Anyone who studies Deadball Era baseball will sooner or later encounter the Bonesetter as a footnote to other subjects. Because he shunned publicity, he was a shadowy figure. But the record is clear. Reese was more than just a mere curiosity. His healing talents had a genuine impact on the game of baseball during the early years of the twentieth century.

An issue of Sporting Life published in April 1924 sums up his career:

Reese has done more for baseball … than anybody else in the country not directly connected to the game. Through his remarkable miracles in bloodless surgery (and restoring muscles and tendons), “Bonesetter” Reese has prolonged the active life of countless baseball stars and preserved them for the fans of the country to cheer.1

A writer for the Cleveland Press ventured in an article of February 5, 1913, that a look at Reese’s hands showed what he could do.

Large, sinewy and knotty, they are the sort you’d expect to see upon a steel worker. The very sight of them creates an impression of power, but gives no hint of the wonderful delicacy of touch that enables them to locate instantly a displaced muscle or a tiny broken bone.2

Such praise would surely warrant a measure of curiosity about Reese on the part of researchers, but little has been published beyond Child of Moriah, a biography written by David L. Strickler, Reese’s grandson-in-law. Several factors explain the dearth of information about Reese. Strickler’ s book is out of print and difficult to obtain. I was able to read the book with the assistance of an interlibrary loan through the University of Notre Dame. Reese himself was publicity-shy and never wrote memoirs. Too, Reese has always been a footnote to larger stories. Most baseball fans have learned of him by reading biographies of stars such as Honus Wagner and Rogers Hornsby.

But even this brief acquaintance is fraught with misconceptions. Baseball authors have described him in a variety of ways. In Dennis and Jeanne Burke DeValeria’s Honus Wagner: A Biography, Reese is depicted as “part chiropractor and part masseuse, treating injuries he diagnosed as wrenched tendons and displaced muscles; he was pronounced a miracle worker after he treated Leach for a leg ailment the previous year [1902].”3 The authors note that Wagner was cured of a leg ailment in late 1903, and Reese accompanied the Pittsburgh club during the 1903 World Series for a fee of $500. Arthur D. Hittner, another biographer, notes Wagner’s first encounter with Reese in 1903:

Bonesetter was not a physician and claimed no medical training. Using massage, manipulation and a touch of mysticism, the former steel worker and oil driller had nevertheless achieved the reputation of a miracle worker throughout professional baseball.4

In his fine biography of Rogers Hornsby, Charles Alexander offers this description:

Hornsby was only one of many ballplayers who visited Reese, an elderly, totally unschooled former Welsh coal miner whose skills at skeletal manipulation were so renowned that the Ohio legislature gave him special medical certification.5

And in his Cultural Encyclopedia of Baseball, Jonathan Fraser Light puts it plainly: “Reese was a popular early trainer. He had no medical training but was good at manipulation and massage.”6

All these descriptions provide a glimpse of Reese’s work, but they all include a measure of inaccuracy as well. Yes, he was a Welsh immigrant. He learned the bonesetting trade from a fellow ironworker. But there is no evidence that Reese ever set foot in a coalmine or on an oil rig, or that he was a mystic. As for being totally unschooled, Reese owned an extensive library on anatomy, and his knowledge of the subject guided his practice. He even attended medical school at Case University in Cleveland, if for only three weeks in 1897. Baseball historians, it seems fair to say, have not brought Reese’s life into full focus.

This article aims to shed some light on Reese and his work. Reese’s experience in medical school reveals much about his character and talents. His attempt at obtaining a medical degree was driven by open opposition to his work by the medical establishment. The education of physicians and the practice of medicine at this time were much different from today’s models. Accreditation of medical schools and licensing of physicians were haphazard, and much effort was spent in getting these two important aspects of the profession in control. The actual practice of medicine was substantially different as well. There were no antibiotics, and a minor infection could easily become a life-threatening illness. Modern tools such as MRIs and other forms of imaging were decades away from discovery and use.

