EVOLUTION OF THE BONUS RULE 

A few players had received sizable signing bonuses during the 1930s. For example, the Yankees paid Charlie Devens $20,000 in 1932 and Tommy Henrich $25,000 in 1936.1 Henrich, however, was not an untried player, having spent three productive years in the minor leagues. Despite such early bonuses, most baseball historians identify Dick Wakefield as the first member of the group that would be forever known as the “Bonus Babies.” In 1941, the Detroit Tigers signed Wakefield out of the University of Michigan for $52,000 and a new car. 

As the sportswriter (and later novelist) Paul Hemphill observed: “Once bonus fever set in, there was no stopping it.”2 Perhaps not, but the owners certainly tried. Steve Treder suggests in The Hardball Times that the motivation behind the bonus rule was twofold. Club owners were interested in competitive balance and sought a way to keep the richer clubs from cornering the market on top prospects. These moguls also wanted to hold down their labor costs, both for new signees and for the increasingly disgruntled established stars, who resented making less than untried “phenoms.”3 

The size of signing bonuses continued to creep upward as the Yankees (again!) paid Bobby Brown $60,000 in 1946. Earlier that year, baseball’s major-league owners proposed restrictions that, according to John Drebinger of the New York Times, “virtually outlaw bonus payments” because the “heavy and complicated restrictions . . . make it unlikely that any Major League club will care to take the risks involved except in very rare cases.”4 The proposed restrictions on bonus payments received approval from the minor leagues (the National Association of Professional Baseball Leagues) and took effect in 1947. 

This original bonus rule stipulated that any player signed by a major-league team for a salary/bonus package exceeding $6,000 had to be placed on the major-league roster before the end of the season or be declared a free agent, claimable by any other major-league (or higher-classification minor-league) team. Similar restrictions applied to minor-league clubs, with a sliding scale for the amount at which the bonus rule kicked in. This scale ranged from $4,000 for triple-A teams down to $500 for Class E teams. The rule also specified that a bonus player retained this designation throughout his career. 

The new rule may have slowed the bonus bandwagon, but it certainly did not bring it to a halt. A significant new bidder did, however, hop aboard. In 1947, the Philadelphia Phillies, under new ownership, shelled out bonuses to two high-school pitchers— $15,000 to Charlie Bicknell and $65,000 to Curt Simmons. The latter bonus was by far the better of the two investments; both were sizable when compared to the average ballplayer’s annual salary of approximately $11,000.5 (The median annual family income at that time was $3,031.)6

The following year, the Phillies again were major investors in the bonus market. The Boston Braves paid the highest premium for a single player—$65,000 to Johnny Antonelli—but Philadelphia signed three young pitchers for a combined bonus total of $85,000. Bob Miller, out of the University of Detroit Mercy, received $20,000; Robin Roberts, from Michigan State University, pocketed $25,000; and Georgia schoolboy Hugh Radcliffe accepted the Phils’ offer of $40,000. 

Few believed that the bonus rule was the solution to the spending problem, and many openly criticized its intent, its effectiveness, and its impact on the young players who fell under its restrictions. It is not surprising, considering his team’s heavy investment in young talent, that Philadelphia Phillies owner Bob Carpenter called the rule “the most unfair piece of legislation in baseball.” Carpenter, who had opposed the adoption of the rule and led several unsuccessful efforts to have it repealed, elaborated on his objections, saying: “It is not only unfair to the clubs who are willing and eager to improve their positions, but doubly unfair to the players themselves. There is no doubt that the necessity of keeping youngsters on the Major League roster has retarded their progress.” He went so far as to label the rule more than unfair, calling it “unAmerican” and asking: “Have you ever heard of any business other than baseball which penalizes a club for making improvements?”7

Carpenter was not alone in his criticism of the bonus rule. Connie Mack, owner and manager of the Philadelphia Athletics, observed that “the bonus rule hurts the player, the club, and all baseball.”8 Baseball Commissioner “Happy” Chandler called the rule a “restrictive yoke,”9 and American League President Will Harridge labeled it “a long-range boomerang to promising youngsters.”10 Leaders of independent minor league teams, such as the Atlanta Crackers’ Earl Mann, recognized that the rule would undermine their ability to compete for new young talent and actively campaigned against it. 

The criticism was not unanimous, however. Warren Giles, Cincinnati’s president and general manager, maintained that “if a player is worth a substantial bonus, he should have sufficient ability to play in the majors at the time he signs and not have to spend several years developing.”11 The varying opinions and the intensity of those feelings made the bonus rule a topic of discussion at every owners’ meeting and resulted in frequent tinkering with its finer points. 

In 1949, for example, the rule was modified to allow certain bonus players signed after March 31 that year to be optioned once during their first year. The “bonus” level for triple-A and double-A teams was increased to the major-league level of $6,000. This latter change was a partial response to a proposal from George M. Trautman, president of the NAPBL, that all leagues have the same limit to prevent clubs from signing players at a higher level to avoid the bonus designation and thus requiring them to face stiffer competition than they were ready for. 

By late 1949, however, the handwriting was on the wall—or at least in the New York Times. In a column entitled “End of a Noble Experiment,” Arthur Daley compared the bonus rule to Prohibition, noting that it was “as lofty in its idealistic motivations . . . and as impractical in its application.” Daley added that the rule “didn’t work and produced more ills than it was supposed to cure.”12 Daley and others reported that just as bootleggers had circumvented Prohibition’s restrictions, owners were adept at finding ways around the bonus rule. Some of these ruses included signing prospects’ fathers to scouting contracts, paying off mortgages on prospects’ family homes, and treating prospects and their families to lavish entertainment. 

Daley also noted that “bonus players, per se, breed discontent”13 and cited the situation in Boston in 1948 as the most egregious example. Johnny Antonelli, the 18-year-old who received the largest signing bonus that year, had joined the Braves in midseason, but manager Billy Southworth was unwilling to use an unproven rookie in the heat of a close pennant race. Consequently, the youngster faced only 17 batters in four innings, and his resentful teammates refused to vote him a share of the team’s World Series earnings. Following the season, Johnny Sain, whose 24–15 record earned him The Sporting News’ Pitcher of the Year honors, demanded and got a raise. Clubhouse dissention, due at least in part to resentment of the Bonus Baby, continued to plague the Braves in 1949, eventually causing Southworth to step down for the final third of the season. 

When the end for the controversial bonus rule finally came in December 1950, its demise was overshadowed by a more newsworthy event: Major-league owners approved its elimination at the same meeting where they voted not to retain “Happy” Chandler as commissioner. The minor leagues ratified elimination of the bonus rule in early December, and Arthur Daley penned its obituary, concluding that “the bonus rule never did achieve its purpose. It didn’t halt extravagant spending. It retarded the development of kids it was supposed to help and in some instances ruined them. It destroyed team morale. It led to sharp practice and chicanery. It was a bad rule.”14

Writing 22 years later, Paul Hemphill, in an article appropriately titled “Whatever Happened to What’s-His-Name?” focused on the adverse impact the rule had on the young players. He said: “Forced to sit in big league dugouts—gaining no experience, ostracized by jealous teammates, eventually the source of humor for fans and press—they waited while their potential, assuming they ever had any, stagnated and often disappeared.”15

Apparently, the club owners did not fully share these assessments of the failure of their initial attempt to limit bonus payments. Only two years after killing the first bonus rule, they approved an even more stringent variation on the theme. In 1952, led by Branch Rickey, the owners passed a new bonus rule (Rule 3k), which lowered the bonus threshold from $6,000 to $4,000 and required that players signed for more than this amount be immediately placed on the signing team’s major-league roster for two years. This new rule, labeled “baseball’s biggest blunder” by Brent Kelly in his 1996 book of the same name, remained in effect for five seasons (1953–1957) and suffered from (and perhaps exacerbated) the shortcomings of the rule it replaced. 

While this rule was in effect, every major-league team signed and carried on its roster at least one Bonus Baby. In all, 57 untried youngsters garnered this designation16 and the financial rewards that accompanied it. Few of them gained the stardom that their signers envisioned, although the list does include three Hall of Famers—Al Kaline, Harmon Killebrew, and Sandy Koufax. 

What happened after the rule was eliminated suggests that it did have some dampening effect on the amounts spent on bonuses. In 1958, the first year following rejection of the second bonus rule, major-league teams paid some $6 million dollars in bonuses, compared to approximately $5 million during the preceding decade.17 The owners reacted by implementing an unrestricted draft of first-year players. This concept, which had been discussed for several years but always rejected, allowed teams to draft any first-year player not protected on a major-league roster for a standard draft amount. The drafting team was then required to place the drafted player on its roster for a full year. 

The first year–player draft did help to reduce the number of signing bonuses, but the amounts of these bonuses continued to creep upward. The owners tweaked the details of the first-year draft and continued to discuss (and reject) an unrestricted free-agent draft—a concept which finally earned approval in 1965 and remains in place today. 

The history of baseball owners’ efforts to control the amounts paid to untried but highly touted young players suggests that there may be no ceiling on such payments and no viable way to create one. The two young Georgians who were courted in 1948 were among the first players who had to consider how bonus rules would affect them—both their immediate financial status and their long-term future. As we will see, they chose different paths and achieved different results. 

WILLARD LEE NIXON: COLLEGE MOUND ACE 

Willard Nixon was the older and more experienced of the two Peach State phenoms. He was born in Taylorsville, Georgia (near Rome), in 1928 and lived in that area all of his life. By the time he graduated from high school, where he excelled in football and basketball, he was a veteran of four seasons of textile ball, first as part of an informal effort to “keep baseball alive despite wartime conditions”18 and later in the Northwest Georgia Textile League (NWGTL). 

Nixon’s textile-league experience was with the team representing Pepperell Mills. He played his first game in 1943 when he was only 14 and was used sparingly during that season. He pitched a two-hit, nine-inning shutout in an exhibition game early in 1944, but he fared less well against Pepperell’s regular opposition and again saw limited action during the remainder of the season. In 1945, Willard became the acknowledged “ace” of the Pepperell pitching staff. He compiled a 6–1 record and earned two complete game victories when Pepperell swept a best-of-three postseason tournament. The final victory came just two days after he had intercepted a pass and returned it for a touchdown to spark McHenry High to a 19–9 win over Trion High. 

He opened the 1946 NWGTL season with three shutouts and 33 2/3 consecutive scoreless innings and compiled a regular-season record of 12–3. When Pepperell became league champions by winning two postseason series, Nixon was the workhorse—and the show horse—of both. He pitched in six of the ten games and played left field when he was not on the mound. He won the deciding game of each series and batted .519 (19 for 37) for the postseason, including a game-tying solo home run in the final game. 

In 1947, the Detroit Tigers offered Willard a contract following his graduation from McHenry High, but he chose instead to accept a grant-in-aid from Alabama Polytechnic Institute (now Auburn University). In his Auburn debut, Willard faced only 19 batters in five innings against Mercer University to earn his initial collegiate victory. He compiled an 8–2 season record and led Auburn to a second-place finish in the powerful Southeastern Conference. 

College baseball in 1947 was a far cry from the attraction it has now become; it was then a minor sport that attracted few fans. As Nixon himself said in a 1974 interview, it “was just something students came out to watch if they didn’t have anything else to do.”19 Willard had played before larger crowds—and perhaps faced better players—back home in the textile league. It was, however, a bigger stage, and his performance placed him in a brighter spotlight than ever before. Johnny Bradberry, sports editor of the Atlanta Constitution, reported that “folks are calling Nixon the best pitching prospect in the Southeastern Conference since Spud Chandler.”20

When the collegiate season ended in May, Willard rejoined his Pepperell team, which had started its NWGTL season in April. He soon benefited from a record-setting performance by Pepperell third baseman “Shorty” Hall, who hit four home runs in four consecutive innings off four different pitchers. Pepperell (and Nixon) won that game 25–4, and Hall became the subject of a Ripley’s Believe It or Not cartoon. Willard’s 1947 NWGTL record was 8–1, and he again was the undisputed star of the postseason. He pitched in five of the six games, winning three, “saving” one, and losing one. He batted “only” .364, but three of his four hits were for extra bases, yielding a 1.000 slugging percentage. 

Willard returned to Auburn and, in the Tigers’ 1948 conference opener, struck out 20 Ole Miss batters to set a new Auburn and SEC record. In his next outing, Nixon was perhaps even better. He tossed a no-hitter against the University of Tennessee, striking out 18 batters and walking four. When he next faced the Vols, only a “scratch” eighth-inning single deprived him of a second no-hitter. In that game, Nixon contributed four hits, including a 370-foot home run, and the Rome News Tribune observed that “folks in Knoxville think that [Nixon] is the greatest college player of all time.”21 

Others held similar opinions. Danny Doyle, his Auburn coach, called Nixon “the greatest prospect I’ve ever coached,” adding that “the team wouldn’t have been much without him.” Teammate Erskine (Erk) Russell, who later became a legendary football coach at the University of Georgia and Georgia Southern University, recalled, “I never thought about losing when Willard was pitching. He was so good that you just knew when he pitched you were going to win.”22

Auburn won the SEC Eastern Division title, and Nixon pitched the final regular season game in front of scouts from 14 major-league teams. He finished the season with 145 strikeouts (an SEC record that would stand for 39 years) and a 10–1 record. He also led Auburn in hitting with a .448 batting average. 

Every team except the Chicago White Sox and the Philadelphia Athletics bid for Nixon’s services, and two days after the season ended, he signed a contract with the Boston Red Sox. Mace Brown, in the first year of his long scouting career with the BoSox, proudly declared that Willard Nixon was “the greatest college pitcher” he had seen and predicted that “he can’t miss being a big leaguer.”23

Nixon reportedly was offered bonuses of as much as $30,000, but, knowing that such a bonus would limit his time in the minor leagues, he chose to take less money. He later explained his decision, saying, “Although nobody in the world needed the money more than I did, I just didn’t think I was good enough to start at the top. I was afraid I might get that money and go up to the majors and flop. Then that bonus money might be all I’d ever get out of baseball.”24

Willard Nixon had been a successful pitcher in two different and very competitive environments, but, until he was invited to Cleveland by Lou Boudreau toward the end of his college career, he had never even seen a major-league game. He wanted to be sure that he had time to fully test his skills against other professional players before joining a major-league team. That way, he would earn his place on a major-league roster. 

HUGH FRANK RADCLIFFE: SCHOOLBOY STRIKEOUT KING 

Hugh Radcliffe gained national attention in April 1948, when he struck out 28 opposing batters in a nine-inning high school baseball game. Radcliffe, pitching for Robert E. Lee Institute, faced 33 Lanier High batters, who managed to make contact with only 10 of his pitches for seven foul balls, two infield grounders that his teammates booted, and the lone hit that he surrendered—another infield roller that Coach J. E. Richards said “should have been fielded, but the boys are too accustomed to watching Radcliffe play the game by himself.”25 Four times, a third strike eluded the R. E. Lee catcher. Three times he was able to throw the batter out at first base, but the fourth batter reached first safely, giving Hugh the opportunity to record an “extra” strikeout to complete his one-hit, two-walk shutout of a team that had won a pennant the previous year. 

Following this game, the opposing coach predicted, “Radcliffe has the physical equipment and pitching know-how to be a truly great pitcher.”26 One of the players who faced Hugh that day was Inman “Coot” Veal, who was destined for a six-year major-league career. He described Hugh’s curveball as the best he ever saw, noting that it “broke straight down at your feet.”27 The Atlanta Journal waxed poetic in an editorial, gushing: “Georgia, home state of Ty Cobb and Nap Rucker, of Sherrod Smith and Carlisle Smith, of Rudy York and Johnny Mize and Spurgeon Chandler, of Luke Appling and Martin Marion and Hugh Casey, should be proud of the towering R. E. Lee Institute athlete whose feat we confidently predict will never be equaled.”28

This record-setting game was the capstone of a youthful athletic career that had made Radcliffe a local legend in and around Thomaston, Georgia, where oldtimers still call him by his dual first names—“Hugh Frank.” He earned All-State honors in football, track, basketball, and (of course) baseball. His high-school coach called him “the best high school punter he ever saw,” and he once booted a football 78 yards in the air. He won the district pole-vaulting championship with a record jump of 11’4″ despite a sprained ankle. He was the starting guard on the R. E. Lee basketball team, and many observers believed that he had enough talent for a pro career in that sport.29 His American Legion baseball coach said, “[Hugh] can play any position on the field well; he can even catch.”30

This versatile athlete had first attracted the attention of professional baseball scouts in 1946, when he led Thomaston’s American Legion team to the state championship and then to the regional crown before losing to New Orleans, the eventual national champion, in the sectional playoffs. These sectional games attracted as many as five thousand fans, giving Hugh and his teammates their first experience playing before such large crowds. 

Radcliffe finished his senior year at R. E. Lee with 210 strikeouts in 81 2/3 innings—an average of 2.6 strikeouts per inning. He tossed two seven-inning no-hitters, and in his three nine-inning games, he averaged 24+ strikeouts and threw two one-hitters. He allowed only 16 hits and three earned runs for the season while compiling a 9–0 record.31 He accomplished all this with a pitching arsenal that included a 95 mph fastball, a “diving” sinker, and two different curve balls—a “wide-sweeping” one and the overhand “bottomless” version that Coot Veal described.32

Hugh led his team into the state championship tournament, where on June 2 (one day after graduating) he pitched his last high-school game. He went the full nine innings and struck out 24 batters, matching his season average, but R. E. Lee made nine errors and lost 8–6. The next day, after considering offers from 14 major-league scouts (including Branch Rickey himself and fellow Georgian Spud Chandler), Hugh Radcliffe accepted a $40,000 bonus from the Philadelphia Phillies. A rival scout reported later that Johnny Nee, the Phillie scout who won the “Radcliffe Sweepstakes,” had “told everybody he had no limit. His club . . . told him to sign Radcliffe and to go as high as he had to to get him.”33

According to the local paper in an article looking back at Radcliffe’s career, the youngster “was just as eager as any teen-ager to get to the top as fast as possible, particularly on an ‘earn as you learn’ basis.”34 He had had no more exposure to major-league baseball than the slightly older Nixon, but with the unbridled confidence of youth he must have been sure that he had the talent needed to succeed. He had achieved amazing things on the diamond, and a bevy of experienced baseball men were bidding for his services. Surely, their expectations were reasonable. How could he turn down that kind of money? 

NIXON AND RADCLIFFE: PROFESSIONAL BASEBALL CAREERS 

Immediately after signing professional contracts, the two young Georgians were sent north to join minorleague teams. Nixon went to the Scranton (Pennsylvania) Red Sox in the Class A Eastern League, and Radcliffe reported to the Wilmington (Delaware) Blue Rocks in the Class B Interstate League. He arrived the same day that fellow “Bonus Baby” Robin Roberts was promoted to the major-league club.35

Radcliffe left his first start in the seventh inning, trailing 5–0, but went on to compile a respectable 7–3 record. Nixon’s debut, one day before his twentieth birthday, was more impressive. He struck out the first batter he faced and pitched an eight-hit shutout against the Wilkes-Barre Barons. Local sportswriter Chic Feldman exclaimed that “the door to a glittering future opened at the stadium last night and in strode Willard Nixon, blond and beautiful (both physically and baseballically).”36 He closed the regular season with five consecutive victories to end the season with an 11–5 mark, and his final victory clinched the league championship for Scranton. His final game came in the postseason, and it was a “masterful two hitter”37 in frigid weather. 

Despite his winning record and acceptable ERA (4.12), the Phillies did not put Radcliffe on the major league roster at the end of the season. Sportswriter Jeff Moshier speculated that the “Phillies already were overburdened with bonus men.”38 Perhaps the major league decision makers also were concerned about Hugh’s control problems; he walked 82 batters in 92 innings. Whatever the reasoning, Hugh Radcliffe was still in the minor leagues at the end of the 1948 season, making him available to be drafted by other teams. He was among “the most publicized and highest paid” of the 270 “bonus tag” players whom big-league clubs left exposed to the draft in 1948,39 but there were no takers. 

Both Nixon and Radcliffe started their sophomore seasons at the triple-A level. Nixon was assigned to the Louisville Colonels of the American Association; the Phils sent Radcliffe to the Toronto Maple Leafs in the International League. Neither of the youngsters fared well at that level. Nixon recorded three losses and a “no decision” in four games for Louisville and was demoted to the Birmingham Barons in the double-A Southern Association. Radcliffe saw limited duty in Toronto, appearing in only nine games and compiling a 1–1 record and a 1.91 WHIP in a mere 22 innings. The Phils’ brass said that injuries prevented Hugh from playing more, but others accused them of using the youngster sparingly “in hopes that he would escape the draft.”40 If that were their plan, it did not work; the New York Yankees drafted Hugh Radcliffe in November.

After being reassigned to double-A ball and following a slow start at that level, Willard Nixon had an outstanding 1949 season. He lost his first three games for the Barons, making him 0–6 for the season, but he then won 14 of his final 18 decisions to finish the regular Southern Association season at 14–7, and at least two of his losses were due to poor defensive support. A local sportswriter described his pitching as “phenomenal after a shaky start.”41 He also had the highest batting average (.345) on the team. 

The highlight of the 1949 season for Willard Nixon came on Monday, August 15, at Ponce de Leon Park in Atlanta. With a large contingent of fans from his home town among the 4,996 in the stands and even more watching the game on television at the American Legion clubhouse in Lindale, Willard dominated the Atlanta Crackers. The final score was 5–4, and Nixon had pitched all nine innings and driven in all five Baron runs. As Langdon B. Gammon reported: “He was the whole show, producer and star.”42

Two years after making their decisions regarding immediate riches versus the potential for delayed gratification, the two young pitching prospects from Georgia each had experienced some success and some tribulation. Neither was yet in the major leagues, but one remained with his original suitor, while the other was facing an uncertain future with a new organization. 

After facing major-league hitters during spring training, both players started the 1950 season at Triple A. Nixon went back to Louisville, and the Yankees assigned Radcliffe to the Kansas City Blues. At the time, Casey Stengel said that both he and young Eddie Ford had “excellent prospects of climbing back fast.”43

Although both Georgia youngsters were now in the American Association, they did not face off as mound opponents. The junior Georgian pitched in only two innings in two games for the Blues, compiling a losing record (0–1) and a WHIP of 4.00. On May 6, he was reassigned to Binghamton in the Class A Eastern League, three days before Nixon faced Kansas City for the first time. Hugh prospered a bit in the lower classification, appearing in 25 games and managing a winning record (9–8), although his ERA (4.14) and his WHIP (1.71) remained high. 

While Radcliffe’s triple-A performance earned him a demotion, Nixon proved that his earlier difficulties at that level were a clear case of premature promotion. This time around, he got off to a fast start, winning his first three games. On July 2, he won his sixth consecutive game, bringing his record to 11–2. On July 6, he was promoted to the parent club. His 97 strikeouts led the American Association, and he was batting .345. Just over two years after signing with the Red Sox, Willard Nixon had gotten the minor-league seasoning that he thought he needed. He joined the Big Sox in New York and received his major-league baptism immediately. On July 7, he pitched the last two innings of a 5–2 Red Sox loss to the Yankees. He allowed one run on three hits, walked three batters, and struck out none—not especially impressive, but manager Steve O’Neill was happy with the results. He noted that Nixon “fired the ball hard and had those Yankees refraining from taking toe holds.”44 By season’s end, Willard had appeared in 22 games and compiled a winning (8–6) record. 

Willard Nixon was in the big leagues to stay. He spent the next eight years with the Red Sox, although he never achieved the stardom that many baseball experts continued to predict for him. Early in his career, he struggled to control his pitches and his temper; later, he often pitched despite a painful shoulder. His best two years came in 1954–1955, when his overall 23–22 record was overshadowed by his mastery over the powerful New York Yankees, which earned him a spot on the cover of The Sporting News45 and the nickname of “Yankee Killer.” He beat the Yankees four consecutive times in 1954, yielding no more than one earned run in any game, and he won his first two games against them in 1955—a streak of six straight wins over the Bronx Bombers. Although his dominance over the Yankees did not continue and while he was not as successful against many of his lesser opponents, Willard would have finished his career with an overall winning record had he not tried to pitch through arm trouble in 1958. He compiled a woeful 1–7 record that year, dropping his career record to 69–72. He returned to the minors in 1959 with the triple-A Minneapolis Millers in an attempt to “pitch [his] way back to the majors,”46 but after nine seasons in the majors, his big-league career was over.47 

Hugh Radcliffe, by contrast, was destined to be a career minor leaguer. Following his winning 1950 season in Binghamton, the Yankees gave him a contract for another year, and he joined the team in Phoenix48 for spring training. After a successful start in an intrasquad game,49 he struggled and was farmed out to Kansas City after giving up seven runs to Cleveland in a two-inning outing that included five walks and a wild pitch. He spent only a month in Kansas City, appearing in three games and compiling a 1–0 record, before being assigned to Beaumont in the double-A Texas League, where he won six, lost eight, and amassed a 1.74 WHIP. In September, he was one of 12 minor leaguers “recalled” by the Yankees but not asked to report immediately. In January 1952, the Yankees announced his “outright release,” leading the New York Times to say it was “the end of the trail” for “bonus baby” Hugh Radcliffe.50 

This pronouncement proved to be premature, as Hugh signed on with Kansas City. He did not play for the Blues, however. He was assigned and reassigned three times, opening the 1952 season back in Beaumont, spending six weeks with the Tyler East Texans51 of the Class B Big State League, and then going back to Class A Binghamton for the last month of the season. Hugh was taking the “journeyman ballplayer” appellation literally: his travels took him to three teams at three different classifications, for a combined record of 9–7 and WHIP of 1.54. Following the season, Hugh said that he had asked the Beaumont club to send him to a team where he could be part of the regular rotation. He added that he had learned more in the last half of the season than in four years of professional baseball, having “turned from a thrower to a pitcher.”52 He admitted later, however, that while with this club, he suffered the injury that effectively ended his hopes of a big-league career. He said that he had been put into a game on a chilly night without proper warmup, and his arm “went bad” and was never the same.53 He was still the property of the Kansas City club and was eligible for the draft, but only a major-league team could claim him; none did. 

