His lifetime batting average and hit total are easily found,¹ but what about his home and away on-base percentage, or his numbers against left-handed pitchers? Cobb’s official day-by-day stats are recorded on dozens of handwritten ledger sheets that are housed in the Hall of Fame’s basement, making it difficult to determine such statistical splits for Cobb. In fact, it had never been done.

However, over the last few years, I have entered all of Cobb’s official day-by-day stats from those paper ledgers into a computer database. I also included new information, like the opposing team, the opposing starting pitcher, and which games were home and away.

By digitizing Cobb’s career stats, we can now create certain statistical splits where before we had only season totals.

We still won’t know stats like Cobb’s average with runners in scoring position or his exact numbers against each pitcher. To calculate those, we’d need play-by-plays of all 3,035 of Cobb’s career games—and the record of those details just doesn’t exist. But we still can calculate a lot of interesting figures for his entire career.

Besides offering the sheer fun of seeing splits for the first time for one of the game’s greats, this article gives new stats that can be used to compare Cobb to other great hitters for whom such splits are easily available on Retrosheet. Along the way, I will point out some of the highlights but also present the full data in tables so that readers can draw their own conclusions.

Here we go.

Note that Cobb hit only three points higher at home than on the road and that he had more career hits on the road. His consistency in almost all statistical fields shows he wasn’t a product of a hitters’-haven home ballpark. A player compiling Cobb’s road numbers alone would be worthy of Hall of Fame consideration.

As just one example of his road-hitting prowess: Cobb hit .423 on the road in 1912, .414 in 1913, and .414 in 1917. In fact, in 1917 Cobb had a 39-game hitting streak on the road, one of the longest such streaks in MLB history. (See table 2.)

Cobb hit over .350 against all teams except Detroit, against whom he played only during his final two seasons, when he was with the Athletics. Philadelphia and Washington, frequently among the worst pitching staffs of Cobb’s era, proved their critics right; the Tiger great hit over .380 against both of them and also had his highest slugging marks against them. (See table 3.)

Cobb had his best numbers at Washington’s Griffith Stadium (.405 average) and the Yankees’ Polo Grounds (.563 slugging). From September 13, 1913, through May 11, 1918, Cobb also put together one of the most amazing—yet heretofore unknown—hitting streaks by getting a base hit in 48 consecutive games at the Polo Grounds. This streak appears to be the longest hitting streak at any particular ballpark in MLB history.

It should be pointed out that Cobb wasn’t the only one who hit well at the Polo Grounds. During his time with the Boston Red Sox, Babe Ruth hit only 22 percent of his home runs at Fenway. However, in 1920 he went to the Yankees and hit 54 percent of his homers at the Polo Grounds, where he compiled a record .990 slugging percentage. It’s not a stretch to say that Ruth never would have come close to 714 homers if he’d stayed at Fenway Park for his entire career.

Returning to Cobb, the only two parks that stymied the Georgia Peach were two that existed only during the beginning of his career: Cleveland’s League Park I, where he hit an anemic .254 with a .291 on-base percentage, and St. Louis’s Sportsman’s Park II, where Cobb hit only .238 in 34 games. (See table 4.)

In this table, Cobb’s stats for an entire game are attributed to the one pitcher who started the game. Since we don’t have full information about relief pitchers, this table is really just a close representation of how Cobb did against these particular starters. Relievers were rare in these days anyway, as these pitchers completed an aggregate of 74 percent of their career starts.

Cobb had good numbers in games where Walter Johnson started (.380 average with a .452 on-base percentage). Cobb always said that the reason he did well against Johnson was that The Big Train was afraid of hitting batters; the stats seem to back it up—Cobb wasn’t hit by a single pitch in any of the 92 games that Johnson started against Cobb. Cobb also did well in games started by a young lefty known as Babe Ruth (.338 average), although only two of Cobb’s 25 hits in those games went for extra bases.

As a lefty, Cobb naturally did worse against south-paws, hitting 28 points higher against righties. Over the last twenty years in the majors, a typical lefty has hit about 15 to 20 points lower against left-handed pitchers than against right-handed pitchers. Note that Cobb’s career average against lefties would still be the fifth-highest overall career average in MLB history.

The only top pitchers who seem to have held Cobb down were Red Ruffing, who allowed just a .229 batting average and .314 slugging average in games started against Cobb; and Addie Joss, who kept Cobb below a .270 batting average and .300 on-base percentage. Even the great Cy Young, whose career was winding down just as Cobb’s was beginning, could only keep Cobb to about a .350 batting average. Interestingly, Cobb stole a disproportionate amount of bases off of Eddie Plank—a lefty, no less—whom Cobb faced more than any other pitcher except Johnson. (See table 5.)

Cobb tended to start off cool in the cool month of April—he had a mere .329 average. But he quickly turned up the heat as the summer grew warmer. His best months were June and July, where he had a .985 and .979 OPS, respectively. As shown in the next section, Cobb’s best months did in fact tend to be June and July.

He also tended to steal more bases at the very end of the season (September and October), perhaps knowing that every run was more valuable to his team as the pennant race came down to the wire. At the very least, Cobb’s famous offseason training (he added weights to his boots when he went hunting) allowed him to keep fresh legs even in September. (See table 6.)

Of the 91 months in his career in which he had at least 75 at-bats, Cobb hit below .270 in only three of them. In fact, he hit below .280 in a month only four times! Compare that to Ichiro Suzuki, who has had 53 months of 75 or more at-bats during his career but has already had nine months below .270 and eleven below .280.

Cobb’s 68 hits in July 1912 is the all-time MLB record; over the last fifty seasons, the most hits in any month is 56 by Ichiro Suzuki in August 2004. Cobb’s .535 average in July 1912 is believed to be the MLB record for a full month; the highest over the last fifty seasons is .512 by Todd Helton in April 2000.

Even Cobb’s run-scoring and base stealing marks would stand up well against modern totals. His 40 runs in May 1921 would match the highest total in the last fifty years; Chuck Knoblauch also accomplished this in July 1996. Only two players in the last fifty years have had more steals than Cobb did (28) in June 1915: Rickey Henderson (33 in July 1983 and 31 in September 1980) and Lou Brock (29 in August 1974).

HITTING STREAKS

Naturally, Cobb is one of the most prodigious hit-streakers in MLB history. He had eight separate 20-game hitting streaks during his career, which matches Willie Keeler and Pete Rose for the most ever. In fact, his totals for all of the following are believed to be MLB records:

• 66 streaks of 10+ games
• 18 streaks of 15+ games
• 8 streaks of 20+ games (40g, 35g, 23g, 22g, 21g, 21g, 21g, 20g)
• 2 streaks of 30+ games (40g, 35g)

A Word about the Numbers

Some of you may notice that the splits I present for Cobb don’t always sum up to his accepted career totals. There are two primary reasons for this:

1. Some of the stats in encyclopedias (such as RBIs pre-1920 and early extra-base hits) were calculated ex post facto by researchers who left only season totals—but no game-by-game stats—and so I either had to research them myself or leave the totals blank; and
2. The official sheets are riddled with errors—players’ lines switched, numbers transposed, and arithmetic errors.

As a result, I am still combing through Cobb’s stats, looking for additional corrections that may need to be made, and I’m also working on cataloging Cobb’s pre-1920 RBI. I present details below of a few of the errors that I came across in Cobb’s official sheets. This list is nowhere near complete.

• Oct 1 and 2 (game 1), 1907: Cobb’s steals and sacrifice bunt totals were transposed on the ledger sheets, giving him five too many sacrifice bunts and five too few stolen bases.
• 1909: Addition error on first page of Cobb’s sheets over-credited him by one run.
• 1911: Addition error on second page of Cobb’s sheets over-credited him by one at-bat.
• May 9, 1912: Cobb hit a home run but wasn’t given a run scored on the official sheets.

The fielding stats of the time are in even worse shape than the batting stats are. For instance, Cobb played at second base in the final game of 1909, but I did not discover this fact for almost one hundred years!

CONCLUSIONS

The splits above can help us compare Cobb’s numbers to modern-day greats, whose splits and numbers are available at the click of a mouse on Retrosheet.org and baseball-reference.com. Until now, we’ve never known if Cobb was a product of a friendly home ballpark, or if he struggled against lefties, or how he really hit against Walter Johnson. Now we finally have numbers to back up the proposition that Cobb could hit pretty much any pitcher at any stadium during any month of the year!

As a final interesting note: Several sources have claimed that only one man has ever pinch-hit for Ty Cobb. Bob Fothergill is usually identified as the lucky man. However, in my research going through Cobb’s game-by-game stats, I discovered that there have actually been several men to pinch-hit for Cobb. Here is the list of those known to have done it:

Acknowledgments

I’d like to thank Steve Gietschier, Pete Palmer, Bob McConnell, and all the volunteers at Retrosheet for contributing info used in this article.

Notes

1 It’s also well known that Cobb’s numbers are constantly Cobb originally was listed with 4,191 career hits. However, a missing hit from 1906 bumped the total to 4,192. Two hits being double-entered in 1910 reduced it to 4,190. An error from 1912 reduced it further to 4,189; however, writer Mark Stang and I recently came across a canceling error from 1912 that put Cobb back at his current total of 4,190 hits.

That study in 2003 was based entirely on the final score of each game. This leaves open some large questions relating to the pattern of scoring within a game. Some questions that were suggested then were

• How important is it to get an early lead?
• Do good teams come from behind more often?
• Do wins in the last at-bat indicate a strong team?

I have now examined these more subtle features by using line-score data. The information came from several sources: Retrosheet and STATS, Inc., provided the greatest portion, while Mike Grahek, John Agius, Ed Hartig, and Luke Kraemer generously pitched in as well. I am very grateful for this help. Much of this information is already on the Retrosheet website. (See table 1.)

Table 2 presents a summary of the basic run-scoring data by inning for all games from these 73 seasons. There are several interesting features. First, note that the highest-scoring inning for both home and visitor is the first. There is a substantial drop-off in the second inning, probably because the bottom of the order is involved. The home team scores more in each inning from the first through the eighth, but then the trend reverses. For the ninth inning and all extra innings, the visitors outscore the home team.

How do these facts fit into the winning of games? That, after all, is our ultimate question. The conventional wisdom is that the home team has an advantage by batting last, but let’s see just how big that advantage is. (See table 3.)

As expected, the home team does do better, though, perhaps surprisingly, its advantage decreases in extra-inning games. In fact, we may ask why the home team wins more than half the time, given the distinct scoring advantage the visiting team has in the ninth inning and later. The answer, of course, is that the rules are a bit different in extra innings, with the game ending if and when the home team takes the lead, whereas the visitors keep batting, no matter how many runs they score. This argument applies to the ninth-inning differences as well. This suggestion is borne out by the data in table 4, which shows the winning margin, for visiting and home teams, in extra-inning games. The only category in which the home team dominates in extra innings is the one-run victory. Four is the maximum possible margin by which the home team can win in extra innings. In extra-inning games decided by more than one run, the visiting team wins many times more than does the home team and wins many games by more than four runs.

Let’s turn now to the value of an early lead. Figure 1 presents the winning percentage of all teams across all seasons when leading after a given number of innings. The pattern is striking. Teams that lead after the first inning win nearly 70 percent of the time, and the winning percentage gets consistently better with each passing inning. A lead after eight innings holds up 95 percent of the time. This is a point worth keeping in mind the next time you hear an announcer praise a team for the way its great bullpen gets the job done.

Of course, the size of the lead matters as well, as shown in figure 2.

A lead of four runs at the end of eight innings has been converted to a win 99.5 percent of the time. The raw numbers are 44,324 wins and only 213 losses in the 73 seasons examined.

Of course, a modern reality is bullpen specialization, with every team feeling obligated to find a closer to preserve the ninth-inning lead. I therefore analyzed this question across the last century to look for any obvious patterns. As figure 3 shows, there are no discernible differences from 1901 through 2003 (data shown for leads of all sizes after one, four, and eight innings). What this says about the necessity of a closer is interesting, though not our main topic here.

The final approach to this question of success when leading after eight innings is to examine individual teams—an apt subject to investigate, as on broadcasts we hear so much about preserving leads late in the game. In the 73 years studied, there were 1,566 team-seasons. Of these, there were 40 teams that never lost a lead after eight innings. The number of wins ranged from 97 for the 1954 Indians to 34 for the 1981 Mets. Here are all the times with unblemished marks in at least 80 games.

By the way, the 1998 Yankees had the largest number of wins when leading after eight, but they lost once, for a mark of 102—1 in these situations.

The flip side of this is to ask what teams have the worst marks when leading after eight innings. This will give us some perspective on the good performances. The answer is in table 6.

There are some teams there that are easily recognizable as pretty poor, but note that the worst performance I could find was for a team that still won more than 80 percent of its games in these situations. There were only four teams that lost 10 or more times when leading after eight innings, with the 1978 Mets being the only team with 11 losses.

Another achievement that is often associated with successful teams is the ability to win games by coming from behind. A win of this type is to be distinguished from one in which the lead never changed hands. Table 7 presents the raw data.

Do the better teams win more games in which they come from behind? Figure 4 presents each team’s winning percentage in relation to the percentage of games in which they came from behind to win. The relation is moderately strong, with a correlation coefficient of 0.65.

The other side of this coin is the relation between winning percentage and the percentage of games in which winner never trailed. These results are shown in figure 5.

This relation is much stronger, with a correlation coefficient of 0.86. This result is in good agreement with my earlier finding (in 2003) that indicated that winning by a large margin is a better predictor of success than is winning close games.

The final topic I will address is the matter of winning in the last at-bat. This is certainly exciting and announcers generally praise it strongly. But once again the question is whether it has long-term meaning as a predictor of team success. First, the raw numbers are in table 8. The huge differences between visitors and home are not unexpected.

The value in overall success is shown in figure 6. The relation is moderate, with a correlation coefficient of 0.42. The values here are combined for home and road for each team; the relation is even weaker if they are considered separately.

CONCLUSIONS

• Home teams score more in each of first eight innings.
• Visiting teams score more in each extra inning.
• An early lead is very valuable.
• The introduction of the closer has not changed the ability of teams to preserve late-inning leads.
• Coming from behind and winning in the last at-bat is only moderately important.
• The most successful teams get the lead and keep it.
• Total scoring is by far the best predictor of overall success.

Acknowledgments

This article is based on a presentation at the annual SABR convention in July 2004. A version of this is posted at www.retrosheet.com.

Notes

1 David Smith, “Do Good Teams Really Win More of the Close Games?” www.retrosheet.org/Research/SmithD/WinClose.pdf.

Although small decreases in home-field advantage have occurred at times, any incidence still represented a minute change relative to the large shift in nearly every other baseball statistic over the past century.

This should surprise analysts more than it does. Nearly every study of psychology with respect to baseball has revealed either small effects or none. We all know that players are human, but the numbers do not seem to indicate much of an obvious psychological aspect to the game. Hundreds of researchers have tried to discover clutch hitting, but few have found any evidence of its being a repeatable skill. Researchers who have tried to identify synergy effects have not found any evidence that certain players increase a team’s chance of winning. Some have attempted to look for the impact of veterans on playoff races and have not found significant effects there either. We have at- tempted all kinds of ways to splice the data to reveal a large psychological effect within baseball, to show that baseball players do not behave like statistical models, and there seems to be little evidence of any strong, detectable effects, even if we know they exist and occasionally can discover smaller ones.

The mantra that we chant as analysts is that talent trumps everything and that most of the stories of heroism and mental fortitude are narratives written by the winners. However, home-field advantage is perhaps the most obvious area where we see something resembling a psychological effect, or at least an effect that is not captured by our typical models of baseball players and ballgames. It is clear that something about being the home team trumps talent in a way that is mathematically equivalent to letting the away team’s best player compete for the home team.

The reason why home teams have an advantage is less clear. Do they feel more at home and so perform better? Does the crowd excite the home team or distract the road team? Do they know better how the stadium plays? Are they simply more comfortable at home? All of these explanations seem possible, and we could give a number of plausible explanations. Finding out why the home team wins more often could open the doors to measuring at least one area where psychology has an impact in baseball. Everybody knows that baseball players are not computers, let alone Strat-O-Matic cards. The mainstream media certainly dramatizes the purported impact of psychological effects on players, but there must clearly be some effect if the home team wins more often.

The first step is to figure out what exactly home teams are doing better. By determining which statistics show the biggest home-field advantage, we can figure out what exactly the home teams are doing to their opponents to consistently win more often than they lose. In this article I will discuss home-field advantage, asking what, when, where, and how and hopefully figuring out why home teams win more often. The first step is to explore how home and away teams distribute their runs across games, to see if this provides a sense of when home-field effects are the strongest.

SCORING BY INNING

Home-field advantage may come from the effects of comfort and familiarity, or it may come from the psychological effect of crowd support. If the effects come primarily from comfort and familiarity, we would expect that home teams would have an even more distinct advantage in early innings. If the effect is primarily psychological, one would expect that home teams would have an even more distinct advantage in late innings, when the crowd may put them on top.

The percent difference in runs scored by the home team as compared with the away team by inning is listed below. I ignored the ninth and any extra innings, because the home team stops scoring when they take the lead in extra innings or in the ninth inning, and the home team frequently does not bat in the ninth inning at all.

The home teams gain much of their advantage in the first inning and enjoy a greater home-field advantage in the second and third innings than in the fourth through eighth innings. This implies that home-field advantage is primarily about comfort and adjusting to surroundings.

It seems that, if comfort in familiar surroundings is a significant factor in home-field advantage, the effect of the first-inning run differential would be particularly strong in the first game of the series. However, this does not appear to be the case.

The effect of extra run-scoring early—particularly in the first inning—seems to hold throughout the series. This could be an indicator that players need to readjust to their surroundings each game when on the road, or it could be an indicator that adjustments starting pitchers make to the mound while on the road explains a large portion of home-field advantage.

Determining who on the diamond is significantly affected by home-field advantage is an important step in studying it. Knowing that home-field advantage seems particularly strong early in the game, regardless of series length, can be helpful. Consider this as we discuss individual statistics below.

ADVANTAGE BY STATISTIC

The Four True Outcomes. There are multiple individuals who play a role in the outcome of a plate appearance. First, the pitcher throws to the batter, and the batter either does or does not swing. If he does swing, he may or may not hit the ball. If he hits the ball, it may or may not be a fair ball in the field of play. It has been well established that pitchers have little control over what happens when the ball is in the field of play—pitchers primarily control walks, strikeouts, and home runs, and the rest is mostly a product of the defense and the hitter. In this section, I will discuss what happens when the ball is not in the field of play, to see how much of home-field advantage depends on pitching. All data are from cumulative major-league totals from 1998 through 2008, unless otherwise indicated.

Strikeouts and Walks. Batters struck out in 16.35 percent of their plate appearances at home from 1998 through 2008 and in 17.30 percent of their plate appearances on the road. Batters received unintentional walks in 8.38 percent of their plate appearances at home and in 7.80 percent of their plate appearances on the road. Both pairs of numbers are statistically significant at the 99.9 percent level. This immediately indicates that a home-field advantage occurs within the strike zone. Somewhere between when the pitcher starts his windup and when the batter swings, home teams already gain an advantage over road teams.

Home Runs. Batters hit home runs in 3.22 percent of their at-bats at home and in just 3.07 percent of their at-bats on the road. This is also significant at the 99.9 percent level. Home teams are able to hit for more power than road teams.

I selected strikeouts, walks, and home runs as the initial tests, because they indicate that the pitcher is involved. The significance of home runs, which pitchers control less than they do walks and strikeouts, indicates that the hitter also must be doing something better at home. However, without any more information, it is difficult to tell if the walks and strikeouts are only the products of home effects on hitters. For instance, it may be that, given enough time to prepare himself to pitch, the pitcher can overcome any disadvantage of being on the road while the hitter has an advantage at reacting to the baseball when at home. In other words, it is possible that travel or staying in a hotel dulls hitters’ reaction times but does not impede the pitcher’s effectiveness. That is why I now introduce the fourth true outcome— the neglected one on which fielders also have no effect.

Hit by Pitches. In every 1,000 plate appearances, home hitters were hit by 9.41 pitches and road hitters were hit by 9.09 pitches. This is a statistically significant difference (p=.016). While some hitters may be better than others at dodging inside pitches that are out of the strike zone, few can actually lean into the ball better. That hitters at home are hit more than hitters on the road indicates that some of the home-field advantage is affecting the pitcher. Getting hit by pitches is a persistent skill for batters, but it primarily derives from hugging the plate and not dodging inside pitches. Unless hitters hug the plate much more at home—and unless this effect somehow dwarfs any extra reaction time allowing them to choose to dodge pitches at home—chances are that this effect comes down to pitchers’ aim being worse on the road. While some of this may be the effect of umpires tending to award the base to a home batsman instead of ruling he made no effort to avoid the pitch, the 3.5 percent increase in the home team’s being hit by pitches is probably representative of a real difference generated by home-field advantage.

Balls in Play. When a ball is hit into play, defense becomes a factor. Some success on balls in play is the effect of how well the batter hit the ball, but much of it is also a product of defense. Looking at balls in play provides the first clue as to how defense plays a role in home-field advantage.

Batting Average on Balls in Play. Home teams had a .301 batting average on balls in play (BABIP) during the period 1998—2008, and road teams had a .295 BABIP. Furthermore, when you factor in errors, home teams reach base at a .316 clip on balls in play (or fail to reach base on 68.4 percent of balls in play), and road teams do so at a .310 rate (and so fail to reach on 69.0 percent of balls in play). When you factor in double plays, defenses at home record .720 outs per ball in play, and defenses on the road .713. All of these differences are statistically significant at the 99.9 percent level. It is clear that, at home, batters are able to reach safely more often. It is not clear how much of the difference in outs on balls in play is hitting and how much is fielding, so, for some clues, it may be useful to look at some indicators of defense.

Double Plays. Hitters ground into double plays in 2.92 percent of their balls in play at home and in 2.94 percent of their balls in play on the road. This is not a statistically significant difference. At first, that sounds like fielding may not be playing a significant role in home-field advantage, but then you realize that home teams have higher OBP than road teams (.342 versus .330), so they have more opportunities to bat with a man on first base. When I approximate opportunities—by looking at the number of singles, walks, batters hit by pitches, and batters reaching base on errors—that home and away teams have, the difference suddenly becomes statistically significant. The ratio of double plays at home to the sum of singles, walks, batters hit by pitches, and batters reaching on errors is 7.62 percent, and the ratio on the road is 7.96 percent. Although some of this may be the hitters’ fault for swinging at bad pitches or making weak contact, this does seem to imply that defense is better at home. As some of this may be umpires calling away-team baserunners out on double plays more often, it is useful to check on other aspects of fielding too.

Reaching on Errors. Official scorers, or so the accusation goes, give the home team credit for hits more often while recording as errors close calls involving road players. This may or may not be true, but it is highly doubtful that the reverse is true. Therefore, that home teams reach on error in 1.46 percent of their balls in play, and road teams on 1.42 percent implies that players on the road are fielding more poorly. The ratio of infield hits to the sum of infield hits and times reached on error is 70.3 percent for home teams and 69.8 percent for road teams. This is also not a statistically significant difference, which further suggests that official scorers are probably not all that biased. To me, this suggests that chances are that defenses perform worse on the road.

Doubles and Triples. Another potential source of home-field advantage is that outfielders at home know their parks better—they know how the ball bounces off the wall, etc. Many triples are the result of balls that get away from outfielders. Therefore, it should not be surprising that the rate of triples per ball in play is 7.59 percent for home teams and only 6.44 percent for road teams. That is a huge and statistically significant difference. In fact, the rate of doubles on balls in play for home teams is 6.81 percent, and 6.74 for away teams, a difference that is not even statistically significant (though it is weakly significant). The reason is that so many extra-base hits get away from outfielders and turn into triples; the ratio of doubles to triples is 9.0 for teams at home and 10.5 for those on the road.