Reese himself was not much of a medical student. He could not stand the sight of blood and could not perform surgery, but he astounded his peers and superiors with his ability to manipulate muscles and ligaments. The head of the school told him to leave because they had nothing to teach him, saying,

You’re wasting your time here. I’ve considered all the factors in your equation, and my advice to you is to go back home and continue to work according to your own methods. Who knows? If you were to continue on here you might lose this unique ability. I don’t understand it, but I cannot deny you have it. As for your detractors, my own colleagues, I’m embarrassed to admit, ignore them! Better still, the next time they cry foul, refer them to me. I have a message for them.7

Anyone wanting to know more about Bonesetter Reese is indebted to David L. Strickler. Using family records, Strickler provides a mother lode of material about Reese’s life. In a work of almost four hundred pages, only thirty-three discuss Reese and ballplayers. But the book provides valuable information, including how Reese practiced medicine and his relationship with patients.

Reese was born May 6, 1855, in Rhymney, Wales. His childhood was marred by tragedy. His father died three months after his birth, and his mother died when he was eleven years old. He thereupon went to work in the iron factories of Wales, where his luck changed. Another ironworker named Tom Jones took him in and taught him the trade of “bonesetting,” the informal term for general-practice medicine. Reese seldom set a broken bone, despite that name; instead, his practice mainly involved the manipulation of muscles and tendons. Jones’s children eventually became trained orthopedic physicians, while Reese’s technique and focus is close to osteopathy, a branch of medicine founded by Andrew Taylor Still on the Missouri frontier in 1874. Still believed that the musculo-skeletal system was a key to good health, and his osteopathic manipulative therapy (OMT) is still taught in osteopathic medical schools.

Reese remained an ironworker until mill closings led him to emigrate to the United States in 1887. Sailing to America in steerage class, Reese left his family behind. He first settled in Pittsburgh, where he became a roller’s helper at Jones & Laughlin Steel. Less than six months after his arrival, he had saved enough money to send for his wife and children. Upon their arrival, Reese moved to Youngstown, Ohio, to work at the Brown-Bronnell Mills. Family history says that he treated an injured ironworker sometime during 1889 for a dislocated shoulder. The successful cure changed Reese’s life forever.

Demand for his medical services soon overwhelmed him. Because Reese was paid on a piecework, instead of hourly, basis, management tolerated his medical activities. The company, after all, received the benefit of getting ailing workers back on the line without paying for the service.

Treating fellow workers on the job deprived him of pay, and Reese was not one to try to make up the loss in pay by charging fellow workers. Establishing his long-held policy, Reese charged only what the patient could afford, and his fellow ironworkers could not afford much. That policy was crisp: “Pay me when you get it.”8 It cost Reese money, but he remained loyal to this way of doing things. In his obituary his standards of practice were detailed:

He saw all patients in order no matter what their rank in society. He often charged them directly in the proportion to the greatness or the smallness of their finances. It was said of him that he never charged a widow or an orphan for treatment. Until his death, he held a soft spot in his heart for mill workers, and even at his busiest times, a steel man had little trouble in seeing him, even though other and more profitable appointments had to be delayed.9

As public knowledge of his talents grew, Reese’s avocation came to occupy his off hours. Eventually he abandoned the mills in an attempt to bring order to his life. The decision was not an easy one. He was faced with giving up bonesetting altogether or not doing it at all at the mill, or else quitting the mill and asking for a fee for service. The last alternative had a hitch, for without a license, he could not charge a fee for service. With licensing restricted to school-trained physicians, Reese arrived at the policy of charging patients what they could afford as a means of providing his service without violating state law.

Reese became a full-time medical practitioner in 1894, just two years after he became a naturalized citizen of the United States. He immediately faced a major challenge from the medical establishment, which charged him with quackery and threatened arrest if he were to treat a patient. Reese’s attempt to attend medical school was a response to these complaints. He struggled with varying levels of opposition from the medical community until about 1900.

