Henry Chadwick, baseball’s first historian, tried to capture a game in a chart for his newspaper readers. It was called a box score, and as it evolved over the years, it offered the raw material for the statistically minded to analyze, understand, and appreciate the game. There were dozens who followed, from Ernie Lanigan, longtime baseball writer and editor, to fans sitting at their dining room tables with pencils and, maybe, a mechanical calculator.

Allan Roth pushed the analysis of baseball statistics to a new level. He promoted himself into a place those other analysts only aspired to. Roth was the first to be employed full time by a major-league team, “the only zealot lucky enough to work for a major league team and to get to test his theories first hand.”1

Abraham Roth was born in Montreal on May 10, 1917, the son of Nathan and Rose (Silverheart). Nathan, a tailor, had emigrated from Galicia (which straddles the current Poland/Ukraine border) in 1899 at the age of 15. Rose probably came from Bucavina, an area then part of Romania, but now in Ukraine. She arrived about 1910.2 Abraham had an older brother, Max, who became a leading Canadian architect, and a younger sister Sylvia.

Nathan worked as a tailor and the family moved around Ontario province before returning to Montreal during Abraham’s high school years, when he attended Strathcona Academy, playing all the major sports. He also spent many free hours from ages 13 to 16, compiling statistics for the International League and his home town Montreal Royals. He passed the entrance examination for McGill University, where Max was already studying. Family circumstances, however, prevented paying for a second college student, so Abraham took a job. He worked as a salesman, first of magazines and later of men’s ties, suspenders, belts and mufflers.3

In July 1940, Abraham married Esther Machlovitch and the following winter, changed his name to Allan. Later that year, he began his pursuit of “the type of work that I wanted to do.”4 From an early age, he had been mathematically oriented, entertaining himself and his family at age three by counting backwards from 100 by twos.5 In his spare time, he had done both hockey and baseball statistics, developing the breakdowns which would characterize his later work.

In December 1940, Roth wrote to Leland “Larry” MacPhail, president of the Brooklyn Dodgers, seeking an appointment to discuss work as a statistician. He tried again in June and August of the next year. He met MacPhail in the Mount Royal Hotel in Montreal and explained his ideas. MacPhail was, at best, non-committal.6 But, Roth decided to take the plunge, quit his job in men’s clothing and began to compile statistics on professional hockey. In October 1941, Roth showed his work to Frank Calder, president of the National Hockey League, who hired him to be the league’s official statistician and to write for the league’s publicity sheet. His progress was interrupted three months later, when he was drafted into the Canadian Army.7

The Army at least recognized his talents and he was put in charge of all the records and statistics of the unit charged with organizing reinforcement contingents for Canadian Forces in Europe. In January 1944, Roth was discharged due to epilepsy, which was of the petit mal variety, and not likely to affect his work.8 He began to write sports features for the Montreal Standard and to compile statistics for the Montreal Canadiens. But, he kept his focus on the Dodgers because he considered Branch Rickey, MacPhail’s successor as Dodger president, the most innovative man in sports.

In April 1944, three months after his military discharge, he wangled a meeting with Rickey at the Dodgers spring training site in Bear Mountain, just north of New York City. It was a disaster, Roth said. The dinner included Mrs. Rickey and was in the main dining room of the Bear Mountain Inn, the premier hotel in the region. Rickey was constantly being interrupted by well-wishers. Roth despaired of making a coherent presentation. Finally, Roth told Rickey he didn’t think he was getting a fair shake. Asked what he wanted, Roth responded, “Ten minutes of your undivided attention.”9

Rickey asked that Roth send Ed Staples, his assistant, a detailed outline of Roth’s ideas. The four-page letter contained proposals to track a wide range of statistics. Some of these were standard, but others, such as where the ball was hit and the count it was hit on, hadn’t been compiled regularly. Roth also proposed to break the statistics down into various categories that would reveal tendencies which the front office and the manager could use to win ballgames. Breakdowns such as performance against left-handers and right-handers, in day games versus night games, in the various ballparks, in situations with runners in scoring position, are all mundane to us now. But in Roth’s time, they were rarely compiled or used, and never part of the public discussion. The letter was intriguing enough to get a meeting with a still-skeptical Rickey. The conversation turned positive, Roth said, when Rickey asked him about runs batted in. Roth said he didn’t think much of runs batted in unless they were correlated with the chances to drive them in, and differentiated again by which base they’d been drive in from. This meshed with Rickey’s own beliefs and the conversation flowered. Roth was offered the job.10

But, with World War II, and then the U.S. government’s fears that returning servicemen would have a hard time finding jobs as military production was cut back, Roth couldn’t get a visa until 1947. Even then, Rickey had some difficulty persuading his partners, Walter O’Malley and John Smith, to approve a $5,000 salary.11

The Roth era began on Opening Day, April 15, 1947, with the Dodgers hosting the Boston Braves at Ebbets Field. Braves shortstop’s Dick Culler’s ground out to third base was the first plate appearance to go into Roth’s specially designed 17×14 inch sheets. Beginning that day, Roth would record virtually every pitch in a Dodger game for the next 18 seasons. The game itself was only part of his day. He estimated he spent another five hours daily, at a minimum, updating the breakdowns on the Dodgers and their opponents. In the offseason, he would refine the numbers further, seeking longer term trends and finding the outliers. Everyone knew right-handed hitters generally performed more poorly against right-handed pitchers and vice versa. Roth would look for, and find, the left-handed hitter who broke the mold and could provide a manager with an unexpected platoon advantage. He tracked bases advanced, a metric that encompassed baserunning statistics as well as the ability to move runners along with outs. He recorded what happened at each point in the count, what happened in bunting situations and differences between night and day games, home and away games, and in individual stadiums. No other team had access to such analysis at that time.

Unlike contemporary statistical analysts, Roth generally ignored higher mathematics. “The figures concerned in baseball statistical work don’t call for integral calculus or even advanced algebra,” he said.12 And he also recognized their limits. “I know perfectly well that baseball cannot be played one hundred percent according to figures, and that the human element is even more important. I realize that certain sets of figures on players and teams will change from time to time, but nevertheless, by a deep and systematic research into the detailed statistics which I have in mind, there is bound to come to light numerous facts which were previously unknown, and which would prove of great value.”13 His records would become voluminous. When the team moved from Brooklyn to Los Angeles a decade later, newspapers reported Roth’s data took up more space than the rest of the Dodgers’ archives.14

In fact, outside of baseball, Roth wasn’t much of a numbers guy at all. He didn’t do his own taxes.15 He couldn’t remember his phone number.16 What he would do is record the numbers in myriad detail and then use his true talent, recognizing what the numbers meant, to provide value to his employers. He summed up his philosophy: “Baseball is a game of percentages — I try to find the actual percentage, which is constantly shifting, and apply it to the situation where it will do the most good.”17

In his first season, for example, Roth used another of his innovations — spray charts showing the location of all of a player’s batted balls — to show that Dixie Walker’s hits were going to the opposite field more and more frequently. Rickey, following his own dictum that it was better to trade a player a year too early, sent Walker to the Pirates. “The People’s Cherce” hit .316 in 1948, but was down to .282 the next year, and became a player-manager in the minors.18 A year after his Walker revelation, Roth’s numbers showed that in 1948, Jackie Robinson drove in a higher percentage of baserunners than any other hitter in the lineup. Manager Burt Shotton moved Robinson, who had barely broken into double digits with 12 homers, into the cleanup spot. He hit only four more home runs in 1949, but drove in 124 and won the National League Most Valuable Player Award.19

Roth’s major league debut was missed in the tumult surrounding Jackie Robinson’s that same day, but reporters soon began to notice the latest addition to the Dodgers’ traveling party. By June 1947, The Sporting News contained a note that Allen (sic) Roth, a “slide-rule expert,” was providing Rickey with numbers to analyze the team.20 In those days, Roth’s numbers were considered proprietary and not made public, adding to the mystery. But he would generate awed publicity — the “flesh-and-blood electronic brain” or “Mechanical Brain Can’t Match Roth’s” and some fear on the part of players, who saw him as Rickey’s hatchet man, especially after the Walker trade.21

In looking for meaning in the numbers, Roth’s methodology was much like that of Bill James and later members of the Society for American Baseball Research — take a piece of accepted baseball wisdom and analyze whether it was true. “Some fellows have mentioned that batting average increases of ten or 12 points would result from the sacrifice fly rule,” Roth said during a 1953 discussion of scoring rules, “The figures on the Dodgers for the last two years don’t come anywhere near such figures.”22

Rickey’s departure from the Dodgers after the 1950 season meant changes for Roth. The new owner, Walter O’Malley, was dedicated to the business side of the organization. The new manager, Charlie Dressen, managed by the seat of his pants and, after receiving Roth’s work politely, would quickly deposit it in the trash can.23 The new head baseball man, Buzzie Bavasi, cottoned to Roth slowly.

Roth’s working position was moved from a seat behind home plate to the press box. To Roth, the move felt like a demotion, and he felt unappreciated.24 He quit classifying the pitches because he didn’t feel he could do it accurately from his new perspective. O’Malley moved him to the press and public relations operation, a department the new president understood. Roth’s tidbits began to appear regularly in the newspaper columns and he was put in charge of a publication called Press Box Pickups. Distributed to reporters each game day during the season, the magazine was filled with Roth’s statistics as well as promotional material. He provided extensive statistical sections for the team’s yearbooks and media guides.

In 1954, he was moved into the radio booth to feed timely material to the Dodger announcers and quickly struck up a strong friendship with Vin Scully, who was becoming the team’s lead announcer. “If you had some question that came to you in the middle of a game, he would reach down into the bag, and next thing you knew you’d have your answer. It was marvelous,” said Scully.25 This partnership had an additional benefit to the team’s bottom line — the broadcast sponsors began to pay half Roth’s salary.26 A few years later, Roth’s spot in the booth included a link to the press box P.A. system, where his choicer items could be relayed live to reporters. He was always available to reporters looking for statistics to back up an angle or ideas for something to write on a slow day. The Dodger switchboard directed all queries of a statistical nature to Roth’s desk, and he settled a great number of bar bets. He even tried to answer queries from long before his time or his statistics, such as why Dodger pitcher Henry Schmidt, who went 22-13 for the 1903 Dodgers at age 30, never pitched in the majors again. Schmidt, a Texas native, had decided he didn’t like living in the East and returned his 1904 contract unsigned.27

Roth kept up his interest in the more analytical side of his statistical work. As the only full-time team statistician, he became a magnet for others working in the field and an inspiration to many young men who would write him for advice about how they could get into his line of work. He corresponded with Nathan McFadgen, Charles Mercurio, Paul Simpson, Tony Johncola, and others, all researchers with a statistical bent who were self-publishing their findings.

In 1954, Roth’s work hit the big time — with a heavy coating of Branch Rickey. Life Magazine, one of the largest-circulation magazines in the country, ran an article titled “Goodby [sic] to Some Old Baseball Ideas.” The article said it had been written by Branch Rickey, whose picture graced the first page. Roth’s back is visible in the background of that photo, and he is pictured on the article’s third page, along with a multipart equation. That equation was clearly Roth’s work; Rickey called the equation, “the most disconcerting and at the same time the most constructive thing to come into baseball in my memory.” Thirty years later, John Thorn and Pete Palmer, in their seminal book, The Hidden Game of Baseball, wrote “Rickey and Roth’s fundamental contribution to the advancement of baseball statistics comes from their conceptual revisionism, their willingness to strip the game down to its basic unit, the run, and reconstruct its statistics accordingly.”28

In many ways, “The Equation” was years ahead of its time. Its first two terms were what we today call on-base percentage and isolated power. It would take the book Moneyball half a century later to cement the importance of on-base percentage. The equation, which contained eight different terms, including pieces devoted to run-scoring efficiency, pitching, and fielding, was vastly complicated for contemporary baseball organizations. In his history of baseball analytics, Alan Schwarz summarizes the impact of Roth’s equation: “No evidence exists that anyone took it seriously.”

While Roth may have felt unappreciated within the Dodger organization, it could not have been completely unexpected. Roth’s 1944 letter to Ed Staples outlining the benefits of employing him had suggested exactly the kind of press and public relations work Roth was now performing. More significantly, it is clear the Dodgers didn’t see him merely as a producer of press releases and statistical tidbits.

As the 1951 season tottered to a close, the Dodgers felt they had an insurmountable lead — 12 1/2 games on the morning of August 13. So, they detached Roth with scout Andy High for a two-week tour to follow the New York Yankees and Cleveland Indians, the two leading contenders for the American League flag. High would make the traditional scouting report, while Roth would add his statistical insights. These two weeks encompassed the only Dodger games Roth missed from 1947 to 1964. The Dodgers’ pennant hopes succumbed to an unbelievable charge by the New York Giants. O’Malley sent Roth a note of thanks.29

It wasn’t just game statistics where Roth’s opinion was sought. That same year, O’Malley sent Roth a pamphlet titled “American Baseball Needs Four Major Leagues” and asked for his opinion of the arguments. The book dealt with questions of population shifts, markets and the structure of major and minor leagues. Roth responded with some mostly statistical comments on the work.30

O’Malley turned to Roth again after the 1954 season, and it’s clear that he was concerned about Walter Alston, who had just finished his rookie season as the Dodgers’ manager. Each year, Roth produced a book which summarized the team’s just-ended season. There were only four copies made — for O’Malley, Bavasi, Alston, and Roth. In mid-December 1954, O’Malley queried Roth on when he’d be able to see the report.31 Roth delivered the report two weeks later, discussing reasons for the Dodgers poorer 1954 performance. He noted some pitching and hitting declines but also suggested Alston wasn’t conducting as aggressive a running game as had Dressen.32 In reply, O’Malley posed additional questions about the number of “hit and run” and “run and hit” plays called, as well as stolen base attempts. “There was a change of managers,” O’Malley wrote, “Is there any significance (to that)? Was club direction less enterprising?”33

Roth began assuming again more of the role he had played under Rickey. But now his analysis was not going just to Rickey, but to the manager and directly to individual players. On Friday, September 18, 1959, the Dodgers arrived in San Francisco for a key series against the Giants. The team was two games behind the Giants and tied with the Milwaukee Braves. With only eight games left in the season, they need a sweep to have any realistic hope of making the World Series. Friday night’s game was rained out and Alston announced that Don Drysdale, who’d been scheduled to start Friday, would pitch the first game Saturday afternoon. Roger Craig would start the Saturday evening game. When Roth saw that Saturday morning, he went to Alston and pointed out that Drysdale’s night-game record was substantially better than his daytime performance while Craig showed little difference. Alston switched the pitchers, Los Angeles won both games, and Sunday as well. The Dodgers finished the season in a tie with the Braves, won the tie-breaker playoff and the World Series for an improbable championship.34

After the move to Los Angeles, Roth started to attend spring training in Vero Beach, something he hadn’t done early in the Brooklyn years.35 Now he met with each player, along with one of the coaches, and went over their performance the previous year, emphasizing positives as well as negatives and suggesting changes that could improve the player’s statistics. Sandy Koufax would credit such sessions in the early 1960s with helping him learn to emphasize first-pitch strikes and taking something off the ball.36 In the dugout, coach Pete Reiser had a set of Roth’s 5×8-inch cards with summaries of player performance keyed to the opposing pitching staff.37

Roth also began a campaign that would ultimately result in the creation of the statistic for a reliever’s “Saves.” In 1951, Roth began to keep track of such situations and began sharing the number with reports several years later.38 By 1964, pushed by sportswriter Jerome Holtzman, major league publicity directors approved the version of the save that we’re familiar with today, although the formula is a bit different from the one devised by Roth.39

A few months after the coronation of his invention, Roth was fired by the Dodgers. It was done very quietly. The team made no announcement and it wasn’t until reporters asked about Roth’s absence from a late-season road trip that the team announced he had resigned because he was tired of all the travel.40 He may have been tired of the travel, but that wasn’t why he was fired. Walter O’Malley hated negative publicity and also had a fear, born in the early years of baseball’s integration, that any news of inter-racial sexual relations could cause an outcry. 41 Bavasi said Roth had developed a relationship with an African-American woman who traveled with him, and then gotten into a screaming match with her in a Philadelphia hotel corridor.42

Roth’s marriage would end in divorce a little over a year later. But he still needed to provide a living for his wife, children, and himself. He began to expand his already extensive freelancing.

Roth’s first article in The Sporting News had been published in 1946, while he was waiting for his visa to join the Dodgers.43 There was a long hiatus until the next one, when he got his first byline in 1959.44 Within weeks of his firing, he was contributing regularly.45 He revived a monthly column he’d written for Sport magazine from 1952 until 1960.46 He continued to edit the annual Who’s Who in Baseball, which he’d done since the 1954 issue. He contributed statistical data for Koufax, by Sandy Koufax and Ed Linn, and the publisher felt it important enough to be included in advertising for the book.47 He collaborated with Harold Rosenthal on the spring training magazines from MACO publishing.48

In 1966, NBC came calling with its new contract for the Game of the Week, the All-Star Game, and the World Series. The Sporting News column disappeared and for the next decade, Roth would sit between Curt Gowdy and Tony Kubek, feeding them the kind of statistical nuggets he’d supplied to Scully for years. A few years later, he moved to ABC to provide the same service. As always, Roth traveled heavy. On his weekly flight from Los Angeles to wherever the broadcast was originating, he was accompanied by several suitcases stuffed with his notebooks, charts and graphs.49 As he did all his life, his calculations were made with pencil, paper, and often internal calculation.

In the offseason, Roth attended meetings of the Los Angeles chapter of SABR, which was named after him. He’d usually speak, presenting some of his recent findings and answering questions, which often ranged far from his current work.

While spending his time providing statistical nuggets for the broadcasters, Roth continued his exploration of ways teams could use statistics to improve performance. He consulted for 20 major league teams and identified Joe Morgan as the league’s most valuable player long before voters did.50 Harking back to his early talks with Branch Rickey, Roth focused on Morgan’s on-base percentage, power, and stolen base success. In a discussion with the San Francisco Giants, he made a case that the tactic of guarding the lines late in games wasn’t as effective as believed. The Giants changed their practices.51

Ill health forced Roth to retire in the late 1980s and he died of a heart attack in Brotman Hospital in Culver City on March 3, 1992.

Roth was elected to the Canadian Baseball Hall of Fame in 2010. “He was the guy who began it all,” said Bill James. “He took statisticians into a brave new world.”

ANDY McCUE has been a SABR member since 1982, winning the Bob Davids Award in 2007. He served on SABR’s board for nine years, finishing with a term as president in 2009–11. He won the SABR-Macmillan Award for “Baseball by the Books: A History and Bibliography of Baseball Fiction” and the Doug Pappas Award for a presentation on Dodgers ownership. His biography of Walter O’Malley, “Mover and Shaker,” was published by the University of Nebraska Press in 2014.

Notes

1 Alan Schwarz. The Numbers Game: Baseball’s Lifelong Fascination with Statistics (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2004), 55.

2 Immigration and family information courtesy of Alan Greenberg of the Jewish Genealogical Society of Montreal. Much of the material about his youth is contained in biographical handouts produced when Roth was with the Dodgers and included in his papers, which are housed at Case Western Reserve University. C. David Stephan and volunteers such as Chuck Carey and Sam James, who preserved the papers after Roth’s death. Thanks to Alain Usereau for pointing me to the Genealogical Society.

3 Roth to Edward Staples, Brooklyn Baseball Club, April 4, 1944, Allan Roth papers.

4 Roth to Edward Staples, Brooklyn Baseball Club, April 4, 1944, Allan Roth papers.

5 Schwarz, The Numbers Game, 56.

6 L.S. MacPhail to Roth, December 19, 1940 and June 6, 1941. Roth to L.S. MacPhail, Aug. 4, 1941, Roth papers.

7 Roth to Staples.

8 Roth to Staples.

9 Harold C. Burr, “Dull Statistics Alive Under Magic Roth Touch,” Brooklyn Eagle, January 11, 1953.

10 Burr, and Harold Rosenthal, ed., “The Statistician,” in Baseball is Their Business (New York: Random House, 1952), 140.

11 Branch Rickey, Memo, April 23, 1947, Branch Rickey papers, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress. Also, Murray Polner, Branch Rickey (New York: Atheneum, 1982), 210. Interestingly, in his letter to Staples, Roth had proposed a salary of $30 a week, or $1,560 annually.

12 Rosenthal, ed., Baseball is Their Business, 139.

13 Roth to MacPhail, August 4, 1941, Roth papers.

14 Los Angeles Mirror News, July 21, 1959; Los Angeles Times, August 11, 1963.

15 New York Times, February 19, 1961.

16 Los Angeles Times, April 14, 1958.

17 Los Angeles Times, June 28, 1960.

18 Schwarz, Numbers Game, 54-5.

19 Rosenthal, ed., Baseball is Their Business, 140.

20 The Sporting News, June 4, 1947.

21 People Today, July 2, 1952: 28 and New York Herald-Tribune, clipping in Allan Roth papers, probably from late 1952. Schwarz, Numbers Game, 57.

22 The Sporting News, November 25, 1953.

23 Schwarz, Numbers Game, 57.

24 Interview, Michael Roth (Allan’s son), March 4, 1997.

25 Schwarz, Numbers Game, 58.

26 Los Angeles Mirror News, July 21, 1959.

27 Richard Goldstein, Superstars and Screwballs (New York: Dutton, 1991), 79.

28 John Thorn and Pete Palmer, The Hidden Game of Baseball (New York: Doubleday, 1984), 42.

29 O’Malley to Roth, October 30, 1951, Roth papers.

30 Roth to O’Malley, November 1, 1951, Roth papers.

31 O’Malley to Roth, December 14, 1954, Roth papers.

32 Roth to O’Malley, December 28, 1954, Roth papers.

33 O’Malley to Roth, January 7, 1955, multiple handwritten notes, Roth papers.

34 This anecdote is contained in a three-page document in the Roth papers that is clearly a draft of an updated biosheet for Roth after the 1959 season. It is undated, and has the number 1. Centered at the top of the page followed by Roth’s name, birthdate, birthplace, and the rest of the material.

35 Rosenthal, ed., Baseball is Their Business, 137.

36 Sandy Koufax with Ed Linn, Koufax (New York: The Viking Press, 1966), 148 and Jane Leavy, Sandy Koufax: A Lefty’s Legacy (New York: HarperCollins, 2002), 106.

37 Walter Bingham, “Dodgers in Mufti,” Sports Illustrated, August 15, 1960: 69.

38 The Sporting News, January 30, 1957: 8.

39 The Sporting News, December 21, 1963: 10; April 18, 1964: 34; and May 2, 1964: 6.

40 Los Angeles Herald-Examiner, September 2 and September 3, 1964. Los Angeles Times, September 12, 1964.

41 Frank Graham, Jr., A Farewell to Heroes (New York: The Viking Press, 1981), 253.

42 Interview, Buzzie Bavasi, August 30, 1994.

43 The Sporting News, January 31, 1946: 15.

44 The Sporting News, January 7, 1959: 11.

45 The first appeared October 10, 1964:16 and others appeared sporadically through February 1966.

46 Los Angeles Times, February 28, 1965.

47 The Sporting News, August 27, 1966: 10.

48 Rosenthal to Roth, September 7, 1964 and December 11, 1964 in Roth papers. From the letters, it’s clear even as close a friend as Rosenthal didn’t know the real cause of Roth’s firing.

49 The Sporting News, April 18, 1970: 28.

50 The Sporting News, October 25, 1975: 3.

51 The Sporting News, January 22, 1971: 42.

Who invented baseball? This question has held a niche in the American consciousness since the 1880s. The most widely known answer is that Abner Doubleday invented baseball in 1839 in Cooperstown, New York. The casual observer who knows one thing about baseball’s origin knows the Doubleday story. The next answer is that Alexander Cartwright invented baseball in 1845 in New York City. The casual observer who knows two things about baseball’s origins knows that the Doubleday story is naive, and that the Cartwright story is the sophisticate’s version. The Doubleday story is indeed naive, yet the Cartwright story is scarcely less so. An unsentimental search for evidence of Cartwright as the inventor of baseball produces thin results.

The two stories are intimately connected: born together in the early twentieth century and joined ever since. The Doubleday Myth has been debunked many times.1 This is the less-told story of how the Cartwright Myth came to be, and its ties to the Doubleday Myth.

The nineteenth century understanding of the origin of baseball

The most important point to make about Alexander Cartwright and baseball is that no nineteenth century writer ever ascribed its invention to him. His place in baseball history was much more modest.

One Charles Peverelly, a veteran New York sportswriter, published in 1866 The Book of American Pastimes covering the four great American sports: baseball, cricket, rowing, and yachting. The book consists mostly of club histories, with a strong emphasis on names of club officers and records of matches. Extra attention is given to the Knickerbocker Base Ball Club of New York as the senior baseball club, including a narrative account of their founding:

During the years of 1842 and ’43, a number of gentlemen, fond of the game, casually assembled on a plot of ground in Twenty-seventh street–the one now occupied by the Harlem Railroad Depot, bringing with them their bats, balls, etc. It was customary for two or three players, occasionally during the season, to go around in the forenoon of a pleasant day and muster up players enough to make a match. The march of improvement made a “change of base” necessary, and the following year they met at the next most convenient place, the north slope of Murray Hill, between the railroad cut and Third avenue. Among the prominent players were Col. James Lee, Dr. Ransom, Abraham Tucker, James Fisher, and W. Vail, the latter better known in later years of the Gotham Club as “Stay-where-you-am-Wail.” In the spring of 1845, Mr. Alex J. Cartwright, who had become an enthusiast in the game, one day upon the field proposed a regular organization, promising to obtain several recruits. His proposal was acceded to, and Messrs. W. R. Wheaton, Cartwright, D. F. Curry, E.R. Dupignac, Jr., and W. H. Tucker, formed themselves into a board of recruiting officers, and soon obtained names enough to make a respectable show.2

Cartwright here proposes forming the club, but implementing the idea is a collective effort. There is no suggestion that the game was new, much less that Cartwright invented it. Quite the opposite, the group had been playing it for the previous three years, and Cartwright seems to have been a later addition to them. He was not selected as one of the club’s initial officers, though he would go on to serve as a club officer—as secretary in 1846 and vice-president in 1847 and 1848.

Cartwright soon disappeared from baseball circles. He left New York and the Knickerbockers for California in the gold rush of 1849, and from there settled in Hawaii for the remainder of his life.

Peverelly doesn’t name his source for the story of the creation of the Knickerbockers. They were a flourishing organization in 1866, but none of the original members remained. It is likely that this was an oral tradition within the club. In any case there is no reason to doubt it. From this kernel of truth would come forth a creation myth of baseball, with Cartwright raised from being merely the person who suggested the club to inventing the game and singlehandedly bringing the club into existence.

Another kernel of truth supporting this myth is the fact that modern baseball derives from a game played by organized clubs in and around New York City. In the late 1850s this game burst forth from the metropolis. By the outbreak of the Civil War it was played across the country, as far west as San Francisco and as far south as New Orleans. So when people thought to search for the origin of baseball, they naturally looked to New York of the 1840s or thereabout. The Knickerbockers, in turn, were the oldest club in existence during baseball’s rise to prominence. This was later misinterpreted as their being the first club ever.

No one thought baseball new at the time, or for decades afterwards. Quite the contrary, the first known newspaper account, from 1845, of a baseball game called it a “time-honored game.”

As the game spread from New York City in the 1850s, it was greeted with recognition. This was a traditional boys’ game played on schoolyards from time immemorial. The game coming out of New York was not a new game, but an improved—more “scientific”—version of an ancient folk game. An example of this can be found in the announcement in 1859 of the formation of a club (playing according to the New York City rules) in Peterboro, a rural hamlet in upstate New York:

Peterboro, thirty—even fifty—years ago, was celebrated for its Base Ball playing, and wonderful stories are recounted, in which the names of Rice and the Wilburs, and others, shine with an enduring fame! Yet we think the Peterboro of today will eclipse the splendor of that behind-the-age celebrity.4

The game was not known everywhere by the name “base ball.” In New England it was also sometimes called “round ball,” while in Pennsylvania and the Ohio valley and the South it was called “town ball.”

This dialectal variety extended to England. As baseball rose to cultural prominence in America in the 1850s, transatlantic observers frequently noted that it was called “rounders” in England. The writer of a letter to a New York newspaper noted that baseball “is played in every school in England, and has been for a century or more, under the name of “Rounders'” while an American correspondent to a London newspaper wrote that “Cricket is becoming a very favorite game with Americans, but Base Ball, or, as you call it, Rounders, is rather more popular.” The definitive statement comes from Peverelly: “The game [baseball] originated in Great Britain, and is familiarly known there as the game of Rounders.”

Baseball’s English origin was uncontroversial in the early years. This soon changed. The New York version completely displaced the various indigenous local versions of baseball, and they were forgotten. People no longer thought of baseball as a folk game of innumerable variants, but as a game strictly defined by a set of written rules. With this narrower use of the word “baseball” it would be ridiculous to claim that baseball and town ball and rounders were the same game. This was replaced by a genealogical assertion, that rounders was the ancestor of baseball, with town ball sometimes inserted as an intermediate phase. A New York newspaper in 1872 defended an accusation that baseball was not truly the American national game because of its English ancestry by disputing not the ancestry, but the premise that this disqualified the game: “Cricket is the English national game, and yet it is based on an old French game, just as our game is based on rounders.”

Resistance to this interpretation soon arose, on both structural and patriotic grounds. Baseball’s rules continued to evolve, making the game less like rounders and the connection less obvious. It could not help that rounders was a low prestige sport, played by schoolgirls and the working class. Any discussion of baseball and rounders by an Englishman could not but have a condescending air. This was an era of patriotic fervor and anti-British sentiment. An English origin of the American national pastime came to be simply unacceptable. Finally, an evolutionary model did not fit the spirit of the age of the inventor. An era that celebrated Thomas Edison and Samuel Morse would naturally look for an inventor of its national pastime.