Shutouts. Pitchers pitch complete-game shutouts far more often at home than on the road. Per every 100 games started, the home-team pitcher will throw 1.68 complete-game shutouts and the road-team pitcher will throw 1.18. Home teams win only 54 percent of total games but record 59 percent of the complete-game shutouts.

Unearned Runs. It may seem like much of this could still be psychological, but I believe that a large portion of it is not. Some of the reasons will become clearer later in this article. One indicator that much of home-field advantage is not psycho- logical is unearned runs. If psychology is playing a significant role, then chances are that it will cause pitchers to be more prone to frustration and let problems escalate. One way to test this theory is to check the ratio of unearned runs to the times that hitters reach base on errors. If pitchers are less likely to be collected on the road, they will probably let more of these runners score. In fact, the ratio for home teams is 0.98 and 0.99 for road teams. This is a very small difference. In fact, from 1998 through 2008, the home team had a higher ratio than did the road team six times out of eleven years and the road team had a higher ratio than did the home team five times. It does not seem like psychology is playing a role here. It’s not that road pitchers are allowing crises to escalate more; they are just finding themselves in more crises.

Stolen-Base Percentage. Home teams are more successful in their stolen-base attempts, nabbing bags successfully in 71.2 percent of their attempts, while road teams are successful in 69.4 percent of theirs. This is a strong statistically significant difference. It’s tough to know whether it is due to catchers reacting more slowly, baserunners running faster, or umpires being swayed by the home crowd when the call is close. For now, it’s enough to note that there is a clear tendency to steal more successfully while at home.

Batted Balls. A little bit about home-field advantage can be inferred from batted-ball statistics. Looking at data from 2005 through 2008, we can see that home teams hit more line drives (19.0 versus 18.6 percent) and fewer ground balls (45.1 versus 45.5 percent) than do away teams; they hit about the same number of fly balls. The differences in line drives and ground balls are both statistically significant. As ground-ball rate is something that pitchers control strongly, this also suggests not simply that pitchers enjoy the effect of home-field advantage but that they affect it. The batter plays a large role as well; this is clear from the statistically significant difference in popups per fly ball at home versus away (21.8 versus 22.2 percent), as infield-fly rate is something that batters affect more than pitchers do. Hitters do a little bit better on each type of batted ball as well. Look at the slash stats for each type of batted ball:

It is clear that home-field advantage affects each type of batted ball. It does not affect the batting average on line drives very much, but it certainly does affect the isolated slugging average on them. There are more triples than doubles, and there are a good deal more home runs as well (2.5 versus 2.0 percent). The home-run rate on fly balls is also a bit higher for home teams (9.2 versus 8.9 percent), and the rate of triples on fly balls is higher too (1.13 versus 0.95 percent). Ground balls find their way through holes more, leading to more singles (22.6 percent versus 21.9 percent of ground balls), more doubles (2.02 percent versus 1.89 percent), and more triples (.112 percent versus .086 percent). The relatively larger jumps in doubles and triples on ground balls indicate that a lot of home-field advantage is knowing how to play the bounces in your home ballpark.

It appears that home teams do pretty much everything better than road teams do. They hit the ball more, they hit the ball harder, they throw more strikeouts, and they surrender fewer walks. Home teams prevent triples more frequently and record double plays more often. They record more outs on balls in play, and they make fewer errors.

The extra home-field advantage in the first three innings strongly suggests that comfort and familiarity are significant to home-field advantage. The large effects within the strike zone indicate that the mound and the batter’s eye are things that pitchers and hitters are more comfortable with at home. The extra triples surrendered on the road strongly suggest an impact that ballpark familiarity has on home-field advantage. The extra stolen bases indicate that reaction time may also be playing a role. All of these numbers together indicate a large significance of mental aspects that are not quite emotional but that affect things like eyesight, reaction time, and learning about the home turf. That pretty much answers the question of what home teams are doing better.

Now that we know what home teams are doing better, our next step is to check differences between teams in terms of how much better they perform at home and to see if we can tell who has larger home-field advantages.

TEAM DIFFERENCES

On June 4, 2009, Cole Hamels shut out the Dodgers, who at that time boasted the best record in the National League. More impressively, this feat came in Dodger Stadium. As mentioned in the previous section, even though road teams scrape out a win in 46 percent of ballgames, they put together only 41 percent of all complete-game shutouts. What was special about Cole Hamels? Was it something about the Phillies? The first clue might have been that, at that point in the season, the Phillies had a 20—6 record on the road but were only 12—14 at home. The average difference between home winning percentage and away winning percentage is 8 percent; after Hamels’s shutout, the Phillies sat at —30 percent!

This did not seem to surprise the Philadelphia media all that much. The Phillies had a regular-season home-field advantage of only 4.9 percent in 2008, and in the previous four years they had home-field “advantages” of 6.2, —3.7, 4.9, and —2.5 percent. Relative to how they performed on the road, the Phillies played much worse at home than did other teams. Phillies manager Charlie Manuel had an explanation for the team’s 2009 performance at the ready—the fanfare surrounding the World Series celebrations was distracting them. There had been ceremony after ceremony through the first several weeks of the season, and, Manuel supposed, this was keeping his players from concentrating at home. Last year, Jimmy Rollins said that the Phillies fans had intimidated the home nine, and Rollins even went so far as to call them “frontrunners,” immediately giving every cable sports show the hottest topic in the world to run with for a few days. Would the Phillies fans boo Rollins when he came back to town? Were the Phillies fans and their anti-Santa agenda too much? Others suggested that the Phillies were a fly-ball pitching staff so were more vulnerable to the homer-friendly dimensions of Citizens Bank Park.

What complicated this speculation was that the Phillies’ 2 percent home-field advantage for 2004—2008 was contradicted by their 7—0 playoff record at home in their World Series run in 2008. They went only 4—3 on the road in the playoffs, meaning that their home-field advantage for the playoffs was 43 percent, more than five times the league average home-field advantage and more than twenty times their advantage over the previous five seasons. Was there something different about the playoffs?

Alternatively, perhaps there was nothing special about either the Phillies in the regular season or the Phillies in the playoffs. Consider the following possibility—perhaps no team has a larger home-field advantage than any other team. That sounds impossible, right? Look at the home-field advantage in the period 2004—2008 for every MLB team:

The Phillies had the smallest home-field advantage in the major leagues over that time. There was a huge difference between the Phillies and the Rays, who had a winning percentage that was nearly 18 percentage points higher at home than on the road. However, we would not expect that every team had a home-field advantage of exactly 8 percent, even if no team had any special home-field advantage; some teams would have some luck at home, or some luck on the road, and the numbers would change. So, I checked the correlation between home-field advantage one year and the next for 2004—2008—the correlation was only 0.05. That is not statistically significant, not even close.

Instead of running only a simple year-to-year correlation, I ran an AR(1) intraclass correlation (with some help from Eric Seidman and Russell Carleton). Intraclass correlation is similar to year-to-year correlation but gives some extra credit to the correlation if a team performs especially well at home in 2006 and 2008 but not in 2007. It looks at each team in general rather than at two consecutive seasons. The intraclass correlation was also only 0.05, which, again, is not statistically significant.

From this, it seems unlikely that any team has a significantly different home-field advantage than any other team, at least when looking at this recent five- year span. Although there is clearly a distribution of home-field advantages that vary from team to team, that is exactly what should happen if no team has a larger home-field advantage than another. If this theory holds true, any team should be expected to have an 8 percent home-field advantage next year, on average, regardless of what their home-field advantage was this year. It will not be exactly 8 percent but will just as likely be above 8 percent as below it.

These five years made sense as an initial starting point for looking at home-field advantage, because team composition does not change as drastically over five years as it does over a longer span. However, it is worth checking whether this does hold true over a span. Is the smaller sample size blurring an effect? I gathered the home-field advantage numbers for every team during 1998—2008 (the eleven-year time period in which there were 30 teams), and, using that data, I attempted to discover whether there was any persistence to home-field advantage; the correlation stayed low and insignificant, though it did rise to .102. Also, the intraclass correlation went up only to .104, which is weakly statistically significant and slightly more noticeable. It’s pretty clear that, if there is any persistence to home-field advantage, it must have a very small effect.

Numerically, even if a team posts a home-field advantage of 18 percent one year, you probably would expect them to have a home-field advantage of less than 9 percent the following year. As we will see below, even that may be too high.

Although the correlations are low, I thought it would be important to try some other angles to see if we can learn more about team-specific home-field advantage, if such a thing exists. The thesis that I am generating here is that the variance we observe in home-field advantage is exactly what we would expect if every team had the same skill at creating a home-field advantage. Therefore, it makes sense to check a chi-squared test to see if the variance is in fact what we would expect. A chi-squared test allows us to compare the expected variance we would expect if every team had an equal home-field advantage against what the observed home-field advantage was for the period 1998—2008.

To generate the expected variance, I found the winning percentage of each team over the eleven-year span and calculated the variance of their expected home winning percentage minus away winning percentage, to see if their home winning percentage was about 4 percent above their overall winning percentage and if their away winning percentage was 4 percent below it. The expected variance would have been 0.0166 according to this estimate; the actual variance was 0.0195. The chi-squared statistic is therefore 34.1, which is statistically insignificant. So, we fail to reject the hypothesis that there is no team-to-team difference in home-field advantage. In other words, the variance was only slightly above what we would expect if there was no such thing as team-specific home-field advantage.

Despite this result, it’s pretty clear that each test shows a positive but statistically insignificant effect of team-specific home-field advantage—which means that perhaps it does exist on some level. Over the eleven-year span, there is one team that has by far the largest home-field advantage of any club in MLB—the Colorado Rockies. They have a winning percentage that is 15.4 percent higher at home than on the road. This becomes even clearer when we look at the following chart, in which I plotted two things:

• the expected number of teams that would have approximately x percent of a home-field advantage over eleven years if there were no such thing as home-field advantage;
• the number of teams that have approximately x percent of home-field advantage for 1998—2008.

This makes it even clearer how anomalous the Rockies are.

Notice that one would probably expect to see at least one team around 2 percent, even though every team would expect to be at about 8 percent on average. What you would not expect is a team at 15.4 percent, as the Rockies are. The explanation for why the Rockies are an anomaly has been given countless times; the overwhelming likelihood is that, because of the difficulty in adjusting to the altitude and in getting accustomed to playing at that altitude, the Rockies gain an advantage over their opponents. Do these results reflect the Rockies’ ability to adjust to their altitude? Or do they reflect an inability of the visiting teams to adjust to normal conditions? The answer is not clear. However, it appears that the Rockies are a different breed altogether, and they seem to break the model. Consider the year-to-year correlation for 1998—2008 without the Rockies— that clocks in at .065, which is nowhere near statistically significant. The intraclass correlation of .068 among the 29 non-Rockies teams is even more insignificant than the .104 intraclass correlation with the Rockies included in the sample; it looks more and more like home-field advantage is not team-specific for the other 29 teams. Looking at it from another angle makes this even clearer.

When the Rockies are excluded, the expected variance of home-field advantage as described above would be .0160. Instead, it was .0138—even less (though in- significantly so) than we would expect if the outcomes were random. The Rockies truly are the anomaly.

Therefore, when analyzing home-field advantage, we should remember that every team except the Rockies has pretty much the same home-field advantage. Claims that crowds in different ballparks or that certain kinds of teams tend to generate a home-field advantage are below the threshold of statistical measurability. It is probably true that, if you get a ground-ball pitcher or a power hitter in a small ballpark, you are likely to increase your home-field advantage some, but these effects are probably extremely minor. It takes a long time for the difference between two similar percentages to show any kind of consistent trend, so we should be wary when approaching, after the fact, explanations for why certain teams have home-field advantages. There has been a tendency historically for domed home teams to do well in domed stadiums, for example, but most similar explanations will not hold water.

Although this result is perhaps somewhat shocking, it simplifies some of our analysis of home-field advantage for the rest of this article. We can now look for trends without worrying that our data is contaminated with large team-specific effects. After delving into the question of what home-field advantage is and who does or does not have it, we now need to consider where it might be the strongest. Specifically, what kinds of games exhibit the largest home-field advantages? We examine divisional matchups and both intra- and interleague matchups in an attempt to learn more about home-field advantage. In doing so, we know that we do not need to worry about certain teams (other than the Rockies) tricking us into reaching inaccurate conclusions, since it does not appear that the other 29 teams in MLB exhibit or enjoy any special home-field advantage.

DIFFERENT TYPES OF GAMES

Even though luck can make a team look like they are particularly good or bad at home, the 29 teams have about an 8 percent home-field advantage, plus or minus a little statistical noise. However, that does not mean that every game has about an 8 percent home-field advantage. In other words, if we know that the Yankees would beat the Dodgers in 52 percent of games they played against each other, we cannot infer that the Yankees would beat the Dodgers in 56 percent of the games at Yankee Stadium and the Yankees would beat the Dodgers in 48 percent of the games at Dodger Stadium. Certain types of games have a different degree of home-field advantage.

I took the 27,613 regular-season games from 1998 through 2008 that did not result in a tie and divided them into a variety of subsets to evaluate the different magnitudes of home-field advantage. This is important to study because, if we can understand where home-field advantage exists, we can better understand why home-field advantage exists and how it comes to be.

Home-field advantage is commonly attributed to the rigors of travel, which hinder the road team, and to the home team’s familiarity with the ballpark. Therefore, I took games played among teams within the same division and compared them to games played among teams in different divisions, since intradivision matchups occur more frequently and usually require less travel. Home teams win just over 53.3 percent of intradivision games, which means that they have a 6.7 percent home-field advantage. In contrast, inter-division games showed an 8.7 percent home-field advantage.

Although this seems like a large gap, it remains a little shy of statistical significance over the period 1998—2008. The problem with tests of statistical significance for this type of analysis is that, to find anything conclusive among minor differences, we would need to review many years to be able to pinch the variance enough that differences in home-field advantage were statistically significant. Doing so would risk losing meaning, by dipping into different eras where effects may be different. Instead, it seems safe to say that, since the confidence interval of intradivision games (52.4—54.3 percent) and the confidence interval for inter-division games (53.6—55.1 percent) barely overlap, intradivision games probably involve smaller home-field advantages. This may be either because road teams are more familiar with the stadiums of their most frequent opponents or because road teams suffer less when they travel shorter distances. In what follows, there will be some evidence of both of these factors.

I also separated the home-field advantage for inter-league games and for intraleague games as well as for inter-division games within the same league. Inter-league games demonstrate a 10.1 percent home-field advantage, far greater than for intraleague games, which show a 7.4 percent home-field advantage, although the difference is still not quite statistically significant. Specifically, inter-division games within the same league have a home-field advantage of 8.4 percent. This indicates that distance effects, as well as familiarity effects, may be in play.

In summary, this means that we have the following home-field advantages:

Of course, interleague games may also have an extra home-field advantage, since the DH is in place only in AL ballparks (giving an added advantage to AL teams who construct their roster with this rule in mind) and not in NL ballparks (giving an added disadvantage to AL teams who construct their roster with a DH). Therefore, it is worth looking at different kinds of interleague games to determine the magnitude of this effect.

First I compared the home-field advantage in inter-league games among teams in the corresponding division in the opposite league (e.g., NL Central versus AL Central) to interleague games among teams in different divisions. The results came out rather clean; home-field advantage in the corresponding-division interleague games was only 7.95 percent, and home-field advantage in different-division interleague games was a whopping 13.42 percent. It certainly seems that familiarity may be in play, since the home-field advantage is smaller for same-division games within the same league (6.7 percent) than it is in corresponding division games in different leagues (7.9 percent), and it is also smaller for inter-division games within the same league (8.4 percent) than it is for different- division interleague games (13.4 percent).

Justification of the theory that familiarity is playing a role in home-field advantage comes from this. When I looked at “interleague rivals,” the home-field advantage came out very small. Since interleague rivalries have changed over time, it was not easy to define who was encompassed by this term. To determine what these rivalries were, I simply found the 14 NL teams that had played the 14 AL teams the most frequently (Angels and Dodgers, White Sox and Cubs, Rays and Marlins, Indians and Reds, Rangers and Astros, Mets and Yankees, A’s and Giants, Royals and Cardinals, Mariners and Padres, Twins and Brewers, Blue Jays and Nationals, Red Sox and Braves, Tigers and Pirates, and Orioles and Phillies). In those games, the home-field advantage is only 4.4 percent, even less than among teams in the same division in the same league. It certainly appears that familiarity is playing a role, since these teams play each other more frequently than do teams in other interleague matchups, although the lower home-field advantage here could also be attributed to the shorter travel distance.

The argument that this might be the effect of familiarity rather than distance strengthens when we analyze the three pairs of teams who play in the same metropolitan area—Yankees and Mets, Dodgers and Angels, Giants and Athletics, and Cubs and White Sox. Those matchups have an 11.8 percent home-field advantage, though in a sample of just 254 games. This also highlights another important fact, which is that crowd support is unlikely to be the primary cause of home-field advantage, since one would expect a smaller home-field advantage in a mixed-fan crowd. The same-city argument for familiarity over distance is not very conclusive, as the confidence interval for those types of games is really large (50.9—64.9 percent), but it does point to distance or familiarity, rather than crowd effects, as a factor, since even this large interval rules out the possibility that there is no home-field advantage in the same metropolitan area.

As these interleague-rival teams do not play each other any more often than do teams in different divisions in the same league, it seems that here too distance may be playing a role, since the home- field advantage is almost twice as large (8.4 versus 4.4 percent) in games between teams in different divisions of the same league as it is between interleague rivals.

Another argument for the effect of distance on home-field advantage is that games between teams that are in the same division but travel further show a larger home-field advantage than games between teams who do not travel as far. To define “further” I had to resort to a small trick—rather than determine the mileage between each of the 450 pairs of MLB cities, I gathered the degrees latitude and longitude for all 30 teams, and then used a formula provided by Tim Kniker for what he called “Great Circle Distance” to determine the distance between each pair of cities. The average distance in miles for teams within the same division was 597, which is the distance between Seattle and San Francisco. Games among teams within the same division who were less than 597 miles apart showed a home-field advantage of 4.2 percent, and for games between teams that traveled further than 597 miles, it was 8.4 percent. That is as large as the home-field advantage among teams in different divisions of the same league (8.4 percent).

So, we have learned from studying where home-field advantage exists that both travel distance and ballpark familiarity are probably significant causes of home-field advantage. We found clear effects of familiarity, as interleague rivals do better (even when geographically distant) than other interleague teams in corresponding divisions, while the argument of distance being the primary determinant of home-field advantage is slightly weakened when we consider that same-city interleague-rival games show a larger home-field advantage than do other interleague-rival games. We also found clear effects of distance. For example, home teams within the same division win more frequently when the away teams have traveled further. However, the differences in home-field advantage remain rather small. The difference between home-field advantage among intraleague games within the same division and between different divisions is less than 2 percent. Ignoring this and assuming that all games have an 8 percent home-field advantage will lead to your guessing wrong on only a couple of games more each year than you would have if you had known the small difference (in home-field advantage) between same-division and different-division intraleague matchups. Nonetheless, it gives us yet another insight into a home-field advantage. Since travel seems to be playing a large part in home-field advantage, in the next section we will look at home-field advantage in different games within a series as well as with different series lengths. We will also consider whether off days and consecutive series at home or away play a role in home-field advantage.

GAME NUMBER AND LENGTH OF SERIES

Since distance traveled has such a clear effect on home-field advantage, it leads us to wonder if the process of traveling has an effect—through jetlag and the like. This naturally leads us to ask whether home teams would have especially large home-field advantages in the first game of the series, perhaps because the road teams were adjusting after travel. In fact, this is not the case at all, as we see when we look at home-field advantage in different series games during the current thirty-team era.

The middle games of the series are the ones that show the most pronounced home-field advantage, and by a statistically significant amount. The last game of the series does show the least home-field advantage, which is an indicator that the road team’s need to adjust to surroundings may be a part of home-field advantage. However, the first game has a smaller home-field advantage than the middle games is shocking, and it makes little sense when taken at face value. I still do not have a definite answer as to why this is true. However, I will present some clues as to what is happening. The term “middle games” obviously involves the conflation of a few different things, so let’s start by looking at home-field advantage by series length. In the period 1998—2008, there have been series that have varied from one game to five games. Here is the home-field advantage in each series length:

Two-game series have a statistically significant smaller home-field advantage, and three-game series have statistically significant larger home-field advantages (although that is probably only because interleague series make up 14 percent of all three-game series instead of only 10 percent of all series). However, that two-game series show less home-field advantage could be a clue.

Breaking things down game by game within a series, we can start to see the trend a little better.

Although it does not seem to be a significant clue, I will also include the average home score/away score because it may help readers discover something that I have not. Keep in mind that the home team does not bat in the bottom of the ninth if they are winning after the top of the inning, so they will have smaller run totals than you would otherwise expect.

None of these samples is large enough to generate statistical significance for any individual series game, but it’s plausible that the effect may occur the day before getaway day. If it does, is there something about travel days and off days that played a role? They might give teams the opportunity not only to settle themselves earlier in a different city but also to reset their rotation.

I checked whether home teams had a larger home-field advantage if they had an off day before the first game of the series. This effect was positive though not significant: 54.1 percent versus 53.6 percent (in 3,064 and 5,656 games, respectively). However, there was a statistically significant effect of having an off day on the road before the game; away teams won 47.6 percent of the 3,060 games when they had an off day the day before the first game of the series but won only 45.4 percent of the 5,660 games when they had no off day the day before game one. There is probably some travel effect on the first game but also some other factor that is playing a role toward the beginning of the series and making it easier for away teams to win.

I checked the effect of having an off day two days before game two of a three-game series. Interestingly, this helped home teams by a statistically significant amount: They won 56.8 percent of the 2,564 games in game two of a three-game series if they had an off day before the series began, and only 54.0 percent of the 3,764 games if they did not. The run totals demonstrate this further, as the average home team outscored their opponent in game two of a three-game series—by a score of 4.95—4.60 if they had an off day before the series but by a score of only 4.87—4.80 if they did not have an off day before the series.

Away teams, however, lost more often when they had an off day two games before the series, but by a small amount: 55.5 percent for the 2,569 game twos of three with an off day two days before, and 54.9 percent for the 3,759 game twos of three with no off day two days before. This effect does seem quite strong when looking at run totals though, as they were outscored 4.85-4.61 in game two of three if they had an off day before the series, and only 4.94-4.79 if they did not.

For the four-game series, there is a huge effect in the third game. This occurs primarily if the away team had an off day before the series began. In four-game series when home teams had an off day before, they won 58.2 percent of the 273 game threes. When they did not have an off day before, they won only 54.3 percent of the 1,211 game threes. That is not quite statistically significant. They outscored their opponents 4.90—4.41 in game three of four if they had an off day before the series, 4.75—4.73 if they did not have an off day before. However, what is statistically significant at the 95 percent level is that, if an away team has an off day before a four-game series, they lost game three 60.3 percent of the 290 game threes, but with no off day they lost only 53.8 percent of the 1,195 game threes. They were outscored 4.91—4.33 if they had the off day before the series, and were even, at 4.76—4.76, if they did not. This effect was even more extreme with an off day before a Thursday—Sunday series. Away teams lost 68.1 percent of the 144 game threes of four-game series that took place on Saturdays. This is statistically significant even at the 99.9 percent level.

