1932.

36. Thompson was the losing pitcher on Tuesday, 19 July loss to Chicago, described by the Chicago Defender as the “former Indianapolis twirler.” Chicago Defender, July 23, 1932.

37. Announced in the Monroe Morning World, August 26, 1932. But the players appeared in games versus the Lincoln Giants beginning on August 11.

38. His first appearance came at Austin, August 22, 1932. Monroe Morning World, August 23, 26, 1932.

39. Monroe Morning World, September 10, 1932.

40. See “The Walker Discrepancy” in Part 5.

41. Gillespie was suspended by the Southern League for the second half of the season. See Pittsburgh Courier, September 7, 1932 for his return.

42. Batting average is the only statistic in this section not physically provided by the actual box scores. Further derivative statistics follow under the heading “Derivative Statistics.”

43. On June 12, the Monarchs played a doubleheader with the Montgomery Grey Sox, and the box score for the first game lists the left fielder as Maher—a name never mentioned before or after. The number of incorrect spellings and misinterpretations of names leads the observer to conclude that the handwritten box score submission that included Walker appeared to be Maher to the Monroe Morning World’s typesetter. Walker (Maher) was 1 for 4 with 0 runs.

44. There here exists a discrepancy that must be acknowledged. James Riley’s The Biographical Encyclopedia of the Negro Baseball Leagues lists two Walkers as players for the 1932 Monarchs. Neither are very well known. W. Walker is listed as a left fielder. H. Walker is listed as a catcher. In a game against the Chicago American Giants, the box score of which appears in the Chicago Defender, 23 July 1932, Walker is listed as playing lf and c in the Saturday box score. The dearth of information available about these players (even accurate first names) leaves open the very real possibility that this is these two players are the same, particularly with the prevalence of box score typographical errors. Box scores generally list “Walker” and a position, so absolute accuracy is impossible. For the sake of the best possible sample, however, I have separated the catching Walker from the left fielding Walker. One newspaper account, however, describes W. Walker as W.C. Walker, “former Campbell College star.” This information doesn’t discount the possibility that H. and W. Walker were different players, but it seems to suggest that there was one known Walker on the team, making the possibility that W.C. Walker was the only member of the 1932 Monarchs more than plausible. Atlanta Daily World, 15 September 1932; and James Riley, The Biographical Encyclopedia of the Negro Baseball Leagues (New York: Carroll and Graf Publishers, Inc., 1994), 809, 811. Following the combined season totals below, the statistics of both possible Walkers are combined to demonstrate the totals of one player, W.C., (in the event that the Walkers were indeed one player) under the heading “The Walker Discrepancy,” page 10.

45. All totals derived from the available data. Wins, losses, and scores are totals from Part 2: 1932 Monroe Monarchs Schedule and Results. Statistical performance numbers are totals from the “Season Totals” section of Part 5: Statistical Analysis of the Available Data for the 1932 Monroe Monarchs, page 8. As in the First and Second Half statistical breakdowns, exhibition games with available scores (with the exception of those taking place after the close of the World Series) are included in the total runs scored and allowed.

46. Winning percentage is the only pitching statistic not physically provided by the actual box scores. The lack of consistent details about specific pitching performance categories makes derivative pitching statistics virtually impossible to provide. The percentage is calculated by dividing the number of wins by the number of decisions.

47. The run totals for this section of the team statistics are derived from available box scores, and thus from fewer games than are the run totals based solely on the reported wins and losses. Addition of runs not included in the box scores cannot be included in this section, as they would skew the representative sample the box score statistical analysis is supposed to provide.

48. Batting average is the only statistic in this section not physically provided by the actual box scores. Further derivative statistics follow under the heading “Derivative Statistics.”

49. Batting average is simply the batter’s number of hits divided by his number of at bats (AB above).

50. Slugging percentage follows this formula: [singles + (2 x doubles) + (3 x triples) + (4 x home runs)] / at bats.

51. The total bases statistic follows this formula: singles + (2 x doubles) + (3 x triples) + (4 x home runs).

52. The isolated power statistic follows this formula: total bases – hits / at bats. The original formula calculated the “total bases” by awarding a 0 for singles, 1 for doubles, 2 for triples, and 3 for home runs. Here, total bases is calculated as described in note 3 above.

53. Home run ratio is calculated by dividing the number of a batter’s home runs by his number of at bats.

54. Batting average is the only statistic in this section not physically provided by the actual box scores. Further derivative statistics follow under the heading “Derivative Statistics,” pages 26-27.

55. Note, as mentioned above, that hits, runs, errors, and at bats are the most consistently noted statistics. In this section, for example, though Chicago has scored 15 runs, they have no listed rbi’s. The box scores for games with Chicago did not include rbi as a statistic, and so is not there. While the first four numbers are clearly the most complete, the numbers to the left of the rbi column are reasonably accurate. The same derivatives generated above are generated below the hard numbers section. The given numbers are for the games noted in Part 2, “1932 Monroe Monarchs Schedule and Results,” as having an available box score. The total number of games used to derive each team’s statistics against the Monarchs follows the team name in parentheses.

56. The Pittsburgh statistics presented here include the three World Series games with available box scores and the early exhibition game. Pittsburgh’s individual and team World Series statistics are included below.

57. The statistics here correspond to the three box scores used to compile the Monarchs World Series statistics. See above.

58. This Jud Wilson, one in a litany of future Hall of Fame inductees from the 1932 Crawfords, is the same Jud Wilson who led the 1932 East-West League in batting average for 1932. Wilson moved to the Crawfords after the East-West collapse. See below.

59. The East-West League, the other major Negro Baseball League in 1932, folded early in June. The final statistical release by the league was published in the Baltimore Afro American, 11 June 1932. The statistics and derivative numbers for individual and team East-West sections come from that source.

60. Minimum of fifty at bats, for batting average and the rest of the East-West League statistical leaders.

61. Smith was 4 and 0 in six games, with thirty innings pitched.

62. The Cuban Stars’ home run ratio just edges Baltimore’s .017.

63. This statistic comes from the Baltimore Afro American, 25 June 1932. Soon after this standings release, the league folded.

64. The Cotton States League was a white minor league of teams from Louisiana, Arkansas, and Mississippi. It included, among other teams, the Monroe Twins, who played across town from the Monarchs in Desiard Park. The league, however, did not outlast the NSL. It folded early in July. The final statistical release by the league was published in the Monroe Morning World, 10 July 1932. The statistics and derivative numbers for individual and team Cotton States sections come from that source, as do the Monroe Twins statistics that follow.

65. Minimum of fifty innings pitched imposed by the author.

66. The Pine Bluff rookie came from Dallas, and though the local paper used first names in its reports on the Pine Bluff Judges, Danforth was always called C.B., often with the nickname “Tarzan” added. Pine Bluff Daily Graphic, 22, 24, 26 April 1932, 1, 15, 27 May 1932.

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Two points of special note are:

1. More runs are scored in the first inning than any other, and this difference is by a wide margin, especially for the home team.

2. The home team averages more runs than the visitors in each of the first eight innings, although that pattern reverses in the ninth inning and later.

This second point deserves an additional comment. At first glance, it might seem surprising that the home team scoring drops so dramatically in the ninth and extra innings. However, most of this apparent decline is accounted for by the fact of “walk-off” wins. That is, when the home team gets enough runs to win in the ninth inning or later, they stop batting, with the result that fewer total runs are scored. For the period studied here, 1957–2005, there were 9,053 walk-off wins, which works out to one in every 10.5 games. This sizable number would seem to be enough to account for a substantial portion of the observed drop. Included in this total are 4,646 extra-inning wins by the home team, all of which are, of course, walk-offs.

My friend Clem Comly suggested a different way to look at scoring rate for these innings, which is to normalize scoring per three outs made in each inning. In this way the partial innings of the walk-offs will be mitigated to some extent. The result of that recalculation is seen in Figure 2.

The values for the first eight innings are, of course, unchanged, as are those for the visitors in the ninth and extra innings. The rates for the home team in these last two categories are increased, as expected, but they don’t quite catch up to the visitors because there are still many potential runs that are not scored due to the walkoffs.

It occurred to me and to several who saw these results at SABR34 that a good place to start in trying to figure out the underlying factors causing this pattern was to consider which batters were likely to bat in each inning. Therefore, I began my journey into the land of lineup studies, territory already well staked out by Mark Pankin (see, for example: http://www.pankin.com/markov/btn1191.pdf ). However, Mark’s pioneering work has concentrated on the starting lineup and how variations there can affect scoring. He also made great use of sophisticated modeling to explore these questions in very interesting ways. Tom Ruane has also done some Markov modeling work on the effect of lineups (www.retrosheet.org/Research/RuaneT/lineup_art.htm).

My approach here is a bit different in two ways. First, I looked at actual performance data, not model results, and second, I focused on the consequences of different lineup positions batting first in a given inning, not on the starting lineup. It is essential to distinguish clearly between the starting lineup and the batting order in a given inning. When I refer to the starting lineup, I will use the term “lineup slots,” whereas when I refer to the batting order in an inning, I will speak of the first batter, second batter, etc.

Once again, the removal of pitcher appearances brings the two leagues very close together, even closer than was seen for on-base average. The largest difference is found for the ninth slot, with the low National League value representing a large number of pinch-hitters who have a collective slugging average of .329 over these seasons.

There is one more topic I wish to discuss, and that is related to some work I did previously on batter learning. I made a presentation on this at the SABR meeting in Kansas City in 1996 and published an expanded version in the Baseball Research Journal in 2006. Briefly, what I discovered is that there is a dramatic improvement for starting batters against starting pitchers in batting average, on-base average, and slugging average between their first, second, and third times at bat. Figure 11 is a summary of these results:

Palmer examined pitchers with at least 150 decisions between 1900 and 1983, accounting for how many runs each pitcher allowed, how many were scored on his behalf, and what his career won-lost record “should” have been based on that data. He was searching for “clutch” pitchers: men who won significantly more games than expected because of some unusual ability to pitch to the score and emerge victorious in the close games. With 23 years of additional data, and newly available research tools, now seems a good time to revisit this project.

The overwhelming majority of the time, a team’s won–lost record correlates to the number of runs it scores and the number it gives up. It follows that the same is true about pitchers: if a pitcher has a winning record, most likely it is because he allowed fewer runs than average (reflected in his ERA), or his team scored more runs than average, or both.

There is another factor involved in statistical results: luck, or what statisticians call random chance. For example, if you flip a coin 100 times, you’d expect to get heads about 50 times, but you might get a little more or a little fewer than 50 just by luck. In fact, based on the laws of random chance, there is a 68% chance you’d get within one standard deviation of that total (between 45 and 55 heads), and a 95% chance you’d get within two standard deviations (between 40 and 60 heads).1

What Palmer found is that most pitchers wound up with about as many wins as they should have, with variations within those rules of random chance. In other words, if you win more games than expected, you’re lucky, and if you win fewer, you’re unlucky. His conclusion: “Clutch pitchers do not exist.”