The new attitude was summed up by John Montgomery Ward—star player, lawyer, union organizer, and baseball historian. He rejected the notion that “everything good and beautiful in the world must be of English origin” and concluded that baseball is “a fruit of the inventive genius of the American boy.”

In 1905 the Mills commission was formed to settle the question once and for all. The fix was in. The rounders theory never had a chance. The only question was who would be anointed as the American boy genius. Both Abner Doubleday and Alexander Cartwright came from this: Doubleday through the front door as the official candidate, and Cartwright through the back door as the alternate.

William Rankin and the Duncan Curry interview

The statement that no nineteenth century source credits Cartwright with inventing baseball may be surprising. There is a well known interview dated to 1877 that clearly does just that. In 1910 Alfred Spink, founder of The Sporting News, published The National Pastime, a history of baseball. It included a letter written the previous year by William Rankin, a veteran New York sportswriter. The letter relates how in 1877 Rankin, then a junior reporter, was introduced to Duncan Curry, the first president of the Knickerbocker Club. Rankin jumped at the chance to interview him. Curry related:

Well do I remember the afternoon when Alex Cartwright came up to the ball field with a new scheme for playing ball. The sun shone beautifully, never do I remember noting its beams fall with a more sweet and mellow radiance than on that particular Spring day. For several years it had been our habit to casually assemble on the plot of ground that is now known as Twenty-seven street and Fourth avenue, where the Harlem Railroad Depot afterward stood. We would take our bats and balls with us and play any sort of a game. We had no name in particular for it. Sometimes we batted the ball to one another or sometimes played one o’cat.

On this afternoon I have already mentioned, Cartwright came to the field–the march of improvement had driven us further north and we located on a piece of property on the slope of Murray Hill, between the railroad cut and Third avenue–with his plans drawn up on a paper. He had arranged for two nines, the ins and outs.

This is, while one set of players were taking their turn at bat the other side was placed in their respective position on the field. He had laid out a diamond-shaped field, with canvas bags filled with sand or sawdust for bases at three of the points and an iron plate for the home base. He had arranged for a catcher, a pitcher, three basemen, a short fielder, and three outfielders. His plan met with much good natured derision, but he was so persistent in having us try his new game that we finally consented more to humor him than with any thought of it becoming a reality.

At that time none of us had any experience in that style of play and as there were no rules for playing the game, we had to do the best we could under the circumstances, aided by Cartwright’s judgment. The man who could pitch the speediest ball with the most accuracy was the one selected to do the pitching. But I am getting ahead of my story. When we saw what a great game Cartwright had given us, and as his suggestion for forming a club to play it met with our approval, we set about to organize a club.9

This interview is the centerpiece of the claim that Cartwright invented baseball. On its face it is strong evidence indeed, with a clear statement from a participant in the event. It also is complete bunkum. To see how it came to be, we will first look at Henry Chadwick, the only journalist with a plaque in the Baseball Hall of Fame; at William Rankin, the father of the Cartwright myth; and then at the Mills Commission, its incubator.

Henry Chadwick was born in 1824 in England and was brought to America as a boy. He took up baseball journalism in the late 1850s. By the late 1860s and early 1870s he was the premier baseball writer in the country, with a seat in the inner circle, where he chaired the rules committee for several years. His influence waned in the 1870s. In 1876 he was cut out of the formation of the National League. By the 1880s his younger colleagues were openly mocking him as an old fogey. He managed the neat trick, however, of moving gracefully into elder statesman status. In the early twentieth century he was a regular fixture of the sporting press with articles about the early days of baseball.

Most people were willing to defer to him about baseball history. The origin of the game was the exception. Chadwick was the foremost proponent of the rounders theory, placing him out of step with the spirit of the age. The Mills Commission was created in direct response to his refusal to abandon the it.

William Rankin was born in 1849 in Pennsylvania. By the 1870s he was in New York as a junior sports reporter, often working for the same papers as Chadwick. By the early twentieth century he was the senior New York correspondent for The Sporting News with a weekly column. For the most part it was straight baseball news, but Rankin had a historical bent. Like many of his contemporaries, he found this useful, filling column inches during the winter months with accounts of old games. Rankin also had an ace in the hole: scrapbooks filled with baseball items from the New York Clipper, a major baseball newspaper in the early years. He could produce historical articles by simply quoting old Clipper pieces.10

Rankin also had a cantankerous bent. He loved using his scrapbooks as ammunition to correct other writers. He most especially loved turning his firepower on Henry Chadwick. In fairness, Chadwick made himself a tempting target. His reminiscences often had more than a little self-aggrandizement, inflating his (legitimately impressive) record. This is memorialized in his Hall of Fame plaque, which for factual inaccuracy is second only to Cartwright’s.

The origin question came to a head in 1905, culminating in the Mills Commission. It was the brainchild of Albert G. Spalding, a former star pitcher turned sporting goods manufacturer, and a man who carried the appellation “baseball magnate” particularly well. He recruited Abraham G. Mills, a former president of the National League, as its chairman. The commission was filled with various men chosen for the combination of baseball connection and distinguished careers. Most regarded this as an honorary position, but Mills himself took an active interest in its work.

The strategy adopted was to solicit reminiscences from old-timers. Some were taken directly from persons likely to have information, while others arrived in response to a general call placed in the press. So far as it went, this approach was perfectly reasonable. It could not, however, stand alone. A literature search would have shown, for example, the eighteenth century English use of the term “base ball.” Ward knew about this. His explanation—that it referred to an unrelated game coincidentally sharing the name—was wrong, but at least he recognized that it required explanation. The Mills Commission never even got that far.11

The strategy had another, more subtle, problem. It couched the call for reminiscences as a search for baseball’s origin, implying that the origin was within living memory: no earlier than about 1830 or so. Any recollection from that era was interpreted through the assumption that it must be from baseball’s earliest youth, distorting the entire enterprise. An earlier origin was never seriously considered.12

This assumption would lead to the Doubleday myth. Mills had initially despaired of finding a wholly satisfactory origin and was preparing to credit the Knickerbockers collectively, when he received a letter, dated April 3, 1905, from one Abner Graves, a Colorado mining engineer originally from Cooperstown, New York. Graves told how baseball had been invented by Abner Doubleday, who went on to be a Civil War general, and taught to the boys of the village. In a follow-up letter of November 17, 1905, Graves placed the event between 1839 and 1841.

Graves has been subjected to much derision for these letters, but often lost is that the underlying story of a young boy being taught baseball by an older boy is perfectly plausible. There are good reasons to doubt this older boy was the Abner Doubleday who went on to be a general in the Civil War, but even that is a minor problem. The problem arises from the assumption that this is not merely a story about early baseball, but about its origin. This story was nearly ideal, with an inventor in the mold of Thomas Edison, and a war hero to boot. Patriotic associations were the underlying reason to reject rounders, so an inventor such as Doubleday fit neatly the prejudices of the commission. They found it impossible to resist.

In the meantime, Rankin was another of the commission’s correspondents. He instituted a series of letters to the commission, supplemented by writing several columns about it.13

The correspondence opens with a letter dated January 15, 1905. Rankin writes how in the summer of 1877 he was standing near Brooklyn City Hall conversing with Robert Ferguson—a star player and manager of the day—when Ferguson pointed out a nearby gentleman, declared “here comes one of the real fathers of Base Ball” and introduced him toDuncan Curry. After conversing a bit, Curry asked why none of the reporters would correct the errors put forward by Henry Chadwick, and relates this story:

” …William R. Wheaton, William H. Tucker and I drew up the first set of rules and the game was developed by the people who played it and were connected with it.”

“Then, I suppose, Base Ball sprung from Town Ball?” said I.

“No.” said he, “We never played Town Ball, as I understand it was played in Philadelphia. We had no name for our game.” Then the description he gave of it was very much like “One Old Cat,” but never went further than “Two Old Cat,” at any time.14

“One afternoon,” continued Mr. Curry, “when we had gathered on the lot for a game, someone, but I do not remember now who it was, had presented a plan, drawn up on paper, showing a ball field, with a diamond to play on–eighteen men could play at one time. There was the catcher, the pitcher, three basemen, a short field and three outfielders. The plan caused a great deal of talk, but finally we agreed to try it. Right here let me say the man placed at short field was then considered the least important one of the nine men. His duty was as an assistant to the pitcher. To run and get the ball thrown in from the field, or when thrown wildly by the catcher when returning it to the pitcher. It was Dick Pearce who first made the short field one of the most important on the ball field. There was one of the greatest little players that ever played ball.”

Rankin writes that this dialogue was copied from notes he had written at that time. This is the first version. Over the next five years it would evolve into the very different account previously quoted.

Curry’s story had seemed strange to the young Rankin, so he had set out to confirm it by interviewing other old-timers. They had all assured him that they had never played rounders or town ball, but none remembered the name of the early game they did play. His interest in this version is not assigning credit for inventing baseball. He has Curry expressly not naming who brought the plan, nor is it stated that this unnamed person was the inventor. His interest rather is in refuting Chadwick’s rounders theory (with town ball as the intermediate form) by establishing that none of the old New York ballplayers recalled ever playing “town ball” or “rounders.”

This was not new in 1905. Rankin had been arguing against a rounders origin before the commission was ever formed. He wrote in his column of December 17, 1904:

Oh, fudge! Cut out that talk about town ball and rounders when talking about Manhattan Island. Base ball was invented by the Dutch and pray, what did they know about the English game of rounders? One might just as well argue that Mr. Edison “modified” the old English candle and formulated the incandescent light in use now, as to say base ball sprung from rounders or its “Americanized edition, town ball.”

Rankin followed his first letter with a second, dated February 15, 1905. He had called upon some of the surviving veterans, who again all denied having played rounders or town ball. Among them was one Thomas Tassie, who had been president of the prominent Atlantic Club of Brooklyn and a member of the 1857 rules committee. As Rankin related Curry’s story about a man with a paper, Tassie broke in excitedly and confirmed the story. He also identified the man:

I think it was a Mr. Wadsworth. Not the one who played ball, but a gentleman and a scholar, who held an important position in the Customs House. He was one of the best after-dinner speakers of the day. Now, I may be wrong about that, but it is the impression I have had for many years, as I have heard that part of Base Ball’s origin talked of many times.

The man with the diagram would go on to be the most influential elements of these letters, but Rankin is clear in his letter that his main point is that baseball did not derive from either rounders or town ball. The identification of its inventor and the date of the invention are secondary:

Every veteran I have seen since 1877, has said the same thing: “I have never seen Rounders or Town Ball and do not know how it is played.”

He publicized this version in a column of April 8, 1905. It is largely a retelling of the two letters, but with much expanded detail. The most important is that in this version Curry makes a new and radical claim: “That was the origin of base ball and it proved a success from the start.”

There matters lay until three years later. Mills was preparing to issue the commission’s report. He had settled on the Doubleday story, placing the event in 1839. This left a loose end. If baseball had been invented in Cooperstown in 1839, how did it get to New York City? He saw Tassie’s Mr. Wadsworth as a potential solution, carrying the game from Cooperstown to New York and introducing it to the Knickerbockers. He tried to identify this Mr. Wadsworth. He wrote on December 20, 1907 to the Collector of Customs in New York asking him to search their records for a former employee of that name. The search proved fruitless and so he wrote on January 6, 1908 to Rankin, asking him to consult further with Mr. Tassie for more details.

Rankin’s story had changed by this time. The new version would be reported in his column published April 2, 1908. He starts by once again relating the story of his conversations with Duncan Curry in 1877 and with Thomas Tassie in early 1905, with yet another detail, that Tassie had called Wadsworth “the Chauncey M. Depew [a U.S. Senator from New York noted for his oratory and after-dinner speaking] of that day.”15

He tells that shortly after he had called on Tassie, he was looking through his files on a different matter. He came across an unrelated letter from 1876, on the back of which he had written “Mr. Alex. J. Cartwright, father of base ball.” This stimulated the memory that it was Cartwright whom Duncan Curry had described as bringing the plan for baseball. It was not Curry who had forgotten this man’s identity, but Rankin who had forgotten the name Curry had given. Forgotten is the awkward detail that Rankin’s original version was stated to be taken from his original notes.

Following this epiphany, Rankin then visited various old timers who agreed that the only Wadsworth involved in baseball hadn’t started until the 1850s. One of them, William Van Cott, confirmed that,

… it was Alex Cartwright who took the plans of base ball, the present game, up to the ball field and was laughed at, but he was so persistent about having his scheme tried that it was finally agreed to do so, and it proved a success from the start. It was Cartwright who suggested organizing a club to play his game.

Van Cott had been prominent in baseball circles in the 1850s into the 1860s, but there is no record of his being involved in baseball in the 1840s. In 1908 he was an old man near his death. One might suspect that he was willing to tell Rankin whatever Rankin wanted to hear.

With the final version, published in Spink’s book, Rankin pulls out all the stops. He adds details copied nearly verbatim from Peverelly, and puts additional florid details in Curry’s mouth. (The excerpt given previously is but a taste of a much longer account.) Spink’s was one of several books on baseball history published in the early twentieth history. They formed baseball’s collective understanding of its history, including Rankin’s final version of the Duncan Curry interview. In the meantime the earlier versions, with their major, and potentially embarrassing, discrepancies lay buried in archives and forgotten.

Tacit assumptions and kernels of truth

It is tempting to dismiss Rankin’s work as mere fabrication, but there is more going on here than one man making up a story. He was subject to the same assumptions underlying the Mills commission. The effects of these assumptions show in the two stories by Abner Graves and Thomas Tassie. We have seen how Graves was influenced by these assumptions, particularly that baseball had been invented within living memory. A similar process worked on Tassie. He recalled a story about Mr. Wadsworth. The context of the conversation was the invention of baseball, so he remembered this as an invention story. This is why he specified that it was “Not the one who played ball,” which is a strange thing to say about the supposed inventor of baseball. He was thinking of Louis Wadsworth, who had been a member of the Gotham and the Knickerbocker clubs in the 1850s. He was some ten years too late to be the supposed inventor of baseball, so Tassie was assuring Rankin and himself that it was some other Mr. Wadsworth. The additional information that he held a position at the customs house confirms what many have suspected, that Tassie was indeed thinking of Louis Wadsworth. Mills was unable to track down that name through the Customs Service, but in recent years baseball historian John Thorn has found that Louis Wadsworth maintained an office there as an independent attorney, not an employee of the Customs Service.16

Tassie remembered a story from 1857 and adjusted it to make it about baseball’s invention.

These adjustments to memory are small in comparison with Rankin’s evolving story, with each version less accurate than the version before. Of particular interest are the original (and most accurate) version, and that with the replacement of Wadsworth by Cartwright. Their interpretation requires we take into account not only the assumptions of the early twentieth century, but the assumptions of the 1870s.

The first version, from January 15, 1905, has some interesting features. It describes a group of men meeting to play a game, but none could recall what that game was called. The unnamed man with the diagram makes for an odd story, mysteriously arriving to reveal the gospel of baseball, and then disappearing again, or perhaps being one of the group, but with no one recalling whom. It specifies two details of the game, that it was played on a diamond and there were nine players on a side, before going off on a digression about Dick Pearce (who was nine years old in 1845). The two details provided turn out on examination to be some combination of uninteresting and wrong.

Baseball’s “diamond” early on took iconic status. Newspaper columns of baseball items had titles like “Diamond Dust” and the “diamond” stood for the entire game. Early on it was taken to be a defining characteristic of modern baseball. In fact, pre-modern versions of baseball had varying numbers of bases, most often from four to six, often arranged in a regular polygon. So having the bases form the corners of a square was one of several natural configurations. The remaining question was where the batter stood. If the bases were flat, as in modern baseball, the batter usually stood in the modern location. If, as was also common, the bases were stakes driven into the ground, the modern placement for the batter presented an obvious problem. He was instead moved to the first base side, often placed midway between home and first base. Either way, depictions of the field conventionally placed the batter at the top or the bottom of the picture rather than in a corner. With this background it is unsurprising that both the word “diamond” and the diamond configuration are in fact documented from decades before the formation of the Knickerbocker club.17 One of the few details of pre-modern baseball that was remembered was that they often had a different configuration, and so the diamond came to represent modernity in baseball.

The Knickerbocker rules did not specify the number of players on a side. We know from the club records that their games had as few as six and as many as thirteen on a side. In the 1850s nine came to be the usual size in match games between clubs, and this was codified in the 1857 rules revision. This number also took on iconic status, with a team commonly called a “nine.”

What we have in the mysterious man’s plan are two elements which, while out of place for the 1840s, by the 1870s stood out as powerful symbols of the game. Just as the assumptions of 1905 influenced memories in 1905, so did the assumptions of 1877 influence memories of 1877. The upshot is that there may be a kernel of truth to the story of the man with the plan, but all we have is its being reported second hand over two gaps of decades each and two sets of assumptions about what it should say. It is impossible to make even an educated guess as to what that truth might be.

Rankin’s introduction of Alexander Cartwright once again brings us to the assumptions of the 1870s. The event which triggered it was Rankin finding in his notes, “Mr. Alex. J. Cartwright, father of base ball.” It is apparent that in 1907 he interpreted this as Cartwright being the inventor of baseball, with further elaborations all following from this. What would have inspired Rankin to write this note in 1877? What did “father of base ball” mean at that time?

An enterprise as successful as baseball accumulated ample claims to paternity. Including Cartwright, not fewer than four persons have been granted the status. As early as 1868 Henry Chadwick was called the father of baseball for his early work in promoting the game.18

Harry Wright established the model for how to run a professional club, managing the spectacularly successful Cincinnati Red Stockings. He was called the father of baseball at least as early as 1876.19

The third example comes from Rankin’s first letter, where Ferguson says of Duncan Curry “one of the real fathers of Base Ball.” Each of these “fathers” worked to advance the game in some way, but none of these was taken to mean that the individual was the inventor of baseball. So why did the young Rankin add Cartwright’s name to the list? The obvious answer is for his suggestion related in Peverelly for the formation of the Knickerbockers.

None of this exonerates Rankin. His mode of discourse, with its constantly evolving fact set and scornful condemnation of anyone not accepting the current version, is unhappily familiar in the modern age of Internet debate. His readiness to adapt the fact set to fit his desired narrative is indefensible. The result has been actively harmful to the field of study. But his conclusions were not created ex nihilo. There was a kernel of truth beneath the layers of distortion.

After the Mills commission

Abner Doubleday was never universally accepted as baseball’s inventor. The Cartwright story became the standard alternative. Originally it stood alone, as Rankin had presented it. Soon the Doubleday and the Cartwright stories were combined, and this became the more common version. This sometimes took the form of making Doubleday and Cartwright associates: “Back in 1839 Abner Doubleday along with Abner Graves, Alexander Cartwright and several other lands [sic] who were attending the private school which is now known as Phinney’s lot…”20

More often their roles were split, with baseball invented by Doubleday and perfected by Cartwright. Grantland Rice interviewed Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis, who said, “It was in 1839 that old Abner Doubleday gave bases to the game. It was about 1840 that Cartwright figured 90 feet was the best distance from home to first, from first to second, from second to third and from third on back to home.”

This era also saw the additional elaboration to the story, that Cartwright had spread the game on his journey west:

Early in 1849 the gold rush to California started, and Cartwright heard the call. On March 1, 1849 he joined a party of adventurers who were crossing the plains. They proceeded to Pittsburgh, where during a stay while supplies were bought, taught the game of baseball to the young men of the town. It was an immediate success. During stops at St. Louis and Independence, Mo., he also introduced the game.22

The article goes on to discuss Cartwright’s journal, kept on his transcontinental trek. This marks the entry of Alexander Cartwright’s grandson, Bruce Cartwright, Jr., into the discussion. Cartwright did keep a journal in his journey, but the original was destroyed after his death. Copies were kept by the family, some of them doctored to add baseball references, with these references disseminated by Bruce Cartwright.23

A committee was formed in 1935 to plan the celebration of baseball’s upcoming supposed centennial, culminating in the dedication of the new Hall of Fame in Cooperstown. Bruce Cartwright wrote a series of letters promoting his grandfather’s case. He wrote that his grandfather “told many local people that he organized [the Knickerbocker club], drew up the rules they played under and also laid out the first ‘base-ball diamond.'” and proffering the gold rush diary as further evidence. (This report of Cartwright family oral history lends itself to the interpretation that it is yet another example of the search for an inventor distorting memories.) He also started a letter-writing campaign, enlisting the aid of the Honolulu city manager to use his official position to bring credibility to the campaign.24

At about the same time, Frank G. Menke, a prominent sports encyclopedist and journalist, rejected Doubleday and came out in support of Cartwright.25

The solution to this awkward situation was to vote Cartwright into the Hall of Fame and name him the “Father of Modern Baseball,” implicitly adopting the combined version of Doubleday inventing and Cartwright perfecting baseball.

This compromise would be widely accepted for the next thirty years. This changed when Sports Illustrated writer Harold Peterson took up the cause with an article, “The Johnny Appleseed of Baseball,” followed by the first full biography of Cartwright, The Man Who Invented Baseball. Peterson rejected the Hall of Fame’s compromise. He accepted at face value Rankin’s account and the doctored gold rush journal. He mocked the Doubleday story and gave full credit to Cartwright. The book is still influential, stating the widely accepted alternative to the Doubleday myth.

The persistence of the Cartwright myth

Even as the Cartwright and Doubleday myths were dueling, the new discipline of academic sports history arose. Its harbinger was the work of Robert W. Henderson. He brought the tools of scholarship to the question of baseball’s origin, culminating in 1947 with Ball, Bat and Bishop: The Origin of Ball Games. The discipline was put on solid footing by Harold Seymour and Dorothy Seymour Mills, whose Baseball: The Early Years remains the standard survey of the field even after 50 years.26 Notable works since include Melvin Adelman’s A Sporting Time: New York City and the Rise of Modern Athletics, 1820–1870 from 1986, David Block’s Baseball Before We Knew It: A Search for the Roots of the Game from 2006, and Monica Nucciarone’s Alexander Cartwright: The Life Behind the Baseball Legend from 2009.

This academic tradition often makes the effort to debunk the Doubleday myth at length while completely ignoring the Cartwright myth. Cartwright is mentioned only in relation to the founding of the Knickerbockers. The Doubleday myth until recently has effectively shielded the Cartwright myth by drawing away attention. While the academic tradition has never supported the Cartwright myth, this is easy for the casual reader to overlook.

The Cartwright myth is the flip side to the Doubleday myth. They are the same story with different names, leading John Thorn to re-imagine them as “Abner Cartwright” (a punchier combination than “Alexander Doubleday”).27

It is no coincidence that the stories are so similar. They were imagined by people working from the same assumptions in the same milieu. The Cartwright version is supported by the Doubleday version simply by virtue of being less untrue. Both Cartwright and Doubleday hold the allure of the lone genius inventor, with the Doubleday story insulating the Cartwright from criticism. Where it is often pointed out that Doubleday played no part whatsoever in baseball, Cartwright at least played a legitimate, if limited, role in the history of the game. He appears a good candidate, if only by comparison. Cartwright becomes the “good enough” creation story and many are satisfied with this.

It is my hope that this article can serve as a small remedy, by pointing out not only that the Cartwright myth is untrue, but also that it was poorly supported from the beginning: an edifice built on the flexible recollections of a man with an axe to grind.

RICHARD HERSHBERGER is a paralegal in Maryland. He has written numerous articles on early baseball, concentrating on its origins and its organizational history. He is a member of the SABR Nineteenth Century and Origins committees. Reach him at rrhersh@yahoo.com.

Photo credit

Alexander Cartwright, National Baseball Hall of Fame Library.

Sources

Newspapers

Cleveland Plain Dealer, The Era (London), Jonesboro Daily Tribune, Morning Olympian, New York Herald, New York Morning News, New York Sun, New York Sunday Mercury, Oneida (NY) Sachem, Philadelphia Sunday Mercury , The Sporting News

Books, articles, and archives

A.G. Mills Papers : correspondence, clippings, minutes, 1877–1929. A. Bartlett Giamatti Research Center, National Baseball Hall of Fame.

Adelman, Melvin. A Sporting Time: New York City and the Rise of Modern Athletics 1820–1870 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1986).

Block, David. Baseball Before We Knew It: A Search for the Roots of the Game (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2005).

Henderson, Robert. Ball, Bat and Bishop: The Origin of Ball Games (New York: Rockport Press, 1947).

Menke, Frank G. Encyclopedia of Sports (New York: F. G. Menke, Inc., 1939).

Nucciarone, Monica. Alexander Cartwright: The Life Behind the Baseball Legend (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2009).

Peterson, Harold. “Baseball’s Johnny Appleseed,” Sports Illustrated, April 14, 1969.

Peterson, Harold. The Man who Invented Baseball (New York: Scribner, 1973).

Peverelly, Charles A. The Book of American Pastimes, containing a history of the principal Base Ball, Cricket, Rowing, and Yachting Clubs of the United States (New York: published by the author, 1866).

Seymour, Harold and Dorothy Mills. Baseball: The Early Years (New York: Oxford University Press, 1960).

Spink, Alfred H. The National Game, second edition. (St. Louis: National Game Publishing Company, 1911).

Thorn, John. “Four Fathers of Baseball” http://thornpricks.blogspot.com/2005/07/four-fathers-of-baseball.html.

Thorn, John. “Abner Cartwright” Nine: A Journal of Baseball History and Culture, 18 no. 1 (2009).

Ward, John Montgomery. Base Ball: How to Become a Player (Philadelphia: Athletic Publishing, 1888).

Notes

1. See Block chapters 3 and 4 for a recent and thorough example.

2. Peverelly 340. The reference to “Stay-where-you-am-Wail” is obscure. It might be a jocular reference to his range factor, but this explanation is purely speculative.

3. New York Morning News, October 22, 1845.

4. Oneida Sachem, June 18, 1859.

5. An interesting illustration of “base ball” and “town ball” being understood as synonyms comes from a discussion in the New York Clipper of January 7, 1865. A discussion of the rule forbidding anyone to play for multiple clubs includes “This rule of course excludes players belonging to Junior clubs from taking part in Senior club matches, and likewise excludes players belonging to any base ball club or town ball club; but not cricket clubs, as cricket is a distinct game of ball.”

6. New York Herald, October 16, 1859; The Era (London), October 31, 1858; Peverelly, 338.

7. New York Sunday Mercury, August 4, 1872.

8. Ward, 11, 21.

9. Spink, 54–55.

10. These scrapbooks now constitute a substantial portion of the Mears collection of the Cleveland Public Library.

11. The New York Sun, May 2, 1905, states that the commission would consult “the leading baseball libraries of America” and even offered some specific suggestions. It also said the British Museum had been asked for “all possible data on rounders.” There is no sign that any of this was carried out.

12. Once again Ward was the more insightful. In a letter in the A.G. Mills Papers dated June 19, 1907 to Spalding, he sympathizes with the search for baseball’s origin but is not optimistic, believing it to be beyond living memory.

13. The letters cited in this section are in the A.G. Mills Papers in the A. Bartlett Giamatti Research Center of the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum. All columns are from The Sporting News.

14. “Old cat” was a scrub form of baseball, played when there weren’t enough players for a proper game, with different versions for differing numbers of players available.

15. The column makes reference to additional correspondence that is missing. Fortunately, it summarizes the content sufficiently to get the gist.

16. Thorn (2005).

17. Block, 196-99.

18. The earliest suggestion of this title is from an editorial in the Philadelphia Sunday Mercury, July 12, 1868, criticizing Chadwick by name, which includes “Please understand that I am forced into a position I should have avoided but for your action. Understand, also, that I am not the father of the game, neither am I its great defender. I am simply a votary, and so subscribe myself.”

19. Cleveland Plain Dealer, December 6, 1876, where he is described as “the father of baseball, and now the governor of the destines of the Boston club.”

20. Morning Olympian, July 21, 1916.

21. Cleveland Plain Dealer, March 9, 1934.

22. Jonesboro Daily Tribune, August 1, 1922.

23. This doctoring has long been known to baseball historians. For a recent and particularly thorough analysis see Nucciarone, 179–92.

24. Ibid. 213–19.

25. Menke, 34. Menke recognized earlier baseball, giving Cartwright credit for various innovations and standardizing the game.

26. Dorothy Seymour Mills was not credited on the title page, but is now generally acknowledged to have co-written the book.

27. Thorn (2009), 125–29.

• Each player was rated on runs above or below average, with runs turned into wins, using a variable factor based on league data, which was usually around 10 runs per win. A rating of 3 wins above average was quite good, while some players could be as high as 5 or 6. Babe Ruth and Ted Williams could get close to 10 in their best years.
• These figures are comparable to WAR (wins above replacement). The only difference is I use a .500 team for the baseline, while WAR uses .294, which is 33 fewer wins. If you assume 18 rated full time players per team, that would be about 1.8 wins per player.
• Since I was rating players back to the beginning of baseball, I had to come up with something which used existing statistics.
• Batting and pitching were no problem, since the existing stats are sufficient to accurately calculate runs compared to the league average.
• For fielding I had to use putouts, assists, errors and double plays.

I thought the system worked quite well for infielders, and fairly well for outfielders. It wasn’t that great for first basemen. I did not count putouts for them, only assists, and some players pick up a lot of assists by throwing to the pitcher, while others run to the bag themselves. Still, the good ones tended to pick up a fair number of assists. But catchers were worse. If a catcher was effective against stolen bases, he would have fewer assists because players wouldn’t run on him. And handling of pitchers wouldn’t compute anyway. I tried to compensate for pitchers by giving the catcher credit for ten percent of the park-adjusted team runs allowed, which admittedly is inadequate.