My belief is that there is not only a travel-hangover effect but a different effect based on distance traveled, in addition to a “time away from home” effect. Home teams really do tend to do better in those middle games with an off day before the series, and away teams tend to do worse in middle games with an offday before the series. Although traveling earlier might help away teams get past jetlag during the earlier part of the series, it seems that, the longer the series goes, the more tired they get. I suspect that in the middle game they are still not fully recovered from travel and may also still suffer from being away from home, increasing the disadvantage for the away team in the middle of the series.

I also tried looking at actual travel distance. Recall that we found that intradivision games among teams who played closer together had a smaller home-field advantage. I decided to look at intradivision matchups for three-game and four-game series involving both closer than average distances and further than average distances.

The day-before-getaway-day effect is significant only for games played between teams who are close together. In fact, if we look at inter-division games, we will see similar effects for those inter-division games where teams happen to be closer than 597 miles (although this is not a large set):

Although there are not many four-game series between teams less than 597 miles away but in different divisions, it is difficult to know whether a similar pattern would emerge whereby the day-before-getaway-day effect is significant only for teams that play in cities near each other.

That this effect holds only for teams playing closer together suggests that it depends on either mode of travel or travel distance. Perhaps something about the last game of the series shifts the advantage to the road team, but they struggle through the first couple of games. However, it may be that much of the effect on the first day is mitigated if the team traveled to the game on a bus rather than by plane, which would lead to jetlag. By the second game, though, regardless of the mode of travel, the effect of staying in a hotel tends to wear on players. It sounds a bit far-fetched, but there probably is something far-fetched that does explain this effect.

This could be a psychological issue as well, whereby road teams can generate the adrenaline to overcome some home-field advantage in the first and last game of the series but lose their steam in the middle games. I do not know for sure, but these effects generally point either to an effect on road teams that helps them early and late in the series or alternatively to a negative effect on home teams that hurts them both early and late in the series so that home-field advantage in the middle games appears greater. In reality, there may be several effects in play. Exhaustion from traveling longer distances and time away from home might lead to this bizarre outcome.

I wondered if the day of the week plays a role in home-field advantage, but what a review of outcome by day of the week suggests is that the home team’s edge seems mostly reflected by series length:

I suspected that the reason that the last game of the series may have a smaller home-field advantage is that it is more likely to be a day game, and therefore I suspected that road teams would have less of a disadvantage. However, Sunday games have larger home-field advantages than do Thursday games— which would probably not be true if night games are a cause of home-field advantage.

A natural question that many have asked is whether long homestands or road trips have an effect on home-field advantage. This does not seem to be all that significant. Consider the home winning percentage by the length of homestand:

Now consider the away winning percentage by consecutive games on the road:

Road teams do a little better early in a road trip than late, but only by a small margin.

This effect certainly appears in the current thirty-team era in MLB, but demonstrating whether it is a real effect could be helped or damaged by looking at a larger sample. Consider two-, three-, and four-game series from 1980 to 1997:

The nearly 2,500 four-game series clearly no longer show any kind of middle-game effect. As many four-game series are between teams in different divisions, and these teams tend to be further apart, perhaps improvements in travel in recent years have eroded some effects that make home teams win more earlier in a series. However, in the more than 7,500 three-game series, we still see a slight effect in the middle game. The effect is not quite statistically significant but does show up as a slightly more than 1 percent larger home-field advantage in the second game of a three-game series.

Even when we combine 1980—2009, we still do not quite get a statistically significant effect (p=.083):

When we examine box scores from 1954 through 2009, we get the following home-field advantage by series game:

From this data, it appears that the statistically significant difference (p=.024) in the last game of three-game series has less of a home-field advantage.

When we examine box scores from the period 1954—1979, we get the following:

The early games have a larger home-field advantage in this era. As travel has improved over time, the early- game home-field advantage has fallen. Whether this may allow another middle-game effect to emerge remains pretty ambiguous. Perhaps it will become clearer over time.

All in all, this section probably poses more questions than it answers. The previous sections have allowed us to reach conclusions about the topics addressed therein, and many of the answers were not surprising. There is clearly a surprising result—that home-field advantage is much larger in the middle games of the series—and my hypothesis as to why that might be is not necessarily correct. I do think it’s most likely that the significance of these games is a result of an effect of home-field advantage that increases with the duration of the series and a second effect of home-field advantage that decreases with the duration of the series, but those two effects are not necessarily jetlag and time away from home, the two effects that I paired earlier in my analysis.

In the next section, we will discuss individual player differences to demonstrate what effects home-field advantage has at the individual level.

INDIVIDUAL PLAYERS

Although team-specific home-field advantage is small, that does not necessarily apply for specific players at home. We have seen that home teams are more likely to succeed in hitting home runs, so we are left to wonder whether home-run hitters are more likely to have a higher home-field advantage. A thoughtful commenter in an online version of this article pointed out that home-field advantage seemed to be growing in recent years. In fact, it has gone up, from about 6.6 percent in 1998—2002 to 8.9 percent in 2003—2008. Perhaps teams have been able to improve their home-field advantage by acquiring players who better suit their ballparks. Furthermore, if teams are more likely to hit home runs at home, we may wonder whether players who hit more home runs will have higher or lower differentials between their home-run rates at home as opposed to the road. In this section, we will test several statistics for this possible trend.

Naturally, testing this data requires that we know that players have a persistent home-field advantage. This is not something we can assume, because we know that teams do not. When we study players who did not switch teams and who had at least 150 at-bats at home and at least 150 at-bats on the road in two consecutive years from 2001 through 2008—only then do we see that the difference between OPS at home and on the road for a player has a year-to-year correlation of .1863, which is quite large given our sample of 960 players. It is worth checking whether park factors were playing a role here, so I used ESPN’s park factors for the year in question and normalized the home statistics using park factors listed (hits, doubles, triples, home runs, walks). Since one-year park factors fluctuate a lot (there is no ballpark that is going to be twice as likely as the average to surrender home runs), I also developed regressed park factors that were merely halfway between the recorded park factor and 1.00. Either way, this correlation came out large: .1752 for given park factors and .1615 with regressed park factors. The year-to-year correlation for this set of hitters was also pretty high for various other statistics. (Note that the following numbers are normalized using the regressed park factors.)

This year-to-year correlation was not as strong for pitchers, since they had only a slight tendency to continue being relatively better at home if they had the year before.

Using the regressed park factor—adjusted ERA of 539 pitchers from 2001 through 2008 who threw 40 innings or more at home and on the road for the same team for two consecutive years, we get a correlation of .0299. This was not much different with no park adjustments (.0394) and unregressed park-factor adjustments (.0520).

It seems that, if some pitchers consistently perform well at home, this would be primarily a function of recording strikeouts and secondarily a function of not walking batters.

In the above analyses, the statistical correlation that is studied concerns the difference between the home and road statistics. It is possible that home-field advantage has a multiplicative effect rather than an additive effect. For that reason, I also tested the correlations of the ratio of home statistics to road statistics from year to year. Here are those results:

It appears that home-field advantage for hitters is persistent either way you measure it. For pitchers it is somewhat persistent but less so.

Since it is pretty clear that hitters and pitchers have some persistent ability to do better at home, it’s worth checking whether home-field advantage proves particularly helpful for players who have certain skills. This appears to be true across many skills. For example, the correlation between OPS and the difference between OPS at home and on the road (all normalized using regressed park factors) is .1452 for the 1,824 hitters with at least 150 at-bats at home and on the road in the period 2001—2008. The correlation between ERA and the difference between ERA at home and on the road (again, all normalized the same way) is -.1048. It seems that better pitchers and better hitters will show larger home-field advantages. Consider the correlations between the following normalized statistics and the differential between them at home and on the road, where normalizing refers to using the same normalized park factors:

For pitchers, we get the following:

From these numbers, it’s pretty clear that players who have certain skills are particularly adept at employing them while at home. This seems true for nearly all statistics and especially for those related to strike-zone management. However, suppose we try to repeat this analysis looking at ratios instead of differentials:

By this measure, it appears that hitters tend to have a particularly strong home-field advantage with respect to BABIP skills but not for other measures of hitting, such as strike-zone management. Pitching does not appear to have an especially strong home-field advantage for particular statistics, though the ratio of home to road ERA actually shows a -.0986 correlation, indicating that better pitchers may be particularly good at home. Of course, there is no reason to necessarily choose differences or ratios, but it is best to look at both to get a better idea of individual home-field advantage.

As a side note, I thought it would be interesting to check the effect of age on home-field advantage. In discussions I had with David Cohen of TheGoodPhight.com a while back, he questioned whether older players may have larger or smaller home-field advantages. Their familiarity with road ballparks may enable them to see the ball better there. However, travel may be more difficult for them. In fact, the latter effect seems slightly more prevalent: The correlation between OPS home-road differential and age is .0884, and the correlation between ERA home-road differential and age is only .0294. The former is statistically significant, while the latter is not. Perhaps pitchers (in this study, starting pitchers generally, since relievers rarely notch both 40 innings at home and 40 innings on the road) are better able to adjust their bodies on the road, while everyday players may struggle a little more with travel as they age.

CONCLUSION

In this study, we have learned many surprising but also a few unsurprising things. Initially, we discovered that home-field advantage was particularly strong in the early innings. Many fans believe that a large portion of home-field advantage in baseball derives from the home team having the structural advantage of the last plate appearance, in which they know how many runs they need to win and can play one-run strategies if necessary. While this may be a factor, it is probably just as likely that the defense can adjust their fielders (e.g., “no-doubles defense”) in such a way to play one-run defensive strategies to their own advantage. Therefore, it is not at all clear that a late-game effect is a significant portion of home-field advantage. The early-game advantage is large and suggests a matter of getting used to the field. That this early-game (and particularly first-game) advantage is large in each series game suggests that starting pitchers are significantly affected by their own ballpark in ways that other players are not. Strengthening the argument that pitchers are a major factor in home-field advantage is the finding that pitchers hit more batters on the road and the discovery of the significant effects of home field on other defense-independent outcomes. Hitters appear to play a role as well in home-field advantage, as demonstrated by their superior performance at home with respect to home runs, batting average on balls in play, and avoiding ground balls. That defenses make fewer errors and record more double plays at home suggests that they are affected by home-field advantage, and stolen-base percentage indicates an advantage in home-team baserunning as well.

Home-field advantage does not appear to be very team-specific. Only the Rockies show a persistent home-field advantage. Other measures of statistical consistency imply that the effect all other teams experience when playing at home does not vary much from team to team. However, there are many indications that individual players see noticeable home-field effects. These may be seen to most affect batting average on balls in play or, depending on the methodology used, strike-zone management, but it does appear that home-field can elevate a player’s game and particularly help a hitter’s game more than a pitcher’s game.

There are differing home-field advantages that depend on which game of the series is played. The closer the teams’ home parks are to each other, and the greater the teams’ familiarity with each other’s ballparks, the smaller the home-field advantage. Even for teams that are from different leagues, play near each other, and play each other relatively often, home-field advantages are low. Home-field advantage does appear variable by series game. Indications are that the last game of the series tends to show the smallest home-field advantage, though more so in the past than now. However, there is some indication that the first game of a series has a smaller home-field advantage than do the middle games, particularly when teams are from cities near each other. This could result from a variety of causes, such as home teams adjusting more quickly than do away teams as the series progresses, but the reason remains unclear.

Home-field advantage clearly exists in baseball. Given so much research that consistently shows weak psychological and contextual effects, to see this large effect is refreshing. Eight percent is a lot. When you remove an average hitter from a lineup and replace him with a replacement-level player, you may lower home-field advantage only a little more than 1 percent. The effect of home-field advantage is so large that you are better off playing your third starter against your opponents’ ace in your home park than you are the other way around. Effects of familiarity and distance appear to be the primary drivers of home-field advantage, though other factors may be at play. Knowing how large these effects indicates that there is much to be learned from understanding context in baseball. It is easy to dismiss these effects as minor, considering how they are often small compared to the effects of talent, but their existence is clear. The psychology of the crowd may not be what is driving home-field advantage, but it is apparent that they will continue to enjoy its effects.

Data-visualization expert Edward Tufte suggests that graphs can deceive as easily as words. While that is certainly true, this article is not about intentional deception. Rather, it’s about graphics that have deceived their very authors. These graphs do not illustrate their purported subject because they are unwittingly dominated by some statistical phenomenon that causes the same distortion in all datasets, making vastly different numbers look similar. 

I’ve recently noticed a surprising number of graphs that have titles descriptive of the content the author wants them to have and not what is actually depicted. Graphs should be read skeptically, not because there is anything inherently sinister about them but because they make such powerful arguments, encapsulating large amounts of information, and are so frequently misunderstood by their authors that the potential for being led astray is serious.

THE PROBLEM

The phenomenon I’m talking about is simple and widespread. It’s the tendency of cumulative “rate” stats to decrease in variation as the sample size increases. We understand this intuitively: Think about hitters’ batting averages at different points in the season. In April there are always some players batting over .400 who you know won’t finish the season over .300, and some players who start off in a .150 slump will finish at .300. The reason for these disparities is the small sample size. When a player has 20 at-bats, every hit has a large impact on his batting average: The difference between .150 (3-for-20)and .300 (6-for-20)is only 3 hits (made up by a 5-for-5 streak). When a player has 400 at-bats in August, the effect of a hit is dramatically less: The difference between .150 (60-for-400) and .300 (120-for-400) is 60 hits (made up by an 86-for-86 streak).

CASE STUDY 1

If we wanted to use a line graph to illustrate the fluctuation of a player’s batting average over the course of a season, how would we do it? The most common solution is to plot batting average along the y-axis and time along the x-axis. This has been done countless times, including in this publication,1 and it generally does not show what the author intends to show.

What you get is a graph that varies wildly at the beginning and levels out as time progresses and the player settles into his “final” batting average. So what’s the problem? Let’s look at what happens if a hitter goes on a 10-for-10 streak. Here are two graphs for a hypothetical season. The datasets are identical except that in the first the player goes 10-for-10 in mid-April and in the second he goes 10-for-10 in August (in each case the non-streak at-bats are 2-for-10). 

Figure 1

Would you have noticed the streak in August if the arrow wasn’t there? All those big zigzags in April appear much more significant, but they never represent anything better than 2-for-2. Graphs should help us see things we didn’t know about. If what we’re looking for is local trends (such as streaks), these graphs don’t help. They exaggerate all streaks early in the season and hide streaks late in the season. Moreover, they tell very different stories about the season in general. To me, the first says that the player had a tremendous hitting streak in April and leveled off for the rest of the year, while the second shows a gradual upward trend for the whole season. But a 10-for-10 streak in April isn’t enough to change the character of an entire season, is it? (In the next section I’ll suggest a way to answer this question.) In other words, these graphs show the player’s batting average over time. But if we want to see when players are “hot” and when they’re “cold,” we don’t really want to see their batting average. Why? Because batting-average graphs don’t illustrate the player’s day-to-day performance. They illustrate the statistical phenomenon that batting averages stabilize as the season progresses. (Of course, the player’s day-to-day performance is included, but it’s overwhelmed—we can’t see it easily.)

CASE STUDY 2

Let’s look at a set of graphs illustrating pennant races. How do we represent a team’s performance at a certain point in the season? A common answer is winning percentage. Like batting average, it’s a cumulative rate statistic and so subject to the same stabilization- over-time phenomenon. Let’s look at the dramatic pennant race between the Brooklyn Dodgers and New York Giants in 1951. The Giants lost 11 straight in April but then won 17 of their next 25 (.680) and by the end of May, they were back at .500. The Dodgers were 10 games ahead, however, and continued to play better baseball over the next 10 weeks. Through August 11, the Dodgers were 13 games ahead and looked like the certain winners. They played over .500 for the remainder of the season, but the Giants went on an amazing 37-of-44 streak (.841) and finished September almost as strong, tying Brooklyn on the last day of the season and winning a best-of-three playoff series. This illustrates the race in terms of winning percentage:                                 

Figure 2

How well does this graph match up with our understanding of the race? Well, it appears to show that, beginning in April, the Giants had a tremendous losing streak (so far so good) followed by a winning streak almost as significant (also true). Then it looks like both teams leveled off and kept pace with each other until mid-August, when the Giants were slightly better for the rest of the season. From this graph, you would never guess how dramatic the race really was. There is no indication that the Giants’ streak in August was one of the most significant six-week performances ever. It appears to be dwarfed by their April—May streaks, just as our April hitting streak dwarfed the August hitting streak in case study 1. Again, we are not seeing the teams’ performances here, we are seeing the statistical phenomenon that winning percentages stabilize over the course of the season.

CASE STUDY 3

For a final example, let me turn to the subject of “Cumulative Home Run Frequency and the Recent Home Run Explosion,” the BRJ article by Costa, Huber, and Saccoman. The article presents a series of graphs, depicting the cumulative home-run percentages of batters throughout their careers. Home-run percentage is home runs divided by at-bats: another cumulative rate stat. These graphs look much like those we’ve looked at so far (with decreasing variation from left to right) and led the authors to conclude that “as the sluggers’ careers progressed, their [cumulative home-run rate] reached a particular value and remained there.” My point is not that this statement is wrong, but that the authors did not present sufficient information for making that conclusion since home-run percentage is subject to the same stabilization phenomenon as any other rate stat, and graphing it cumulatively over time will almost always yield a line that flattens out.

Another point made in their article that the career home run rates of Bonds, McGwire, and Sosa increase significantly, and the graphs do show that phenomenon. In fact, because their graphs show this increase, we know that actual day-to-day home-run frequencies of those players increased dramatically indeed, far more than the authors likely realized. Bonds hit a home run every 8.2 at-bats (12.2 percent) during his last five full seasons, an outrageous number. The previous five seasons he hit one every 13.2 at-bats (7.6 percent). This increase is literally off the authors’ charts, yet it appears mundane because it is lost as the cumulative sample size increases.

THE SOLUTION

The good news is that there’s a surprisingly simple and generally applicable solution to this problem: instead of graphing a cumulative rate, simply graph the absolute distance from an arbitrarily-chosen rate. For example, if we want to graph a pennant race it usually makes sense to choose .500 as our arbitrary winning percentage (rate) and graph the distance of each team from that rate (in number of wins). For example, take this game log for a hypothetical team:

Note that Diff (the difference, what we want to graph) always changes by exactly 0.5. This will be true at any point in the season, and it is consistent with our desire for all wins to be equal (for a win in April to be worth the same as a win in August). Figure 3 illustrates, in our new format, the same graph of the 1951 NL pennant race:

Now we see the things we wanted to see before: that Brooklyn kept playing well until mid-September but New York played extraordinarily well from mid-August to the end, and that the Giants’ performance in August was more significant than their April—May run. We also notice a 31-of-42 (.738) by Brooklyn spanning July and August, which ended just as New York’s run began.

We can do the same thing with our batting-average graphs, although our arbitrary starting point is not as obvious. If we choose .500 again, all batters (realistically speaking) will have a steady downward trend because, as we know, a .500 average is most attainable at the start of the season and becomes less likely as at-bats accumulate. Even when Ted Williams hit .406 he was constantly getting “worse” if we consider .500 as “average.” So we should choose a benchmark that is the batting-average equivalent of a .500 winning percentage—a batting average, for example, of .300. Figure 4 illustrates some data and graphs for a hypothetical batter:

You’ll notice that the hits-from-.300 data, like the pennant-race data, always move in same-size increments, so that each hit is “worth” the same amount. However, unlike the pennant-race graphs, this graph shows those increments as different when the graph is moving upward and when it is moving downward. In general, the amount of each downward move is b and the amount of each upward move is 1-b where b is our arbitrary benchmark.

This inequality may seem strange at first, but think about it this way: Imagine that hitting was so difficult that league leaders hit just .010, which would mean they totaled about five hits a year. Outs would be so common they would hardly bother anyone, but getting a hit would be a big event, and with each one you would be one-fifth of the way to being a league leader. Each hit would help far more than each out hurt. It’s the same, though less dramatic, when we expect our league leaders to hit .340: Each hit helps a bit more than each out hurts.

The choice of benchmark can have a large effect on the appearance of the batting-average graph. A full discussion of this subject is outside the scope of this article, but suffice it to say that you want to choose something in the middle of the dataset’s range. For example, if a player’s average varies between .290 and .350 in a given year, it would be safe to choose .320 as your benchmark. If you’re graphing data for just one player it usually makes sense to use his final average as the benchmark, though the choice of benchmarks generally warrants far more discussion.

Now we also have more insight into the question I asked above: Can a 10-for-10 streak in April affect the character of a batter’s entire season? Can he “level off” and end up hitting .350, as the first graph suggests?

Here are the distance-from-.300 graphs for the same two seasons (see figure 5):

Clearly, the answer is no. These graphs tell us a more sensible story: that a hitting streak early in the season has the same effect on a player’s final average as the same streak late in the season.

RIGHT AND WRONG

At this point, you may be wondering how we can have graphs that display basically the same data and yet look so different. You might also be wondering if the “improved” graphs are subject to some kind of distortion, and you might even be offended that I’ve taken graphs of factual information (winning percentage, batting average, etc.) and manipulated them to align with how I “want” them to look so that they “feel” right.

It seems to me that, while we are accustomed to thinking of numbers as “objective,” they are not. If we return to Tufte’s analogy, even if we all agree on the meaning of terms (in this case. “1,” “2,” “3,” “24,” etc.), as soon as we begin constructing sentences (tables and graphs) they become tools for making arguments, and they can be wielded clumsily or with precision.

I submit that there is no such thing as a “correct” batting-average graph any more than there is a “correct” statement about the quality of a player’s season. However, if you do employ graphs in a discussion, you ought to be aware of the properties and behaviors of the numbers you‘re graphing and be sure to select a sensible dataset or to create a derivative dataset that better isolates the point you want to make, a dataset not dominated by some statistical phenomenon.

As readers of graphs, we also need sufficient statistical literacy to interpret the data. Often the deception lies not in the graph itself but in the data chosen for it. I predict that, in the coming years, as graphing software becomes more accessible, we’re going to start seeing many more graphs of baseball data, and we need to be ready. Graphs make powerful statements, which means they can make statements that are powerfully persuasive but incorrect. We will be fooled, and will miss opportunities for important discoveries, if we don’t understand what we’re looking at. 

Notes

1 Gabriel Costa, Michael Huber, and John Saccoman, “Cumulative Home Run Frequency and the Recent Home Run Explosion,” SABR Baseball Research Journal 34 (2005): 37—41.

Books have been devoted to nearly two dozen seasons between 1901 and 1966 and to virtually every season of the last four decades. Yet the story of this historically significant 1921 season has not been told until now. Highlights include two dramatic pennant races, the New York Yankees’ first American League pennant, and the first all—New York City World Series. With as much drama and as many turnarounds as any postseason ever, that Series, a match between the American League’s Yankees and the National League’s Giants, provided a worthy climax to an eventful season.

With the end of World War I, the nation was ready to focus on less momentous clashes, ones that were not about life and death. The election of President Warren Harding, who in his March 4, 1921, inauguration promised the nation a “return to normalcy,” signified that Americans had tired of world affairs. They were ready to consider less cosmic issues and to enjoy themselves. Newspapers across the country responded with expanded sports sections. Baseball occupied an increasingly large part of the nation’s newspapers, as well as its psyche. In 1921 the game provided a season for the ages.

In 1921 baseball had center stage of the sports world almost to itself. Professional football and basketball had not yet developed as popular alternatives for fan support. College football emerged each fall, but it was a plodding game with little offense. The forward pass, which would revolutionize football in much the same way the home run did baseball, was still in its infancy.

Boxing was popular in the lower weight divisions in New York City; yet except for infrequent heavyweight title fights, the sport did not appeal to the nation at large. Moreover, the sport meant little to the youth of America in the way baseball did. The same was true of horse racing, which was recovering from corruption— fixed races—far worse than that of baseball’s 1919 Black Sox scandal.