Palmer has updated and fine-tuned his research since then. For one thing, he essentially eliminated modern relievers, because their inclusion skewed the data. Many had much lower winning percentages than expected because of their usage patterns: entering almost exclusively with their teams ahead, they are more likely to suffer a loss than earn a win. Thus, Palmer’s current study includes only pitchers (501 in all) with at least 200 starts and 200 decisions between 1876 and 2006.

In the original study, Palmer used a complex method to estimate a pitcher’s run support, based on his innings pitched, his team’s offense, his own batting performance, and the Linear Weights formula. Thanks to Retrosheet, he is now able to use actual run-support figures (though the figures are not broken down to show runs scored while the pitcher is actually in the game).

Nevertheless, the results of the updated study are very similar to those of the original, and produce the same conclusions.

According to Palmer’s formulas, the number of runs needed to produce an extra win over the course of a season is equal to ten times the square root of the number of runs scored by inning by both teams. Using this theory, it is possible to project a pitcher’s won-lost record based on the number of runs scored and allowed. For example, Johnny Allen made 241 starts in his career, during which his teams scored 1,393 runs, an average of 5.78 per game. Since Allen pitched a total of 1,950.1 innings (the equivalent of 216.7 nine-inning games) in his career, we estimate that his teams scored 1,253 runs (216.7 times 5.78) on his behalf. Meanwhile, Allen allowed a total of 924 runs, an average of 4.26 per nine innings. He thus projects to have had 329 more runs scored on his behalf than he gave up.

To figure out Allen’s expected won-lost record, we need to determine the number of runs per win in his era. In this case, that number is ten times the square root of (5.78 plus 4.26 divided by nine), or 10.56 runs per win. We divide the 329 by 10.56, determining that Allen should have been 31.2 wins above .500. Since he had 217 decisions in his career, his projected wins are 31.2 plus half of 217, or 139.7. So Allen should have gone about 140–77 based on his runs scored–runs allowed patterns. In fact, his career record was 142–75.

Incidentally, Palmer has expanded his study to determine how many of a pitcher’s “extra” wins (wins over .500) can be attributed to his pitching, and how many to his offensive support. For example, Whitey Ford, an excellent pitcher on a great team, finished with a 236–106 record, or 65 games over .500 (171–171). Palmer finds that 38 of those wins were attributable to Ford’s pitching, 22 were courtesy of the Yankees’ bats, and the other five were due to luck.

In a sampling of 501 pitchers, we would expect to find about 160 (32%) who finished more than one standard deviation above or below projection, 25 (5%) who finished more than two, and one (0.25%) who finished more than three. The actual totals are 161, 16, and zero (with Red Ruffing just missing, at 2.98), respectively. Thus, the results are about what we would expect from random chance, and there is no evidence of clutch pitchers.

Here are some highlights of the new study:

• Of 501 qualifying pitchers, 100 (20%) came within one win of projection (rounding off to the nearest integer). Only four pitchers were more than 15 wins off projection.
• Of the 161 pitchers who were at least one standard deviation off projection, 102 were over projection and 59 were Of the 16 who were at least two standard deviations off, 14 were over projection but only two were under. The average pitcher among the 501 was one win over projection. This could be because those who are “lucky” in the win column are more likely to get 200 decisions.
• Two of the three luckiest pitchers were named Welch: Mickey (+21) and Bob (+17). The unluckiest, by far, was Red Ruffing (- 24). Table A shows the pitchers who exceeded projection by the greatest number of wins, while Table B shows those who came in under projection by the most. Table C shows the projected and actual records of some other pitchers of interest, including several commonly regarded as “clutch” pitchers.
• Several pitchers might have made the Hall of Fame, or at least become more serious candidates, had they only matched their projected records. They include Bert Blyleven (287–250 to 299–238; I think somehow he would have managed one more victory), Carl Mays (208–126 to 217–117), and Jim McCormick (265–214 to 280–199).
• On the other hand, Rube Marquard (201–177 to 195–183), Early Wynn (300–244 to 297–247), Happy Jack Chesbro (198–132 to 187–143), and Smiling Mickey Welch (307–210 to 286–231) might not be as Happy or Smiling anymore, on the outside of Cooperstown looking in.

Table A: The Luckiest: (Most Wins over Projection, 1876–2006)

Table B: The Unluckiest: (Most Wins under Projection, 1876–2006)

Table C: Others of Interest (Through 2006)

In a clutch performance, BILL DEANE pitched his team to the Cooperstown Co-Ed Softball League Playoff Championship in 2006.

Notes

1. In this case—a binomial distribution—a standard deviation is the square root of P₃Q₃N, where P is the probability of success (50%), Q is the probability of failure (1 – P, or again 50%), and N is the number of tries (100). So the standard deviation here is 5. Finding the standard deviation (or sigma) for expected wins is a much more complex process, varying from pitcher to pitcher based on his number of decisions and his winning percentage. The average sigma in this group is 6.2 wins.

The reserve clause bound a player to his team for as long as the team, not the player, desired. Even after the contract itself expired, a player remained tied to the team. He could be traded, sold, or released, but the player himself could not initiate any moves on his own.

The reserve clause had its origin at the end of the 1879 National League season and soon evolved into the form it would keep well into the second half of the 20th century.¹

The reserve clause kept a player from choosing where to work for whatever reason, fiduciary or otherwise. And simple economics demonstrate how this inhibited the player’s salary with regard to what he could have received in a free market.

A Definition 

Although it was widely accepted that players had no freedom in determining their fates and destinations, it appears that few people from either side, players or owners, gave much thought to the mechanics of the reserve clause.

The clause was codified into the Uniform Player’s Contract, eventually becoming Paragraph 10A of the document:

On or before December 20 (or if a Sunday, then the next preceding business day) in the year of the last playing season covered by the contract, the Club may tender to the Player a contract for the term of that year by mailing the same to the Player at his address following his signature hereto, or if none be given, then at his last address of record with the Club. If prior to the March 1 next succeeding said December 20, the Player and the Club have not agreed upon the terms of such contract, then on or before 10 days after said March 1, the Club shall have the right by written notice to the Player at said address to renew this contract for the period of one year on the same terms, except that the amount payable to the Player shall be such as the Club shall fix in said notice; provided, however, that said amount, if fixed by a Major League Club, shall be an amount payable at a rate not less than 80 percent of the rate stipulated for the next preceding year and at a rate not less than 70 percent of the rate stipulated for the year immediately prior to the next preceding game.²

More than 200 words, much of it devoted to explanations of timing and salary-reduction limits, the clause has its essence in the 64 words bolded in the above paragraph. If a player and team could not come to terms, the team could unilaterally renew the player’s contract for one year.

While teams had this option, it wasn’t one they had to exercise. Just having the ability to unilaterally renew a contract meant they never had to. If a player didn’t like the contract being offered, his only option, hardly a good one, was to hold out. Thus, for many years the reserve clause served its function as owners and players routinely accepted the effect of the clause without serious scrutiny as to how it worked.

Open to Interpretation

The reserve clause was an iron cable that bound a player to his team, or so everyone thought until the mid-1960s, when growing awareness of the clause’s wording brought about a realization that it was actually a thin thread. 

Although long considered unambiguous in its power, the reserve clause included a phrase that was open to interpretation. “To renew this contract for the period of one year” left hanging the question of what would happen after one year. Could a team renew the contract again (and again and again, into perpetuity, if necessary), or could it exercise the contract renewal only once?

The question was significant because if the answer was ruled to be the latter, it created not just a window but a wide-open door to free agency for a player. All he would have to do was report for duty without putting his signature to a contract, thereby forcing the team to unilaterally renew the contract for a year if it wanted to retain control of the player. After a year, if a team didn’t have the ability to renew the contract again, the player would be a free agent.

If this was so simple, why weren’t players doing it? Because it was still a question whether a team could renew a contract only one time. Through the 1960s, the arbitrator of this issue would be the commissioner of baseball, an employee of the owners who surely would not answer the question in this manner.

A route to Free Agency 

Meanwhile, Marvin Miller was envisioning a different approach. The 48-year-old Miller had experience as an economist in the United Steelworkers of America when he became the first full-time executive director of the Players Association in 1966. Miller said he discovered the potential in Paragraph 10A even before he officially took office. “I did a double take the first time I saw it,” Miller said. “I couldn’t believe the whole reserve system rested on this.” Miller said he knew then that two elements were necessary for a challenge: a grievance system with an impartial arbitrator and a player who felt strongly enough about challenging Paragraph 10A to withstand the “brick bats” that would be thrown at him.³

The formula Miller had for challenging the reserve clause did not emerge right away. Although the players sought a revision of the reserve clause as well as an impartial arbitrator to supersede the commissioner and resolve disputes, they initially had to settle for simpler gains. However, in 1968 they did achieve a collective bargaining agreement (CBA, also known as the Basic Agreement), the first in professional baseball history, which included a procedure for handling grievances.⁴

Although the commissioner would act as the arbitrator of the grievances, Miller said it was still significant. “Nineteen-sixty-six and 1967 there was no grievance procedure—and no grievances,” he explained. “First came the procedure, and then the players had to be taught about the procedure and that they had the right to grieve. The owners claimed that there was a procedure in the past, but they were unable to produce a record of a single grievance having ever been filed.”⁵

Miller said the first grievance filed by the Players Association after the CBA was reached was on behalf of Curt Blefary, who had been fined by his team, the Baltimore Orioles, for taking part in an organized basketball league in the offseason. Although Commissioner William Eckert’s ruling went against  Blefary,  Miller  characterized  it  as a “great thing” since it outraged the players and helped to solidify them.⁶

The players demonstrated solidarity again, over the 1968–69 offseason, by collectively refusing to sign their individual contracts until negotiations over their pension fund were settled. It was new commissioner Bowie Kuhn who helped end the dispute just prior to the March 1969 opening of spring-training camps.⁷

The players had another cause that brought them together in 1969, when they backed Curt Flood’s lawsuit against baseball, which challenged the sport’s exemption from antitrust laws and in turn the reserve clause. Flood, an outfielder who decided to fight baseball after being traded from the St. Louis Cardinals to the Philadelphia Phillies in October 1969, ultimately lost his case; however, the battle produced additional solidarity among the players.⁸

The players stood together again in 1972 in another dispute over the pension, one that resulted in a strike that delayed the beginning of the regular season. (Within a year, the pension was incorporated into the CBA.) Charles Korr, in The End of Baseball As We Knew It: The Players Union, 1960–1981, called the 1972 strike one of the union’s defining moments, writing that it “established the credibility of the union and showed the players that a solid union could prevail in a battle against the owners.”⁹

Potential Challenges to the Reserve Clause

Barely noticed amid all this activity was that in the 1970 CBA negotiations the players got an impartial arbitrator to hear their grievances. (It was actually a three-member arbitration panel, which contained one representative from labor, one representative from management, and an impartial arbitrator agreed upon by both sides.) The commissioner would no longer decide all disputes, only those concerning the integrity of the game.¹⁰

The first piece was in place for the players. Next they would need someone to challenge the interpretation of Paragraph 10A. Although Al Downing had had his contract unilaterally renewed by the New York Yankees during spring training in 1969, he had no thoughts of becoming the test case for the players. First, the commissioner would still adjudicate such questions; in addition, Downing had little leverage. Coming off an injury-plagued season that left him with little value on the open market, Downing was actually fearful of being cut loose by the Yankees, and he ended up signing a new contract before the regular season opened.