• Appendix: Click here to view the complete table of individual catcher ratings by Pete Palmer

Bill Deane undertook a private study in 1991 of Johnny Bench’s stolen bases and caught stealing allowed which encouraged me to try to incorporate that analysis into the catcher rating.2 At the time, Retrosheet had play by play of games back into the 1970s. For that period, I was able to use actual stolen bases and caught stealing from play by play accounts. For the earlier years, I went through the official averages and compiled stolen bases and caught stealing allowed by teams back to 1920. I used the team batting sheets and added those up by opponent. The only problem was the NL did not keep caught stealing from 1926 through 1950. Ernie Lanigan kept caught stealing records from game account for 1912 through 1919.

About half his data have been found in various newspapers. He generally just did base runners, but he did do caught stealing by catchers in some years. His data also allowed figuring the league totals.

I was able to estimate missing league caught stealing by combining three ways and taking a weighted average. We do have the league total of catcher assists. We can also estimate roughly the number of runners who were out on base. We know how many batters there were, how many outs there were, and how many runs there were. We can estimate the number of batters who reached base. The biggest problem is base on error. Luckily the NL actually kept base on error for a few years in the teens. I used 57 percent times errors to estimate times reached base. The other errors resulted in extra bases. You can calculate runners left on base as being total plate appearances minus runs and putouts.

So the runners out on base are equal to base runners minus runs and left on base. The major reason for outs on base are double plays. You also have pickoffs, runners out advancing and caught stealing. I also estimated caught stealing based on the number of stolen bases allowed.

I actually went back to 1890 for team stolen bases allowed. I also estimated total caught stealing, which was more of a stretch, since I didn’t have actual data before the teens. Stolen bases had been compiled starting in 1886, but box scores before 1890 had too many missing stolen bases to be useful.

Once you have the team stolen bases and caught stealing allowed, you can estimate the breakdown among catchers. I prorated caught stealing by assists and stolen bases by putouts. Admittedly, the caught stealing data should be more accurate. I then rated each catcher using three factors, stolen bases/caught stealing allowed, putouts/assists/errors/double plays other than caught stealing, and the previously mentioned team runs allowed. So a catcher like Bench would have an excellent stolen base factor, although his total caught stealing would be low. This would result in improving his fielding rating because he would have more non-caught stealing assists.

Since then, Retrosheet has driven its play-by-play back to 1950, with a few games missing. Also Tom Ruane and his team there have a wonderful collection of box scores of every game back to 1914. This allowed calculating actual stolen bases allowed. For the 1914–49 period, if there was more than one catcher in a game, I prorated stolen bases by plate appearances and caught stealing by assists. I used fractions and rounded off at the end of the year. I also used the same method for those few games missing play by play in the 1950–73 period.

I was happy to see that my original estimates of caught stealing from before I had the box scores were pretty accurate. No catcher was off by more than three caught stealing in a year after 1927. The 1920s were a period of higher stolen bases. Luckily stolen base attempts were fairly low from 1926–50 when the NL was not keeping caught-stealing records. I also improved my inning estimate, which goes into the fielder rating. I found that using actual innings from the box scores gave me totals within about 10 innings from my earlier estimates for catchers and infielders in over 1,000 innings for the season.

Outfielders were a bit worse. They are more complicated because data are combined for three positions. The stolen bases figures were off a bit more from my original estimates. The substitute catchers were apt to allow more stolen bases per game than the regulars.

I am confident that the 1910-to-date figures for catchers are quite accurate. The 1890–1909 numbers are fairly good, since we have exact numbers for team stolen bases allowed and for catcher assists, but there is room for error in the estimations.

I rated every catcher in 500 or more games, almost 350 players. I compiled the number of stolen bases and caught stealing and also the number of expected caught stealing for the stolen bases allowed if the success rate had been the same as the league average. I rated catchers on caught stealing above the expected number. The league average was calculated each year for all opponent teams. There was a turf corrector in there because the actual success rate on turf is higher than on grass, since when you run on turf, the surface does not slide back as it does on dirt. Turf parks with dirt base paths were considered grass. Success rate is five percent higher on turf. Currently Toronto’s Rogers Centre is the only field using turf basepaths.

Table 1: Top 20 Catchers Who Played Mostly Since 1890

Table 2: Bottom 4 Catchers Who Played Mostly Since 1890

* Games played before 1890 not counted

• Click here to view the complete table of individual catcher ratings by Pete Palmer

Looking at the data, there is a clear winner for handling stolen base attempts and it is Ivan Rodriguez. I-Rod had a surplus of over 300 caught stealing. Hall of Famers Ray Schalk and Gabby Hartnett were over 200. Next came two nineteenth century catchers, Chief Zimmer and Duke Farrell, but since I used prorated team assists and stolen bases, the measurement error there could be high.

The only other two catchers who had a rating greater than half of I-Rod’s were Bob Boone and Jim Sundberg, both considered good fielders. Bench ended up 11th. Among actives, Yadier Molina is the best and could move into the top ten before he retires. Henry Blanco is also highly rated.

Bill Bergen is an interesting case. You had to figure he must have been a great catcher in order to survive for 11 years with a .170 batting average (.201 slugging) and an OPS that was only sixty percent of average. Bergen does show up with a decent rating, 39th all time, but you might have expected him to be higher.

At the opposite end of the spectrum is Deacon McGuire, who played on some very bad teams in the 1890s. Again, his rating is suspect because of data accuracy. Mike Piazza has the worst rating otherwise. Mike was never considered to be good at preventing stolen bases, and the fact that he was the best hitting catcher of all-time will deservedly put him in the Hall of Fame.

McGuire’s claim to fame was that he was the first person listed in The Sporting News Record Book. McGuire played for 26 years and the first record in the book was longevity. He got his 26th year by being one of the players hastily recruited back in 1912 in the famous Ty Cobb strike game. Cobb was suspended for punching a fan who had been heckling him, and the entire team refused to play. McGuire, a Tiger coach, was 48 years old at the time. He played nearly the whole game at catcher, watching 24 runs cross the plate, and even got a hit. In 1993 Nolan Ryan had his 27th season and McGuire was erased.

One major change over the years has been specialization. In the early years everyone was expected to steal, depending on the game situation. Now many players hardly ever steal, no matter what. From 1901 to 1910 only 13 percent of players in 100 games or more had fewer than 10 stolen bases, now it is a whopping 69 percent. The success rate today is a lot higher as a result. However, the catchers are rated compared to the league average, so the change in distribution doesn’t matter. The average success rate during Rodriguez’s career was 69 percent, compared to only 55 percent for Ray Schalk.

The pitcher is also an important part of defending the stealing game. For this study it was assumed that the overall mix of pitchers for any given catcher would be about the same as far as preventing stolen bases was concerned. This could be an additional factor that could change the ratings. However, it would be difficult to separate the pitcher and the catcher, since each could help or hurt the other.

PETE PALMER is the co-author with John Thorn of “The Hidden Game of Baseball” and co-editor with Gary Gillette of the “Barnes & Noble ESPN Baseball Encyclopedia” (five editions). Pete introduced on-base average as an official statistic for the American League in 1979 and invented on-base plus slugging, now universally used as a measure of batting strength. A member of SABR since 1973, Pete is also a contributor to “Who’s Who in Baseball,” which will celebrate its 100th year in 2015. With John Thorn, Pete also edited seven editions of “Total Baseball.”

Notes

1 John Thorn and Pete Palmer, The Hidden Game of Baseball (New York: Doubleday, 1985).

2 Bill Deane, private email correspondence, 1991.

John McGraw, seen with Philadelphia Phillies manager Pat Moran, led the New York Giants to a record-setting 26-game winning streak in 1916. (LIBRARY OF CONGRESS, BAIN COLLECTION)

On a dreary Friday afternoon, September 29, 1916, 43-year-old John McGraw, manager of the New York Giants, stood in the third base coaching box at the Polo Grounds, swearing at catcher Lew McCarty on first base. McCarty had just smacked a single to left. Had the 150-pound McGraw been coaching first, he would probably have had his hands around the neck of his dim-witted second-string catcher. What McGraw needed was an out, not a hit, because it was the bottom of the fourth, the Giants were leading the Boston Braves 1–0, it was raining, and it was so dark McGraw could not see the Braves’ outfielders. Three more Braves’ outs would give the Giants their 26th consecutive game without a loss. It would have been a 26-game winning streak but for a 1–1 rain-shortened tie with Pittsburgh on September 18, and keep alive their slim chance to win the National League pennant.1

McGraw was no stranger to winning streaks; his Giants won 18 straight in 1904, 17 in 1907, and 16 in 1912. On a road trip in May of this year, his team had run off 17 wins in a row. McGraw knew what it took to keep a streak going.2

With six games to play, the Giants trailed Brooklyn by five games, four on the loss side, but there was still hope. McGraw never stopped hoping because he knew the clock never ran out on a baseball game, though it might on the season. He never stopped reminding his players that when they hit a pop fly in fair territory, two outcomes were possible, the ball could either be caught for an out, or it could fall safely. McGraw believed it was the sacred duty of the man who hit the ball to assume the ball would fall safely and run as fast as he could, on the chance that he might reach base or take an extra base. That was the way John McGraw played the game and he demanded no less of his players. In a 16-year playing career, McGraw reached base 46.6 times for every 100 plate appearances, a figure exceeded in major league history only by Ted Williams (48.3) and Babe Ruth (47.4).3

McGraw also demanded that his team play smart and take advantage of every game situation. Lew McCarty should have known that the game situation required him to strike out as quickly as possible so the Giants could hurry to make this an official game, the 26th consecutive game without a loss.

For more than three weeks McGraw—who was sometimes called “Little Napoleon” and “Mugsy,” but more often Mister McGraw—had been driving his Giants day after day to win. He had almost convinced them that they would never lose again. Six more wins and they would have run the table, going undefeated for the final 32 games of the season. When they showed up for work at the Polo Grounds on September 7 their record was a dismal 59–62; now 22 days later, if the rain would hold off for just three more Braves’ outs, the Giants would stand at 85–62. But it was not to be. McGraw was a powerful force on the ballfield, but even he could not control the weather.

Shortly after four o’clock, umpire William J. “Lord” Byron called the game off, much to the disgust of McGraw who was ready to continue play in the downpour. McGraw chided himself for not scheduling a two P.M. start instead of the normal 3:00 p.m. With games averaging a little over an hour and a half, there was rarely a problem, but this was hurricane season on the East Coast, and he should have taken it into account. If the game was not completed, the only way it could be made up would be to play three games the following day, which McGraw took seriously enough to discuss the possibility with Braves manager George Stallings. Playing a game on Sunday would be allowed only if it were an exhibition game played for charity.

McGraw had a long list of things he did not trust, including hotel clerks, telephones, and left-handers, but his hate list was short—umpires, bad hops, Republicans, and rain—the things he could not control. McGraw had been manager of the Giants since 1902, and in those 14 years had won 1,235 games.4

McGraw’s first full year as manager was 1903, and in the years since then he had averaged 93 wins per season, winning five pennants, which would have been six but for the perfidy of umpire Hank O’Day who had called Fred Merkle out for failing to touch second base, costing them the 1908 pennant. McGraw would go on to manage the Giants for another 17 years, and become the all-time winningest manager in National League history with 2,699 wins, and a winning average of .586. But the 1,948 losses eventually took their toll and McGraw died young, a year after retiring from the game in 1933.

But this story is about the streak, and McGraw’s team, a motley collection of unlikely heroes, none of whom would ever appear on the 100 best players of the century list. For three magical weeks in the fall of 1916 they were unbeatable, achieving the longest unbeaten streak in baseball history.5

In this time they actually played 29 and a half games, counting the four-inning rainout. They also beat the Yankees and the minor league New Haven team in exhibition games and played a 1–1 tie with Pittsburgh, called after eight innings because of rain. All the major league games, including nine double-headers, were played at the Polo Grounds. The average time of game was 1 hour, 44 minutes. For the entire time, including the exhibition game, and all the double-headers, McGraw used exactly the same lineup and batting order, except for the two catchers.

And the pitchers! Ah, the pitchers. Does anybody remember these names? Pol Perritt 6–0, Jeff “the Ozark Mountain Bear” Tesreau 7–0, Ferdie Schupp 6–0 with four shutouts, Rube Benton 5–0, and Slim Sallee (off the sick list) 2–0. Using a bewildering array of “moist” balls, curves, and fastballs, with pinpoint control (33 walks in 240 innings) the staff turned in 23 complete games, including 10 shutouts, and seven one-run games. They were aided by superb fielding that played 14 errorless games (compared to the opponents’ three), and executed 15 double plays. The Giants racked up 122 runs, 223 hits, 22 errors. Brooklyn, Philadelphia, Cincinnati, Pittsburgh, Chicago, St. Louis, Boston: 33 runs, 151 hits, 50 errors.

New York Giants manager John McGraw, left, shakes hands with his longtime star pitcher and close friend Christy Mathewson, right, as infielder Buck Herzog looks on. Due to Mathewson’s desire to manage in the big leagues, McGraw traded him to the Cincinnati Reds on July 20, 1916. Mathewson managed the Reds for parts of three seasons. (LIBRARY OF CONGRESS, BAIN COLLECTION

Game One. Thursday, September 7. It looked like another Giants loss. Zack Wheat, batting cleanup and following right fielder Casey Stengel in the Brooklyn lineup, whaled a home run into the right-field grandstand to lead off the second inning, and Brooklyn left-hander Nap Rucker threw blanks at the Giants through five innings. In the sixth the game got ugly; the Dodgers began to dodge. With two out and two on due to free passes, Giants shortstop Art Fletcher grounded weakly to short where Ivy Olson booted it to load the bases for Benny “the Ty Cobb of the Federal league” Kauff. Benny managed a swinging bunt to third for an infield hit that tied the score. Next came the big first-sacker, switch-hitter Walter Holke, the only rookie in the Giants lineup, who rapped a single to left for two runs and a 3–1 Giant lead. Holke’s hit opened some eyes because he was playing in only his seventh major league game. In Holke McGraw had found the final piece. Catcher Bill Rariden completed the Dodgers’ misery with yet another infield hit, and the Giants won 4–1 when left-hander Ferdie Schupp pitched no-hit, no-run ball after the second inning. Fred “Bonehead” Merkle, now with the Dodgers and the man Holke had replaced, made the next-to-last out.

Table 1: NL Standings at start of play Friday, September 8, 1916

Game Two. Friday, September 8. The Giants treated the best pitcher in the National League, Philadelphia’s Grover Cleveland Alexander, like chopped liver, raking him for 13 hits and eight runs (five earned) in seven innings. They would notch a 9–3 win behind Jeff Tesreau who, in addition to his darting “moist” ball, contributed a home run to the festivities. Game two of the scheduled twin bill was postponed because of rain.

Games Three and Four. Saturday, September 9. Thirty-five-thousand New Yorkers roared their approval as lanky right-hander Pol Perritt went the distance twice. First he defeated the defending-champion, league-leading Phillies 3–1, then changed his shirt, and blanked them 3–0 in game two, besting Chippewa Chief Bender. Art Fletcher sealed the game one win with an eighth inning steal of home.

Sunday, September 10. Baseball was not usually played in New York on Sunday because of certain laws, but the laws were relaxed if the game was played for sweet charity, so the Giants squared off against the American League Yankees in front of 20,000 fans and a few movie cameras. John McGraw was not easing up, even for an exhibition game, and went with his regular lineup, including starting pitcher Ferdie Schupp on two days’ rest. Ferdie went three and two thirds before turning it over to veteran right-hander Fred Anderson who breezed to a 4–2 Giant win, helped by a home run from “Little Benny” Kauff. It was hard to believe Kauff could generate so much power from his 5’8″, 157-pound body, especially the way he choked up on the bat.

In 1916 everybody choked up, the amount varying with position in the batting order. Leadoff hitters choked up three inches, numbers three, four, five, and six hitters, at least an inch. One reason why games moved so briskly is there were few strikeouts and few home runs. Pitchers worked fast and aimed for the middle of the plate. That meant few deep counts and many complete games.

Game Five. Monday, September 11. The Giants were back to their job of pounding the Phillies. On the tide of a six-run fourth inning, featuring a three-run triple by catcher Bill Rariden off Eppa Rixey, and another homer by “Little Benny,” the Giants coasted to a 9–4 win behind Ozark Jeff Tesreau. McGraw’s twirlers pitched long, and they pitched often.

Game Six. Tuesday, September 12. The 5,000 or so Giants rooters who came out to see the team win their sixth straight game, 3–2 against the last place Cincinnati Reds, were treated to an odd sight. Standing across the field in the disguise of a Cincinnati uniform was a man who over the last 15 years had pitched 372 victories for the Giants, not including the three shutouts in five days against the Philadelphia Athletics in the 1905 World’s Series. Yes, it was Reds manager Christy Mathewson who had been swapped, along with third baseman Bill McKechnie and Edd Roush, to the Rhinelanders in June for Red Killifer and their manager, Buck Herzog, who was now batting second and anchoring second base for the Giants. Herzog, whom McGraw made field captain, accounted for the Giants’ first run with an RBI double in the first inning after the Redlegs got off to a 2–0 lead. Davey Robertson, Giants’ right fielder, and number three hitter, tied the game with an upper deck homer to right in the fourth, and the winning run scored in the fifth while pitcher Rube Benton hit into a double play. After the first inning, left-hander Benton handed the Reds a string of eight goose eggs.

Games Seven and Eight. Wednesday, September 13. In game one, young Holke settled the issue with a bases-loaded sixth-inning triple off Reds’ ace Fred Toney, and Ferdie Schupp, back again with two days rest, made it stand up with a three-hit shutout. Not counting the exhibition game, the skinny lefty had now thrown 16 consecutive scoreless innings. The Giants did not waste time in game two, scoring five runs in the first inning which turned out to be enough when Giants rookie right-hander “Columbia George” Smith pitched into the sixth, and then handed off to Pol Perritt who silenced the Reds thereafter. Giants 6, Cincinnati 4.

Game Nine. Thursday, September 14. The Giants found a new way to win: base on balls, stolen base, single to center. It worked in the first when Robertson scored on a hit by Zimmerman, and again in the fourth when Kauff was plated on a hit by Holke. McGraw had pried third baseman Heinie Zimmerman, the veteran RBI man, away from the Cubs in a late season trade for “Laughing Larry” Doyle, and installed him in the cleanup spot. It may not be a coincidence that the streak began a week after Zimmerman joined the team. The Reds squeezed out a run in the eighth, but it was not enough. The Ozark bear hunter, back again on two days rest, was using his “moist” ball, which dived as it approached the plate, to perfection; only four fly balls were hit to the outfield.

Friday’s game was rained out.

Games 10 and 11. Saturday, September 16. Game one was easy as Rube Benton held Pittsburgh to two runs, and the Giants put the game away with a five-run lucky seventh, winning 8–2. Game two was another story. The Giants were blanked into the eighth by slim Pirate left-hander Wilbur Cooper, and trailed 3–0 as McGraw used four pitchers trying to keep the game close; two Giant double plays helped. The Giants took advantage of a Pittsburgh error to score two in the eighth on a ground out from Buck Herzog and a two-out single to center by Davey Robertson. They won it in the ninth on a walk-away two-out smash up the middle by leadoff man George Burns after the tying run scored on a passed ball. Tesreau pitched the ninth for the win. Twenty-two thousand fans were delirious.

Game 12. Monday, September 18. After a Sunday day of rest, the Giants and Pirates were back for another double-header. The Giants managed to score only three runs all day, but prevailed when Ferdie Schupp and Pol Perritt held the Pirates, and the fearsome Honus Wagner, who McGraw always said was the best ball player he ever saw, to only one run. Schupp won the opener 2–0 on hits by McCarty and Zimmerman. The nightcap was called after nine innings because of rain with the teams tied 1–1. The Giants’ run came on a fifth-inning inside-the-park home run by Benny Kauff. Honus Wagner tied it with a eighth-inning sacrifice fly. McGraw was inconsolable.

Games 13 and 14. Tuesday, September 19. For the third time in four days the Giants and Pirates squared off in a twin bill. The Giants put aside the number 13 jinx quickly, winning game one easily, 9–2 behind Fred Anderson and Rube Benton. With batting help from Georgie Burns and Benny Kauff they took the nightcap 5–1 behind Jeff Tesreau. Kauff homered in both games. The New York Times beat writer said Benny’s second game four-station clout was slammed so hard that it arrived limp and breathless into the upper deck boxes. New York fans showed respect for a fading warrior when they applauded every appearance of eighttime National League batting champion Wagner, now nearing the end of his celebrated career. In the six games, the 42-year-old “Flying Dutchman” went 1 for 17 but drove in the game tying run in the only game the Pirates didn’t lose.

Game 15. Wednesday, September 20. The Giants added the Chicago Cubs to their victim list, scoring the winning run on a seventh-inning three-bagger by Lew McCarty. Ferdie Schupp, pitching on one day’s rest, saw his 27 consecutive scoreless inning streak stopped, but went the distance again to win 4–2, the Cubs’ second run scoring on two Giants’ errors.

Game 16. Thursday, September 21. Pol Perritt, with two days’ rest, blanked the Cubs 4–0, the Giants scoring single runs in the first, second, fourth, and sixth. The second-inning run came when catcher Bill Rariden hammered a pitch into the flower bed in deep right center. It was Bedford Bill’s only home run of the year, and one of only seven hit in a 12-year major league career.

Game 17. Friday, September 22. Southpaw Slim Sallee came off the sick list to give the gritty Giant pitching staff a lift with a seven-hit shutout of the Cubs, and the Giants won 5–0, equaling an early-season 17-game winning streak which was achieved entirely on the road, and was thus less appreciated by local fans. Today’s game was highlighted by two double plays, and numerous circus plays by Zimmerman, Fletcher, and Herzog who “scoured the infield of hits until it was as clean as a newly polished kitchen.” Batting muscle was furnished by Robertson, Rariden, and Kauff.

John McGraw is pictured here in 1916 with Wild Bill Donovan, the manager of the New York American League club, and two umpires. (LIBRARY OF CONGRESS, BAIN COLLECTION)

Games 18 and 19. Saturday, September 23. The Giants turned their attention to the St. Louis Cardinals, and thumped the Birds twice, 6–1 and 3–0 in seven innings when play was stopped by rain. Jeff Tesreau and Rube Benton handled the pitching. Umpire “Lord” Byron got into the act by sending Giants’ pitcher Bill Ritter into oblivion, and later Cardinal manager Miller Huggins, who put on a splendid display of verbal gab before leaving the field. Zimmerman drove in runs in both games.

Games 20 and 21. Monday, September 25. The Giants beat the Cardinals two more times before 10,000 cheering spectators. In the opener, Ferdie Schupp fired a two-hitter, and the Giants hung on for a 1–0 nail-biter, the winning run scoring in the fourth inning on a wild throw as the Giants were held to only three hits by St. Louis sophomore right-hander Lee Meadows. The nightcap was easy as the Giants jumped on Joe Lotz for five early runs, and breezed to a 6–2 win behind Pol Perritt.

Game 22. Tuesday, September 26. The Giants, playing loose and easy, broke the record for longest unbeaten streak, held by Cap Anson’s 1880 Chicago, with another comfortable win over the hapless Cardinals. Slim Sallee took only an hour and 35 minutes to dispatch the Birds 6–1, and contributed two hits and an RBI to the fun.

Game 23. Wednesday, September 27. The Giants pulled one out. Unheralded Cardinal rookie left-hander Bob Steele came within one pitch of ending the streak, but with two on, two out, and two strikes on the hitter, made a mistake to Buck Herzog who tripled off the right field wall to tie the game at two. Steele heaved a ball over catcher Frank Snyder’s head, allowing Heinie Zimmerman to score the winning run in the bottom of the tenth. McGraw used a committee of pitchers. Fred Anderson’s moist ball was all over the place, and the Giants were lucky to trail by only two when McGraw yanked him after two and one third innings … he had yielded six hits and two walks. Rube Benton held the fort for four and two thirds, then handed off to George Smith for two. Bill Ritter pitched the tenth, and got the win.

Baseball is like a flowing river, veterans drifting downstream to an ocean of retirement, rookies boldly swimming against the current, seeking the limits of their abilities. For those in attendance it was easy to acknowledge the achievements of the old-timers as they drifted on down, but to spot the potential future star, struggling to make his mark, was a different story. New Yorkers following the improbable Giants’ streak, were quick to cheer the aging Honus Wagner as he passed through.

They most likely missed the 20-year-old Cardinal rookie third baseman, Rogers Hornsby, who managed only three singles in 21 at bats in the six Cardinal defeats. Hornsby would go on to become one of the greatest offensive forces the game has ever seen, winning seven National League batting titles.

Games 24 and 25. Thursday, September 28. After 18 straight games against teams below them in the standings, the Giants had to play the final nine games of the season against teams above them. Five against Boston, and four against Brooklyn. They began the stretch in fine fashion, Jeff Tesreau and Ferdie Schupp throwing 18 ciphers at the Beantowners as the Giants won 2–0 and 6–0. The opener was settled on a home run by Davey Robertson, and the nightcap saw two baseball rarities, a near no-hitter by Ferdie Schupp, scored on in only two of his last 52 innings pitched, and a grand slam inside-the-park home run by Benny Kauff.

At the end of the day, New York sports writers took a deep breath, and allowed that there was yet a way, though convoluted, that the Giants could win the pennant. They would never consider this if they had not become convinced, like everyone else, that the Giants would never lose again. It was like this:

Table 2: NL Standings, Friday, September 28, 1916

If the Giants ran the table, Boston would be eliminated for they would have 63 losses. Philadelphia had to lose six of eight, and Brooklyn one of two to Philadelphia assuming they lose all four to the Giants. It was possible. McGraw told his club to forget about what is past; they are beginning a seven-game season, and they must win them all.

On Friday the weeping heavens saved the Braves, and left the Giants doing some weeping of their own. The Giants led 1–0 behind Pol Perritt, with one out in the bottom of the fourth, but it was so dark at ten minutes till four, and the rain was coming down so hard, that Lord Byron called a halt over the intemperate beefs of the desperate McGraw. The game could not be made up. Across the East River in Brooklyn the game between the Robins and the fighting Phillies had also been washed out, and would be played as part of a twin bill the next day, the first game beginning at 10:30 in the morning.

Game 26. Saturday, September 30. Everybody was scoreboard watching, all 28,000 fans and the peanut vendors. The game began with the knowledge that the Phillies had trounced the Robins 7–2 in the morning game to take over the league lead. The Giants’ Rube Benton took a cue from Ferdie Schupp, and threw a second straight one-hitter at the Braves’ slumbering bats, extending their consecutive scoreless inning streak to 27. They had yet to score in the series. Riding triples by Burns and Fletcher, the Giants scored two in the seventh, and two in the eighth to win 4–0. The Giants were down to a five-game season.

Strike three. Saturday, September 30. Game two. The Braves seemed helpless against left-handers, and Slim Sallee had three days rest, as he swaggered to the mound for McGraw. For three innings Sallee stifled the Braves, but the scoreless streak ended in the fourth when the unthinkable happened: steady shortstop Art Fletcher made a wild throw letting a runner on and eventually leading to two runs scoring. The Giants fought back to tie in the fifth, after Lew McCarty walked, igniting a two-run rally. In the seventh, “Big Ed” Konetchy, the Braves’ first baseman, the man who had broken up both Ferdie Schupp’s and Rube Benton’s no-hitters, singled to center. Braves’ third baseman Red Smith took two strikes, then began to foul off pitches as Sallee tried to put him away. Tension mounted as Smith gained confidence with each swing, and Sallee seemed to sag. The sixth foul ball of the at bat was a long fly into the left field grandstand, and suddenly the crowd sensed doom. Even Sallee seemed to know, as he stalked around the mound muttering to himself.

Captain Herzog came in to talk with him, try to settle him down. Finally he threw the pitch, and immediately knew it was a mistake. Smith measured the approaching ball, shifted his weight in a practiced motion, and swung with all the strength he owned. It was a home run off the bat, and the Giants trailed 4–2. The Giants had surrendered only two home runs in the preceding three weeks, one to Gavvy Cravath of the Phillies and one to Jack Smith of the Cardinals.

It was the first time in 17 days that the Giants had given up as many as four runs in a game. But the worst was yet to come. Sallee’s next pitch to Sherry Magee was also belted into the left field grandstand. Back-to-back homers! McGraw called on Tesreau to stop the bleeding, but the brutal pace finally proved too much. The Ozark bear hunter was out of steam. He faced four batters and they all smacked hits. Braves shortstop Rabbit Maranville was all over the place to snuff every Giants’ rally.

Final score: Boston 8, Giants 3. The streak was over.

Across the river at Ebbets Field in Brooklyn, Robins’ right fielder Casey Stengel sparked his team to a big win over the Phillies with a fifth inning home run off Phillies’ ace Pete Alexander. In 1916 Alexander, a 33-game winner with 16 shutouts, was virtually unhittable, except when he pitched in New York. Recall on September 8, in the second game of the streak, the Giants shelled the great Alexander for 13 hits, and today in Brooklyn, in a game that could have put the Phillies in the catbird seat, “Old Pete” failed again. There were those who claimed New York teams held an edge because visitors were dazzled by New York nightlife. Some also claimed the Giants’ shiny streak owed more than a little to the Great White Way. Perhaps. But who was to say the hometown Giants were tucked in by nine?

In any case, at the end of the day the Giants were cooked. Five games back with four games to play. Where did they go from here? They went to Brooklyn.

Wilbert Robinson, manager of the Robins, was an old teammate of McGraw’s when they played for the Baltimore Orioles back in the gay nineties. The Giants were out of the pennant race. McGraw was in a position to help “Uncle Robby” whose team entered play with a one-half game lead on the Phillies who were playing a double-header against Boston in Philadelphia. To suggest this to McGraw would be to invite a punch in the nose. McGraw played to win. Period.

McGraw sent out his ace Ferdie Schupp who had given up only five hits in his current 23-scoreless-inning stretch. Pitching for the Robins was “Long Jack” Coombs who in 1910, while twirling for the Philadelphia A’s, pitched three complete game World’s Series victories against the Chicago Cubs.