In New York City, it was on this stage that the larger-than-life figures of Ruth and McGraw, two of the dominant personalities of their day, took over in 1921. The Giants and McGraw, their autocratic manager since 1902, had dominated National League baseball and the New York City sports scene. McGraw’s disdain for the American League dated from 1902, when he quit as an AL manager after repeated suspensions by and clashes with the league’s president, Ban Johnson. McGraw’s contempt for Ruth’s new slugging game, which was repudiating the very style of play McGraw had helped make famous, only added to his disdain. Now the Giants were back in the World Series for the sixth time under his leadership.

The Brooklyn club had won the National League pennant in 1916 and 1920, but it was not a serious contender for the devotion of New Yorkers outside of that borough. Brooklyn remained a separate entity— not accepted as New York by New York—even after it had joined the city in 1898. The feeling of Brooklynites was mutual.

At the start of 1921, the Yankees—who have since won forty pennants—had won none. They were a franchise with a long history of losing. By 1921, however, the allegiance of New York City’s baseball fans was in play. Ruth was the force behind the Yankees’ rise in the standings and at the box office. In 1920, Ruth’s first year in New York, the Yankees outdrew the Giants, the team that owned and shared their ballpark, the Polo Grounds, by 360,000 fans. That year, the Yankees had become the first team to top one million fans in home attendance. Ruth was also the catalyst behind a shift away from the game McGraw’s teams had excelled at for years. When they met in the 1921 Series—the Giants and Yankees, McGraw and Ruth—they represented two very different styles: what the game had been and what it would soon become.

Often thought of as the season in which baseball emerged from the Great War, 1920 was dominated by the spectacular slugging of Babe Ruth. Yet 1919 was when attendance rose dramatically and Ruth first astounded the baseball world playing in Boston, where he hit an unheard-of 29 home runs. The year 1920 is also remembered as the season that baseball rebounded from the 1919 Chicago Black Sox scandal. However, the scandal was not exposed until the final days of the 1920 season. In fact, the year that tested the loyalty of baseball fans was 1921, not 1920.

With the arrival of the game’s first commissioner, Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis, 1921 also marked a revolution in baseball governance. Baseball’s owners had selected an outsider—the maverick federal judge who himself was a big fan of the game—and had given him enormous power. Confronted with a crisis of confidence in the integrity of the game, Landis began his rule with an iron, if somewhat erratic, fist and an eye on how baseball could best recover. It was also the year that Landis, Ruth, and the sheer drama of the baseball season brought the game back from its darkest days. Baseball was undergoing fundamental change. John McGraw personified the Deadball Era, which was not going quietly; and Babe Ruth was fueling the new power game almost single-handedly. This season was one of the great tipping points in the history of our national pastime.

A CHALLENGER TO THE GIANTS EMERGES

By 1921 the World Series had become America’s greatest sporting event. Even those who paid little attention to baseball during the regular season were cognizant of the multigame struggle between the champions of the American and National leagues. And while no one individual game could create the furor and excitement of the previous July’s heavyweight title fight between champion Jack Dempsey and his French challenger, Georges Carpentier, no other event could hold the sporting public’s protracted interest that the battle for baseball’s championship could.1

Dempsey was one of the two 1920s athletes whom American sports fans would come to idolize and who would symbolize the era of the Roaring Twenties. The other was New York Yankee slugger Babe Ruth. No player before (or since) has so captured the imagination of the American sporting public, many of whom had begun following the Babe’s at-bats on a daily basis. His fame spread nationwide and even beyond, with more words written about him than about President Warren Harding. Ruth’s presence in the Yankee lineup ensured that the 1921 Series between the Yanks and John McGraw’s New York Giants would be the most closely followed championship series ever. Even before the first pitch was thrown, fans were discussing whether McGraw’s pitchers would be able to handle the Yankee sluggers as a group, and in particular Ruth. With the Polo Grounds, the home park for both teams, hosting all the games, Ruth appeared to be even more of a looming threat to the Giants’ pitchers. The seats down the right-field line at the Polo Grounds were a mere 256 feet away, not that the Babe needed the help. Fifty-two of his 113 home runs in two seasons with the Yankees had come on the road.

The glamour and prestige surrounding the World Series had come a long way since that day seventeen years earlier, when, after the Giants had won the 1904 National League pennant, manager McGraw famously announced, “The Giants will not play a postseason series with the American League champions.”2 Now the Giants were preparing to do just that. They had done so before, of course, although with limited success, much to the chagrin of McGraw, who passionately hated the American League and its president, Ban Johnson.3 After having defeated the Philadelphia Athletics in the 1905 World Series, McGraw’s Giants had lost four consecutive Series to the American League pennant winners: to the Athletics in 1911 and 1913, to the Boston Red Sox in 1912, and to the Chicago White Sox in 1917.

Back in July 1904, when McGraw, backed by owner John T. Brush, issued his refusal to play a World Series against the champion of the upstart new league, there was a strong possibility that the Highlanders, as the Yankees were then called, might be that champion. But the Highlanders lost the pennant to Boston on the last day of the season, whereupon Highlanders co-owner Frank Farrell proposed to Brush and McGraw that the Giants meet his second-place team in a post-season series. Brush’s refusal was brutally and mockingly short. “Who are these people?” he asked dismissively. “We do not know them at all. The Giants do not care to play minor leaguers, so this absurd challenge from a lot of nobodies will be ignored.”4 Recognizing the new team in New York as being on a par with the lordly Giants was something neither their manager nor their owner wanted to do.

Two years later, in 1906, Farrell had his revenge. The Yankees had again been involved in an exciting pennant race, finishing in second place, three games behind the Chicago White Sox. Moreover, they had surpassed the Giants in attendance for the first time.

Hoping to convert the Yankees’ popularity into dollars for the Giants, Brush and McGraw suggested a post-season series between the two teams. Farrell, who had hoped the Yanks’ postseason play would be against the Chicago Cubs in the World Series, turned the Giants down flat.5 The “nobodies” had gotten their revenge. Now that the Yankees, a team McGraw despised above all others, had won their first pennant, these two New York teams would meet, with the world championship at stake. That the Yankees’ potent offense was led by Babe Ruth, the game’s greatest attraction and the antithesis of the “inside baseball” McGraw had helped foster, only heightened the drama of this match.6 There were many reasons for McGraw’s current antipathy to the Yankees. Perhaps foremost was that the American Leaguers had now shed their image as New York’s “other team” and taken their place as the Giants’ equals in the estimation of New York’s fans.

Furthermore, by 1921 the hordes of early twentieth-century immigrants who had descended on New York City, mostly Jewish and Italian, had changed not only the ethnic composition of the city but also the fan base of its baseball teams. Author Harry Golden’s tales of his childhood attachment to the Giants were symbolic of a generation of newcomers to America who had taken to America’s game without assistance from, and often as an act of revolt against, their old-world fathers. Eric Rolfe Greenberg touched on a similar theme in his novel The Celebrant, a story centering on a young Jewish immigrant’s devotion to pitcher Christy Mathewson.

Neither the National League team that had been in neighboring Brooklyn since the 1890s nor the American League entry relocated to Manhattan from Baltimore in 1903 had done much to change the Giants’ entrenched position as the team of choice for the vast majority of New Yorkers. Brooklyn, despite becoming a part of the city in 1898, was just too far away; and its inhabitants did not fully embrace New York either. Just four years earlier, Brooklyn had voted for the merger by only 277 votes out of more than 129,000 cast; and on the eve of 1898, the editor of the Brooklyn Daily Eagle had declared, “Though borough it may be, Brooklyn it is, Brooklyn it remains, and Brooklyn we are.”7

Because the Yankees rarely generated much excitement, a good portion of the American Leaguers’ attendance came from fans anxious to see the great stars of the American League rather than to watch the home team. Only by going to watch the Yankees play at Hilltop Park located at Broadway and 168th Street, not too far from the Polo Grounds, could older fans and those youngsters new to the game have the opportunity to see players like Nap Lajoie, Ty Cobb, Eddie Collins, Tris Speaker, Rube Waddell, Cy Young, Addie Joss, and Walter Johnson.

John McGraw’s constant bullying of umpires and complaints that everyone was out to get the Giants had alienated fans in the league’s seven other cities. Over time, his behavior came to alienate and drive away a significant number of New Yorkers. Yet despite the defections, New York had remained a strong National League town through the end of the First World War. That began to change when the Yankees became serious pennant contenders in 1919 and accelerated with the coming of Babe Ruth to New York in 1920. Ruth’s arrival had won new converts for the Yanks and the American League. On the eve of the 1921 Series, New York was evenly divided in its sentiment. “A few years ago, the Giants had the big following in New York, and the Yankees were given little consideration. McGraw and his men have still as great a grip on one part of fandom as any Giant team of the past had, but in the meantime, a new army of fans has rallied to the Yankee standard where there once was a scattering few.”8

Sid Mercer of the New York Evening Journal also recognized the inroads made by Yankee rooters and credited Ruth for bringing it about. “This is a National League town. John J. McGraw put his label on it years ago, and the Giants are firmly established. Up to a couple of years ago, the Yanks were just the ‘other New York team.’ But the immense personal popularity of Babe Ruth and the dynamite in the rest of that Yankee batting order have made the Yanks popular with the element that loves the spectacular.”9

Unlike in future years, when rooting for one New York team meant rooting against the others, many New Yorkers had been happy to see both teams win. New York fans wanted and demanded winning teams, and they had not had a pennant winner since the Giants in 1917. The Brooklyn Dodgers had won the National League pennant in 1920, but that World Series had not generated much interest or excitement in New York.10 People in Manhattan just could not get very enthused about a team from Brooklyn.

When the Dodgers reached that Series to play the Cleveland Indians, one New York newspaper noted in an editorial that “the honor will go to a new city.”11 Another paper sarcastically editorialized that there would be a World Series “in town,” if Brooklyn would concede that “Manhattan is part of New York and admit the inhabitants of this inconsiderable suburb to a humble share in their triumph.”12 Should Brooklyn repeat as National League champions in 1921, “there’d be nothing but thick gloom from the Statue of Liberty to Westchester County,” unless the Yankees thrashed them in the World Series, wrote sportswriter Joe Vila.13 This year was different. New York fans were certain of one thing: for the first time since Christy Mathewson and 1905, a New York team would be baseball’s world champions.

The cleaner brand of play in the American League, along with its star-studded rosters, contributed to the Yankees gaining a foothold in New York.14 Nevertheless, the overwhelming factor was the addition of Ruth. The bigger-than-life Babe, now playing on the nation’s biggest stage, won the hearts of New Yorkers immediately. After having hit 29 home runs—a record at that time—with the Boston Red Sox in 1919, Ruth shattered that mark with an unprecedented 54 in 1920, more than any other team in the American League and thirty-five more than runner-up George Sisler. He also led by similarly large margins in runs scored, runs batted in, on-base percentage, slugging percentage, and walks.

Yet despite the Babe’s accomplishments, McGraw remained defiant, convinced his pitchers could handle the Yankee slugger. When asked before the Series if the Giants would pitch to Ruth, he responded, “Why shouldn’t we pitch to Ruth? I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again, we pitch to better hitters than Ruth in the National League.”15

Despite McGraw’s disdain for Ruth, the Babe had impressed him since he first saw the young slugger back in 1914, when the Giants were playing a spring-training game against the International League Baltimore Orioles. Ruth was, of course, a pitcher then; and McGraw envisioned him someday pitching for the Giants. When Orioles owner Jack Dunn sold Ruth to the Red Sox without even contacting him, McGraw was so upset he never forgave his old Baltimore teammate.16 Nor, seemingly, did McGraw ever again have a kind word to say about Ruth. In the spring of 1919, Ruth was pestering Red Sox manager Ed Barrow to allow him to play every day. “If he plays every day,” said McGraw, “the bum will hit into a hundred double plays before the season is over.”17 The Red Sox and Giants played a series of exhibition games that spring, and whenever Ruth had a hit he would direct a “How’s that for a double-play ball, Mac?” at the Giants’ bench.18 Now a full-time outfielder, Ruth had almost single-handedly begun changing the game from the old-style inside baseball practiced by McGraw to one that featured power hitting and home runs.19 McGraw had been the embodiment of that old style of play, a low-scoring, scientific game that had prevailed in baseball since the turn of the century, a game dominated by pitchers, many of whom threw “trick” pitches, a game where a walk, a stolen base, and a couple of sacrifices would scratch out a precious run.20 Even the introduction of the cork-centered baseball in 1910 had not changed the style of play.

Ruth did. The Babe represented the new power-hitting game, where one swing of the bat generated runs. Twenty-five major leaguers had slugged ten or more home runs in 1921, a steep increase from the usual three or four who had done so during a typical year of the Deadball Era. As recently as 1917, Yankees first baseman Wally Pipp had led the American League with nine home runs.

McGraw hated this new style of play. “I do not like the lively ball,” he said. “I think the game far more interesting when the art of making scores lies in scientific work on the bases.” He believed that while fans liked to see home runs hit, there were times when they got weary of the long ball.21

THE STAGE IS SET

But evidently, the fans were not getting weary of it. More than one million of them had paid their way into the Polo Grounds in 1920 to watch the Ruth-led Yankees stay in contention all season before finishing third, behind the Chicago White Sox and the pennant-winning Cleveland Indians. The Yankees’ failure to win that year emboldened those in the New York press who had never cared for manager Miller Huggins to call for his removal, just as they had after the 1919 season.

Huggins also had to deal with unrest among his own players, who often second-guessed his moves. Yankees co-owner Tillinghast “Til” Huston was in favor of firing Huggins, but his partner, Jacob Ruppert, had faith in Huggins and wanted him to remain. Ruppert had prevailed, and now Huggins had rewarded him and Huston with the Yankees’ first American League pennant.

While The Sporting News complained in an October 13 editorial that “baseball is a national game, not just a diversion for Manhattanites,” the Detroit News more accurately reflected the opinions of baseball fans everywhere: “Never before have two teams as colorful as the contending clubs in this Series met for the title. Never has personality and individuality entered so strongly into a clash for baseball supremacy.”22

The Giants had finished in second place in each of the three preceding seasons. Over that same period, the Yankees, under Huggins and with the addition of Ruth in 1920, had become legitimate pennant contenders. As a result, supporters of both teams had spent countless hours arguing which was the better team. Now, finally, the first all-New York Series was here, and the answer would be determined on the field.23 In one corner stood John McGraw and the old, established Giants, a fixture in the city since the Rosie O’Grady days of the Gay Nineties. In the other, stood Babe Ruth and the brash Yankees, the perfect sports symbol for what would come to be called America’s Jazz Age.

Also at stake was the battle for who would be New York’s team of choice. From a vantage point ninety miles away, the Philadelphia Inquirer wrote: “It is more than possible that the victor in this combat will plunge ahead as the chosen team of the city, and if the American Leaguers bring home the bacon it will mean much, very much to them McGraw has never lost his hold on the popular imagination of New York, and the legend that he is the greatest still exists and is still potent.”24

THE BIGGEST NAMES IN THE GAME

The storyline of the 1921 World Series was succinct and direct. Two New York teams were vying for the hearts of New Yorkers, attempting to lay claim to baseball supremacy in the nation’s largest city. Two of the biggest personalities in the history of the game were leading these teams into the Series. “Big Series Resolves Itself to Question of Ruth versus McGraw,” read the headline in the Boston Herald.25

In addition to having taken New York by storm the past two seasons, Babe Ruth had captured the attention of people throughout the country, and not only of baseball fans. He did so in part with his record-setting home run feats. But he had much more—an exuberant joie de vivre and behavior that pushed conventional boundaries. Both were made to order for the early 1920s, a time of breaking free from constraints and having a good time.

Ruth was so genuine and so unbridled in his enthusiasm for baseball and for life that his drinking and carousing only added to his allure. Grantland Rice captured the Babe’s persona well when he wrote, “Ruth, the man-boy, was the complete embodiment of everything uninhibited.”26 After the devastating Great War, Americans wanted to enjoy themselves. Sports became “an American obsession,” and celebrities (in sports and in entertainment) became the focus of great attention and adulation.27

In a time of increasing urbanization and mass production, the Babe was one of the biggest and most inimitable heroes of the times, one who appealed to people of all ages. He was “a screaming symbol, saying ‘I won’t go’—to some, the last gasp of the rugged individual.”28

Ford Frick was a young New York sportswriter who covered the Yankees in the 1920s and would serve as the commissioner of baseball from 1951 to 1965. Frick knew Ruth well and even was one of the Babe’s ghostwriters. “Most of us lack the nerve to defy the conventions which we secretly detest. When we find a man who has such nerve, then we put him on a pedestal of notoriety. While we question his judgment at times, we admire his daring and his originality. That’s Babe Ruth.”29 This was the man who would spearhead the Yankees’ attack in the upcoming Series. New York drama and literary critic Heywood Broun conveyed Ruth’s impact, in an article in the Nation during Ruth’s first season in New York. Broun related a story about the famous New York Baptist preacher John Roach Straton (1875—1929). Straton dies and goes to heaven, where he meets the “ruler of the realm,” as thousands of fans are attending a Sunday ball game at the Polo Grounds. “Let New York be destroyed,” cries the preacher. “Delay not thy wrath.” But the ruler sees that it is the ninth inning of a tie game, with two men on base and Ruth coming to the plate. “The time has not come,” declares the King.30 While some may have found Broun’s article humorous and others may have seen it as irreverent, it resonated because of Ruth’s enormous appeal. It seemed that everyone wanted to see the Babe hit.

Everyone except John McGraw. As demeaning as the Giants’ skipper had been in the past about Ruth’s long-ball style, McGraw was a realist. A week before the postseason, he said, “It’s a tough proposition to go against Ruth. I’m not silly enough to say that my pitchers will prevent Ruth from hitting out of the park.”31 A week later, he elaborated, “We shall take no liberties with a slugger like Ruth.” McGraw made it clear that in threatening situations, he would not hesitate to walk the Babe, even though the fans would not like it. “Ruth is the man we must beat,” he declared. “I will not be swerved by any sentiment from the grandstand. It will not disturb me at all.”32

One reporter noted that Giants pitchers were not afraid of pitching to the Babe. “But, then, there are people who are not afraid of rattlesnakes, and it is a well known scientific fact that rattlesnakes bite those who are not afraid of them just as readily as those who are afraid.”33

While Giants pitchers may have been eager for the challenge of pitching to Ruth, doing so would not be their decision to make. McGraw controlled his team to such an extent that he often called every pitch from the bench. Back in the spring of 1914, after winning three straight National League pennants, McGraw spoke openly about his heavy-handed style: “It has been said of me that ‘The Giants are McGraw.’ I admit that to a great extent that is true. It is my policy to build a team that is a machine, and my relation to it is always to have my hand on the lever that controls things.”34 McGraw had given little indication in the intervening seven years that he had changed his philosophy.

*****

Analysts and prognosticators considered the Series a toss-up; and the odds, which hovered around even money, reflected the closely matched abilities of the two teams. Dan Daniel declared that this World Series between two of the gamest clubs ever was “the hardest ever to dope. To tell the truth, there is no edge either way.”35 As humorist Bugs Baer put it, “Teams look as evenly matched as [sic] set of false teeth.”36

Refusing to pick a winner, a Sporting News editorial added what has often been true in the postseason, that this Series between two such evenly matched teams might be decided by a break.37 Sam Crane observed that an obscure player often emerges as the star of the World Series. He even offered up a possible candidate, the Giants’ Johnny Rawlings, “one of the gamest men who ever played the bag [second base].”38 Fred Lieb suggested that Waite Hoyt might emerge as the star, since the Brooklyn youngster was eager to gain revenge on the Giants, who originally had signed him and then let him go.39

Hugh Fullerton presented some of the most detailed analyses of the upcoming event. He predicted that the early games would be low-scoring, with hitting taking over as the Series got deeper into the pitching rotations. He went so far as to pick the winner of each game, based on projected pitching matchups. He said the Yanks would win the first two games but would eventually lose the Series, as the Giants would win the final three contests.40

HOW THEY STACK UP

The press, which had set up headquarters at the new Commodore Hotel, made the battle between Miller Huggins’s sluggers and McGraw’s pitchers the focus of most of their stories.41 Mainly they talked about Ruth. The Babe had hit 59 home runs to break his own record set a year earlier, while also establishing new single-season major-league highs in runs (177), runs batted in (171), and total bases (457).42

Seemingly forgotten by much of the press was that the Giants also had their league’s home run leader, perhaps because George Kelly’s 23 paled next to Ruth’s 59. One exception was Harry A. Williams of the Los Angeles Times, who seemed cognizant that the Giants had some long-ball hitters of their own and predicted the Series would set a record for home runs. Then, echoing McGraw’s frustration with the long-ball style of play, Williams added, “Baseball has switched from a science to a wild scramble.”43

While the Yankees had the better hitting, the Giants had plenty of offensive weapons too. The Giants had hit 75 home runs in 1921, more than any previous two World Series opponents combined; yet it seemed hardly worth mentioning compared to the Yankees’ record-setting total of 134.44 The numbers were illuminating. The Giants hit .298 with 1,575 hits in 1921, and the Yankees hit .300 with 1,576 hits. Yet, because of their power, the Yankees scored 108 more runs—948 compared to the Giants’ 840—to set a new twentieth-century high.

The consensus was that with Art Nehf, Phil Douglas, Fred Toney, and Jesse Barnes, the Giants had better and deeper starting pitching, though their earned run average of 3.55 was only third-best in the National League, lagging behind those of Pittsburgh and Cincinnati. The Yankees were led by veterans Carl Mays and Bob Shawkey, who won 27 and 18 games respectively, and by twenty-one-year-old newcomer Waite Hoyt, who won 19. The Yanks’ pitching staff had the lowest earned run average in the American League at 3.82.

In the dawning of the Lively Ball Era, many felt the Series would be dominated by hitting. “Playing for a run is a forgotten art,” wrote umpire-columnist Billy Evans.45 Yet John McGraw felt that some things never change, regardless of the era. “Pitching will, as it has so many times in the past, decide the championship,” he declared.46

John McGraw believed that his Giants had a stronger all-round set of starters than the Yankees had. “We are going into the series with plenty of confidence, but we are not boasting,” he said.47 Not surprisingly, Miller Huggins thought his team had the edge. In Carl Mays, whose 27 wins this season had come on the heels of 26 victories in 1920, the Yanks clearly had the best pitcher on either club. “My pitchers are all in good shape for the series with the Giants,” said the Yankee skipper. “Ruth, Meusel, and the rest of my hitters will bat their way to victory.”48

Many of those analyzing the teams’ respective strengths felt that the Giants had a big—and perhaps decisive—edge in the dugout, where they believed McGraw was clearly superior to Huggins. Sam Crane, for example, said that the Giants’ manager was more creative and more of a risk-taker, while Huggins was more deliberate and predictable.49 The Giants also had the advantage of discipline that came from their manager’s iron hand. The Yankees, on the other hand, openly challenged and disregarded their manager, often deciding on their own what to do.50 Such a style might prove fatal in a short series. Yet it seems somewhat paradoxical, if not contradictory, for sportswriters to consider the Giants the smarter and more resourceful club, when their players did little thinking on their own with McGraw pulling the levers from the dugout. William Hanna was in the distinct minority of New York reporters in recognizing Huggins’s quiet and hidden strengths. “Tactically Huggins plays second fiddle to nobody, nor is he behind anybody in quick grasp of openings,” he declared.51

New Yorkers had been talking about a Giants— Yankees World Series since spring training; and now that it was here, it gripped this normally blasé city with a sense of enthusiasm and anticipation. Finding a New York City baseball fan who had no opinion on the outcome was difficult, and finding one who professed neutrality was nearly impossible. “As a result of this family feud, Manhattan seethes tonight with arguments, debates, and scraps.”52 Even the governor, Nathan L. Miller, voiced his preference. Though he risked antagonizing millions of voters by doing so, Miller announced that he was rooting for the Giants, citing the fact that both he and McGraw were born in Cortland County, New York.53

Though not directly involved, those whose allegiance was to Brooklyn, the city’s third team, also had a rooting interest, one that centered on being for or against the Giants and had little to do with the Yankees. Some Dodger fans were for McGraw’s club simply out of loyalty to the National League. Others loathed McGraw enough to want him humbled regardless of the opposition. With Ruth now the most popular man in baseball and McGraw perhaps the most hated, there was no doubt the vast majority of fans in other cities across America were hoping for a Yankees victory.