It wasn’t until 1972 that anyone played into the regular season on a renewed contract. Catcher Ted Simmons had had a solid season in his first full year in the majors, playing for the St. Louis Cardinals in 1971. He rejected his club’s contract offer the following spring. Rather than follow the usual, but internecine, path of holding out, Simmons wanted to get in shape and play while continuing to negotiate with the Cardinals. He reported to spring training, forcing the Cardinals to renew his contract.

“Simmons refused to be bluffed into signing a new unsatisfactory contract in order to be ‘allowed’ into uniform,” said Marvin Miller. “The union advised [him] that once his contract was renewed, he was under contract and could not be barred from spring training or from the regular season, even if he refused to sign that contract.”¹¹

Miller also said he never made recommendations to the players, that the initiative  had  to come from them. He simply advised the players as to what their rights were.¹²

Although Simmons, as had been the case with Downing three years earlier, was only trying to negotiate a better deal for himself, some of the more astute sports columnists around the country were picking up on the potential significance of his situation.13 What if he went the entire season without signing a new contract? Would he become a free agent?

The question never came before the arbitration panel as Simmons signed a new contract with St. Louis on July 24. The Cardinals said the signing— reportedly for two years at $35,000 per year—was made possible by the Federal Pay Board’s decision to exempt athletes from wage controls then in effect.¹⁴

However, it’s possible that the Cardinals might have also been feeling pressure to sign Simmons, lest he become the test case for the players. Simmons later said the Cardinals had “buckled under” and given him exactly what he had been requesting.¹⁵ Simmons reportedly had considered challenging the renewal clause, possibly in the courts as opposed to through a grievance to baseball’s arbitration panel, but he had been adamant at the time that he would rather settle his contract situation with the Cardinals. “I don’t think I ever seriously considered that,” he said of a court challenge. “If I had gone to court and won, I don’t think I could do anybody in the future in baseball that much good, if you know what I mean.”¹⁶

The owners’ fear of a test case might have benefited players who followed Simmons’s lead and went into the 1973 season on renewed contracts. According to The Sporting News Official Baseball Guide 1974, seven players opened the 1973 season without having signed new contracts and were playing on renewed contracts: Stan Bahnsen, Rick Reichardt, and Mike Andrews of the Chicago White Sox; Jim Kaat of Minnesota; Dick Billings of Texas; Fritz Peterson of the New York Yankees; and Jerry Kenney of Cleveland.¹⁷ (Kaat had actually signed a contract with the Twins the day before the regular season began.)¹⁸

Bahnsen, Billings, and Peterson signed new contracts with their teams during the 1973 season while Kenney, Reichardt, and Andrews were released from their teams. “The Chisox probably could have easily sold Reichardt and Andrews for the $20,000 waiver price but instead asked for and received waivers on both players for the purpose of giving them their unconditional releases, a process in which the Sox, in exchange, received $1 for each player,” according to Jerome Holtzman in the “Review of 1973” in The Sporting News Official Baseball Guide 1974. “It was believed that the Sox chose this route essentially in fear of a subsequent grievance by the Players Association, which may be eager to test the validity of the renewal clause in a courtroom.”¹⁹

In addition to the leverage individual players might have been getting because of the owners’ fear of a challenge to the reserve clause, collectively the players were making gains as the owners were refusing to budge on modifying the reserve clause in collective bargaining.

In negotiations for a new CBA, to replace the one that expired at the end of 1972, the players sought a loosening of the shackles, reportedly in the form of a proposal for a player to become a free agent if not offered a certain salary, depending upon the player’s length of service.

The new agreement contained no such provision. However, veteran players—those with more than 10 years in the same league and five years with the same team—would have the right to veto a trade. In addition, the owners agreed to salary arbitration for players with more than two straight years of service in the majors or three years of non-continuous service. Although this wouldn’t allow a player to choose the club he wanted to play for, it at least meant players could ensure that their salaries were in line with others of their caliber.²⁰ “Salary arbitration has been a major factor in eliminating gross inequities in the salary structures from club to club (and sometimes on the same club),” wrote Miller in his 1991 autobiography.²¹

These were significant gains for the players, particularly the salary arbitration, which remains today and continues to vex the owners. Not only that, the players kept the owners nervous regarding the interpretation of the reserve clause as two more, Sparky Lyle of the New York Yankees and Bobby Tolan of the San Diego Padres, started the 1974 season on renewed contracts. (One of the reasons for the decline of players going unsigned into the regular season in 1974 was because of salary arbitration, which started that year. Many players resolved their salary disputes in this manner rather than refusing to sign contracts.)

On the final day of the regular season, Lyle signed a two-year deal with the Yankees, one that covered the nearly completed season and the 1975 season, but Tolan finished the 1974 season on a renewed contract. On October 17, the Players Association filed two grievances. One was specifically on Tolan’s behalf, requesting free agency for him; the other, more significant, requested clarification of the renewal clause, which could mean free agency for any player who played out his option in this manner.²²

Tolan’s case reached the arbitration panel, but on December 9 he signed a new contract with the Padres. He received the salary increase he had been seeking for 1974 along with another increase for his 1975 contract. The following month the Players Association dropped the grievances that had been filed on Tolan’s behalf.²³

If it was the intent of the owners to continue to postpone a test case, they were succeeding—in a sense. The question was how expensive was it becoming for them to do so. Would Tolan have received what he wanted if not for the fear by the owners that he could become a free agent—and take everyone else along with him? Were owners more likely to accede to the requests of players on renewed contracts? Marvin Miller contends that this was the case, that “players were picking up gradually that they had leverage by the threat of being a test case.”²⁴

Catfish Hunter Grabs the Headlines

As Tolan was signing his contract, another player was in the process of getting his freedom, and it was this case that dominated the news. Oakland A’s pitcher Jim “Catfish” Hunter was claiming to be a free agent on the grounds that his owner, Charles Finley, had reneged on his contract by not making payments for deferred compensation as scheduled during the 1974 season. Hunter would be the biggest free agent ever to hit the market, coming off a season in which he had won 25 games and the Cy Young Award, if he was successful. And he was.

After deliberating two weeks, Peter Seitz, the impartial member of the arbitration panel, ruled in Hunter’s favor in mid-December. The circus scene that developed later in the month—team representatives lining up at the office of Hunter’s attorney in the small town of Ahoskie, North Carolina—was a story no media outlet could resist, particularly when Hunter finally signed a five-year deal with the New York Yankees worth more than $3 million, a then unheard-of amount (although reportedly not the highest offered).

While the story was surely an attention grabber, Hunter became a free agent in  a  way  that set no precedent for any other player (except, of course, for anyone fortunate enough to play for an owner foolish enough to be as remiss as Finley). Mostly ignored in this frenzy was what could have happened had Tolan been granted his free agency, which would have opened the door to everyone else. So little attention was paid to Tolan’s signing that it was mentioned in a one-paragraph item a “Sports News Briefs” section of the New York Times.²⁵

Still, the Hunter case was significant in that it provided an indication of how restrained player salaries were because of the reserve clause. The owners used the situation as an example of how salaries would escalate out of control with rich teams (such as the Yankees) snapping up the biggest stars if others were allowed to sell their talents in an open market. Emil “Buzzie” Bavasi, president of the San Diego Padres, reported to have been one of the highest bidders for Hunter, said, “What we saw happen here fully demonstrates the importance of the reserve clause. This manifests why we can’t afford to change the reserve rule. The richest clubs would offer the top players the biggest salaries and the biggest bonuses.”

Marvin Miller countered by saying, “ The Hunter case established zero about what would happen in a free market. Here we had a supply of one and a demand of 24 [clubs in the major leagues at that time]. Obviously, when the supply is one and the demand is great, prices will go up dramatically.”²⁶

Privately, however, Miller made sure the players realized how much free agency could be worth to them. The Hunter experience, he contended, displayed “concrete evidence” of how much salaries were held down by the lack of freedom players had. He added that freedom, not just money, was a significant issue to the players, although the media never touched on this, focusing only on the money issue. Beyond the dollars, players wanted the opportunity to choose where to play; for some players the motivation was to get to a team that was thin in talent at their position, thereby providing a greater opportunity for playing time. In Hunter’s case, getting out of Finley’s clutches was more important than the money. “There were many valuable things in freedom that had nothing to do with money—but money was there, too.”²⁷

The Hunter case increased Miller’s hopes that some freedom could be gained through collective bargaining (which would take place in the next year as the Basic Agreement was expiring at the end of 1975). Before the Hunter decision, Miller said he would never have recommended a strike as a means of challenging the reserve clause. After the Hunter decision, a strike became a viable strategy should they need it.²⁸

The Final Beginning of the End

Beyond negotiations, the opportunity to end the reserve clause through a grievance remained. The 1975 season began with three players on renewed contracts, Andy Messersmith of the Los Angeles Dodgers, Richie Zisk of the Pittsburgh Pirates, and Dave McNally of the Montreal Expos. Zisk played through the regular season on the renewed contract but signed a new contract before the playoffs began that fall.²⁹

That left Messersmith and McNally as the potential challengers to Paragraph 10A. Messersmith wanted a no-trade clause in his contract, a provision the Dodgers were reluctant to agree to. It’s possible that they would have given in, however, if not for the presence of McNally.

McNally was significant because he had retired during the season. Following an outstanding pitching career  with  the  Baltimore  Orioles (in which he had four consecutive seasons with at least 20 wins), McNally had been traded to Montreal after the 1974 season. However, after a good start with the Expos, he struggled and, after losing six straight games, retired in June 1975, and eventually returned to his hometown of Billings, Montana, where he operated a car dealership with his brother.