The exact source of Reese’s licensing is not at all clear. No copy of it exists today. Reese’s family claimed that it came from the Ohio legislature, but there was a state law against such individualized awards. It could well have been a proclamation from a state agency or legislative committee.

Reese enjoyed popularity and had the support of influential people. His experience in medical school did not hurt him, and he did not hurt himself by making any outrageous claims. In 1908, Reese further proved his personal and professional responsibility by referring patients with symptoms of typhoid fever to conventional physicians.10

Open opposition from the medical establishment faded as the years went by, but while he may have been grudgingly accepted, he never was quite understood by his more educated colleagues. “He is an enigma to all the physicians of the country,” one remarked, “who cannot understand his natural ability to straighten out twisted bones and replace misplaced muscles and ligaments.”11

If licensed physicians could not understand Reese and his technique, just what kind of doctor was he? Reese described his work simply:

Manipulation is the secret, if there is any, of my treatment. A thorough knowledge of anatomy is necessary, which I have studied and am still studying to acquire. My manipulation is something similar to that of an osteopath. The theory on which it is based is that muscles and ligaments may become displaced and remain so until put back where they belong.12

The medical establishment never accepted Reese, but he overcame that obstacle through his methods. In diagnosing ailments, he relied upon his knowledge of anatomy and highly developed sense of touch. During treatment he used great strength and quick movements and never used terms such as “magical” or “miraculous” to describe his cures. And he knew his limits. Reese was not afraid to admit that a case was beyond his ability.

As Reese’s practice grew, he began to treat many of the famous of the day. Among prominent patients were Charles Evans Hughes, Theodore Roosevelt, former British Prime Minister David Lloyd George, evangelist Billy Sunday, Will Rogers, and countless others, great and common alike-as well as showgirls who needed treatment for twisted ankles or leg cramps.

Reese’s ability and fame won him a rare honor in June 1926 when he was given the highest Druidic degree by the Gorsedd, an ancient Celtic institution charged with guarding ancient traditions. The Druidic degree was recognition of good works by alleviating suffering and had little to do with spiritualism or superstition. News reports of the event noted that Reese was the first American to be so honored.13

As with his licensing, the origin of his treatment of ballplayers is not easily traced, except for a diary composed of news clippings kept by the family. This diary is not entirely accurate for a couple of reasons. Many players were reluctant to make it known that they had visited the Bonesetter because they wished to keep injuries secret from opponents and team management. Another obstacle to accuracy was that Reese did not encourage publicity from treating players. A shy man, he was known to tell reporters not to report on his treatments of celebrities. There was another reason why he discouraged publicity. He simply did not need to drum up more business, for at his peak Reese saw as many as eighty patients a day.

The first player he treated was probably Jimmy McAleer, a Youngstown native who suffered from a bad cramp. The treatment occurred when McAleer was with the Cleveland Spiders. McAleer is credited with spreading the word about Bonesetter Reese. In 1894, pitcher George “Nig” Cuppy was treated for a strained arm tendon. By the turn of the century, Reese’s patient list expanded greatly. He treated members of the Pittsburgh Pirates as they prepared for the first modern World Series. Babe Adams, Honus Wagner, and Tommy Leach were among his patients.

Reese’s biography lists fifty-four players whom he treated. Of that number, twenty-eight are members of the Hall of Fame. Reese described his treatments of ballplayers plainly. “The ball players who consult me have no imaginary ailments. They come because they are in trouble and I have treated so many of them that I can tell in a jiffy where the trouble lies.”14

Reese’s assessment of pitching injuries reveals his knowledge of anatomy and of the impact that pitching has on the arm:

Strange as it may seem, most of my patients are pitchers … and it’s not the curve ball pitchers who come the more often either but the boys who try to throw the ball past a batter, the speed ball pitchers. If the soreness is in the elbow it’s a speedball pitcher nine times out of ten; if in the shoulder, a curve ball pitcher …. I can usually locate a problem and fix things up. Once in a great while, an arm fails to yield to treatment and then the pitcher is through.15

Reese’s favorite ballplayer was Wagner.