The Giants loaded the bases with two outs in the first inning, and Benny Kauff, who batted in 23 runs during the streak, went to war against Coombs, fouling off pitch after pitch, exceeding a half dozen before Coombs finally put him away with a diving spitter that got Benny lunging. After that Coombs toyed with them, throwing a mixture of stuff “not hard enough to break tissue paper.” The Giants fell 2–0. The Giants had a two-game losing streak. The Robins edged closer to the pennant when the Phillies split with Boston.

On Tuesday the unimaginable happened. McGraw lost control of his team. The Giants played loose and carelessly. They ignored their manager’s signals, Pol Perritt more than once went into a windup with a man on first or second, Captain Buck Herzog made repeated trips to the mound to scold first Rube Benton, then Pol Perritt for indifferent pitching. The Robins scored nine runs. McGraw couldn’t stand to watch; he left the dugout in the fourth inning. He announced that he was disgusted with the Giants’ play, and would not be associated with such shenanigans. The Robins would have won the pennant in any case because the Phillies folded before Boston, losing both games, but the Giants’ players did not know this while the game in Brooklyn was in progress.

The Giants gathered themselves to win the next day when the pennant race was over and they lost the final game of the season on Thursday, but McGraw was long gone. When he left the field on Tuesday he headed straight for the racetrack in Laurel, Maryland, looking for a hot tip or playing a hunch. He was through with baseball.

***

P.S. When the Black Sox Scandal broke after the 1919 World’s Series, the Chicago players were not the only ones booted out of baseball. Rube Benton, Buck Herzog, Heinie Zimmerman, and Benny Kauff were all fingered as in on fixes from time to time. Zimmerman and Kauff were banned for life, Kauff officially for being part of an alleged auto theft ring.6

John McGraw got over his pique. He came back to manage exactly the same team that was unbeaten for 27 straight games for him in September 1916 to the 1917 National League championship, winning 98 games for a 10-game edge over the Phillies. Brooklyn won only 70 games, and dodged to seventh place. The Giants lost the World’s Series four games to two to the same Chicago White Sox team that disgraced baseball two years later.

MAX BLUE is the pen name of Paul Fritz who has been ensnared by the game of baseball for more than 75 years, and a SABR member for many years. In 1950 Fritz was a catcher for the Appleton Papermakers, a Class D farm club of the St. Louis Browns in the Wisconsin State League. Blue is the author of “God Is Alive” and “Playing Third Base for the Appleton Papermakers,” as well as three published books about the Philadelphia Phillies.

Notes

Clyde Sukeforth shrugged off his importance to the Jackie Robinson story, but Robinson didn’t. (BARNEY STEIN / COURTESY OF KARL LINDHOLM)

Clyde Sukeforth was the consummate Yankee, though he was never associated with the New York Yankees baseball club, and for 20 of the 48 years he drew a paycheck in baseball, he was a member of the Brooklyn Dodgers, the Yankees’ arch-rivals. Sukeforth was a Yankee from Maine.

As Branch Rickey’s collaborator and confidant, Sukeforth is well-known for his role in the Jackie Robinson integration saga. He was the scout who met with Robinson in Chicago in August of 1945 and accompanied him to Brooklyn for the historic meeting in which Rickey informed Robinson he wanted a “man with guts enough not to fight back.”2

Sukeforth was in the room that day, and on the bench as manager of the Dodgers for Robinson’s first game as a major leaguer on April 15, 1947. “Sukey,” as he was known, shrugged off the importance of his contribution: “I was just the right person at the right place at the right time.”3

Jackie Robinson, however, felt otherwise. Near the end of his life (he died in 1972 at age 52), he expressed his appreciation in a letter to Sukeforth at his home in Waldoboro, Maine:

While there has not been enough said of your significant contribution in the Rickey-Robinson experiment, I consider your role, next to Mr. Rickey’s and my wife’s—yes, bigger than any other person with whom I came in contact. I have always considered you to be one of the true giants in this initial endeavour in baseball, for which I am truly appreciative.

May you never find it convenient to underplay the role you played to make the Rickey-Robinson experiment a success.4

Yet that’s exactly what Sukey did. He always downplayed his importance in baseball’s integration drama: “I get a lot of credit I don’t deserve. I treated Robinson just like any other human being,” he said near the end of his long life. “See, coming from Maine, I never thought about color. I don’t feel I did anything special. I was just there.5

“Many people have the impression that I was the first man to scout Jackie Robinson, but everybody in America knew what talent he had. Nobody but Branch Rickey deserves any credit. They have given me too much credit.”6

One could expect nothing else from Sukey. He was a Mainer, after all.

TEAM PLAYER

People from Maine are “Yankees,” broadly speaking, and a composite of all those character traits New Englanders associate with the term: Yankee industry, reticence, practicality, resourcefulness, frugality, loyalty, independence, humility. Yankees abhor pretension and avoid ostentation. Their discourse is ironic and understated: they are straight talkers with a wry sense of humor. Austerity and simplicity are virtues. “Times change,” they say, “but I don’t.”

Clyde Sukeforth symbolized competence and dependability in the workplace. In his biography of Branch Rickey, Lee Lowenfish refers to the “taciturn native of Maine” as “one of the most trusted members of Rickey’s inner circle.”7 As such, he was not the star, the boss, one of the principals—it was Rickey’s and Robinson’s show.

He was a team player, happier in the shadows than the limelight. He is baseball’s most famous factotum. Sukeforth was crucial but not central—and that’s just the way he liked it. “I was perfectly happy and satisfied to be a coach,” he told a Pittsburgh reporter in 1957, “to stand in the wings and help put the play on the stage.”8

Befitting his nature, he was a catcher—a 5’10” 155-pound catcher. A receiver, not a deliverer. Pitchers may be vain, flighty; catchers are humble, solid. They see the whole field, play the entire game. There are no relief catchers. They go the distance. Many great catchers historically came from New England: Bill Carrigan, Connie Mack, Gabby Hartnett, Mickey Cochrane, Birdie Tebbetts, Jim Hegan, Carlton Fisk.

Clyde Sukeforth was born in Washington, Maine in 1901. He died in Waldoboro, 17 miles from his birthplace, nearly a century later in 2000. Sukey is an ideal representative of his region. Mainers are used to rugged times, hardship, bad weather, tough choices. They live a hardscrabble life, or at least they did when he was growing up there and adopting the values of his place.

He was the mythical young man from the provinces who went to the city and participated in an epic drama, and then, after an extraordinary career full of high adventure, repaired to his Ithaka — Waldoboro — to live out his long life, a sage in the tranquility of old age in familiar and reassuring surroundings.

More than anything, Sukey lived and loved the Yankee life and lifestyle. His daughter Helen Zimmerman, of Dallas, Texas, said of him: “He was a true Mainer…. He loved the outdoors, even in the winter, especially in the winter. He liked to hunt and fish, and always had dogs. He always found something to do in the winter. He would never have been happy in Florida or Texas.”9

Each year, after playing ball, or serving as a coach, scout, or manager during the warm 6-8 months of the baseball season, Sukeforth returned to Waldoboro for the offseason. For many years, he came back to his 100 acre farm on Blueberry Hill where he grew Christmas trees and blueberries. Then in the last 30 years of his life he moved to a more manageable cottage on a dirt road right on the water, on the Medomak Bay, a few miles below Waldoboro village.

1922 Augusta Millionaires. Clyde Sukeforth is third from the left in the back row. Four other players on this team played in the big leagues. (MAINE BASEBALL HALL OF FAME)

NOTHING ELSE TO DO

Baseball was everything and everywhere when Sukey was a boy in coastal Maine at the turn of the last century. His dad was a farmer and a carpenter who shoveled snow in the winter for money. He also was a pitcher in his youth and his son early on showed an affinity for the game, playing every day the weather allowed. “Baseball was different then,” Sukeforth explained. “Every kid had a ball and glove, and threw the ball. You’d throw the ball seven days a week.”10

“There was nothing else to do. I mean, there were two things you could do; you could take your ball and glove and play catch with the neighbor’s kids, or you could dig a can of worms and go fishing on the trout brook. That was it!”11

They just played the game, outdoors, live. “We didn’t have a radio until 1930, and no TV until the early ’50s,” Sukey said. “The only way we got news was from the Boston Post, which came by stagecoach along about sunset every day. You’d have to get the Post to find out what the Red Sox did yesterday.”12

Clyde did get a chance to see two World Series games when he was 16. He went to Boston with his uncle for the wartime 1918 Series in which Babe Ruth shone as a pitcher for the Red Sox. “We walked right up to the ticket window and got tickets the day of the game. There were even empty seats,” Sukey recalled.13

He attended a one-room/one-teacher school house in Washington with his older sister, until he enrolled in Coburn Classical Institute in Waterville for his last two years of high school. “Then I stayed out of school for one year and worked for the United Lumber Company from one June to the next,” Sukey told a writer in 2000. “I’ve only done two things in my life: baseball and chopping wood.”14

“Right after World War I, industry was real good and all the manufacturing plants sponsored ball teams,” Sukey said in 1998. “I had always dreamed of playing professional ball, so in 1921 I made the Great Northern Paper Company ball club. We used to play in Bangor, Brewer, Bar Harbor, all around. They recruited all the better college players around, and paid more than the good ballplayers were getting in the minor leagues.”15

Sukey played all over the field as a youngster, but eventually settled on catching. His explanation was typically practical: “I wasn’t very big, but a small fella had a chance in those days. In the first place, if you’re gonna have a game, somebody’s got to catch.”16

He played two summers for Great Northern and also played for the Augusta Millionaires, a fast semi-pro team. A Pittsburgh newspaper later described these early years thus: “Sukeforth was raised in the Maine woods and played semipro ball in Millinockett. Some Georgetown college boys who were spending the summer took the young man back to college with them and he was a student at Georgetown for two years. ‘I played ball there and I loved the school,’ said Sukeforth.”17

So off he went to study and play ball at Georgetown 1923–25 where he attracted the attention of major league scouts. After two years, he was faced with the decision to continue on to a four-year degree or to play pro ball. In truth, it wasn’t a real dilemma. “I wanted to play ball—that’s all I wanted to do.”18

MAJOR LEAGUER

The Reds gave him $1,500 to sign and $600 a month and sent him to play for Nashua in the New England League in the summer of 1926. He was called up by Cincinnati in late May and got his first major league at-bat. He batted only once—and struck out. Nonetheless, he always claimed, “The highlight of my career was the first day I put on a big-league uniform.”19

For the next two years, he was the Reds’ third-string catcher, stuck behind “Bubbles” Hargrave, who led the National League in batting average in 1926, and veteran Val Picinich. Sukey finally got his chance in 1929, with the aging Hargrave gone to manage in the minors and Picinich traded, and had a marvelous season: in 84 games, he batted .354, by 40 points the highest average on the Reds and higher than any other catcher in the majors (Mickey Cochrane hit .331 for the Tigers that year).

Sukeforth was far from the lumbering Ernie Lombardi-type of backstop. He put the ball in play, and ran like the wind. “I took a big, heavy bat, choked up on it. I never had any power, but I could run. I legged out a few.”20 He struck out only six times that summer in 237 at-bats. For the next two years he was the Reds’ regular catcher, batting .284 in ’30 and .254 in ’31 in 112 games.

Then, misfortune struck. Just after the ’31 season, he was bird-hunting in southern Ohio with friends when, as he described it, “The bird jumped up before one of our fellows expected it and he took a quick shot at it. He got the wrong bird.”21

He shot Sukeforth in the face at close range. Sukey was hospitalized for weeks. One of the pellets had gone right through his right eye, rendering him nearly blind in that eye. He lived the rest of his life with shotgun pellets lodged in his head and an ability to detect only shapes with his bad eye. He described with typical aplomb the impact of this event on his baseball career. “I wasn’t a world beater before then, and the accident didn’t help any.”22

He was traded that winter, 1932, to the Dodgers (for Lombardi and others) and played three more undistinguished years before his major league career was over at age 32 after the 1934 season.

SUKEFORTH, THE MANAGER

Sukey stayed in the game, however, playing in the minors until 1939. In 1936 he was asked to be player-manager of the Dodgers farm club in Class D ball in Leaksville, North Carolina, and then the next year in Clinton, Iowa, a step up to B ball. The following two years, 1938–39, he managed Elmira (NY) in the Single A Eastern League before taking over the Dodgers top farm team (AA) in Montreal for three years, beating out Hall of Famer Rogers Hornsby for that managerial job.23 He led good teams in 1940 and 1941, as the Royals contended for the pennant, finishing second both times.

Fans in Canada liked their neighbor from Maine with his restrained Yankee style. These comments from Montreal newspapers, from the Sukeforth file in the research library at the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, make the point:

Self-effacing humor comes easily to him. He can go into extra innings talking about baseball while keeping his ego on the bench.”24

The quiet youthful man was well-liked from the start. Unlike some other managers we have had, Sukeforth proved that he is as good a listener as a talker.”25

Sukey is a rugged battler himself—although you’d never think it to look at the quiet-mannered, parson-like figure who walks to the third base coaching line in a semi-apologetic fashion.26

In the winter of 1941, the Montreal Standard sent a reporter to Waldoboro to profile the skipper of their club in the offseason. The result was a remarkable essay titled “Sukey of Blueberry Hill.” Pictures showed the Mainer shoveling snow to stay in shape, and squatting with his hunting dog, Martha, and his friend and neighbor, Val Picinich, his former teammate and rival for the catcher’s job in Cincinnati.27 Their conversation, according to the reporter, “usually centers around a hunting or fishing jaunt. Together they trek deer, foxes, or bag a few partridges whenever they’re in season. Smelt fishing provides an occasional diversion.”28

That winter, Sukey was “busy clearing some of the wooded land on his 100 acres and piling enough firewood to last the winter,” the Standard sportswriter reported. “He rises at six every day and retires between nine and ten every night.”29

The Standard article also introduced readers to Sukey’s two and a half year-old daughter, Helen, who was being raised in the baseball season by her grandmother, Clyde’s mother-in-law. Clyde’s wife, Helen Miller Sukeforth, whom he married in 1931, had died 15 days after giving birth to their daughter.

(Letter from Jackie Robinson to Clyde Sukeforth, July 21, 1972, Sukeforth file, National Baseball Hall of Fame Library. Click image to enlarge.)

THE DODGER YEARS

In 1943, Sukey was promoted to the big club in Brooklyn, where he would stay as coach, scout, and all-round handyman to Dodgers President Branch Rickey until 1951. He even played. In 1945 the roster was depleted by the war. Still slender and fit at age 43, Sukeforth was pressed into duty behind the plate in 1945, playing 18 games and batting .294 (15 hits in 51 at-bats).

With his natural unobtrusiveness, Sukey was the perfect man to participate in Rickey’s elaborate clandestine stratagem to integrate baseball. “Mr. Rickey had been talking about establishing a Negro team in New York called the Brooklyn Brown Bombers, and we had been scouting the Negro leagues for more than a year,” Sukey explained later. “He told us he didn’t want this idea of his getting around, that nobody was supposed to know what we were doing…. We made ourselves as inconspicuous as possible.”30

Like most white players of his era, Clyde was keenly aware of the skills of his black counterparts in the Negro leagues: “When we visited Pittsburgh we played during the day and came back to watch the Negro League games at night. I have to say the best catcher I have ever seen play baseball was Josh Gibson of the Pittsburgh Crawfords.”31

It is fitting that Sukeforth was the manager that day in April 1947, when Robinson put on the immaculate Dodger white home uniform to play the Boston Braves at Ebbets Field, and made history. It was expected that Leo Durocher would have that honor, but he had been suspended a few days before for consorting with gamblers, so Sukey stepped into the breach. He managed that day, and the next game too, and won both times, ensuring that forever his managerial record in the Majors would be perfect.

He had no interest in managing the team on a permanent basis, though he was asked by Rickey to do so. He had managed in the minors and knew the job and its demands and was clear that he didn’t want the added responsibilities of the major league position. When asked by reporters about his managerial aspirations, or lack thereof, he often replied in jest: “I’ll do anything Mr. Rickey wants me to. But if someone else comes along and says, ‘Well, you did okay in Brooklyn, how about managing full time with some other club?’ I’d be apt to say, Gotta pick some blueberries, Bud, see you later.”32

Sukey’s recommendation for the Brooklyn manager’s job was 62-year-old Burt Shotton, an old baseball hand, then a scout for the Dodgers, whom Sukey knew well and trusted. Rickey concurred, and Shotton finished out that ’47 season. The Dodgers won the pennant and extended the Yankees to seven games in the World Series.

Shotton managed the Dodgers in 1948 as well (after Durocher was fired in mid-season) and in 1949 and 1950. New York sportswriters referred to him as KOBS, “Kindly Old Burt Shotton,” but, with Sukeforth’s capable assistance, he was just the steady hand that the Dodgers needed in Jackie Robinson’s tumultuous first years.33

Shotton was an old-fashioned skipper, managing in street clothes in the manner of Connie Mack, so Sukey had an important role on the field. “Mr. Shotton became the manager and I became the leg man for him. So I was Mr. Shotton’s legs and he had the brains. What a combination. He did a marvelous job leading us to a pennant that year.”34

Sukeforth’s departure from Brooklyn after the 1951 season was attended by controversy. Baseball fans will recognize immediately that 1951 was marked by “the shot heard ’round the world” and Sukey was right in the middle of that. He was in the bullpen coaching that day in October when the Giants and Dodgers squared off in a final playoff game to determine the winner of the National League flag. As Dodgers ace Don Newcombe tired, Sukey personally caught both Ralph Branca and Carl Erskine at different times as they warmed up, and had a clear sense of who was more ready.

When Dodgers manager Chuck Dressen called the pen and asked for Sukey’s recommendation, Sukey replied that he thought Branca was throwing better. Two pitches later, it was bedlam in the Polo Grounds, and after the game, Dressen unhesitatingly pointed the finger of blame at Sukeforth. Sukey never retaliated, even averred in the New York press that he and Dressen, his former teammate in their playing days in Cincinnati, were friends. However, early in 1952, Sukeforth resigned from the Dodgers and accepted a coaching position with Pittsburgh, where his patron Rickey had taken over, hoping to breathe life into a moribund Pirates club.

SUKEFORTH AND BOB FLYNN

Bob Flynn was a terrific baseball player in Maine, signing with the Pittsburgh Pirates after he graduated from Lewiston High School in 1951. He spent the fall that year in Deland, Florida, with other Pirate hopefuls, attending daily baseball seminars by “Mister Rickey,” and working to refine his game and impress Pirates brass.

A few months later, in the spring 1952 Flynn was off to spring training in San Bernardino (CA). His itinerary had him going by train from Pittsburgh with other Pirates rookies (including Bobby Del Greco and Tony Bartirome, who went on to major league careers) and Pirates coach Clyde Sukeforth, their de facto chaperone and sage.

From his office in the athletic facilities at Bates College in Lewiston, Flynn, now 79 and mostly retired from coaching baseball and skiing, warmed to the recollection of that four-day trip west with Sukeforth. “We had a great time, relaxing talking about baseball, and other things. We spent a lot of time in the club car and dining car. He had a great knowledge of baseball, but we talked about a lot of things.”35

That summer, 1952, Flynn was playing minor league ball in Waco, Texas, when Sukeforth came through looking at prospects for the organization. They went out to dinner one night, the two of them (“I think he took a special interest in me because I was from Maine”), then played golf the following day, an off day for the club. In a double-header the day after golf, Flynn got a bunch of hits, the result he thinks of Sukey’s visit and their conversations.

Flynn’s baseball career was interrupted by the military draft. He spent 1953 and 1954 in Korea, and then played three more years in the Pirates farm system, before determining that the “real world” of teaching and coaching offered a more stable existence than the itinerant, non-remunerative life of a pro baseball player. He retired at age 25.

He was a high school teacher and coach before accepting the position at Bates. Over the years, he stayed in contact with Sukey. “Clyde would often just show up at our games at Bowdoin or Colby,” he said. “He loved to go to games. And when I was inducted into the Maine State Baseball Hall of Fame in Portland, Clyde attended the ceremonies. I appreciated that.”

Flynn’s estimate of Sukeforth as a baseball mentor and person is unequivocal: “Just a wonderful guy: outgoing, positive—loyal, modest, easy to be around. He loved Maine, fished, put out a few lobster traps, always had boats and dogs. He really enjoyed the outdoors. He lived a good life.”36

THE PIRATE YEARS

After scouting Robinson and recommending Branca, the third most notable event in Sukeforth’s baseball life was his participation in the drafting of Roberto Clemente, the first great hispanic star.

The Rickey tenure in Pittsburgh were years of little success for the Pirates. They finished last in the eight-team National League in 1954, so had first pick in the draft the following winter. The Pirates could claim players from other teams who were not protected on major league rosters. Rickey sent Sukey to look at African American pitcher Joe Black, who had been sent to the minors after a stint with the Dodgers. As usual, Sukey got to the park early and saw another prospect taking flies in the outfield. “I get to my seat to watch Montreal take infield practice and I see this baby-faced negro boy in right field with one of the greatest arms you have ever seen.”37

However, this outfield prospect was playing only sporadically.38 Sukeforth deduced that the Dodgers were “hiding” him. “The moment I saw Clemente I couldn’t take my eyes off him. I recommended we draft Clemente and he cost us only $4000 at the time.”39

Clyde stayed on with the Pirates until the end of the 1957 season. In the middle of that season, the Pirates fired manager Bobby Bragan, and again Sukey was offered the opportunity to manage in the major leagues. Again, he declined. This time he recommended Danny Murtaugh—a good choice as it turned out, as Murtaugh managed the Pirates on three different occasions for 15 years total, before succumbing to a stroke at age 59 in 1976.

This time Sukeforth had Christmas trees to grow. He told sportswriter Les Biederman of the Pittsburgh Press, “I never was cut out to be a manager, especially in the big leagues. You might say I’m not that ambitious, but the real reason is I couldn’t take what the job demands. I wouldn’t care for the speeches I’d have to make, the public appearances I’d have to make, or the worry or the heartaches that go with the job.

“I don’t ask for a lot out of life, but I do want contentment. I could never find it as a manager. I have a happy home life, own a farm in Waldoboro, Maine, and among other things I grow up there are Christmas trees.”40

So he went back to his farm intending to live happily ever after—and did so, at least until 1963, when he got “itchy” as he put it, after seeing some baseball pals in Florida in the offseason. Again he heeded the call of the Pirates to spend his summers with their prospects, coaching in Columbus, Georgia, in 1963, scouting in 1964, and managing in Gastonia, North Carolina, in 1965. “I enjoyed that,” he told Mike Shatzkin in an interview in 1993. “I don’t mind managing in those lower minor leagues. Kids.”41

So he retired for good at age 64 in 1966 and then lived happily ever after in Maine. Well, not exactly. For the next eight years, 1966–74, Clyde was a New England and Canada scout for the Atlanta Braves in northern New England and the Canadian Maritimes. This scouting duty he could perform from his home base in Waldoboro, where he lived with his second wife, Grethel, whom he married in 1951.

With the Expos recently installed in Montreal, creating a stir in Eastern Canada, Clyde was taken with the thought that some prospects might emerge from this unlikely northern clime: “They don’t ride the bus to and from school,” he said, “and they shovel their own snow off the pond. They are bigger, stronger, and can run better. I have an idea that in a few years, if baseball continues to develop the way it is, we’ll be seeing a lot more of these boys in baseball.”42

Clyde finally gave up a formal role in the game at age 72. He lived in retirement for 26 more years, almost all of them with Grethel, his wife of nearly 48 years, who predeceased him by two years, and his beloved dogs, in that cottage by the salt-water river just below town.

Clyde Sukeforth at age 90 (COURTESY OF THE SUKEFORTH FAMILY)

BASEBALL — AND MAINE

So here’s Clyde Sukeforth, the mentor of the immortal Jackie Robinson, the right-hand man of Branch Rickey, trusted and respected by all who knew him as a person of integrity and humility, whose life spanned nearly the entire twentieth century.

In the rich narrative of this long life lived well, two themes powerfully emerge—his love of baseball and his love of Maine. In 1995, he told a reporter for the Rockland (ME) Courier-Gazette, “I just like the game and the atmosphere. I felt at home at the ballpark. I never had to work in a factory. I’ve made a living doing what I wanted to do. (Baseball) has been my life and it’s been a great life.”43

Clyde Sukeforth—Mainer through and through, a Yankee, and a credit to his place.

KARL LINDHOLM, PH.D teaches in the American Studies Program at Middlebury College where he is Dean of Advising Emeritus. His classes include “Segregation in America: Baseball’s Negro Leagues.” He has published widely on baseball topics and is near completion on a biography of William Clarence Matthews, “Harvard’s Famous Colored Shortstop.”

Notes

Some professional baseball teams did not include dates on regular season tickets before 1974. Therefore, many stubs exist as a tangible part of sports history, but remain unidentified and have lost their historical significance.

This study attempts to identify pre-1974 regular season grandstand and bleacher tickets issued by the New York Yankees. Numerous unique details exist on ticket stubs to assist researchers in trying to identify the date each ticket was used. These unique details include, but are not limited to, printer logos and names, team logos, ticket back language, ticket prices, game numbers, the names of general managers or team presidents, and various numbers and letters printed on tickets. These individual details may be used to narrow the date range of a particular ticket. However, in most instances, multiple data must be used to identify the exact date of a ticket stub. Even so, in some cases, identifying an exact date is impossible. Historical ticket samples will be presented as well as techniques to limit the range of dates each ticket sample was issued.

These techniques provide historical context to previously unidentified ticket stubs. This assists collectors and authenticators in the identification of undated stubs. It also serves as a lesson to sport administrators in regard to the need to deliver value back to fans from a customer service perspective. To many fans, tickets do more than grant access to stadiums; they are a permanent link to sports history.

Prior to approximately 2003, when ticket scanners became prominent at sports facilities, ushers would tear tickets into two pieces returning a piece to the user.1 The stub typically included the respective seat location to serve as a receipt for the stub holder.2 The stub also allowed fans to return to the facility in the event a game was cancelled due to rain. In fact, “Rain Check” is printed on many old ticket stubs. (See Figure 1.)

As the field of sports memorabilia continues to grow, collecting ticket stubs, once an overlooked part of the industry, is becoming a more popular segment of the memorabilia market.3,4

As actual pieces of sports history, ticket stubs have a real connection to a sporting event. Unlike sports trading cards, ticket stubs were not printed to meet consumer demand. Tickets were limited to the seating capacity of the home team’s facility.5

Ticket distribution was further restricted by the actual attendance at the event. In addition, at the time, ticket stubs were not generally viewed as collector’s items. Few survived in pristine condition since they were folded and placed in pockets, wallets, game programs, etc. Some were also damaged by rain, residue from concessions, rubber bands, paper clips and staples. Many ticket stubs were discarded after the respective event making surviving ticket stubs even more rare.6,7,8

Researching ticket stub collecting is difficult due to a lack of information. According to sport memorabilia authenticator and author Joe Orlando, “The problem has been and continues to be a real lack of available information about them. How scarce are they? What are they worth? What collecting themes are popular? The questions are numerous, but there’s no doubt that tickets are gaining in popularity.”9,10

As ticket stub collecting continues to grow, the most desired ticket stubs will likely be those with the most historical significance. When reviewing the top 15 most sought after ticket stubs in the sports memorabilia field in all sports, four of the tickets involve the New York Yankees.11

As collecting ticket stubs continues to gain popularity, the ability to identify previously unknown undated ticket stubs should help to make historical ticket stubs more popular to collectors.

Historical Significance

The original Yankee Stadium opened on April 18, 1923, hosting more than 74,000 fans. It is estimated that an additional 15,000­–25,000 fans who wanted to purchase tickets were turned away that day. Due to demand for tickets the gates closed a half hour before the start of the game. Grandstand tickets were priced at $1.10.12,13,14,15

Some of the greatest games played at Yankee Stadium took place between 1923 and 1964. For example, some of the greatest home run hitters in Yankees history played during this period. Mickey Mantle hit the most home runs at Yankee Stadium, with 266, followed by Babe Ruth with 259, and Lou Gehrig with 251.16 Undated tickets at Yankee Stadium appear to be limited to bleacher and grandstand seats. The latest confirmed undated bleacher and grandstand tickets from Yankee Stadium are from 1973, the year before Yankee Stadium’s second renovation.

Relevance to Sports Management

Research on fan identification, referred to as the strength of a fan’s emotional attachment to a sports team, indicates fans with high levels of team identification attend more games, have a long-term commitment to their team, and spend significantly more money on team merchandise.17 This serves as a lesson to sport administrators in regard to the need to deliver “added value” back to fans. To many fans, tickets do more than grant access to stadia; they are a permanent link to sports history. Tickets from sporting events are saved and passed down from one generation to another in many cases. Recognizing that fans collect team merchandise and memorabilia creates an opportunity to use items such as tickets to better market the team. Since team administrators never know when a momentous event may occur, including the date of the game on the ticket is a simple way to capture historic occasions. Tickets may also be used as a marketing device in other ways. Issuing differently designed tickets to season ticket holders, or issuing tickets that include photos of current or past players, significant moments in team history, or even artwork created by fans are a few additional examples.

Narrowing Years and Identifying Games

A number of items printed on undated Yankees grandstand and bleacher ticket stubs may help identify the year each was issued. The technique used to identify undated ticket stubs is similar to the technique used by baseball researcher George Michael to identify mystery photos.18 The technique includes reviewing the items for clues that may provide a range of dates that may allow the items to be conclusively identified. The following is a list of details printed on undated ticket stubs that may assist in their identification.