While there was some muttering that an all—New York Series would not generate much interest across the country, the unprecedented crush for press credentials and game tickets belied such comments. Tickets were in such demand that Yankees co-owner Til Huston grumbled, “I know I’m going to be an unpopular cuss after this series, and the worst of it is I can’t do a thing about it.”54

BIG MONEY, LARGE CROWDS, AND SO MUCH AT STAKE

Revelations about the fixed Reds—White Sox World Series of 1919 were only a year old, as news of the plot had first surfaced in September 1920. Nevertheless, there was extremely heavy betting on the Series, and the press reported it in detail.55 Professional gamblers gave the Yankees a slight edge based on their superior offense; but because bettors considered the teams evenly matched, both clubs had vast amounts of money wagered on them.

With Nehf and Mays expected as the probable Game 1 starters, there was a last-minute switch in the odds to favor the Giants. The thinking behind this shift was that bettors felt that if Nehf lost the opener, the Giants could come back, but if Mays lost it, the Yankees could not.

No less an authority on baseball gambling than Hugh Fullerton, the Chicago reporter who broke the story of the 1919 World Series fix, reported in his syndicated column that this 1921 World Series was seeing the heaviest postseason betting ever.56 The pro-professionals who ran the gambling establishments went even further than Fullerton. They felt certain that the amount of money wagered on the 1921 World Series would exceed that of any previous sporting event.

Almost hourly the odds shifted back and forth, as money poured into the various gambling venues around the city. Newspapers reported the odds given and the individual bets placed on Wall Street; along Broadway; at the Jamaica, New York, racetrack; and at various well-known betting parlors.57 A number of bets centered on Ruth himself—such as, Who would get more walks in the Series, Babe Ruth or the entire New York Giants’ team?

Among those professional gamblers monitoring the betting was Arnold Rothstein, acknowledged by observers as the only gambler who had the brains, bankroll, and chutzpah to devise such a scheme as fixing a World Series. Yet, in a ludicrous miscarriage of justice, Rothstein had recently avoided indictment for any involvement in the 1919 fix.

Rumors along Broadway indicated that Rothstein was betting on the Giants to defeat the Yankees. Given his involvement in some shady dealings with Giants owner Charles Stoneham and his onetime partnership with McGraw in a billiards parlor, Rothstein might have been expected to be backing the Giants. If he was, it would not be for any reasons of friendship or sentiment. Arnold Rothstein’s only sentiment was for money, so his “rooting” interest would lie only where there was money to be made.

Interest in the Series extended even to Paris, France, home to a growing American expatriate colony disproportionately made up of people with ties to New York. The Longchamps racetrack reported that among Parisian bettors the Yankees were slightly favored, just as they were among New Yorkers.

Meanwhile, back home, as the two teams prepared to do battle at the Polo Grounds, the New York City Police Department was making preparations of its own. The police had experience handling Sunday and holiday games at the Polo Grounds, but they suspected an exceptional crush of fans would attempt to purchase gameday tickets. Their job would be to get the spectators in and out of the park as efficiently as possible while dispersing the overflow crowd unable to get in. Aware of the excitement this first all—New York World Series was generating and knowing how exhilarated the fans were about it, the police department assigned three hundred men to the job of maintaining order, the largest police contingent ever assigned to any ballpark.

Inspector Cornelius F. Cahalane was in charge of this huge force, whose primary duty would be to maintain order among the crowds in line for the 20,000 unsold seats. The remaining seats consisted of 9,000 in the unreserved upper deck, priced at $3.30, and 11,000 bleacher seats, which sold for $1.10.58 Strips of reserved-seat tickets to four games had a face value of $22.00 ($5.50 each), and the scalpers were getting between $44.00 and $60.00 for the set of four.59

Additionally, the police would be responsible for controlling and directing the ever-growing number of people coming to the park by automobile. However, once the fans were in the park, the police department’s responsibilities would end. The custom in New York was to not have uniformed policemen inside the park but rather to have employees of the home team responsible for crowd control. Plainclothes detectives would also be present, mainly to look for ticket speculators. Capacity crowds of about 37,000 were expected for each game; but because of the large police presence and “the usual good nature of New York crowds,” no trouble was expected at the games.60

For the limited few with access to the new wireless technology of radio, stations WJZ in Newark, New Jersey, and WBZ in Springfield, Massachusetts, would be broadcasting the games. Station KDKA in Pittsburgh had done the first broadcast of a baseball game—a Pirates—Phillies game on August 5, 1921; but this would be the first time World Series games would be “on the air.” More fans would follow the games via a medium that had become popular in many of the nation’s biggest cities. Several New York City newspapers had set up boards outside their offices that would allow thousands of people in the streets to follow the play-by-play action.

Baseball’s first World Series, back in 1903, had been a best-of-nine affair. There was no Series in 1904, thanks to the intransigence of McGraw and Brush; but all those between 1905 and 1918 had been best of seven. With the 1919 regular-season schedule reduced from 154 games to 140, the leagues revived the nine-game format for the Series between the Cincinnati Reds and the Chicago White Sox; and continued in 1920 for the Cleveland—Brooklyn Series, even though both leagues had returned to the 154-game schedule. The 1921 season repeated the nine-game format for what would be the final time.

In 1919 the scheduled sequence of games had been two at Cincinnati, three at Chicago, two at Cincinnati, and two at Chicago. In 1920, it was three at Brooklyn, four at Cleveland, and two back at Brooklyn. But because all the games of the 1921 World Series would be played at the same park, the Polo Grounds, there would be no off days; and the Giants and the Yankees would simply alternate as the home team.61 The Giants would assume that role in Games 1, 3, 5, and 7; and the Yankees, in Games 2, 4, 6, and 8. As such, the home team would wear their home whites, occupy the first base dugout, and bat last. The home team for a ninth game, if needed, had not yet been addressed.62

New Yorkers could revel in an all—New York City World Series, with the world champion sure to come from the city. Just a year earlier, Brooklyn had represented the National League, but that was different. As The Sporting News editorialized, “The distinctive Gotham obsession is that anything bearing the New York label is or should be the only thing worthwhile—and both ball clubs of late years have been incorporated as part of New York’s best in everything. Brooklyn is the more populous borough, but it is not and never will be ‘New York.’”63

Back in 1915, Miller Huggins was a third-year manager who had led the Cardinals to a surprising third-place finish in 1914. No less an authority than John McGraw was impressed with the young skipper: “Miller Huggins is my ideal of a real leader. He can take a player who has shown only a mediocre supply of ability on some team and transform him into a star with his club   He will make a high mark as a manager in baseball one of these days.”64

When Huggins took over as the manager of the Yankees after the 1917 season, someone told McGraw, “Now you have a man who will go 50/50 with you in New York.” To which he replied, “No man will ever go 50/50 with me there.”65 Perhaps it was arrogance; perhaps it was his belief, confirmed over the years, that he and his Giants had a virtual birthright over New York. Yet now with the rise of the Yankees, led by the Babe, New York was in play. And the Yankees were going for much more than “50/50.”

This was more than a civil war, even more than what Judge Landis called a “historic occasion” in “the greatest city in the country.”66 Joe Vila wrote of the significance of this Series for the two franchises: “The New York teams must battle not only for gold, but for the magnetism that goes with victory New Yorkers have little use for losers. That is why the clans of McGraw, and Huggins now are prepared for a desperate grapple.”67 

Acknowledgments

This article by Lyle Spatz and Steve Steinberg is excerpted from their book 1921: The Yankees, the Giants, and the Battle for Baseball Supremacy in New York, which will be published by the University of Nebraska Press in spring 2010.

Notes

1. On July 2, 1921, Dempsey defended his title by knocking out Carpentier in the fourth round at Jersey City. The fight drew more than 90,000 people; and the gate, estimated at more than $1.6 million, was the first million-dollar gate in boxing history.

2. Shortly after McGraw’s announcement, Chicago Cubs president Jim Hart announced that, should his team win the pennant, they too would refuse to play against the American League in a World Series.
3. When the new American League began to challenge the established National League in 1901, John McGraw became the manager of the American League’s Baltimore But McGraw, a product of the rough-and-tumble National League of the 1890s, had problems with the strict discipline imposed by AL president Ban Johnson. In mid-1902 McGraw abandoned the Orioles and the American League and signed to manage the New York Giants of the National League. McGraw’s desertion was a big part of the collapse of the Baltimore franchise. The next year, the club moved to New York and began playing at Hilltop Park.
4. The Sporting News, 13 October 1906.
5. Originally, this postseason matchup was called the World’s Championship While the s had dropped off the first word by 1921 and the middle word had been dropped, leaving the event as simply the World Series, some reporters still used the older name. The Reach Guide used World’s Series through 1930, and The Sporting News used it from 1942 to 1963.
6. That Ruth was the game’s greatest attraction is Yet a profile in the New Yorker of March 28, 1925, began with these two sentences: “John McGraw is baseball. He is the incarnation of the American national sport.”
7. Andrew Goldblatt, The Giants and the Dodgers: Four Cities, Two Teams, One Rivalry (Jefferson, C.: McFarland, 2003), 27.
8. New York Times, 2 October 1921.
9. Sid Mercer, New York Evening Journal, 3 October 1921.
10. Although the team was known as the Dodgers for most of their years in Brooklyn, some newspapers called them the Robins during Wilbert Robinson’s tenure as manager (1914—31) as a mark of respect for Robinson.
11. New York World, 4 October 1920.
12. New York Times, 4 October 1920.
13. Joe Vila, quoted in The Giants and the Dodgers: The Fabulous Story of Baseball’s Fiercest Feud, by Lee Allen (New York: Putnam, 1964), 113—14.
14. In his effort to incorporate a different culture in the American League, President Johnson included these strictures in a May 8, 1901, directive to all club owners in his league: “Clean Ball is the Main Plank in the American League platform, and the clubs must stand by it There must be no profanity on the ball field. The umpires are agents of the League and must be treated with respect. I will suspend any Manager or player who uses profane or vulgar language to an Umpire, and that suspension shall remain in force until such time as the offender can learn to bridle his tongue. Rowdyism and profanity have worked untold injury to baseball. To permit it would blight the future of the American League.” Jonathan Fraser Light, The Cultural Encyclopedia of Baseball (Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 1997), 22.
15. Noel Hynd, The Giants of the Polo Grounds (New York: Doubleday, 1988), 220.
16. Robert Creamer, Babe: The Legend Comes to Life (New York: Penguin, 1974), p. 82. Creamer claims that when Dunn tried to sell Lefty Grove to the Giants, McGraw would have nothing to do with the Orioles, and so Dunn sold Grove to Connie Mack’s Philadelphia A’s. Dunn may have sold Ruth to Boston as a gesture of appreciation toward Joseph Lannin, the owner of the Red Sox. Lannin had helped save the International League during the Federal League war with his financial backing of the Buffalo and Providence clubs and by helping Dunn meet his payroll in Baltimore. Babe Ruth, as told to Bob Considine, The Babe Ruth Story (New York: P. Dutton, 1948), 31.

17. Creamer, Babe, 190.
18. Ibid
19. Ruth pitched one game for the Yankees in 1920 and two in 1921.
20. McGraw did not use the sacrifice bunt as much as other The Giants’ 166 sacrifice hits in 1921 were the third-lowest in the National League and were 23 fewer than the Yankees. Tris Speaker’s Cleveland Indians led both leagues in sacrifice hits in 1921 with 232. To advance runners, McGraw preferred to use the hit-and-run, an offensive tactic introduced by the Baltimore Orioles teams he played on in the 1890s. See Charlie Bevis, Sunday Baseball: The Major Leagues’ Struggle to Play Baseball on the Lord’s Day, 1876—1934 (Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 2003).
21. John McGraw, My Thirty Years in Baseball (Lincoln, Nebraska: Bison Books, 1995), 207. (Originally published—New York: Boni and Liveright, 1923.)
22. Editorial, The Sporting News, 13 October 1921; and Detroit News, 5 October 1921.
23. The New York Giants of the National League did play the Brooklyn Bridegrooms of the American Association in the 1889 postseason. However, Brooklyn was not part of New York City at that time. The Giants, led by home run slugger Roger Connor, won the Series, 6—3.
24. Philadelphia Inquirer, 10 October 1921.
25. Boston Herald, 4 October 1921.
26. Grantland Rice, The Tumult and the Shouting: My Life in Sport (New York: S. Barnes, 1954), 114.
27. Frederick Lewis Allen, Only Yesterday: An Informal History of the 1920s (New York: Perennial Classics, 2000), (Originally published—New York: Harper and Row, 1931. See also Frederick Lewis Allen, The Big Change: America Transforms Itself, 1900—1950 [New York: Harper and Brothers, 1952], 133.)
28. Richard Crepeau, Baseball: America’s Diamond Mind, 1919—1941 (Orlando: University Presses of Florida, 1980), 91.

29. Ford Frick, New York Evening Journal, 19 June 1924.
30. Broun, “A Bolt from the Blue,” Nation, 21 July 1920, In the early twentieth century, religious conservatives known as Sabbatarians believed Sunday should be a day of religious observance, not to be desecrated by professional baseball games. The Sabbatarians led the battle against Sunday baseball, but the ban was slowly overturned state by state, with Pennsylvania the last state to relent, late in 1933. See Charlie Bevis, (Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 2003).
31. St. Louis Times, 28 September 1921.
32. St. Louis Post-Dispatch, 5 October 1921; and St. Louis Times, 5 October 1921.
33. Harry Cross, New York Evening Post, 5 October 1921.
34. Baltimore Sun, 31 May 1914.
35. Dan Daniel, New York Herald, 3 October 1921.
36. Bugs Baer, New York American, 4 October 1921.
37. Editorial, The Sporting News, 6 October 1921.
38. Sam Crane, New York Evening Journal, 4 October 1921.
39. Fred Lieb, New York Evening Telegram, 2 October 1921.
40. Hugh Fullerton, Atlanta Constitution, 29 September 1921.
41. Built in 1920 at the corner of East 42nd Street and Lexington Avenue, the Commodore Hotel was named for Commodore Cornelius Vanderbilt.
42. Ruth’s 457 total bases is still the Major League His 177 runs scored is still the American League record and the post-1900 major- league record.
43. Harry Williams, Los Angeles Times, 5 October 1921.
44. The 63 home runs by World Series foes Cleveland (35) and Brooklyn (28) in 1920 had set the record that the Yankees and Giants, with 209, obliterated in 1921.
45. Billy Evans, Philadelphia Inquirer, 1 October 1921.
46. New York Times, 2 October 1921.
47. New York Times, 2 October 1921.
48. Washington Post, 3 October 1921.
49. Sam Crane, New York Evening Journal, 2 October 1921.
50. G. Salsinger, Detroit News, 5 October 1921.
51. William Hanna, New York Herald, 2 October 1921.
52. Philadelphia Inquirer, 4 October 1921.
53. Cortland is a small rural county situated between Syracuse, Ithaca, and Binghamton.
54. New York Evening Journal, 1 October 1921.
55. The New York Times on October 3 reported that stockbroker James O’Brien was hosting a dinner at the Ambassador Hotel that night to celebrate his winning $100,000 for successfully picking the Yankees and Giants at odds of 4—1 to win their leagues’ pennants back in July when neither club was in the lead.

56. Hugh Fullerton, New York Evening Mail, 8 October 1921.
57. Although gambling was illegal in New York, the law, like Prohibition, was openly And, again like Prohibition, it was protected by Tammany Hall—controlled judges and police.
58. The higher-priced $6.60 box seats and $5.50 reserved lower-grandstand seats had sold out quickly.
59. Cleveland Plain Dealer, 2 October 1921.
60. New York Times, 2 October 1921.
61. This was the first time that all games of the World Series would be played at the same The second time would be the following year, 1922, when the Yankees and Giants would repeat as pennant winners. The third and last time would be in 1944, when the St. Louis Browns and the St. Louis Cardinals played all the games at Sportsman’s Park, the home field they shared.
62. After Game 7 the commissioner would hold a coin toss at the Giants’ office in the Polo Grounds that would determine the home team if a ninth game was needed. Commissioner Landis flipped the coin, and the Giants won.

63. Editorial, The Sporting News, 22 September 1921.
64. Louis Post-Dispatch, 23 June 1915.
65. The Sporting News, 22 September 1921.
66. New York Times, 4 October 1921.
67. Joe Vila, New York Sun, 5 October 1921.

Or so the story goes. Norworth and von Tilzer appear to have written the song, but the rest of this frequently told tale probably has about as much validity as the one about Abner Doubleday and the invention of baseball.

To begin with, Norworth apparently didn’t mention the role of the famous ride until after the fiftieth-anniversary celebration of the writing of the song.2 Nor is there any evidence that there were advertisements for baseball games in either the subways or elevated trains in New York City in 1908.3 Furthermore, by 1908 Norworth was successful enough to own an automobile, raising the question why he would be riding on New York City public transportation, which was already considered to be both crowded and malodorous.4

If Norworth’s inspiration for the song didn’t involve a train ride, what exactly was its source? In those days, long before the invention of television and when radio messages were sent by Morse Code, baseball was likely to be brought to his attention if one of two things happened—someone mentioned baseball to him or he noticed an advertisement similar to the one that he was supposed to have seen on the subway. As “Take Me Out to the Ball Game” was copyrighted on May 2, 1908, and the New York Giants’ home opener that year wasn’t until April 22, the event that fired up Norworth’s creative juices may well have occurred during the last ten days of April.

The likelihood that Northworth had a conversation about baseball is slim. One of the delicious ironies about Norworth and von Tilzer composing the greatest of all baseball songs is that both would later deny having seen a baseball game before they wrote “Take Me Out.” Whether this is true or not, there is nothing to indicate that, at the time the song was written, either man was, to use the parlance of the day, a baseball “bug.” Although the fandom of many other show-business professionals—playwright and composer George M. Cohan, for example, often played in exhibition games for charity and was a close friend of New York Giants manager John McGraw—was frequently reported in the newspapers of the day, the names of Norworth or von Tilzer do not appear in this context.

Their apparent lack of interest in baseball is further indicated by the lyrics of “Take Me Out,” which demonstrate at best a rudimentary knowledge of the game.

Therefore, the most likely explanation is that Norworth was inspired by something he read. In New York in 1908, there were at least 13 major English-language newspapers published daily in Manhattan and another three published in Brooklyn. Most covered sports to varying degrees and, during the baseball season, often contained ads for games being played that day. However, the ads usually ran alongside news of baseball on the sports pages, making it doubtful Norworth would have noticed them.

We are also left with the question of which, if any, of the papers Norworth read in April 1908? We can’t know for certain but there are at least two newspapers Norworth, and also von Tilzer, probably regularly perused: the weekly theatrical newspapers, Variety and the New York Clipper. The evidence for their attention to these papers is their advertising their work in them: The first ads for “Take Me Out to the Ball Game” appeared in the May 2, 1908, issues of both papers.

Variety of 1908 is similar to the Variety of a century later; it was devoted to news of interest to show business professionals. Until the beginning of the twentieth century, the Clipper carried both theatrical news and extensive coverage of sports, most notably baseball. Although by 1908, it had eliminated the latter, in the April 25, 1908 issue of the Clipper an advertisement appeared on page 264 for the opening home games of the New York Giants at the Polo Grounds on April 22, 23, 24, and 25.

Obviously, it is impossible to know if Norworth saw this ad but there is a good chance that he did. It sounds very similar to the one that he supposedly noticed on the subway. Also, it is in the middle of a page of show business news and advertisements. It is far more likely that Norworth would have read it rather than the sports page of a newspaper.

There is one other item that appears in the same issue of the Clipper that provides further evidence. On page 277 there is an ad for one of the two snack foods mentioned by name in “Take Me Out to the Ball Game”: Cracker Jack. Despite the ad’s claim that it was “The Biggest Popcorn Seller in the World,” of all the New York newspapers only the Clipper frequently carried ads for it.

We thus have references to both baseball and Cracker Jack published in a newspaper Jack Norworth would have been reading at the time he wrote his lyrics, making the Clipper the most likely source of his inspiration. 

Notes

1. The Sporting News, 9 September 1959, 35.
2. Geoffrey Ward, Ken Burns, Baseball: An Illustrated History (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1994), 96-97.
3. Andy Strasberg, Bob Thompson, Tim Wiles, Baseball’s Greatest Hit: The Story of Take Me Out to the Ball Game (New York: Hal Leonard Books, 2008), 19.
4. Baseball’s Greatest Hit, 21.
5. Variety, 1 August 1908, 5.
6. Even if the ad that inspired Norworth was for the New York American League team, the same case could be made for the Clipper as the source. In the April 18, 1908, issue there appeared an ad for the first games of that team’s season beginning on April 14 and also the same ad, for Cracker Jack, as in the April 25 issue.

Ty Cobb’s basestealing ability had a great influence on the game. The opposition knew that Mr. Cobb was a fast and daring runner and that he would not hesitate to steal any base, including home. It not only put a tremendous amount of pressure on the pitcher worrying about him as a base runner, but it also took the pitcher’s concentration off the batter (in his effort) to throw strikes.

*****

Ty Cobb was a threat to steal any base in any situation regardless of the score, pitch count, or batter. People talked about how he sharpened his spikes, but the story is a rumor. He didn’t sharpen his spikes. I cleaned his shoes. I dug dirt and clay out of his shoes and I didn’t see any sign of sharpening his spikes.

*****

Ty Cobb set an example for the other players on the team by leading an unbelievably rigorous daily training and practice routine. The other players could not keep up with him.

He would say constantly, “Practice, practice, practice!” Mr. Cobb would run the bases “for time” over and over and spend a couple of hours every day just bunting the ball.

I believe that Ty Cobb’s tireless efforts, rigorous training program, and striving to be the best reflects back to the rigidity of his father. Without question, Mr. Cobb was the best base-stealer that I ever saw.

It has been said that this story from The Brethren “makes no sense,”3 but that is not enough to make it false. The Brethren accurately reports some pretty nonsensical behavior by people who worked at the Supreme Court during the period covered by the book (1969 to 1976). Moreover, the authors of The Brethren claim there is documentary proof of their story of Blackmun-versus-Marshall in Flood. Nevertheless, the story is false. The document from which the authors quote — Blackmun’s allegedly racially exclusive circulated first draft in Flood — does not exist and never did. Paige, Robinson, and Campanella were present in the first circulated draft and thereafter. And thus Marshall’s objection to the offending draft never occurred either. There was nothing to object to.

Before getting to the business of correcting this sliver of the historical record, it is worth pausing to consider the value of contradicting a two-page anecdote about a single baseball case buried in the middle of a 444-page book written almost thirty years ago. In short, the accuracy of The Brethren’s Blackmun-versus-Marshall story matters not only because it is generally good to know the truth — especially on a subject as perennially salient as a justice’s views on the place of race in a decision by the Court — but also because The Brethren is an important book, the importance of which hinges in large part on the consistency with which the stories it tells turn out to be true.