There’s one ball player I will never forget and that’s Hans [sic] Wagner. I got the surprise of my life when he came to me with his back injured. The big husky! Anyone would think he could stand all kinds of pain. I guess he can, too, but because they call me “bonesetter” he was trembling clear down to his shoes. And the minute I placed my hands on his back he fainted dead away.16

Wagner thought highly of Reese, saying, “He hurts me like the devil but always does the work.” 17

No pain, no gain: that aptly describes Reese’s treatments. Owen “Chief” Wilson of the Pirates tells how a charley horse was treated:

Why, when he grabbed that bunch of congested muscles, I thought I would croak. I did not think I ever before suffered so much pain in my young life. After he had done this, Reese told me to get to the train and hike for St. Louis that I would be all right in a day or two. 18

While baseball fans owe a huge debt to Reese for keeping their favorites in action, the Bonesetter himself was not all that pleased with many of the athletes he treated. He believed many of them would wind up injuring themselves again because they would not follow directions.

Reese also hated football. When George Halas came calling, Papa Bear had to persuade Reese that his bum knee was from a sliding injury on the diamond, not a bone-crunching tackle on the gridiron. University of Illinois Athletic Director George Huff reportedly tried to persuade Reese to come to the Urbana-Champaign campus, but like others before him, he was rebuffed. 19

Reese died of heart failure at the age of seventy-six in 1931. His passing was widely noted. It was in his obituary that a Youngstown Vindicator reporter noted that Reese exacted from him a vow of silence about the identities of the ballplayers he treated. The Bonesetter came to America to seek a better life for himself and family. We sons and daughters of immigrants understand that motive. His adopted nation gave him a productive life, and “productive” best describes the man and his works.

His legacy to baseball can be seen in this all-star team from the patient list in his biography, a twenty-five-man roster that amounts to a pretty good ballclub. In addition, I have added a list of players mentioned in Strickler and names provided me by Steve Steinberg during his research on players of the era.

Uhle apparently suffered chronic arm and elbow pain, which Reese was able to repair.21                             

Another player who could credit Reese with saving his career was shortstop Glenn Wright. Upon Reese’s death, the Youngstown Vindicator reported that Wright had injured his throwing arm in an offseason basketball game. In 1929, Wright quit the game, citing his arm problems. Reese worked on Wright’s arm that fall, and in 1930 Wright reported to the Dodgers with a strong arm that allowed him to “cut down base runners with rifle-like throws from all angles of the short field.”22

This list of players is incomplete, for Reese himself claimed to have treated hundreds of ballplayers. Because of his reluctance to seek attention, it can be safely assumed many other ballplayers visited Reese than are listed here. 

HONORABLE MENTION

Among others treated but not on David Strickler’s list are George Uhle and Jack Pfiester, both of them pitchers. Pfiester’ s treatment is detailed in Sporting Life (October 10, 1908), where it is claimed that Pfiester pitched the Merkle game with a badly injured, if not dislocated, elbow. In Touching Second, Johnny Evers says Pfiester pitched in pain the entire game. It was especially painful for him to throw a curveball. Evers says that Pfiester threw four curveballs, all to Mike Donlin in game situations.20                 

Uhle reportedly went to see Reese yearly. The old-time pitcher credited Reese with lengthening his career.

NOTES

1. David L. Strickler, Child of Moriah: A Biography of John D. “Bonesetter” Reese, 1855-1931. (Franklin, Mich.: Four Comers Press, 1984), 181.

2. Cleveland Press, February 5, 1913.

3. Dennis De Valeria and Jeanne Burke De Valeria, Honus Wagner: A Biography (New York: Holt, 1995), 122.

4. Arthur D. Hittner, Honus Wagner: The Life of Baseball’s “Flying Dutchman” (Jefferson, N.C: McFarland, 1996), 118.

5. Charles C. Alexander, Rogers Hornsby: A Biography (New York: Holt, 1995), 113.

6. Jonathan Fraser Light, The Cultural Encyclopedia of Baseball (Jefferson, N.C: McFarland, 1997), 749.

7. Strickler, Child of Moriah, 103.

8. “Famous Healer Succumbs at 76,” Youngstown Vindicator, November 11, 1931.