Name of Team President or General Manager. Vintage Yankees ticket stubs contain the name of the owner, team president, or general manager (Figure 1). Since years of service are well documented for owners and team executives, this datum may be used to identify a range of years when ticket stubs were printed. For example, Yankees executive Larry MacPhail was the team president and general manager 1945–47. He was listed as team president on all regular season grandstand and bleacher tickets. Since MacPhail’s name only appears on ticket stubs for three seasons, this can be used in combination with other data to narrow the issue dates of undated stubs. Table 1 summarizes the combination of New York Yankees owners, team presidents, and general managers whose names have appeared on grandstand and bleacher ticket stubs 1903–73.19,20

Rain Check Logos. No less than four different styles of rain check logos were used on Yankees grandstand and bleacher seat ticket stubs from 1923 to 1964. Figure 2 illustrates three of the four designs with similar rain check logos. The fourth rain check logo was not included in the illustration since it is unique and appears to have only been issued for promotional events. Since the actual rain check script on the samples illustrated in Figure 2 is identical, the differences are subtle, such as a thin line above or below the rain check script. One sample has lines above and below, another has no lines at all, while a third includes only a line below. However, each design, subtle or significant, may ultimately be used to identify the year, or range of years, the ticket stubs were issued.

Price and Amount of Sales Tax Printed on Tickets. The face value of a ticket, as well as the amount of tax printed on the ticket, may help narrow the age of the ticket stub. For example, existing Yankees ticket stubs indicate that the most common ticket prices post 1923 through the early 1940s was $1.00 for grandstand tickets and .50 for bleacher seats. The price of .50 for bleacher seats is documented through 1951. In addition, a tax of 10% was charged on grandstand tickets, bringing the total cost to $1.10, while bleacher seats included a tax of .10 (20 percent) bringing the cost to a total of .60. Though it is not known when in the 1940s the grandstand ticket price was raised to $1.04, a documented 1947 ticket stub includes a ticket price of $1.04 plus a tax of .21. This indicates that at some point in the 1940s the tax on grandstand tickets was increased from 10 to 20 percent. Looking at vintage ticket stubs from other professional baseball teams provides some additional information in regard to the tax included on ticket stubs. For example, an undated ticket stub from a game hosted by the Philadelphia Phillies reveals that one of the taxes paid by fans was a federal tax while another was a city amusement tax. (See Figure 3)

Another interesting tax that appears on ticket stubs is a war tax. This was a tax imposed by the U.S. federal government to offset the cost of World War I. The actual wording “War Tax” appears on 1921 World Series ticket stubs between the New York Yankees and the New York Giants played at the Polo Grounds. This language on ticket stubs would have been limited from the 1919 season when the tax went into effect through the early 1920s.21 Dated Yankees ticket stub samples from the 1922 World Series and later reveal the additional pricing referred to as a “tax” and not a war tax.

Game Numbers on Tickets. In most cases, once the year of the ticket stub is identified, determining the game is generally much easier. Almost all ticket stubs include a number identifying “the home game number,” (e.g., one of 81 current home games) as opposed to the “total game number” (e.g., one of 162 current home and away games) of the respective game. This is important since some ticket stub collectors confuse the number of the home game with the total number of games played as displayed on historic schedules such as at Baseball Almanac. It is also important to mention that American League teams played 154-game schedules until the 1961 season and that the National League schedules were lengthened to 162 games in 1962. However, in some instances, capital letters such as T, DD, etc. were used in the place on the ticket where the game number is typically located (Figure 1). It is known that in at least one instance tickets with a combination of a capital letter and number were used for a playoff game. This is supported by the ticket used by the Boston Red Sox at Fenway Park for the playoff game against the Yankees on October 2, 1978, known as the Bucky Dent game because of his unexpected late-inning home run.22 At this game, a ticket labeled as game E2 was used to grant access to Fenway Park (Figure 4). In addition, it is known that letters were used on tickets to indicate additional print runs of tickets when initial supplies were exhausted. When large single game attendance numbers required additional print runs of tickets, a letter representing the additional print run was added beneath the game number (Figure 5).

Team Names Used on Tickets. When the Baltimore Orioles franchise was moved to New York in 1903, the team name was changed to the Greater New Yorks, while the popular press nicknamed them the Highlanders, to reflect the new environment located at one of the highest elevations on Manhattan Island. The Highlanders played at American League Park, also referred to as Hilltop Park, 1903–12. The earliest known reference referring to the team as the “Yankees” appears in the Washington Post on June 22, 1904.23,24

When the team began play at the Polo Grounds a few blocks away for the start of the 1913 season, the nickname Highlanders no longer fit, due to the lower elevation of the Polo Grounds. In January of 1913, the team officially changed the name of the club to the “American League Baseball Club of Manhattan.” However, early Highlanders and Yankees ticket stubs display at least four different team names.25,26

In addition to the more recent use of the New York Yankees, Inc., other names on early tickets include the New York American Ball Club, the Greater New York Baseball Club of the American League, and the American League Baseball Club of New York. The use of the name American League Baseball Club of New York actually appears on tickets with two different spellings depending on the year issued. On tickets from the 1920s, “American League Base Ball Club of New York” is used with baseball written as two words. Tickets issued later, including some documented in the 1940s, use “American League Baseball Club of New York” with baseball spelled as one word.27

Once the official dates of each of the Yankees’ name changes are documented, the time period the names were used will provide a range of years each was used and subsequently allow ticket stubs to be identified.

Rain Check Language or Advertising on the Front and/or Back of Tickets. Most ticket stubs contain legal language somewhere on the stub. The language is designed to communicate the terms of the relationship between the ticket holder and the sport organization. Over the years, no doubt due to the litigious nature of our society, the legal language appears to have changed often. However, in a few instances the language remained the same while the formatting changed slightly. Something as simple as the words shifting from left justification to being centered may help differentiate one year from another. In some instances, years are actually included as part of the legal language text. An example is tickets issued in 1926, which includes “Sec. 800 d Revenue Act of 1921” in the body of the text. Obviously, we know that tickets that include this language were issued no earlier than 1921.

Advertising on the reverse side of tickets may also help narrow the year they were issued. Some tickets from the 1920s included ads on the back. (See Figure 6) Though it is not yet known what year advertising ceased and legal language became permanent on the back of ticket stubs, the use of different logos or sponsors may be a useful tool in narrowing the dates tickets were issued. For example, existing ticket stub samples indicate that Yankees grandstand tickets in 1923, 1924, 1926, and 1927 had a Canada Dry logo on the reverse side of the ticket. However, in 1925 the backs of the tickets did not include any advertising or legal language. They were completely blank. The Canada Dry logo, or lack of it in 1925, is just another example of how subtle details, used in conjunction with other points of reference, may be used to help identify the year ticket stubs were issued.

Numbers and Letters on Front of Tickets. Many undated grandstand and bleacher ticket stubs 1923–73 include unidentified numbers and letters printed in the area of the stub where the game number is provided. Typically written vertically, these items may include a four or five digit number (Figure 5), a single letter (Figure 5), or a phrase such as Series A, Series B (Figure 1), etc. Once identified, these items may hold some significance in determining the year the ticket stub was issued.

Printing Company. Three different names of printing companies have been identified on Yankees tickets 1923–73. Research is currently being done to see if it is the same company that merged with others, possibly just changed names, or if they are different entities altogether. According to ticket stub samples, the names are The Brown Ticket Corp., M.B. Brown, and Devinne-Brown. Knowing this valuable information can provide a range of years tickets were issued.

Watermarks. Some tickets have a circular watermark of the Yankees red “top hat” logo. Artist Henry Alonzo Keller created this logo for the team in 1947. The logo was introduced for spring training prior to the 1947 season and was used through the 1970s.28,29

The obvious significance of this particular watermark is that any ticket that contains it must have been issued after 1946. This watermark, used in conjunction with the tenure of Larry MacPhail as team president 1945–47, allows tickets issued in 1947 to be easily identified. For example, if a ticket stub contains Larry MacPhail’s replica signature as team president (1945–47), and the Yankees top hot watermark first introduced in 1947, then the ticket stub must be from the 1947 season (Figure 7). Further, since the ticket stub illustrated in Figure 7 is from home game number 8 of the 1947 season, we can cross-reference historical baseball schedules, and with three separate identifiable marks on the stub, it appears that it is from the May 13, 1947, game at Yankee Stadium against the St. Louis Browns.

Length of the Season. The 162-game season was implemented in the American League in 1961 and in the National League in 1962. Prior to that, Major League Baseball played a 154-game season.30 As previously mentioned, all game numbers printed on ticket stubs refer to the number of the home game scheduled that respective season. All teams play half of their games in their home ballpark and the other half in the facilities of their opponents. Therefore, in any one season, no Yankees team would have been scheduled to play more than 77 regular season home games in a season prior to 1961, or more than 81 regular season home games during or later than the 1961 season. Subsequently, any Yankees ticket stubs illustrating a home game number higher than 77 must be from the 1961 season or later.

Handwritten Dates on Ticket Stubs. From time to time undated ticket stubs will appear with the date handwritten on the front or back of the stub (Figure 8). These stubs are sometimes accompanied with a program or other piece of memorabilia from the game referenced.

Though additional resources provided with a ticket stub may be helpful, it is recommended that researchers proceed with extreme caution when relying on dates handwritten on undated ticket stubs. Researchers should rely on multiple techniques identified in this manuscript to identify or narrow the date range. The more pieces of the puzzle that fit together the more confident researchers may be that a ticket stub is authentic. Short of testing the ink for precise dating, which would be expensive and likely only yield a range of dates as well, it is almost impossible to verify a handwritten date on an undated stub. Due to the explosion of the sports memorabilia industry, collectors and researchers should be wary of handwritten dates especially if the date coincides with a historically significant game.

Implications of the Study

The implications of this study are significant. The Yankees are one of the highest profile sports teams in the world. In addition, they have a rich tradition of success, winning championships and having players voted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame. If a sports franchise like the Yankees, with such a rich historical past, has hundreds perhaps thousands of undated ticket stubs available in the sports memorabilia market, how many other teams in professional sports may have issued similar tickets? The findings of this study might not only be significant to Yankees, but may be applied to other teams with undated tickets in all sports.

Future Research

As with any preliminary study, the process of discovery is ongoing. The goal of this initial project is to generate discussion about the historical importance of ticket stubs in all sports, and, in the process, begin to identify as many undated Yankees grandstand and bleacher tickets as possible. Remaining ticket stubs are part of sports history and a tangible link to the games they represent. Some ticket stubs may be from games more significant than others. However, collectors deserve to have an opportunity to decide for themselves, which are most valuable. Since it is documented that other sports franchises, such as the Philadelphia Phillies, issued tickets without dates for at least a period of time (Figure 3), the author hopes that identification techniques introduced in this paper may be used to identify historical ticket stubs for other professional sports franchises not just in baseball, but for all applicable sports.

In conclusion, it is important to reiterate that many of the techniques described in this manuscript only limit the dates of ticket stubs to a range of particular years. Few alone can identify the year and date of a particular ticket stub. The combination of multiple criteria provides redundancy and is the recommended method for identifying undated ticket stubs.

DR. JAMES REESE is an associate professor in the sport management program at Drexel University in Philadelphia. Before beginning a career in higher education, Dr. Reese worked as a ticket administrator for the Denver Broncos from 1996 to 1999, where he had an opportunity to assist in planning and executing ticket operations and ticket sales for Super Bowls XXXII and XXXIII. Dr. Reese’s research interests include ticket operations and ticket sales and college athletic reform.

Notes

1. Collectors Weekly, “Collectible Ticket Stubs, Accessed October 30, 2012, www.collectorsweekly.com/paper/ticket-stubs.

2. TheFreeDictionary Online, s.v. “Ticket stub,” Accessed January 9, 2013, www.thefreedictionary.com/ticket+stub.

3. Dan Busby, “Why and How to Collect Baseball Tickets,” November 13, 2002, Baseball Ticket Man, www.baseballticketman.com/Default.aspx?PageName=WhyAndHowToCollectBaseballTickets].

4. Joe Orlando, Collecting Sports Legends—The Ultimate Hobby Guide (Irvine, CA: Zyrus Press, 2008), 355.

5. Jim Capobianco, “Collecting Tips: Sports Tickets and Stubs,” September 22, 2012 http://reviews.ebay.com/Collecting-Tickets-and-Stubs?ugid=10000000000920191.

6. Orlando, Collecting Sports Legends, 355.

7. Capobianco, “Collecting Tips: Sports Tickets and Stubs.”

8. Busby, “Why and How to Collect Baseball Tickets.”

9. Capobianco, “Collecting Tips: Sports Tickets and Stubs.”

10. Orlando, Collecting Sports Legends, 355.

11. Ibid.

12. Dave Anderson, The New York Times Story of the Yankees: 382 Articles, Profiles, & Essays from 1903 to the Present (New York, NY: Black Dog & Leventhal Publishers, Inc., 2012), 52.

13. Mark Vancil and Mark Mandrake, eds., One Hundred Years: New York Yankees an Official Retrospective (Chicago, IL: Rare Air Media, 2002), 13.

14. Anderson, The New York Times Story of the Yankees, 52.

15. Vincent Luisi, Images of Sports: New York Yankees the First 25 Years (Charleston, SC: Arcadia Publishing, 2002), 103.

16. Les Krantz, Yankee Stadium: A Tribute (New York, NY: Harper Collins, 2008), 145.

17. James Reese and Chris Moberg, “An exploratory study of the college transplant fan,” The SMART Journal, 41(1), p. 28. The purchasing benefits of brand loyalty were addressed in a PowerPoint presentation obtained from the Charlotte, NC office of the National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing (NASCAR) dated September 18, 2008.

18. George Michael, “Identifying Mystery Photos,” Baseball Research Journal, 33, 2004, 36–46.

19. Yankees History, “Yankees timeline,” Accessed November 6, 2012. http://newyork.yankees.mlb.com/nyy/history/index.jsp

20. Yankees.com, “All-Time Owners,” Accessed November 6, 2012. http://mlb.mlb.com/nyy/history/owners.jsp; Yankees History, “Yankees timeline,” http://newyork.yankees.mlb.com/nyy/history/index.jsp

21. “PRICE OF BASEBALL TICKETS ARRANGED; Internal Revenue Official Suggests Scale for Use While War Tax is In Force,” The New York Times, February 12, 1918.

22. Phil Pepe, The Yankees: An Authorized History of the New York Yankees (Lanham, MD: Taylor Trade Publishing, 2003), 197.

23. Luisi, Images of Sports, 14.

24. Anderson, The New York Times Story of the Yankees, 22.

25. City of New York Parks & Recreation, “Coogan’s Bluff,” Accessed January 21, 2013. www.nycgovparks.org/parks/highbridgepark/highlights/11107; Phillip J. Lowry, Green Cathedrals: The Ultimate Collection of All 271 Major League and Negro League Ballparks Past and Present (Reading, MA: Addison Wesley, 1992), 195; James Renner, “Coogan’s Bluff and the Polo Grounds,” accessed January 21, 2013, www.hhoc.org/hist/ coogans_bluff_p.htm; Lawrence S. Ritter, Lost Ballparks: A Celebration of Baseball’s Legendary Fields (New York, NY: Viking Studio Books, 1992), 158.

26. Anderson, The New York Times Story of the Yankees, 22.

27. Ibid, 19.

28. David Stout, “Henry Alonzo Keller, 87. Artist of the Yankees top hat logo,” The New York Times, June 28, 1995.

29. Ibid; Biography of Henry Alonzo (Lon) Keller 1907–1995, “About the Artist,” Accessed January 21, 2013, www.lonkeller.com/biography.htm.

30. Anderson, The New York Times Story of the Yankees, 253.

31. Mark Gallagher, The Yankee Encyclopedia, 315.

32. Gallagher, The Yankee Encyclopedia, 317.

33. Gallagher, The Yankee Encyclopedia, 321.

34. Gallagher, The Yankee Encyclopedia, 323.

35. Gallagher, The Yankee Encyclopedia, 325.

36. Gallagher, The Yankee Encyclopedia, 326.

37. Gallagher, The Yankee Encyclopedia, 339.

After the Civil War, the U.S. Army built dozens of military forts on the Great Plains. As the railroads pushed westward, settlers soon followed, and the first cities on the western frontier were established. From the earliest days, the playing of base ball was a favorite pastime, first by the soldiers and later by the new citizens in the territories. This essay traces the development of baseball in and around Bismarck from the earliest known origins through North Dakota statehood in 1889.

Versions of base ball were played in the Dakota Territory since at least the early 1870s. When Bismarck was still known as Edwinton (the name was later changed by the Northern Pacific Railroad to attract German investors), base ball was played in the city and at the nearby military posts, Fort Rice and Fort Abraham Lincoln. The playing wasn’t of particularly high quality, but there was a great deal of enthusiasm and excitement among players and fans. Before North and South Dakota gained statehood in 1889, one of the ways in which settlers in the territory considered themselves a part of the United States was by playing America’s “national game.”

Settlers in the Bismarck area brought various versions of bat and ball games with them they had learned previously. In an 1886 game, a player named Moorhouse was quoted as saying “he hadn’t played much of the new-fangled base ball, but when he went to school he was a dandy at three-old-cat.” In the same game, Moorhouse called for a “hip ball” indicating they were playing under rules which allowed the batter to indicate where he wanted the pitcher to deliver the ball.1

In 1889, two rural nines got together on the Bismarck grounds and played a game “for a liberal purse” under rules they knew as “barn ball.” The 65–33 final score was highlighted by “many exciting chases after the ball.”

Custer’s Seventh Cavalry Plays Base Ball

The earliest baseball in the Dakota Territory was played at the military forts in the region that were established to protect settlers and the workers who were building the Northern Pacific Railroad westward. Soldiers learned the game as boys growing up in the East or during their service in the Civil War. Captain Fredrick Benteen was assigned to the newly-formed Seventh Calvary, under the command of Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custer at Fort Rice, thirty miles down river from Fort Abraham Lincoln (near present day Bismarck, North Dakota) in the Dakota Territory. In 1873, he organized the Benteen Base Ball Club, representing Company H. Another base ball club was formed at Fort Lincoln called the Actives, made up of members of Company L. Between 1873 and 1876 the clubs played against other military squads as well as civilian teams.3

Benteen’s soldiers purchased over a dozen bats and baseballs and, according to their own record, won twelve out of seventeen games with other units. The Benteens beat E Company’s picked nine, which was made up of members of the infantry garrison at Fort Randall, Dakota Territory. The local Yankton Press and Dakotaian stated, “Neither club played up to their standard owing to the high wind.” When the Benteens lost a game featuring plenty of betting to the First Infantry, based in Fort Randall, the Yankton Press reported, “It is hoped that these two nines will meet again soon, as a large amount of money will probably change hands in such an event.”

While on the Black Hills Expedition in 1874, the Actives defeated the Benteens, 11–6, in a game on the site of present-day Custer, South Dakota, near Rapid City.5

Custer did not witness the contest. He and a small party of men were off climbing nearby Harney’s Peak on the day of the game. But Trooper Theodore Ewert, a member of the Seventh Cavalry, wrote this account in his diary: “The soldiers wiled away the long summer day with a game of base ball, a genuine Black Hills first, including a dispute over the umpire’s impartiality.”

On the same day, July 31, 1874, Brigadier General Joseph Green Tilford wrote in his journal: “On the occasion of Custer and the press being absent from camp, the troopers had a ball game.”

The July 31 game was the first of a series of three games between these two teams. The Benteens won the second game, also played in the Black Hills, by a score of 16–11, but there is no record of the third and deciding game having taken place. However, there are references to even earlier base ball games on military forts in the Dakota Territory. In May 1874 the officers at Fort Buford (near present day Williston, North Dakota) put up a purse of $100 for which the post base ball clubs were to play a series of games, but there are no written records of the results of these games.8

Captain Benteen and Company H were transferred to New Orleans in 1875. During that summer, two teams calling themselves the “Alerts” and the “Nameless” played base ball at Fort Lincoln. Benteen and Company H then returned to the Dakota territory, and in 1876 Custer led the Seventh Calvary on another expedition westward, this time to quell an Indian uprising in Montana. Benteen was the commander of three columns of soldiers during the Battle of the Little Big Horn, also known as “Custer’s Last Stand” in June of 1876. Benteen survived the battle but his unit, and members of the post base ball clubs, sustained heavy casualties.

The best player on the Actives was First Sergeant John McCurry, a pitcher who reportedly had professional aspirations. McCurry suffered a gunshot wound to his left shoulder during the battle. A second baseman named Williams had signed a contract to play ball for a club in Pittsburgh after his enlistment was up. He was also wounded, and never played for Pittsburgh. Two other ballplayers, Alex and Charlie Bishop, also sustained wounds that day.9

The only known member of the Benteens who died with Custer was the club’s third baseman, Private William Davis.10

After the Seventh Cavalry suffered such losses at the Battle of the Little Big Horn, there is no further record of the Benteen Base Ball Club. The Fort Lincoln Actives are not mentioned again until 1879 when they came into Bismarck to play the local team, the Blue Stockings, in a July 4 contest. In this game there were several horse races going on near the ball grounds, and the umpire called time out before the start of each race to allow the ball players to place their bets on their favorite horses.11

Base Ball in Bismarck and Mandan

After the discovery of gold in the Black Hills, Bismarck—on what was known as the “Custer Route”— became a major overland freight shipping center. In 1873, the Northern Pacific Railroad reached the eastern bank of the Missouri River, and consequently the city grew very rapidly. The base ball teams at Fort Lincoln played against other military posts and local nines, implying teams from Bismarck were playing base ball against the soldiers shortly after the city was founded.

Although the Benteens played earlier, the first written record of a base ball game from a primary source (Bismarck Tribune) in the city of Bismarck took place on August 10, 1873. The “Bismarck and Camp Hancock Base Ball Club” defeated the “D Company, 20th Infantry, Base Ball Club” of nearby Fort Abraham Lincoln. Camp Hancock, another of the military forts established to protect Northern Pacific Railroad workers, was located within the city of Bismarck. The score of the game remains unknown, but apparently the Bismarck club won the game as team captain A. J. Smith wrote a letter to the editor of the Bismarck Tribune congratulating the soldiers on their “‘gentlemanly conduct and good playing…although unfortunate enough to be beaten.” It was implied that there may have been earlier games for the Bismarck club as the same story stated “…we have never before played a club with so little ill feeling being shown on either side.”12

On July 4, 1877, a team made up of local merchants defeated a team composed of county officers by a 27–2 score. M. B. Doyle, captain of the county officers nine, wrote a letter to the editor in both the July 9 and July 13 issues of the Bismarck Tribune in which he suggested one of the reasons for the defeat on Independence Day was that “the ladies of the picnic committee required the services of some of our most worthy officials and best players.” This game also offered the first suggestion of professionalism in the territory as Doyle accused the merchants of hiring six salaried professional players, one of whom reportedly drew a salary of $1,400 from an Indianapolis club, and stated “…a stranger would think that it was the White Stockings of Chicago that had come to display their skill upon the diamond.” He could offer no definitive proof to back up his claim, but suggested that in future games between the two teams, “the merchants nine will confine themselves to those in mercantile pursuits.”13

The first mention of a base ball team in neighboring Mandan comes from 1882 when they challenged Bismarck to a game but the Bismarck Tribune stated, “No such organization exists in Bismarck” and further, “All our active young men are too busy attending to business to make clowns of themselves upon the diamond.”14

However, once the Northern Pacific Railroad bridge was completed across the Missouri River, the Bismarck and Mandan nines would begin playing match games regularly beginning in 1883. This was also the first year the Bismarck team was called the No. 1 Hards, named for a group of city firemen.

In 1884, the Mandan base ball club embarked on an ambitious eastern trip in which they were to play clubs along the Northern Pacific line. They had scheduled games with Jamestown, Valley City, Fargo, Moorhead, Grand Forks, and even as far as Minneapolis and St. Paul. But, after being beaten badly in Valley City, they turned around and came home, and according to the Bismarck Tribune “…will probably not recuperate sufficiently to go the states this season.”15

The Teams and Players

By 1885, Bismarck had teams called the Regulars or the First Nine, but they weren’t made up of the best players in town. There were no set rosters, and players moved from one team to another, often on a weekly basis. Usually, someone would get nine players together, name himself the team captain, and issue a challenge to a rival, who would in turn get his team together. Then the captains would come up with respective team names, set a date and location for the game, and establish the amount of the wager or “purse.”

There were teams called the Palmer Aggregation, Holley’s Invincibles, Ryan’s Colts, Edgerley’s Bronchoes, and the Irrepressibles. In 1887 alone, teams took the field with names such as the Rip Snorters, the Terrors, the Howlers and the Brick Bats. Such was the informal organization of base ball teams that in 1887 the Brick Bats played a “club picked up around town and not sufficiently organized to possess a name.”16

At various times the regular nine was called the Capital Citys or the Professionals, but it wasn’t clear if they were referring to professional ball players, or professional men playing base ball. In addition to the loosely organized clubs in the city, professional and social groups formed their own teams. The doctors, lawyers, and ministers had ball clubs with the creative names: the Aesculapians (named for the Greek God of medicine), the Blackstones (named for the famed British jurist), and the Divines. The “fats” and “leans” had teams called the Heavyweights and the Featherweights, and there were games between the Muffers and the Butter Thumbs. The saloon keepers of the city organized a team and challenged “any class, profession, claque, or clan,” but as they wanted to play only on Sundays (the only day the local watering holes were closed) they could find no opponents.

Games were played in the middle to late afternoon so that nine innings could be completed before darkness set in. Therefore, most of the early ball players were young professionals and businessmen who had the ability to leave work early. William DePuy, an early pitcher, was a prominent dentist in Bismarck. Outfielder Myron Hutchinson was the chief clerk at the local land office and John Tibbels was an attorney. John Homan was a baker and restaurant keeper who later held the position of city engineer and served a term in the state legislature. William Falconer, one of the most prominent early players in Bismarck, later served as manager of the team and even umpired from time to time. He held various government positions in the city and county including register of deeds, treasurer, and city assessor.

Alexander McKenzie was one of the most notorious early territorial and state political figures. Though he, himself, never held political office, his “McKenzie Machine” was widely accused of stealing votes, intimidating voters, and physically beating opponents. Later in life he was involved in a gold mine theft scheme in Alaska and a fictional character, based on McKenzie, was featured in a movie called The Spoilers and in James Michener’s novel Alaska. But, as a young man in the 1880s, McKenzie was one of the best ball players in Bismarck.

The most spirited games in 1885 and 1886 were among the various boarding houses and hotels in Bismarck. Teams were formed from guests staying at the various lodging establishments and other players that could be found around town. Elaborate challenges from one team were printed in the local newspaper along with the response, accepting the challenge, from the opposing team. These boarding house games seemed to have a tone of good-natured fun as the Bismarck Tribune reported in 1885, “The Stewart boarding house celebrated the victory last evening by an impromptu strawberry and ice cream festival to which the Falconer nine were invited and all united in scientific and enthusiastic discussion of the national game.” 17

Almost always there was some type of wager on the game, with each team putting up a few dollars, the “purse” being held by some trustworthy fan, and winner take all. Later, because of the gap in ability between the various pickup teams, the betting became more sophisticated with odds being offered. In one game, the Regulars needed to beat the Reserves by at least nine runs to collect their winnings. More important than the money were the prizes put up for the winner. In 1887, two teams played for a “championship belt made by the young ladies of the city” and the next year, two clubs played for $5 and “a league ball.”18

Overall, hospitality and goodwill were more important than wins and losses or even prize money from the wagers. In an 1888 game, the final score was secondary to the fact that at the close of the game, the Bismarck club invited the Mandan nine to an elegant supper at a local restaurant and “the boys returned home feeling they had been well treated.”19

The Game on the Field

At times players in Bismarck appeared to have a firm grasp on the rules of base ball, and at other times were twenty years behind the eastern part of the country in understanding the game. Early scorekeeping was very rudimentary, as in an 1885 game, when a runner crossed home plate he “chipped his tally on a stick of pine.”20

But there was also an interest in learning more about the game. An early player named Call took a trip to Chicago in 1887 to take in some National League games and returned with “the most modern kinks and maneuvers to paralyze an opposing nine.”21

Many rules appeared to have originated out of tradition or were made up to address a specific circumstance. An 1887 game ended due to darkness after 7 1/2 innings. The umpire cited a rule that if teams had an uneven number of times at bat “the game shall be decided on the standing of the nines at the end of five innings.”22

In another game, when one team’s catcher was injured and the other team’s backstop had to catch for both teams, the umpire suspended the rule that allowed the batter to try to reach first base if the catcher dropped the third strike.

Professional base ball in the east was undergoing a transition at this time. Changes in the design of the base ball made it easier for batters to hit it harder and farther, resulting in higher scoring games and the decline of what was known as the scientific game. This appeared to be true in the Dakota Territory as well. In June 1886 the Bismarck Tribune editorialized “Batting seems to be the great and paramount qualification for the base ballists now instead of the old fashioned idea of good fielding, good catching and throwing gaining glory. The man who can flatten the ball with one fell swoop and bring in three or four runs at a time is considered the artist.”23

The earliest games in Bismarck were played at a site described as “the grounds east of the city,” or “the race track grounds” probably the same place. Later, there was mention of “base ball grounds north of town.” The exact location of these playing fields is not known. By 1887, games were being played on the “hill back of,” or “the grounds north of” the Episcopal church. Across the river in Mandan, the first reference to base ball grounds comes from an 1883 game with Bismarck played “near the stage stables.” But by 1888 the Mandan base ball club had initiated a fund raising effort to erect a grandstand on their grounds. These sites were likely somewhere near the Northern Pacific Railroad depot, but the exact location remains unknown.