Before he threw a pitch in 1953, Hugh Radcliffe had been the property of four minor-league clubs—Kansas City, Birmingham (Double A, Southern League), Syracuse (Triple A, International League), and Natchez (Class C, Cotton States League). With this last club, Hugh saw more action than in any of his other minor-league seasons. He appeared in 33 games, winning 13 and losing an equal number. His ERA was 3.74, and his WHIP was 1.51. At the end of the season, Birmingham reclaimed and reserved his rights. 

Birmingham assigned Hugh to Winston-Salem (Class B, Carolina League) before the 1954 season started. He appeared in only three games, losing his only decision, before being returned to the Barons on May 1. Four days later, the Barons released him, and his trail truly came to an end. The $40,000 bonus baby had spent seven years in the minor leagues, playing for eight different teams in eight different leagues at every minor-league classification above Class D. He had managed an overall winning record (46–42) although with only two winning seasons. He had constantly struggled with his control, averaging 6+ walks per nine innings pitched over his career. 

Both these Peach State natives expressed some regrets as they looked back over their professional baseball careers. For obvious reasons, Nixon’s regrets were fewer. He summed up his playing days by saying, “I didn’t get the most out of my ability, but I’m happy with [my career]. Baseball’s been good to me. I wouldn’t have had anything if it hadn’t been for baseball.”54 Radcliffe openly rued his decision regarding the bonus money. In 1955, the year after his career ended, he said: “If I had it to do over, I wouldn’t be a bonus boy. They bring the bonus boys up too fast and they don’t get the chance that some of the other players get. If I had had a chance to come up a little slower, and had had a little time to spend with a few pitching coaches, I think I’d be up there winning today.”55 In his later years, Hugh Frank was more philosophical; looking back in 2009, he said, “I’m kinda glad I didn’t make it. I would have had to raise my family up there and wouldn’t have gotten to spend as much time with them.”56 

LIFE AFTER BASEBALL 

Both Willard Nixon and Hugh Frank Radcliffe had long, productive lives after their baseball days had ended. Both found careers beyond the ballpark. Both raised families. Both found pleasure in active hobbies. Both retained legendary status in their hometowns. As with their baseball careers, they took somewhat different paths, but now the results were much more similar. 

The first year of professional baseball was the last year of bachelorhood for both young men, and they found lifelong partners. Willard and Nancy Nixon had been married for more than 51 years when he passed away in 2000; together they raised three children. Hugh and Marge Radcliffe have now been married for more than 60 years and have raised four children.57

League Abbreviations: AA (American Association); BSL (Big State League); CL (Carolina League); CSL (Cotton States League); EL (Eastern League); IL (International League); ISL (Interstate League); SA (Southern Association); TL (Texas League). Statistics from Baseball-Reference.com.

When their baseball days ended, both players took full-time jobs with the companies where they had worked during the offseasons. Hugh worked for the telephone company that later became Alltel (and was later acquired by Verizon), starting out as a lineman and moving up to supervisor. He left them for a few years to serve as a recreation director in Cordele, Georgia, but then returned and remained until his retirement some twenty years ago. Willard spent five years as a Red Sox scout before returning to Pepperell Mills, where since his high-school days he had worked when he was not playing baseball. He left Pepperell in 1968 rather than relocate and held a variety of positions—clerk of the Floyd County Board of Commissioners, County Court investigator, chief of police for Floyd County, and transportation director for the Floyd County School System—until he retired in 1989. 

Even before he retired, Nixon became one of the most popular and successful amateur golfers in Northwest Georgia and maintained this status until failing health forced him off the links. Radcliffe also became an avid golfer and fisherman and retired to Florida so that he could pursue both hobbies, which he is again enjoying after recovering from a bout with cancer.58 Hugh’s decision to retire to Florida reflects another major difference in the lives of these two Georgians. Willard Nixon arranged his life so that he never lived more than 10 miles from his birthplace; Hugh Radcliffe never lived in Thomaston after he graduated from high school, although he did return often to visit family members59 and to participate in ceremonies honoring his accomplishments. 

In 2004, Hugh Frank Radcliffe was among the first 15 athletes inducted into the Thomaston–Upson County Sports Hall of Fame. Willard Nixon had received a similar honor in 1971, when the Rome–Floyd County Sports Hall of Fame inducted its inaugural class of seven. Nixon was also elected to the Georgia Sports Hall of Fame in 1993. That honor has so far eluded Radcliffe, but in 1998, the Georgia House of Representatives passed a resolution commending his athletic achievements in four sports and especially honoring “the golden day he struck out 28 batters.”60 Radcliffe’s most recent honor came in 2008, when the clubhouse at Thomaston’s Silvertown Ballpark (the site of his historic performance) was named in his honor. 

HUGH RADCLIFFE: POSTER BOY FOR THE EVILS OF THE BONUS RULE—OR NOT? 

The two heroes of this story faced similar situations, made very different decisions, and achieved very different results. The intriguing question is the degree to which their decisions to accept or reject large bonuses impacted their upward mobility. 

Willard Nixon thought he needed minor-league experience before he would be ready to pitch in the majors. In two and a half years, he got that experience, moving smoothly through Classes A, AA, and AAA. His only slip during that climb came when he was promoted from Class A to Triple A before he was ready. When he faltered at the higher level, he went to Double A and pitched well. 

In contrast, after the pitching-rich Phils chose not to protect their investment in Hugh Radcliffe by adding him to the big-league roster, they promoted him all the way to triple-A Toronto to ensure that only another major-league team could draft him. He had been somewhat successful in Class B, but he skipped Class A and AA and spent his entire sophomore year at the triple-A level, getting little opportunity to prove himself there. 

Radcliffe’s belief that he would have done better if he had rejected the bonus offer, of course, echoes the concerns voiced by opponents of the bonus rule, but can we be sure that his “bonus boy” status is what prevented him from becoming a major leaguer? In spite of a reasonably successful first season, no other major-league club saw enough potential to add him to their roster after the Phillies exposed him to the draft. If his limited use at Toronto was truly a ruse to keep other teams from noticing him, then his bonus status certainly retarded his progress. If he was kept at the triple-A level to reduce the number of teams who could draft him, his bonus status hurt him further. Radcliffe himself believes to this day that the Phillies “tried to hide me.”61 If such were not the case, there seems to be little justification for not using him more in 1949, either in Toronto or at a lower minor-league classification. 

There is little doubt, therefore, that Hugh Radcliffe’s development suffered because he was a bonus baby, but other factors may have kept him in the minors while his fellow Georgian advanced to the majors. Radcliffe had the disadvantage of being selected by teams that had an abundance of pitchers. The Phillies had signed a bevy of bonus-level pitchers and reaped the benefits in 1950 when the “Whiz Kids” won the National League pennant behind the starting pitching of three Bonus Babies—Curt Simmons, Robin Roberts, and Bob Miller. The Yankees of the early 1950s dominated the American League, winning five consecutive pennants between 1949 and 1953, with a pitching staff built around Vic Raschi, Allie Reynolds, Eddie Lopat, and (later) Johnny Sain and Whitey Ford. 

While he got less minor-league training than Nixon, Radcliffe probably needed it more. He had pitched extremely well, but typically against players younger than he was. During the summer between his junior and senior years in high school, Hugh did pitch for Swainsboro in the semipro Ogeechee League,62 where most of his opponents had played college ball. He also pitched “a few games” for the local textile-mill teams,63 but he was 19 years old throughout his dominant final year in high school; most high-school seniors are a year younger than that. In contrast, Willard Nixon had pitched extensively in the textile leagues against men who were five to ten years his senior, and he had prospered against that competition.

Both players suffered from sore arms during their careers, but here again there was an important difference. Nixon hurt his arm after proving that he could pitch at the major-league level. Radcliffe’s injury came while he was struggling in the minors, effectively sidetracking any hope that he could succeed in the majors. 

There seems to be little doubt that the 1948 bonus rule played a role in Hugh Frank Radcliffe’s failure to reach the major leagues. The Phillies certainly got little (if any) benefit from their $40,000 investment. There is some irony in the fact that the younger of the two players we have considered, the one who was perhaps most in need of minor-league seasoning, opted for the route that made such seasoning least likely. Yet he got minor-league experience anyway, although perhaps not in the proper sequence. Other factors also helped to keep the youngster in the minors, so the overarching lesson here may be that paying large sums for “can’t miss” (but untried) pitchers was just as risky in 1948 as it is today—and as it will likely be in 2048. 

WYNN MONTGOMERY, author of the biography of Willard Nixon for SABR’s BioProject, has seen ballgames in every major league city except Arlington, Texas, and in almost fifty minor-league parks. He is coeditor, with Ken Fenster, of The National Pastime: Baseball in the Peach State, the 2010 SABR convention journal.

Sources

My most valuable resource for the portion of this article dealing with Willard Nixon was Mrs. Nancy Nixon, who freely shared with me her memories and her extensive collection of scrapbooks (one for almost every year he played, 1945–59) and related materials that chronicled her husband’s career. Several unattributed quotations were found in unlabeled articles in those scrapbooks. Hugh Frank Radcliffe himself graciously participated in a telephone interview and shared his memories with me, as did his long-time friends Jim Fowler and Charles Gordy. Steve Densa, Minor League Baseball’s media relations director, provided Radcliffe’s “player record card.” In addition to these resources and the specific publications cited above, the following additional sources were invaluable during the preparation of this article.

Libraries (Newspaper Archives and Staff) and Organizations

• Auburn University Library (especially Joyce Hicks) 
• Boston Public Library 
• Rome/Floyd County Public Library (especially Dawn Hampton) 
• Upson Historical Society (specifically Penny Cliff and Patty Morgan)

Online

• Baseball Reference www.baseball-reference.com 
• Newspaper Archive www.newspaperarchive.com 
• New York Times www.nytimes.com 
• Paper of Record www.paperofrecord.com
• Retrosheet www.retrosheet.org, for box scores and play-by-play descriptions 
• SABR research tools sabr.org

Notes

1 Brent Kelley, Baseball’s Biggest Blunder: The Bonus Rule of 1953–1957 (Lanham, Md.: Scarecrow Books, 1997).

2 Paul Hemphill, “Whatever Happened to What’s-His-Name?” True (June 1972). Collected in Paul Hemphill, Lost in the Lights: Sports, Dreams, and Life (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2003).

3 Steve Treder, “Cash in the Cradle: The Bonus Babies,” The Hardball Times (November 11, 2004).

4 John Drebinger, New York Times, February 3, 1946.

5 Michael J. Haupert, “The Economic History of Major League Baseball,” in EH.Net Encyclopedia, ed. Robert Whaples; “The Century in Dollars and Cents,” Seattle Post-Intelligencer (2002), www.seattlepi.com/specials/moneyinsports/sportstimeline.pdf.

6 U.S. Census Bureau’s Historical Income Tables-Families, www.census.gov.

7 Salt Lake City Deseret News, October 20, 1949.

8 Frank Eck, Massillon (Ohio) Evening Independent, July 2, 1948.

9 Charleston (W.V.) Daily Mail, December 4, 1949.

10 New York Times, April 3, 1948.

11 Portsmouth (Ohio) Times, June 4, 1949.

12 Arthur Daley, New York Times, September 4, 1949.

13 Arthur Daley, New York Times, September 4, 1949.

14 Arthur Daley, New York Times, December 15, 1950.

15 Hemphill, “Whatever Happened to What’s-His-Name?”

16 Steve Treder, “Cash in the Cradle: The Bonus Babies,” The Hardball Times, November 11, 2004.

17 Kelley, Baseball’s Biggest Blunder.

18 Langdon B. Gannon, Rome News Tribune, April 22, 1943.

19 Owen Davis, The Auburn Bulletin, August 28, 1974.

20 This quotation comes from an undated newspaper clipping in one of the many scrapbooks (this one labeled 1947) maintained by Mrs. Nancy Nixon, Willard’s widow. After graduating from the University of Georgia, Spurgeon Ferdinand “Spud” Chandler pitched for the New York Yankees for 11 years (1937–47), compiling a 109–43 record—the highest winning percentage for any pitcher in history with 100 or more games.

21 Rome (Ga.) News Tribune, April 29, 1948.

22 Inside the Auburn Tigers (a monthly magazine for Auburn fans), August 1983.

23 Undated clipping in Nancy Nixon’s 1948 scrapbook.

24 Roger Birtwell, Boston Globe, March 14, 1949.

25 Thomaston Times, April 23, 1948.

26 Thomaston Times, April 23, 1948.

27 Thomaston-Upson Sports Hall of Fame.

28 Atlanta Journal, 22 April 1948. Most of the names in this list will be familiar to all baseball fans. The two Smiths are the least well known; both had long but relatively undistinguished major-league careers. Carlisle, who was better known as “Red,” was not born in Georgia, nor was Martin (Marty) Marion, who was a prep star at Atlanta’s Tech High. The Journal’s choice of players with whom to compare Radcliffe was less insightful than the prediction that the record would not fall; no one has yet matched or topped that standard.

29 Atlanta Journal, April 22, 1948.

30 Florence (S.C.) Morning News, August 17, 1946.

31 Hagerstown (Md.) Daily Mail, June 4, 1948.

32 Thomaston-Upson Sports Hall of Fame.

33 Wayne Minshew, “Scouting Big League Talent Has Changed with the Years” Baseball Digest, July 1976.

34 Thomaston Times, June 17, 1955.

35 Doug Gelbert, The Great Delaware Sports Book (Montchanin, Del.: Manatee Books, 1995).

36 Chic Feldman, Scranton Tribune, June 17, 1948.

37 Chic Feldman, Scranton Tribune, September 22, 1948.

38 Jeff Moshier, Saint Petersburg Independent, November 22, 1949.

39 Saint Petersburg Times, November 9, 1948.

40 Jeff Moshier, Saint Petersburg Independent, November 22, 1949.

41 Naylor Stone, Birmingham Post, September 13, 1949.

42 Langdon B. Gammon, “Lindale News,” Rome News Tribune, August 15, 1949. 

43 New York Times, 30 March 1950. Eddie Ford, better known as “Whitey,” climbed back and began his Hall of Fame career on July 1.

44 Arthur Sampson, Boston Traveler, July 13, 1950.

45 The Sporting News, May 4, 1955.

46 Tom Briere, Minneapolis Tribune, April 12, 1959.

47 Thirty other American League pitchers made their major–league debut in the same year as Nixon, and only three (Lew Burdette, Whitey Ford, and Ray Herbert) pitched longer and won more games. Two fellow 1950 Red Sox rookie pitchers (Dick Littlefield and Jim McDonald) equaled his longevity, but neither matched his record. The average career for 1950’s other 25 American League rookie pitchers was 3.6 years.

48 This is the only time that the Yankees have gone west for spring training. Yankees co-owner Del Webb, a resident of Phoenix, swapped training sites with the New York Giants, who came east to use the Yankees’ usual site in St. Petersburg, Florida.

49 In an interview on October 21, 2009, Radcliffe recalled that he pitched the first five innings of a game that pitted the Yankees rookies against each other and gave up only one hit—a triple to Mickey Mantle, who was experiencing his first spring training.

50 New York Times, January 31, 1952.

51 On July 15, 1952, Hugh Radcliffe participated (as a pinch-runner) in a 20-inning Tyler loss (3–2) to the Texarkana Bears.

52 Atlanta Journal-Constitution, November 21, 1952.

53 Thomaston Times, June 17, 1955.

54 Undated article in Nancy Nixon’s scrapbook.

55 Undated article in Nancy Nixon’s scrapbook.

56 Interview with Hugh Frank Radcliffe, 21 October 2009.

57 Radcliffe interview. Hugh said that he named one of his sons “Rip” after Raymond Allen (Rip) Radcliff, who had a 10-year major-league career (1934–43). He mistakenly thought they shared a common spelling of their last names.

58 Radcliffe interview.

59 Hugh came from a large family. He had ten siblings, and one of them did make it to the major leagues. His older sister, Emma Lou Radcliffe Boss (1922–2007), spent 17 years as an administrative assistant to Hank Aaron and the Atlanta Braves.

60 Georgia House of Representatives, HR 1258.

61 Georgia House of Representatives, HR 1258.

62 The Ogeechee League, which derived its name from Georgia’s Ogeechee River, operated in middle and southern Georgia during the 1940s and 1950s. Teams represented small towns such as Glenville, Greenwood, Louisville, Metter, Millen, Statesboro, Swainsboro, Sylvania, Thomson, and Wrightsville. According to an article (April 23, 2009) in the multititled Louisville News and Farmer & Wadley Herald & Jefferson (County) Reporter, the Louisville team bore the name “Mudcats” long before Columbus’s Southern League team adopted that nickname and retained it even after moving to North Carolina.

63 Interview with Hugh Frank Radcliffe, October 21, 2009.

The real value of the Game Score tool is different from what its inventor claimed. It was an astoundingly useful measure that, while it didn’t come anywhere close to describing everything you need to know about pitching, described something critical at the time and, importantly, was accessible to casual fans. 

James revealed the Game Score (GS) stat using data from the 1987 season to illustrate its use. The question I can answer for you easily is “Given all the changes in the decades since then, does the stat hold up as an indicator?” 

The answer, surprisingly, is “Yes. Unequivocally.” 

I’ll show you the particulars and explain why GS seems to hold up through pitching-rule changes, mutation of the ball, and the construction of new, mostly cozier ballparks that have led to what is popularly felt to be a hitter’s era. 

Later in this article, I’ll explain why GS is truly a significant measure that shows off the inventor’s brilliance and is something we should pay more attention to.

WHAT IS GAME SCORE AND HOW DO WE USE IT? 

Game Score is a measure of a starting pitcher’s performance, one that synthesizes the value of both a start’s quantity and its quality. 

The only widely distributed competitor is Quality Start, a binary (“yes,” it was a quality start; “no,” it wasn’t) measure. The Quality Start had a noble purpose: to free the starting pitcher from the oppression of the traditional won–lost record. And in its defense, it is simple to “measure”—a start of at least six innings where the pitcher gives up three or fewer earned runs is a Quality Start.

Its limits, though, are too constraining. The binary nature of the QS eliminates spectrum or shading. Further, the baseline for what constitutes a Quality Start should have been updated for the changed playing environment since MLB apparently juiced the ball after the 1993 season. (Since then, the average start is shorter and yields more runs on the average but still maintains an equal probability of helping the team win the game.) Game Score is more nuanced and useful. 

Bill James cleverly calibrated Game Score to a scale of 0 to 100 points, with 0 points being roughly the worst start a pitcher could have, 100 being the best, and 50 being the “average”. 

Graph 1 shows the frequency distribution for each Game Score, from 0 to 100, for the 2007 season. The peak incidence of Game Scores is between about 42 and 65, with more below than above. James has shown this shape to be pretty normal for distributions of baseball accomplishment. 

You may notice there are several Game Scores below the theoretical floor of zero. The low-end extremity for the 2007 season is a –12 delivered by Milwaukee’s promising Yovani Gallardo in an August 8 start against the Rockies in Denver. 

The high end was a 98 notched by Erik Bedard for Baltimore against the Rangers in Texas on July 7. 

James cleverly set up GS so that someone who had mastered sixth-grade math could compute it from a scorecard or a box score in about 15 seconds. GS is accessible because it doesn’t require long division or decimal math, unlike ERA, which does. And, again, you can get all the components from a newspaper box score—such as the following pitching line (which I’ve truncated, leaving in only the items you’d use) for a roughly average start. 

Here’s the fastest way to compute it. Each game starts at 50 (which we’ll roll in as the last piece of computation). 

• +1 point for each out recorded (3 points for each full inning, 1 point for each additional third of an inning). In the example, 7 x 3 = 21 points. 
• +2 points for each full inning completed after the fourth inning. In the example, three full innings, 3 x 2 = 6 points. 
• –2 points for each hit surrendered. In the example, 6 x –2 = –12 points. The sum of strikeouts minus walks (usually a positive number you add, sometimes a negative number you subtract). In the example, 2 – 1 = +1 point. 
• –4 points for each earned run and –2 points for each unearned run surrendered. In the example, 2 x = –4 = –8 for the earned runs, and 2 x –2 for the other, not earned, run, so –4, added up to –12. 
• +50 as the baseline the pitcher starts with.

So, in the preceding Shields example: 21 + 6 equals 27 for the length of the start; minus 12 for the hits equals 15; plus 1 for the strikeouts minus walks equals 16; minus 12 for the runs earned (and not) equals 4. Add 50 for the starting threshold, and the Game Score is 54, what James designed the system to describe as a start a bit above average. This GS number, as you will see later, argues that Shields’s start was above average in several ways, and the GS more closely measures the value of his start than ERA does (which, at 2.57 for the game, probably overstates his contribution), or won–lost record, which, at 0–0, screams an existential nothingness about Shields’s effort. 

GAME SCORE AS USED TODAY 

Today, Game Score is applied too infrequently. 

Unlike a lot of the other sabermetric stats that James and other researchers such as Dick Cramer and Pete Palmer invented or brought to public attention, GS hasn’t been internalized into the warp and weft of fan or researcher discussions. None of the half–dozen major-league organizations I’ve discussed pitching with seem to use it for much. James, I discovered after I finished the research for this study, uses it consistently in his annuals, The Bill James Gold Mine, though without basing a lot of significant observation on it. Researchers Mike Webber, Steve Treder, Rich Lederer, and Dan Fox have made concrete mentions. Sean Forman (who crafted a beautiful raw dataset for me to work from for this study) presents GS as part of the exhaustive game lines for pitchers on game-log pages of his incomparable Baseball Reference site. But no one I can find has made an effort to promote or headline a starting pitcher’s contribution to the team by using GS as a significant (and easy to “get”) starting point. 

My investigation has led me to the conclusion that GS reveals enough about a pitching start that researchers should explore it further—not just for other researchers but as a tool we can broadcast to the larger, less sabermetric population. 

HOW HAVE GAME SCORE’S AVERAGE RESULTS AND TAILS CHANGED WITH MLB’S OFFENSIVE EFFLORESCENCE? 

Remarkably, almost not at all. The changes have been small.1 

The change over the past 20 years for the mean average GS has changed less than a single point. The median Game Score in MLB for the 2007 season was 49. 

So it’s consistent over time. But what makes it a good stat to proliferate beyond the stathead tribe? I believe there are three prerequisites for deciding which statistics are worth trying to popularize. 

• The stat should mean something significant. 
• The stat should retain the meaning of its numbers when you apply it in varying contexts (such as league and season). 
• A stat one should try to popularize should not require the 50th-percentile fan to use a calculator. 

Further, the measure shouldn’t require adjustment by a pro, like Pete Palmer’s very valuable (but impossible to popularize) Adjusted Batting Runs or James’s own flotilla of Runs Created formulæ (about two dozen of them) that try to contextualize meaning over differing playing environments. 

Game Score, contrary to being a “garbage stat,” nails all three prerequisites. 

HOW MUCH HAVE GAME SCORES VARIED IN THE LAST 20 SEASONS? 

It’s fine to show that two seasons, 20 years apart, have a similar set of averages. But the average of any serious stat is never a truth in itself; the average is not the reality, though the average may illustrate a tiny facet of the reality. 

(An interesting aside of marginal relevance: For all the whining about the diminished endurance of starters, the numbers indicate that, while innings pitched per start is going down a little, the number of batters faced is essentially the same. See the chart in appendix C. It shows that plate appearances (batters faced) per start has gone down 1 per start in the past 20 years. A difference of 1 batter per start since then––when Michael Jackson was “Bad” and Twisted Sister was a hot ticket––and now.)

Before we explore how much Game Scores have varied over the years, it’s important to mention that the 1987 season, the one Bill James had as a backdrop for his tweaking the measure and sharing it, was an outlier itself. In 1987, there was an offensive uptick fueled by a homerun explosion. Sluggers like Kent Hrbek and Wally Joyner set their career highs in taters. So did more contact- oriented batters. Wade Boggs’s 24 home runs were more than twice his second-highest seasonal output. In between, gents such as Juan Samuel, whose 28 home runs that campaign eclipsed his second-most prolific season of 19 round trips, joined the Pounder’s Parade.2

But let me show you a chart that shows the rough variation of the individual components. It’s “rough” because one of the factors that shapes an individual Game Score result is the number of full innings from the fifth inning on that a pitcher labors. The following chart is a composite average: all starters’ stats combined, divided by the total number of starts. It is, therefore, not precise in cases where there’s a wide divergence in the distribution of outs recorded.3 We cannot derive the precise average Game Score from the average innings pitched per start because of the bonus for innings completed from the fifth on. 

But the numbers are close enough to be strong indicators of change in the composite GS and in all the measures except for the fifth-inning-on bonus. The fifth-inning-on bonus presented here is the composite, and therefore only an estimate. 

GS Points Difference from 1987

Negative numbers indicate an erosion of Game Score component averages. Positive numbers have raised the average GS since 1987. 

As you can see, none of the components varies even by a full point. The changes between the composite average in 1987 and 2007: 

• Shorter average outings by starting pitching shaved about a point (.9) from composite average Game Score. 
• More strikeouts per start and fewer walks per start added about half a point (.6) to composite average Game Score. 
• A lower number of unearned runs added a soupçon (.2) to composite average GS. 

There’s a legitimate argument that an exceptional baseline year, such as 1987, is a bad foundation because comparing a baseline with extraordinarily high offense to a year such as 2007, which was normal for a big offensive era, is going to dampen larger differences. So, what about 1988 (a particularly good year for pitchers) or 1994 (powered by probably the liveliest ball since the 1950s)? 

Both years were extreme within the evolving norm for Major League Baseball. And both years varied noticeably from Game Score norms since 1987. But neither varied by enough to render Game Score a stat that needs a proliferation of special variants to make GS deliver the thumbnail results it aims to produce. 