Even though he was no longer pitching, McNally, because he had begun the season on a renewed contract, would be eligible to claim free agency after one year. While it wouldn’t benefit him, it would mean much to the current and future players. Since he was retired, there wasn’t any way he could be tempted to sign a new contract. Or was there?

Marvin Miller says McNally called him in November to report that Expos president John McHale had come to Billings and tried to get him to sign a contract. The reported offer was for $125,000 for the 1976 season along with a $25,000 signing bonus, which McNally could keep even if he didn’t pitch again.

However, McHale says his trip to Billings occurred soon after McNally left the Expos, and he was trying to persuade the pitcher to return to the team immediately. McHale said he was trying to salvage something from the trade with Baltimore to take the pressure off Expos general manager Jim Fanning, who was on the hot seat as a result of the trade. (The other major league player the Expos got in the deal was Richie Coggins, who barely played for Montreal because of a thyroid infection. In June, at about the same time McNally retired, the Expos put Coggins on waivers. Meanwhile, the players the Expos gave up in the deal, Ken Singleton and Mike Torrez, were having good seasons for the Orioles.)

McHale denies offering McNally a bonus that could be kept even if he didn’t pitch again but says he “may have offered him [McNally] more money to come back.”

McHale’s offer was viewed by some as a sham, nothing more than a bribe to remove McNally from the test case. If McNally signed a new contract with Montreal, the Dodgers could then renew their efforts to sign Messersmith, removing the final possibility for a challenge in 1975. McHale maintains that wasn’t the case. “I had never even given a thought that it had anything to do with the player relations problem. That was not the motivating factor for me to go to Billings. . . . I was pulling out all the stops [to get McNally to return to the Expos]. I couldn’t have been more serious about wanting him to come back.”³⁰

Regardless of McHale’s intent, McNally did not sign a new contract. With a grievance now assured because of McNally, it meant that the long-awaited challenge to the reserve clause would finally happen. As a result, the Dodgers didn’t bother to try and sign Messersmith. They had to resign themselves to having his, and others’, fate in the hands of the arbitration panel.

The Players Association filed grievances on behalf of Messersmith and then McNally in early October.

The Decision

At the heart of the Players Association’s case before the arbitration panel was the argument that the word “one,” when used in Paragraph 10A, meant a single year rather than a rolling number of one-year renewals stretching into perpetuity. The owners’ argument was that they had the right to renew the entirety of the contract, including the right to renew the renewal provision.

The hearing was held in the latter part of November and early December of 1975. Miller and owners’ representative John Gaherin quickly ruled in favor of their respective employers.

Just before Christmas, reports came out that Peter Seitz, the impartial arbitrator, would rule for the players. Even so, Miller said he felt great trepidation when the decision was released on December 23. He immediately turned to the final page of the document containing the decision, then sighed with relief as he saw what Seitz had ruled, that Messersmith and McNally were free agents.³¹

McNally stayed retired, and Messersmith, free to deal with anyone, eventually chose the Atlanta Braves as his next employer, but the significance of the decision went well beyond either player. The door to free agency was open. A player could refuse to sign a new contract, forcing his team to unilaterally renew his contract for one year. After that year, since the team could not renew it again—the crux of the issue decided by Seitz—the player would then be a free agent.

While Seitz’s decision resulted in freedom for the players, he made clear that it wasn’t his job to decide on the merits of the reserve clause. He maintained that the issue before the arbitration panel was not “to determine what, if anything, is good or bad about the reserve system. The panel’s sole duty is to interpret and apply the agreements and understanding of the parties.”³² In other words, the demise of the reserve clause was not created by Seitz but by the wording of the contract itself.

Nevertheless, Dick Young of the New York Daily News, in his column entitled “Young Ideas” (considered a misnomer by many), blasted Seitz with typical intemperance. Young’s opening read, “Peter Seitz reminds me of a terrorist, a little man to whom nothing very important has happened in his lifetime, who suddenly decides to create some excitement by tossing a bomb into things.”³³

Other Options for the Owners

Were the owners really stuck in 1975 when there was no way to get Dave McNally to sign a new contract? What if the Expos had just released McNally, similar to what had been done in 1973 with the White Sox with Rick Reichardt and Mike Andrews and the Indians with Jerry Kenney? That would have made McNally a free agent but without setting a precedent that could affect others.

In a telephone conversation in February 2003, when this question was asked of Marvin Miller, he replied that he had never thought of the possibility. A follow-up letter to Miller the next month included the statement “McNally would have been a free agent without setting a precedent in the process” had the Expos released him. Miller replied, “Given the circumstances, I do not agree.”³⁴

Even if the owners could have indefinitely postponed a showdown before an arbitrator, the cost of heading off a challenge would probably have become increasingly expensive, as they would have had to continue  to accede to the requests of players, no matter how extravagant they were seen by the owners, to keep them from becoming a test case.

It would appear that the owners had no good choices in hanging on to the reserve clause.

Of course, there had always been another way. All along, the owners could have superseded Paragraph 10A, the troublesome clause, by agreeing to modify the reserve clause through collective bargaining.

In fact, Seitz reportedly tipped his hand on his decision in the Messersmith-McNally case, urging the owners not to force a decision from him but to instead settle the matter in the negotiations then taking place for a new collective bargaining agreement. “That Seitz had urged negotiation was a tipoff of impending defeat [for the owners],” wrote Jerome Holtzman in the “Review of 1975” in The Sporting News Official Baseball Guide.³⁵ If true, it was tantamount to a jury letting a defendant know they were going to find him guilty, giving him the chance to instead cop a deal with the prosecutor. However, the owners pressed Seitz for a decision, even though they knew what it would be, opting instead to appeal his ruling in federal court.

What would the owners have been able to achieve had they bargained at this point rather than allow Seitz to rule on the matter? They probably could not have come out as well as owners in other sports, who did allow players to play out their options but with significant restrictions.

Since the early 1960s, the National Football League (NFL) had operated under a system in which a player could become free to sign with another team. However, the team signing the player would have to compensate the team losing the player with something of equal value (money, a draft choice, or another player or players). This meant that a player could only force his team to perform what was essentially a trade. In this sense, the freedom was limited, especially with regard to the monetary amount a player would be offered by a new team. Under such a system, salaries would still be severely restricted vis-à-vis what one could receive in a truly free market. (Because Commissioner Pete Rozelle would rule on the compensation one team would have to give the other if the teams themselves could not agree, the system became known as the “Rozelle Rule.”)³⁶

Marvin Miller said, “Once we had impartial arbitration, I would not have recommended anything except the most meaningful of reform,” adding that he never would have settled for free agency that called for significant compensation, similar to the Rozelle Rule. But what if the owners had been willing to give something as early as 1968, during the negotiations for the first CBA? Would they have been able to have gotten a system similar to that of their brethren in the NFL? “The thing is,” said Miller, “they never tried.”³⁷

Bowie Kuhn concurs that it was a mistake not to have been flexible on the issue while they had the upper hand and that he had urged the owners to negotiate.³⁸ But the executive contingent— particularly hard-liners such as Bob Howsam of Cincinnati, Paul Richards of Atlanta, August Busch of St. Louis, and later Allan “Bud” Selig of Milwaukee would not let this become a possibility.³⁹

Even in 1975, with their own bargaining position significantly reduced as Seitz considered his ruling on McNally-Messersmith, the owners could have held on to some portion of player control through negotiation. Instead, once Seitz made his ruling, they had lost it all.

Aftermath

The first thing the owners did after the decision came down was fire Seitz, which was the right of either side to do at any time. Then, as expected, the owners appealed Seitz’s decision to federal court. The appeal was based not on the decision itself but that the grievance procedure was not the proper forum for such a case.

“The owners had great confidence in their ability to prevail in the courts,” said Miller, offering an explanation as to why the owners chose this route rather than accept Seitz’s suggestion to work out their differences through negotiations.⁴⁰

However, the owners were unsuccessful in their appeal, first in the U. S. District Court of the Western District of Missouri and then in the Eighth District Court of Appeals. They had the option of appealing to the U. S. Supreme Court, which they finally chose not to pursue.⁴¹

The legal challenges did not end until March 1976, which delayed negotiations on a new CBA, which had expired December 31, 1975. The new Basic Agreement would define the workings of free agency.

“Following the Seitz decision, all the owners could do was bargain with the players on the new Basic Agreement,” said Miller. “This time, the players held all the cards, not that you could tell by the way the owners negotiated. They offered a reserve system that would allow players with nine years’ experience to become a free agent after playing another season on a renewed contract. In other words, it would take 10 years—nine plus the option year—for a player to become a free agent.” Miller added that the owners’ proposal called for a player becoming a free agent only if his team did not offer him a certain salary. Other restrictions called for compensation to the team losing a free agent from the team that signed the player (along the lines of the NFL’s Rozelle Rule) and a limit on the number of teams that would be eligible to sign a particular free agent. Miller was amazed at the chutzpah exhibited by the owners and said it was akin to Robert E. Lee showing up at Appomattox and trying to dictate terms to Ulysses Grant.⁴²

With no agreement on a modified reserve system in sight, the owners ordered a lockout of spring training camps. In his negotiations, Miller faced pressure from the players in different ways. If he gave away too much, he could face litigation from players claiming that the rights gained by the Seitz decision had been abrogated by the new Basic Agreement. “I think the majority of players are willing to make a compromise on a retroactive reserve system,” said Miller at the time. “But the arbitrator’s ruling gave all the players certain legal contractual rights. Not every player would be willing to bargain these away.”⁴³

On the other hand, some players wanted the lockout ended, even at the cost of their newly gained freedom. Miller says he received a call from a member of the Houston Astros, telling him that something had to be done to end the lockout, even if it meant giving up the free-agent rights that the players had just received. Ken Forsch later called Miller to say that Houston general manager Tal Smith had coerced this player into making the call.⁴⁴

Fearing a split in the players’ ranks, Miller said the players would agree to a structured free agency along the general lines suggested by the owners. On March 17, Commissioner Bowie Kuhn ordered the training camps opened. The 1976 regular season started on schedule as negotiations continued.⁴⁵

A new four-year Basic Agreement was reached in the summer of 1976, calling for free agency for players with six years of major league service after playing a year under a renewed contract. These players would go into a re-entry draft, in which a maximum of 12 teams, 13 starting after the 1977 season, would draft the rights to negotiate with the player. (The player’s previous team would also retain negotiating rights to the player, and any player selected by fewer than two teams in the re-entry draft would be eligible to sign with any team.)