Umpires in the Dakota Territory in the nineteenth century were usually trustworthy fans selected from the crowd. They only needed a basic knowledge of the rules of the game and to meet the approval of both teams. In an 1885 game in Bismarck, a local judge was selected “whose lack of knowledge of some of the minor technicalities of the game was counterbalanced by his wonderful abilities as a harmonizer.” A description of this same game also noted “nine men on each side and an umpire in the middle,” implying the umpire may have been positioned behind the pitcher.24

Umpiring a game in the nineteenth century could also be quite dangerous. In a later game in Bismarck, the umpire was struck in the nose by a foul ball (suggesting the umpires were now stationed behind the catcher) resulting in a broken nose and a tooth knocked out which “bled profusely.” The Bismarck Tribune went on to say, “The accident was a regrettable one, but one of those which sometimes befall an umpire.”

In 1889, the Bismarck team was photographed in their new gray uniforms with black trimming, which were said to be modeled after the “Chicagos.” In this picture, bats and balls were present, as well as what looked to be a catcher’s mask and chest protector. No fielding gloves could be seen in the photograph and there was no mention of any in the base ball news reported in the Bismarck Tribune. It is likely they were still playing without gloves, as there were numerous reports of players injuring their fingers or hands from being hit by a liner or trying to field a hot grounder.

1889: The Championship Season

The 1889 season was the high-water mark for base ball in Bismarck. Anticipating statehood that fall, a constitutional convention was to be convened in Bismarck beginning July 4. The local base ball association asserted that the team needed to be strengthened and the grounds placed in good condition because “the city will be crowded with visitors‚” and will “have a number of strangers and guests to entertain.” The club also decided to “induce some of the best players in the northwest to become members of the team”—the first overt admission they needed to attract outside professionals to field a competitive team.

In April the base ball association embarked on a fundraising effort to fence in the grounds, build a grandstand, and buy new uniforms for the players, by offering anyone who would subscribe $5 for a season ticket. After obtaining permission from the city to “cross the street on the hill” construction soon began and by mid-May the site, north of the Episcopal church, was called the “best in the northwest.”25

With the new fence enclosing the grounds, the club could for the first time charge admission: 25 cents for the grandstand and 15 cents general admission.

During the constitutional convention, even the delegates in town got into the act, and there was a series of games between teams called the “republicans” and the “democrats.” One of the issues to be decided at the convention was whether the new state of North Dakota would be wet or dry. In a July game pitting the “prohibitionists” against the “antis” even the politicians placed wagers on the outcome of their games. If the prohibitionists lost, they had to buy champagne for the antis, but if the wets lost, they were to furnish lemonade for the drys. There was a comment made that it was difficult to find enough prohibitionists in town to fill a nine man base ball team.

In August the Bismarck club was notified that the base ball club from Aberdeen, in present day South Dakota, would be in town the following week to play. Aberdeen had the first openly professional base ball team in the Dakota Territory; their team made up entirely of paid outside players.26

The Aberdeen team was organized by L. Frank Baum, who years later would write The Wizard of Oz. Baum was a shopkeeper in Aberdeen in 1889 and only took an interest in base ball because the club would have to purchase uniforms and other equipment through his store, Baum’s Bazaar. The Bismarck Tribune billed the games as being for the championship of Dakota and as the “sporting event of the year.” On August 8 Aberdeen beat the locals, 14–2. The next day the two clubs played what was called a “novelty” game in which the teams switched batteries. Bismarck’s Claude Holley (pitcher) and Thomas Cannan (catcher) played for Aberdeen while Murnane and Cody pitched and caught for Bismarck. Nonetheless, Aberdeen defeated Bismarck again, 23–7.

To conclude the 1889 season, in September the Bismarck team traveled to Grand Forks to play against the club of that city and “other leading teams in the Red River valley.” After the first game on September 17, manager Falconer sent the following telegram to association directors back in Bismarck: BISMARCK 8, GRAND FORKS 0, BATTERY, MCGRADE AND CANNAN. NO ERRORS. According to the Bismarck Tribune, “As soon as news spread among the sportsmen of the city, there was a great deal of jubilation and all drank merrily to the health of the victorious athletes.”27

Bismarck won two more games from Grand Forks the next day, September 18, by a score of 6–5 in the morning game, and 14–4 in the afternoon to complete the sweep. Rainy weather in Grand Forks cut into attendance, resulting in an estimated loss of $200 to the Bismarck club, but otherwise the trip was a success, and Bismarck declared themselves the champions of Dakota.

Conclusion

Influenced by the ball playing of the soldiers at the nearby military forts, baseball caught hold in Bismarck, the newly established capital city of the Dakota Territory, in the early 1870s. Throughout the 1880s, there was great enthusiasm over the game in Bismarck and the Western part of what would become the state of North Dakota. But primarily due to the economic depression that affected the entire country throughout most of the 1890s, interest in baseball in Bismarck declined in the decade after statehood.

Another of the challenges faced by baseball enthusiasts in Bismarck was the geographic isolation of the city. Mandan, the neighboring city on the west bank of the Missouri River, had fielded a team since the early 1880s and the Bismarck teams continued to play games against the soldiers at Fort Lincoln. But, after the Northern Pacific Railroad was completed into Montana, Fort Lincoln was abandoned in 1891. Other than local pick-up teams, an assortment of rural nines, and the soldiers at another nearby military post, Fort Yates, there were no other baseball teams in the immediate vicinity.

Since those early days, many communities in Western North Dakota have supported amateur, semi-pro and, at times, professional teams in organized baseball. Bismarck-Mandan, an affiliate of the Minnesota Twins, fielded a team in the Northern League in the 1960s and Negro Leagues stars and Hall of Famers Satchel Paige and Ray Dandridge also played in Bismarck. Although North Dakota, and Bismarck in particular, is not considered a baseball hotbed, there is a proud history that spans nearly 140 years.

TERRY BOHN is proud to be one of the original members of the Halsey Hall Minnesota SABR chapter. He is a member of SABR’s Minor Leagues and Nineteenth Century Committees. Terry has made presentations at regional meetings, has been published in the 1996 Baseball Research Journal and has authored biographies for the SABR Biography Project. His interests and areas of research include early baseball in North Dakota and prominent players who have played in the state. He works as a hospital administrator in Bismarck, North Dakota.

Notes

1. Bismarck Tribune, January 19, 1886.

2. Bismarck Tribune, October 13, 1889.

3. Dr. Harold Seymour and Dorothy Z. Seymour, Baseball: The People’s Game (Oxford University Press, 1990).

4. Seymour, Baseball: The People’s Game.

5. Larry Bowman, “Soldiers at Play: Baseball on the American Frontier,” Nine: A Journal of Baseball History and Culture, Volume 9, Number 1 & 2, Fall 2000/Spring 2001, University of Nebraska Press.

6. Brian Dipple, “Its Equal I Have Never Seen: Custer Explores the Black Hills in 1874, Columbia,” The Magazine of Northwest History, 19 (Summer 5) 2005.

7. Chronological outline of the life and times of General Joseph Green Tilford.

8. Bismarck Tribune, May 13, 1874.

9. Tim Woltrer, “Bats and Saddles: Base Ball with Custer’s Seventh Cavalry,” The National Pastime, Society for American Baseball Research (SABR), Number 18, 1998.

10. Nathaniel Philbrick, The Last Stand: Custer, Sitting Bull, and the Battle of the Little Big Horn (Viking, 2010).

11. Bismarck Tribune, July 5, 1879.

12. Bismarck Tribune, August 13, 1873.

13. Bismarck Tribune, July 6, 1877.

14. Bismarck Tribune, June 16, 1882.

15. Bismarck Tribune, August 1, 1884.

16. Bismarck Tribune, July 26, 1887.

17. Bismarck Tribune, June 19, 1885.

18. Bismarck Tribune, April 23, 1887.

19. Bismarck Tribune, July 22, 1888.

20. Bismarck Tribune, January 19, 1886 The winter of 1885–86 was unusually mild in the Dakota Territory. Taking advantage of temperatures in the fifties, a base ball game was played on January 18.

21. Bismarck Tribune, May 28, 1887.

22. Bismarck Tribune, July 27, 1887.

23. Bismarck Tribune, September 13, 1885.

24. Bismarck Tribune, December 2, 1885 See Note 20.

25. Bismarck Tribune, April 25, 1889.

26. Michael Patrick Hearn, “Wizard Behind the Plate: L. Frank Baum, the Hub City Nine and Baseball on the Prairie,” South Dakota Magazine, (Spring) 2000.

27. Bismarck Tribune, September 19, 1889.

South Florida is notoriously hot in the summer, but conditions heated up another notch in 1952 when the Miami Sun Sox and the Miami Beach Flamingos fought it out in one of the great pennant races of minor league baseball. The 1952 dash for the pennant involved two colorful managers: the contentious Johnny “Pepper” Martin of Miami Beach and former Brooklyn Dodger Max Macon of Miami. The Florida International League was headlined by many former and future major leaguers including Charles “Red” Barrett, Humberto “Chico” Fernandez, Miguel “Mike” Fornieles, Dick Gray, Jesse Levan, and Camilo Pascual. The 1952 season was notable because it played out against the backdrop of the integration of the league and declining attendance; the latter would cause the demise of the league less than two years later.

The FIL was born in 1946 at the dawn of the minor league “Golden Age” with six franchises: Havana, Lakeland, Miami, Miami Beach, Tampa, and West Palm Beach. Jumping from 12 leagues in 1945 to 43 the ensuing year, the growth of minor league baseball was spurred by a booming economy. Returning servicemen who had served in World War II found jobs at home, along with time and money to spend on entertainment like baseball. In this environment, the FIL opened for business as a league with “International” as its designation due to the inclusion of Havana, the first franchise in organized baseball outside continental North America. Accordingly, the FIL was the first league to use airplanes to transport its teams. Other cities were added and dropped over the years, but the aforementioned clubs were the core franchises of the league.1,2

From 1946 to 1950, Havana dominated the FIL, winning the regular season crown five consecutive years. The Havana Cubans dominated the regular season championships, but the league was highly competitive and the Cuban team won only two league championship series (1947 and 1948). In 1946, the Tampa Smokers won the championship playoffs. They finished in third place in the first half of the split season and bounced back to take first place in the second half, edging Havana by 2 1/2 games.3 In 1947, Havana won 105 games, beating out Tampa, who won 104, and swept the Smokers in the championship. Tampa finally broke the Havana domination in 1951 by winning the regular season, but lost to St. Petersburg in the playoffs.

Initially, the league was designated as Class C, but many observers—including players—thought it should be a higher classification due to the inclusion of many Cuban players and former big leaguers. Rogers McKee, who played in the league for three seasons after the FIL received its Class B designation, stated, “In those years, I think the FIL was possibly the best ‘B’ league in the country. I also think the Havana teams could have been in Triple-A, and had winning records. Some of their pitchers would pitch in the FIL one week and the next week in Washington winning in the major leagues.”4,5

Consequently, the league moved to Class B for the 1949 season and for the remainder of the league’s existence.

The FIL drew much attention for its former major league players and managers: Paul Waner (1946 Miami), Jimmie Foxx (1947 St. Petersburg), Tony Cuccinello (1947 Tampa), Lou Finney (1947–48 St. Petersburg, 1949 West Palm Beach), Ducky Medwick (1949 Miami Beach, 1952 Tampa), Travis Jackson (1949 Tampa), Pepper Martin (1949-1951 Miami, 1952 Miami Beach, 1953 Fort Lauderdale, 1954 Miami Beach/Miami), Wes Ferrell (1949 Tampa), Dolf Luque (1951 Havana), and Ben Chapman (1951 Tampa).6

Havana employed virtually all Cuban players, many who would be in the majors at one time or another including Luis Aloma, Sandalio “Sandy” Consuegra, Fermín “Mike” Guerra, Conrado “Connie” Marrero, Julio Moreno, Carlos Pascual, Gilberto Torres, Raul Sanchez and Jose “Tony” Zardon.7,8,9,10

After the 1951 season, Pepper Martin moved from managing the Miami Sun Sox to take over as field boss of the crosstown rival Miami Beach Flamingos. The Flamingos had finished sixth in 1951. Miami, an affiliate of the Brooklyn Dodgers that had finished third in 1951, hired Max Macon as their manager.11

A full five years had passed since Jackie Robinson’s debut with the Dodgers and in 1952 it was high time that the FIL followed suit with integration. Thus, the stage was set for the pennant race of 1952, the last great stand of the league, as well as many other minor leagues that were in decline by 1953. The FIL disbanded for good on July 26, 1954.12

Leading Up To The Season

As charter members of the FIL, the Miami Sun Sox and Miami Beach Flamingos had developed arguably the most heated rivalry in the short history of the league. Their proximity fomented contentious feelings between the combatants. The fiery and competitive nature of Johnny Leonard Roosevelt “Pepper” Martin further magnified the emotions.

A mere 5 1/2 miles separated the two Miami clubs, yet by comparison, they were different as night and day. The Sun Sox played their home games at Miami Stadium. Built in 1949, on the corner of Northwest Tenth Avenue and Twenty-Third Street, it was considered to be the most state-of-the-art ballpark in the minor leagues. Built at a cost of $1.4 million (later reports stated closer to $2 million13) its most distinguishing feature was its one-of-a-kind overhanging steel cantilever roof. The overhang wrapped around and covered the infield portion of the grandstands, providing protection from the ever-present rains as well as shade from the oppressive South Florida sun. The design required no steel support beams that would have blocked the view of the field. Other stadium amenities included a private lounge for the ballplayers and their wives, large dugouts with cushioned seats, tunnels leading to well-appointed locker rooms with steel lockers, an oversized press box with elevator access, individual rooms, some with showers for visiting dignitaries, and a lounge for patrons with a fully stocked bar.14,15

Across Biscayne Bay to the east resided the Flamingos, who played in the “band box” known as Flamingo Park (sometimes referred to as “Flamingo Field”). The park, built in 1925, was located on the corner of North Fifteenth Street and Michigan Avenue near the now-popular South Beach area. With an estimated seating of around 3,000, it offered few of the creature comforts enjoyed by their neighbors to the west.16,17

The other major contrast: most Flamingos games drew half or less of the attendance at Miami Stadium. Over the years, the team had failed in their efforts to lure fans across the bay and the Flamingos generally played “second fiddle” to their chief competitor.

Both clubs had enjoyed varying degrees of success during their six seasons in the league, although none had won a pennant. Miami participated in four playoff appearances (1947, 1949, 1950, and 1951) and garnered one championship in 1950, finishing the regular season in second place with a glossy 98–55 record during Pepper Martin’s second year as their skipper. The Sun Sox (77–61) dropped to third place in 1951, but again reached the finals and were swept by the St. Petersburg Saints in four games. The Flamingos experienced three winning seasons, along with four playoff appearances (1946, 1947, 1949 and 1950), but failed each time to get past the initial round. The only campaigns when Miami Beach finished ahead of Miami in the standings were in 1946 and 1947.18

With the Flamingos and Sun Sox approaching their seventh season, both clubs would go through significant changes on and off the field. The financially troubled Flamingos were near disbanding before a last minute intermediary stepped in to save the day. Paul D. Rust Jr.—a semi-retired businessman, with controlling interest in a Kansas City, Missouri, lumber company, and a self-proclaimed sportsman who enjoyed yachting and tennis—agreed to purchase the club and assume all of its debts. Consummation of the transfer of ownership came on January 12, 1952. The Flamingos secured another year as a member of the FIL. As part of the changeover, Rust shrewdly renewed the services of Joe Ryan as his General Manager and right-hand man. Rust, an intelligent administrator, was keenly aware that Ryan was a good baseball man, had an eye for spotting talent, and a knack for producing winning results.19

One of Ryan’s first tasks was to secure a manager. In a surprising move, the Flamingos announced ex-Sun Sox skipper Martin would take over the reins. Martin’s firing the previous winter was accompanied by no reason from his employer, although his repeated confrontations with umpires and fans may have played a role in his demise.20

Two of Martin’s incidents in particular stood out. In Havana on August 26, 1949, in the midst of the pennant race, the petulant Martin got into a heated exchange with umpire Clem Camia and grabbed him by the throat with both hands. Martin expressed to the press that he thought Camia was being unfair to his team. The game was forfeited to the Cubans and the former “Gas House Gang” leader was fined $100 and suspended for the remainder of the season.21,22

In August of 1951, the FIL fined Martin again, this time for $25, for hopping a chain link fence during the seventh inning of game against Lakeland and punching a fan.23

Although Martin was none too popular with the men in blue, his likable nature, down-home charm, and ability to relate to the fans made him popular throughout the FIL.

To take Martin’s place, the Sun Sox chose a less flamboyant personality in the fair-minded Max Macon. He would serve as player-manager. Macon, born on October 14, 1915, in Pensacola, Florida, began his major league career as a pitcher in 1938 with the St. Louis Cardinals where he was a teammate of Martin’s. He later joined the Brooklyn Dodgers (1940, 1942, and 1943) where he had moderate success before re-inventing himself in 1944 as a first baseman (106 GP, .273 BA, 3 HR, 36 RBI) with the Boston Braves. Macon made a last one at-bat appearance in 1947 before concluding his big league career with a career mark of 17–19, a 4.24 ERA, and a .265 batting average.24

Humberto “Chico” Fernandez fondly remembered his manager and shared a few stories about the positive impact that Macon had on his career.

Oh yes, to me he was the best manager for me, because he used to be crazy about me… We came over here to Miami and nobody took me to eat or nothing. And I didn’t know Miami and he showed me. He was in a restaurant and he saw me walking and asked me what happened. He said, ‘Did you eat?’ and I said, ‘No.’ He called a team meeting and he told all the Cubans that if they ever asked me if I ate, and if they didn’t take care of me that they had a fine. Yeah, Max Macon was crazy about me.25

Coming into the season, the Sun Sox enjoyed the benefits of having ample young talent through their affiliation with the Brooklyn Dodgers, as well as abundant financial resources supplied by their 20-year-old millionaire owner, Jose Aleman Jr. He had inherited a vast fortune, the byproduct of his deceased father’s investments and alleged stolen money from the Cuban treasury. In short, Miami had the means to sign quality veteran players. Three of the freshest faces on the scene were shortstop Fernandez, third baseman Dick Gray, and right-handed pitcher Billy Harris. All three would eventually make it to the majors. Fernandez, the most intriguing and highly-touted prospect after being spotted in the Cuban Winter Leagues, brought a reputation as an excellent glove man who wasn’t too shabby with the bat. Fernandez stroked a solid .284 batting average while starring the previous season at Class-C Billings (Mustangs) and earned the Pioneer League’s designation as its best shortstop.26,27,28

Mixing with the youngsters were returnees from the 1951 squad: left fielder Paul Armstrong (5 HR, .305), catcher Ed Little (5 HR, .223), right fielder Charles “Rocky” Rotzell (9 HR, .278), and hurlers Arturo Seijas (10–8, 3.02) and 36 year old Gilberto “Gil” Torres (7–13, 3.34, splitting time between Havana and Miami the previous year).29

Only two position players were back from the 1951 Flamingos squad: catcher Charles “Chuck” Ehlman and outfielder/infielder Morton “Mort” Smith (the latter who was also used as a pitcher and the team’s bus driver). More encouragingly, three frontline starting pitchers were returning: Richard McMillin (9–8, 3.74), Ernesto “Chico” Morilla (13–13, 4.01), and Marshall O’Coine (11–18, 3.34). Two of the most interesting young prospects that had a positive impact on the Flamingos’ fortunes were slick-fielding shortstop Jack Caro, coming off his first season of organized baseball having hit .298 at Waycross of the Class-D Georgia-Florida League, and Charles “Pete” Morant, who went 15–7, 3.13 ERA with Landis/Elkin of the Class-D North Carolina State League.30

Ryan made headlines during the offseason by signing two former major leaguers, an experienced minor league jack-of-all trades, and a Negro League star. Twenty-five year old Jesse Levan, who had a brief fling with the Philadelphia Phillies in 1947, and Mizell “Whitey” Platt (1942–43 Chicago Cubs, 1946 Chicago White Sox, and 1948–49 St. Louis Browns) brought experience to the club as well as potent bats. Coming out of retirement was utility man Augie “Knobby” Rosa, who upon hearing that his old skipper Martin was returning to the dugout immediately inked a contract.31

On the mound side, Ryan took a flyer on 38-year-old Dave Barnhill. The wily veteran had broken into organized ball in 1937 with the Miami Giants before moving up to the barnstorming Zulu Clowns and Ethiopian Clowns. He had also spent time in the Negro Leagues with the New York Cubans, building an impressive won-lost record (32–28), the Puerto Rico Winter Leagues (11–9), and the Cuban Winter Leagues (23–19).32,33

Barnhill had previously pitched with Minneapolis of the American Association. The Oakland Oaks of the Pacific Coast League purchased him, where he later complained of arm trouble. It was a risky move for Ryan to sign him. Barnhill told Mel Ott, “I might as well go home because I know I can’t help you. Not this season at any rate.” He later said that after throwing in an exhibition game his armed pained him so much that he could not sleep and soon after left the team to retire to his home in Miami. Barnhill would be one of the first black players signed to play in the FIL, although his teammate George Handy, along with Havana’s Silvio Garcia and Angel Scull, would be collectively the first to break the league’s color barrier.34,35,36,37,38,39

Interestingly, Ryan’s best signing during the offseason almost did not make the final roster. Charles Morant remembered in spring training that Martin needed to witness the athleticism and speed of one veteran before deciding to keep him in the fold.

We were getting ready for the season, and Jesse Levan, who wound up leading the league that year, I think there was a question mark as to whether he was going to make the ballclub or not. He [Martin] lined people up and they had races, and Jesse outran everybody, and he [Martin] put him on the ballclub. And he [Levan] won the batting title that year by; I’d have to look it up, by thirty points or so.40

Let the Games Begin

The consensus by sportswriters favored the Sun Sox making a run for the pennant and the Flamingos to finish in the second division. Columnist Morris McLemore predicted St. Petersburg to take the flag with Miami running a close second place. He was less than optimistic about the Flamingos, prognosticating they would finish in fifth place and out of the playoff picture. Ultimately, the two rivals would prove him wrong.41

Both clubs kicked off their seasons on April 9 with the Flamingos playing on their home turf, in front of 2,021 paying customers hosting the Havana Cubans. Meanwhile the Sun Sox traveled 225 miles north to Lakeland to take on the Pilots. Martin’s choice for his opening day starter was 26-year-old righty Morilla, set to face former Washington National Santiago “Sandy” Ullrich. In a classic duel, both pitchers went the route before Morilla walked Ullrich with the bases full in the bottom of the twelfth inning, handing the Cubans a 1–0 victory. Further north, the Sun Sox spoiled the Pilots’ home opener by pounding out twelve hits, four by Macon, to notch an easy 10–0 win.42

Curiously receiving little press coverage was the fact that the FIL color barrier was broken opening night when George Handy took his position at second base for the Flamingos, outfielder Angel Scull batted lead-off, and Silvio Garcia played shortstop for visiting Havana.43

Much to the surprise of fans and scribes, it was the Sun Sox who got off to an inauspicious start, while the “Pink Birds” came out of the gate faster than a filly at the Kentucky Derby. On the evening of May 7, the Sun Sox, who had dropped seven of their previous nine games, took another loss in heartbreaking fashion to Havana, 2–1. Pedro Formental scored from first base on a Roberto Ortiz double in the bottom of the tenth inning, sending starter Labe Dean down in flames. At the end of the evening’s action, Miami Beach and Tampa were tied atop the standings with 21–9 records. Miami would drop to their lowest point, falling to 15–15 and in fifth place, six games off the pace.44

Not wanting to remain stagnant, and complying with FIL league rules trimming team rosters to seventeen players thirty days after opening day, Ryan made more moves. In reaction to the deadline, he optioned second baseman Handy to Keokuk (he would return to Miami Beach later in the season) and relief pitcher Ken Munroe to Thibodaux (Giants) of the Evangeline League. Ryan also announced that he would deal outfielder Clark Henry and pitcher Harry Raulerson before the deadline.45

The moves opened up playing time for infielder George Wehmeyer and outfielders Oscar Garmendia and Edmond Wilson.

On May 8 and on the verge of losing their fourth game in a row, Macon decided to take matters into his own hands and turn things around. Macon had already committed an error playing first base earlier in the game that cost his charges two runs, but he was not about to let Tampa and their burly star chucker, Chet Covington, send his Sun Sox to the south side of .500.46

“We lost three in a row in Tampa and we had to win this one”, said the indignant Macon. Although Macon admitted his arm had been dead as yesterday’s news since 1938, the old soup bone seemed to have sprung to life. Macon swapped positions with pitcher Torres, and with one out in the eighth inning, proceeded to retire five of the next six batters including four by strike out. The winning run was thanks to some clever base running by Fernandez who beat out a drag bunt, then tagged up all the way to third base on Armstrong’s long fly ball. The Cuban speedster later scored on Rotzell’s sacrifice fly ball to center field.47

The win over Tampa served as the turning point for Miami, and from there on the Sun Sox played as if they were on fire. Fueled by Harris, Torres, and starter/ reliever Lowell Grosskopf the Sox began a run winning twenty-seven of their next thirty games and blowing by the Flamingos for the league lead. During the streak the staff was nearly untouchable with Harris going 6–0, Torres 4–1, and Grosskopf 4–0, including two of his victories in relief. The Sun Sox built a 3 1/2 game cushion over their second-place rivals.48

When the Flamingos woke up the morning of June 6 they found themselves looking straight into the eyes of a critical three-game series against the Sun Sox with pennant implications. Pitching the lid-lifter for the Sun Sox was Vicente Lopez who was riding a 21-game win streak as a member of the Sox dating back to 1950 when he won his last sixteen decisions, before his promotion in 1951 to the Fort Worth (Cats), and his first five starts of the 1952 season. Opposing Lopez was hard throwing left-hander Walt Nothe.49

The Flamingos struck first in the third inning on successive singles by George Wehmeyer, Ray Williams, and Levan. Combined with a couple of walks and an error Miami Beach jumped ahead, 2–0. Nothe was nearly flawless scattering six hits while throwing shutout ball. The two tallies would prove to be all the offense needed as Lopez dejectedly walked off the mound at end of the nine innings.50

After a rainout on June 7, the Sun Sox returned the next day to face the Flamingos in a make-up doubleheader. Southpaw Morant bested Harris in the first game, 1–0 holding the Sun Sox to three base knocks. In the second game, newly inked former University of Miami football star Frank Smith sparked a ninth inning rally with a pinch-hit single as the Flamingos came from behind to beat the Sox, 4–2. The Flamingos not only relished the series sweep, but they had closed the gap behind the front-running Sun Sox to a half a game.51

For the remainder of the summer not much seemed to slow either club down except when they played each other. Through the entire month of June, the Flamingos nipped at the Sun Sox’s heels, but were unable to overtake them. On June 30, the two met in a three-game series at Miami Stadium. In a classic pitchers’ duel, veteran gray beard Barnhill squared off against the peach-fuzzed Harris. Both twirlers traded zeroes until the sixth inning. Barnhill had begun to develop a blister on his fingertip in the bottom half of the same inning, and with two outs and “ducks on the pond,” Barnhill delivered a pitch that went awry sailing over the head of his backstop Ehlman. Harris raced home with the go-ahead run spotting the Sun Sox a 1–0 lead. An inspired Harris continued his mastery of the Flamingos by scattering seven hits over the course of the game and only allowed one free pass earning the complete game shutout win.52

With 3,023 customers looking on, Torres topped Bob Palmer the next night, 5–1 and in the July 2 finale, lanky right-hander Billy Darden completed the sweep in a hard fought 3–2 victory.53,54

Miami stood at 4 1/2 games ahead of Miami Beach, their widest margin of the season.

July proved to be a month full of highlights. On July 10, Torres made history when he tossed the first no-hitter in Miami Stadium. With two outs in the bottom of the ninth inning, West Palm Beach’s Gordon Bragg stepped to the plate. Torres, who had been relying on his knee-buckler knuckle ball all night, changed his repertoire and on his third pitch threw an overhand curve. “I hadn’t tried one all night,” said Torres after the game. Bragg connected, but the ball drifted foul and left fielder Armstrong raced over to make the catch and set off the celebration. The Sun Sox had persevered shutting down the Indians, 1–0. Torres’s battery mate, Little, recalled in a recent interview that although the press frequently referred to Torres as a knuckle ball pitcher he had many other tools in his arsenal, “He was a regular pitcher with the ability to throw a knuckle ball. He could also throw a curve ball. He could throw any pitch you can think of.”55

With the onset of July, and the hotter than a firecracker weather in South Florida bearing down, on July 14, the Sun Sox traveled to Flamingo Park for a three game set. Martin was in rare form all season having been especially vocal in expressing his distaste for several calls by umpires. For his actions “The Wild Horse of the Osage”, as the press liked to call him, had drawn a three game suspension and a $75 fine dating back to games on May 26 in West Palm and June 10 in Havana. The former involved a verbal altercation with umpire Art Talley’s failure to call a game that went beyond the curfew; the contest ultimately won by the Indians, 1–0, and the latter involved a heated exchange between home plate umpire Archie Jones and Martin on a call at home plate that allowed the Cubans to win, 7–5.56

Martin was always seeking to get a leg up on his competition. On July 14, for the lid-lifter against the Sun Sox, to the surprise of the fans, the Flamingos took the field in shorts for the first time. No doubt, Martin felt his troops would perform better if they were cooler and might even improve their speed.57

Fernandez remembered how Martin would use any means at his disposal to gain an edge on an opponent, whether it was uniform modifications or the use of deception.