9. “Famous Healer Succumbs at 76,” Youngstown Vindicator, November 11, 1931.

10. Strickler, Child of Moriah, 124.

11. Strickler, Child of Moriah, 112.

12. Strickler, Child of Moriah, 344-45.

13. Reese File, Mahoning Valley Historical Society.

14. Strickler, Child of Moriah, 207.

15. Strickler, Child of Moriah, 207.

16. Strickler, Child of Moriah, 162.

17. Strickler, Child of Moriah, 128.

18. Strickler, Child of Moriah, 325.

19. Strickler, Child of Moriah, 288.

20. John J. Evers and Hugh Fullerton, Touching Second: The Science of Baseball (Chicago: Reilly and Britton, 1910), 116.

21. Strickler, Child of Moriah, 290-94.

22. “Famous Healer Succumbs at 76.”

Indians team owner Alva Bradley had hired “Ol’ Oss” Vitt before the 1938 season, following Vitt’s phenomenal run as skipper of the minor-league Newark Bears. Vitt replaced Steve O’Neill, who was popular with the players, gregarious, self-confident, and straightforward. Vitt was none of these things. Upon assuming the Cleveland helm, he’d gone to the press with the pronouncement that, after having had a look at the team, he had “only two major leaguers, Feller and [Mel] Harder.”

Vitt was tough, but the 1940 preseason gave no indication of the drama that was to play out in Cleveland. That isn’t to say that all was perfect. Veteran pitcher Johnny Allen and catcher Frankie Pytlak were contractual holdouts, young star Lou Boudreau tore cartilage in his ankle during an intrasquad game, and promising rookie Paul O’Dea was struck in the eye by a batting practice foul ball and never played again. Despite that adversity, Vitt was buoyant. Even when confronted with stories such as the one about Jeff Heath and another player staging a fight in the hope that Vitt would try to break it up so that Heath could “accidentally” take a swing at the manager, “Ol’ Os” remained calm.

“I guess it can’t be helped,” Vitt responded to reporters. “I’ll just go along doing the best I can and the boys will have to like it.” Those words are consistent with the notion that Vitt was a Dr. Jekyll to reporters but a Mr. Hyde to his players. The players thought the manager antagonistic and spiteful, while the press portrayed him as suffering and misunderstood.

Vitt had his work cut out for him on the field. Oddsmakers were so confident that the Yankees would win their fifth consecutive pennant that the odds on New York were set at 7-20, and the scarce few who disagreed almost unanimously believed that Boston would win the American League. Vitt, though, remained a study in confidence, telling reporters that Cleveland just might unseat the Yankees.

The season began with Feller’s opening-day no-hit classic against the White Sox, and by April 27 the team was in first place with a record of 6-2. Joe DiMaggio had suffered a sore heel earlier in the season, raising doubts about his health. If fate was not smiling on Cleveland baseball, at least it did not seem to be smirking, either. But fate has, on occasion, displayed a sense of humor.

On the following day, the real fireworks began. On a sunny afternoon against Schoolboy Rowe, and in front of a crowd of more than 30,000 in Detroit, the Tribe entered the ninth inning with a 9-3 lead. Cleveland pitcher Al Milnar, along with the bullpen, gave up six runs, allowing the score to tie at 9-9. At that point, Vitt theatrically “mugged” on the bench, criticizing everyone in earshot for the team’s play. Hal Trosky homered with two out in the tenth inning to win the game, but Vitt had dipped his toes in the river of discontent.

The next day Feller was a bit off, and Cleveland lost to Detroit 4-3. Vitt snapped at his star to the press, and the team edged toward meltdown. As captain, Trosky was toeing a thin line between the professional pride of his teammates and the responsibility afforded by his title. Managing egos became as much a daily ritual as managing to hit American League pitching.