All players who had not yet signed a contract for the 1976 season would become free agents at the end of the 1976 season, and all players who had not yet signed a contract for the 1977 season would become a free agent at the end of the 1977 season, regardless of whether or not they had six years of service in the majors by that time. (This is how some short-term players, such as Lyman Bostock of the Minnesota Twins, were able to become free agents.)⁴⁶

The new system called for compensation to a team losing a free agent, but it wasn’t as significant as what the owners had hoped for. A team signing a free agent had to give the team losing the player one of its picks in the next amateur draft.⁴⁷ Dworkin notes that if the team acquiring a free agent was in the bottom half of the selecting clubs in the re-entry draft, it would have to give up its first pick in the upcoming amateur draft to the team that lost the player; if the acquiring team was in the top half of the re-entry draft, it would give up its second pick. Teams signing more than one free agent would give up draft choices in succeeding rounds. (Amateur draft choices in baseball are not as coveted as in some other sports, particularly football and basketball. Baseball players entering pro ball usually require time to develop in the minors and, in general, the prospects are more uncertain regarding how good the players will eventually be.)

The first re-entry draft was held November 2, 1976, and involved more than 20 players who had played on renewed contracts through the 1976 season. Two days later, Bill Campbell, a relief pitcher who had made $23,000 with the Minnesota Twins in 1976, signed a four-year deal for $1 million with the Boston Red Sox. Marvin Miller had expressed concern about the owners colluding to not draft and sign free agents, but his fears subsided as many other top players signed million-dollar deals with new teams over the next three weeks. Baltimore’s Reggie Jackson was the last of the big name free agents to sign and got $3 million for five years from the New York Yankees.⁴⁸

This system of free agency lasted through the remainder of the CBA, which expired at the end of 1979. The owners were adamant in wanting more substantial compensation included in the free agent system to be negotiated in the next Basic Agreement. The players  were  equally  adamant in their opposition. A strike was averted in May 1980 only by deferring the issue of free agency for another year.

A strike did eventually come, wiping out the middle third of the 1981 season. It was finally settled with the agreement of a player pool to be used to compensate teams losing free agents. Teams could protect either 24 or 26 players in their organization (the number depending on whether or not they signed a Type A free agent, meaning one of the top players in the majors as established by a statistical formula). The rest of the players in a team’s organization would be placed in the pool and could be drafted by a team losing a player to free agency. Up to five teams could exempt themselves from supplying players to the pool by forfeiting their right to sign a Type A free agent.⁴⁹

The significance of the player pool was that it did not require direct compensation from a team signing a free agent to the team losing that player. The new agreement also ended the re-entry draft, and free agents were no longer restricted as to the number of teams they could negotiate with.

Owners’ efforts to restrict player freedom and/or limit salaries continued, including some underhanded tactics. In the 1980s, teams operated in concert and adopted a hands-off policy with regard to signing free agents from other teams for the purpose of keeping salaries down. Arbitrators later determined that teams had conspired against free agents over the course of three offseasons, in violation of the collective bargaining agreement, and the owners had to agree to establish a $280 million fund to distribute to the players affected by the collusion.⁵⁰

An attempt by the owners to impose a salary cap resulted in a strike that wiped out the final portion of the 1994 season, including the playoffs and World Series, and delayed the beginning of the 1995 season. The strike ended after the players lodged an unfair labor practices complaint with the National Labor Relations Board, which sought, and received, an injunction to restore the terms and conditions of the previous Basic Agreement.⁵¹ Although the players fended off a salary cap this time, the owners were eventually able to create a “payroll tax” system, calling for a tax on salaries above a certain limit for each team.

Conclusion 

The million-dollar contracts of the free-agent pioneers were significant, even if they look puny in comparison to ever rising salaries in the ensuing decades.

Salaries would have risen even without the abrupt demise of the reserve clause, in part simply because of inflation but also because, most likely, some freedom would have eventually been afforded the players through collective bargaining. Had the owners allowed modifications to the reserve system while they still controlled it, they no doubt would have held on to more than they have with their post-Seitz attempts to restrict salaries and player movement. Their attempt to gain substantial compensation in 1980-81 was doomed but might have been possible had it been offered earlier.

In his introduction to Marvin Miller’s 1991 autobiography, Bill James summed up the futility of the owners: “From 1966 to this moment, the owners have been just behind the curve, always trying to get the players to accept today the offer that would have been acceptable yesterday and generous a couple weeks ago.”⁵²

Acknowledgments

The author appreciates the help of Mark Armour and Bill Deane, who reviewed the content of this article for accuracy and made valuable suggestions. I am not a lawyer (although I have had the Miranda warning read to me more than once), so I am grateful for the input from SABR members Mitchell Nathanson and Larry Boes. Charles Korr also answered questions from me and contributed information. Special thanks to Marvin Miller, Bowie Kuhn, and John McHale, who consented to be interviewed.

Notes

1. Al “First Reserve Clause Enacted 100 Years Ago” in “From a Researcher’s Notebook,” Baseball Research Journal. Cooperstown, NY: Society for American Baseball Research, 1979, pp. 9–10; Andrew Zimbalist, Baseball and Billions: A Probing Look Inside the Big Business of Our National Pastime. New York: Basic Books, 1992, p. 4. According to Zimbalist, the National League was “following the lead of the avaricious owner of the Boston club, Arthur Soden,” who proposed baseball’s first reserve clause. “His proposal secretly to reserve five players per team was adopted by the owners at a meeting in Buffalo, New York,on September 30, 1879. The number of reserved players was enlarged to eleven in 1883, twelve in 1885, fourteen in 1887; by the early 1890s the reserve clause had been extended to cover thecontracts of all players.”
2. James B. Dworkin. Owners versus Players: Baseball and Collective Boston: Auburn House, 1981, p. 63. Dworkin noted that although the clause had been amended slightly attimes, the language presented is from the 1973 collective bargaining agreement, which Dworkin describes as “a fairly standard version of the pre-free-agency reserve clause.” The SportingNews Official Baseball Guide 1975, p. 302, describes Section 10A of the Uniform Player’s Contract: A club can automatically renew the contract of an unsigned player “for a period of one year” with the player entitled to at least 80 percent of his prior salary; The Sporting News Official Baseball Guide 1976, p. 285, Section 10A: “If, prior to March 1, the Player and the Club havenot agreed upon the terms of the contract, then on or before 10 days after said March 1, the Club shall have the right by written notice to the Player to renew this contract for one year.”
3. Interview with Marvin Miller, May 22, 2003.
4. The Sporting News Official Baseball Guide 1968, 168.
5. March 2003 correspondence with Marvin Miller.
6. Interview with Marvin Miller, May 22, 2003.
7. The Sporting News Official Baseball Guide 1969, 174, 190.
8. Leonard “Flood, Backed by Players, Plans Suit to Challenge Baseball Reserve Clause” by Leonard Koppett, New York Times, December 30, 1969, p. 42; Leonard Koppett, “BaseballIs Sued Under Trust Law,” New York Times, January 17, 1970, p. 1; The Sporting News Official Baseball Guide 1970, pp. 302-307; The Sporting News Official Baseball Guide 1971, pp.272-278;The Sporting News Official Baseball Guide 1972, p. 296; The Sporting News Official Baseball Guide 1973, pp. 281-282; U. S. Supreme Court decision of Flood v. Kuhn, 407 U. S. 258 (1972), available online at http://laws.findlaw.com/us/407/258.html.
9. Korr, The End of Baseball As We Knew It, 246.
10. The Sporting News Official Baseball Guide 1971, 291.
11. Correspondence with Marvin Miller, March 2003.
12. Interview with Marvin Miller, May 22, 2003.
13. Bob “The Simmons Case—A Touchy Issue,” The Sporting News, July 8, 1972, p. 4.
14. “Cards Sign Simmons,” New York Times, July 25, 1972, 29; Dick Kaegel, “Simmons Is ‘Relieved’ with 2 Year Contract,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, July 25, 1972, p. 1C.
15. The Sporting News Official Baseball Guide 1975, 303.
16. “Simmons Is ‘Relieved,’” 1C.
17. The Sporting News Official Baseball Guide 1974, 266–267.
18. Sid “Kaat Signs,” Minneapolis Tribune, April 6, 1973, p. 2C; Interview with Jim Kaat, April 19, 2003.
19. The Sporting News Official Baseball Guide 1974, 267.
20. “New Contract Assures Baseball 3 Years’ Peace,” Los Angeles Times, February 26, 1973, E1; 1974 The Sporting News Official Baseball Guide 1974, pp. 259–263.
21. Marvin A Whole Different Ball Game: The Sport and Business of Baseball. Secaucus, NJ: Birch Lane Press, 1991, p. 109.
22. “Lyle Signs with Yanks for 1975—and 1974,” Chicago Tribune, October 3, 1974; The Sporting News Official Baseball Guide 1975, 302–303.
23. “Baseball Avoids Showdown Over Reserve Clause,” Los Angeles Times, January 14, 1975, D1.
24. Interview with Marvin Miller, May 22, 2003.
25. “Sports News Briefs: Tolan and Padres Agree on ’74 Pay,” New York Times, December 10, 1974, p. 62; Leonard Koppett, “A’s Hunter Ruled Free Agent,” New York Times, December 16, 1974, 51; “Catfish a Free Agent—His Price: Million Plus,” Los Angeles Times, December 17, 1947, p. F1.
26. The Sporting News Official Baseball Guide 1975, 300.
27. Interview with Marvin Miller, May 22, 2003.
28. Interview with Marvin Miller, May 22, 2003.
29. The Sporting News Official Baseball Guide 1976, 285; Oscar Kahan, “Messersmith, McNally Attack Reserve System,” The Sporting News, November 1, 1975, p. 8.
30. Telephone interview withs with John McHale, October 31 and November 1, 2006; Miller, A Whole Different Ball Game, pp. 244-245; Korr, The End of Baseball As We Know It, p. 152; “Dejected McNally Tells Montreal He’s Retiring,” The Sporting News, June 21, 1975, p. 30; Bob Dunn, “McNally Declares His Decision to Retire is Firm,” The Sporting News, June 28, 1975, p. 17.
31. Interview with Marvin Miller, May 22, 2003; Miller, A Whole Different Ball Game, 250
32. “Baseball’s Future Was Not Issue—Seitz,” Chicago Tribune, December 24, 1975, p. A3.
33. Dick “Baseball’s Reserve Clause Is Dead . . . Maybe,” New York Daily News, December 24, 1975, p. 38.
34. Telephone conversation, February 15, 2003, and correspondence, March 2003, with Marvin Miller.
35. The Sporting News Official Baseball Guide 1976, 290.
36. Paul Staudohar. Playing for Dollars: Labor Relations and the Sports Business. Ithaca, NY: ILR Press, 1996, pp. 65-83; Dworkin, Owners Versus Players, pp. 249–250.
37. Interview with Marvin Miller, May 22, 2003.
38. Interview with Bowie Kuhn, February 26, 2003.
39. Correspondence with Marvin Miller, August 2006.
40. Telephone conversation with Marvin Miller, February 15, 2003.
41. The Sporting News Official Baseball Guide 1977, 286.
42. Telephone interview with Marvin Miller, February 15, 2003; The Sporting News Official Baseball Guide 1977, p. 287; Miller, A Whole Different Ball Game, p. 255.
43. The Sporting News Official Baseball Guide 1977, 287-288.
44. Interview with Marvin Miller, May 22, 2003; Miller, A Whole Different Ball Game, 269-270.
45. The Sporting News Official Baseball Guide 1977, 291.
46. The Sporting News Official Baseball Guide 1977, 291.
47. Korr, The End of Baseball As We Knew It, 193; Dworkin, Owners Versus Players, pp. 86–87.
48. The Sporting News Official Baseball Guide 1977, 283.
49. The Sporting News Official Baseball Guide 1982, 11.
50. The Sporting News Official Baseball Guide 1990, 20-21; The Sporting News Official Baseball Guide 1991, p. 25.
51. Murray Chass.“Labor Board to Seek Injunction against Baseball Club Owners; Action May Open the Way for Players’ Return,” New York Times, March 27, 1995, A1; “Backed by Court,Baseball Players Call Strike Over,” New York Times, April 1, 1995, p. 1.
52. Miller, A Whole Different Ball Game, xiv–xv.