Dave Barnhill, he was warming and he was the one that was going to pitch. … They had Barnhill warming up some place else and the one that was supposed to be pitching was right there in the ballpark. After that, he didn’t pitch that guy. That I remember. Pepper Martin was like that. He didn’t like to lose nothing.58

A large crowd, by Miami Beach standards, of 1,841 packed Flamingo Park to witness Harris square off against Barnhill. Returning from his three-day suspension, Martin was none the mellower. After Miami scored in the top of the fourth frame when Armstrong raced around from second on a Macon single, the Flamingos attempted to answer in the bottom half of the same inning. With one out Lou Colombo hit a slow grounder towards Jimmy Bragan, at second base. Bragan threw to Macon on a bang-bang play at first base that umpire Albury called out. Once again, thrown into the middle of a melee, Albury drew the ire of Martin who charged at him from the dugout. Albury, obviously not in the mood for another confrontation with Martin, gave him the thumb, ejecting him from the game. Tempers further erupted in the top of the ninth inning when Ehlman got into a verbal altercation over the determination of the infield fly rule. The husky catcher was restrained by coach Johnny Podgajny, to avoid getting the heave-ho.59

Podgajny’s quick response to Ehlman proved to be his best strategic move of the night. Ehlman got his revenge in the bottom of the ninth. With one out and Harris closing in on his eighth shutout of the year, the burly catcher singled driving in Wehmeyer from second base to tie the game. Macon, not to be outdone by his peer on the opposite side of the diamond, then got into the act arguing with the umpiring crew claiming that the Flamingos were using illegal players for pinch-hitting roles setting off an angry eruption by the fans who sent a shower of catcalls cascading down on Macon. Harris settled down to finish the inning, but in the bottom of the eleventh frame, with the bases loaded, Ehlman hit a long fly to center allowing Levan to tag, and score, giving the Flamingos the 2–1 victory. The Flamingos had closed the gap to half a game.60

An even larger crowd of 2,187 crammed into the little Miami Beach ballpark for the following day’s doubleheader with expectations of more drama, and they were not to leave disappointed. Fighting a bad back, Torres held the Flamingos in check as the Sun Sox staked him to a 4–0 advantage going into the bottom of the sixth inning. Miami Beach mounted a comeback in the bottom half of the same inning on Levan’s three-run home run, but failed to score again as Miami prevailed, 4–3.

In the nightcap tempers flared again. In the third inning, Joe Kwiatkowski took a half-swing on a full count that umpire Butch Henline called a ball allowing him to trot to first. On cue, Martin came charging out of the dugout. In short order, the angry skipper was tossed from the game. Martin’s response to Henline’s call was to throw a couple of handfuls of dirt on his footwear before slowly marching to the showers. Bragan, the next batter, swung at a third strike and Kwiatkowski broke for second base. A head-high throw delivered by Ehlman reached second baseman Wehmeyer who tagged Kwiatkowksi in the face and fisticuffs followed. Both benches cleared, and by the time the dust had settled, Kwiatkowski and Wehmeyer both found themselves ejected. Nevertheless, the Flamingos continued to rally chasing Billy Darden in the sixth inning and coming out on top thanks to some fine hurling by Nothe, to beat the Sun Sox, 3–2.61

The two teams would not tangle again until Aug-ust 5. Still battling for first place, the Sun Sox came into the three-game set two games in front of the Flamingos. Once again, Miami Beach would get the better of the two. Barnhill’s shutout, along with his two base hits in three at-bats, were the keys in the 2–0 whitewashing in the series opener. The next evening was one of the best games of the season. Nothe, facing Harris, had a perfect game going into the eighth inning. With two outs, Kwiatkowski hit a hard grounder to second that Handy booted. Nevertheless, not discouraged, Nothe then retired Levan to escape the inning. Nothe completed what would have otherwise been a no-hitter in the ninth inning, except for the fact that his teammates had failed to score a run. In a still scoreless game, in the bottom of the tenth, Bragan hit a “laser” past Handy for a single to break up the “no-no.” Armstrong then sacrificed Bragan to second and Rotzell hit a shot to right field scoring Bragan that proved to be the only tally of the night. It was the most disappointing defeat of the season for the Flamingos. “Who cares whether I pitch a no-hitter or not. I go out there on the mound to win the baseball game; all other things are incidental,” said a subdued Nothe following the game. Amongst the celebration in the Sun Sox locker room, Harris and his teammates were relishing his nineteenth win against five losses and ninth blanking of the season.62

In the series “curtain closer,” the “Pink Birds” got a modicum of revenge. However, the sweet taste of victory was brief when a protest lodged by the Sun Sox would change everything. Mort Smith, who was used by Martin as an infielder, outfielder and occasionally on the mound, relieved McMillin in the second inning and proceeded to pitch eight shutout innings. Martin chortled after the game that he had found a new secret weapon for the stretch drive. Smith relied on his change-up to baffle the Sun Sox batters. Final score Miami Beach 5, Miami 2. The Flamingos were now within a game of the top of the heap, but the win was to be short-lived.63

Jerry Waring, the Sun Sox’s business manager, filed charges with FIL President Henry Baynard that Miami Beach had used an ineligible player during the August 7 game. The protest centered on Rosa’s return from his suspension for insubordination. The FIL league rules stated that for a player to be eligible, the league must be informed before game time of a player’s return to the active list. Baynard stated that the wire sent from GM Ryan to the league offices arrived after the game began and thus, Rosa was ineligible. On August 18, Baynard handed down his decision in favor of the Sun Sox. “The fact that we sent a wire showed we were acting in good faith,” stated GM Ryan.64

The decision ended up having a critical bearing on the pennant race, much like the famous “Merkle’s Boner” decision would on the 1908 National League finish.

The Flamingos went on a thirteen-game winning skein before dropping a double-header to Havana on August 21. Meanwhile, Harris and Torres both passed the 20-win mark and ended the season with 25 and 22 W’s respectively. Torres notched his twentieth victory on August 28, defeating the Tampa Smokers, 3–2 the same night that O’Coine tossed a two-hit gem against St. Petersburg in a 6–1 win. Harris earned his record-tying twelfth shutout of the year blanking Havana on August 30, 4–0. Harris and Torres would both end up tying the FIL record for most shutouts in a season with 12.65

As the month of September dawned, the Flamingos found themselves 3 1/2 games off the pace with seven games remaining. Needing some help, the Flamingos got it in the form of the Tampa Smokers’ impressive play. Dale Matthewson allowed the Sun Sox a solitary base hit in the first game of the double-dip and “Red” Barrett followed in the night cap limiting the visitors to only four base knocks as the Smokers won two games in shutout fashion. At the same time, Miami Beach was taking both ends of a doubleheader from seventh place Lakeland. Levan hit his tenth home run of the season in the opener sparking the 8–7 win and Platt led the charge in the second game with his twelfth round-tripper of the year, as part of a 14-hit attack, during the 8–1 shellacking.66,67

Going into the final day of the season, the same 1 1/2 games that separated the two clubs on September 3 had not changed by September 6. In order to steal the pennant, the Flamingos would have to sweep their doubleheader against Tampa and hope that Miami would lose at home to St. Petersburg. While Miami Beach was doing their part by taking both ends of a twin bill from the Smokers, 4–1 and 4–0, the Sun Sox were less than cooperative. Miami did all of their damage in the third inning when, with one out, Oscar Sierra started a rally by drilling a single. Macon followed suit by also singling and backup catcher Cecil Dotson was intentionally walked by Vicente Amor to load the bases. Gray knocked the third single of the inning, plating two runs and wound up at second base when center fielder Rudy Tanner threw wild to the infield. Fernandez singled in Gray, and nothing was left but for Torres to apply the finishing touches. Torres induced Frank Gallardo into a game-ending double play and the celebration was on. Miami had won the game, 3–2 and the pennant.68

In one final salvo, Joe Ryan charged that St. Petersburg did not give their all in the Miami series losing all three games. In question was the September 5 game when Saints manager Bill Herring left starter Joe Kirkland in the game, despite the fact that he was roughed up for five runs in two innings of work. Regular shortstop Billy Spears was also benched in favor of Max Gnagy who would finish the season with a microscopic .145 batting average.69 Despite the protest, the results stood.

The Playoffs and Quest for the Championship

With the regular season wrapping up on September 6, the “Shaughnessy Playoffs” system, which the Miami Herald strangely defined “in an effort to prove nothing,” matched the league’s top four teams beginning on September 8.70

In what today would seem unconventional, third place Tampa opened against first place Miami, and second place Miami Beach played at fourth place St. Petersburg in a best of five series. It was reported that the winning team in the playoffs would be awarded $1,000 and the second place team $500.71

Miami opened with their ace Harris, while Tampa countered with Rogelio Martinez. In a bit of pre-series gamesmanship, Miami General Manager Jerry Waring said he was still without permission to use reserve catcher Mike Napoli and instead would go with Cecil Dotson behind the plate pending Joe Ryan’s approval. Waring earlier stated he would forfeit the playoff games if Dotson came up injured. Ryan had been silent on the matter and as the Miami Herald proclaimed, “Waring’s not going to beg ‘im.” Ryan eventually gave his permission to use Napoli only if a Dotson injury forced him from the game.72

In the series curtain raiser, Leonard Pecou’s two-run single in the fourth inning was the deciding base knock and Martinez went the distance in Tampa’s 3–2 victory before a crowd of 1,072 in Miami Stadium. According to the Miami Herald, attendance suffered due to the rain that fell during the day. Fernandez starred for Miami in the losing effort. Indicative of his aggressive style of play all season, in the first frame, Fernandez walked, stole second base, went to third on an infield grounder and beat a throw to home plate on another grounder. In the third inning, the speedy Cuban walked again, stole second base, went to third on a grounder and stole home on a play that was not even close.73

Meanwhile in St. Petersburg, the hometown squad defeated Miami Beach 10–9, in a ten-inning thriller. The winning run scored in the bottom of the tenth inning on a wild play. Eddie Wilson lost Neb Wilson’s wind-blown fly ball in left center and Rogers McKee walked. After a pop fly out, Billy Spears lofted another pop-up in front of home plate which third baseman Ray Williams failed to catch. Although Spears was out on the infield fly rule, Neb Wilson took third and scored when Williams threw wide and low behind third. In all, there were nine errors in the game; three by St. Pete and six by Miami Beach.74

The Miami-Tampa game was rained out on Tuesday, while Miami Beach bounced back and beat the Saints 6-5 to knot the series at one apiece before 2,497 at Al Lang Field. The Flamingos overcame a 4-0 deficit by scoring five times in the fourth inning to take the lead and hold onto the win.75

On Wednesday, because of the postponement, there were games at both Miami and Miami Beach. In front of 1,040, Miami committed five errors (three by Fernandez and two by Dotson), but Torres pitched a five-hitter allowing only an unearned run as Miami evened their series with the 5–1 win over Tampa.76

Across the bay, St. Petersburg edged Miami Beach, 7–6 to take a 2–1 series lead. Neb Wilson’s homer that traveled 360 feet in the eighth inning tied the game and Gil Valdivia’s walk-off single in the ninth frame was the game winner. Neither of the starting pitchers, Barnhill or Hooks Iott, lasted past the fifth inning of the slugfest and thanks to 51‚ÅÑ3 innings of scoreless and brilliant relief work by ex-Flamingo O’Coine the Saints prevailed.77

Miami Beach bounced back the next evening when Andy Elko pitched a two-hit shutout and Levan blasted a three-run home run as the Flamingos beat the Saints, 6–0 knotting the series at 2–2. Only 600 partisans attended the contest.78

Meanwhile in Tampa, the Smokers outlasted the Sun Sox 7–5. In a sloppy affair, both teams combined for eleven errors, six by the Sun Sox. Tampa got off to a 6–0 lead and Red Barrett cruised along with a shutout before a trio of Smoker errors in the seventh inning led to three Miami runs. Two more errors in the ninth added a couple more Miami tallies, but it was not enough as Tampa took a 2–1 lead in the series.79

On Friday night, before 861 fans in Flamingo Park, the Flamingos scored five runs in the fourth inning and went on to beat St. Petersburg, 5–4 advancing them to the finals. In the fourth inning, the first six batters reached base on three walks and three singles leading to three runs. Pepper Martin, not taking any chances, used four pitchers during the game to limit the Saints to four hits. Barnhill saved the game by striking out Rudy Tanner in the ninth on three pitches with the tying run on second base.80

In Tampa, Harris pitched a six-hit complete game as Miami beat Tampa, 3–2 and evened the series. A single by Dotson in the sixth inning drove in the winning run. Although Martinez went the distance, he fell short in his effort to beat Harris twice in a row.81

On Saturday night, with the Flamingo players and Martin rooting for a Miami victory, the Sun Sox obliged besting Tampa, 3–1. Martin and his charges wanted to face the Sun Sox especially after losing the pennant by one game due to the August protested game ruled in Miami’s favor. The five hit pitching of Gil Torres, and a costly error by Tampa outfielder Cecil Kaiser, were the main factors in Miami’s win. In the second inning, Sierra and Bill “Gabe” Gabler, whom Miami acquired late in the season, singled and with two out came home when Kaiser misplayed Gray’s long fly ball.82,83

Miami and Miami Beach advanced to the finals upending their opponent three games to two, both coming back from 2–1 series deficits to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat. The teams advanced to what the Greater Miami area referred to as the “Causeway Series,” reminiscent of the “Subway Series” played between New York clubs. Now the teams would play for the championship, a seven-game series, and after facing each other 22 times during the season in which the Flamingos held a 13–9 advantage, it would prove to be a “battle royal.” Opening on Sunday with the first two games in Miami Stadium, the series would then shift for three games to Flamingo Park, and then back to Miami.

Miami Beach had completed their series on Friday night. However, due to the aforementioned rain out, Miami had not completed their series with Tampa until Saturday. Thus, the Sun Sox had to travel on a day that the Flamingos got to rest.

The series began in Miami Stadium before a crowd of 3,303 with Barnhill of the Flamingos facing off against Labe Dean. With Barnhill allowing only four hits, Miami Beach defeated the Sun Sox, 4–2. The Flamingos scored two in the second inning on singles by Levan and Colombo. First baseman Gabler made a throwing error on Mort Smith’s grounder that allowed Levan to score. Ehlman followed by singling as Colombo raced home giving the Flamingos the early edge. Miami Beach added a run in the fifth frame on an RBI single by Levan, and then another tally in the eighth on three consecutive singles with two outs. Barnhill’s shutout was ruined in the ninth inning, thanks to second baseman Handy’s dropping of Gray’s fly ball that allowed two runs to score. All the same, the miscue was the only gift the Flamingos would hand out as they prevailed in the end.84

Game Two was played on September 16 at Miami before a crowd of 2,639 and was to be the “Billy Harris Show.” The stocky right-hander scattered eight hits, struck out three, walked one, and drove in the winning run in a 5–4 Miami victory that deadlocked the series at one game apiece. The Flamingos trailing 5–3 scored a run in the ninth inning and had runners on first and second with none out. Harris settled down, induced Williams to ground into a double play, and then retired Mort Smith on a ground ball. Miami, the FIL’s leading defense, uncharacteristically committed four errors, two by Harris, which led to two of the Miami Beach runs. However, Harris kept a cool head and overcame his early miscues by escaping out of several jams.85

Game Three moved to Flamingo Park. Errors continued to plague the Sun Sox. Torres allowed only five hits and one tally, but Elko garnered his second consecutive whitewashing in post-season play in a four-hit shutout and a 1–0 Flamingo victory. The only run came in the second inning when Rotzell misplayed a Colombo fly ball and Colombo later scored on Platt’s sacrifice fly. The victory amounted to the eleventh in the past twelve on the “Pink Birds” home turf.86

In Game Four, Miami squared the series at two games apiece with a 3–1 victory behind the five-hit pitching of Darden and Dean. The Sun Sox scored two runs in the top of the first off Nothe on a walk to Fernandez, and singles by Bragan, the younger brother of Bobby Bragan (formerly of the Philadelphia Phillies and Brooklyn Dodgers), and Armstrong. Rotzell’s sacrifice fly scored Bragan, prompting Martin to bring in Morilla. Morilla escaped the inning and allowed only one run the rest of the way on a sacrifice fly given up to Handy.87

Friday night’s Game Five found the Sun Sox leading 1–0 in the second inning when the rains came forcing a cancellation. The Miami Herald noted that unless the series reached completion quickly the Sun Sox will have to do without the services of their third baseman Gray since he has to report to Pittsburgh Tuesday for his Army draft physical much to the concern of skipper Macon.88

The specter of sloppy played reared its ugly head again as the Sun Sox committed four errors during Saturday’s Miami Beach, 7–3 victory; six of the Flamingo runs were unearned. Miami Beach scored five in the fourth inning to seal the win before 1,624 fans, a surprising turnout according the Miami Herald. A single by Colombo, an error on a fielder’s choice by Fernandez, an error by pitcher Seijas loaded the bases. Wehmeyer then stepped up to the plate and promptly singled in a run followed by Gray’s wild throw wide of home plate on an attempted force out allowing two additional runs. Fernandez booted Rosa’s bunt for another run and Eddie Wilson executed a perfect squeeze play for the fifth marker. Bob Palmer, who allowed only two hits in five innings in relief of Barnhill, earned the win and Seijas absorbed the loss.89

Down three games to two, the Sun Sox shored up their defense in an error-free Game Six at Miami Stadium as Torres pitched a shutout allowing Miami to even the series with a 2–0 whitewashing in front of 2,934 enthusiastic rooters. Gray was the hitting star for the Sun Sox as he doubled in the seventh inning, took third on a sacrifice bunt by Little who was safe at first when the throw was late and scored on a sacrifice fly by Bragan. Gray’s second double of the night plated Gabler with an insurance run in the eighth. Elko’s efforts went for naught as he went the distance allowing only four hits in the losing effort.90

In the series finale on Monday night in Miami, before 4,007 fans, the Sun Sox played their second consecutive error-free game and unleashed a ten-hit attack to claim the championship with a 5–1 victory. Manager Martin had surprised Miami by starting Mort Smith who rewarded his skipper’s faith by failing to last through the first inning. In the opening frame, Fernandez walked and scored on Armstrong’s double. Two base hits by Gray and Harris tallied a run in the second frame, and in the third inning Armstrong reached on a walk, stole second, and scored on Sierra’s single to right field. In the fifth stanza, Fernandez doubled, and scored on Armstrong’s single. In the seventh canto, Fernandez tripled, and later scored on Bragan’s single, spotting Miami a 5–0 lead. The fans began to celebrate early.

The Flamingos, refusing to throw in the towel, answered with three runs in the top of the eighth inning. Then in the ninth inning Manager Macon went to the mound to remove a tiring Harris and brought in Torres who had pitched a complete game the night before. The Sun Sox bench showed concern when Torres was greeted with a single by Caro that scored Williams and sent Morant to second. Then with Rosa batting next, Torres threw his knuckle ball and Rosa popped out to the backstop, Little. In disgust, a frustrated Rosa threw his cap and bat to the ground. It was all up to Eddie Wilson. Wilson slammed a long fly ball to left field, and Armstrong ran it down to end the game. Final score Miami 5, Miami Beach 4.

Torres flung his cap high in the air as his jubilant teammates swarmed him at the mound. The Sun Sox had proved they were genuine champions and no one could dispute their right to the pennant. “I’m delighted. That proves it,” said Macon. Losing manager Martin came to the Sun Sox dressing room to congratulate the winners. All animosity, was forgotten in that moment as Macon said, “I’m pleased that Pepper came in to congratulate us like the good guy that he is.” Martin pronounced, “That Gil Torres is great. His knuckle ball was too much for us.”

A personal letter from Macon’s old friend Adolph Rupp (University of Kentucky’s legendary basketball coach) read, “Congratulations on winning the championship. We were really pulling for you. This should help put you in line for a nice promotion one of these days.”

Macon concluded his thoughts by saying, “We came here to win the pennant. We didn’t come here to finish anywhere but first place and we did it. We had a bunch of fighting players and they would not give up. They [Miami Beach] challenged us. They had a good ball club but we had just a little better one. There was no bitterness. Both teams fought hard and fairly.”91

Epilogue

Max Macon (1915–89) left the Sun Sox after the playoffs due to alleged disagreements with Sun Sox management. He went on to manage the Dodgers’ Fort Worth affiliate in 1953.

Pepper Martin (1904–65) left the Flamingos at the end of the season to pursue a short-lived career in law enforcement before returning to manage the FIL Fort Lauderdale club in 1953.

Gil Torres (1915–83) became player/manager of Valdosta of the Georgia-Florida League in 1953. In 2007, he was elected posthumously to the Federation of Professional Cuban Baseball Players in Exile Hall of Fame.

Billy Harris (1931–2011) finished the 1952 season with a 25–6 record and an ERA of 0.83. He pitched 13 more seasons in the minor leagues and had two cups of coffee with the Dodgers in 1957 and 1959 finishing with a lifetime mark of 0–1, 3.12.

Humberto “Chico” Fernandez played eight years in the majors with the Dodgers, Phillies, Tigers and Mets. Chico is retired and lives in south Florida.

Dick Gray (1931–2013) went on to play three years in the major leagues with the Cardinals and Dodgers.

Charles “Pete” Morant’s last season in professional baseball was 1952. He suffered shoulder problems while serving in the military and became an educator; is retired and lives in North Carolina.

Jesse Levan (1926–98) played seven more years in the minor leagues and made it back to the big leagues with the Washington Nationals in 1954 and 1955. In 1959, he was banned from baseball for trying to fix games.

Jack Caro played eight more years in the minors before hanging up his cleats. As of this writing, he currently lives in Texas.

Ernesto “Chico” Morilla played one more year in the minors and two years in the Mexican League. He later returned to Cuba. As of this writing he is still alive and resides in Cuba.

Lou Colombo (1927–2012) played minor league ball for two more years before moving on. He went on to a long career as a professional musician. He died in an automobile accident in Fort Myers, Florida in 2012.

Dave Barnhill (1913–83) was 38 years old in 1952. He pitched one more year with Fort Lauderdale of the FIL and later worked for the city of Miami Parks and Recreation Department where he retired after serving 30 years.

SAM ZYGNER is the author of the book The Forgotten Marlins: A Tribute to the 1956–1960 Original Miami Marlins. He has been a member of SABR since 1996 and is Chairman of the South Florida Chapter of SABR. He received his MBA from Saint Leo University. His writings have appeared in the Baseball Research Journal, The National Pastime, Nine, and La Prensa de Miami. A lifelong Pittsburgh Pirates fan, he has shifted some of his focus to Miami baseball history.

STEVE SMITH is a retired CPA who has been a SABR member since 2000. His primary passion is researching Keokuk, Iowa, baseball history and he attended many minor league games in his hometown while growing up. He was able to see players such as Gordy Coleman, Jim “Mudcat” Grant, Gary Kolb, Jeoff Long, Tim McCarver, and Fred Whitfield as they made their way to the big leagues. His second passion is researching the long-forgotten Florida International League in his adopted state of Florida, where he now lives in Englewood, near the Tampa Bay Rays spring training site in Port Charlotte.

Aquino Abreu in the uniform of the 1968–69 National Series champion Azucareros ball club, three seasons after his miraculous three-game pitching string. (Author’s Collection)

Aquino Abreu—a diminutive right-handed fastball specialist who labored for a decade and a half during the formative years of the modern-era post-revolution Cuban League—remains entirely unknown to North American and Asian baseball fanatics. This is a rather large irony considering that Abreu once registered a string of the most remarkable performances witnessed anywhere in the history of the bat-and-ball sport. The more noteworthy event perhaps was a pair of consecutive no-hit and no-run games in 1966 that equaled a feat achieved precisely once in the big leagues and perhaps only five in the entire recorded saga of North American Organized Baseball. Hardly less rare, however, was this same obscure hurler’s 20-inning losing stint that same season in which he rang up 19.1 scoreless innings before yielding the sole enemy tally in the final frame. And all three miraculous performances were achieved in less than the span of a single month. It is hardly an exaggeration to propose that no other single pitcher in the game’s long annals ever matched Abreu by authoring a similar trio of brilliant outings during any single brief four-week span.

No ballpark history buff worth his salt is unaware of Cincinnati southpaw Johnny Vander Meer’s pair of back-to-back gems against Boston and Brooklyn in June of 1938; it is a feat that only two other major league pitchers—American Leaguer Howard Ehmke of Boston in 1923 and National Leaguer Ewell Blackwell of (quite ironically) Cincinnati in 1947—have ever come legitimately close to matching. More obscure were the consecutive hitless games achieved in May 1952 by Bill Bell of Bristol (Tennessee) in the Class D Appalachian League.1 With his own pair of unique uninterrupted gems in January 1966, Abreu thus became the first to display this same form of unparalleled pitching mastery anywhere outside of North American soil.

Baseball history is full of short-term wonders that flash for a week or a month or even a season but soon fade away to mediocrity, and Abreu was one of the prototype examples. At the end of a 14-year career, the native of Cienfuegos Province owned an overall losing lifetime record. He did boast a few moments of overseas glory earned with the Cuban National Team long before that outfit had established itself as an invincible dynasty in international tournament play. But he never stood out among the Cuban League pitchers of his own era, let alone the legendary mound aces that would follow in succeeding decades. Yet in one brief ten-day stretch of January 1966, Abreu accomplished a pitching oddity that remains indelible in the annals of island baseball lore. He joined the equally overachieving Vander Meer as the third member of baseball’s most exclusive pitching club—the only three hurlers in major professional league competition to author consecutive no-hit and no-run games. (Clarence Wright achieved the feat in 1901, in the Western Association.) But one huge downside was that the Cuban also paralleled Vander Meer’s own uneven career in so many less illustrious features.

Abreu was one of the earliest notable figures of Cuba’s post-1960 baseball, although his brief fame rested more on a few spectacular moments than on any sustained performances. In his fourteen seasons he only posted four campaigns in which his victory totals exceeded his numbers in the loss column.2 Only once did he reach double figures in wins (10–1 during his most stellar season of 1968–69)—a feat balanced out by another later season in which he also lost just as frequently (owning a 5–10 mark for the 1973–74 winter campaign). Perhaps Aquino’s proudest boasting point in retrospect was that his ERA totals fell under 2.00 in exactly half of his career National Series outings; but it must at the same time be noted that those campaigns came in an era famed for pitching dominance and filled with rather miniscule ERA numbers. Abreu himself never paced the circuit in the ERA department, and no circuit leader in the Cuban League ever soared above the 2.00 level until 1988 (the league’s twenty-seventh year of existence).3

Given the relatively mediocre set of career numbers and the obvious absence of any semblance of lasting star status, Abreu’s slot in Cuban baseball lore is indisputably built upon his singular streak of hitless magic during the second month in Cuba’s fifth season of baseball action in the Fidel Castro era. But those two surprising no-hitters were not by any stretch the sum total of Abreu’s achievement, nor the only mark of his stature in the early going of Cuba’s new brand of amateur-style national pastime. Less than a month before his two masterpieces, the Centrales right-hander also hurled twenty masterful innings in a single contest. He also enjoyed several stellar outings on national teams that were at the time laying a foundation for Cuba’s eventual dominance in international play. And he was arguably one of the most solid hurlers in the league’s early years even if he rarely stood among the island’s year-end statistical leaders.

Little is known publicly about Abreu’s early life away from the baseball diamond, other than the fact that his origins were those of the largely impoverished farming class that populated central Cuba during the decade immediately preceding World War II. Tomás Aquino Abreu Aguila was born in the rural agricultural distinct of southern Cienfuegos Province—in the village of San Fernando de Camarones—on March 7, 1936. The island population during that era was still recovering from a bloody U.S.-backed 1933 revolution that had successfully unseated the ruthless dictatorship of President Gerardo Machado but also first brought to prominence future strongman Fulgencio Batista. Abreu’s father Lupgardo Abreu Gómez and his mother Petrona Aguila Arbolaez both hailed from a poverty-stricken peasant stock that then constituted the bulk of the island’s rural population. Aquino would eventually marry twice (the second time in 1958) and would sire three sons (all with his first spouse, Maria Cuéllas). His offspring were named Francisco Abreu Cuéllas (the eldest), Reinaldo Abreu Cuéllas, and Pedro Abreu Cuéllas (youngest). The remainder of Abreu’s private life remains altogether obscure since his rare public comments have always been narrowly focused solely on his substantial 1960s and 1970s athletic career.4

Prompted by interviewers Leonardo Padura and Raúl Arce in 1989 to comment about his three sons and their own baseball ambitions, the ex-pitcher’s answers were somewhat evasive. Only the middle son, Reinaldo, apparently harbored early baseball ambitions. “He was also a pitcher and accounted himself well as a youth, but he had to give it up,” Abreu observed. “He is now a physical education professor, but the others followed different paths: the elder is an engineer and the younger is a minor official with FAR [an acronym for the Cuban Armed Forces]. Even if they didn’t become ballplayers the most important thing is that they are happy and that I am proud of them all.” But why Reinaldo had to relinquish his own pitching dreams (because of injury, perhaps, or because of lack of talent?) is never revealed by the self-described proud father.

In that same 1989 interview (based on my own translations from the Spanish), Abreu would also provide only sketchy details concerning his own start on the amateur diamonds of rural Cuba in the middle decade of the twentieth century. “I always dreamed of being a ballplayer, of appearing on television, of wearing those fancy uniforms, and of being popular, and cheered for. But despite those dreams I never thought I could play in the organized leagues, or even less that I could represent Cuba overseas. But it all came true and therefore today I am hugely satisfied.”

Abreu would also inform his 1989 interviewers that his earliest memories were of weekend games in local pastures where he and his buddies played barefoot and without any formal equipment outside of a rubber-taped ball and crudely carved bat. A pitcher from the outset, young Abreu was invited in 1950 at age 14 to play on a neighboring village club from Cumanayagua during the regional juvenile championships. He had apparently drawn some local attention as a hard thrower although he admittedly knew very little at the time about the art or science of pitching. Early success in these local youth tournaments eventually led to a spot in the Liga Azucarera (Sugar Mill League) where he would debut in 1958 for a club sponsored by the Central Manuelita (Manuelita Sugar Mill). By 1960 he was working for the Cienfuegos Province Hanabanilla hydroelectric plant and also pitching weekend games for the local Cumanayagua ball club in the island’s popular Amateur Athletic Union League.