More slugging appears to have led to harder swinging, which, apparently, increased strikeouts per starter inning while diminishing walks per starter inning. And while gross numbers of hits have gone up, outings by starters have also become slightly shorter, offsetting to some degree the effects of the increase in strikeouts and decrease in walks. 

I also believe (but have no numbers to support) that management and coaching tend to counter the kinds of trends that have mutated the game since 1987. In an environment where homers are more prevalent—which, in turn, makes walks more costly— pitching coaches develop tactics to help their charges diminish walks. They invest more in studying ways to limit exposure to homers. And pitchers who are walkor homer-prone are marginally less likely to be drafted or invested in once drafted. The game, in sum, is an evolving system with some gravitational fields that tend to counteract disruptive trends. 

Whether you agree with that last supposition or not, you can see from the following table just how minor the changes to components of composite average Game Score have been in the past 20 seasons. 

GS Points Difference from 1987

Game Scores were higher in 1988, as the leagues sacrificed some hitting for pitching. But 1988 shows the biggest divergence in average Game Score from 1987 since, well, 1987: 2 points per start. After 1993, the average GS started coming down, but since 2001 it’s been hovering in a narrow range, with variation affecting average GS being under a single point.

The average Game Score for starters in a season has been stable, certainly stable enough to validate GS as a great tool to describe the performance of starting pitchers through changing contexts.

IT’S EASY TO COMPUTE AND CONSISTENT ENOUGH OVER TIME, BUT WHAT MAKES IT SIGNIFICANT ENOUGH TO PAY ATTENTION TO? 

The Game Score proves to be a magnificent indicator of the most important thing a starting pitcher can do: Give his team a chance to win the ballgame. Bill James knows this. (He’s written about it, tangentially.) Everyone else I cited who uses GS knows this, I think. But they don’t follow up and apply that knowledge broadly. 

Let me make the argument for the significance of GS this way. A starting pitcher’s Game Score correlates remarkably well with ability of the starter’s team to win. That is, if you chart the winning percentage  for major-league teams at each Game Score, you see the correlation between the starter’s GS and the team’s likelihood of winning—the higher the GS, the greater the probability the team will win the game.

A team win is baseball’s most basic currency. Anything a player does that increases the probability of his team winning is adding value.

The following chart reflects this distribution, showing the winning percentage for all games pitched by a starter at each Game Score. You’ll find the raw data for the chart as appendix A, at the end of the article. 

When James wrote his 1988 essay, he presented a table that showed the strong correlation between the starter’s Game Score and the team’s winning percentage. He used 10-point ranges to chunk the information. While this is sensible as a first cut at examining the results, I find his ranges more arbitrary than what he would have crafted were he looking for deeper significance. (With ranges such as 60–69 and 50–59, a game score of 62 is batched with a 68, six points away, but not with a 59, three points away.) I followed the pattern of his table for the 2007 data to show similarities and differences using his chosen ranges; they appear in their entirety as appendix B. Note, in the subset of that chart (see below), that every 10-point range features a higher win percentage than does the range below it, with one exception (the two bottom ranges for 1987, representing a small number of cases). The biggest difference worth noting between the 1987 and 2007 numbers is that Game Scores from 40 through 49 were 4 percent more likely to generate a win for the starter’s team in 2007 than in 1987. 

MEANINGFUL RANGES FOR GAME SCORES 

I think moving ranges are more flexible and show that, even when more finely graded, the correlation between increasing GS and increasing team wins holds up. While James shows fixed 10-point ranges, I’ll show you that the relationship between GS and team wins is clear even in more graduated pieces. 

The table below shows the percentage of games a team won in 2007 with a specific Game Score plus or minus 2. For example, the row that shows a game score of 49 +/–2 shows the win percentage for a team whose starter notched a GS of 51 through 47, while 50 +/–2 shows win percentage for a team that had a starter with any GS of 52 through 48.4 

It’s worth noting that, in the previous table, while James originally hoped to design a measure where a Game Score of 50 would win 50 percent of the games for the starter’s team, even at 47 +/–2 a team will win a little more than that. A glance at appendix A will confirm it’s not a fluke of the +/–2, but the rawer numbers show scores as low as 46 being good enough to support a team’s winning more than 50 percent of the time. 

SO IF IT IS IMPORTANT, HOW SHOULD WE USE IT?

Bill James himself has suggested using the tool to adjust one’s perception of a starter’s seasonal won–lost record. When he first wrote about the measure—back when Dirty Dancing blew away the box-office numbers for Gone with the Wind and Buddy Biancalana celebrated his age-27 season with an OPS+ of 3—James suggested tracking two stats derivative of GS, Tough Losses and Cheap Wins. He suggested a Tough Loss was a game where a starter posted a Game Score of 50 or better but got the loss, and a Cheap Win was a start where he got the victory with a GS under 50.

Percentage of Games Won by Team When Starter Has Specific GS Ranges, 2007

Every season is stuffed with instances of starters who pitch consistently well with poor run support and have losing records (or, at the other extreme, average less than 5 innings for 20 starts while yielding 4.3 runs each start and have an 8–7 record over them).5

What I like about James’s suggestion is its cleanliness. The break point at 50 seems logical, and it’s easy to remember. And any rational proposal to fix the popular misperception that the won–lost record of an individual pitcher holds a lot of insight into his quality is a worthwhile effort.

However, I don’t propose we make use of GS by proliferating these derivatives. For one thing, James knew even then that Game Scores of 50 would yield better than .500 results (as did a GS of 49). So I believe his anchor point is misplaced. In addition, I think there’s a middle band of Game Scores that should qualify for neither; a grey zone in the middle where the team’s game prospects are between “should be confident of winning” and “can expect to lose.” 

A DRAFT PROPOSAL 

I have a draft proposal for a season measure that’s a derivative of Game Score. 

The measure isn’t as tidy-looking as James’s break point at 50, and I think if I looked at the fine details of multiple years of game logs, I would probably tweak the break points. But here’s a straw man we can play with that delivers a new version of won–lost record, using Game Scores, that reflects each starter’s contributions to his team’s record better than do the won–lost records currently tracked. 

For the purpose of this proposal, I’ll give this measure the working name “Game Score Won–Lost” (GSWL, pronounced “Gaz–Wall”). Let me pitch how it works. 

For all starts where the pitcher earns a GS of 55 or higher, the pitcher earns a Game Score Win, recognizing a game where his start gave his team a clear chance to win, whether the team went on to win or not. 

For all games where the pitcher earns a GS of 43 or lower, the pitcher earns a Game Score Loss, a game where he set his team up to lose, whether they went on to lose or not. 

For the roughly one quarter of all starts that fall between (a GS of 54 through 44, what I’ll call “Game Score Tweeners”), split them down the middle into two halves. Assign one half to Game Score Wins and one half to Game Score Losses. If the Game Score Tweeners are an odd number, round the Wins half “up” and truncate the Losses half down. This is not capricious, it’s based on the fact that team winning percentage when the starter pitches a game that earns between 54 and 44 is .528, a little higher than even. 

Relation of Game Score to Team Wins, 2007

Total up the Game Score Wins and Game Score Losses and you get a season measure that looks like a traditional won–lost record, which I like because it’s easy for the uninitiated to map to an existing measure they think they understand. 

IS GSWL FAIR? IS IT ACCURATE? 

I think Game Score Won Lost (GSWL) is fair in that a pitcher gets credit for a “win” in the cases where the team can expect to win about three quarters of the time, and he gets a “loss” in the cases where his performance puts the team in a situation where they can expect to lose about three quarters of the time. 

We could just as easily ignore the Tweeners as divvy them up, but I lean toward leaving them in. For one thing, if you do, a pitcher’s GSWL more accurately reflects the number of starts the pitcher has (an improvement over the traditional W–L system). Parsing the leftover Tweener games allows you to allow for the pitchers who consistently throw in the middle range (2007 Kyle Kendrick, average GS = 50, 9 Tweeners of 20 starts) and reveals some differences from those who throw a higher concentration of GS Wins and GS Losses with the same average GS (2007 Ubaldo “No, You–Baldo” Jímenez, Average GS = 50, 2 Tweeners of 15 starts). 

So a GSWL that reflects number of starts helps a reader better ascertain quantity along with quality.

Kendrick labored more and achieved the same season average Game Score. With the Tweeners removed, the stat would broadcast that Jímenez worked a little more and achieved a more positive result for the season (same number of losses, a couple of more wins). With the Tweeners added in, Kendrick’s bigger workload is reified and he looks almost comparable on quality. And either is more informative than Quality Starts (Kendrick 13, Jímenez 9). 

Another cool side-benefit of including Tweeners is that the result delivers season won–lost counts that look more like twentieth-century baseball. There are 20-game winners using GSWL. Here are some final numbers for GSWL (with Tweeners) for the 2007 season, including all the 20-game GSWL winners.6

Starters, GSWL 20-Game Winners, 2007

This example shows that, while GSWL tends to confirm many preconceptions (the appearance of any of the top 9 on the previous table should be a surprise to no one who paid a lot of attention to the 2007 season), the measure allows us to find some overshadowed achievers. 

How can you not love the total justice of Matt Cain (median GS = 58) getting a GSWL of 22–9, the poor bustard having pitched in the top 15 percent of starters only to be embossed with a traditional W–L mark of 7–16, below even the dreaded Boom-Boom Beck Line. 

A measure is worthwhile only if it shows off accomplishment at both ends of the spectrum. The bottom of the GSWL table shows off prolific losers pretty well, I think. 

Starters, GSWL, Lowest Scores, 2007

There were only a pair of 20-game GSWL losers in 2007: the Phillies’ Adam Eaton (his 10–10 traditional W–L record was enhanced by the Phils’ ability to score in his starts, notching 3 or fewer runs in only 8 of his starts), and a surprising guest appearance by the Marlins’ Scott Olsen. Olsen’s 10–15 traditional W–L record was actually hiding some of the deficits in his overall game-by-game performance. Odalis “Friend of David Hasselhoff” Perez, GSWL 7–19 . . . proving, I think for all time, that, if you have really marginal stuff, “pitching to contact”7 is Russian roulette with six bullets. 

CONCLUSION 

I believe I’ve shown compelling evidence that supports my idea that Game Score is the single most useful measure that a broad range of fans can calculate in real time to gauge the value of a starter’s performance to his team in the most important measure of success: the team’s ability to win a game. 

• Game Score is a finer measure than Quality Start and appears to keep its relationship to winning through more contexts. 
• Game Score measures beautifully a starter’s ability to deliver an important goal: the likelihood of his team winning the game. 
• Game Score is calculated through universally accessible components, and the calculations required are accessible to all. Despite James’s humble stance about his invention, I believe it’s got some serious applications, and I’d like to see us popularize it beyond the SABR community.

JEFF ANGUS, a baseball writer and management consultant, is the author of “Management by Baseball: The Official Rules for Winning Management in Any Field” (HarperCollins, 2005).

Notes

1 I didn’t compute the 1987 mean. Bill James wrote it in his Game Score essay that appeared in the 1988 Baseball Abstract.

2 And 1987 was the year the Houston Astros gave up their explosion-in-a-paint-factory unis in favor of muted, corporate-dull duds; this fact has nothing to with the offensive surge.

3 So if, for example, in 1987, starters averaged 6 1/3 innings per start but with low variation and with 12 percent lasting under 5 innings (where they would start racking up bonus points for innings completed), while in 2007 starters averaged 6 innings per start but 19 percent didn’t complete the fifth innings, but more starts went deeper so as to equalize the average, these numbers would diverge from actuals, which I can’t compute for 1987 because I don’t have the raw data.

4 I combined all scores of 75 and above and all scores of 18 and lower because each GS in those areas is relatively scarce (each tail is 5 percent of the total) and there are many missing slots in those ranges.

5 Horacio Ramirez, Mariners, 2007.

6 Note that there were 30 starters who were GSWL 20-game winners, and there are 30 MLB teams. Coincidence, synchronicity or “Intelligent Design”? Only Carl Everett knows. Or merely thinks he does.

7  Grant Sterling said of pitching to contact, “Pitching to contact has exactly the same record of success as appeasing Hitler.” There’s no vital reason to cite this except it’s one of my favorite recent baseball quotes, because Dr. Sterling is one of the smartest baseball minds I know, and because I suspect it’s true for a lot more pitchers than pitching coaches would like to think.

The idea that the draft could generate so much attention was preposterous as recently as 1998. That was the first year that MLB even dared to release its draft list to the public the day the draft finished. 

I covered my first draft for Baseball America in 1997, as a truly peripheral part of the magazine’s coverage. I remember vividly how Allan Simpson—BA’s founding editor and the man who essentially invented coverage of the baseball draft—had white boards in his office, tracking the draft round by round. He’d get calls from scouts, college coaches, agents—even sometimes from clubs—with information about what players were picked where. He wrote them, almost always in pencil, it seemed, on his white boards, three years before Tim Russert and Florida and the 2000 Election made similar but smaller white boards immortal. 

We were the only complete source for this information. The next year we announced we’d be selling our draft lists and could fax them for the grand fee of $— to anyone interested. Within a week of our announcement, MLB announced it would release its list. We still made enough money off the “Draft Deluxe” offer to buy new desktop computers. 

Interest in the draft doesn’t always go hand in hand with knowledge about the draft. Technically the proceedings are spelled out in Rule 4 of MLB’s Professional Baseball Agreement—just ahead of the section on the Rule 5 draft—but most people call it the June draft or the amateur draft. Technically, its name is the First-Year Player Draft. 

That change was made in the late 1990s, to close a draft loophole and to keep amateurs from becoming free agents. The draft itself, from its inception in 1965 to the present, always has been a reaction to the way major-league clubs procure amateur talent. That’s its past history, and it appears to be its future as well.

The draft was a new concept only to baseball. It came to football first (1936), and the two other major professional leagues in basketball (1947) and hockey (1963) already had followed suit by 1964, when baseball decided to act. In 1964, led by the $205,000 bonus the Angels gave to Wisconsin outfielder Rick Reichardt, major-league clubs paid more than $7 million to amateur players—more than was spent on major-league salaries. 

Before the draft, procuring talent was on a first-come, first-served basis. Scouts scoured the country, going to games, getting to know players’ families and competing with each other to cultivate the best relationship, make the best offer, and sell their organization as the most attractive one for an up-and-coming ballplayer. Not surprisingly, the system tended to reinforce competitive imbalance. The Cardinals, Yankees and other clubs that had extensive scouting networks for amateurs and that recognized the value of player development in their minor-league systems thrived; those clubs that didn’t, such as the postwar Cubs, Indians, and Athletics, were mired in the second division in what seemed to be perpetuity. 

The draft helped change that, giving the worst teams a shot at the best talent. The A’s drafted Rick Monday first overall in 1965 and five rounds later took another Arizona State Sun Devil, Sal Bando. Later, with their twentieth selection, they drafted and signed Ohio prep shortstop Gene Tenace. Only a year later, drafted second overall, Reggie Jackson (yet another Sun Devil) joined the organization, and in 1967 the A’s took Vida Blue, in the second round, out of a Louisiana high school. The foundations of their early 1970s dynasty were laid in those first few draft classes. 

Of course MLB wasn’t installing a draft out of egalitarian dreams; it wanted to cut those signing bonuses, and the way to do it was to give amateur players one club to negotiate with, instead of twenty. In that, the draft worked exceedingly well. Monday, the draft’s first number-one overall pick, got a $100,000 bonus, or less than half of what Reichardt had received as a free agent in 1964. Monday’s bonus record lasted until 1975 (Danny Goodwin, Angels, $125,000), and Reichardt’s pre-draft record wasn’t broken until 1979. That record—a $208,000 bonus for Yankees draftee Todd Demeter—wasn’t even publicly known until 25 years later. A second-round pick, Demeter hit just .173 in a 34-game trial in Double A. 

Baseball kept bonuses down, no matter who the players were or how talented they were. Scouts universally lauded Darryl Strawberry as the best talent out of Los Angeles in years, and the Mets gave him a $200,000 bonus in 1980, still short of Reichardt’s mark. None of the celebrated members of the 1984 Olympic baseball team broke the record—not Mark McGwire, not Will Clark. 

The business of holding the line on bonuses began to lead to an influx of talent to college baseball, as players who turned down what they thought were insufficient offers out of high school found their way to NCAA play. It led to a golden era for college baseball. Roger Clemens led Texas to the 1983 national championship, two years after the Mets drafted him in the twelfth round out of San Jacinto (Texas) Junior College. Instead of signing him, the Mets faced Clemens twice in the 1986 World Series with Boston. The Giants could have had Barry Bonds out of high school, in 1982, but a difference of less than $10,000 in negotiations prompted Bonds to attend Arizona State. The Pirates got him with the sixth overall pick three years later. 

On and on it went. In 1987, Ken Griffey Jr. brought obvious talent and a big-league bloodline to become one of the most celebrated number-one overall picks ever. Still, the Mariners gave him a bonus of just $160,000. 

Only Bo Jackson, as Heisman Trophy winner with an NFL future, could get more money out of a major league club, after 22 years, than Reichardt. The Royals spent a fourth-round pick on Jackson and then bought him away from football (temporarily) with a major league contract worth $1,066,000, with $100,000 as a signing bonus. 

The bonus record wasn’t broken again until 1988, when the Padres signed right-hander Andy Benes for $235,000. Two high-school pitchers, Steve Avery (Braves, $211,000) and Reid Cornelius (Expos, $225,000) signed for bonuses that exceeded Reichardt’s old mark. 

In 1989 bonuses started to climb to the point that current-day fans have become accustomed to when the Orioles and number-one overall pick Ben McDonald of Louisiana State reached an impasse. The Orioles finally relented and signed McDonald for an $825,000 major-league deal with a $350,000 bonus, a record broken days later by John Olerud. The Blue Jays signed their third-round pick Olerud for a major-league deal with a $575,000 bonus. 

That began the draft’s Common Era, for teams now truly started to take signing-bonus demands into account. In 1990, Texas prep right-hander Todd Van Poppel was the consensus top talent available, and the Atlanta Braves held the first pick. The Braves at that time wanted Van Poppel but decided they couldn’t meet his perceived demands or dissuade him from his commitment to the University of Texas. Instead they chose Florida prep shortstop Larry Wayne Jones of Jacksonvile, whom everyone already called Chipper. 

Van Poppel, though, signed with Oakland for a $500,000 bonus and a major-league contract with value of $1.2 million overall. He wound up with a journeyman career, while Jones has an MVP Award and more than 400 home runs while helping give the Braves one of the longest runs of success in team sports history. 

Van Poppel’s contract set the stage for 1991, when the Yankees held the number-one overall pick for the second time ever. They drafted North Carolina prep lefthander Brien Taylor and then shattered the bonus record by giving him a $1.55-million straight bonus. That was more than any of the big-league contracts up to that point and almost three times Olerud’s bonus mark. 

How much were bonuses increasing overall? In 1990, just three years after Griffey and his $160,000 bonus, every first-round pick signed for at least $175,000. Bonuses continued to climb until 1996, when all hell broke loose, at least in terms of the draft. Because of violations to Rule 4(E) of the Professional Baseball Agreement, which required that teams make a formal contract offer to every pick within fifteen days of the draft, MLB had to grant several top talents free agency. 

While three of the players—pitchers Braden Looper and Eric Milton and catcher A. J. Hinch—ended up signing with the teams that drafted them while MLB mulled its options, four others were set free. The loophole free agents included San Diego State first baseman Travis Lee, completing a stint with the Olympic team, and high-school pitchers Matt White, John Patterson, and Bobby Seay. Lee had been the number-two overall pick in the draft, while White (number 7) ranked as the top high-school pitching talent. Patterson (number 5) and Seay (number 12) were consensus first-round talents as well.

The 1996 draft also was the first for the expansion Arizona Diamondbacks and Tampa Bay Devil Rays, who were eager to establish an identity and didn’t even have to field major-league clubs until 1998. The confluence of free agency and new teams created the perfect storm, as Lee signed first for a $10-million contract with the Diamondbacks. White, signing with Tampa Bay, then topped him with a $10.2-million bonus, while Patterson (Diamondbacks, $6.075 million) and Seay ($3 million, Rays) followed with their own mega-deals. In comparison, the number-one overall pick that year, Kris Benson, signed for $2 million. 

Only White never reached the majors, but neither Lee, Seay nor Patterson had any lasting big-league impact. White reached Triple A and hurt his shoulder while trying to make the final 2000 Olympic-team roster. 

“I can’t imagine what it would be like now with the media attention and the interest there is now in the draft,” said White, a volunteer assistant coach at Georgia Tech in 2010 and hired in June 2010 as pitching coach at the University of Michigan. “I heard my share of criticism for how my career turned out, but I’m sure it would have been greater with the amount of attention the draft receives now.”1

The next year, the Boras Corp. represented Florida State outfielder J.D. Drew, who put together the first (and so far only) 30-homer, 30-steals season in NCAA Division I history. Drew wasn’t going to use Benson’s $2-million bonus as a benchmark; he was using the numbers the loophole free agents got. But when the Phillies took him second overall, they were using Benson’s number. Acrimonious negotiations followed that never came close to bridging the near-$7 million gap between the two sides. 

Drew wound up blazing a trail to the draft through independent leagues; at first, Boras hoped this would make Drew a free agent. MLB closed that loophole by renaming the proceedings the First-Year Player Draft, making independent leaguers such as Drew subject to the draft. Drew was part of the 1998 draft and was picked fifth overall this time, by the Cardinals. Eventually, he signed a $7-million big-league contract with a $3-million bonus, which was soon surpassed by that of 1998’s number-one overall pick, Pat Burrell of the University of Miami. He signed with—you guessed it—the Phillies, for a $3.15-million bonus and an $8-million contract. 

“Baseball has made an admission that they’re not paying for talent,” Boras later said. “They’re paying for jurisdiction. That’s where the draft is wrong.” 

By 1999, it was noteworthy when a first-round pick didn’t receive a $1-million signing bonus. (The only such pick in 1999 was Blue Jays’ first-rounder Alex Rios out of Puerto Rico.) From 1989 through 1999, the average payout for first-round picks increased from $176,000 to about $1.81 million. 

Money has continued to be one of the biggest themes of the draft in the 2000s, but the money isn’t what gets all the attention anymore. Now, it’s the talent, as fans and baseball media have started to tune into the draft as never before. Major League Baseball’s past secrecy was a major reason that media rarely gave the draft much attention—MLB didn’t want any. It contended that more draft coverage drove up signing bonuses, and didn’t publicize the draft list in part to keep colleges from going out and recruiting drafted players. 

But toward the end of the decade, MLB began to realize that times were changing. In 1998, it actually released its draft list, and it didn’t change its mind. The explosion of new media prompted more changes and openness. In 2001, Southern California ace righthander Mark Prior brought the draft more attention with a remarkable season and awkward pre-draft negotiations with the Twins, who had the number-one overall pick. The NCAA ended up questioning him about his eligibility the night before his College World Series start and after the Twins, citing Prior’s perceived bonus demands, passed over him. Instead, they went for hometown talent Joe Mauer, an athletic catcher who had a Florida State football scholarship waiting for him. 

Mauer signed for $5.15 million, which by this time wasn’t even a record—the White Sox had given outfielder (and Stanford quarterback) Joe Borchard $5.3 million the year before. But Prior, picked second overall by the Cubs, received more than twice that amount, signing a $10.5-million major-league contract with a $4-million bonus. 

In 2002, MLB puts its draft on public display for the first time, as MLB Radio on MLB.com broadcast the proceedings. It was raw—just the conference call from New York and the thirty clubs on the phone, drafting away. (This writer and Baseball America colleague Will Lingo co-hosted the proceedings.) 

In 2007, the draft finally left its conference-call roots behind. ESPN joined with MLB to broadcast the draft from Disney’s Wide World of Sports in Orlando with a 2 P.M. broadcast. There were even three players on hand for the show, led by the third overall selection, Josh Vitters. The players followed their counterparts in other sports, posing for photos with the commissioner. 

“It’s a great day for us, and this is such an important day,” Commissioner Bud Selig said. “This is a special event, and we want to communicate that as best as possible to all of our fans. This is really a dramatic manifestation of how the sport has improved. This will get bigger and bigger.”2

In terms of attention and money, it certainly has. Strasburg was the draft’s biggest star in 2009, as he surpassed Prior in many ways, going first overall to the beleaguered Nationals. He wound up signing a major league contract worth more than $15 million with a $7.5-million bonus, giving him both the largest contract in draft history and the largest bonus for a player who signed with the team that drafted him. 

All along, MLB has attempted to keep bonuses from spiraling out of control, even as they surge ever higher. Several times, MLB unilaterally has passed sweeping (or at times minor) changes in draft rules, only to have them struck down when challenged because the changes were not collectively bargained. While the Players Association does not represent amateurs, draft picks are tied to free-agent compensation, and the union has argued successfully that, in essence, this makes the draft its business. 

Because both sides have had bigger issues to deal with, the draft has never become a focal point of negotiations for a collective bargaining agreement. Instead, MLB has moved toward its recommended bonus slots, first begun in 2000, when Sandy Alderson was MLB’s executive vice president for baseball operations. Alderson gathered scouting directors for what MLB termed “negotiating training,” and the commissioner’s office began recommending signing bonuses for players chosen in the first three rounds. They also forced scouting directors to report above-slot bonus agreements to the commissioner’s office, essentially submitting them for approval. 

Eventually, MLB expanded the slots to the first five rounds, with the bottom slot of the fifth round extending out as a perceived slot maximum for the rest of the draft. Clubs are subject to fines only if they pay “over slot” without notifying MLB. Other efforts to rein in bonuses included the 2007 introduction of a signing deadline. Previously, players could negotiate until they attended college classes, with no uniform date. Players who had exhausted their college eligibility, or who renounced their eligibility (a new Boras Corp. strategy), could hold out all fall, winter, and spring, right up until a week before the next draft. (Jered Weaver and Stephen Drew, two of the top talents in the 2004 draft, both went that route, signing with the Angels and Diamondbacks, respectively, just before the beginning of the one-week “closed period” in 2005.) 