On May 1, crisis found Trosky’ s family. His fourteen-month-old son James inhaled a piece of bacon at breakfast, and Hal’s wife Lorraine rushed the boy to the hospital. As soon as word reached the team, Trosky dropped everything and took a cab to the airport to get back to Cleveland.

Jim Trosky’s condition improved. After a few days, when doctors were confident that pneumonia would not set in, Hal made plans to rejoin the team in Washington for a series with the Senators. Frighteningly, the boy took an abrupt turn for the worse, and Hal cabled Vitt that he’d be staying home until the boy got better. While the delay was brief, Vitt wasn’t pleased. The slugger’s eventual return, though, boosted the team to a two-game-series sweep of the Yankees and imbued the clubhouse with renewed optimism. By Memorial Day, Trosky had eleven homers and the team was in second place with a record of 23-13. The first week in June, however, marked the beginning of the end.

After the Tribe split a doubleheader with the Senators, narrowly avoiding losses in both ends with a late run in the nightcap, Vitt conveyed his anger with Al Smith, despite the win, and said as much to the press. A couple of players later claimed to have overheard Vitt yearning for his Newark Bears squad, a thinly veiled assertion that the minor-league team would have performed as well or better. Opinion did not change at all when, three days later, despite Trosky’ s fourteenth home run, Cleveland lost to the Yankees when George Selkirk stole home off Feller.

On June 10, the Indians were rained out in Boston, and the players spent the day in the hotel lobby dissecting their misfortune. The blame, naturally, fell on Vitt. Some players advanced the idea of mutiny, of trying to have the manger fired, but again Trosky counseled patience. The slugger was a proud man, and he wanted no part of public finger pointing, even though he had been a repeated victim of Vitt’s acid tongue.

The next day, the Red Sox blew out the Indians. Vitt was in rare form during the game, again screaming about his star, “Look at him! He’s supposed to be my ace. I’m supposed to win a pennant with that kind of pitching?”

That evening, Trosky spoke with Frank Gibbons of the Cleveland Press. He told the reporter that the Indians could win the pennant with their current players but had no chance as long as Vitt was the manager. Gibbons cautioned Trosky to wait and see how things turned out before doing anything rash, the same advice Trosky had given his teammates.

In the hotel lobby the next morning, the players checked out early. At breakfast they began surreptitiously plotting about how to solve the “Vitt problem.” During the game that afternoon, which the Indians lost, Vitt snidely chastised Mel Harder. “It’s about time you won one, the money you’re getting.” To the other players, this was rock bottom. Mel Harder was in his thirteenth year with the team, was one of its touchstones in what was shaping up to be a memorable pennant race, and was unquestionably respected by everyone in the organization-everyone except one.

Harder could only respond, “I gave you the best I had.” On the train ride from Boston to Cleveland, no one bothered to break out the cards. Ben Chapman and Rollie Hemsley reportedly called Lou Boudreau and Ray Mack into their berth and told the young infielders that some of the players were circulating a petition calling for Vitt’s ouster. Boudreau and Mack, along with Al Smith, Beau Bell, Mike Naymick, and Soup Campbell, were excused from participating because the veterans did not want to penalize the younger players by potentially ruining their careers.

It was a gesture that demonstrated the sobriety and seriousness of the mutineers. Mel Harder and Johnny Allen, in a meeting with the rest of the players, told the team that they would go to owner Alva Bradley alone. The players disagreed, but they did anoint Harder as their spokesman. (See Fred Schuld’s article on page 46.)

On June 13, actual tragedy struck Trosky. As the train pulled into the Cleveland station, Hal received word that his mother had passed away unexpectedly in Iowa. Trosky went directly from the train station to the airport, while Harder called Bradley’s office seeking an appointment with the owner. Instead of sending Harder alone, though, ten of the dissidents went to Bradley’s office en masse to demonstrate the depth of their resolve. It was an act unprecedented in baseball history.