The article, authored by David Jordan, Larry Gerlach, and John Rossi, challenged legendary baseball executive Bill Veeck’s claim that in 1943 he had attempted to buy the Philadelphia Phillies with plans to stock the team with Negro League stars, only to be thwarted by the machinations of Commissioner Kennesaw Mountain Landis and National League president Ford Frick.“The major difficulty with this oft-told story,” read a quote on the cover of The National Pastime, “is that it is not true. Veeck did not have a deal to buy the Phillies. He did not work to stock any team with Negro League stars. No such deal was quashed by Landis or Frick.”2

Veeck, the authors charged, had, at the very least misrepresented his actions, and more likely, lied to enhance his image as an integrationist. This contention, aggressively argued and persuasively supported by diligent research, became the new conventional wisdom. However, now the “major difficulty” is that recently uncovered evidence, while not definitively absolving Veeck, raises questions about the conclusions of the Jordan/Gerlach/Rossi article and lends greater credence to Veeck’s original story.

The saga of Bill Veeck and the 1943 Phillies gained wide circulation with the publication of Veeck’s celebrated autobiography, Veeck As in Wreck, in 1962. In a relatively brief two-page aside to his discussion of his 1946 signing of Larry Doby, Veeck revealed that during World War II he had approached beleaguered Phillies owner Gerry Nugent and made arrangements to purchase the club.

Unbeknownst to Nugent, Veeck, working with Negro League booking agent Abe Saperstein and Chicago Defender sports editor Doc Young, planned to field a virtual Negro League all-star team that he believed would win the 1944 National League pennant. Veeck said that he had arranged financing with the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO), and when that fell through, he had Phillies Cigars as another potential backer lined up. But, added Veeck, “Out of a long respect for Judge Landis I felt he was entitled to prior notification of what I intended to do.”

Suddenly, the National League seized control of the Phillies, and Ford Frick sold the team to lumber magnate William Cox “for about half of what I was willing to pay.” According to Veeck, he soon heard that “Frick was bragging all over the baseball world . . . about how he had stopped me from contaminating the league.”3

Veeck’s story adhered to the historical record in some respects but also contained key inaccuracies. The National League had indeed taken the Phillies from Nugent when he could not find an acceptable buyer and subsequently arranged a sale to Cox (who would be barred from baseball the following year for betting on his own team.) But Veeck’s scenario had the date wrong, placing these events in 1944 rather than 1943, misnamed one of his co-conspirators, confusing Chicago Defender editor Fay Young, with A. S. “Doc” Young, whom he would know in Cleveland, and identifying among the Negro Leaguers he planned to sign Luke Easter, who would not make his debut until 1946.4

There was also another reason to be skeptical of Veeck’s claims. Veeck already possessed substantial credentials as a key figure in baseball’s historic integration. In 1947 he had signed Larry Doby to become the first African American player in the American League, becoming only the second major league owner to add a black athlete to his squad, after Branch Rickey of the Brooklyn Dodgers. Now Veeck was saying that if not for the intervention of baseball officials, he, not Rickey, would have won the accolades lavished on baseball’s “Great Emancipator.”

Nonetheless Veeck’s account, as Jordan et al write, had become “an article of historical faith, found in virtually every general history of black and white professional baseball as well as studies of racial integration.”5 Robert Peterson included it in Only the Ball Was White. Donn Rogosin and I, both of whom also interviewed Veeck on the subject, presented the story uncritically in our 1983 books, Invisible Men and Baseball’s Great Experiment.6 All of us took Veeck at his word; none of us sought to corroborate the tale.

The 1998 National Pastime article thus came as a bombshell. Indeed, the journal presented it as such. In addition to the splashy cover and provocative title, The National Pastime presented the revelations as its lead story and, in a periodical in which the typical article ran two to five pages, devoted 11 pages to its exposition. Editor Mark Alvarez in his preamble comments to the issue wrote, “Our lead article . . . definitively debunks a baseball myth created by Bill Veeck, one of the few owners who would probably get a favorable rating by SABR’s membership.”7

The prominence of the three authors lent even more credibility to the exposé. David Jordan, the author of three biographies, including one of pitcher Hal Newhouser, is one of the foremost authorities on Philadelphia baseball history. John Rossi is a professor of history at LaSalle University in Philadelphia. Larry Gerlach, a professor of history at the University of Utah, had published the pioneering volume of oral histories, The Men in Blue: Conversations With Umpires, and more significantly, was the president of SABR at the time.8

Jordan, Gerlach, and Rossi noted that Veeck’s account “has never been corroborated by anyone else . . . the source always turns out to be the two pages in the autobiography or an interview with Veeck himself.”9 Despite dogged digging in newspapers, document collections, and autobiographies they could uncover no evidence to support his tale. Abe Saperstein had never discussed Veeck’s plan, nor had Fay Young. No Negro League player had ever mentioned being recruited by Saperstein, Young, or Veeck to play for the Phillies. Contemporary newspaper reports and an interview with Rudie Schaffer, Veeck’s top assistant during these years, confirmed that Veeck had met with Phillies owner Gerry Nugent in October 1942. But according to Schaffer and other accounts, nothing had come of this meeting. No firm offer had been made or accepted. During the critical months leading up to the sale of the team in February 1943. Veeck’s name never came up as a potential buyer.

The three scholars searched not only the mainstream press and The Sporting News for corroboration of Veeck’s claims, but the African American week lies as well. The Philadelphia Tribune never picked up on the story. Fay Young’s Chicago Defender, which supposedly had an inside track, never mentioned Veeck’s plan; nor did any of the other major African American periodicals. “The silence of the black press,” concluded Jordan et al, “is deafening.”10 The Communist Daily Worker had addressed the sale of the Phillies and even advised the new owner to “look for first rate players . . . among those Negro League players who have never been given a major league chance.” But the Worker never mentioned Veeck’s name in connection with this story.11 With regard to CIO involvement, the authors note, “a bankrupt baseball team seems an odd investment for the CIO to make during the war.” Research into the CIO archives uncovered “no mention of Bill Veeck or the possible financing of his purchase of the Phillies.”12

Jordan et al also searched the black and white press at key moments of Veeck’s career when the story might have surfaced. Veeck purchased the Cleveland Indians in 1946, the year when Jackie Robinson debuted in Montreal and speculation existed about which other teams might follow the Brooklyn Dodger lead. The only mention of Veeck’s attempt to buy the Phillies appeared in a column by Red Smith. Smith wrote,“Hardly anyone knows how close Veeck came to buying the Phillies when the National League was forcing Gerry Nugent to sell. He had the financial backing and the inside track, but at the last minute, he decided the risk was too great to take with his friend’s money.”13

Smith had worked for the Philadelphia Record in 1942-43, but, as Jordan et al point out, this story likely came not from any firsthand knowledge, but from Veeck himself and the reason that the deal fell through offered here differs from later accounts. More significantly, neither Smith nor any newspaper in 1946, black or white, not even the Chicago Defender or Cleveland Call and Post, displayed an inkling of awareness of Veeck’s plan to field a team of Negro Leaguers. Similarly, in 1947 when Veeck signed Doby, and 1948 when, amidst great publicity he recruited Satchel Paige, no one brought up the Phillies precedent.14

Moreover, the three authors found numerous inaccuracies, inconsistencies, and improbabilities in Veeck’s version of events. Why would the cash-strapped Nugent have accepted an offer for his team that would have netted him half as much as the Veeck bid? Since Veeck owned the minor league Milwaukee franchise and Landis had no jurisdiction over the minors, why hadn’t Veeck assigned the players he had recruited to play for the Brewers? How, if Frick had “bragged all over the baseball world” about his actions, had the story never leaked out? As Jordan et al observed, Veeck had “a singularly cavalier attitude toward the details of the story.”15 Interviews with Rogosin, Wendell Smith, Shirley Povich, and me differed in the names of the players involved, the sportswriter he had worked with, and the timing of his offer, sometimes placing it before Nugent had turned the team over to the National League and at others implying that he had dealt directly with Frick after the takeover.

Indeed, these inconsistencies led Jordan et al to conclude that Veeck’s integration saga was an “ex post facto . . . latter-day construction,”16 a tale concocted by Veeck in the early 1960s. Veeck, they argue, might have thought about buying the Phillies and might have been influenced by 1942 articles in the People’s Voice and The Sporting News that speculated about how successful an all-black team would be in the National League, but he had never seriously attempted to bring this scenario to fruition.17

The first published version of the story discovered by Jordan et al appeared in 1960. Veeck told a writer for Ebony magazine that he “wanted to buy the Philadelphia ballclub to put in an all-Negro team.” Shortly before the publication of Veeck As in Wreck, Pittsburgh Courier sportswriter Wendell Smith, who had covered the integration beat since the 1930s, described Veeck’s efforts to buy the Phillies, but his account came not from first-hand knowledge, but from a recent interview with Veeck. Jordan et al imply that Veeck’s fabrication dated from this time. In commenting on the Ebony piece, they state, “Clearly the story was embellishedand changed for the autobiography a couple of years later.”18 At another point they suggest that “this story may have resulted from Bill Veeck’s ill health at the time he sat down with Ed Linn to do his book.” Fearing that he might soon die, “he probably felt this book was to be the last chance to poke the baseball powers in the eye, to steal some credit from Rickey, and to polish his own place in baseball history.”19

The arguments presented in “A Baseball Myth Exploded” fell into two categories. As in the case of “Sherlock Holmes’s non barking dog,”their inability to discover any corroboration for Veeck’s claims, they believed, spoke volumes about the validity of the story.20 Furthermore, many of the elements of Veeck’s tale lacked even a modicum of common sense. Jordan et al, using the strongest possible language, speculated on how people would have acted if confronted by various situations. It is, they assert, “inconceivable that Veeck’s Phillies project would not have become a matter of public currency, at least within the world of Negro baseball.” That the black press would not have reacted to Veeck’s betrayal “with great vehemence” is “simply not believable.” Nugent’s acquiescence in Frick’s chicanery “defies economic logic.” 21 Thus, they concluded, “we must face the fact that Bill Veeck falsified the historical record.”22

Given the revisionist nature of the article and its open attack on Veeck’s character, “A Baseball Myth Debunked,’ triggered surprisingly few challenges. Gerlach had sent me an earlier draft in June 1997 and requested a critique. In an e-mail response I raised several objections.23 I pointed out that he, Jordan and Rossi, were trying to prove a negative, a virtually impossible task

Gerlach responded, “That is why we read so far and wide in every conceivable source. In the end we concluded that the absence of evidence is ipso-facto negative; it would not be reasonable to conclude otherwise.” I also argued that I found the press silence on this matter less unusual than they did and could think of other reasons why they might not have pursued this. I did not agree with the proposition that had Veeck been serious about integration in 1942, he could simply have added black players to the Brewers.