So for 2007, MLB set August 15 as a uniform signing date. The idea was that less time to negotiate gave the teams more leverage over players and their agents. The decision also killed the draft-and-follow process, a system whereby teams could draft high-school or junior-college players, “follow” them through the next season, and then sign them (or not) before the next draft. 

Despite the changes, the 2007 draft brought more giant contracts, such as the $7-million major-league contract the Tigers gave to New Jersey prep right-hander Rick Porcello. It tied Josh Beckett’s 1999 deal for the highest amount ever given to a prep pitcher. The Yankees then gave out the biggest contract in draft history pre-Strasburg, to right-hander Andrew Brackman, a 6-foot-10 North Carolina State product. Brackman, who also played two seasons of ACC basketball and had NBA potential thanks to his size, signed for a $3.35-million bonus as part of a major-league contract with roster bonuses that would guarantee Brackman $13 million as long as he didn’t jump to basketball. 

The slotting system was still in place as the 2010 draft approached. However, during its ten-year run, MLB and the union have had two CBA negotiations pass peacefully, with no work stoppage. With the 2012 CBA negotiations fast approaching and the sport’s fiscal health looking relatively strong, the draft looms as one of the more important issues of the next CBA. 

Scouting directors are loath to speculate on the record about the draft’s future, and they don’t often agree on the changes they’d like to see. The repeated scandals in Latin American player procurement—from age changes to bonus skimming by agents and club officials—have brought calls for an international draft, or for international players to be incorporated into the current First-Year Player Draft. (It’s happened before, as bonus escalation in Puerto Rico prompted MLB in 1989 to make players from the island commonwealth subject to the draft.) 

Other proposals for changes to the draft include the formalization of draft slots, making them “hard,“ as is the case with the NBA’s draft contracts; a significant reduction in rounds from the current maximum of fifty; the ability of clubs to trade draft picks; and overall caps on spending for organizations on scouting and player development together, a salary cap for everything not including major-league salary.

“[The draft] is an area that will be of great interest in the next round of negotiations,” Rob Manfred, baseball’s executive vice president for labor relations, told the New York Times in 2009. “I’m not going to speculate as to what our proposals are going to be the next time around, but I will say the purpose of the draft is to make sure the weakest team gets the best player.”3

Of course, that’s only one point of the draft. The other always has been to keep the amount the clubs have to pay players as low as possible. 

More telling perhaps than the effort to divine future CBA negotiations are the other trends that are shaping up around the draft. MLB has started operating, on a limited basis, some of its own showcase events, tournaments, or all-star games that gather amateur players in one place for teams to scout. 

Agents would resist, but eventually some of these events—USA Baseball’s Tournament of Stars, perhaps—will evolve into a scouting combine, similar to the NFL’s combine. MLB could use such a combine for medical evaluations (such as standard eye exams), for drug testing (currently 200 players MLB deems “top prospects” are drug-tested around the country), and of course for evaluating players’ physical talent. 

The overall thrust appears to be an attempt by MLB and its clubs to get more control over the draft in all phases. Every attempt in the past—to control players, to control bonuses—has had unintended consequences, because, when push comes to shove, teams need talent, and players are the ones who provide it. Because it costs so much more to pay established big-leaguers rather than less experienced ones who aren’t arbitration-eligible, it still makes financial sense for a club to pay a sizable, market bonus to a player it wants and to get him under control for the early part of his career. Even if it means going above slot.

JOHN MANUEL is co-editor of Baseball America, where he has worked since September 1996. He has covered everything at the magazine and website from college baseball and prospect rankings to the Olympics and the draft.

BEST DRAFTS EVER

By the Baseball America staff

1. DODGERS 1968

The best, and it’s not really close. The Dodgers assembled an amazing collection of stars as well as solid big-leaguers, with a total of fifteen players who at least made appearances in the majors. Davey Lopes (second round) from the January secondary phase, Bill Buckner (second) from the June regular phase, and Steve Garvey (first) and Ron Cey (third) from the June secondary phase were the stars, but longtime big-leaguers like Tom Paciorek, Joe Ferguson, Doyle Alexander, Geoff Zahn, and Bobby Valentine were also part of the haul. 

2. TIGERS 1976

Like the 1968 Dodgers class, the Tigers set themselves apart with quality and quantity. Alan Trammell (second round), Dan Petry (fourth), and Jack Morris (fifth) formed the heart of Detroit’s 1984 World Series champions, and January first-rounder Steve Kemp also had a nice career. Even the best drafts have players who got away, though: Seventh-rounder Ozzie Smith would have been a nice addition, but he didn’t sign until the next year, when the Padres took him. 

3. RED SOX 1976

This draft stands apart from the two ahead of it because it features a Hall of Famer, five-time batting champion Wade Boggs. He was an all-time bargain as a seventh-rounder, but the Red Sox also found two quality left-handers in first-rounder Bruce Hurst and John Tudor, who was their third-round pick in the secondary phase of the January draft. 

4. INDIANS 1989 

This is one of the most interesting drafts in history because, even though it turned out as one of the best ever, it led to the firing of the scouting director (Chet Montgomery) who oversaw it. First-round pick Calvin Murray was considered unsignable, but the Indians took him anyway—and didn’t sign him. That was bad, but Cleveland more than made up for it with ten big-leaguers after that, including Jim Thome in the thirteenth round and Brian Giles in the seventeenth. The Indians’ scouting staff was also notable because it included at least two future scouting directors (Roy Clark, Donnie Mitchell) and a future GM in John Hart. 

5. CUBS 1984

The Cubs found eight future big-leaguers, but the overwhelming bulk of the value in this group comes from two pitchers who, amazingly enough, are still pitching in the big leagues now. Right-hander Greg Maddux (second round) and left-hander Jamie Moyer (sixth) don’t fit the prototype for draftable high-school pitchers, but they’ve combined for 585 major-league wins. 

6. RED SOX 1968

A great draft year tends to help multiple teams, and this is one of three 1968 classes to make our top twenty. Boston found four All-Stars in the June regular phase (a feat matched only by the 1990 White Sox): Lynn McGlothen (third round), Cecil Cooper (sixth), Ben Oglivie (eleventh) and Bill Lee (twenty-second). And John Curtis, a first-rounder in the June secondary phase, pitched fifteen years in the big leagues. 

7. RED SOX 1983

The third of four Red Sox classes in the top twenty, this one is built mostly on the success of Roger Clemens, who was the nineteenth overall pick in the June regular phase. But Ellis Burks, a first-rounder in the January regular phase who played eighteen major-league seasons, pushes it into the top ten. 

8. PADRES 1981

First-round pick Kevin McReynolds and June secondary pick John Kruk had nice major-league careers, but the big score was a player who was better known for his basketball skills at San Diego State. Tony Gwynn turned his focus to baseball when the Padres made him a third-round pick in June, and he was in the big leagues after little more than a year in the minors. 

9. YANKEES 1990

The career of first-rounder Carl Everett didn’t take off until the Marlins grabbed him in the 1992 expansion draft, but the signing of two draft-and-follows the next May—Andy Pettitte and Jorge Posada—provide foundation pieces for the Yankees’ success of the late 1990s. 

10. TWINS 1989

One of three 1989 draft hauls in the top twenty, the Twins drafted two AL Rookies of the Year in Chuck Knoblauch (first round) and Marty Cordova (tenth) as well as two 20-game winners in Denny Neagle (third) and Scott Erickson (fourth). And 52nd-rounder Denny Hocking—drafted as a catcher— became one of the lowest-drafted players to reach the majors.

Adapted from “Head of the Classes” by Tracy Ringolsby, BaseballAmerica.com, 25 June 2008.

Notes

1 Matt White, interview with John Manuel, May 2010.

2 Quoted in “Draft 2007: First Round Review Prep Class, Lefthanders Rule the Day,” by John Manuel, Baseball America, 7 June 2007.

3 David Waldstein, “N.B.A. Could Be Model for New Baseball Draft,” New York Times, 18 August 2009, B10.

Two seasons ago, I witnessed the Florida Marlins attempt to execute a classic Earl Weaver maneuver. It was the fifth inning of a game in Milwaukee. The Marlins, down 1–0, had runners on first and third with two outs. As the pitcher was winding up for the next batter, I nudged my buddy in the seat next to me and drew his attention to the situation. I’d heard the former Baltimore manager detail the play on a radio show some years before. He’d have the guy on first get himself caught in a rundown; meanwhile, the guy on third steals home. Weaver said they practiced the play only once a year, in spring training, but everybody was expected to know it and be ready for the situation any time throughout the season. 

The brief discussion may have been lost on my buddy, at least the part about Earl Weaver. He asked if that was the same guy who had been kicked out of all those games way back when; he thought he had seen a few YouTube clips that he described as “hilarious.”

My buddy’s knowledge of Weaver, who retired from managing twenty-four years ago, probably ends with the video clips. In that respect, he’s probably no different from the people who have tuned in to YouTube nearly half a million times to witness the hilarity. One clip isn’t a video so much as a series of still photos strung together to go along with an old recording of Weaver’s radio show, The Manager’s Corner. That particular episode might as well have been scripted by David Mamet for the way Weaver spews profanity. He tears apart the idea of having speed on the basepaths, digs at Terry Crowley and how lucky he is to be in baseball, and finally gives Alice from Norfolk some rather pointed advice about her love life when all she was looking for was some pointers about growing tomatoes. 

The other clip is of an infamous fit Weaver threw on September 17, 1980, at Baltimore’s Memorial Stadium. What unfolds is all too familiar regarding Weaver’s onfield reputation: He storms out of the dugout and erupts in umpire Bill Haller’s face: “You and your crew are here for one reason only—to fuck us!” That happens within the first 30 seconds of the three-minute clip, and it’s enough for Haller to run Weaver for the fourth time. Haller was purportedly featured in a documentary being filmed at the time and so was wearing a microphone that captured nearly every word of the obscenity-soaked tirade. What had Haller done to incur Weaver’s wrath? He’d called a balk on Mike Flanagan. There was one out in the top of the first inning.  

Some would say the YouTube clips are a fitting legacy for Weaver. The audio clip, though, to accompany the montage of still photos is not to be believed. Baltimore sportswriter Rick Maese wrote about it in the Baltimore Sun on May 23, 2008. He found that it was a prank set up by Weaver and Orioles broadcaster Tom Marr. It was inadvertently leaked at one point and continues to fool casual Internet surfers, fueled no doubt by Weaver’s reputation as, to quote Maese, an “ornery cuss.” The question about gardening, that was a reference to the tomatoes Weaver and groundskeeper Pat Santarone grew beyond the outfield fences at Memorial Stadium. 

The Haller clip is a different story. It is but one example of the 94 ejections Weaver accumulated throughout his 18-year managerial career. The total still stands as the American League record. (Bobby Cox holds the MLB record at 151 and counting, at the end of the 2009 season.) The number can’t be ignored in any discussion of the combative manager, especially in light of some of the circumstances under which the ejections occurred. Weaver began to earn notoriety in the mid-1960s when he was thrown out of each game in a three-game series while managing at double-A Elmira. (That was enough for Orioles owner Jerry Hoffberger to ask, when he was considering hiring Weaver as manager, how Weaver could manage his team when he couldn’t manage to stay in the dugout long enough.) In 1969, Weaver argued balls and strikes with umpire Shag Crawford and became the first manager in more than sixty years to be ejected from a World Series game. Ron Luciano ran Weaver early in game one of a doubleheader in 1975, and then ran him again during the lineup meeting prior to the start of game two. Weaver then got ejected the next day, thus giving the manager an unofficial record for the most ejections over the shortest amount of time. (Weaver scored two more ejections that year to set his personal season record of ten.)1 Perhaps fearing that he wasn’t getting enough international exposure, Weaver was once thrown out of an exhibition game in Japan. 

But it wasn’t just the ejections that built Weaver’s reputation—many times it was the antics that followed. He kicked enough dirt to start another Dust Bowl, but that was the least of his histrionics. He once shredded a rule book on the pitcher’s mound and even went as far as twice striking umpire Terry Cooney in the face in 1982. The latter action earned Weaver a one-week suspension and $2,000 fine. It was the fourth suspension of his career. Weaver referred to it as a “vacation” granted by AL president Lee MacPhail. The scope of Weaver’s carryings on was so great that it’s probably hard for at least one other manager not to have duplicated any one thing he did on being ejected. Some might argue that former Pirates skipper Lloyd McClendon outdid Weaver when he pulled a base out of the ground and took it with him after he was tossed from a game in 2001. Not so; Weaver did the same thing in 1963.  

Given the weight the ejections and antics lend to his legacy, it’s easy to forget that Weaver has humble roots—he came to baseball as a working-class boy from the streets of St. Louis. As a child in the 1930s, he worked hauling uniforms back and forth between his father’s dry-cleaning business and the clubhouses of the St. Louis Browns and the Cardinals. He fell in love with the Gashouse Gang at a young age and dreamed of nothing but becoming a professional ballplayer. Weaver eventually became a standout player at Beaumont High School in St. Louis and played second base in the minor leagues for almost a decade before realizing, as he said, “I wasn’t going to make the majors as a player.”2 He went on to manage at every level in the Orioles organization before finally being brought in to manage Baltimore, replacing Hank Bauer midway through the 1968 season. 

Baltimoreans know all this, though, and will forget neither how hard Weaver worked to get to the Orioles dugout nor all he accomplished once he got there. They were the ones who saw Weaver as their guy, as the literal small guy sweating his way through life with an unwavering work ethic and who rarely worked with more than a one-year contract. They dubbed the diminutive dynamo “The Earl of Baltimore.” It was those same fans who cheered wildly and almost brought Weaver to tears when he delivered his Hall of Fame acceptance speech in August 1996. Standing behind the podium, speaking in front of his boyhood idols Enos Slaughter and Stan Musial, Weaver implored the fans, “Please don’t make me cry, now. I don’t want to cry.”3 The Oriole faithful knew that Weaver was right where he belonged, and it wasn’t just his 1,480 wins that got him there. They knew that, over the course of his career, Weaver developed a system that not only defined Orioles baseball but had a significant impact on how the game was managed. 

Weaver was one of the first managers to make extensive use of statistics; he pored over them endlessly as he tried to find anything that would give him an advantage over an opponent. Sometimes those advantages came at the cost of a player’s ego, but Weaver made no apologies. An excellent example: Substituting a hitter like Chico Salmon for MVP Boog Powell when the Orioles faced Mickey Lolich. To Weaver, who described the odd substitution in his book Weaver on Strategy, it was a no-brainer. Salmon’s .300 batting average, .349 on-base percentage, and .400 slugging percentage against Lolich towered over Powell’s paltry .178/.211 /.278. The same applied to slugger Lee May. When Weaver “went to the books” (as the Oriole players used to say), he saw that May hit a sickly .095 against Luis Tiant. To hear Weaver tell it, “No way he’s going to be in the lineup against Tiant when I got [another] guy who hits his junk for about .420.”4 In a similar regard, Weaver would move Mark Belanger higher up in the batting order when facing Jim Kern. Belanger hit .625/.684 /.625 against Kern; he was otherwise (that is, after subtracting his 10-for-16 against Kern) a .226 lifetime batter. Weaver tolerated Belanger’s low average in the first place because Belanger was an outstanding defender who won eight Gold Gloves at shortstop.5

Weaver was also a renowned judge of baseball talent. Frank Robinson, one of six Hall of Famers Weaver managed, said in a Time magazine article that Weaver’s talent went far beyond realizing who the best athlete was or what combinations made the best starting lineup.6 He delved deep into the question of who was the best man to get a hit after sitting on the bench for a week, what pinch-runner could steal a base in the late innings, and who could play more than one position if there was an injury. “Nobody in baseball can put all those elements together better than Earl Weaver,” Robinson concluded. “Because nobody can judge baseball talent as well as he can.” Robinson may as well have said the name Terry Crowley, the same player Weaver ripped on his fake radio broadcast. Part of what Weaver said wasn’t fake at all—he kept the journeyman around because he knew Crowley could sit on the bench and then break something open late in a game with his clutch hitting. But it wasn’t just Crowley that cemented Weaver’s reputation. He was but one of a boatload of no-names and castoffs from other teams whom Weaver used once he dug through his files to see who could do what in whatever situation. Weaver credits his ability to evaluate talent with the epiphany he experienced when he realized he would never play in the majors. In the same Time article, he said, “Right then I started becoming a good baseball person, because when I came to recognize, and more important, accept my own deficiencies, then I could recognize other players’ inabilities and learn to accept them, not for what they can’t do, but for what they can do.” 

Adding to this, Weaver also had a knack for exploiting loopholes he found in the rules. Whether it was a survival skill that carried over from the Depression or something that developed in his mind as he scrambled to find any way to compensate for his size on the field, Weaver’s conniving became one of his best-known characteristics. In 1975, he adjusted for Mark Belanger’s weak bat during late-season division races by listing Royle Stillman to hit leadoff and play shortstop on the road. Stillman, who was called up from the minors once rosters expanded, hit .500 (3-for-6) in those situations, so he usually gave the team an immediate advantage. When the Orioles took the field in the bottom of the first, Belanger would trot out to short and hit leadoff the rest of the game. The league never stopped Weaver from using that particular ploy (he did it again in 1979), but it did pull the plug on another one of his strategies. In 1980, he fell into the habit of listing Steve Stone as his designated hitter.7 The motivation was simple: If the opposing pitcher was knocked out of the game early, Weaver wouldn’t lose a position player if he wanted to change the DH to match up better with the reliever. It was perfectly legal, but the league passed a rule against it, citing that the stunt distorted hitting statistics.

Of the three books to his credit, it’s Weaver on Strategy that has left the greatest impression on baseball minds since its publication in 1984. It’s packed with insights and observations from Weaver’s career, but there are also ten laws that delineate his managerial philosophy. Two of them prove his preference for big plays and big innings: The easiest way around the bases is with one swing of the bat; and, If you play for one run, that’s all you’ll get. He has two laws for pitching, one of which justifies his use of the four-man rotation; the other designates long relief as the best place for a rookie pitcher. He addresses defense by noting that the key step for an infielder is the first one—to the left or right, before the ball is hit. Weaver even has a law for dealing with his constant nemeses: The job of arguing with the umpire belongs to the manager, because it won’t hurt the team if he gets thrown out of the game. 

Though his laws are sound, Weaver was best known for his succinct managerial philosophy: Pitching, defense, and the three-run homer. The catch phrase was as short as the man himself and packed every bit as much punch thanks to his ability to stack the Orioles year after year with players to supplement the three-pronged attack. Weaver’s pitchers won 20 games on 22 occasions (six went on to win the Cy Young Award), his fielders won 34 Gold Gloves, and his clubs were in the top five in home runs in the American League 11 times. All told, it was enough for him to pile up a .583 winning percentage, six division titles, four pennants, and the 1970 World Series championship. 

If you watch the Haller clip on YouTube long enough, you’ll hear the assailed umpire make a comment that cuts deep beneath Weaver’s bristly façade. It comes after Weaver, once again in Haller’s face, promises that it is he who will be remembered when all is said and done; it is he who will be in the Hall of Fame. Haller smugly inquires, “What are they gonna put you in the Hall for? Fuckin’ up World Series?” 

Haller is most likely referring to Game 2 of the 1979 Series when Baltimore and Pittsburgh were tied 2–2 in the bottom of the eighth. The O’s had runners on first and second base; John Lowenstein was at bat. If Weaver had called for a bunt, the Orioles would have been in excellent position to plate one or more runs to keep the pressure on the Pirates. Instead, Lowenstein hit into a double play and erased both baserunners. The next batter grounded out. Pittsburgh scored a run in the top of the ninth and then held on to win 3–2 and tie the series at a game apiece. The victory gave the Pirates a much needed toehold in the Series before they eventually overcame a 3-games-to-1 deficit to claim the championship. If ever there was a time for Weaver to stray from his “pitching, defense, and three-run homer” philosophy, it was probably then. I doubt the lesson was lost on the astute Weaver. Perhaps it was the genesis for his sixth law: Don’t play for one run unless you know that run will win a ballgame. 

Unfortunately for Weaver, that wasn’t the only World Series gaffe to which Haller could be referring. Weaver took criticism for having Boog Powell play throughout the ’71 Series despite suffering an injury that caused obvious pain every time he was at bat. Powell was a crucial part of the O’s slugging attack, but he hit an anemic .111 for the Series, going 0-for-4 and striking out twice in Game 7, when Baltimore fell to Pittsburgh 2–1.

Though Haller ejected Weaver five times, the two were merely enemies. There was another umpire who was easily Weaver’s archenemy: Ron Luciano. Their feud went as far back as the minor leagues. (It was Luciano who had tossed Weaver three games in a row in Elmira.) Weaver couldn’t stand Luciano’s flamboyant style, and at one time even threatened to fine any Oriole player who talked to Luciano during a game. Luciano once described Weaver’s approach to the game as religious; his outrageous behaviors, then, were a reaction to an umpire’s sacrilegious actions. Weaver never could convert Luciano. Instead, Luciano exorcised Weaver from games on seven different occasions once they both reached the major-league level. Luciano’s description was neither his final word on Weaver nor his most acerbic. In a sports-themed book published shortly after his retirement in 1980, Luciano was asked to rank the five toughest managers he had to deal with.8 He listed Weaver in the first four spots (the fifth spot was Frank Robinson, though Luciano noted that Robinson was Weaver’s protégé). Later in the same book, Luciano commented that Weaver never forgets and held grudges that made him even more difficult to deal with. He cited a controversial call he made at the plate late in his career, recalling, “Earl charged out of the dugout, screaming that that was the same call I’d blown at Elmira in ’66.”9

Many players, including Robinson and Weaver’s long-time staff ace Jim Palmer, insisted that Weaver never held grudges, so perhaps it was only with umpires.10 Those same players, especially Palmer, commented that heated confrontations, blow-ups, and even the hurling of equipment were not uncommon in the Orioles dugout as Weaver and his players dealt with each other but that, once it was over, it was over. Weaver never continued to stir the pot. Weaver even claimed in Weaver on Strategy that he didn’t believe in grudges. “They’re stupid,” he wrote, “and nothing good comes from them.”11 

One pitch after I had brought the Earl Weaver situation to my buddy’s attention, Florida manager Fredi Gonzalez called for the play. Dan Uggla baited lefty Manny Parra, but Hanley Ramirez was too late breaking for home and was gunned down 1-3-2. Given Weaver’s reputation, I had a feeling about what he might have said to Gonzalez for playing for one run, much less doing it so early in the game. 

Of course, there’s a chance Weaver would have said nothing. On the same radio show when he described his patented first-and-third double steal, he said he doesn’t watch much baseball nowadays (and only a few innings at a time when he does) because he can’t stand to see the way the game is coached and played. He finds greater satisfaction with his weekly (and highly competitive) golf game and in growing tomatoes where he has retired in south Florida. So perhaps Weaver doesn’t mind so much what’s on YouTube. His position in the Hall of Fame is just as permanent as the notorious clips in orbit around cyberspace, and, if nothing else, they reinforce how the man himself suggested he be remembered when his time comes—as The Sorest Loser Who Ever Lived.

JEFF BURD, an Orioles fan since May 27, 1979, works as a high-school reading specialist. His blog is at http://seeker70.wordpress.com. 

Photo credit

Earl Weaver, National Baseball Hall of Fame Library.

Notes

1 For the list of his ejections in 1975, see Earl Weaver with Terry Pluto, Weaver on Strategy (New York: Collier Books, 1984), 135. But according to Retrosheet the number of Weaver’s ejections in 1975 is nine.

2 Weaver, Weaver on Strategy, 176.

3 Michael Olesker, “The Earl of Baltimore Becomes King for a Day,” Baltimore Sun, August 5, 1996.

4 “Sport: Baltimore’s Soft-Shelled Crab,” Time, July 23, 1979.

5 Weaver, Weaver on Strategy.

6 “Sport: Baltimore’s Soft-Shelled Crab,” Time, July 23, 1979.

7 See Rich Marazzi, “Baseball Rules Corner,” Baseball Digest 58, no. 11 (November 1999): 86. Weaver in Weaver on Strategy, though, gives the year as 1981: “In 1981, I wrote Steve Stone into my lineup every day as the designated hitter” (56).

8 Phil Pepe and Zander Hollander, Book of Sports Lists, No. 3 (Pinnacle Books, 1981).

9 Pepe and Hollander, 45.

10 “Sport: Baltimore’s Soft-Shelled Crab,” Time, July 23, 1979.

11 Weaver, Weaver on Strategy, 106.

Al Niemiec looked forward to returning to baseball after his discharge from the U.S. Navy in January 1946. In the three seasons, 1940–42, before his call to duty, he played for a Seattle Rainiers team that won three consecutive Pacific Coast League championships, and he led second basemen in fielding percentage all three of those years. But things didn’t feel quite right to Niemiec. During a train ride north from California these several years later, he confided in fellow veteran Tony Lupien his fears that the Rainiers planned on releasing him soon because of his age. Lupien had a similar experience on his return from duty when the Phillies sold his contract to the Hollywood Stars. Lupien initially fought the move under the provisions of the Selective Training and Services Act of 1940 that guaranteed returning vets one year of employment in their old jobs, but he dropped the case when Hollywood agreed to pay him $8,000 for the season—the same amount he would have received had he remained in Philadelphia.1

Organized Baseball developed its own rules regarding returning vets, specifically that they were entitled to their old jobs for a trial period of 15 days of regular-season play or 30 days of spring training, after which the club could terminate the contract at its discretion. The motivating factor was obviously one of money, though the potential for bad publicity should have been apparent from the start. Baseball rode a wave of patriotism as the “American game” during the Second World War and took steps to promote the game as such. By 1945 major-league attendance had rebounded from the slump it endured early in the war, jumping to approximately 10.8 million, a new record, along with record gross receipts of $22.5 million. The majors shattered this record the next year, 1946, drawing more than 18 million fans through the turnstiles and grossing $51.7 million.2 It was a time of record popularity and profits, and not a time to take an unpopular stance with respect to veterans, who made up a significant portion of the game’s fan base. 