THE BRETHREN

When it was published in 1979, The Brethren gave the public an unprecedented look at the inner workings of the Supreme Court.4 It did so in a crisp, anecdotal style that made it appealing and accessible to the lay reader. The book’s numerous behind-the-curtains vignettes also provided a wealth of otherwise unavailable factual detail about the thinking and behavior of the justices and their staffs that made it irresistible to Supreme Court journalists, scholars, and other specialists. The combination of an important subject, intriguing new information, and good writing made The Brethren a commercial success. It was also controversial, both for its content (it related many less than flattering stories about the Justices and others at the Court) and for its method of reporting (it was based largely on anonymous sources and confidential documents).5 The book weathered the early controversies and has gradually become a standard resource for scholars and other commentators — and, in recent years, even some federal judges6 — seeking to understand the Court. The list of respectable scholars who have relied on The Brethren is long and lengthening.7 Nowadays, whenever a new Supreme Court exposé appears, it is to The Brethren that it must first be compared.8

At first, however, readers — having no access of their own to Woodward and Armstrong’s anonymous sources and confidential documents — had no basis for believing the stories told in The Brethren, other than the inherent plausibility of those stories and the authors’ reputations for reliably uncovering and sorting the true from the not so true. On that front, there was at the time (and probably remains) no user of anonymous and confidential sources with a more impressive track record than Woodward. He had already written two anonymously sourced and largely vindicated books about the inner workings of the executive branch of the federal government, All the President’s Men and The Final Days, as well as many articles based on anonymous sources for the Washington Post. And Armstrong had played a major role in the research and writing of The Final Days.9

As time passed, The Brethren had to stand on its own. Anonymous sources spoke to other authors, previously confidential documents became public, and some stories told in The Brethren could be verified or falsified. If those stories that could be checked did not check out — if Woodward and Armstrong, or their sources, had been fabricating tales of the Supreme Court — those truths would come out, undermining not only those particular stories but also the book as a whole. After all, if the stories we can check turn out to be false, why should we believe the stories we cannot check?10 On the other hand, if those stories that could be checked did check out, then the converse inference would apply: It would be only reasonable to acknowledge that the credibility of the stories we cannot check is enhanced by the accuracy of the ones we can.

So far, The Brethren’s checkable stories have turned out, scattered bit by bit, episode by episode, to be true11 or at least not definitely false — with the exception of a few “small errors” picked up by early reviewers.12 This has added to the credibility and influence of the book as a whole. Linda Greenhouse, the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist who covers the Supreme Court for the New York Times, wrote in her biography of Blackmun that The Brethren’s “reliance on anonymous sources has made that best-selling book controversial, but, in many instances, Blackmun’s case files attest to its accuracy.”13 And Professor Mark Tushnet, who clerked for Marshall during part of the period covered by The Brethren and has studied the Court ever since, has observed that “[t]he accounts in The Brethren are factually accurate on nearly every point.”14

Until the opening of Blackmun’s papers at the Library of Congress in 2004, the Blackmun-versus-Marshall episode in Flood v. Kuhn was one of the uncheckable stories. Now it can be checked, and it does not check out.

Which raises a more complicated question: If some of the stories we can check are true and at least one is false, does that make all of the remaining unchecked stories unreliable, or only some of them, or perhaps none? The answer to that question depends on the answers to two intermediate questions. First, where did the false story come from, the authors or a source? If the former, then all unchecked stories are subject to doubt. If the latter — if a source somehow duped the authors — then the second question arises: Did that source provide information for any other part of the book, and if so what part or parts? If the source helped only with the Blackmun-versus-Marshall story, then perhaps the rest of the book should retain the standing it enjoys today, subject perhaps to a bit of extra skepticism courtesy of one small blemish on the authors’ reputation for winnowing truths from lies delivered by anonymous sources. If the source (or sources, if Woodward and Armstrong relied on more than one for Blackmun-versus-Marshall) did more, then those stories should be doubted (fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice . . .).

The answers to these questions are probably available only from Woodward and Armstrong. But the true story of Blackmun-versus-Marshall in Flood can sharpen the questions, even if it cannot answer them. This is the added value of contradicting one anecdote about a single baseball case buried in the middle of The Brethren.

Which brings us to that anecdote: The Brethren’s tall tale of Blackmun-versus-Marshall in the Flood case.

THE TALL TALE

Part I of Blackmun’s published opinion in Flood, which he announced in Court on June 19, 1972, contains his salute to the game of baseball. It includes a list of eighty-eight “celebrated . . . names” from the history of the game, a list that grew from seventy-four names when he circulated his first draft of the opinion on May 5, 1972. The tale of the birth and growth of the list was first reported by Woodward and Armstrong. Here is the story as they tell it on pages 190 and 191 of The Brethren, starting with Blackmun’s reaction when Potter Stewart, the senior justice in the majority after the initial vote in conference on the case, assigned the opinion for the Court to him:

Blackmun was delighted. Apart from the abortion assignment, he felt he had suffered under the Chief, receiving poor opinions to write, including more than his share of tax and Indian cases. He thought that if the antitrust laws were applied to baseball, its unique position as the national pastime would be undermined. A devoted fan first of the Chicago Cubs and later the Minnesota Twins, he welcomed this chance to be one of the boys.

With his usual devotion to detail, Blackmun turned to the Baseball Encyclopedia, which he kept on the shelf behind his desk. He set down minimum lifetime performance standards — numbers of games played, lifetime batting averages or earned-run averages. He picked out representative stars from each of the teams, positions, and decades of Organized Baseball. Then, closeted away in the Justices’ library, Blackmun wrote an opening section that was an ode to baseball. In three extended paragraphs, he traced the history of professional baseball. He continued with a list of “the many names, celebrated for one reason or another, that have sparked the diamond and its environs and that have provided timber for recaptured thrills, for reminiscence and comparisons, and for conversation and anticipation in season and off season: Ty Cobb, Babe Ruth ” There were more than seventy names. “The list seems endless,” Blackmun wrote. He paid homage to the verse “Casey at the Bat,” and other baseball literature. When he had finished, Blackmun circulated his draft.

Brennan was surprised. He thought Blackmun had been in the library researching the abortion cases, not playing with baseball cards.

One of Rehnquist’s clerks called Blackmun’s chambers and joked that Camillo Pascual, a former Washington Senators pitcher, should have been included in the list of greats.

Blackmun’s clerk phoned back the next day. “The Justice recalls seeing Pascual pitch and remembers his fantastic curve ball. But he pulled out his Encyclopedia and looked up his record. He decided Pascual’s 174 wins were not enough. It is difficult to make these judgments of who to include but Justice Blackmun felt that Pascual is just not in the same category with Christy Mathewson’s 373 wins. I hope you will understand.”

Calling Blackmun’s chambers to request that some favorite player be included became a new game for the clerks.

Stewart was embarrassed that he had assigned the opinion to Blackmun. He tried to nudge him into recognizing the inappropriateness of the opening section, jokingly telling him that he would go along with the opinion if Blackmun would add a member of Stewart’s home-town team, the Cincinnati Reds.

Blackmun added a Red.

Marshall registered his protest. The list included no black baseball players. Blackmun explained that most of the players on his list antedated World War II. Blacks had been excluded from the major leagues until 1947.

That was the point exactly, Marshall replied.

Three black players were added — Jackie Robinson, Roy Campanella, and Satchel Paige.15

This story has since been told and retold, in whole and in part, and has become part of the history of Flood.16 Pieces of it soon checked out as true — the bit about Stewart and the addition of a Cincinnati Red, for example. Justice William O. Douglas’s papers, which he had deposited in the Library of Congress, were opened to the public in 1986, just seven years after The Brethren was published. Douglas’s file on the Flood case included three versions of Blackmun’s Flood opinion:

• A version labeled “1st draft” and “Circulated: 5/5/72.” This draft featured a list of only seventy-four “celebrated names,” and not one of them had been a Cincinnati 17

• A version labeled “2nd draft” and “Recirculated 5/25/72.” In this draft, there were twelve more baseball greats on the list, one of whom was Reds pitcher Eppa 18

• A copy of the final slip opinion, dated June 19, 1972, with two more names on the list: Jimmie Foxx and Moe Berg. The story of their addition is not relevant here, and is well told (as is the entire story of the Flood case) in Brad Snyder’s A WellPaid Slave: Curt Flood’s Fight for Free Agency in Professional Sports.19

When they were opened to the public during the 1990s, the papers of Justices Marshall and William J. Brennan Jr. revealed Flood files that consistently matched the one in the Douglas papers. They included the same versions of Blackmun’s Flood opinion, and no more.20

But, while the “1st draft” and “2nd draft” of Blackmun’s Flood opinion in the files of Douglas, Brennan, and Marshall supported the anecdote about the addition of a Cincinnati Red, they undermined the Blackmun-versus-Marshall story about the addition of Paige, Robinson, and Campanella. The “1st draft” in the justices’ files already had all three of those names. All three men were still there in the “2nd draft,” and none of the twelve added celebrities was African American. And all three remained in the final slip opinion as well, accompanied by two more white additions, Foxx and Berg. That is, the three black baseball celebrities were there from the beginning, and no African Americans were added or subtracted thereafter. Moreover, the very labeling of the two drafts suggested that the version labeled “1st draft” was, indeed, the first circulated draft, because it had been “Circulated,” while the “2nd draft” had been “Recirculated.” If some other draft had been circulated prior to the “1st draft” then surely the “1st draft” would have been labeled “Recirculated” too.

Furthermore, there was the word of Blackmun himself. He repeatedly acknowledged the provenance of the Rixey addition during his 1995 interviews with Professor Harold Koh for the Justice Harry A. Blackmun Oral History Project, and alluded to it in correspondence.21 But he consistently denied the Blackmun-versus-Marshall story in his correspondence (it did not come up during the oral history interviews).22

Confirming a positive is, however, not the same as proving a negative. Who knows, perhaps Blackmun did circulate some sort of preliminary draft before the “1st draft” in the justices’ files. Finding a needle (the added Cincinnati Red) in the proverbial haystack is one thing; proving there is no needle (the racially exclusive circulated draft) is quite another. In addition, there is good reason for the careful reader to discount Blackmun’s statements that there was no dispute with Marshall over African Americans on the list of “celebrated names.” Long experience teaches that some public figures sometimes resort to self-serving lapses of memory, artfully mendacious warping of the English language, or simple falsehood when recalling their foibles and mistakes or polishing their legacies. This is not to say that Blackmun lied when he denied the conflict with Marshall. Rather, it is to say that his word standing alone cannot serve in this context, no matter how honest he was in fact.

Suffering that skepticism is a legacy for which he and all other public servants can thank prominent members of all three branches of the federal government who have given inaccurate accounts of their behavior only to have their misstatements discovered and disclosed, to the shame of the institution, if not the individual. And then there is the general imperfection of human memory that occasionally afflicts Supreme Court Justices just as it does the rest of us.23 There is also some specific cause to suspect Blackmun’s recall of matters relating to The Brethren. For example, in his oral history, he minimizes his own role as a source for The Brethren, saying “One of them did come in and talk to me a little. It was a very short interview.”24

In fact, Blackmun’s own records show that he met with Armstrong at least twice, and that he looked into and was impressed by Armstrong’s background and credentials.25 His appointment book for 1978 shows meetings with Armstrong on Thursday, July 6, at 2:30 P.M., and Friday, September 15, at 3:00 P.M., and notes added to a June 30, 1978, memorandum show the same two meetings.26 Perhaps Blackmun misremembered the number of drafts he circulated in Flood, just as he misremembered the extent of his engagement as a source for The Brethren, including the number of times he met with Armstrong.

The Blackmun-versus-Marshall story is, however, more susceptible to proof or disproof than many of the stories in The Brethren, because the story stands or falls on the content of a document, not on the memory of a person, whether an anonymous source or a named Supreme Court justice.

Recall that in the long second paragraph of the passage from The Brethren quoted above, the authors describe in detail Blackmun’s preparation of his first draft, quoting from it twice, and concluding, “When he had finished, Blackmun circulated his draft.” It is this draft, they report, to which Stewart responded with a request that Blackmun add a Cincinnati Red, and to which Marshall objected on the ground that its list of “celebrated names” lacked African Americans. As Woodward and Armstrong explain in their introduction to The Brethren, “[w]here documents are quoted, we have had direct access to the originals or to copies,” including “unpublished drafts of opinions.”27 Thus, the quotes from the racially exclusive first draft must be from a document that the authors had in hand when they wrote the Blackmun-versus-Marshall story, not merely recitations from an anonymous source who told the authors what some document said. And thus there is no need to independently identify and corner an anonymous source — a practically impossible task, as aspiring story-checkers of The Brethren have learned.28

All that is necessary to check the Blackmun-versus-Marshall story is to check the document — the draft Blackmun circulated without African-American players. If Blackmun circulated such a document, then Marshall’s reaction and Blackmun’s response are just about as plausible as the eminently believable story of Stewart’s request for the addition of a Cincinnati Red. But if Blackmun did not circulate such a document, then there also was never a reaction against it by Marshall, and thus no such racial dispute between the two justices in Flood.

No such document appears, or is referred to, in the other justices’ files. And four features of Blackmun’s papers show that whatever The Brethren was quoting from in the story of Blackmun versus Marshall, it was not a racially exclusive draft circulated by Blackmun. Thus, the Blackmun-versus-Marshall story in The Brethren is not true.

First, Blackmun’s Flood files contain two pieces of correspondence with Justice Potter Stewart which, taken together, reveal the logistical impossibility of a circulated draft predating the “5/5/72” “1st draft” in the papers of Douglas, Brennan, and Marshall. First, on March 20, 1972, Stewart announced his assignment of the opinion for the Court to Blackmun:29

March 20, 1972

No. 71-32 — Flood v. Kuhn

Dear Chief,

I have asked Harry Blackmun to undertake the writing of the opinion for the Court in this case, which, hopefully, can be a rather brief per curiam.

The Chief Justice

Copies to the Conference30

Blackmun’s notes on Flood similarly indicate that when he made the assignment, Stewart did so with a request to keep it short.31 Six weeks later, Blackmun wrote to Stewart as follows:

May 4, 1972

Re: No. 71-32 — Flood v. Kuhn

Dear Potter:

I have a proposed Per Curiam for this case at the Printer. I must confess to you that I have done more than merely follow Toolson with a bare peremptory paragraph. The case, for me, proved to be an interesting one, and I have indulged myself by outlining the background somewhat extensively. As a matter of fact, this has prompted me to conclude that Federal Baseball and Toolson have a lot to be said for them. When I finally get to the heart of the matter, however, I give it rather summary treatment. The briefs on both sides are good and I rationalize by saying that they deserve at least this much.

Please give the opinion a reading and let me have your general reactions. The case, supposedly, is critical for the baseball world. I am not so sure about that, for I think that however it is decided, the sport will adjust and continue.32

Thus, on May 4, 1972, Blackmun is warning Stewart that his draft opinion in Flood is an elaborate piece of work, more than the brief per curiam Stewart had suggested, and that it is at the printer — meaning not yet ready for circulation, but soon. The next day, May 5, 1972, Blackmun circulates the “1st draft” that can be found in the files of Douglas, Brennan, and Marshall. There would have been no point in sending the May 4 note to Stewart if Blackmun had already circulated a draft containing “somewhat extensive” background, including the list of “celebrated names.” If he had already circulated such a draft, then Stewart would already have known that he had “done more than merely follow Toolson with a bare peremptory paragraph.” But if there had been no earlier circulation, Blackmun might well have wanted to give Stewart a heads-up about the unexpectedly long (and surely unexpected in other ways, including the list of baseball celebrities) “1st draft” that was in the works. And he did.

Second, Blackmun’s papers reveal his perfectly consistent opinion-circulation and record-keeping practices, which in turn reveal that the only opinions he circulated in Flood were the version labeled “1st draft” and “Circulated: 5/5/72” and the version labeled “2nd draft” and “Recirculated: 5/25/72.” Blackmun kept an “opinion log sheet” for every case in which he wrote an opinion for the Court or a substantial per curiam opinion. Each sheet begins with the name of the case and the case number at the top, and lists down the right-hand side of the sheet the dates on which the decision was announced and on which drafts were circulated (for the first draft) and recirculated (for subsequent drafts). The rest of the sheet is devoted to other data about the case, including the dates on which other justices joined Blackmun’s opinion and the circulations of concurrences and dissents by others. During the 1970–71 and 1971–72 terms — Blackmun’s first two terms on the Court, and the period preceding and including the drafting and announcement of his Flood opinion — whenever he circulated a draft opinion, he always recorded that circulation on the corresponding opinion log sheet.33

I have examined every piece of paper in every case file of every justice whose papers are open to the public for every case in which Blackmun wrote an opinion for the Court or a substantial per curiam opinion during the 1970–71 or 1971–72 term. In every case, Blackmun’s opinion log sheet corresponds perfectly to the circulated and recirculated drafts in those files.34 And he was thorough. Consider NLRB v. Scrivener,35 like Flood a 1971–72-term case, in which his correspondence with Douglas reveals that Blackmun insisted on receipt of a formal “join” letter from Douglas so that his “records [would be] complete.”36

The opinion log sheet for Flood v. Kuhn was no exception to Blackmun’s invariably comprehensive and precise record-keeping. It records the same opinions found in the files of the five justices whose papers are open to the public:

• “Circulated: 5/5/72” — the “1st draft” in the justices’ files.

• “Recirculated: 5125/72” — the “2nd draft” in the justices’

• “Announced: 6/19/72” — the slip opinion in the justices’

Like his NLRB v. Scrivener file, Blackmun’s opinion log sheet for Flood reflects his penchant for comprehensively accurate record-keeping: it includes a correction to the date of assignment, changing it from March 20, 1972 (the date when Stewart notified the Court that he had assigned the Flood opinion to Blackmun), to April 3, 1972 (the date on which the Court’s assignment list formally recorded Stewart’s assignment of the opinion to Blackmun).37

Third, Blackmun’s Flood files contain a five-page document consisting of proofreading and cite-checking corrections to Blackmun’s Flood opinion, most of which are reflected in the”1st draft.” The document is dated “5/4/72” and signed “JTR” (the initials of John Townsend Rich, one of Blackmun’s clerks at the time). Blackmun might have had a practice of circulating drafts of his opinions to the Court and only afterward enlisting his clerks to proofread and cite-check those opinions. Such a course would have been odd, even silly, and so it should come as no surprise that he did not operate that way. All of the evidence in his case files for the 1970–71 and 1971–72 terms indicates that Blackmun’s clerks squeegeed his opinions before the first circulation to the other justices, not after.38 And so Rich’s notes comport neatly with the timing of Blackmun’s May 4 note to Stewart warning him of the “somewhat extensive” draft of his Flood opinion that had just gone to the printer. Rich finished proofreading and cite-checking on May 4, Blackmun promptly reviewed Rich’s work and incorporated most of it, then sent the draft off to the printer and warned Stewart of what would circulate the next day — ”5/5/72” — as the “1st draft” of Flood.

Fourth and finally, Blackmun’s files on the Flood case contain only the same three versions of his opinion that are available in the papers of Douglas, Brennan, and Marshall: (1) The version labeled “1st draft” and “Circulated: 5/5/72,” with a list of only seventy-four “celebrated names,” including Paige, Robinson, and Campanella; (2) the version labeled “2nd draft” and “Recirculated 5/25/72,” with twelve more baseball greats on the list, one of whom was Reds pitcher Eppa Rixey and none of whom was African American; and (3) the final slip opinion, with Berg and Foxx slipped in.39

In sum, the evidence in Blackmun’s papers, combined with the evidence in the papers of Douglas, Brennan, and Marshall, leaves no room for the circulation of a segregated first draft of Blackmun’s Flood opinion. (Marshall’s papers, by the way, contain no hint of any dispute of any sort, racial or otherwise, over Blackmun’s list of “celebrated names.”) Consider the following:

• If the story in The Brethren were true, then Blackmun’s May 4, 1972, note to Stewart would not exist, because it reflects Blackmun’s knowledge that Stewart had not as of that date seen Blackmun’s “somewhat extensive[]” draft in Flood.
• If the story in The Brethren were true, then Blackmun’s opinion log sheet for Flood would be inaccurate, even though there is not a single instance in any case from the 1970–71 or 1971–72 terms in which a Blackmun opinion log sheet is inaccurate about any circulation of any draft of any of his
• If the story in The Brethren were true, then Rich would have proofread Blackmun’s first circulated draft in Flood after that draft had circulated, even though there is not a single instance in any case from the 1970–71 or 1971–72 terms for which a proofread has been preserved where a Blackmun clerk engaged in such nonsensical behavior. They proofed before circulation, not
• If the story in The Brethren were true, then not a single Justice whose files are open to the public would have saved the racially exclusive draft reported and quoted in The Brethren, even though every one of them who participated in the case saved every other
• If the story in The Brethren were true, then the Blackmun opinion in the Justices’ files labeled “1st draft” and “Circulate: 5/5/72” that includes the three great African American players would have been labeled “2nd draft” and “Recirculated,” because it would have been preceded by the segregated draft from which Woodward and Armstrong But there already is a version in each of those files labeled “2nd draft” and “Recirculated” — the one dated “5/25/72” that features only a few additional white players, including Eppa Rixey, the Cincinnati Red.

The bottom line is that Blackmun’s first circulation in Flood was the “1st draft” dated “5/5/72” that appears in all of the justices’ files and that contains the names of seventy-four baseball celebrities, including the great African American players Satchel Paige, Jackie Robinson, and Roy Campanella. Blackmun did not circulate a racially exclusive draft. It follows that any story about Marshall being offended by such a draft is wrong, because the basis for such a story — the circulated draft opinion — does not exist. Marshall and Blackmun certainly had disagreements on matters of race at the time,40 but the integration of Blackmun’s list of baseball celebrities in Flood was not one of them.

*****

The fact that The Brethren contains inaccuracies should come as no surprise. No lengthy study of the Supreme Court or any other subject is (or likely ever will be) entirely accurate. Authors err. So do archivists, researchers, editors, typesetters, printers, and webmasters. Paper and electronic records can be incomplete or inaccurate. Human sources can be mistaken or misleading. And new discoveries can alter or destroy what were once perfectly reasonable understandings of history.

Finding each other’s inaccuracies and misinterpretations and bringing them to light is a service that historians provide to each other, to their subjects, and to the public. This kind of work involves reassessing existing evidence or combining new discoveries with that evidence to present a different — and, the revisionist hopes, more accurate — picture of the past. The Brethren is a hard case, because much of its evidence is inaccessible. Its sources are anonymous and confidential.41 That means there is no way for later students of the Court to return to that evidence, to reassess it, to combine it with new discoveries in order to improve our understanding of the Court. As Professor Walter Murphy observed in a review of The Brethren, “The scholar, of course, longs to see the full documents and to hear the tapes of the interviews, not only to check the accuracy of the authors’ work but also to test other ideas.”42 Woodward and Armstrong’s approach surely enabled them to uncover many true stories that would otherwise have remained hidden, at least for a time, but it also disabled others from building on their work, at least in the conventional cumulative and synthetic senses. But at the very least, we can still compare a story presented in The Brethren with a story based on existing public records and new discoveries, and weigh their merits.