I also made two other criticisms. In the article Jordan et al had indicated that sportswriters had not commented on the Phillies revelation, indicating that they did not believe Veeck. I noted that the episode occupied on two pages in a 377-page book and that sportswriters had probably over-looked it, rather than rejected it. More pointedly, I wondered about Frick’s response, or lack of one, to Veeck’s charges. In 1962 Frick was the commissioner of baseball. Veeck had charged him with being a duplicitous racist. Yet Frick had never denied the tale. “Why did Frick allow this blot on his record to stand if it werenot true?” I asked.

In the published version of the article, Jordan et al addressed this point, noting that Veeck had taken many “potshots” at Frick in the book, but argued that since“the baseball press generally gave the volume short shrift . . . there was little pressure on Frick to respond to any of Veeck’s charges.” Frick had decided “that his best course would be to ignore Veeck’s work altogether.”24

Indeed, when Frick published his own autobiography in 1973, he made no mention of Veeck at all.25 The assertion that the press, baseball or otherwise, gave Veeck As in Wreck “short shrift” seemed odd. The book, after all, was a sensation. It was widely reviewed and within twelve days of publication had gone into four printings. It rose as high as ninth place among New York Times bestsellers and remained on the list at least eight weeks.26

Nonetheless, while reviewers and other commentators remarked on his sending a midget to the plate and other promotional stunts and described his running battles with the baseball establishment, none had addressed the Phillies integration saga. Jordan et al were probably correct in their assessment of Frick’s response.

Despite my reservations about particular arguments, I generally accepted the overall thrust of The National Pastime article. Not so Mike Gimbel. He was a SABR member who published annual player ratings manuals and had worked as a statistics analyst for the Montreal Expos and Boston Red Sox. He wrote to SABR executive director Morris Eckhouse, protesting the Veeck article.27

“It is with great sadness and outrage that I must request that my name be removed from the membership list of SABR,” wrote Gimbel. “Shame on SABR for printing this scurrilous article. Shame on SABR for putting it on the cover.”

Gimbel raised some of the same points I had: the negative nature of the evidence, the failure of Frick to rebut the charges, the popularity of Veeck’s book. But in far more pungent prose he attacked the authors as “mean spirited” and protested the tone of the article. He criticized their over-reliance on newspapers. “For Veeck to have gone to even a single reporter to tell anyone of his plans would have been suicidal of the time,” wrote Gimbel, given the “absolute and total racism in the US, both North and South,” at the time.

He noted that the inconsistency in Veeck’s retelling could be construed as a point in his favor. “If it were totally consistent then I would really be suspicious about the story,” countered Gimbel. He had hoped that SABR would publish his response in a subsequent publication, but the organization failed to do so.28

Gimbel’s angry missive notwithstanding, the article in The National Pastime convinced most SABR members and those in the baseball world who became aware of it that Veeck, a master storyteller often prone to exaggeration, had largely invented the tale of his attempt to integrate the 1943 Phillies. However, their considerable exertions notwithstanding, Jordan et al had not, indeed could not possibly have, examined all of the available newspapers that might have mentioned this scheme. They had, in effect, rounded up all of the usual suspects, looking for coverage at times it seemed most likely the story might be referenced. But in recent years researchers perusing the African American press have found earlier references to Veeck’s plans that at least partially debunk the new myth that the 1998 exposé created.

In a footnote in his path breaking 2004 study, Negro League Baseball: The Rise and Ruin of a Black Institution, Neil Lanctot wrote, “there is scattered evidence to suggest [Veeck’s] involvement with Saperstein and Fay Young.” Lanctot references an article in the Chicago Defender on February 26, 1949, in which Young had described an address by Veeck to the Chicago Urban League. The Indians owner stated he had spoken with Young “for several hours about integrating Negroes in major league baseball. At that time I was planning to buy the Philadelphia Nationals.” Lanctot also noted a 1954 report from the Associated Negro Press in which Abe Saperstein talked about the matter.29

In 2005, while thumbing through Great Negro Baseball Stars, a long out-of-print book written by S. “Doc” Young in 1953, I found a passage about Veeck when he bought the Indians in 1946: “Negro writers soon recognized Veeck as a person likely to give an ear to the proposition of Negroes playing in the American League. Perhaps they had heard the unsubstantiated story that Veeck once shocked baseball’s late commissioner Kennesaw Mountain Landis, with a proposal to buy a major league club and transform it into an all-colored aggregation.”30

These citations clearly disproved one of the basic Jordan/Gerlach/Rossi assertions — that Veeck’s story was a “latter-day creation” that he had begun to tell widely only in the early 1960s. It also offered at least partial corroboration from three individuals whom the authors had deemed central to their 1998 exposé. Fay Young and Saperstein, Veeck’s purported collaborators, had indeed both mentioned the plot. With regard to “Doc” Young, who as the sports editor of the Cleveland Call and Post had had extensive access to Veeck during the latter’s years in Cleveland, Jordan et al had asserted, “Young’s silence is significant.”31 But he too, like Fay Young and Saperstein, had not truly been silent on this matter.

Upon discovering the passage in Great Negro Baseball Stars, I sent a message to SABR-L, the discussion list for the Society of American Baseball Research.32 I received several responses from people who had also found pre-1960 references to the Veeck-Phillies venture. Christopher Hauser fleshed out the Saperstein connection. He reported on the following item in the August 14, 1954 Philadelphia Independent:

Interleague play is also typically one of the accomplishments cited as part of MLB’s PR campaign to persuade people that the sport hascome all the way back from the devastating strike of the mid-1990s. Along with the Division Series and the wild card, interleague play is given credit by many pundits for reviving interest in the national pastime and pumping up attendance.

Without detailed information from a marketing survey, it’s impossible to quantify just how much extra interest interleague play generates among fans. Regardless, it certainly generates a spate of predictable stories each summer in the media, many of them focused on how much inter-league play boosts attendance. Most of these stories are fueled by the annual press releases from MLB touting the increased attendance in inter-league games as compared to intraleague games.

Teams with larger payrolls should enjoy a substantial competitive advantage over teams with smaller payrolls. And this appears to be the case. In 2005, for example, the seven teams with payrolls larger than 90 million dollars won an average of 55.6% of their games while the seven teams with payrolls smaller than 50 million dollars won an average of only 45.1% of their games.

Still, there are many exceptions to the rule that a larger payroll means greater success on the playing field. In 2005, the San Francisco Giants with a payroll of 90.2 million dollars won only 46.3% of their games while the Cleveland Indians with a payroll of only 41.5 million dollars won 57.4% of their games. And such anomalies are not rare. In recent years teams with very modest payrolls, like the Minnesota Twins and the Oakland A’s, have enjoyed considerable success while teams with much larger payrolls, like the New York Mets and Texas Rangers, have performed poorly.

So overall, how much difference does money make in team success? To answer this question, I calculated the correlations between team payrolls and won-lost percentages for the last 10 baseball seasons. The results are displayed in Table 1. A correlation coefficient measures the strength of the relationship between two variables. It can range from zero (no relationship) to one (a perfect relationship). The squared correlation coefficient measures the proportion of variation in one variable that is explained by the other variable.

The results in Table 1 show that the strength of the relationship between team payrolls and won-lost percentages varied considerably over these ten years. In some years the relationship was fairly strong while in other years it was quite weak. On average, however, the relationship between team payrolls and won-lost percentages was fairly modest—spending explained an average of only 26.3% of the variation in success on the playing field over these 10 seasons.

Despite the growing disparity in the size of team payrolls between 1996 and 2005, there is no evidence here that the impact of spending increased over time. In fact, the average correlation between team payrolls and won-lost percentages was somewhat larger during the first half of this time period than during the second half: the proportion of variation in team success explained by spending declined from an average of 32.5% between 1996 and 2000 to an average of only 20.1% between 2001 and 2005.

These correlations actually overstate the influence of spending on won-lost records. That is because the correlation between spending and success reflects the influence of success on spending as well as the influence of spending on success. Teams that enjoy success on the playing field tend to increase their payrolls the next season because of increased revenues and increased salary demands from players. To control for the influence of success on payrolls, I calculated partial correlations between team payrolls and won- lost percentages while controlling for the previous season’s won-lost percentages. As expected, these partial correlations were considerably smaller than the original correlation coefficients. They ranged from -.038 to .603. The average partial correlation between payroll and won-lost percentage, controlling for last season’s won-lost percentage, was a very modest .203.

The general conclusion that can be drawn from these data is that team payrolls have only a limited influence on what happens on the playing field. Further evidence for this proposition can be seen by comparing actual team performance with what would be expected based solely on the size of team payrolls. Along these lines, Table 2 displays the difference between actual and expected wins per season for every major league team between 1996 and 2005.

The results in Table 2 show that over these 10 seasons, some teams consistently exceeded what would be expected based on their payrolls while other teams consistently fell short of what would be expected. The most successful teams in baseball during this period were the Oakland A’s and Atlanta Braves. The A’s won an average of 12.6 more games than expected per season based on their payroll while the Braves won an average of 10.3 more games than expected per season. At the other end of the spectrum, the least successful teams in baseball during this period were the Detroit Tigers and Tampa Bay Devil Rays. The Tigers won an average of 11.3 fewer games than expected per season based on their payroll while the Devil Rays won an average of 10.0 fewer games than expected per season.