Alfred Joseph Niemiec was born in Meriden, Connecticut, on May 18, 1911. He attended and played baseball for the College of the Holy Cross from 1931 through 1933 before making his way to the minors, finishing out the 1933 season with the Reading Red Sox of the New York–Pennsylvania League. His solid infield play and .306 average won him recognition, and in 1934 he played in 137 games with Kansas City in the American Association. His efforts in Kansas City earned him a late-season call-up with the Boston Red Sox, and he made his major-league debut on September 19, picking up two hits and one RBI against the St. Louis Browns. While his fielding was perfect in nine games with Boston, his bat was weak (.219), and Niemiec found himself assigned to Syracuse for the 1935 season, where he contributed to the Chiefs’ International League championship. Once again his play attracted the attention of the majors, and the Philadelphia Athletics sent Doc Cramer and Eric McNair to Boston in exchange for Niemiec, Hank Johnson, and, perhaps just as important for Connie Mack, $75,000 in cash. Niemiec spent the entire 1936 season on the Athletics’ roster, appearing in 69 games and splitting time between second base and shortstop, but once again major-league pitching confounded him, and his .197 average prompted his sale to the minors in the offseason. 

Al Niemiec has a word with the umpire in 1940. From left: Seattle Rainiers outfielder Frank Kelleher, coach Eddie Taylor, manager Jack Lelivet and Niemiec. (David Eskenazi Collection)

Following a year with Little Rock, where he won a championship with the Travelers, Niemiec made his way out west for a five-year stint in the PCL. He spent two seasons with San Diego before moving north to Seattle to play for the Rainiers in 1940. Anchoring the keystone sack for the Rainiers, Niemiec, an outstanding defender, also maintained a respectable .278 average during the Rainiers’ run of three consecutive PCL titles. After the close of the 1942 season he was called up to serve in the U.S. Navy, where he rose to the rank of lieutenant before his honorable discharge on January 6, 1946. 

On his discharge, Niemiec reclaimed his former job with the Rainiers, and on February 11 the club signed him to a contract at $720 per month, a fairly substantial increase from the $575 per month he earned in 1942. He appeared in 11 games at the start of the 1946 season but was beaten out for the job at second by Bob Gorbould, who played for the Rainiers in 1944 and 1945 and was seven years his junior.3 The Rainiers cut Niemiec on April 21, and he went immediately to the local Selective Service office to register a complaint against the club, based on the job guarantees to returning veterans under the Selective Training and Services Act. He brought with him a letter of introduction provided to him by the team on his dismissal, which was signed by manager Bill Skiff and vice president Roscoe “Torchy” Torrance: 

April 20, 1946

TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN:

This will introduce player Al Niemiec. Al played on the Seattle Ball Club during three championship years, 1939 [sic], 40, and 41. We won the pennant all three years. He was chosen the outstanding second baseman of the league in 1941 and is one of the most dependable ball players we have ever had the privilege of having in the organization. 

Al has just returned from more than three years in the United States Navy and returned to our roster this year. The surplus of talent and the fact that we have had to make room for some younger ball players has made it necessary for us to dispose of Mr. Niemiec’s services. Al still has a lot of fine baseball left we are sure and is the type who would be a credit to the game in years to come as a manager of some club. The loyalty and integrity of this ball player has always been away above average and we would not hesitate a moment in recommending his services to anyone in the baseball business.4 

The Selective Service System wasted no time in arguing Niemiec’s case, sending a letter to club president Emil Sick on April 24. In the two-page letter Lt. B. V. Vercuscki outlined the facts, including the team’s obligations under the Selective Training and Service Act. Vercuski wrote that Niemiec’s dismissal was “without cause” and that he was still capable of playing baseball at an acceptable level: “There is nothing in the record to reflect that he does not have the ability or background to continue in his former position.”5 The severity of the situation was readily apparent to the Rainiers, and Torrance dispatched copies to the heads of the PCL (Clarence Rowland), the National Association (W. G. Bramham), and Major League Baseball (commissioner Happy Chandler). Torrance even offered a possible compromise to the situation: “Just as an after-thought don’t you think it would be a good idea to let the Mexican League have about 200 ball players so that they could set up a real baseball program and take care of some of our surplus talent? It might be better to have a good league down there and make more room for extra ball players than to continue having trouble.”6 

The Rainiers retained attorney Stephen Chadwick of the firm Chadwick, Chadwick and Mills to meet with the government officials, who on May 6 followed up with another letter from the U.S. district attorney demanding Niemiec’s reinstatement. Chadwick and the Rainiers held fast to their position: 

We replied by letter dated May 9, but delivered May 13, declined to reemploy upon the ground that we had reemployed, he had been accorded the time prescribed as a reasonable minimum by National Association rules, and had demonstrated his inability to comply with the accepted standards of work performance and professional skill and proficiency required of our players and by clubs with which we were in competition, and accordingly had been given his unconditional release and had accepted transportation to his home.7

The Rainiers did not stand alone, having the full support of Organized Baseball. The impact of any court ruling on the Niemiec case had far-reaching consequences, and it was deemed so important that Major League Baseball and the National Association agreed to split the cost of the legal expenses involved in defending the case. 

It is ironic that Stephen Chadwick represented the Rainiers and baseball against Niemiec. Chadwick too was a veteran, who served in the Russian Civil War, one of the little-known conflicts related to the First World War. While the Bolshevik rise to power in the 1917 Revolution is well known, what is often neglected by popular history is the attempt by the anti-Bolshevik “White” forces to overthrow the new communist government. A number of foreign powers participated on both sides of this conflict, and Chadwick served with U.S. forces in support of the Whites from August 1918 to May 1919. Chadwick was also heavily involved in leadership roles in various veterans’-rights organizations; he served as the National Commander of the American Legion in 1938–39. While Chadwick’s firm represented Emil Sick’s business ventures, both baseball and brewing, his willingness to argue against the legal rights of returning veterans is surprising given his background. 

As the legal wrangling continued, Niemiec signed with Providence of the New England League on May 17 for $150 a month. Back in Seattle the two sides prepared to take the case in front of federal judge Lloyd L. Black on June 15. Further complicating matters for the Rainiers was that they fired manager Bill Skiff on June 11, though they still needed him to testify on their behalf at the hearing. Skiff toed the company line, however, and testified that Niemiec was too old and slow to play in the PCL. Niemiec’s representatives pounced on the former manager, attempting both to impeach his judgment in baseball matters, by raising his recent termination, and to show that Skiff himself had still been an active player when he was older than Niemiec. Niemiec returned to Seattle from Providence to participate and testify on his own behalf.8 

Rainiers manager Jack Lelivet (left), with team trainer Lewis “Doc” Richards in 1941, testified on behalf of the Rainiers, affirming their claim that Al Niemiec was too old to play second base effectively. (David Eskenazi Collection)

Judge Black announced his decision in favor of Niemiec on Friday, June 21, and brought the parties back to the courtroom on June 24 to elaborate on his ruling. Black specifically addressed three arguments made by the Rainiers—that baseball is “a quasi public institution not operated primarily for profit,”9 that Niemiec’s skills had eroded and he was no longer capable of playing at an acceptable level, and that by signing a contract that gave the club the right to cut him Niemiec waived his rights under the Selective Training and Service Act. 

In addressing the first issue, Judge Black reviewed the articles of incorporation of the Pacific Coast League and stated that these clearly indicated the league was a for-profit enterprise. He added that the Selective Training and Service Act made no concessions for not-for-profit organizations or for any other type of employer. As for Niemiec’s skill and ability to perform the job of baseball player: 

The law says [Niemiec] is entitled to his position for a year. The veteran must be qualified to perform the duties of his position. 

The evidence shows he was. The employer may adopt fair and reasonable standards of qualification for work performance. Under the evidence there was no qualification or standard at all. In substance the most Mr. Skiff said was that he had the idea that Mr. Niemiec would not be able to complete the season. He had no right to anticipate Mr. Niemiec’s inability until it occurred. The employer may discharge at any time for cause, but that cause must be something other than prediction or [the] hunch of a manager.10

The contract issue was dealt with clearly as a matter of contract law. The employer in this case wrote the contract, and the employee was not allowed any input or modification—he had to take it or leave it as written. In fact, the evidence presented indicated that the management of the Rainiers, as officers of a member club of the National Association, could no more modify the contract than could Niemiec. As the employer had complete control over the wording of the contract, it had a duty to write the contract in clear and unambiguous language, which, according to Judge Black, it did not. “Any player reading this contract, I am satisfied, would believe his rights were protected. Personally, after I have read it, I think his rights are protected.”11

Judge Black reserved his more pointed criticism for the behavior of the game as a whole toward its returning veterans:

Baseball is an American institution. Professional baseball is a great American institution. Compared with many professional sports and entertainments it holds a very high regard of the people of the nation. I cannot escape the view, however, that the argument of the respondent analyzed completely means just this, that if the baseball player be older when he comes back from service than when he entered it, his baseball club employer is given the right in its discretion to repeal the Act of Congress.12

Black then took this a step further, to recognize the contributions veterans had made to protecting American society: I recognize the seriousness to baseball of having the judge dictate as to its players. But since it has been argued—and correctly—that baseball is the American game, certainly, then baseball ought to bear its share of any burden in being fair to service men. There are few institutions in American life which ought to feel a greater obligation. If Mr. Niemiec and all the others had failed in their job, there would be no American manager of any baseball if such should be played at the stadium this year. If the Nazis permitted baseball, it would not be an exhibition that any of us liked.13

Though Black ruled in Niemiec’s favor, he was clear that his ruling did not require the Rainiers to actually play him. In fact, so long as the Rainiers paid him a full season’s salary, minus any earnings he made in any other occupation (including non-baseball occupations), the club had no other responsibilities. The ruling satisfied Niemiec, who sent word to Providence that he was not returning, and on July 1 he began a new job as a beer salesman—ironically, working for the brewery owned by Rainiers president Emil Sick. Niemiec returned to baseball briefly as general manager for the Great Falls Electrics (a Rainiers farm team) of the Pioneer League in 1948 before leaving the game for good. He later became a golf pro and instructor.

The ruling did not sit well with baseball’s executives. Happy Chandler sent a telegram to the club about appealing the decision. “The Niemiec case should be appealed through the higher courts. Organized baseball will help bear the expense of the appeal.”14 Chandler attended a special meeting of the board of directors called by the PCL on July 22–23. There the parties agreed to pursue an appeal, with the expenses underwritten by the major leagues and the National Association—an agreement that applied not only to the Niemiec case but to any others that arose.

Per the meeting minutes:

Following discussion of the Al Niemiec case, Director Starr moved that the Pacific Coast League concur in the arrangement whereby the Major Leagues and the National Association will take care of half of the survey and further legal involvement in the Niemiec case as well as any other National Defense Player situation that may arise.  Duly seconded, and carried unanimously.15

The potential ramifications were significant— The Sporting News estimated that the ruling might impact as many as 143 former major leaguers, plus another 900 players at the triple-A level, and even more at the lower levels. However, players had to file a complaint in order to pursue their benefits. Some decided it wasn’t worth the trouble, while others encountered roadblocks; Bob Harris, for example, was pressured by his local district attorney to amicably settle his case against the Philadelphia Athletics.16

Discussion regarding a possible appeal of Judge Black’s ruling continued through the summer, but at the close of the PCL season the Rainiers were ready to step aside. A judgment in the amount of $2,884.50 (unpaid contract value of $3,552.00, minus $75.00 Niemiec earned playing for Providence, and minus $592.50 he earned as a salesman) was entered against the Rainiers on September 18, and they were prepared to pay. By October, correspondence between the Rainiers and baseball officials was focused on determining the costs owed by each party, with no further talk of appeals. By that time the major leagues and National Association understood how profitable the 1946 season had been and were ready to put this issue behind them. The Rainiers finally satisfied the judgment on November 1 with a payment of $2,905.36 (including post-judgment interest), though the satisfaction of judgment was not filed with the court until December 21, a time specifically chosen to fall after the winter baseball meetings so as to reduce the likelihood of questions from the press.17

In the end, the Niemiec case cost the major leagues and the National Association $1,718.28 each in legal expenses, and the Rainiers incurred the cost of the judgment. At least two other Rainier players received similar payments as a result of Judge Black’s ruling— John Yelovic ($1,000.00) and Larry Guay ($1,100.00).18 Not all vets were as fortunate. Some, like Steve Sundra of the St. Louis Browns, lost their court cases.19

However, the Niemiec ruling remained pivotal and contributed to a number of veterans receiving the pay they were owed by baseball under the Selective Training and Services Act of 1940. The case is touched on in writings about baseball during the Second World War as well as in writings about the game’s labor issues, but what the documentary evidence shows is the previously unreported direct involvement of both Major League Baseball and the National Association in this dispute involving a minor leaguer. The willingness of these two organizations to pay the legal costs, as well as the obvious potential for negative publicity, illuminate what an important issue this was in the eyes of baseball owners and executives, in terms of profits but perhaps even more so in maintaining complete control over the players. The players who served in the Second World War did so fighting for a democratic society, but they returned to a game in which the owners held the power and the players had no say in their own careers, a status quo that remained in place for another twenty years until the rise of the Major League Baseball Players Association. Still, the Niemiec decision was one small step forward in favor of players’ rights, earned by one veteran who took on baseball and fought for what was right. 

JEFF OBERMEYER earned a master’s degree in military history from Norwich University in 2009, where he wrote on the relationship between Major League Baseball and the military during the Second World War. In the offseason he researches the history of hockey in his hometown of Seattle.

The Niemiec case contributed to a positive outcome for a number of veterans who sought the pay they were owed by baseball under the Selective Training and Services Act of 1940. (David Eskenazi Collection)

Notes

1 Lee Lowenfish and Tony Lupien, The Imperfect Diamond: The Story of Baseball’s Reserve System and the Men Who Fought to Change It (New York: Stein and Day, 1980), 129–34. Niemiec filed away Lupien’s story in his memory in case he needed it.

2 House Subcommittee on Study of Monopoly Power of the Committee on the Judiciary, Organized Baseball, 82d Cong., 2d sess., 1952, report no. 2002, 90 Stephen Chadwick, 94.

3 The SABR Encyclopedia and the Social Security Death Index give Gorbould’s date of birth as November 19, 1918. However, in The Coast League Cyclopedia: An Encyclopedia of the Old Pacific Coast League, 1903–1957, vol. 1, Batters A through K (Baseball Press Books, 2003), Carlos Bauer gives his date of birth as November 19, 1920.

4 Letter to Al Niemiec, April 20, 1946, Seattle Rainier Baseball Club Records Collection, Washington State Historical Society.

5 Lt. B. V. Vercuski to Emil Sick letter, April 24, 1946, Seattle Rainier Baseball Club Records Collection, Washington State Historical Society.

6 R. C. Torrance to A. B. “Happy” Chandler, letter, April 27, 1946, Seattle Rainier Baseball Club Records Collection, Washington State Historical Society.

7 Stephen Chadwick, to Victor Ford Collins, letter, May 17, 1946, Seattle Rainier Baseball Club Records Collection, Washington State Historical Society.

8 Royal Brougham, “Niemiec Hearing Closes, Judge Takes Case under Advisement,” The Sporting News, June 26, 1946, 10.

9 Niemiec v. Seattle Rainier Baseball Club, Inc., 67 F. Supp. 705 (U.S. Dist. Ct. 1946), 2.

10 Niemiec v. Seattle Rainier Baseball Club, Inc., 67 F. Supp. 705 (U.S. Dist. Ct. 1946), 6.

11 Niemiec v. Seattle Rainier Baseball Club, Inc., 67 F. Supp. 705 (U.S. Dist. Ct. 1946), 4.

12 Niemiec v. Seattle Rainier Baseball Club, Inc., 67 F. Supp. 705 (U.S. Dist. Ct. 1946), 2.

13 Niemiec v. Seattle Rainier Baseball Club, Inc., 67 F. Supp. 705 (U.S. Dist. Ct. 1946), 6.

14 Albert B. Chandler to Roscoe Torrance, Western Union telegram, June 25, 1946, Seattle Rainier Baseball Club Records Collection, Washington State Historical Society.

15 Minutes of a Special Meeting of the Board of Directors of the Pacific Coast Baseball League, July 22 and 22 [sic], 1946, Seattle Rainier Baseball Club Records Collection, Washington State Historical Society.

16 Lowenfish and Lupien, 137.

17 S. F. Chadwick to Joseph C. Hostetler letter, November 7, 1946, Seattle Rainier Baseball Club Records Collection, Washington State Historical Society.

18 Notes from special meeting, board of directors, Seattle Rainier Baseball Club, Inc., November 25, 1946, Seattle Rainier Baseball Club Records Collection, Washington State Historical Society.

19 Richard Goldstein, Spartan Seasons: How Baseball Survived the Second World War (New York: Macmillan, 1980), 273.

Like most cities, Toronto once had a great many more newspapers than it does today. Among the most prominent in 1916 were the Star and the Globe— today’s lone survivors of this time period—as well as the Telegram, the World, and the News. All of them devoted a lot of copy to the upcoming Series. “Toronto’s baseball sympathies are with the Boston Red Sox in the world’s series,” said the Toronto Star on October 6, “if for no other reason than the fact that the American League champions are under the management of Bill Carrigan, who was formerly a catcher on the staff of the Toronto club.”1

Toronto newspapers wrote not only of the personalities, the teams, and the excitement that was building in Boston and Brooklyn. They let Torontonians know how, and where, they could follow the 1916 World Series “live.”

In his book Past Time: Baseball as History, Jules Tygiel writes:

As early as the 1890s communities began to translate telegraphic reports of baseball games into visual recreations. . . . After 1905, when the World Series became a permanent fixture on the national scene, scoreboard-watching became an equally entrenched annual ritual. Newspapers erected large displays in front of their offices, attracting crowds numbering in the thousands. . . . In 1906, the Chicago Tribune began the practice of renting armories and theaters to hold the crowds. The indoor setting allowed scoreboards in the major cities to become increasingly more elaborate.2

At least two elaborate American scoreboard devices made their Canadian debuts in Toronto for the World Series of 1916. According to the Globe, “The Nokes Electrascore Board, which will be at Massey Hall, is the only one yet invented which satisfactorily shows the actual movements of each player. . . . The board stands upright in full view of the spectators, and the moving lights can be plainly seen from any part of the hall. Mr. Nokes, the inventor of the board, has arrived in the city to set up the board, and will be here throughout the entire series of games.”3 Tickets to watch the “games” at Massey Hall could be purchased for 25 or 50 cents.

While I think we all have at least some idea of these devices, from old photographs and from scenes in movies like Eight Men Out, fortunately the Toronto Star provided a few more details on the Nokes board. “To those who are not familiar with this marvelous invention, we may state that by means of colored lights for each team the movement of every player is shown and the players are in actual movement all the time. Returns are received by special wire direct from the field the moment the plays are made.”4

To judge from the stories that followed, a large number of Toronto baseball fans were entertained by the Nokes Electrascore Board during the World Series. Yet if I were to time-travel to Toronto in October 1916, I would not have been in attendance at Massey Hall. Instead, I would have been at the Arena Gardens. Seated inside the city’s largest hockey rink, I would have watched—or, rather, followed—the World Series on the Jackson Manikin Baseball Indicator.

I had never heard of this mechanical wonder before I stumbled across the following Toronto Star article from October 4, 1916:

The Jackson Manikin Baseball Indicator, which will be shown at the Arena Gardens for the first time on Saturday afternoon next, is the latest invention of its kind in the world, and so far ahead of all others showing the world’s series games that it is sure to make a big hit among local fans. It is a faithful representation of the game, with diamond, grandstand, fences with advertising on them, and, lastly, umpires and players that do everything but talk. The players throw and catch the ball, run the base lines, slide, run after fly balls, hold consultations on the field and quarrel with the umpire to hide their own shortcomings. The diamond, with scenery, is fairly large, and occupies the full depth and width of the Arena. In the front are shown devices so that the spectators may keep track of the outs, balls, strikes, runs for the inning . . . and in certain plays know whether the runner is out or safe.5

According to an article two days later, it required ten men to keep all the figures in action—ten men, and it filled the entire floor of a professional hockey arena.6 The Jackson Manikin Baseball Indicator must have been a giant-sized version of an old-fashioned baseball arcade game.

It turns out that the Jackson Manikin Baseball Indicator was invented by Thomas H. Jackson of Scranton, Pennsylvania. He received a patent for it on February 18, 1913, and began using his device to entertain fans that summer in Atlantic City; Washington, D.C.; Rochester, New York; and his own hometown Washington Post, in its Sunday edition on August 17, 19137, reprinted a story that originally ran in Scientific American, giving a detailed report on how the invention worked and what it looked like:

The manikins that enact the plays are themselves about a foot and a half high, but the working mechanism, which is not seen by the spectators, is just as long. . . . Through a system of levers the operator is able to raise either the right or left arm or both, or cause the figure to bend over. In running bases the wheel attached to the manikin fits the base-runner groove, and in revolving causes the legs to move backward and forward. If the operator wishes to make the figure slide into a base, it is necessary only to incline the entire device in the direction desired. . . .

At the commencement of the game . . . the nine fielding players in their white suits come up through holes in the diamond and take their respective positions, and the batter in his brown suit comes up through a hole near the home plate and with bat in his hand takes up his place. A light appears in the pitcher’s hand if he is right-handed, in his right hand, and if left-handed, in his left. [Note: All batters and fielders could be correctly represented as lefties or righties.] After “winding up” he delivers the ball toward the batter. The light in his hand is extinguished, and if the pitcher is inclined to be wild it is shown in the catcher’s hand, the umpire raises his left arm and the announcer calls “ball one.” If the batter makes a safe hit—say for two bases to left field—the progress of the ball is shown on the ground from home plate, between shortstop and third base out into left, where the fielder stoops and the light is shown in his hand. He throws to third base. . . . If, however, the batter merely hit a fly to left field, a light glows over the shortstop’s head, then over the head of the left fielder and then in his hand. [Presumably, groundouts were represented by the ball appearing in, say, the shortstop’s hand. He would then “throw” across the diamond, the light going out in his hand and then the light going on in the first baseman’s hand before the manikin in the baserunner groove reached the bag.] When the side is out, the manikins in white go down through holes and off the field and their places are taken by manikins in brown, while the batsmen are dressed in white. If, perchance, a pitcher is being hit very hard and is taken out of the box, that fact is faithfully presented by a consultation between the captain of the team and his pitcher and the exit of the latter through a hole near his position in the center of the diamond. . . .

Great enthusiasm is aroused among the fans who witness a game on the board: for they see a miniature player representing their pitching idol strike out batter after batter, or the team’s slugger hit the ball to all corners of the field with the fielders in pursuit, or maybe the speedy baserunner stealing bases and sliding beyond the reach of the baseman with all the realism of the game.8

Though the story says nothing about noise, I imagine a lot of rattling and clanking as the manikins pitch, hit, run and field. Perhaps not. Regardless, this was an invention worthy of a Disney theme park. It’s the Hall of Presidents, only with Hall of Famers! And it comes at a time not only before radio or television but also before the widespread use of action photography or motion pictures. It certainly doesn’t take much imagination to believe that the enthusiasm of baseball fans would indeed be aroused well beyond anything that a machine, with blinking lights or magnetic men, could achieve on its own.

So what became of the Jackson Manikin Baseball Indicator? While Toronto newspapers claim it “made a decided hit with local baseball fans,” I have found no evidence that it was used in the city again after 1916.99 Ads from the New York Times indicate that it was still used to follow the World Series until at least 1925.1010 By then, of course, radio had become a fixture of the Fall Classic. While other scoreboard re-creations were still used into the early 1930s, a giant electrical device that required ten men to operate was likely deemed too costly to be able to compete with invisible airwaves that brought the World Series into a person’s living room free of charge.

ERIC ZWEIG is a writer and an editor with Dan Diamond and Associates, consulting publishers to the National Hockey League. A baseball fan since Toronto received its AL franchise when he was thirteen, he worked for the Blue Jays ground crew from 1981 to 1985.

Walter O’Malley, center, shown with Jersey City officials, announced that, in 1956 through 1958, the Dodgers would play seven games each season in Jersey City and would have the option to continue the agreement for three years beyond that.

INTRODUCTION 

The Dodgers are playing the Yankees at Yankee Stadium in Game 7 of the 1955 World Series. The Yankees are at bat in the bottom of the sixth with men on first and second and none out. Johnny Podres has pitched masterfully during the first five innings. Yogi Berra is up and lashes a line drive down the left-field line. Sandy Amoros, the Dodgers’ left fielder, runs in the direction of the 301-feet sign, stretches his body, and with his right gloved hand snares the line drive off Berra’s bat. Amoros, showing great presence, turns and throws the ball to Pee Wee Reese, who fires it to Gil Hodges, doubling off the runner on first. The next batter grounds to short for the third out. 

This was the last real chance for the Yankees in this game. Podres finishes them off in the seventh, eighth, and ninth, and there is great joy in Brooklyn. This is next year! They have won the elusive World Series for the first time. The borough celebrates, and the future appears rosy. It turns out, however, that this is actually the beginning of the end. In two years the Dodgers will leave Brooklyn for the riches of California. In addition, this is the last great moment of glory for a Dodgers team that has been competing very successfully for pennants since the end of the Second World War. Jackie Robinson, Pee Wee Reese, Gil Hodges, Carl Furillo, Don Newcombe, Carl Erskine, and others have reached an age where their effectiveness is beginning to wane. The nucleus of this team is beginning to crumble, and it is a different cast of players who bring the World Series to Los Angeles in 1959. 