The players were all seasoned veterans who knew how baseball was played, both as a game and as a business. They were men who played before the era of spoiled superstars, men who worked in the offseason not of choice but necessity, and they were men who understood the consequences of their actions. Clearly, this was no idle grumbling about a stern taskmaster. Vitt had wounded each deeply enough to provoke them to take this extraordinary measure.

The players told Bradley that Vitt had to go if the team was to compete successfully. They outlined four specific grievances, each of which Bradley later confirmed, and they demanded that the owner take action. Trosky even telephoned Bradley from the airport to ensure that his absence would not be misconstrued as disagreement. Despite his personal misgivings about the action, as captain he could not stand by while his teammates pressed the issue.

Bradley told the players that he would look into the matter and warned them that if word of this got out, the players would be ridiculed forever. Naturally, the story was leaked to reporter Gordon Cobbledick almost immediately. The team won that afternoon, but it was the insurrection that was front-page news the following morning. The headline for the story was physically larger on the printed page than was the news of Hitler’s invasion of Paris. Even Trosky’ s hometown paper, the Cedar Rapids Gazette, jumped on the bandwagon and bashed the “Crybaby Indians.”

In the following days, reporters attempted to dissect the events leading up to the insurrection. Most concluded that although Vitt was a good baseball strategist, he had completely lost the respect of the players by making them lose face among the other American League teams. One Iowa writer contacted Trosky at home, where he was still grieving for his mother, and asked the player about the team.

“Those writers,” Trosky reportedly answered, “know the situation so well that I couldn’t add anything to what they have already stated. The boys are sincere in their complaints. Take Bob Feller, for example. Bob is the kind who never did anybody any harm. But he was among the leaders of the movement. He must feel justified. It’s the same with the rest.”

He continued:

“There’s a lot of defense offered for Vitt, namely, that he must have a lot of ability because he is keeping his team near the top of the league. But that is mis-leading. We are up there because the Yankees have not yet come into their own. But we’re only playing .575 ball. That isn’t championship stuff. Our showing is due mainly to the failure of some other teams.”

Owner Alva Bradley took no action. In 1951, the Cleveland News discovered and published a memo from Alva Bradley written a decade earlier:

“We should have won the pennant. … Our real trouble started when a group of 10 players came to my office and made four distinct charges against (Vitt) and asked for his dismissal. The four charges made against Vitt, on investigations I have made, were 100% correct.”

Bradley later offered the managerial job to coach Luke Sewell, who declined. “Oscar was a fine fellow, but he talked too much,” Sewell recalled.

“He would say these things, promise things, which he forgot he ever said or promised. Players resented this because they thought he did it on purpose. But he didn’t. … [The rebellion] was not all Oscar’s fault. The players were to blame, too. They picked on one another, blamed each other when things went wrong, and blew a pennant they should have won.”

Despite the players’ subsequent public retraction of their charges (Roy Weatherly refused to sign), after a half-season of humiliation at every park the team visited, and following a dramatic loss to Detroit and Floyd Giebell on the last weekend in September, Bradley fired Vitt after a directors’ meeting on October 28 and replaced him with Roger Peckinpaugh. The season had ended, but the event colored the careers and reputations of almost all those involved.

In a sad postscript, the Plain Dealer ran the following a year later, on September 28, 1941:

Oscar Vitt disclosed today he had resigned as manager of the Portland baseball club which finished last in the Coast League this season. The former Cleveland Indians manager submitted his resignation at the close of the season …. Vitt expressed belief that if the Portland club had had a few more replacements it probably could have finished well up in the first division.

SOURCES

Books
Schneider, Russell. The Cleveland Indians Encyclopedia. New York: Sports Publishing, 2001.

Thorn, John, et al. Total Baseball: The Official Encyclopedia of Major League Baseball. New York: Warner Books, 2001.

Newspapers
Cleveland News

Cleveland Press

Des Moines Register

New York Daily News

New York Times Plain Dealer

The Sporting News

Interviews

Rick Ferrell

Denny Galehouse

Mel Harder

Willis Hudlin

Lorraine Trosky