Which brings us to the questions suggested earlier in this article: What document were Woodward and Armstrong quoting from? Where did it, and the story of Marshall’s objection, come from? And did the source or sources for Blackmun-versus-Marshall contribute to any other stories in The Brethren? We are unlikely to learn the answers to these questions unless Woodward and Armstrong’s research files for The Brethren are opened to the public, as Woodward and Carl Bernstein’s files for All the President’s Men and The Final Days have been at the University of Texas, with files involving each confidential source remaining sealed until the source’s death.43 For The Brethren, that is unlikely to happen anytime soon. After all, nearly all of the sources for the book spoke to Woodward and Armstrong on condition of anonymity.44 Many of them were young at the time and are likely to be relying for their livelihoods and social standing on their lawyerly reputations for discretion and confidence-keeping for many years yet. It may well be that Woodward and Armstrong would prefer to endure whatever small doubts might be raised by this article rather than break their promises to the source or sources of the Blackmun-versus-Marshall story.45

In the meantime, the careful reader of The Brethren might consider, on the one hand, that respected observers of the Court have concluded that “[t]he accounts in The Brethren are factually accurate on nearly every point”46 and “in many instances, Blackmun’s case files attest to its accuracy,”47 and, on the other hand, that in at least one instance — the story of Blackmun-versus-Marshall in Flood — the book is not accurate. For students of the Court, then, perhaps the best approach to The Brethren for the time being is the one to which President Ronald Reagan treated President Mikhail Gorbachev: Trust, but verify.48

Editor’s Note
By Clare Cushman, managing editor, Journal of Supreme Court History

Ross Davies, the author of “A Tall Tale of The Brethren,” sent a draft of the article to Bob Woodward and Scott Armstrong in September 2007, along with an invitation:

The enclosed article (which is scheduled to appear in the spring issue of the Journal of Supreme Court History ) suggests that one passage in your book, The Brethren, is not accurate. If I have gone astray in any way, I would be grateful to hear about it from you before we go to press. Also, I am told by the editor of the Journal that she would be happy to consider printing a reply from either or both of you.

I sent a follow-up invitation of my own to Woodward and Armstrong early in 2008, and postponed publication of the article to our summer issue in order to give them plenty of time to draft a reply. Armstrong expressed an interest in replying, but in the end nothing was forthcoming from either him or Woodward. It would have been nice to include their perspective here and now, but it appears that we will have to wait for a later issue of this Journal, or for another forum.

ROSS E. DAVIES is professor of law at George Mason University and editor of “The Green Bag: An Entertaining Journal of Law.”

Acknowledgments

This article was published originally in the Journal of Supreme Court History 33, no. 2 (July 2008): 186–99.

Thanks to Adam Bonin, Bennett Boskey, Ofemi Cadmus, Susan Davies, Vincent Gaiani, Suzanne Garment, David Garrow, Paul Haas, Dennis Hutchinson, Anthony Lewis, G. Edward White, Diane Wood, participants in a Robert A. Levy Fellow Workshop, and the George Mason Law & Economics Center.

Notes

1. The Brethren: Inside the Supreme Court, 190–91 (1979) (hereafter The Brethren).

2. 407 U.S. 258 (1972).

3. Brad Snyder, A Well-Paid Slave: Curt Flood’s Fight for Free Agency in Professional Sports 301 (2006) (hereafter Well-Paid Slave).

4. Earlier profiles of the Court, such as Drew Pearson and Robert Allen’s Nine Old Men (1936) and J. Harvie Wilkinson’s Serving Justice: A Supreme Court Clerk’s View (1974), had not been anywhere near as revealing of its interior workings.

5. See, e.g., Anthony Lewis, “Supreme Court Confidential,”New York Review of Books, 7 February 1980 (hereafter “Supreme Court Confidential”); “The Evidence of The Brethren: An Exchange,” New York Review of Books, 12 June 1980 (hereafter “The Evidence of The Brethren”); John G. Kester, “Breaking Confidences,” The Washingtonian, February 1980; see also Dennis J. Hutchinson, The Man Who Once Was Whizzer White, 384-86 (1998) (hereafter Whizzer White); Adrian Havill, Deep Truth: The Lives of Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, 130–35 (1995).

6. See, e.g., Landell v. Sorrell, 382 F.3d 91, 109 (2d Cir. 2004), rev’d 126 Ct. 2479 (2006); Larsen v. U.S. Navy, 346 F. Supp. 2d 122, 132 n. 5 (D.D.C. 2004).

7. See, g., Neal Devins, “Should the Supreme Court Fear Congress?” 90 Minn. L. Rev. 1337, 1341 (2006); Linda Greenhouse, “How Not to Be Chief Justice,” 154 U Pa. L. Rev. 1365, 1369 (2006); James 1. Brudney and Corey Ditslear, “Canons of Construction and the Elusive Quest for Neutral Reasoning,” 58 Vand. L. Rev. 1, 44 (2005); Clarke D. Forsythe and Stephen B. Presser, “The Tragic Failure of Roe v. Wade,” 10 Tex. Rev. L. & Pol. 85, 127 (2005); Sanford Levinson, “The Pedagogy of the First Amendment,”52 UCLA L. Rev. 1359, 1361 (2005); see also Edward White, The American Judicial Tradition chs. 13 and 14 and 523 n. 124 (3d ed. 2007) (describing The Brethren as “a source on the internal history of the Burger Court that needs to be used with great care”). A search for “woodward/5 armstrong/5 brethren” in Westlaw’s jlr database of law reviews and similar periodicals on March 30, 2007, turned up 492 documents.

8. See, e.g., David J. Garrow, “Breaking Silence and Legal Ground,” Los Angeles Times, 23 January 2007 (reviewing Jan Crawford Greenburg’s Supreme Conflict); Rodger Citron, “A Peek Into the Marble Palace,” Legal Times, 29 May 2006 (reviewing Todd Peppers’s Courtiers of the Marble Palace); Kim 1. Eisler, “Truth Teller or Sore Loser?” Legal Times, 27 April 1998 (reviewing Edward Lazarus’s Closed Chambers).

9. Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward, All the President’s Men (1974); Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, The Final Days (1976).

10. Victor Navasky, “The Selling of the Brethren,” 89 Yale L.J. 1028, 1030 (1980).

11. Compare, e.g., The Brethren at 357 et seq. with Whizzer White at 434–35,463–65 (1998); Bruce Allen Murphy, Wild Bill, ch. 38 (2003).

12. See, e.g., Walter F. Murphy, “Spilling the Secrets of the Supreme Court,” Washington Post Book World, 16 December 1979, at 11.

13. Linda Greenhouse, Becoming Justice Blackmun: Harry Blackmun’s Supreme Court Journey, 254 (2005) (hereafter Becoming Justice Blackmun).

14. Mark Tushnet, Making Constitutional Law: Thurgood Marshall and the Supreme Court, 1961–1991 at viii (1997) (hereafter Making Constitutional Law).

15. The Brethren at 190–91.

16. See, e.g., Andrew O’Toole, The Best Man Plays 97 (2003); David Greenberg, “Baseball’s Con Game,” Slate, 19 July 2002; Roger Abrams, “Before the Flood,” 9 Marq. Sports L.J. 307, 3II (1999); Tony Mauro, “Would the Court Go to Bat for Baseball?” Legal Times, 29 August 1994; Chad Millman, “Bench Player,” Sports Illustrated, 18 April 1994; Max Vobiscum, “The Supreme Court’s Sports Page,” (Passaic County, N.J., Bar Association) Reporter, Aug.–Sept. 1980, at 40; “Games Justices Play,” Newsweek, 10 December 10, 1979, at 88.

17. Flood v. Kuhn, 1st Draft at 4–5 (5 May 1972), in Papers of William O. Douglas, Library of Congress, Manuscript Division, box 1561 (hereafter Douglas Papers).

18. Flood v. Kuhn, 2d Draft at 4–5 (25 May 1972), in Douglas Papers.

19. Well–Paid Slave at 305–6.

20. Flood v. Kuhn, 1st Draft at 4–5 (5 May 1972) and Flood v. Kuhn, 2nd Draft at 4–5 (25 May 1972), in Papers of William J. Brennan Jr., Library of Congress, Manuscript Division, box 1:268, folder 2; Papers of Thurgood Marshall, Library of Congress, Manuscript Division, box 87, folder 10 (hereafter Marshall Papers). The Flood file in the papers of Justice Lewis Powell Jr. contained no draft opinions at all. Lewis F. Powell Jr. Papers, Washington and Lee University School of Law, Lewis F. Powell Jr. Archives, box 148. Powell determined early on in the deliberations over the Flood case that his ownership of shares of Anheuser-Busch, which owned the St. Louis Cardinals baseball team, a respondent in Flood, obligated him to disqualify himself, and he did so. Memorandum to the Conference (21 March 1972), in Powell Papers, box 148. The papers of the other members of the Court at the time — Chief Justice Warren Burger and Justices Potter Stewart, Byron R. White, and William H. Rehnquist — are not yet open to the public.

21. The Justice Harry A. Blackmun Oral History Project 184, 186, 293 (1994–95) (hereafter Oral History); Harry Blackmun to Jim Caple, 11 February 1997, in Papers of Harry A. Blackmun, Library of Congress, Manuscript Division, box 145, folder 3 (hereafter “Blackmun Papers”).

22. See, e.g., Harry A. Blackmun to Daniel Crystal, 9 October 1980, in Blackmun Papers, box 145, folder 3; Harry A. Blackmun to Jim Caple, 11 February 1997, in Blackmun Papers, box 145, folder 3.

23. Compare, e.g., Justice Thurgood Marshall, Memorandum to the Conference (4 October 1984), in Blackmun Papers, box 1405, folder 14, reprinted in “NAACP Recusals,” 10 Green Bag 2D 93, 93–99 (2006), with Milliken v. Bradley, 418 U.S. 717, 722 (1974); id. at 781 (1974) (Marshall, J., dissenting); Meek v. Pittenger, 421 U.S. 349, 356 n.5 (1975).

24. Oral History at 292.

25. See Memorandum from “sjb” to “Mr. Justice” (17 January 1978), in Blackmun Papers, box 1435 (“sjb” were the initials of Blackmun’s secretary, Shirley Bartlett).

26. See 1978 Appointment book, in Blackmun Papers, box 61; memorandum from “sjb” to “Mr. Justice” (June 30, 1978), in Blackmun papers, box 1435; see also Becoming Justice Blackmun, 153.

27. The Brethren, 4.

28. See, g., “Supreme Court Confidential”; “The Evidence of The Brethren”; David J. Garrow, “The Supreme Court and The Brethren,” 18 Const. Commentary 303 (2001); see also, e.g., Leonard Garment, In Search of Deep Throat, chs. 4 and 5 (2000).

29. Stewart had the privilege of assignment because he was the senior justice in the majority at the time.

30. Memorandum from Justice Potter Stewart to Chief Justice Warren Burger (20 March 1972), in Douglas Papers, box 1561.

31. Handwritten note dated “3-20-72,” in Blackmun Papers, box 145, folder I (“PS [Potter Stewart] Asks me to PC [per curiam] this essentially along t[he] lines of Toolson & n[ot] too long”).

32. Memorandum from Justice Harry A. Blackmun to Mr. Justice Stewart (4 May 1972), in Blackmun Papers, box 145, folder 2.

33. This is not to suggest that in later years he did not continue this practice. Rather, it did not seem necessary to go beyond the 1970–71 and 1971–72 terms for the purposes of this article.

34. Compare Justice Blackmun’s opinion log sheets for the 1970–71 and 1971–72 terms, in Blackmun Papers, boxes 118, 133, with the corresponding case files in the papers of Justices Douglas (boxes 1507, 1511, 1516, 1518, 1542, 1543, 1545, 1547, 1549, 1551, 1561), Brennan (boxes I:233, I:236, I:239, I:240, I:244, I:246–I:248, I:257, I:258, I:259, I:261, I:263, I:265, I:267 ,I:268, I:273, II:3), Marshall (boxes 80, 81, 83-85, 87, 90, 91), Blackmun (boxes 120–22, 124, 125, 127, 129, 130, 134–40, 142, 145), and Powell (boxes 146-49).

35. 405 U.S. 117 (1972).

36. Memorandum from Justice William Douglas to Justice Harry A. Blackmun (16 February 1972) and memorandum from Justice Harry A. Blackmun to Justice William Douglas (16 February 1972) in Blackmun Papers, box 142. When asked recently about Blackmun’s papers, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg noted that “he was a great saver; he didn’t toss out anything.” “An Open Discussion with Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg,” 36 Conn. L. Rev. 1033, 1042 (2004). This is not to say that he knew all, saw all, and accurately recorded all that he knew and saw — see, e.g., id. at 1042 (recalling that he mistakenly noted an advocate had worn a red dress at oral argument when in fact she had worn black) — but rather that his compilations of documents relating to particular cases can generally be counted on to be complete.

37. See Assignment List (3 April 1972), in Marshall Papers, box 75.

38. See generally Blackmun Papers, boxes 119–31, 134–47.

39. See Blackmun Papers, box 145, folder 1.

40. See, e.g., Palmer v. Thompson, 403 U.S. 217 (1971); Palmer v. Thompson, 1st Draft at 3 (29 April 1971)(Blackmun, , concurring), in Blackmun Papers, box 124, folder 10; Becoming Justice Blackmun at 67–68; see also Deborah C. Malamud, “Intuition and Science in the Race Jurisprudence of Justice Blackmun,” 26 Hastings Const. L.Q. 73, 84–88 (1998); Henry J. Abraham, Justices, Presidents, and Senators: A History of the U.S. Supreme Court Appointments from Washington to Clinton, 230–33 (rev. ed. 1999).

41. This approach to studying the Court has shown signs of enduring popularity in recent times. See, e.g., Jan Crawford Greenburg, Supreme Conflict: The Inside Story of the Struggle for Control of the United States Supreme Court 321–22 (2007); Jeffrey Toobin, The Nine: Inside the Secret World of the Supreme Court 342 (2007).

42. Walter F. Murphy, “Spilling the Secrets of the Supreme Court,” Washington Post Book World, 16 December 1979, at Scholars should be cautious, however, about exaggerating the importance of source-transparency in their work. Plenty of important and reputable scholarship generated in the academy shares The Brethren’s source-opacity. Consider, for example, John W. Kingdon’s highly regarded study of decision-making in the executive and legislative branches of the federal government, Agendas, Alternatives, and Public Policies (2d ed. 2003). Kingdon’s book is based largely on interviews with “many congressional staffers, administration appointees, civil servants, lobbyists, journalists, researchers, and consultants” conducted during the late 1970s — the same period in which Woodward and Armstrong were doing their research for The Brethren. “I guaranteed [the interviewees] their anonymity,” writes Kingdon, “so cannot acknowledge their help by name. But this book could not have been written without their generous cooperation.” Id. at xvii, 232–33. Just like The Brethren. See also, e.g., Bennet Boskey, “Justice Reed & His Family of Law Clerks,” in Bennett Boskey, Some Joys of Lawyering, 14 n. 4 (2007) (observing “that the claims of history, journalism, and biography strongly press against principles of privacy, confidentiality and ethics. There is not always a simple answer to questions of how much should be published how soon.”)

43. See The Woodward and Bernstein Watergate Papers: About the Papers, available at hrc.utexas.edulexhibitions/web/woodsteinlaboutl (last visited 20 April 2008); Lee Hockstader, “Watergate Papers Sold for $5 Million,” Washington Post, 8 April 2003, at C1; see also, e.g., Bob Woodward, The Agenda: Inside the Clinton White House, 12 (1993).

44. The Brethren at 3–4.

45. See Cohen Cowles Media Co., 501 U.S. 663 (1991); but see “The Evidence of The Brethren.”

46. Making Constitutional Law at viii.

47. Becoming Justice Blackmun at 254.

48. William Safire, “Nyet Problemy on Snow Jobs,” New York Times, 3 January 1988, § 6, at 6 (Reagan: “Though my pronunciation may give you difficulty, the maxim is doveryai no proveryai. ‘Trust but verify’”).

Alex Salerno was born and raised in Utica, New York, and became a schoolboy pitcher of local renown. He signed with the Red Sox in 1949 and spent a season in their organization before serving two years in the army. He hurt his arm in a truck accident in Korea and did not pitch professionally again. Salerno returned to Utica for a few years before enrolling in the Al Somers Umpire School in Daytona, where he graduated first in his class. He spent just five years in the minors, including two in the Pacific Coast League, before reaching the American League in late 1961 as a 30year-old. In just his sixth major-league game, he was umpiring at third base when Roger Maris hit his record-breaking 61st home run.1

Reaching the major leagues as an umpire has always been a difficult journey — there are a limited number of jobs, and an umpire might work twenty-five years or more once he reached the majors. For most of the 1960s, when there were twenty major-league teams and forty umpires, there were generally about two or three openings per year.2 These slots were usually filled from one of the Triple-A leagues, by someone considered to be one of the very best umpires in the minor leagues. In 1962 the American League had one “rookie” umpire — Al Salerno.

Bill Valentine, from Little Rock, Arkansas, attended a local umpire school right after high school and was just 18 when he got his first job in Organized Baseball in 1951. He spent twelve years in the minor leagues, including seven in the Texas League and two in the PCL, before joining the AL staff in 1963. He was promoted at the instigation of Kansas City owner Charlie Finley, who had met him on a trip to Little Rock the year before. Just 30 years old, Valentine looked to have a long career ahead of him — after all, he was twenty-five years from the league’s retirement age.3

As full-fledged major-league umpires, Salerno and Valentine then had several fairly typical seasons — generally drawing attention only when there was an on-field melee of some sort. Salerno had a notable run-in with Orioles manager Hank Bauer in 1964, which led to fines for Bauer and pitcher Steve Barber. Twins manager Sam Mele appeared to punch Valentine in 1965, leading to a five-game suspension. Nothing out of the ordinary for an umpire, and both men were honored with All-Star Game assignments — Salerno in 1964 and Valentine in 1965.

By 1968 the two men were on the same four-man crew for the first time, joining (in early June) veteran chief Jim Honochick (later more famous for his Miller Lite commercials with Boog Powell) and Emmett Ashford, the junior man in service time, who just two years earlier had become the majors’ first African American umpire.

On September 15, the four umpires concluded a routine series in Cleveland. The next morning Salerno was awakened in his hotel room by a phone call from American League president Joe Cronin. Salerno was hoping for this call, anticipating the news that he would work the upcoming World Series. Instead, Cronin told him he was fired, effective immediately. Stunned, Salerno went to find Valentine, who was just hanging up the phone. He too had been fired. Both men were told they were being let go because they could not do their jobs. “They’re just bad umpires, that’s all,” Cronin told the press.4

Joe Cronin held the post of AL president for fifteen years, beginning in 1959. The role of league president was ill defined but tended to involve a lot of consensus building; the real power was wielded by the league owners. The one exception was with the league’s umpiring staff, over which the league office held total control. The league hired the umpires, arranged them into four-man crews, and told them what to wear, how to position themselves on the field, and how to interpret the rule book.

Helping Cronin with this responsibility was Cal Hubbard, a longtime umpire who had been the league’s umpire-in-chief since 1954. Hubbard scouted prospective umpires in the minor leagues and watched AL games to help evaluate the current staff. When an umpiring crew worked in Boston, where the league had its offices, the umpires would visit with Hubbard and Cronin, where they might receive feedback on their performance. Cronin had never fired an umpire before, and he would never again. His reason for firing these two was unequivocal: They were incompetent.

Salerno and Valentine told a different story. As it happened, the two men were leading an effort to organize the AL umpires. Their National League counterparts had formed a union in 1963, and on September 12 — just four days before their dismissals — Salerno had attended a meeting in Chicago with a few NL umpires and the union’s lawyer. The umpires had told Salerno that the AL could join their union if all twenty umpires agreed. The next day Salerno and Valentine had sent notes to the five AL crew chiefs about the meeting. Three days later, both men were fired.

When asked about this unusual coincidence, Joe Cronin expressed surprise — he had “no knowledge” of any desire by the umpires to organize, insisting that the two umps were “never first class at any one time.”5 Suffice it to say that no one believed Cronin’s claim of incompetence. “To Cronin’s credit,” wrote Shirley Povich, “this was not a snap judgment. In Salerno’s case it took the AL President seven years to arrive at it; in Valentine’s case, six years.” Sounding the same theme, Red Smith wrote that Cronin “has to be one of the least perceptive or most indulgent employers this side of Utopia.” But most writers were more direct. “Cronin draws his ideas from the philosophy of William McKinley,” wrote Bob August in the Cleveland News. “Today he looks foolish, a baseball dinosaur lumbering through the 1960’s. He made a mistake and it was a beaut.”6

Until the terminations, no one had paid much attention to the salary and benefits of the major-league umpires. They did now. After five years with an established union, the NL umpires at the high and low end made nearly 50 percent more in salary than did their AL counterparts, received a larger per diem and mileage allowance, and had better pension benefits with lower vesting levels.7 All of this had been achieved without public rancor. These facts only added to the growing sentiment that the “junior circuit” was the inferior league in every way. The NL had all of the black stars, had won the race to place teams in California, had much higher attendance figures, and won the All-Star Game every year. Now, it turned out, the AL stiffed their umpires and kept incompetent ones around for years on end.

The firings also came at an unusual time, as the league was expanding in 1969 and would need four new umpires. Now they needed six. Bill Kunkel and Jake O’Donnell, who were both working in the Southern Association, were hired immediately and worked with Honochick and Ashford in Cleveland on September 17. The league claimed that they wanted the two new umpires to get some experience before the season ended, which accounted for the mid-September change. Could Salerno and Valentine have been incompetent? This is a difficult charge to prove, then or now, although there is a myriad of evidence that the umpires were not incompetent, that in fact they were very good at their jobs. Both men had received regular increases in pay and claimed to have never received a negative performance review. Cronin later admitted to pay increases even when other umpires were not getting them. Salerno had received an unscheduled bonus after the 1967 season, just one year before his dismissal.

Several managers publicly defended the umpires, including Dick Williams (who had had run-ins with both men), Hank Bauer, Al Lopez, and Alvin Dark. More tellingly, Valentine and Salerno had been assigned to the same crew and were joined by Ashford, a fairly junior umpire. It seems unlikely that the league would place its two worst umpires together.

Valentine noted that he had been given the assignment to umpire home plate in the crucial final game between the Tigers and Angels in 1967. Valentine has a point, though not precisely the one he made. There were two big series that final weekend. In Detroit, there were doubleheaders on the final two days, and the umpire rotation was rearranged so that veteran Larry Napp worked the plate in two of the games — Valentine was not shifted, but he got his scheduled game in the finale. In Boston, the Red Sox played two games against the Twins. Here the crew schedule was rearranged so that Nestor Chylak umpired the plate in the final game, in lieu of Marty Springstead (who was in his second season).8 Given that the league was willing to shift the assignments, Valentine getting the plate on October 1 is telling.

If Cronin’s intention was to pressure his umpires not to organize, his efforts backfired decisively. The day after the regular season, just two weeks after the dismissals, the remaining major-league umpires met in Chicago. The NL umpires voted unanimously to admit the AL umps into their group, to be renamed the Major League Umpires Association. The arbiters also considered striking the 1968 World Series to protest the firings. Salerno and Valentine attended the meeting and urged the umps to work, and the union’s lawyer persuaded them to do so. In the offseason the union met with Cronin to begin the process of working out a relationship, but Cronin would not agree to reinstate the fired umps.9

In January 1969, the new umpires union filed an unfair-labor-practice claim with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB). In a separate action, in September 1969, Salerno and Valentine filed a $4-million suit in federal court in the Southern District of New York against Major League Baseball, Joe Cronin, and the American League, alleging federal antitrust violations and defamation of character. The district court dismissed the lawsuit for lack of jurisdiction — prior Supreme Court cases had held baseball to be exempt from federal antitrust laws. The attorneys for the umpires immediately appealed. Meanwhile, in December 1969 the NLRB agreed to hear the union’s charge.