For the Dodgers, 1956 and 1957 are interesting years, as Walter O’Malley, the owner, is jockeying with Robert Moses and other New York politicians about the future of baseball in Brooklyn. Even while the World Series of 1955 is being played, O’Malley is thinking of possibly moving the Dodgers. My purpose in this article is to look at those last two years in Brooklyn and at the role Jersey City played in O’Malley’s efforts. During 1956 and 1957, the Dodgers played 15 regular-season games in Jersey City. One question that never has been adequately addressed is what role Jersey City played in O’Malley’s decision to stay or relocate. I will conclude with some conjecture about that role. 

THE THREAT OF A DODGERS MOVE 

During the early 1950s, Major League Baseball underwent major change. The structure of leagues, with eight teams in each league, had not changed since the early part of the twentieth century. In fact, between 1903 and 1953, there were no franchise relocations. 

During these fifty years, New York, Philadelphia, Boston, Chicago, and St. Louis had teams in both the American and National Leagues. After the Second World War, it became clear that some of them could no longer support more than one team. In 1953, after seeing their season attendance drop to less than 300,000 fans in 1952, the Boston Braves became the Milwaukee Braves. This franchise move was quickly followed by the St. Louis Browns moving to Baltimore in 1954 and by the Philadelphia Athletics moving to Kansas City in 1955. 

O’Malley followed these moves closely. He was concerned that the Milwaukee move might tip the balance in the National League and argued that Milwaukee might use the greater revenue they would generate to develop into a more formidable competitor for the National League title.1 His concern was justified—Milwaukee did win the pennant in 1957 and 1958. 

The Dodgers’ home attendance was more than one million in 1955, but O’Malley had issues with their ballpark, Ebbets Field. Built in 1913, it was not aging gracefully. Its seating capacity was 32,000, less than that of County Stadium, the Braves’ new home in Milwaukee. Moreover, Ebbets Field was in the middle of a congested and deteriorating neighborhood. During the decade following the Second World War, the suburbs around New York City grew significantly as city residents began flocking to them. Driving was now the preferred means of transportation to the ballpark. In the vicinity of Ebbets Field, public parking was sparse. 

O’Malley was convinced that the only solution to the problem was to build a new ballpark. He envisioned it at the intersection of Atlantic and Flatbush Avenues in Brooklyn. In 1953 he sent a letter to Robert Moses, chairman of the Triborough Bridge and Tunnel Authority, requesting a meeting to discuss the possibility.2 He also sent a more detailed letter to a friend, George V. McLaughlin, a member of the Triborough Bridge and Tunnel Authority Board, explaining that the new ballpark would be privately funded and all he needed was an appropriate site.3 O’Malley proposed to finance the building of the facility provided he was given access to the land. 

Robert Moses was also chairman of the mayor’s Committee on Slum Clearance. For the new ballpark to be built on that site, businesses would have to be purchased and relocated using Title 1 of the 1949 Federal Housing Act as the basis for such action. Moses was charged with implementing Title 1. While not an elected official, he was arguably the most powerful figure in the City of New York. He had designed and overseen the construction of the network of roads that intersected New York City and provided access to the suburbs. He was also responsible for designing most of the public and recreational spaces throughout much of the city and parts of Long Island. 

Moses was unsympathetic to O’Malley’s request to use Title 1 for a new Dodgers ballpark and rejected his proposal.4 It was not the intent of Title 1, he argued, to build a major-league park. Later, he proposed that the State of New York move forward with the project by creating a sports authority that would finance and build the facility.5

The year 1953 also saw the beginning of rumors about the Dodgers possibly moving to Los Angeles. On October 20, 1953, Vincent X. Flaherty wrote to O’Malley, endorsing Los Angeles as the next home for the Dodgers and asking O’Malley to meet with the Los Angeles citizens’ committee for major-league baseball.6 Possibly fueled by actual incidents like the Flaherty letter, the rumors about the Dodgers moving to California escalated over the next few years. 

Apparently still committed to finding a way for the Dodgers to remain in Brooklyn, O’Malley turned for help to Frank D. Schroth, publisher of the Brooklyn Eagle. In late 1953 through the spring of 1954, Schroth, Moses, and O’Malley along with John Cashmore, the Brooklyn borough president, met monthly for lunch in an effort to resolve the issues surrounding construction of a new Brooklyn ballpark.7 Throughout this period and into 1955, various sites were discussed and researched, but agreement was never reached. On May 26, 1955, O’Malley wrote noted architect R. Buckminster Fuller at Princeton University and asked him about the possibility of using some of Fuller’s geodesicdome concepts for an indoor facility in Brooklyn. Fuller’s graduate students tackled the project and a prototype was developed.8

After a meeting on August 9, 1955, O’Malley and Moses traded letters. In Moses’s response to O’Malley’s note, he wrote that the alternatives proposed by Moses had been deemed unsatisfactory by O’Malley mainly because O’Malley did not consider the public improvements that would accompany construction of the new ballpark to be important enough. Moses also seemed to indicate that O’Malley should be using his own funds not only to finance construction of the ballpark but also to acquire the land it would be built on.9 

Soon after this exchange of letters, O’Malley announced that in 1956 and 1957 the Dodgers would play seven games at Roosevelt Stadium in Jersey City.10 Brooklyn fans voiced their displeasure that their beloved Bums, their affectionate nickname for the Dodgers, were going to be playing some of their home games across the river.11

JERSEY CITY 

In 1955, the population of Jersey City, just across the Hudson River from lower Manhattan, was approximately 300,000. Brooklyn’s population was 2.75 million. The difference, though, was less stark when the borough was compared to all of Hudson County, which includes not only Jersey City but the cities of Bayonne, Hoboken, North Bergen, Union City, and other, smaller towns. The population of the whole county was about 650,000.

Jersey City has a rich political history. From 1917 through 1947, it was led by its colorful mayor, Frank Hague, known affectionately as Boss Hague. A Democrat, Hague was a shrewd politician, with a tight grip on the reins of power in Jersey City and also influential throughout the whole state. He was an ardent supporter of Franklin D. Roosevelt and contributed significantly to Roosevelt’s winning New Jersey in the 1932 presidential election. Jersey City benefited tremendously from the many building projects, including the Jersey City Medical Center, that were financed through Roosevelt’s New Deal programs. 

Hague defined not only Jersey City’s politics but even its mores, his own being shaped by his Roman Catholic upbringing. It was not until the 1950s, for example, that women were allowed to sit in a tavern. In 1935, when socialist leader Norman Thomas came to Jersey City to speak, Hague, a staunch anticommunist, had him escorted via ferry out of town.12

While perceived to be a friend of the people, Hague as mayor was in fact corrupt, taking kickbacks from citizens and anyone who did business with the city. He was able to amass a fortune and had a Park Avenue apartment and homes on the Jersey Shore and in Florida. His political machine started to crumble after the Second World War. In 1947, after more than thirty years, he finally left office. 

JERSEY CITY AND PROFESSIONAL BASEBALL 

Hague clearly saw the potential appeal that professional sports would have to Jersey City residents and as early as 1929 had planned to build a stadium that would host a variety of sports, including baseball. Roosevelt Stadium, financed as a New Deal program, was opened in 1937 and became the home of the Jersey City Giants in the International League, the top farm team of the New York Giants. The capacity of Roosevelt Stadium was approximately 25,000. Most years, opening-day attendance exceeded that, as Hague would arrange for many people to buy tickets even if seats were unavailable. 

From 1937 until the late 1940s, Jersey City developed a rich tradition of supporting minor-league baseball. Probably the high point of baseball in Jersey City was Jackie Robinson’s professional debut, with the Montreal Royals, against the Jersey City Giants in 1946. Robinson went 4-for-5 with a home run in a 14–1 Royals victory. The attendance for Robinson’s game was announced as 52,000. 

In 1947 the Jersey City Giants drew more than 300,000 but, with the advent of televised baseball and the rise of car ownership, making the three major league teams in New York easily accessible to more people in the suburbs, attendance dwindled to fewer than 100,000 in 1950. The Jersey City Giants moved to Ottawa in 1951. From 1951 to 1956, no professional baseball games were played in Roosevelt Stadium, where the main fare was high-school football games and weekly stock-car races. 

It should also be noted that the only public transportation to Roosevelt Stadium on the southwest side of Jersey City was by bus. Fans from New York City would have to use buses or the Hudson Tubes, a subway through tunnels under the Hudson River. New Jersey residents from outside of Jersey City would probably have to drive. 

THE JERSEY CITY RESPONSE 

An announcement on August 16, 1955, appeared to indicate that the Dodgers and Jersey City had a deal, but no contract was signed yet, as the financial and operating arrangements between the club and the city still needed to be negotiated. There was some resistance on the part of certain Jersey City officials as they pointed out that, given the loss of stock-car revenues, the deal could cost the city.13 However, it does appear that, by the end of August, the intent of both the city and the club was for the Dodgers to play some home games in Jersey City during 1956 and 1957. 

On December 1, 1955, it was finally announced at a press conference in Brooklyn that an agreement had been reached between the Brooklyn Dodgers and Jersey City. The Dodgers would play seven regular-season games and one exhibition game in Jersey City in 1956.14 Seven regular-season games would be played in 1957 and 1958 as well, with an option to continue the agreement for three additional years beyond that. The agreement stipulated that the Dodgers would rent Roosevelt Stadium for an annual fee of $10,000. The Dodgers also agreed to absorb the cost of making the stadium ready for major-league baseball. The Dodgers were to receive all parking revenue. In making the announcement, O’Malley added that the Dodgers would not play in Ebbets Field in 1958 and could play the entire season in Jersey City if the new stadium in Brooklyn were still under construction. Initially the Dodgers had wanted to sell each season’s seven or eight games as a package but in the end agreed that fans could buy tickets to individual games.15

Actually, the lease allowing the Dodgers to play in Jersey City was not officially signed until January.16 Apparently, a supplementary agreement had to be worked out concerning a split in income, between Jersey City and the Dodgers, from non-Dodger events that took place in Roosevelt Stadium but that the Dodgers promoted. 

Despite the interval between the initial announcement in August and the press conference in December, and then between that and the signing of the lease in January, no major issues appeared to be deterring the Dodgers from playing in Jersey City in 1956. Part of the delay can be explained by O’Malley’s involvement in the 1955 pennant race that led to the Dodgers’ first World Series title, while Bernard Berry, the mayor of Jersey City, went to Europe on a six-week vacation. Excitement and civic pride at news that the Dodgers would play began to mount. When Berry returned to Jersey City after his vacation, he described the finalizing of the Dodger deal as a priority.17

The first game the Dodgers played in Jersey City, when they beat the Phillies before 12,214 very cold fans.

THE DODGERS IN JERSEY CITY, 1956 

The first game played in Jersey City was on April 19, 1956, when the Dodgers beat the Phillies before 12,214 very cold fans.18 The attendance was disappointing, as initially it was thought the game would be a sellout.19 On April 17, there was an attempt to promote the game in the local newspaper, which stressed to the fans of Jersey City that poor crowds would hurt Jersey City’s chances for future opportunities.20 After the first game, several of the Dodgers indicated they felt that the fences at Roosevelt Stadium were not too friendly.21 Jackie Robinson, who was jeered there, was particularly unhappy.22

Table 1. Dodger Games in Jersey City, 1956

As can be seen in table 1, after that first game, attendance at each successive game increased, except for the August 7 contest against the Pirates. The Dodgers won all but the last game, which was against the Giants. All of the games were close, and five of them were decided by one run. 

The game that proved somewhat historic was that seventh game, where the Giants beat the Dodgers 1–0. Johnny Antonelli pitched the shutout, striking out 11. Antonelli, a left-hander, was probably helped by the field dimensions at Roosevelt Stadium. The Dodgers were known to hit left-hand pitchers quite well in Ebbets Field, with its short left-field fence. The winning (and only) run in this game was a Willie Mays home run, the first fair ball ever hit out of Roosevelt Stadium.23

The average attendance for the Jersey City games was 21,196, about 5,400 more than for for the games played at Ebbets Field that year. And so, from all perspectives, the season in Jersey City proved successful, although it was somewhat surprising that only the games against the Braves and the Giants were sellouts. 

O’Malley commented on the Jersey City experiment in August 1956. After some rumors that the Dodgers might increase the number of games they would play at Jersey City in 1957, O’Malley said, “All things considered, I think we’ve given Jersey City the right number of games.” O’Malley added that “the way I look at it we’ve had about two games that attracted peak crowds while all the others were about average.” Given the unresolved stadium situation in Brooklyn, O’Malley did concede that “Jersey City must be considered in the Dodgers future plans—that is, in a limited sort of way.”24 O’Malley’s enthusiasm for the experiment in Jersey City appeared to be waning. 

Walter O’Malley throws out the first pitch at the Dodgers–Phillies game, April 19, 1956, the first of fifteen games—fourteen regular-season, one exhibition—that the Dodgers would play at Roosevelt Stadium during the 1956 and 1957 seasons.

NO LONGER A THREAT 

The Dodgers’ move to Jersey City prompted New York City and Brooklyn to respond. Mayor Robert Wagner immediately scheduled a meeting for August 19, 1955, three days after the initial announcement about the Jersey City deal. The meeting was to include O’Malley, Cashmore, and Moses.25 In the meeting’s aftermath, $100,000 was appropriated by New York City’s Board of Estimate to study the Atlantic–Flatbush site as a possible location for a new stadium. While the study was being conducted over the next few months, the Dodgers and Jersey City were finalizing their agreement for the next three seasons. 

On February 6, 1956, a proposal was finally presented as a bill to the New York State legislature to establish the Brooklyn Sports Center Authority (BCSA), a public authority that was empowered to raise $30 million in bond sales to clear the area and build a new ballpark. The bill gained legislative approval on March 21 and 22, 1956, and Governor Harriman signed it into law in April.26 But the BCSA was beset with problems and did little to move the project forward. By December 1956 the BCSA was requesting additional funds to continue their efforts. 

During the 1956–57 offseason, the Dodgers sold Ebbets Field to the city.27 While they no longer owned it, they could still lease it, although that did little to curb speculation that the Dodgers might not be playing there after the 1957 season. 

While the BCSA was having its issues and as plans were being made to sell Ebbets Field, the Dodgers went to Japan on a goodwill tour following the 1956 season. Flying to Japan, the Dodgers stopped in Los Angeles first. There O’Malley met with Kenneth Hahn, the Los Angeles County supervisor. It was the Dodgers’ first serious meeting with Los Angeles officials about moving the Dodgers there. According to Hahn, he had a handshake agreement with O’Malley that the Dodgers would move to Los Angeles, although exactly when that informal agreement was struck is unknown.28

A major deterrent to any major-league franchise moving to Los Angeles was that Philip Wrigley and his family owned the minor-league franchise and stadium in Los Angeles. O’Malley negotiated with Wrigley and they swapped minor-league franchises, O’Malley taking over in Los Angeles, and Wrigley in Fort Worth, which had been the Dodgers’ double-A minor-league team. Wrigley assumed ownership of the Fort Worth Stadium as well.29

Clearly, O’Malley by this point had his sights set on the West Coast. Was he only posturing to pressure New York City to act, or had he made up his mind to relocate? While he continued to state that he wanted to stay in Brooklyn, his chief antagonist, Robert Moses, reiterated that there are no viable sites there. Moses did finally meet with O’Malley early in 1957, and they discussed the possibility of a ballpark in Flushing Meadows in Queens. During the next few months, both Moses and O’Malley indicated some interest in the Flushing Meadows plan, but O’Malley raised concerns about the site.30 A few years later it would become the site of Shea Stadium, home of the New York Mets from 1964 through 2008. 

It had now become a distinct possibility that the Dodgers would be leaving Brooklyn. On May 28, 1957, the National League owners met and gave their blessing to the relocation of the Dodgers and the Giants to the West Coast.31 It appears that the National League insisted on the relocation of both teams, not just one, travel costs being the main consideration, although Warren Giles, National League president, later denied the two-team stipulation. The National League also created an end-of-season deadline for decisions to be made about any franchise relocations. Mayor Wagner convened the various parties on May 4, 1957, in New York. As in the past, no progress was made with respect to an agreement about a new stadium. 

In June 1957, the Antitrust Subcomittee (of the House Judiciary Committee), chaired by Emanuel Celler, a Democrat from Brooklyn, was convened to investigate why baseball was not covered by antitrust legislation while other sports were. In 1922, the U.S. Supreme Court, in a unanimous decision, argued that baseball was not interstate commerce, Oliver Wendell Holmes making the case that “personal effort, not related to production, is not a subject of commerce.”32

O’Malley testified before the subcommittee and painted himself a victim. He claimed that New York officials had stymied his efforts to stay in Brooklyn while Los Angeles officials were united in their resolve to provide the Dodgers with a ballpark. The Dodgers, Celler pointed out, were profitable. O’Malley agreed but stressed the issues with Ebbets Field. He said that he didn’t know where the Dodgers would be playing the next year but that he had made no preparations to move to Los Angeles. Those words come back to haunt him, as he had already purchased the Los Angeles Angels and their stadium and had taken other steps to determine the viability of Los Angeles as a home for the Dodgers.33 

All eyes turned to the New York Giants. Horace Stoneham, the Giants’ owner, had made it clear that the Polo Grounds were no longer suitable. Attendance had fallen significantly since the Giants won the World Series in 1954. Stoneham originally had his sights on the Twin Cities, Minneapolis–St. Paul. Minneapolis was the Giants’ top farm team. Neither the Giants nor the City of New York entered into any serious discussion about a new facility for the Giants. The possibility that the Giants would play games in Yankee Stadium was raised but dismissed, as it was assumed that the Yankees would not want to share their stadium. 

Seizing the opportunity, San Francisco entered negotiations with Horace Stoneham. On August 7, 1957, the Giants announced that they would become the San Francisco Giants.34 However, the Dodgers’ situation had yet to be resolved, and so the Giants had to wait.

Los Angeles had proposed Chavez Ravine as the location for the new ballpark, but there was some opposition to the terms of the agreement, and negotiations continued late into the summer of 1957. Los Angeles needed to come to final terms with both the Dodgers and the local parties who were raising opposition. 

MEANWHILE—JERSEY CITY IN 1957 

While the future of the Dodgers was uncertain, they did play their handful of games in Roosevelt Stadium in 1957. 

Table 2. Dodger Games in Jersey City, 1957

As can be seen in table 2, the Dodgers won five of eight games in Jersey City in 1957. They played the Phillies twice, although the initial agreement called for each National League team to visit Jersey City only once. Again, the Giants were the biggest draw and, to the delight of Giants fans, once again beat the Dodgers. The average attendance, 16,014, was less than in 1956 but still higher than the average attendance at Ebbets Field.

The Jersey City games in 1957 began with both the Dodgers and the fans in a more positive frame of mind. After the April 22 game, players said nice things about the field, and the fans appeared friendly.35 Jackie Robinson, the target of much of the hostility in 1956, was no longer with the Dodgers, having retired after being traded to the Giants following the 1956 season. 

The only sellout in 1957 was for the game against the Giants. Passions ran high, as fans booed Don Newcombe for his performance and he allegedly spit at them. Newcomb later said he didn’t “give a damn” if he ever pitched in Jersey City again.36

Attendance for the last two games in Jersey City was poor. The Dodgers continued to fall further behind in the pennant race, and moreover it grew increasingly clear that they weren’t going to play in Jersey City in 1958. Attendance at the final two games was only 9,592 and 10,910. Before the final game, against the Phillies on September 3, the local newspaper offered that Jersey fans would get their final glimpse of the Dodgers that night, adding that whether they would be back in Brooklyn next year was doubtful.37 After this final game, some of the players, sounding frustrated, said they hoped they wouldn’t have to play in Jersey City the next year.38

Dodgers players pose with students and nuns at the Academy of St. Aloysius, a Catholic girls’ school in Jersey City, June 5, 1957.

THE DODGERS MAKE IT FINAL 

In August and September of 1957, as Los Angeles and the Dodgers were putting the final touches on their negotiations, steps were being taken back in Brooklyn to try to stop the club from moving. A financier offered to buy the Dodgers and keep them in Brooklyn. The Dodgers declined. Nelson Rockefeller, the future governor of New York, advanced a proposal involving him both in the ownership of the club and in the building of a ballpark. In addition, a legal opinion by the Corporation Counsel of the City appeared to circumvent the stranglehold that Robert Moses had over the Atlantic–Flatbush site. All these efforts had collapsed by late September.39

Los Angeles officials and the Dodgers finally reached an agreement. The Dodgers would receive approximately 300 acres of land at Chavez Ravine, including site-preparation and access roads, while the city would receive Wrigley Field from the Dodgers. Los Angeles would be the new home for the Dodgers if two-thirds of the Los Angeles city council agreed to the deal. On October 7, 1957, the council voted 10–4 in favor, and Walter O’Malley announced that the Dodgers were leaving Brooklyn.40

CONCLUSION 

In this long saga of the Dodgers, Brooklyn, and Los Angeles, what role did Jersey City play? Why did the Dodgers play some of their home games there in 1956 and 1957? What did Jersey City expect to gain from the relationship? 

These are difficult questions. O’Malley’s objectives for playing games in Jersey City were never clearly stated. Before Celler’s subcommittee, he remarked that he had already sold Ebbets Field and that Jersey City had provided a site for home games in 1958. But it was in 1955, about a year before he sold Ebbets, that he announced his decision to schedule some games in Jersey City. For some time already, he may have had his mind set on selling Ebbets Field and so thought it helpful to test the waters in Jersey City.

Obviously, with his announcement about Jersey City, O’Malley wanted to put pressure on New York officials. Being a shrewd businessman, he also saw an opportunity to increase profit. The Dodgers received both the gate receipts in Jersey City and the parking fees. The difference between these revenue streams and what they would have been for the same games at Ebbets Field was greater than $10,000, the cost of the lease to Roosevelt Stadium. 

Jersey City politicians and officials were enthusiastic about the Dodgers playing some of their home games there. Always under the shadow of New York City, Jersey City could now claim to be major-league. The presence of the Dodgers there boosted civic pride, was good for local businesses, and could, one could have speculated, also open other doors for more baseball in Jersey City. 

Jersey City fans, though, never did fully warm to the Dodgers. Obviously, there was still significant support for the New York Giants in 1956 and 1957, as Jersey City was the Giants’ triple-A farm team for many years. This may have been why the Dodgers sold out there only when they played the Giants. 

If O’Malley’s rationale for being in Jersey City was to determine if it would support the Dodgers while a new stadium was being built in Brooklyn, the attendance figures probably gave him pause. It is not inconceivable that both O’Malley and Jersey City politicians thought that sellouts for these seven games would be the norm. In his interview in August 1956, O’Malley points out that Jersey City would not see more Dodger games in 1957, as the attendance at all but two of the games in 1956 had been only average. It is fair to say that extending the seven games to a full season in Jersey City would probably have resulted in the Dodgers’ season attendance taking a steep dive. 

It should be reiterated that one of the reasons for attendance problems in Jersey City was that Roosevelt Stadium was hard to get to from New York City. On mass transit, you could get to Journal Square in Jersey City, the hub, fairly easily but then had to endure a long bus ride to the stadium. The drive to Roosevelt Stadium was also difficult, since you had to traverse Manhattan; the Verrazano Bridge had not yet been built. The experience of 1956 and 1957 probably convinced Dodgers’ management that Jersey City was not a good option if in 1958 they needed a ballpark while a new one was being built back in Brooklyn. 

The Dodgers in Jersey City was an interesting sidebar to the whole issue of the Dodgers and Giants moving to the West Coast. While cynics dispute O’Malley’s intentions, I think that as late as 1956 he was resolved to keep the Dodgers in Brooklyn. But he probably never realized how difficult it would be to deal with the political issues surrounding the building of a new facility in Brooklyn. The Jersey City experiment probably illustrates this naiveté. The Dodgers playing games in Jersey City did not really create a sustainable sense of urgency among New York politicians and officials. 

Jersey City received $15,000 when the Dodgers broke their lease to play games at Roosevelt Stadium in 1958. When International League president Frank Shaughnessy identified Jersey City as a likely site for an IL franchise, local citizens had hopes of seeing professional baseball return to their city in 1958.41 But first the city had to come to terms with an existing International League club that would agree to the relocation. The Yankees were confusing the issue, as Jersey City initially had hopes that they might play some home games there. They wouldn’t, and Jersey City was without baseball in 1958. But the Havana Sugar Kings, in the middle of the 1960 season, after unrest at some games in Havana, did move to Jersey City. 

While Major League Baseball has survived the Dodgers’ relocation to Los Angeles, Brooklyn did suffer. The 1960s and 1970s were not kind to the borough. Civil unrest and deteriorating neighborhoods were the norm. The loss of the Dodgers contributed to the malaise. In recent years, Brooklyn has revived, as many neighborhoods have been gentrified. The Brooklyn Cyclones, a single-A team of the New York Mets, play in Coney Island. To many of the younger residents, the Dodgers are a distant memory. Jersey City had a similar experience with significant deterioration in the city’s housing and infrastructure in the 1960s and 1970s. Since then, the waterfront area, Liberty State Park, and a championship golf course have been developed. Several Wall Street firms have located back offices in Jersey City. Given Jersey City’s proximity to New York City, the downtown area has seen gentrification. But Ebbets Field and Roosevelt Stadium are no more, and city life is not quite the same. 

JOHN BURBRIDGE JR. is a professor at the Martha and Spencer Love School of Business, Elon University.

Author’s Note

This article is adapted from a presentation given at the Seymour Medal Conference, April 2009.

Notes

1 Lee Lowenfish, “A Tale of Many Cities: The Westward Expansion of Major League Baseball in the 1950s,” Journal of the West 17, no. 3 (July 1978): 77.