These results demonstrate that while money matters in baseball, it matters considerably less than many people assume. A team’s success on the playing field depends as much on leadership, organization, and baseball knowledge as it does on the size of its payroll. 

After saves became an official statistic in 1969, a generation of relievers built their reputations as firemen who doused rallies as early as the sixth inning and pitched the rest of the way to record saves. More recently, a new breed of relief ace has emerged, one of many specialized bullpen roles. These save-gatherers are spared the hazardous duty of putting out fires in the seventh or even the eighth inning. Instead, their sole assignment is to saunter in at the start of the ninth inning, with a lead of three runs or less, and record the final three outs. They are called“closers” (“fireman” has become obsolete), a business term for the person who irons out the final details of a deal after others have done the legwork. In essence, the game is already won when the closer enters; it is only a matter of what the final score will be.

On the rare occasions when a closer is brought in with no save possible, announcers feel compelled to account for the aberration. Most likely he hasn’t pitched in a few days and needs the work. Some closers have admitted to pitching poorly with a four-run lead because they aren’t sufficiently motivated. It’s as if the manager gears his game strategy toward providing his closer with the chance to accumulate a lot of saves, compared to the earlier generations when the manager identified his best reliever and sought to get as many innings as possible from him, with victories and saves the by-product of quality work. For instance, when Mike Marshall set the record in 1974 with 208.1 innings pitched in relief, 93 of those innings came when he entered with his team losing or tied, and he became the winning pitcher in 15 of those 47 appearances.

The left-field wall is one of the most recognizable features in any ballpark and has been a part of Fenway Park since it opened on April20, 1912. The original wall was a 37-foot-tall wooden structure, but that was replaced by a sheet metal wall in 1934 as part of renovations made by the new Red Sox owner, Tom Yawkey. A 23½-foot screen was built on the top of the wall in 1936 to prevent home run balls from damaging buildings across Lansdowne Street, which runs behind the wall. Commercial advertisements covered the wall as late as 1946, but they were painted over before the 1947 season by the distinctive green paint, which has led many people to refer to the wall in the last few decades as the Green Monster.

When the park was built in 1912, hand-operated scoreboards were the norm. Fenway Park, the oldest ballpark in the majors, still operates as it did in 1912, with a person posting numbers on the board as the game progresses. Now there are new fields that feature retro-effects, such as hand-operated scoreboards. Among these parks are Minute Maid Park in Houston and Coors Field in Denver. Chicago’s Wrigley Field, the oldest park in the National League, has a hand-operated scoreboard that was built in 1937, 23 years after it opened.

The Fenway scoreboard had sections for various purposes in the 1950s. In addition to an inning-by-inning section for the Sox game, there were sections showing the current score in all other major league games in progress. The National League section of the board was removed as part of a 1975 renovation, during which time the board was moved farther away from the left-field line toward left-center field. As part of that renovation, the sheet metal surface of the entire wall, which had been damaged by hundreds of baseballs striking it in four decades of use, was replaced.

The 1976 covering is still in place on the wall in 2006, with its own collection of dents from baseballs. In July 2002, commercial signs were added atop the wall, and before the 2003 season major changes were made. Those included removal of the screen and replacing it with a new section of seating called the “Monster Seats.” Those 274 tickets on the wall typically are the most sought after in Boston during the summer and provide a great view of the action and an occasional souvenir. Changes to the scoreboard in 2003 included the addition of a National League section, addition of the AL East division standings, and increased signage at either end of the scoreboard. Almost the entire 231-foot width of the wall is now covered with signs and the scoreboard.

Another feature on the scoreboard are the Morse Code initials of Tom Yawkey (TAY: dash, dot-dash, dash-dot-dash-dash) and his wife, Jean (JRY: dot-dash-dash-dash, dot-dash-dot, dash- dot-dash-dash). These vertical stripes appear just to the right of the Sox game section on the board.

Behind the scoreboard is a small room that runs most of the length of the scoreboard. This is the “office” of Chris, Mike, and Nate, three guys with second jobs that many people in New England would love to have. This room has a concrete wall along the back with beams that run out toward the back of the metal scoreboard.

The concrete wall is covered with names of people who have come into the room through the years. Players, team officials, and others have memorialized their visit to this little room by writing their name somewhere on the concrete. Before the game this night, Nate pointed out the names of Wade Boggs, Trot Nixon, and model Leeann Tweeden to a visitor. Also on the wall are the names of Yankees GM Brian Cashman and Rockies Vice President of Communications, Jay Alves, among others. During batting practice, Magglio Ordonez of the Tigers visits the room with his son, Magglio, Jr. The younger Ordonez writes his name onto the concrete as his dad watches. The Tigers training staff also toured the small area behind the scoreboard, looking at names on the wall.

From this room the operators place metal number panels into slots for the Red Sox contest and the American League games. Since their room does not run as far toward the center-field end of the wall as the scoreboard, the National League scores must be put up from the front of the board. One of the workers runs out onto the warning track between innings with a ladder and places the numbers in the appropriate place on the scoreboard. Inside, there is a wooden step up to a small concrete wall just behind the scoreboard. Standing on the concrete, one can reach up to the slots to place numbers for each inning as the Sox game progresses.

The number panels used to indicate runs and hits are 16 by 16 inches and weigh three pounds each. The panels used for the pitcher’s numbers, innings, and errors are 12 by 16 inches and weigh two pounds. Each panel has a different number front and reverse; they are consecutive, such as 2 and 3. There are small slits into which the numbers are inserted from behind the board.

The slots for the number panels are similar to taking an inbox from a desk and placing it vertically against the scoreboard. Some of these are loaded from the top and some from the bottom. Each time the score changes in the Red Sox game, one team collects a hit or is charged with an error, one of the operators pulls the appropriate number out of its position on the board and either flips and reinserts it or takes a new number panel off the back wall and inserts that into the board. While an inning is in progress, the number of runs scored (greater than zero) are represented for that inning with a yellow digit, which is replaced with a white number at the end of the inning.

As the Red Sox game progresses through the first three innings, Mike watches an Internet site from a laptop computer for updates on scores from other big league games in progress. Occasionally, he yells out an American League score. Then one of the operators grabs a number panel off the back wall and moves to the correct slot in the scoreboard and updates that game’s score and inning.

Once the eight o’clock hour passes, many more games start and must be monitored. This means that there is more activity in the room as runs are scored in the Central Time Zone as well as Eastern. The current board display is kept on a notepad for comparison with the Internet scoreboard. The operators talk in their own code for out-of-town game scores. For each of those contests, there are two numbers for the pitchers, one for the inning and two more for the runs scored by the teams. When the score changes, someone might call out “3–0–1” for a game, meaning third inning with the home team ahead 1–0.

Keeping track of the Red Sox game requires looking through one of about eight slots in the scoreboard. These holes are approximately ten inches wide and one inch tall. From here, the operators can see the progress of the game as if standing in left field with Manny Ramirez. However, the view is restricted by the size of the slot; high fly balls can disappear from view and watching the fielder gives a better idea of what is going on. There is also a window in the wall between the words “Ball” and “Strike” that is used often by a television camera person. This vantage point offers a unique look as it is perfectly lined up with the baseline between first and second bases. Thus, one gets a great angle on a double play, in which the view is behind the throw to first base.

Fly balls that strike the metal  scoreboard reverberate loudly in the room behind the wall. There is no running water, and therefore no toilet, thus left fielders who disappear into the room during a pitching change are not going in to relieve themselves, contrary to public belief. There is also no heat or air conditioning in the room, and it can get very warm during the hottest part of the summer as the sun beats off the metal facing of the scoreboard and heats the air in the room. No breeze relieves that heat as there is no possibility of cross-ventilation and little space in the wall for the breeze to enter. However, the board operators know that the temperature and lack of facilities is a small price to pay to work one of the coolest jobs in Boston.

Carlton Fisk hit one of the most famous homers ever at Fenway Park in Game Six of the 1975 World Series. As the ball flew down the left-field line, Fisk stood near home plate applying body English and waving with his hands, willing the ball to be fair as it reached the wall, and then leaped into the air when it hit the pole for a game-ending home run. This scene was captured accidentally by the television cameraman stationed in the scoreboard, as he had been instructed to follow the path of the ball but did not pay attention to that instruction since he was watching a rat at his feet, and kept the camera trained on Fisk and his gyrations, thus providing one of the most famous moments in World Series history.

In June 2006, board operator Nate Moulter’s face looking out the camera window appeared on ESPN and other television outlets. During a three-game series with the Washington Nationals, Alfonso Soriano, Washington’s left fielder and leading home run hitter, spent a few minutes during a pitching change talking with Nate at the window while leaning on the scoreboard. As Soriano started to leave, he said something and laughed, then swatted Nate with his glove and returned to his defensive position. Many left fielders have ducked into the room behind the wall during games.

According to Moulter, Manny Ramirez used to come in frequently but has stopped doing that. Moulter figures that someone told Ramirez to stop the visits. One time in 2005, Ramirez went in and then did not get back on the field when the teams were ready to resume the game. Ramirez came out with a big smile on his face, and that could have led to the cessation of his visits.

The next time you visit Fenway Park, take a look at the scoreboard and watch the changes in the display as the game progresses. Maybe you can help others understand how that information area is updated.

DAVID VINCENT added his name to the scoreboard wall during his evening as rookie board operator.

Click image to enlarge:

The Walking Men

As expected, the list is headed by Barry Bonds, circa 2004. He had almost 100 more walks than hits, by far the highest margin in history. Next up is also Bonds with his impressive 2002 season, which at that point broke the MLB record for walks in a season. Of course, we’re looking here at results only, not discussing whether they were achieved in a natural way or not. The above list shows all seasons with a (walks/hits) differential of 20 or more. There are four pre-1900 seasons in there as well as three third-millenium entries, all by Bonds.

Note the absence of any entries for almost the entire first half of the 20th century. Roy Cullenbine’s 1947 season is the first in the 20th century. Also quite as expected is that most players on the list are veterans, the majority being in their thirties while gaining entry. The obvious exception is Willie McGill in 1891 at just 18 years old, his second year in the league. He is the only pitcher on the list.

Looking at totals, the following number of seasons is listed in which a player accumulated a positive differential (BBH), showing all players who achieved the feat at least twice: first season indicates the first season of more walks than hits for the player, not his debut season in the majors. We see two players with an impressive six seasons of more walks than hits, followed by five players with four seasons each, including modern sluggers Barry Bonds, Mark McGwire, and Jack Clark.

Of course, Barry Bonds may climb up the ladder before his career is finished. Noteworthy is the relative absence of pre-1900 players on this list with only three entries, although this includes Yank Robinson with four seasons. Half of the players (14 out of 28) had their first(BB>H) season after 1960.