The opening decade of a new post-revolution brand of national baseball in Cuba was one full of pomp and circumstance—with a strong measure on patriotism and politics thrown in for good measure—even if the quality of play did not always quite measure up to earlier professional Cuban winter league standards. Most of the best native professional prospects playing with the island’s AAA International League franchise quickly abandoned their homeland once the Havana Sugar Kings ball club was overnight transferred to Jersey City in July 1960. Among the native Cubans on the 1960 Sugar Kings roster, Leo Cárdenas, Miguel Cuéllar, Orlando Peña and others were all destined to be future big leaguers. A number of additional stellar players with professional prospects (Pedro Ramos, Camilo Pascual, Tony Oliva, Zoilo Versalles, Luis Tiant, Jr., Bert Campaneris, Cookie Rojas, José Tartabull, Tony Taylor, José Valdivielso, and Tany Pérez, among others) had all departed for the States immediately before or shortly after Castro’s forces seized government control in January 1959.

A final professional winter league season was played in Havana with only native Cuban professional players in 1960-1961, in the immediate aftermath of the Sugar Kings uprooting. Most of those Cubans (including already established big leaguers like 1961 Cuban League MVP Pete Ramos and his Washington teammates Camilo Pascual and Julio Becquer) rejoined their North American clubs in the spring of 1961 and almost none returned after tensions escalated between the governments in Havana and Washington.5 A seven-decade-long tradition of professional winter play in Cuba was suddenly over, but a new type of baseball would soon emerge on the horizon. And it would be rebuilt on the backs of a considerable army of “lesser” talents (mostly denizens of the popular country-wide amateur and Sugar Mill leagues) who had remained at home on their native island.

Part of Castro’s plan for overhauling Cuban society and launching a “fairer and more just” societal order (one founded upon Soviet-style Communist principles) involved the total revamping of the island-wide organized sports system. Sports and recreation—like education and health care—would now become a genuine “right of the people” and not an enterprise for profit-oriented commercial business. A revamped government agency labeled with the acronym of INDER (Institute for Sports, Education and Recreation) was founded in February 1961 and under its direction all professional sports were outlawed across the country (with the famous National Decree 936) by the middle of the same year. There would now be no admission charges for attending such public events as ball games and concerts; attending matches and ballgames would become a popular celebration aimed at entertaining and building community spirit. Baseball would now involve only native Cubans (no more imported foreign talent) in a new kind of national league with a prime focus on developing strong home grown and patriotic national squads.

The new National Series league opened play in January 1962, with only four clubs that recruited their talent from the popular amateur leagues of the previous decade. Amateur leagues (especially the Amateur Athletic Union league and the various Sugar Mill circuits) had always been highly popular and now they would no longer take a back seat to a pro league featuring mainly visiting North American professionals. The first few seasons would be played with only a handful of teams but by the end of the first decade there were a dozen squads spread across the island and no longer restricted (as the former pro circuit was) mainly to Havana.6 For the first time Cuba could enjoy not only a purely indigenous brand of baseball but also a genuinely “national” sport that was staged in all of the island’s (at the time) six provinces.

One motive for the new league was to supply and train players for a national team that could carry the Cuban banner into the international arena and thus display the imagined strengths of the socialist (non-commercial) brand of baseball. If Castro had been deeply stung by the loss of the AAA-level Sugar Kings he was now bent on launching a novel system designed to beat the Americans at their own “national game” in the venues of international tournaments. At the very time the April 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion was unfolding, a handful of the top amateur Cuban players (soon to be showcased in the new league) were already winning a first proud victory in nearby Costa Rica. The surprisingly robust Cuban amateur squad went undefeated en route to capturing a cherished gold medal during that spring’s fifteenth edition of what was then called the Amateur Baseball World Series.7

Early National Series baseball was also highlighted to a notable extent by staged political displays of yet another flavor. Castro himself would regularly make celebrated appearances at the first several opening-day league festivities. It was arranged for “El Comandante” himself to slug out the first official base hit of the inaugural league game on January 14, 1962 (he tapped a fat delivery from Azucareros starter Jorge Santín through a cooperative infield) and this staged ritual was subsequently carried on for the next several seasons.

It was into this brand of new revolutionary baseball that Aquino Abreu emerged during the first National Series of winter and spring 1962. Performing for the Azucareros (Sugar Harvesters) under manager Antonio Castaño, Abreu would collect 4 of the 13 overall wins for his second-place ball club. If that total seems small, the schedule was short (27 games) and even the most successful league pitchers posted only a half-dozen games in the win column. Abreu would register six starts that first season and leave the field as the pitcher of record in all six (two defeats and three complete games). The diminutive but hard-throwing righty logged his first league victory on February 8, 1962 in Havana’s Latin American Stadium, a complete-game six-hit 5–0 shutout of rival Habana, the eventual league cellar-dweller.

Aquino’s decade-plus career displayed few true highlights, although those few were spectacular enough to carve out a lasting legend. His physical stature on the mound was also something less than imposing and his successes would eventually result more from a carefully honed craftsmanship than from any element of raw power or exceptional arm talent. Years later he would comment to Padura and Arce that although at the outset of his career in the early sixties he had already mastered an adequate fastball and tricky curve, it was lessons learned from the tutoring of 1940s-era amateur league great Pedro “Natilla” Jiménez (ironically then the manager of the rival Orientales National Series club) that opened the door on his eventual successes. It was Jiménez who painstakingly instructed Abreu on how to mix up the speeds of his deliveries and also impressed upon him the necessity of concentrating on the specific weaknesses of each and every rival batter.

Despite early promise and his developing mastery of the pitcher’s art, Abreu would became a celebrity hurler only in the immediate aftermath of his rare feat achieved during the early going of his fifth league season (which he entered with only a lackluster 10–16 record to date). Suddenly he was seen as more than just a run-of-the-mill league pitcher, despite the fact that those two inexplicably odd no-hit games would account for two of his three victories during the campaign. With a 3–2 won-lost mark but only nine earned runs permitted, he would rank second that year in the individual ERA department, the closest he ever came to leading the league (his 1.50 mark trailing the 1.09 registered by 1961 World Cup hero Alfredo Street). Abreu’s mark on the 1966 season—especially his runner-up ERA numbers—perhaps seem all the more impressive in light of the fact that his Centrales club finished dead last in the six-team circuit with a 23–40 record.

The first no-hitter came on a Sunday afternoon: January 16, 1966. Centrales hosted the Occidentales club in Santa Clara’s venerable Augusto César Sandino ballpark (now the home stadium of the current league powerhouse Villa Clara Orangemen). The visiting club (with most of its players hailing from Pinar del Río Province) featured outfielder Fidel Linares, a solid early league performer in his own right but also the father of future league star Omar Linares (now dubbed by many followers of the international game as the best third baseman never to play in the Major Leagues).

That inaugural no-hitter (the opening match of a scheduled twin bill) was an unsettlingly one-sided affair from the start and a regrettably sloppy game by almost any standards. The home contingent jumped far out in front with four markers in the first and a half-dozen more in the third and coasted easily from there to a 10-0 whitewashing. The outclassed losers not only failed to connect for a single safety but also committed an embarrassing six errors before the afternoon was out. Under little pressure after the third frame, Abreu struck out four and issued three free passes along the way. Another base runner reached on an error (second baseman Mariano Alvarez’s boot of an infield roller by the game’s third batter, the aforementioned Linares). Yet if the game was not very artistic it was nonetheless hugely historic. It was the first no-hitter witnessed in the six short years of league history.

Abreu spoke wistfully a quarter-century later (to Padura and Arce) about a sore limb that failed to deter him during his first effort. He apparently was not aware that he had been pitching flawlessly until the fact was pointed out to him in the eighth by catcher Jesus Oviedo. But this violation of baseball superstition was not nearly as troubling in the final frames as was an increasingly painful right arm. By game’s end Aquino was unable to lift the sore limb above his shoulder and it continued to throb and ache until his next scheduled start. Here apparently could be found the origins of serious and lasting arm troubles that would plague the ill-starred hurler for the remaining decade of his professional career.

The second no-hitter would follow nine full days later (teams then played only four or five times a week). The January 25 evening date with destiny would be set in Havana’s cavernous Latin American Stadium and the opposition would be eventual league champion Industriales, already the island’s most beloved team. This contest was far cleaner, with the losers only booting the ball twice, but it was also equally one-sided on the scoreboard. Again Abreu benefitted from the comfort of an early lead (a pair of runs in the first and a 7–0 cushion after five) and coasted home despite struggling a bit with his control. He struck out seven but also issued half-a-dozen walks, the control lapses likely being the result of the painful pitching limb that still plagued him severely.

According to the pitcher’s own later report he felt sound during pre-game warm-ups, and he seemed pain-free (after nine days of suffering) until the fifth inning. But from the fifth on, he had to abandon his more effective fastball and rely on a prayer and his soft breaking balls to get by in the clutch. He would also report that the second no-hitter was largely a product of considerable luck. Not only was he laboring with a wounded appendage but he was also rescued by a pair of remarkable late-inning fielding plays—by Alvarez and shortstop Ramón Fernández—that both saved likely base hits.

With the final out (a tame roller to second by outfielder Eulogio Osorio) Abreu had accomplished the unthinkable by duplicating the feat first achieved by Vander Meer 28 seasons earlier. And as was the case for Vander Meer (who had walked the bases full before finally escaping his own final history-making inning at Ebbets Field), a truly historic repeat performance for the Cuban Leaguer had been anything but a clean or easy affair.

The two games would remain a lofty mountain peak in an otherwise rocky career. Laboring for the renamed Las Villas club one season later, “Mr. No-Hit” would be saddled with a 3–6 record. The same would occur (6–8) when he returned to the Azucareros club a year after that. But by the 1968–69 campaign Abreu would enjoy a sudden upswing and a surprising return to prominence. His 10-1 mark was one of the league’s best and his ERA again dipped below 2.00 (as it would four more times before his career finally wrapped up). For steady year-long achievement, 1968–69 (NS #8) was definitely a “career” season. Abreu would also enjoy moderate successes across two following campaigns, going 6–3 and 6–1 while still wearing the Azucareros jersey. But in 1974 (back with Las Villas) he lost a career high ten matches (versus five wins), and his final two seasons saw his innings on the mound dip drastically (to 38.0 and then to 22.1) as his career quickly faded.

The overall career that surrounded the two no-hitters was in the end anything but remarkable. A victory total of 62 would average out to less than five wins per season; a career 2.26 ERA is only impressive if it is removed from the context of the era in which he labored. A half-dozen Cuban League mound stars boast sub-2.00 lifetime marks and a full dozen (some from later more hitter-friendly decades) are under 2.20 for a full ten-year-plus career. There were far greater pitchers during the same pioneering era, even if none of the others enjoyed three quite-such-brilliant single outings. In the end the best that can be said is that Abreu’s overall mound record is somewhat blunted since it came during an era of remarkable pitching that marked the Cuban League’s own “dead-ball” period.

But the no-hitters were enough to clinch a legend since they put Abreu in the rarest of company alongside Vander Meer—even if few would know anything about his feat in the larger outside baseball universe that existed beyond a Cuban island now largely closed to outside scrutiny by Castro’s revolution. There are some quite interesting parallels between the two pairs of no-hitters. The duo by Abreu comprised the first two no-hitters of any type in Cuban League history. Vander Meer’s second was spiced by the added fact that it came in the first ever Ebbets Field night game (also the first night contest in the baseball capital of New York City), itself a first-rate historic occasion. Abreu’s second (also a night game) was the first ever in the venerable Havana ballpark that has over the years now hosted the largest number of such games on the island (13 of the 51 Cuban no-hitters have occurred in Latin American Stadium; the next most are six in Santa Clara’s Augusto César Sandino Stadium, also the site of Abreu’s first gem).

Abreu’s overall career would also parallel that of Vander Meer in rather ironic fashion. Both men were career sub-.500 pitchers. Vander Meer won and lost more or less equally in the majors (119–121) and the minors (76–73). Abreu also dropped more league games than he won in domestic competition (62–65 overall, 55–59 in 14 National Series, 1–2 in one Selective Series, 6–4 in one Special Series). Yet Vander Meer did enjoy the big stage when he pitched in both the All-Star Game (1938 as the game winner, also 1942 and 1943) and the World Series (1940). Abreu was on three different occasions one of the aces of the Cuban national team in international tournament play, essentially the Cuban version of pitching in the Series.

And it can also be noted that both pitchers struggled with control during their second no-hit efforts and across their full careers. Plagued by wildness throughout much of his career, Vander Meer was exceptionally sharp when he walked only three (against four Ks) in his initial masterpiece versus Boston on June 11, 1938. But in the more memorable Ebbets Field outing the Cincinnati southpaw almost didn’t survive the ninth when he walked the bases full before dodging a bullet with Leo Durocher’s final fly ball to short center. In that historic second game, Vander Meer not only walked eight Dodgers but also benefitted from superb defense by Lew Riggs on two potential base hit grounders and a spectacular outfield grab by Wally Berger. Abreu had an identical line of three free passes and 4 Ks in his first but permitted six hitters to reach the base paths due to his own wildness in the second. And again he also benefitted by a pair of late-inning fielding gems.

Many writers have labeled Vander Meer’s feat as the most unbreakable record in baseball, since a hurler would need to complete an unimaginable three straight hitless nine-inning outings to best it. Before Abreu worked his magic far off the North American radar screen in the invisible Cuban League, only two other big leaguers came tantalizingly close to equaling what Vander Meer alone had done.8 In one respect, however, Abreu actually outdid his big-league forerunner since his gems occurred directly on the heels of a marathon 20-inning effort that serves to make them all the more remarkable.

From a purely artistic perspective, it might be suggested that Abreu’s greatest outing was actually the one that preceded his pair of no-hit games. The durable Centrales ace pitched all 20 frames of a marathon game that at the time was the longest in Cuban League history. In that December 28, 1965 affair at the Sports City Park in Santiago, Abreu took the hill against the Orientales and threw 19 scoreless innings, facing 66 batters before the match was finally decided. But on that ill-starred day the four opposition pitchers were just as effective and the scoreless contest stretched on for more than four nail-biting hours. Abreu struck out 13, while allowing a dozen enemy hits and also walking seven. But he would lose it all by relinquishing the game’s lone run with one out in the bottom of the twentieth. The inning’s second hitter, Elpidio Mancebo, electrified the partisan crowd with a loud double. Then after an intentional walk to set up a possible double play, Gerardo Olivares finally ended the extended day by slapping a single into right field.

Within the space of less than a month, then, Abreu would not only toss his back-to-back no-hit games, but he would also throw a 19 1/3-inning stretch of shutout baseball, a far more difficult feat. And the earlier stunt may well have come at a steep price, since the arm problems that plagued Abreu in his next two historic outings and throughout his career might well be traced to his marathon effort in December.9 There have been many big league no-hitters (nearly 300) but how many big-league hurlers have blanked the opposition for 19 straight frames in a single outing? One recalls only a National League duel between Brooklyn’s Leon Cadore and Boston’s Joe Oeschger who battled for 26 frames in the 1920s and allowed but a single run each along the way, or Joe Harris, who pitched 20 straight scoreless innings in September 1906.10

Abreu’s success was not exclusively limited to his three days of exceptional mastery. He also made his brief mark on the world tournament scene when Cuba was first establishing its international dominance. His first such outing—on the heels of his National Series debut season—came at the August 1962 Central American Games staged in Kingston, Jamaica. Overall it was a less than successful return to that event by the Cubans after a dozen-year absence; the young and inexperienced club managed by short-tenured big leaguer Gilberto Torres lost three heart-breakers to the Dominicans, Puerto Ricans, and Mexicans sandwiched around victories over Colombia and Venezuela. Abreu appeared in relief on two occasions, worked six total innings, gave up a single earned run, struck out one batter while walking four, and earned no game decisions. When asked in 1989 about his fondest baseball memory he suggested without hesitation that it was the first time he heard the national anthem while wearing a national team jersey in Jamaica (and not either of his later no-hitters).

During the April 1963 Pan American Games in Brazil, both the Cuban team and Abreu himself performed far more brilliantly. Seven victories against a lone defeat brought home a gold medal and Abreu was a game winner on two occasions—twice beating host Brazil with complete game victories, 11–2 and 17–3. An even more impressive triumph came on the heels of his double no-hit season when in June 1966 he again labored on the staff of Cuba’s championship squad at the Tenth Central American Games staged in Puerto Rico. The latter tournament was held against a backdrop of severe political tension and the Cuban delegation was purposely detained long enough upon arrival by ship at San Juan Harbor to miss the event’s official opening ceremonies. During the games, anti-Castro exiles heaved stones at Cuban players on the diamond interrupting action on several occasions. Abreu earned a complete-game 5–2 victory over the hosts in the opener (he made one other brief appearance in relief) and Cuba walked off with another gold medallion on the strength of a second decisive victory over Puerto Rico in the finals.

In his 1989 interview with Padura and Arce, Abreu recalls receiving several lucrative professional offers during the 1966 stay in San Juan to leave his homeland and join North American professional ball clubs. As Abreu remembered it, “There was a great effort to buy a number of our players and I got several offers, including 30,000 pesos to sign with Pittsburgh. They even put in the paper that I had signed for 50,000 pesos, but it wasn’t true and in the end none of us on the team stayed in Puerto Rico.”

Defiance College in northwestern Ohio has fielded a baseball team since 1905. Like most small colleges, Defiance places academics ahead of athletics, and the baseball team generally loses more games than it wins.1

The 1961 baseball season, however, was a shining exception. That season the Defiance College baseball team was invited to the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics (NAIA) National Championship Tournament. Defiance played only three games in the double-elimination tournament, but each of these games featured performances that had never before been seen in the tournament.

The Defiance College baseball team entered the 1961 season optimistic but uncertain. They had racked up a record of ten wins and three losses in each of the two previous seasons, winning the Mid-Ohio League Championship in 1959 and finishing second in 1960, but graduations and academic problems had left only seven lettermen returning for 1961.2

In addition, the team would be playing under a new coach. Former Michigan State star Bob Reising had been hired to coach baseball so that Merle McDonald could concentrate on his duties as Athletic Director. Eighteen players reported for the first practice. The roster was young with only two seniors and four juniors, and two of these were new to the team (See Table 1). Reising worked his players hard to get them ready for the season. Letterman Mike Snyder, who also played on the Defiance College football team, recalled “He worked our fannies off in preseason. We could have gone straight into the Marine Corps.”3,4

The eighteen-game schedule had twelve Mid-Ohio League games and six games with nearby traditional opponents. Playing baseball in early April in northern Ohio is not always pleasant and the first four games were postponed due to snow and rain. Nevertheless, all scheduled games were played. This is unusual for small college baseball, even today.

Defiance quickly dispensed with the uncertainty by winning their first fourteen games, breaking the 1929 team’s record for most wins in a season. The team’s talent was apparent; the margin of victory was three or more runs in all but five of these games. The Defiance bats dominated in two non-conference games during the streak. The NAIA Defiance College Yellowjackets defeated the visiting Toledo University Rockets of the NCAA Mid-American Conference, 22–9. After seven innings the Toledo coach conceded defeat and the game was halted. This was the second consecutive year that Defiance had defeated Toledo at home. The twelfth game of the winning streak against Tri-State College was a makeup game for the first game of the season that had been snowed out twice. Strong winds produced a seven-inning slug fest with Defiance College coming out on top 19 to 13. Six home runs were hit in the game, two by Defiance and four by Tri-State batters.

The last four games of the season were with conference foes Ashland College and Bluffton College. Defiance needed to win one of the two Ashland games to clinch the Mid-Ohio League title. The first game at Ashland was on Friday, May 19, 1961. Ashland ran up a 9–0 lead in the first three innings and cruised to a 13–4 victory, halting the Defiance College winning streak at fourteen games. Jim Sanderson, the first of three Defiance pitchers, took the loss. The next day Defiance College won their second Mid-Ohio League Championship in three years, defeating Ashland College by a 3–1 score.

With the Mid-Ohio League Championship decided, the Bluffton games took on a new importance. Defiance College had been notified that they were the Ohio candidate for the District 22 (Ohio, Indiana, Kentucky, Michigan, and Illinois) representative to the NAIA National Baseball Tournament. It was reported that Pikeville College (12–1) and Indiana Central College (14–5) were the Kentucky and Indiana candidates.5

The first Bluffton game on Friday, May 26, did nothing to advance their tournament aspirations, as the Yellowjackets managed only three hits in a 9–2 loss to the Beavers. Pitcher Ron Coxon went the distance in his seventh start and was charged with the loss, giving him five wins and one loss for the season. Coach Reising sent Pete Ladd to the mound for Saturday’s season finale. This was Ladd’s fourth start of the season in eleven appearances. The game was a featured part of Alumni Day on the Defiance College campus. After a late start due to the alumni luncheon, Ladd recorded his sixth win without a loss (to go with his four saves) as Defiance defeated Bluffton, 9–4. The game was stopped after seven innings at Bluffton’s request. Defiance College finished the regular season with a 16–2 record (See Table 2).

Bids for the NAIA National Tournament were announced Sunday, May 28, the day after Defiance’s season ended. The NAIA Area VI Commissioner picked Defiance College as the first choice for District 22, with Illinois State Normal University and the Ferris Institute as second and third choices. Based on a comparison of season records and strength of opponents the Tournament Committee extended the bid to Defiance College. Defiance’s thrashing of Toledo may have influenced their selection.6

The 1961 NAIA National Championship Baseball Tournament was held in Sioux City, Iowa, June 6–10. Defiance had the best record of the eight teams. The first round pairings were as follows: first-seed Sam Houston State Teachers College (18–9) vs. Defiance College (16–2); second-seed Grambling College (23–3) vs. Slippery Rock State College (15–3); third-seed East Carolina College (20–3) vs. Winona State College (15–5); fourth-seed Sacramento State College (20–12) vs. Omaha University (17–5). A ten-run mercy rule was in effect for the first two rounds of the tournament.7

At 11:45am Sunday, June 4, the Defiance College baseball team boarded the train in Defiance for the trip to Iowa.8

For most of the team a trip farther west than Chicago would be an exciting, and perhaps frightening, new experience. After a six-hour layover in Chicago the team arrived in Sioux City at 9:30a.m. Monday. Their first game in the national tournament was scheduled for 2:00p.m. Tuesday, June 6.

Coach Reising again sent his ace, Pete Ladd, to the mound for the first game against Sam Houston State Teachers College. Sam Houston State tagged Ladd with twelve hits, including three home runs, in the seven innings he pitched.9

Meanwhile, Sam Houston pitcher Alton Arnold held Defiance hitless, pitching the first no-hit game in NAIA National Tournament history. The game was stopped after the eighth inning by the mercy rule with Sam Houston State winning 10–0. Four of Sam Houston’s runs were unearned due to the six Defiance errors, one each by the starting infield and battery. In their first national tournament game, Defiance College became the first team ever to be no-hit in the NAIA National Tournament. Alton Arnold still holds the NAIA National Tournament record for fewest hits allowed (10 inning minimum). In his two games in the 1961 tournament he gave up three hits in the 13 innings he pitched. There have been two nine-inning no-hit games pitched in the NAIA National Tournament since 1961.10

On Wednesday, June 7, Defiance College played a loser’s bracket game against Winona State College. Defiance scored twice in the top of the ninth inning to take a 6–5 lead, only to see Winona State come back to tie the game. Both teams scored once in the 13th inning and twice in the 15th to take the game into the 16th inning tied at nine runs each.11

Ron Coxon had started the game for Defiance and was replaced in the sixth by Pete Ladd who pitched the next eight innings. Winona State’s starting pitcher went four innings before being replaced by Mike Sund who pitched through the 15th. Defiance’s fourth pitcher, Jim Sanderson, came into the game in the 15th inning with Defiance leading by one run, two outs, the bases loaded, and a three balls and no strikes count on the Winona batter. Sanderson threw the fourth ball to tie the game and then struck out a pinch hitter batting for Sund, sending the game to the 16th inning.

Leading off in the top of the 16th, Defiance’s Jim Martin drew a walk and was sacrificed to second by Dave Browns. With two outs, Steve Booker singled to drive in Defiance’s tenth run. In the bottom of the 16th, Winona State had a runner on third base with one out after a single and Defiance’s seventh error. The runner tried to score on a ground ball to second baseman Al Phipps and was thrown out at the plate. The next batter walked, but was picked off first by Defiance catcher Booker to end the game. Sanderson pitched the 16th and got credit for the win. The sixteen-inning marathon game took four hours and twelve minutes to play. Defiance College scored ten runs on ten hits while making seven errors. Winona State had nine runs on fifteen hits and committed eight errors.

The sixteen-inning win, however, was costly. Ned Ewers, Defiance’s slugging first baseman, suffered a double fracture of his right leg in a collision at first base with Winona catcher Bob Rogenby. Ewers was taken to a Sioux City hospital where he underwent surgery. (Ewers was hospitalized in Sioux City for a week.) Catcher Steve Booker played the entire sixteen innings, but finished the game in pain. After the game it was determined that he had suffered a fracture to his arm. The injuries to Booker and Ewers put the heart of Defiance’s batting order out of action for the remainder of the tournament.12

Defiance College’s costly, sixteen-inning victory remains one of the two longest games ever played in the NAIA National Tournament. Other records set in this game are most at bats by a player, most at bats by both teams, and most team at bats, fielding chances, and assists. (These records are all held by Winona State.) The NAIA record was tied in 1964 when Wartburg College needed 16 innings to defeat West Liberty State College, 2–1. Until 2008 this was the record for all collegiate National Finals baseball tournaments. On May 26, 2008, Sonoma State University defeated the University of Central Missouri 6–5 in 19 innings at the NCAA Division II National Tournament.13,14

A makeshift line-up took the field for Defiance’s third game of the tournament.15

With their regular first baseman hospitalized, center fielder Jim Martin played first base while left fielder Lowell Frederick covered center field for the first time. Right fielder Gary Shiverdecker, who had moved to center field when Martin went to first base during the previous game replacing the injured Ewers, now went behind the plate due to the injury to the catcher Booker. The left field and right field positions were filled by pitchers Kenny Heckman and Don Miller. Ron Coxon was the starting pitcher for the second straight day.

Omaha University, the opposition in the third-round game, scored two unearned runs in the first inning on their way to a 9–1 victory over the depleted Defiance College team. Omaha had six stolen bases and two home runs in the game, while Defiance committed four errors. The only bright spot for Defiance was the play of Lowell Frederick in center field. Frederick caught nine fly balls to set the NAIA National Tournament record for putouts by an outfielder. (This record was tied in 1992 by Pookie Wilson of Auburn University at Montgomery.)

Defiance College played three games in the 1961 NAIA National Championship Tournament. In their opening game, they were the first team to be held hitless in the National Tournament. The 16-inning marathon in the second game remains the record for the NAIA National Tournament, and, for 47 years was the longest game in any collegiate national tournament. Lowell Frederick’s record for putouts in the third game still stands as the NAIA National Tournament record.

The 1961 success did not carry over to the next season. With only eight lettermen returning, the 1962 Defiance College team had a record of seven wins and ten losses. During the next 30 years, Defiance College played in the NAIA postseason playoffs nine times, never advancing beyond the Regional Tournament. Defiance College left the NAIA to join the NCAA as a Division III school in 1991. They have not yet qualified for an NCAA playoff.

After the 1962 season Bob Reising left Defiance College to coach the baseball team at the University of South Carolina. He later coached at Fort Hayes State College and Furman University. Reising started his college coaching career with a fourteen-game winning streak and an appearance in the NAIA National Tournament. After leading Furman to the Southern Conference Championship and the NCAA Regional Tournament in 1969 he retired from coaching to become an English professor. He has written books on Jim Thorpe and Moonlight Graham. Bob Reising is still active in higher education at the University of Central Arkansas.

Coach Reising attributes the success of the 1961 Defiance College team to the talent and chemistry of the eighteen players, saying, “I believe that, in a sport that celebrates team play, the 1961 Defiance College team possessed it and, therefore, the team as a whole merits recognition.”16

ROGER J. HAWKS is a retired engineering professor whose last position was with one of Defiance College’s “nearby traditional opponents.” Since his retirement, his research has concentrated on small college (Div. III and NAIA) baseball in Indiana, Michigan, and Ohio. This is his second contribution to the Baseball Research Journal.

Notes

1. Through the 2013 season the Defiance College baseball team has won 869 games and lost 1,049 with 11 ties.

2. “College Nine Launches Season Here Monday,” Defiance Crescent-News, April 7, 1961.

3. Jack Palmer, “Just a bunch of farm boys’ playing ball,” Defiance Crescent-News, October 27, 2013.

4. Snyder coached both the football and baseball teams at Defiance College from 1974 to 1979.

5. “College Ends Baseball Card With Bluffton,” Defiance Crescent-News, May 25, 1961.

6. “DC Picked For National NAIA Tourney,” Defiance Crescent-News, May 29, 1961.

7. Games were stopped if one team led by ten or more runs after seven innings.

8. “DC Teams Prepare For National Play,” Defiance Crescent-News, June 2, 1961.

9. “DC Tests Winona In Losers’ Bracket,” Defiance Crescent-News, June 7, 1961.

10. “National Baseball Championship Records,” www.naiahonors.com/ records/Baseball_UpdatedChampionshipRecords.pdf.

11. “Omaha U. Next Rival Of DC Nine,” Defiance Crescent-News, June 8, 1961.

12. Robert Reising, email correspondence, December 20, 2012.

13. “Division II Baseball Championship,” www.fs.ncaa.org/Docs/stats/ baseball_champs_records/2012/d2/DII.pdf.

14. There have been three 15 inning games in the College World Series (NCAA Div. I), and four 13 inning games in the NCAA Div. III National Tournament.

15. “Injury-Beset Defiance Ousted In NAIA Play, 9–1,” Defiance Crescent-News, June 9, 1961.

16. Robert Reising, email correspondence, August 16, 2013.