2 Michael D’Dantonio, Forever Blue: The True Story of Walter O’Malley, Baseball’s Most Controversial Owner, and the Dodgers of Brooklyn, and Los Angeles (New York: Riverhead Books, 2009), 175.

3  D’Dantonio, 175.

4  D’Dantonio, 176

5  D’Dantonio, 212.

6 Vincent X. Flaherty to Walter O’Malley, letter, October 20, 1953, Walteromalley.com, Historic Documents, Business Correspondence.

7 Robert L. Murphy, After Many a Season: The Passing of the Giants and Dodgers and a Golden Age in Baseball (New York: Sterling, 2009), 123.

8 Murphy, 123.

9 Murphy, 123–24.

10 T. Holmes, New York Herald Tribune, August 17, 1955, 1.

11 11. R. Graf, “Dodgers Fans Cool To Jersey City Games,” New York World-Telegram and Sun, August 17, 1955, 1.

12 New Jersey City University, www.njcu.edu/programs/jchistory/Pages/H-Pages/Hague_Frank,htm.

13 “Jersey City Wary of Dodger Offer,” New York Times, August 21, 1955, 39; J. O. Haff, “Dodger ‘Package’ Irks Jersey City,” New York Times, August 31, 1955, 23.

14 J. Powers, “Dodgers Agree on Jersey City; To Play 24 Games in 3 Years,” Jersey Journal and Jersey Observer, December 1, 1955, 1.

15 J. Powers, “Dodgers Move Big Break for Fans,” Jersey Journal and Jersey Observer, December 2, 1955, 9.

16 “Big League Here! Dodgers Sign Up,” Jersey Journal and Jersey Observer, January 24, 1956, 1.

17 “Back at Desk, Berry Eyes Dodger Pact,” Jersey Journal and Jersey Observer, October 24, 1955, 1.

18 Arthur Daley, “Sports of The Times: At Home on the Road,” New York Times, April 20, 1956, 29.

19 “Sellout Looms for Dodger First Game,” Jersey Journal and Jersey Observer, February 7, 1956, 12.

20 J. Powers, “Jersey City Can Show Up Brooklyn,” Jersey Journal and Jersey Observer, April 17, 1956, 15.

21 J. Lang, “Dodgers Say Fence Too Far, Fans Too Rough,” Jersey Journal and Jersey Observer, April 20, 1956, 22.

22 E. Brennan, “Jackie Robinson Blows Cork at Jersey City Fans,” Jersey Journal and Jersey Observer, April 20, 1956, 22.

23 J. Lang, “Stumbling Giants Come to Life at Sight of Dodgers,” Jersey Journal and Jersey Observer, April 16, 1956, 25.

24 E. Brennan, “Increase in Games Not Likely Says O’Malley,” Jersey Journal and Jersey Observer, August 8, 1956, 18.

25 Murphy, 130.

26 Murphy, 140–43.

27 Neil J. Sullivan, The Dodgers Move West (New York: Oxford University Press. 1987), 77.

28 Sullivan, 87.

29 Lowenfish, 78.

30 Murphy, 201.

31 J. M. Sheehan, “Dodgers, Giants Win Right to Shift if They So Desire,” New York Times, May 29, 1957, 1.

32 David Greenberg, “Baseball’s Con Game: How Did America’s Pastime Get an Antitrust Exemption?” Slate, July 19, 2002 (www.slate.com/id/2068290).

33 Sullivan, 123–25.

34 B. Becker, “Giants Will Shift to San Francisco for 1958 Season,” New York Times, August 19, 1957, 1.

35 A. Maurer, “Dodgers Happy With Field, Friendly Fans,” Jersey Journal and Jersey Observer, April 23, 1957, 15.

36 J. Lang, “Newk As Unpopular in JC as He Is Everywhere Else,” Jersey Journal and Jersey Observer, August 8, 1957, 24.

37 “Dodgers Play Final Tilt of Season Here Tonight,” Jersey Journal and Jersey Observer, September 3, 1956, 16.

38 J. Lang, “Players Hope Flock Moves . . . Out of Jersey City!” Jersey Journal and Jersey Observer, September 4, 1957, 23.

39 P. Crowell, “Rockefeller Bid to Help Dodgers Ends in Failure,” New York Times, September 21, 1957, 1.

40 G. Hill, “Dodgers Pact Wins Los Angeles Vote,” New York Times, October 8, 1957, 1.

41 M. Kerzner, “Jersey City Making Pitch for Return of Baseball Next Season,” Jersey Journal and Jersey Observer, October 9, 1957, 62.

When confronted by a player or manager, Tim Hurst would offer to settle the matter with his fists, challenging the offender in his rich Irish accent. They called him “Sir Timothy” for his bearing and “Terrible Tim” for his temper.

The Irish potato famine of the 1840s and ’50s was probably the greatest human tragedy of the nineteenth century. After a nearly total failure of Ireland’s potato crop in 1845, followed by successive years of poor harvests, more than a million and a half Irish—nearly 20 percent of the island’s population—died of starvation from 1845 through 1851. In the nine years immediately following the onset of the famine, some 2,164,000 Irish men, women, and children emigrated to the New World, and the total number of Irish who made the passage by the end of the nineteenth century topped three and a half million. 

Most Irish immigrants spoke English, which gave them an advantage over new arrivals from Germany, Italy, and Eastern Europe. Though their life was hard in the New World, they managed to add a distinctive Irish flavor to the American “melting pot,” as Irish immigrants raised families, built communities, fought in the “Irish brigades” in the Civil War, and made a place for themselves in their adopted country.

Hundreds of thousands of these Irish immigrants were young men, and their arrival created a new stream of participants in America’s most rapidly growing sport. Baseball provided an opportunity for the Irishman to participate in and excel at something distinctly American. While the older generation could not always understand this strange new pastime and its appeal, their young men embraced it with enthusiasm. Before long, Irish names began popping up on rosters of amateur teams, especially in Brooklyn, Philadelphia, and northern New Jersey. Irish American laborers and millworkers formed their own clubs, and their children played the game in vacant lots and pastures.

Sports and games had been an important part of Irish civilization long before the upheaval caused by the famine. Gaelic football, a cross between soccer and rugby, was known in medieval times, while hurling, a stick-and-ball game that resembles lacrosse, had been played in some form in Ireland for more than two thousand years. The Irish came to America, said historian Steven A. Riess, “with a manly athletic tradition and quickly became avid sports fans and athletes in their new country.” 

Professional baseball, which took root in America shortly after the Civil War, was attractive to the ambitious Irishman. It matured just as a new generation of Irish Americans, the children of the famine refugees, reached adulthood, and it did not take long for the Irish to gain a foothold in the increasingly popular sport. Many of the game’s early stars were either Irish-born or sons of immigrants—the Hall of Fame includes twenty-four Irish American players from the nineteenth century. By 1885, according to statistics compiled by Hall of Fame historian Lee Allen, more than 40 percent of all major-league players claimed Irish ancestry.1

It comes as no surprise, then, that the Irish would come to dominate the umpiring ranks as well. 

Why were the Irish attracted to umpiring? Most likely, for the same reasons they were attracted to ballplaying. Baseball became a profession in the 1870s, just as thousands of Irish Americans were looking for both work and a place in American society; when umpiring became a profession during the 1880s, it became attractive to the Irish for the same reasons. In a time when too many occupations were closed to immigrants and their families, the Irish were looking for occupations they might be accepted in, and baseball had already proven itself welcoming to the Irish. Baseball, too, was growing; the number of teams, major and minor, increased sharply during the 1880s, creating a new demand not only for players but also for competent game officials. The Irish filled these positions with enthusiasm.

Research shows that many, indeed most, of the outstanding umpires of the period 1880–1920 were second-generation Irish. Some of these men were amateur and minor-league players who had failed to advance to major-league ball and turned to umpiring as a way to remain in the game they loved. A few—Bill Dinneen, George Moriarty, and Hank O’Day among them—had been fine major-league players themselves and sought to extend their time in the big leagues by serving as arbiters. Men such as these might umpire in the majors for thirty years or more after they played their last games. 

The first great umpire, John Gaffney, was an immigrant’s son from Roxbury, Massachusetts. He was a fine amateur player whose career had ended in the winter of 1880 when he hurt his arm throwing a snowball. Wanting to stay in the game, he became an umpire instead, and by 1886 his work in the National League had won him general recognition as the “King of Umpires.” The American Association had its own claimant to that title, “Honest John” Kelly, a New Yorker who was also the son of immigrants. Kelly had played in the National League in 1879 but batted only .155 and was convinced he would not succeed as a player. He turned to umpiring instead. 

Gaffney and Kelly set the tone for the Irish American umpires who followed. Both were former players, second-generation Irishmen, and masters of the strike zone and the rule book. Both men ruled the field with their presence and personality, though Kelly may have had another angle working in his favor. An umpire’s personal popularity played a key role in his success or failure during the 1880s, when fan rowdiness increased to alarming levels, and John Kelly proved highly popular with the crowds. Perhaps Kelly gained favor and kept the peace by being something of a “homer”—researchers have found that, in 1884, the home team won more than two-thirds of the games he presided over.2

Gaffney used patience and tact to control a game. “With the players I try to keep as even tempered as I can,” Gaffney explained, “always speaking to them gentlemanly yet firmly. I dislike to fine, and in all my experience have not inflicted more than $300 in fines, and I never found it necessary to order a player from the field. Pleasant words to players in passion will work far better than fines.”3 

Another second-generation Irishman, Tim Hurst, took a different tack. A coalminer’s son from Pennsylvania, Hurst had worked in the mines himself and learned to hold his own with his fists. He carried this attitude into a career as a boxing referee and, later, as a baseball umpire. He took no abuse from anyone. When threatened by a player or manager, Hurst would offer to settle the matter with his fists, challenging the offender in his rich Irish accent. They called him “Sir Timothy” for his bearing and “Terrible Tim” for his temper, and few players elected to punch it out with him. In 1897 he took on three Pittsburgh Pirates at once and whipped them all soundly. Still, he knew the rule book and commanded instant authority, though some players found his conversation so entertaining that they purposely baited him just to hear him argue in his Irish brogue. When asked why he wore a cap with a letter B on it, Hurst replied, “Because I’m the best.” 

The game changed as the new century dawned, but Hurst refused to change with it. He remained the same battler he had always been, even after joining the American League staff in 1905. His career ended in 1909 when he spit in the face of Philadelphia’s Eddie Collins because, as he said, “I don’t like college boys.” Still, Connie Mack, who managed the Pirates during the 1890s, said, “Hurst lost his head at times, and this was eventually his undoing, but he did more to stamp out rowdyism than any other official I have known. He was fearless and one of the gamest men who ever handled an indicator.”4 

One Irish umpire who had a rough time of it was Tom Lynch, who joined the National League staff in 1888. Lynch was widely admired for his honesty and integrity in an era when umpires were increasingly the target of player rowdiness and fan violence. He did not take abuse from anyone, and, though he was not an enthusiastic fighter like Hurst, he could be pushed past his limits. On August 6, 1897, he got into a fistfight on the field with Baltimore’s Jack Doyle during a hotly contested game at Boston, an incident suggesting that among the Irish there was little ethnic solidarity on the diamond at that time. Two years later, tiring of the constant abuse and lack of backing from the league, he resigned and took a job as a theater manager in his hometown of New Britain, Connecticut. 

Ten years later, the National League was looking for a man of integrity to take over as league president and offered the job to the long-retired Lynch, who served in that position for the next four years. Not surprisingly, he strongly supported his umpires, even against his bosses, the club owners. Lynch, not a man to hold grudges, hired Jack Doyle as an umpire on the National League staff in 1911. Lynch paired Doyle with the veteran Bob Emslie, another arbiter who had often clashed with Doyle years before. Doyle was not a good umpire, lasting only half a season, but, as Christy Mathewson remarked, “Emslie and [Doyle] got along like Damon and Pythias. This business makes strange bed-fellows.”5 

Tom Lynch was widely admired for his honesty and integrity in an era when umpires were increasingly the target of player rowdiness and fan violence. But he could be pushed past his limits. On August 6, 1897, he got into a fistfight with Baltimore’s Jack Doyle.

The percentage of Irish players in baseball dropped as more German and Eastern Europeans entered the game, and by 1900 the Irish were no longer the largest ethnic group on the playing field. However, their presence in the umpiring ranks remained steady for several decades to come. Perhaps the reason is that umpires have longer careers than players; perhaps also the Irish American umpires in the last two decades of the nineteenth century set an example that other Irish American men sought to follow. 

One outstanding umpire in the early years of the twentieth century was Jack Sheridan, a man so Irish in appearance and manner that people assumed he was born on the island. He was actually a native of Chicago and grew up in San Jose, California. He had been roughly treated in the National League during the 1890s, so he joined Ban Johnson’s Western League later that decade. He was the best arbiter on Johnson’s staff and umpired in the American League from 1900 to 1914. 

Sheridan had a few idiosyncrasies. He wore no chest protector behind the plate, because he was nimble enough to jump away from foul balls. His strike-three call was totally his own. He would make an exaggerated gesture with his arms and bellow, “Strike three! San Jose, California! The garden spot of America!” Sheridan had battled a fellow Irishman, John McGraw, in the National League, and their feud continued when both men found themselves now in the American League in 1901. On May 1 of the following year, Boston pitcher Bill Dinneen hit McGraw with a pitch, but Sheridan refused to allow McGraw to take his base, claiming that McGraw hadn’t tried hard enough to get out of the way.6

McGraw disliked Sheridan personally but respected him professionally. In 1913, McGraw and Charlie Comiskey took their teams, the Giants and White Sox, on a round-the-world exhibition tour. Wanting the two best umpires to accompany them, they chose Bill Klem and Jack Sheridan. 

Two other outstanding Irish American umpires of the era were Bill Dinneen and Hank O’Day. Both of them were pitchers who extended their baseball lives through umpiring. Dinneen pitched for twelve seasons and umpired for 28 more. O’Day pitched for seven seasons and umpired for 31, his umpiring career interrupted by two seasons as a manager. Both men are answers to great trivia questions. Dinneen is the only major leaguer in history to throw a no-hitter as a pitcher and call one as an umpire. O’Day is best known as the arbiter who called Fred Merkle out at second base in the pivotal Giants–Cubs contest of September 23, 1908. He was also the only umpire who ever ejected Connie Mack from a game, which he did in 1895.

In 1946 the Baseball Hall of Fame instituted the Honor Rolls of Baseball, a secondary level of recognition, that includes 39 men—managers, umpires, executives, and sportswriters. Of the 11 umpires on the list of honorees, seven (Dinneen, Sheridan, Hurst, Kelly, Gaffney, Lynch, and Frank “Silk” O’Loughlin) were Irish Americans, while the unaccountably missing Hank O’Day certainly should have been the eighth. (Another honored umpire, Tommy Connolly, was born in England but may well have also been Irish.) 

Another player-turned-umpire, George Moriarty, grew up in Chicago, where his immigrant father was a childhood friend of another Irishman, Charlie Comiskey. Moriarty reached the majors as a third baseman in 1903, having already earned a reputation as a fighter of the first rank. When he joined the Detroit Tigers in 1909, Ty Cobb challenged him to a fight. Moriarty handed Cobb a bat. “A fellow like you,” said the young third baseman, “needs a bat to even things up when fighting an Irishman.” Cobb wisely backed off. 

In 1917, his playing career over, Moriarty joined the American League umpiring staff, remaining until 1940. A Sporting News poll in 1935 rated him the best umpire in the league. One day in 1932, he took a page from Tim Hurst’s book when he fought four Chicago White Sox (three players and the manager) all at once after a hotly contested game in Chicago. Moriarty emerged with a broken wrist but managed to hold off all his assailants despite being nearly twice the age of the players involved.

Moriarty was so esteemed as a baseball man that he took a two-year hiatus from umpiring in 1927–28 to manage his old team, the Detroit Tigers. He was one of several Irish Americans— John Gaffney, John Kelly, Hank O’Day, and Tim Hurst—who interrupted their umpiring careers to manage major-league clubs.

The last of the great Irish American umpires was Jocko Conlan, another ex-player who turned to umpiring as a way to stay in the game. While riding the bench for the White Sox in 1935, he filled in for an umpire who had become ill in the summer heat. Conlan liked the work and shortly afterward retired as a player and gained a minor-league umpiring job. In 1941 he joined the National League staff and remained for 24 years. In contrast to many of the umpires in baseball today, Conlan was only five feet and seven inches tall and weighed about 160 pounds. He kept order on the field with his personality and his hustle and by making quick, correct decisions in an authoritative manner. 

The most famous Conlan story involves Leo Durocher, who was coaching for the Dodgers in 1961 when he ran out to argue with Conlan at home plate. Durocher kicked at the dirt and accidentally hit Conlan in the shins; Conlan kicked Leo back, and the two men stood at the plate kicking each other until Durocher realized that Jocko was the home-plate umpire and was wearing shin guards and steel-toed shoes. 

Conlan was elected to the Hall of Fame in 1974, the fourth umpire so honored. He was among the last of a breed. By the time he died in 1989 at age 89, the Irish American dominance of the umpiring profession had long since passed into history. 

DAVID FLEITZ, author of “The Irish in Baseball: An Early History” (McFarland, 2009), is a contributor to SABR’s Baseball Biography Project.

Author’s Note

This article is adapted from a presentation the author gave on July 31, 2009, at the 39th annual SABR convention in Washington, D.C., and from his book The Irish in Baseball: An Early History (Jefferson, S.C.: McFarland, 2009). Ron Kaplan, “The Sporting Life,” Irish America, February–March 2003.

Notes

1 Robert F. Burk, Never Just a Game: Players, Owners, and American Baseball to 1920 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1994), 131. Burk’s data came from a study by Hall of Fame historian Lee Allen and is summarized in Allen’s “Notebooks Containing Statistical Data on Baseball Players” in the Baseball Hall of Fame Library, Cooperstown, New York.

2 Larry Gerlach, “John O. Kelly,” in Baseball’s First Stars, ed. Frederick Ivor-Campbell, Robert L. Tiemann, and Mark Rucker (Cleveland: Society for American Baseball Research, 1996), 89.

3 The Sporting News, April 25, 1891.

4 Norman Macht, Connie Mack and the Early Years of Baseball (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2007), 450.

5 Christopher Mathewson, Pitching in a Pinch, reprint ed. (New York: Stein and Day, 1977), 177.

6 Charles C. Alexander, John McGraw (New York: Viking Penguin, 1988), 88.

Probability theorists usually think about this in terms of a tossing a biased coin (that is, one whose probability of turning up heads is not equal to .5) in succession, with each toss having the same probability of being a head. A perennial question is the probability of having a run of k heads in a row in n tosses. In the parlance of baseball, the question is the likelihood of getting a streak of k games in which he gets at least one hit. 

Our focus here is on a different question—namely, whether a long streak is consistent with a random coin-tossing model or if it is an exceptional event that defies the usual odds. This is a controversial topic, especially in the case of Joe DiMaggio’s 56-game hitting streak in 1941. It was an unusual occurrence, but was it only a manifestation of pure chance?1

We want to add our voice to this discussion by being more specific about what it means for the outcome of a game to be due to chance. 

A player’s average performance over many games is obtained from his batting average and his average number of hits per game. From these, one extracts an estimate of his probability of getting at least one hit per game—every time he is at bat, he either gets a hit or not—and the probability of this is some constant value determined by his averages. Moreover, each atbat is independent in outcome from all previous at-bats. This independence assumption is somewhat questionable during periods of exceptional performance (something we discuss further below), but it appears that, in the long run, over many games and many seasons, this hypothesis is not unreasonable and, as we will see, some of our results tend to support it. 

We now have the components for what is known as a Poisson process (after the French mathematician S. Poisson). For a Poisson process there is a specific formula p(k) for the probability of obtaining exactly k hits: ?k e-k/k! The details of how this comes about are discussed in most texts on probability and statistics. The only point of immediate concern to us is the parameter ?, the average number of hits per game. In a season of n games in which a player gets a total of m hits, one estimates ? by m/n. In the case of DiMaggio in 1941, he played in n=139 games and got a total of m=193 hits, and so ?=1.39. 

To begin the study of the phenomenon of “streak hitting,” we obtained game-by-game statistics pertaining to the two major streaks in modern baseball— DiMaggio’s 56-game streak in 1941 and Pete Rose’s 44-game streak in 1978. In DiMaggio’s case, the data had to be painstakingly culled from newspaper box scores.2 It is possible to count how many games in the season there were either no hits, or one hit, or two hits, up to four hits (the maximum for any game, as it turned out). Whether these data are consistent with the Poisson formula is easily found by computing p(k) for k=0, 1, 2, 3, 4 and then comparing the result to the actual number of hits. For the Pete Rose streak year, the same type of data was obtained from the Retrosheet, an invaluable source for this study and any future studies requiring daily and seasonal baseball data that are in-depth.

In order to test whether these streaks were exceptional occurrences, we made the comparison between theoretical and actual data for three sets of data in each of the streaks—the full seasons of 1941 and 1978, the streak-only data for those years, and the no-streak data. We also compared a variety of common stats such as batting average, average hits per game (this is the lambda, the one parameter of the Poisson distribution), on-base percentage, and slugging percentage. (The latter two metrics added together form OBPS.) We then were able to compare the action of the model on each of those periods and also compare the hitting statistics of the players during each of the periods, and finally we could examine two streaks for interesting similarities or difference with respect to the model fit and the players’ statistics. 

To test the hypothesis that the model predicted data that could be considered a reasonable representation of the actual data, we used the well known Chi Square goodness-of-fit test. If this hypothesis is rejected on the basis of the Chi Square test, then we must say that the model is not doing a good job of representing the data. Looking at the first two scenarios, we see that the Poisson assumption overestimates the number of games in which DiMaggio went hitless and underestimates the single-hit games, whereas, when the streak is removed, in the third scenario, there is actually a very good fit to the actual data (rounding to the closest integer gives a nearly perfect fit).

Table 1. DiMaggio’s 56-Game Streak, 1941

Ruth and Cobb are both in the Hall of Fame, but each hitter excelled in his own way. Indeed, every batter has unique psychological approaches, swing mechanics, habits, and characteristics. Even so, one thing about hitting is true for every hitter: Every time he walks up to the plate, he has only one tool to work with. Skillful use of this tool, the baseball bat, has captured the attention of fans, tried the patience of athletes, and turned men into legends.

AMBITION BEGETS EXPERIMENTATION

Baseball as played today emerged from a cauldron of other games. In the late nineteenth century, the rules changed often, contributing to a seesaw dynamic within the game. For a few years, batters would have the edge and pitchers would be disadvantaged; subsequent rule changes would turn the tables. Exploited rules (and inherent advantages) disappeared quickly, leaving rules that maintained a good balance of offense and defense. Around 1900, rules about the bat had evolved that were simultaneously simple and thorough. In the decades since, bat-specific rules have remained relatively unchanged. The bats themselves, however, are a different story.

One important rule change in the early turbulent years came about in 1887: Batters could no longer request a high or low pitch. If the pitcher’s throw passed over the plate and between the shoulders and knees, it was called a strike. Thus the adversarial approach to pitching — planted by Jim Creighton in 1859 — fully bloomed. Instead of trying to help the hitter, pitchers had a new objective. The goal of all pitchers became what Casey Stengel once said of Satchel Paige: “He threw the ball as far from the bat and as close to the plate as possible.” Pitchers began experimenting with various deliveries and grips. The spitball became a part of nearly every pitcher’s arsenal.

As pitchers experimented with the ball, hitters responded by experimenting with the bat. Indeed, as the sport evolved, the bat changed significantly — in shape, size, and material — as batters sought a competitive advantage. Examining the history and underlying science will allow us to gauge the success of these experiments.

Large barrel of Heinie Groh’s “bottle bat” gave him a bigger striking surface. (NATIONAL BASEBALL HALL OF FAME LIBRARY)

EARLY EXPERIMENTS

During baseball’s fledging years, there were no bat manufacturers. Each player made his own, often starting with an axe handle or wagon tongue and shaping it to his liking using hand tools. Through trial and error, hickory wood was found to be successful. It was hard and resilient, so players rarely needed to replace bats. But as the game became more sophisticated, so did bat making. In 1884, a boy watched the slumping local star Pete “Gladiator” Browning break his bat. After the game, the boy offered to make Browning a new one using his father’s woodworking lathe; the two worked through the night on a piece of northern white ash. The next day, Browning’s three hits provoked inquiries about his new bat. As the years went on, ash wood became very popular with players. So did that boy and his father. That is how Hillerich and Bradsby, the manufacturer of the popular Louisville Slugger line of baseball bats, got their start. A trend had begun. Instead of making their bats, more and more players in the 1880s began purchasing bats that were professionally lathed.

Experiments were not restricted to trying out different types of material. Briefly popular, flat bats fell into obscurity as longer bats with slight tapers and knobs at the handle became prevalent. Players continued to tweak the weight distribution and barrel and handle diameters, but, for the most part, bats used after 1900 look remarkably similar to each other. However, creativity was not totally suppressed — experiments that deviated from the norm found their way into the batter’s box and the patent office.

THE “SCIENTIFIC GAME,” MOMENT OF INERTIA, AND EXPERIMENTS ON SHAPE

To understand the experiments on bats, we must understand the goal of the batter. If Stengel’s words best sum up the efforts of the pitcher, the objective of the hitter was best summarized by Wee Willie Keeler’s “Hit ’em where they ain’t.” In Keeler’s playing days (1892–1910), hitters followed his guiding wisdom by playing what has been called the “scientific game.” The scientific game involved a heavily strategic approach to baseball. Runs were scored via bunts, hit and runs, and stolen bases. Batters choked up and slapped at the ball, placing hits between infielders or just over their heads. Slugging — swinging mightily — was a frowned-on approach.