A loss in either action — the federal lawsuit or the unfair-labor charge with the NLRB — could have influenced the Supreme Court to reconsider baseball’s antitrust exemption. In the spring of 1970, the American League negotiated a confidential settlement with the new union, which required that both legal actions be dropped. In exchange the umpires would receive full reinstatement at a salary of $20,000 per year — the current rate for their experience level but $8,000 more than they made at the time of their dismissal. There was a catch: The umps would have to work a brief probationary period in the minor leagues to make sure they had “improved their game,” a stipulation all agreed was a face-saving gesture on the part of Cronin.10 Valentine agreed to the deal, but Salerno did not, claiming he had gone into debt fighting the case. Just prior to the scheduled hearing, the AL sweetened the pot: $20,000 in back pay and full pension credit for their missed service time. Again Salerno balked. Valentine was sufficiently alarmed to get in his car and drive from Little Rock to Utica, where he offered Salerno $10,000 of his share. The league also offered Salerno $37,500 without reinstatement. Salerno’s attorney, Joseph Kellner, advised his client that he would win reinstatement in the hearing and that he would likely win his lawsuit as well. Salerno did not believe the league would follow through on their promise to promote the umps from the minor leagues, and he wanted at least $100,000 to drop the suit. Valentine’s lawyer tried to get the AL to deal with him separately, even at lesser terms. The league would not.11

The hearings took place in Boston over nine days in July 1970. Supporters of the umpires included several former colleagues, plus managers Al Dark, Eddie Stanky, and Dick Williams, all of whom testified that the two were good umpires, among the top half in the league. Valentine broke down when he recalled the phone call from Cronin telling him he was a lousy umpire. Salerno spoke for two hours about his efforts to organize, which he said were not a secret to anyone around the league. Cronin stuck to his story, claiming that the umps were hotheaded and arrogant and, more importantly, that he had no idea that the umpires wanted to unionize. Cal Hubbard, Cronin’s assistant, told the same story. When asked on the stand if he would recommend the two umpires for positions in the minor leagues or in the National League, Cronin answered “Yes.”12

In November 1970 the NLRB ruled in favor of the American League, claiming that the umpires had not adequately proven that they were fired for their union activities. The decision read that, although many umpires backed Salerno and Valentine in contending that the union activities were well known, no umpire would admit to telling Cronin or Hubbard. Without that link, there was no evidence “beyond mere suspicion or surmise” that Cronin knew the umpires were unionizing.13

As for the lawsuit, the umpires’ only real hope was to have the Supreme Court hear their case. Oliver Wendell Holmes, writing for a unanimous Court in Federal Baseball v. National League, ruled baseball exempt from the Sherman antitrust act in 1922. In 1953, the Court upheld Holmes’s decision in Toolson vs. New York Yankees. In denying the appeal of the dismissal of Salerno and Valentine’s federal lawsuit, Second Circuit Judge Henry Friendly wrote, “We fully acknowledge our belief that Federal Baseball was not one of Mr. Justice Holmes’s happiest days,” but concluded that only the Supreme Court could undo the decision. “While we should not fall out of our chairs with surprise at the news that Federal Baseball and Toolson had been overruled, we are not at all certain the Court is ready to give them a happy dispatch.” Moreover, Friendly believed that Salerno and Valentine did not make enough of an antitrust claim, raising doubt that they could win their case even without baseball’s antitrust exemption.14

As Brad Snyder outlined in his wonderful book on Curt Flood, the Supreme Court was highly unlikely to hear the Salerno case. If the court were to consider a challenge to Federal Baseball it would want a case where the facts were not in dispute (as they were in Salerno) — and a case of great national interest. After denying the petition to hear Salerno in January 1971, a few months later the court chose to hear Flood v. Kuhn, a much more appropriate case. (Appropriate or not, in July 1972 the court ruled against Flood in a 5–3 majority opinion that refused to reconsider the logic of Federal Baseball or Toolson.)15

Although there were a few more less noteworthy challenges, the story had effectively come to an end. Al Salerno, a veteran of 1110 games, and Bill Valentine, of 947, were finished as majorleague umpires. But as neither man had reached 40 years of age, there were still lives to lead.

In 2007, thirty-nine years after their dismissals, I sought out the two men for interviews. Valentine was easy to find, as he was the general manager of the Arkansas Travelers in Little Rock. When I told him that I was writing a book about Joe Cronin he laughed. “Why would you want to do a thing like that?” After umpiring, Valentine had returned home to Little Rock and held a variety of jobs, including working with the local Republican Party and broadcasting. He became GM of the Travelers in 1976 and held the job for thirty-three years, retiring in early 2009. He has been inducted into both the Texas League Hall of Fame and the Arkansas Sports Hall of Fame and has received several minor-league Executive of the Year awards. At banquets, he used to say, “I would like to thank Joe Cronin for giving me my start in this line of work.” His wife, he noted, would tease him if he screwed up around the house. “Cronin was right, you are incompetent.”

Valentine described Cronin as a big man who drove a big car and smoked big cigars. He had no sympathy for umpires and reacted to grievances by suggesting that the umpire just quit. He felt that Cronin had lost his temper, reacted rashly, and was too stubborn to back out. But, all things considered, life had turned out pretty great, better in fact than it would have been had he remained an umpire. If he had been in Cronin’s shoes, he might very well have done the same thing. When I asked about the proposed deals before the hearing, he said, “Al’s lawyer told him we could make a lot of money. I just wanted to umpire.” He gave me Salerno’s phone number, and asked me to pass along his best wishes.

I reached Salerno at home in Utica, where life had not worked out as well. A lot had gone wrong in the previous thirty-nine years, and Salerno blamed Cronin for all of it. The heart attack at age 48, and the six subsequent operations, which he detailed for me. Sporadic employment, the lost marriage in the 1980s, all because he lost the only job he ever wanted. “My wife got sick of my complaining,” he said. He asked me how Valentine was doing and I reported that he seemed very happy. “He’s got money in his pocket, so of course he’s happy,” Salerno said.

Anticipating a question I feared asking, he offered that “the deal was a sham, they would never have allowed us back in the major leagues.” In the ensuing years Salerno had never stopped fighting the case, and he remained bitter at the current umpires who had not fought for him. He did not have enough service time to receive a pension, though the action he took led to a lowering of the minimum service time for other umpires. He was bitter at the legal system. “I served my country, and my country screwed me over.” When I spoke with him, he had just written to John Roberts, the new chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court. Nothing had worked, but he would keep trying.

“I am just waiting to crawl in my hole,” he said.

I had called Salerno in order to help me, but the tables had turned — it was now he who wanted help from me. He needed me to tell his story, to tell the truth, to help spread the word that he had been mistreated. I assured him that I planned to tell the entire story and that the pro-Cronin side had never really caught on with anyone. But the story might gain him some new sympathizers, though not necessarily any tangible benefit. I tried to get him to talk about other things, his favorite memories of umpiring, his life in the minor leagues, his hometown, but inevitably the conversation came back to his grievance.

He called me a few times after our original conversation and sent me a couple of packets of signed photos, affidavits, and letters. He treated me kindly, perhaps even deferentially. The last time we spoke I told him I would call him back when I returned from a family vacation. Before I could do so, on August 5, 2007, he died, having spent nearly four decades a bitter and defeated man. How much of his suffering was related to second-guessing himself over his legal challenge will remain unknown.

The two men were dealt the same cards, but the story of how they handled their similar fates might be a lesson for us all. Charles Dickens once wrote: “Reflect upon your blessings, of which every man has plenty, not on your past misfortunes, of which all men have some.” Sadly, Salerno let his misfortune consume and define him, to the very end of his life.

MARK ARMOUR writes baseball from Corvallis, Oregon. His biography of Joe Cronin was by the University of Nebraska Press in March 2010.

Acknowledgments

This article is based on a presentation at the annual SABR convention in July 2009.

The author would like to thank Brad Snyder and Craig Calcaterra for their review of the legal language in this article.

Notes

1. Al Salerno, interview with author, July 2007.
2. Umpiring rosters from retrosheet.org.
3. Bill Valentine, interview with author, June 2007
4. Chicago American, 18 September 1968; The Sporting News Official Baseball Guide 1969, 195.
5. New York Times. 18 September 1968.
6. U.S. Senator Charles E. Goodell (N.Y.), news release, 16 April 1969.
7. The Sporting News Official Baseball Guide 1969. Goodell news release.
8. Game logs from retrosheet.org.
9. The Sporting News Official Baseball Guide 1971, 283–87.
10. Valentine; Salerno.
11. Ibid.
12. The Sporting News Official Baseball Guide 1971.
13. Ibid.
14. See Friendly’s decision at http://openjurist.org/429/f2d/1003/salerno-v-american-league-of-professional-basebell-clubs-e.
15. Brad Snyder, A Well-Paid Slave: Curt Flood’s Fight for Free Agency in Professional Sports (New York: Viking, 2006).

So how did this happen? How did a team in the middle of an era known for its dearth of hitting give up so many runs? Usually, they result from a combination of three factors: bad pitchers, a hitter-friendly park, and some changes to the game or equipment favorable to offense. Let’s take the last one first. The first edition of the Macmillan Baseball Encyclopedia contained a wonderful series of charts right at the beginning, in a chapter entitled “Baseball: The Changing Game.”2 One of the charts showed the runs per game through the years and had a small spike centered around 1911. It would have been an offensive drought during the 1920s, but for the times it caused quite a bit of comment. A lively ball introduced that season was blamed on the increase in scoring. The following excerpt from a postseason article in the Chicago Tribune was typical:

The lively ball introduced into baseball this year revealed itself more forcibly than in any other way in the quantity of so-called slugging matches which occurred during the championship season. Taking fifteen hits by one team in a single game as a basis for comparison, there were almost twice as many swatfests in the National League in 1911 as there were the year before.

Fifteen or more hits were piled up in the present year in seventy-four National league games, while the record for 1910 showed only thirtynine games in which one team made that many swats.3

One weird thing about this offensive increase in the National League: It was entirely accounted for by Boston pitchers and hitters. Here are the runs scored in the National League in the two years:

Table 1

That’s a 10 percent increase in scoring from one year to the next. Here is the same chart with Boston’s games removed:

Table 2

Oh, and of those 74 15-hit games the Chicago Tribune writer noted, 40 involved Boston, including the largest offensive explosion of the year, a 26–3 rout of Boston at the hands of the Cincinnati Reds on June 4.

In the American League, it was a different story, with a scoring increase of more than 20 percent spread across the league. The reason for the increase in the junior circuit is less clear.

So what about the ballpark? Boston in 1911 played in South End Grounds. Actually, they played in the third incarnation of the South End Grounds. The previous version, nicknamed the “Grand Pavilion,” had burned down on May 15, 1894, and a somewhat less grand replacement was built in only ten weeks. By 1911, it had short fences down both lines (250 feet in left field and 255 in right) but was relatively deep in center.

The short fences were probably why there were almost twice as many homers hit in Boston’s home games that year. The park also had an effect on doubles and triples but almost no effect on anything else. Here are the combined records of Boston and their opponents at South End Park and elsewhere that year:

Table 3.

AB R H 2B 3B HR BB AVG SLG Home 5,305 925 1,495 272 51 75 613 .282 .395

Away 5,312 793 1,492 218 97 38 619 .281 .380

So they did score and allow more runs at South End Park, which is what we expected, but their games were high-scoring in the other parks as well. The 485 runs they allowed on the road were more than any twentieth-century team would allow until 1930.

Which brings us to their pitchers. Despite the turmoil (featuring a drawn-out sale of the club and the installation of a new manager) surrounding the franchise just prior to the 1911 season, the core of Boston’s pitching staff was intact from the year before, when four of their starting pitchers had each thrown more than 250 innings.

Al Mattern was the staff ace, having led the team in both wins and innings pitched the previous two seasons. There were off-season rumors that had him going to either the Cubs or the Reds in a trade, but they came to nothing.4 Buster Brown, their numbertwo starter despite 23 losses the year before, was the Boston pitcher to allow the fewest runs per nine innings. Sam Frock had been picked up in a trade with the Pirates the previous April and ended up winning 12 games and finishing third in the league with 171 strikeouts. Rounding out the quartet was Cliff Curtis, the weakest link in the group. Curtis led the team in runs allowed, walks, and losses, finishing with a 6–24 record and a 3.55 ERA. He dropped his twenty-third consecutive decision on May 22 and was 1–8 (on a pace to lose 26 games) when he was sent to the Cubs.

None of the four was either particularly young or old, ranging in age from 27 (Mattern) to 29 (Brown and Curtis), and there was little reason to suspect that none of the four would come close to repeating his previous season’s performance.

A lot had been expected of Cecil Ferguson, the only other Boston pitcher to see significant action in 1910. He had managed a 7–7 record, including five wins in September and October, and during the offseason had successfully petitioned the National Commission to receive a $500 bonus promised to him if he succeeded in winning most of his games.5 The appeal hinged on whether two of his victories in exhibition games should count. He argued that they should and the Commission agreed, no doubt causing owners everywhere to be more careful with the language of bonus agreements in the future. Cecil then decided to hold out and had yet to sign a contract by the start of the season.6 This is pure speculation, but it wouldn’t be too surprising if the owners had simply subtracted the $500 bonus from his 1911 salary.

The main newcomers were 21-year-old Lefty Tyler, who had pitched decently in two late-season relief appearances the year before, and Big Jeff Pfeffer, a veteran obtained from the Cubs in a February trade. This was Pfeffer’s second stint with the team; back in 1906, he had been one of four Boston pitchers to lose 20 or more games, duplicating the feat of the previous year’s staff and marking the only two times in major-league history that a team has had a quartet of 20-game losers. The team that came closest since then? You guessed it — the 1910 Nationals, with Mattern, Brown, Frock, and Curtis all losing at least 19 games.

The season started deceptively well, with Buster Brown beating Brooklyn 2–1 on opening day. Unfortunately, his second victory would not come until August. Mattern and Tyler were knocked out early in the next two games, the latter featuring 15 Brooklyn runs and 6 stolen bases, before Curtis, because of a sore shoulder, was forced to leave his first start of the year after only one inning.7 The Phillies scored 10 runs in each of the next two games, knocking out Frock and Mattern, and the swatfest was on. Before the season was over, Boston pitchers would give up 10 or more runs in a game 32 times.

One early-season surprise was the pitching of Pfeffer, whose repertoire included what one Boston Globe writer called “annoying slow balls.”8 He replaced Curtis in the rotation for a while. Pfeffer pitched Boston’s first shutout of the year on April 24 and ran his record to 5–0 with a complete-game victory on May 8. After that, the league appears to have figured him out. Two bad starts in a row got him dropped from the rotation, and over the rest of the season he would allow more than a run an inning.

Brown began a 14-game losing streak after his opening-day victory, and Mattern ended up getting dropped from the rotation in early July with a 4–10 record. He pitched ineffectively out of the bullpen the rest of the year, making only an occasional start, and would not win another game in his major-league career.

Frock lost his job as a starter after allowing 10 runs in a complete-game loss to the Phillies and was sold to the Atlanta Crackers in early May. He would pitch in the minor leagues until 1918 and would not appear again in the majors. Curtis recovered from his sore shoulder and was back in the starting rotation within a month but was also ineffective. He was 1–8 and on a pace to lose 26 games when he was sent to the Cubs in an eight-player trade in June.9 And finally, Cecil Ferguson didn’t sign a contract until late May.10 Once he reported, he pitched briefly and badly and was traded to Memphis of the Southern Association at the end of July.

In short, the five pitchers who had combined for 146 starts in 1910 all pitched much worse the next year. Table 4 shows their combined lines.

Their collapse opened the door for a host of new faces, and before the end of the season 16 different pitchers would start at least one game for the team. Lefty Tyler was the first to get a shot, but he didn’t pitch well early and was used sparingly until July. Between May 27 and July 5, he pitched in only one game, in a mop-up role in a 20–2 loss to the Cubs on June 11. By early August, he sported a 1–8 record and had allowed 79 runs in 74 innings.

Other newcomers included Orlie Weaver and Hub Perdue. Weaver, who came over from Chicago in the Curtis trade, had shown some promise in Chicago but didn’t do well after the trade and was 2–12 by the time he was dropped from the rotation at the end of August. On October 9, he was given one last start and pitched a complete-game victory. It would be his last majorleague appearance.

Perdue was a 28-year-old rookie who was added to the roster after going 12–17 with Nashville of the Southern Association the year before. He pitched well in his first start with Boston before being forced to leave with arm problems.11 He underwent electric treatments for a month before having a bone splinter removed in late May. Despite being a little overmatched in the majors, Perdue managed to stay in the rotation after recovering from his arm troubles and even had a winning record for a while before fading over the last six weeks of the season.

The team reached its low point on August 1, when Boston lost to the Pirates 10–2. At the time, they were on a pace to lose 119 games and give up more than 1,100 runs. After that game, they would go 24–33 and allow 5.7 runs a game. That might not sound great, but, compared to a 20–74 record and 7.1 runs allowed per game, it was quite an improvement. So what happened?

Big improvements came from Brown and Tyler, who had each won only once by the beginning of August. They both had winning records after that, Brown going 7–4 and Tyler 6–4. And two late-season additions also helped. Ed Donnelly was selected from Troy in the September draft of minor-league players. He made four starts over the last three weeks of the season, winning three, including a shutout in his last start of the season.

The other late-season addition was Cy Young, who was signed after being released by Cleveland. He pitched well down the stretch, throwing two shutouts. The story I had always heard was that Young decided to retire after losing a 1–0 game to Pete Alexander, but I suspect the real reason had more to do with the last inning he pitched that year. It was in a game at Brooklyn on October 6. The score was knotted at 3 heading into the bottom of the seventh inning. With one out and no one on, Otto Miller tripled. That was followed by four straight singles and then three straight doubles. After the eighth hit in a row, Fred Tenney finally removed Cy Young from what would turn out to be his last major-league game.

So much for the pitchers. What about the hitters they faced? In a sense, the hitters faced by the Boston pitchers that year made up one of the greatest-hitting teams of all time. Of course, they were helped by both the South End Grounds and the pitchers they faced, but I thought it might be fun to take a quick look at their collective statistics. Table 5 shows a breakdown by each lineup position.

This is certainly a great offense, with good production out of every lineup spot except the last. It has the leadoff hitter getting on base more than 300 times (and stealing 59 bases); the secondand third-spot and cleanup hitters averaging more than 200 hits; an eighth-spot hitter batting over .300, and so on.

Table 6 shows how they hit by defensive position. To focus on just one stat of particular interest at the time: This team had six regulars hitting .300 or better (and another hitting .296 with 108 walks).

One surprising finding here is that the second basemen are only a shade behind the right-fielders in the battle for best hitter on this team. Much of this is due to Heinie Zimmerman, who went 40–80 with three triples and six home runs against Boston that season.

Table 4

Table 5

Table 6

Also helping were Larry Doyle and John Hummel, who contributed 24 extra-base hits and a .634 slugging percentage to the second-base effort.

Still, I must admit that I expected this team to look even greater. Their .381 on-base percentage and .420 slugging percentage exceeded any team mark from the Deadball Era, but the 1923 Cleveland Indians, to pick just one example, had almost exactly the same percentages (.381 and .421) and scored “only” 886 runs. According to Runs Created (a formula, devised by Bill James, that can be used to predict from a team’s offensive statistics the number of runs they will score),12 Boston’s opponents should have been expected to score 927 runs that season. So how did they manage to squeeze an extra 100 to 135 runs out of their offense? I suppose their 289 stolen bases may have added a few runs but, from what we know of their success rate, it’s hard to assume this was responsible for many of them.13

The answer lies in the Boston defense. In 1911, Boston committed an NL-worst 350 errors, which led to 245 unearned runs. By comparison, the average team in the AL in 1923 committed 200 errors leading to 126 unearned runs. So these hitters not only faced a pitching staff in disarray but also had the good fortune to hit into a very error-prone defense.14

The next year Boston would cut their errors down to 296, but that total would still be the most in the NL. Similarly, their pitchers would allow 871 runs, or 150 fewer than the year before, but that total would be not only still the worst in the league but also the secondworst of the Deadball Era.

As you can imagine from their performance in 1911, few of the pitchers discussed in this article had much of a future in the majors. Only two would make a significant contribution past that year. Lefty Tyler would have the longest career, pitching in the league until 1921, winning 127 games and making four World Series starts. And no Boston pitcher would match the combined 29 wins that Hub Purdue collected in 1912 and 1913. He would have the misfortune to get off to a slow start in 1914 and would be traded to the Cardinals on June 28. At the time of the trade, the Braves would be in last place. They would not be there for long.

TOM RUANE, a frequent contributor to “The Baseball Research Journal”, is director of Retrosheet.

Author’s Note

A version of this article is posted at www.retrosheet.com.

Retrosheet has box scores for every game played in the National League in 1911 and play-by-play accounts for more than four hundred of them. This information was used extensively in this article and would not exist without Ted Turocy’s help in digitizing the data and in the design of Retrosheet’s box-score event-file format. And the transaction information used in this article is just a small sample of Cliff Blau’s extensive research in this area.

Notes

1. The Nationals were a generic nickname for just about any NL team that shared a city with an American League The less generic nicknames for Boston’s NL entry were a little fluid during this period. They had been the Beaneaters until around 1907, when they became the Doves. In 1911, they were commonly referred to as the Rustlers, and the next year were known as the Braves. In the article, I will be referring to them as the Nationals, since few people would know who the Rustlers were and I’m sure I would get complaints from readers (and you know who you are) if I referred to them as the Braves.

2. The Baseball Encyclopedia (New York: Macmillan, Information Concepts, 1969), 22–29.

3. “Slugging Feature of Year,” Chicago Daily Tribune, 29 October 1911, C4.

4. “Emslie to Quit with Pay,” Chicago Daily Tribune, 18 December 1910, C1; “Mattern and Sweeney,” Boston Daily Globe, 20 December 1910, 7.

5. “National League Men in Session,” New York Times, 14 December 1910, 14.

6. “Cecil Ferguson Here,” Boston Daily Globe, 18 April 1911, 5.

7. “Tenney Lads Get Back in Stride,” Boston Daily Globe, 16 April 1911, 17.

8. Ibid.

9. The key to the trade for Boston was veteran catcher Johnny Kling, who caught one game for his new team and then threatened to He was coaxed back after a few days, but getting used to catching his new pitching staff seems to have taken a toll on his hitting. He started his stay in Boston by collecting only 3 singles in 45 at-bats, for a .067 batting average (and slugging percentage).

10. “Baseball Notes,” Boston Daily Globe, 23 May 1911, 6.

11. “Must Go to Surgeon,” Boston Daily Globe, 20 May 1911, 6.

12. The Runs Created formula used here is a variant on Bill James’s “technical” version — it is minus SB (since we don’t have CS) and GIDP and intentional walks (which we don’t have for 1911). Like other versions of his formula, it can be expressed as (A times B) divided by C. In this version:
A = Hits + walks + hit batsmen
B = Total bases + (.26 [walks + hit batsmen]) + ( .52 x sacrifice hits)
C = At-bats + walks + hit batsmen + sacrifices In the NL in 1911, this formula resulted in a total Runs Created of 5,398, or 2 percent less than the actual number of runs scored that year (5,506).

13. In 1911, Boston’s opponents stole 289 bases; we have play-by-play data for 85 of their In those games, enemy baserunners stole 151 bases and were caught 91 times, for a success rate of 62 percent. Which means that all that running probably didn’t account for a whole lot of extra runs.

14. I did consider that this might be a park effect, caused by either a poor playing field or an idiosyncratic official scorer, but Boston in 1911 committed a lot of errors both at home and on the road.