The appeal of the tactics employed by adherents of the scientific game is understandable when you consider the game’s origins. Making contact was important because, in the sport’s infancy, the development of the bat far outpaced the development of gloves. Since gloves were deemed unmanly, they were often not used, and errors were common. Even if a batter did hit the ball in the proximity of a fielder, he still might reach base on an error. Also contributing to the allure of the scientific game was an English game that heavily influenced baseball: cricket. In cricket, batsmen may get only one turn to bat per match, so the ability to place hits (and avoid being put out) is important. The first baseball players took this idea of guiding their hits and brought it to the diamond. And so experimentation with bats in the early days of baseball was steered by this “small ball” approach — the goal of experiments was to help players place their hits.

Many players, most notably Ty Cobb, adopted a split-hands grip, hoping to increase their bat control. But bat manufacturers sought to improve the tool itself by making a bat that was easier to swing. Manufacturers tried unconventional shapes; many bats that hit the market looked familiar to us from the knob up but had baseball-sized chunks of wood connected below the knob. In advertisements from this era it was explained that the chunks were intended to give the bat a more even weight distribution. In other words, manufacturers were hoping to alter the moment of inertia of the bat.

Moment of inertia (MOI) is an object’s resistance to rotation. It relates both to how the weight is distributed throughout the object and where the point of rotation is located. MOI is a value, just like weight is. And just as a heavier object will be harder to lift, an object with a higher MOI will be harder to swing. Two bats can have the same static weight, but if their shapes are different they may have different MOI and different swing weights. Even though bats are described in terms of length and weight, fans and players alike know that these values alone do not tell the whole story; a bat feels “heavier” when swung while holding the handle versus when held around the barrel. In reality, however, the bat’s weight is remaining the same — it is the moment of inertia that is changing.

The lemon-, ball-, and mushroom-knobbed bats used in the Deadball Era were all successful in lowering the MOI when compared with similarly weighted bats shaped like those used today. So these bats felt lighter when swung and gave a player more bat control than if he used a similarly weighted bat of twenty-first-century shape. However, a decrease in MOI means a less efficient collision between the bat and ball. And so these bats, perfectly suited for the scientific game, have fallen out of favor for the same reason Ty Cobb’s split-hands grip has: More bat control means less power.

While these bats succeeded in increasing bat control, other peculiar shapes were introduced to help batters play the scientific game. Perhaps the most famous of the oddly shaped, antique baseball bats was one wielded by Heinie Groh in the 1910s and ’20s. His “bottle bat” had a thick barrel that extended past the label before tapering quickly to a thin handle. Groh’s manager, the crafty John McGraw, suggested such a bat, but he was not intentionally trying to lower the MOI and thus make an easier-to-swing bat for the fivefoot-eight, 160-pound batter. The goal of the larger barrel was to give Groh a bigger striking surface; the thinner handle would make it easier for his small hands to grasp the bat. Groh had a fine career, but whether his bat helped is difficult to determine. Interestingly, because of the peculiar shape, if his bat were the same length as one used today, the MOI would be higher. However, if it were the same weight as one used today, the MOI would be lower. The unique geometry of Groh’s bat may have given him slightly more bat control than if he had used the heavy bats that were common during the Deadball Era.2

Another variation on the bat’s geometry was that of Napoleon Lajoie’s bat, which had two knobs, the higher one being called the shoulder. The shoulder was a few inches up the handle and was for the batter’s bottom hand, if he was choking up, or for his top hand, if he was swinging normally. This bat, named for Lajoie, drew a lot of attention. Many players tried it, hoping to emulate Lajoie, one of the outstanding hitters of his day (and of baseball history, for that matter).

A third oddly shaped bat was patented in 1906 by inventor Emile Kinst. His patent drawings more closely resemble a jai alai stick than a baseball bat. In his patent (US0838257), Kinst claimed his bat had two unique features. The first was the shape of the barrel: When viewed from the side, it traced not a line but an arc. He hoped that the curved barrel would allow the hitter to spray the ball to all parts of the field and that it would impart spin to the ball, making it harder to field. A player who mastered the use of this bat would be very hard to defend. The second curious trait was the series of longitudinal grooves in the front of the curved barrel. Their purpose was to aid the hitter in hitting sharp line drives, avoiding foul tips and fly balls. Both of these traits, the bat’s tendency to give spin to batted balls and to induce them to take the form of line drives, fit directly with the objective of the scientific game.

A NEW OBJECTIVE

Despite how crazy (not to mention illegal) his bat may seem, Kinst incorporated one design feature into his bat that was well ahead of its time. In 1971 the idea of bending the bat resurfaced with the patent of a bent-handled baseball bat. As stated in the patent application, the dog-leg handle was supposed to “improve the batter’s hitting power and effectiveness.”3

Notice the goal of the dog-leg bat was to increase the power, not the placement of the hit. Bats invented before 1920 all tried to help the hitter play the scientific game. Whether by a change in the weight distribution, the addition of a knob, or an alteration of the shape, all were designed to give the batter more control over where he hit the baseball. This dog-leg handled bat is just one example of the many modifications that in the 1970s, ’80s, and ’90s were made to help the player hit the ball hard.

And so, while Emile Kinst’s idea of a curved bat would be imitated more than half a century later, the reasons behind his design were entirely different. Clearly, between the early 1910s and the 1970s there was a change in the goal of design improvements. If the experiments in the later twentieth century were focused on a player’s ability to hit the ball far and hard instead of placing it carefully between the shortstop and third baseman, something must have changed. A new objective of experiments in bats suggests a change, in the approach to hitting, from what had been around for over half a century — since the beginning of baseball no less. What could bring about so monumental a shift? It would take only 54 swings by one man to forever change the game.

Remember, Babe Ruth and Ty Cobb disagreed sharply on this very issue: Is hitting scientifically better than slugging? As it turned out, Cobb was the last of one era, Ruth the first of another. For decades, hitters had been playing the scientific game, but this low-scoring approach went out the window when the Babe was up. Setting incredibly lofty single-season home run records, he swung for the fences every time. Players, seasoned fans, and team owners familiar with the entrenched style thought Ruth’s approach was an indecent way to play the game. However, in the years immediately following the First World War, the public’s appetite for entertainment was renewed, which Ruth provided, appealing to a new type of fan and a broader audience. A bright spot after the disillusionment bred by the Black Sox Scandal, he became one of the first national celebrities; as his popularity rose, so did attendance figures.

Rogers Hornsby, a contemporary of Ruth, remarked, “The home run became glorified with Babe Ruth. Starting with him, batters have been thinking in terms of how far they could hit the ball, not how often.”

Old-school players were frustrated. As a proponent of the scientific game, Cobb had always looked down on Ruth’s approach, but his style of chopping at the baseball was falling out of fashion. Ruth succeeded in changing what had been the norm for eighty years. Though still trying to “hit it where they ain’t,” he and his successors attempted to do this in a different way. On the whole, hitting the ball sharply gives defenders less chance to field it and, moreover, increases the odds it will fly over the fence. Hitting the ball hard became the new objective.

CONSERVATION OF MOMENTUM

If players wanted to focus their experiments on one particular variable, perhaps the best metric of a hitter’s ability to hit the ball hard is batted-ball speed (BBS). The question for athletes and inventors then becomes what variables can be tweaked to help a player hit the ball hard — to increase BBS?

We can analyze which properties of the bat affect BBS. In physics terms, the momentum of the bat-ball system is conserved during the swing, so the sum of the initial momenta must be equal to the sum of the final momenta. Though simplifying the collision, examining the linear case will yield meaningful insights. The equation for the conservation of linear momentum of the bat-ball collision looks like (1)

where mB is the mass of the bat, vB the velocity of the bat, mb the mass of the ball, and vb the velocity of the ball. Since the goal of the batter is to hit the ball hard, not to guide it anywhere in particular, vb final needs to be as large as possible. Assuming that the mass of the bat and ball stay the same throughout the collision, the equation can be rearranged using simple algebra to yield (2)

To increase BBS, vb initial could be increased. Baseball players have long supported this conclusion: If the pitcher is throwing harder, the batter will hit it harder. However, this insight is not always helpful to the hitter — the only values under his control belong to the bat: vB initial and mB. When we focus on these values, further analysis shows that since vB initial > vB final >0 (the bat slows down after contact, but does not change direction) the ratio of mB / mb will be multiplied by a m/m positive constant. So this ratio needs to be as large as possible, and so the numerator needs to increase. Therefore, we see that a heavier bat will hit the ball harder.

While equation 2 helps our understanding, incorrect conclusions can be drawn if we just stopped there. For instance, if vb initial were increased by any amount, it appears that vb final would be increased by an identical amount. That would be incorrect, because a harder-thrown pitch will result in a slower bat after contact. We still have vB final in our equation, and, in order to get a complete picture, we need to get rid of it. Besides, when was the last time you heard someone talk about the bat’s speed after collision? We need a way to eliminate that variable. The answer is the coefficient of restitution (COR).

The COR deals with how elastic the collision is between two objects — in our case, the bat and ball. A higher COR means the ball bounces off the bat harder. (In the case of a baseball colliding with a bat, the COR is about 0.55, meaning the ball bounces off with just over half of its original velocity.) The correct equation (using C to designate the COR) that isolates all of the variables is this: (3)

If we look closely at this equation, we see that, if we increase vB initial then we will have a larger numerator, as both the second term and the third term will increase. And so a faster bat will result in a higher BBS. What is curious about the heavier-versus-faster predicament is that these traits are mutually exclusive. If we assume the bats are similarly shaped, a heavier bat is necessarily swung slower, not faster. So which is more important, weight or speed?

Rogers Hornsby, a contemporary of Ruth, remarked that “starting with him, batters have been thinking in terms of how far they could hit the ball, not how often.” (NATIONAL BASEBALL HALL OF FAME LIBRARY)

THE SCIENCE BEHIND THE “UNSCIENTIFIC” GAME — WHAT MATTERS MORE, WEIGHT OR SPEED?

Ideally, a player would swing the heaviest stick with the greatest speed, but the ideal is impossible, so players face a difficult tradeoff. The correlation between the bat’s characteristics (weight and speed) and the player’s performance (BBS) intrigues scientists and batters alike. Bat speed matters more than bat mass, according to Daniel Russell of Kettering University.4 In one of the studies he cites, experimenters, using BBS as the guiding metric, recorded the ball velocity resulting from different swings of different bats. Bats of increasing weight were swung at a constant speed. Other factors (like ball velocity and ball mass) were kept constant. Obviously, the largest bat resulted in the highest BBS. (It had the largest initial momentum.) Then bats of the same weight were swung at increasing speeds. Again, other factors were kept constant. Again, the results proved intuitive: The faster bat resulted in the highest BBS. The interesting thing was that a change in bat speed resulted in a higher BBS than a proportionally equal change in bat weight. So an incremental change in bat speed would give a player a higher BBS than would an incremental change in mass. In practice, though increasing the mass of the bat is not the scientifically optimal choice, it’s the easier alternative. It’s easy enough to grab a heavier bat but not so easy to just swing harder — players often swing as hard as they can anyway.

That bat speed matters more than bat weight was certainly not intuitive to players in Ruth’s era. Players in the late 1920s and ’30s actually pounded nails or needles into the barrel of their bats to make them heavier. They intuited (correctly) that a heavier bat would hit the ball farther, and they concluded (incorrectly) that the heavier, the better. And so we hear tales of 45-ounce clubs being wielded in the batter’s box. Today’s players seem to understand the importance of bat speed. So what — or, rather, who — was the reason for the shift from emphasis on weight to emphasis on speed? Supposedly baseball players are great experimentalists, so how did such a fact stay undiscovered for decades?

The origins of recognizing bat speed as more important than bat mass are difficult to pin down; the shift to lighter bats was gradual and not marked by any one specific event or person. However, Ted Williams reports in his book, The Science of Hitting, that he began using a light bat during the 1938 season. He used a 35-ounce bat in the minor leagues for a while before borrowing a teammate’s lighter bat and, to his surprise, hit a home run with just a flick of his wrists. From then on Williams used a 33-ounce bat. In his book he remembered that players using smaller bats created a stir in the 1950s, but he claimed to have been using one for years.

In Keep Your Eye on the Ball, Robert Watts and Terry Bahill help explain both why Ruth and others were using such heavy bats (though with success) and why a lighter bat might have been better.5 In the 1990s Watts and Bahill devised a test in which they tried to find the best bat weight for a player to use. They had a player swing bats of different weights. They measured the swing speed and calculated what the ball’s exit speed, or BBS, would be. As expected, the faster swings were with lighter bats, slower swings with heavier bats. Also as expected, there was a bat weight at which an extra ounce meant the ball’s exit speed would decrease.

Watts and Bahill realized that there might be a difference between an optimum bat weight and an ideal bat weight. While an optimum bat weight would enable a hitter to create the highest BBS, a bat lighter than that would allow the hitter more time to see the pitch, would give him more bat control, and would enable him to make good contact more frequently. They suggest that the ideal weight would be one in which the player has good bat control and can wait longer before swinging. They suggest a weight that is 1 percent below the maximum BBS value. The swing speed would be much higher and therefore the frequency of well-struck balls would outweigh the slight dip in power.

Their results suggest that the difference between optimum weight and ideal weight is approximately equal to the difference in the weights of the bats used by Ruth and by Williams respectively. Focusing on the idea that more weight would help him hit the ball farther, Ruth kept traveling along the curve until he reached a fall-off point. It is likely, then, that Ruth would not necessarily be able to hit the ball any harder (or farther) by using a bat that was slightly lighter or slightly heavier. However, pitch velocities have risen since 1930, so that the importance of bat speed has increased. Over time, players have favored increased bat speeds and lighter bats even at the cost — albeit diminutive — of BBS.

Before Barry Bonds’ 73-home-run season in 2001, few players had ever used a maple bat, let alone on a regular basis. Seven years later, about half the bats in the major leagues were maple. (NATIONAL BASEBALL HALL OF FAME LIBRARY)

RECENT EXPERIMENTS ON THE SHAPE OF THE BAT

As bat speed has become more important, many alterations to the shape used by Ruth and Williams have been suggested, from dimpled barrels to bent and V-shaped handles. Patenting his idea in 1994 (US5284332), MIT professor Jeff DiTullio believed that adding dimples to the barrel would increase a player’s bat speed by reducing drag.6 A dimpled barrel experiences less drag because the dimples stir up the air around the bat, causing it to flow through more turbulent air, reducing the drag coefficient. DiTullio tested his dimpled bat and found that he could increase the swing speed by about 3 to 5 percent — enough to turn a fly ball caught on the warning track into a home run.7 However, bats used in MLB games must be “smooth” (Rule 1.10a), so it’s unlikely that DiTullio’s idea will be applied in professional ball.

Another bat redesign intended to increase a batter’s power has already been mentioned: the dogleg-handled bat. By the 1980s, the idea of a dog-leg handle had migrated into aluminum softball bats. In 1982, Esther Moe completed her master’s thesis in which she compared the ball-exit velocity off the two differently handled softball bats — one “normal”-handled bat and the other with a handle angle of 19 degrees.8 She found that, despite the psychological appeal of a newer technology, the different handle shape did not help the performances of the players.

While these two bats are some of the many that are disallowed by MLB rules, there have been experiments on bat shapes whose permissibility is only questionable. Some players shave down the handles of their bats. Most are simply trying to change the diameter so that it feels right in their hands when they swing. In the 1980s and ’90s, Don Mattingly went so far as to change the shape of his handle so that it was no longer cylindrical. He believed his bat speed would improve if he held the bat in his fingers, not his palms. He found that a rounded, triangular-type handle would help the bat sit well in his hands and keep his fingers aligned throughout his swing. Mattingly’s name now appears on a line of V-handled bats promising to help players hit the ball farther.

MATERIAL EXPERIMENTS

Alongside experiments on the shape of the bat have been experiments on its material. For the last quarter century, amateur players have been able to use metal bats in games. The idea was around as early as 1924,9 but metal bats did not come into common use until the 1970s. Originally, metal bats were used because they were more durable. However, performance quickly became the main reason for their use.

Indeed, metal bats are quite an upgrade from wooden ones. Like Daniel Russell, Alan Nathan maintains a website where he looks at, among other things, the science of baseball. Both Russell and Nathan explain many of the advantages metal has over wood.10 They explain the efficiency of the bat-ball collision based on hoop and linear oscillatory modes, describe a few different ways to define the “sweet spot” of a bat, and show why certain safety measures need to be taken. They were involved in helping the NCAA regulate their bats, looking at both the ball-exit speed ratio (BESR) requirement and the MOI monitoring. However, while the history and science of metal bats is interesting, I will leave it for another to fully explore and explain. I will limit my examination of differences in materials to a look at different types of wood.

Even though different woods have different characteristics, the type of material used by players had remained remarkably consistent for more than a century. Ever since Pete Browning swung his in 1884, Louisville Slugger has made bats out of ash, specifically northern white ash. As recently as 2000 it was generally accepted that professional ballplayers used ash bats. Today, though, many players are using sugar (rock) maple. After ash dominated the market for so long, why the sudden change? Interestingly, it was another single-season home-run king who was responsible for altering a convention that had prevailed among hitters for a century.

BODYBUILDERS PLAYING BASEBALL

In 1998, Sammy Sosa and Mark McGwire were locked in a home-run race to see who could break Roger Maris’s 37-year-old single-season home-run record. Looking more like bodybuilders than typical baseball players, they slugged it out, drawing fans and media adulation. That year McGwire did succeed in setting a new record, but his reign on top was brief; baseball waited only three years before another single-season home-run record was established. Besides uncannily quick hands, a nearly inhuman plate discipline, and the plausible assistance of undocumented and possibly unsafe levels of chemicals coursing through his body, to what could Barry Bonds attribute his record 73 home runs in 2001? The bat of the new home-run king was a maple, and Bonds credited it with giving him “a lot of confidence.”11

Reports vary as to when maple bats were first used in an MLB regular-season game, but they all agree that, before 1996, no player had ever used one. Before Bonds’s monster season, few players had ever used a maple, let alone on a regular basis. Yet only seven years after the record-setting season, about half the bats in the major leagues were maple.

Manufacturers claim maple has two advantages over ash. The first is that maple bats help a player increase his BBS. The second is that maple bats last longer. One obvious place to look for evidence that these bats help players hit balls farther would be offensive statistics. With 50 percent of players using maple, offensive statistics should have increased. Benjamin G. Rader and Kenneth J. Winkle studied the 1990s hitting barrage.12 They discovered that hitting peaked in 2000 and that seasons that spanned 2001 to 2007 saw a “new equilibrium” of offensive statistics. They found that when maple bats started becoming more popular, the offensive numbers actually decreased.

However, they caution that maple was not an isolated variable. In fact, offensive numbers have declined over the past decade primarily because of the changing strike zone, the banning of certain substances, and the institution of drug-testing programs. It’s possible that maple bats help hitters but that the positive effect has been outweighed by expansion of the strike zone and restrictions on drug use. Rader and Winkle acknowledge the effect of such institutional changes and think their findings are indicative of them, not of wood type.

Although it’s difficult to determine from offensive statistics, ash and maple indeed have unique performance characteristics. Uniqueness does not imply superiority, however — one does not necessarily have an advantage over the other. After all, McGwire used an ash bat when he hit 70. If statistics will not suffice, perhaps a scientific examination of each material will aid in the understanding of the distinct characteristics of each type of wood and how each is suited for use in major-league games.

“The pitcher has got only a ball,” Henry Aaron once said. “I’ve got a bat. So the percentage of weapons is in my favor and I let the fellow with the ball do the fretting.” (NATIONAL BASEBALL HALL OF FAME LIBRARY)

CHARACTERISTICS OF WOOD

The table below shows measures of stiffness and other important features of different types of wood.13 I include values of hickory for historical purposes and values of yellow birch to show that other suitable woods exist that have yet to catch on.14

Specific gravity relates to the density of the wood. Even though hickory was used in the 1930s and earlier, it has fallen out of favor as bat speed has become important. It’s possible that new drying techniques can make hickory a viable wood in the future, but its heavy weight continues to discourage its use. Also, since maple is denser than ash, the barrel and/or handle diameters of maple bats are necessarily thinner so that a maple bat will have the same length-to-weight ratio of an ash bat.15

Static bending relates to the stiffness of the bat and is commonly referred to as Young’s modulus. Having a lower value, an ash bat will bend more on impact with a ball than a maple one will. Players notice the inherent give to an ash bat and that the connection with a maple bat feels more solid. Some hitters have commented that they like maple because they don’t have to compensate for this give; others prefer the flex of an ash bat. The stiffness of the bat also determines how the bat vibrates when struck by a ball. These vibrations are what contribute to a stinging sensation when the ball is hit poorly and a solid feeling when contact is made on the bat’s sweet spot, giving further credence to players’ subjective evaluation of the different merits of ash and maple.

It’s interesting to compare Young’s modulus with the “height of drop causing failure” test. This test is exactly what it sounds like: A hammer is dropped on a wood sample from increasing heights until the wood breaks. From Young’s modulus, we know that ash is more flexible; from the “height of drop causing failure” test, which is a measure of impact bending, we see that ash will also withstand a greater force from a hammer. So, compared to ash, a maple bat, which is stiffer, will, with its thinner handle and lower impact bending value, be more likely to snap at the handle. However, an ash bat is more likely to split down the barrel, as it has lower shear strength parallel to the grain. There is an important difference in the ways these two bats tend to break: A splitting bat poses significantly less danger to spectators than does a snapped bat. A split bat usually stays in one piece, whereas one that snaps leaves the batter holding only the bottom six inches while the barrel goes flying away. In the summer of 2008, a player, a fan, and an umpire were all injured by a flying barrel. As the use of maple has risen, so have safety concerns.

MLB RESPONSE TO SAFETY CONCERNS

Prompted by the rise in broken bats, Commissioner Bud Selig assembled a team of experts to study the issue. Over a two-month period in 2008, the committee collected and examined more than 2,200 broken bats. Chief among their discoveries was that manufacturers were making bats with a poor slope of grain.

Slope of grain is essentially a measure of how parallel the bat would be to the tree it came from. If a bat breaks at the handle and there is a smooth ellipse-shaped break — almost as if someone had cut through the bat with a knife — that is an example of a break due to poor slope of grain. The steeper the angle of that oval, the less strength the bat had. Bats used during the 2008 season had as much as a 14-degree angle, which means they were at only 25 percent of the possible strength. MLB now enforces regulations on this issue, but some manufacturers have simply opted to stop selling maple bats entirely.

In addition to considering rules for minimum handle thickness and proposing regulations regarding the slope of the grain, the MLB committee defied conventional wisdom and asked manufacturers to reposition the label on maple bats. From childhood, players are taught to swing with the label directly up (or down) in order to hit with the edge grain of the bat. With the label on the edge grain of a maple bat, the players still hit with the label in the same orientation, but they make contact with the face grain instead. The committee recommended this change because the face grain has a higher impact bending strength, which means it can withstand a higher hammer drop. So the bat is stronger with the face grain hitting the ball. The recommendation of the committee gives the player a tougher side of the bat to use, and so the bat will be less likely to snap when struck by a baseball.

As it turns out, maple and ash bats alike have a higher impact bending strength when struck on the face grain. Yet the label for an ash bat remains in its traditional location. So why would the label not change for ash bats as well? The answer hinges on the difference in the pore structures. Ash is a ring-porous wood, so rings of pores correspond to the growth rings. Conversely, maple is diffuse-porous — the pores are spread out evenly throughout the wood. These pores compress when ball hits bat. Maple compresses evenly, but ash bats will deteriorate very quickly when struck on the face grain. Manufacturers put the label on the face grain of ash bats to warn players which side would deteriorate fastest with use. This is why players are taught to hit with the label either directly up or down — to hit, that is, parallel with the grain — even though that means the face they hit with is the weaker one.

Diffuse-porous bats made of wood like maple don’t undergo such deterioration. In fact, grain spreading in ash leads many players to discard used ash bats, but maple bats tend to be used until they break. Bats made of maple will typically last longer, and their lack of degradation allows players to take into the game the same one they used in batting practice that afternoon. Each player wants to succeed at the plate, and comfort with his particular tool of the trade can go a long way toward helping him achieve that aim. However, players who prefer ash may soon need to consider other bats, as the supply may be in jeopardy.

FUTURE OF WOOD BATS

For decades, Pennsylvania forests have provided ash wood for baseball bats. In 2002, the emerald ash borer, a species of beetle dangerous to ash trees and once foreign to America, was discovered in Michigan. By 2007 it had reached Pennsylvania. If it reaches certain parts of the state, the supply of ash bats could be severely diminished. While the manufacturers of bats are aware of the beetle and are taking what precautions they can, it still threatens. While birch and bamboo bats are currently being manufactured, maple may need to become the primary wood for MLB. Provided ash does need to bow out of the spotlight it has enjoyed for the past hundred years, maple would be a viable alternative. Many players already enjoy the bat. And since safety concerns already keep some players from switching over, should the MLB committee’s recommendations prove to alleviate these concerns, maple may achieve the dominance enjoyed by ash until just a decade ago. It seems the future of maple bats hinges on the safety of their use.

Or we can just wait for someone to hit 80 home runs with a birch bat, which would then become all the rage.

Hitters take their bats seriously. Some believe that each bat has one hit in it and will constantly change bats. Others may keep their bat in a special case when not in use, bringing the same bat up to the plate for months on end. The experiments over the years — by players, inventors, physicists, engineers — have resulted in a refined tool for the major-league hitter to carry with him to the plate. Although the job of hitting is quite possibly one of the hardest in sports, the right tool makes it slightly less so. “The pitcher has got only a ball,” Hank Aaron once commented. “I’ve got a bat. So the percentage of weapons is in my favor and I let the fellow with the ball do the fretting.”

BEN WALKER, a recent college graduate, is moving with his new wife and electrical-engineering degree from Seattle to Chicago, where he will look for work, a home, and Cubs tickets.

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