Jake Stenzel

In 1893, Jake Stenzel, then of the Pittsburgh Pirates, registered a streak of eleven hits in consecutive ABs, a performance which was detailed by Al Kermisch in the Baseball Research Journal in 1991.3 As stated by Kermisch, the Stenzel streak began on July 15, in a game against the Washington Senators, with three hits. Although he had five hits that day, the first five-hit performance of his career, it was the final three of those hits that began Stenzel’s streak.4 On July 17 against the Cleveland Spiders, Stenzel went four-for-four, with two walks, to bring the total to seven hits in seven consecutive at-bats. The Kermisch article incorrectly dates the next game to July 19 — it was July 18 — but nevertheless the streak was continued with four singles in six ABs.

I researched six relevant newspaper articles covering the game but unfortunately they only provide the details of when the first three hits occurred (singles in the first, second and fourth innings) as well as a ninth-inning strikeout.5 It isn’t clear in which at bat the fourth hit occurred. The Kermisch article didn’t include references but it seems fair to presume that Kermisch based his conclusion that “Stenzel singled in his first 4 times at bat to make it 11 hits in a row” on sound evidence. Eleven hits in eleven consecutive times at bat is significant of course, because it increases by one the NL record over that listed in Total Baseball and means that Speaker’s performance only tied the MLB record rather than set it.

But that’s not all. My research shows that Ed Delahanty also had eleven hits in consecutive ABs, rather than the 10 listed in Total Baseball.

Ed Delahanty

The Delahanty streak is demonstrably 11 hits in 11 at-bats. It began with the doubleheader games on July 13, 1897, with Delahanty playing for Philadelphia against the Louisville Colonels. In the first game he went four-for-four and in the second game five-for-five, making nine hits on the day. The streak continued the next day, also against Louisville, when Delahanty managed to get two more hits in his first two times at bat — in the first and fourth innings. That would make eleven hits in eleven consecutive ABs to equal the MLB record set by Stenzel in 1893.

Let us examine the evidence. The home and away newspapers covering the first game of the July 13 doubleheader differ markedly in their batting statistics for Delahanty. The Louisville newspapers listed Delahanty with only three hits in three at bats.6 The Philadelphia newspapers listed him with four hits in four at bats.7 The boxscore in Sporting Life along with the ICI game-by-game data sheets for Delahanty in 1897 each also indicated four hits in four at bats.8 After the Delahanty hit spree the Cleveland Plain Dealer newspaper commented:

“Delehanty [sic], the Phillies’ heavy hitting outfielder, must be afraid that Burkett may become the three-time champion batter. When he saw that the Cleveland hitter was crawling up, the Quaker champion took out a fresh supply of bats, and the way he has been hitting the ball is wonderful. Out of fifteen times at bat in the last three games, he has made fourteen hits [sic]. That is a record for the season.”9

Crediting Delahanty with only three hits in three at bats appears to be unique to the Louisville newspapers. The discrepancy apparently stems from whether or not Delahanty reached on an error in the seventh when his ball got past Clark at second base for Louisville. If the play was interpreted by the Louisville press as an error, that should have been reflected accordingly in the boxscore of the Louisville papers. Strangely, they neglected to do so. It is clear from the newspaper articles that Delahanty made a hit every time he came to bat and The Louisville Courier-Journal specifically alluded to Clark failing to corral balls off the bats of Delahanty and Lajoie.10 This could mean Clark had a shot at fielding the Delahanty hit in the seventh but wasn’t up to the task. If that was the case, then by rule Delahanty should be credited with a hit rather than Clark being credited with an error on the play.11 (There was also another discrepancy regarding the reporting of the first game on July 13, 1897, which is not relevant to this article.12)

Joe Kelley

Delahanty isn’t the only one whose achievements seem to be under-recorded. There is a discrepancy in the number of hits during consecutive ABs for Joe Kelley of the Baltimore Orioles during the 1894 season. As mentioned, Total Baseball lists Kelley with nine hits in consecutive ABs. My research shows the streak was actually ten.

The Kelley streak began with the game on September 1, 1894, with a hit in his final at bat, and finished with the doubleheader games on September 3, 1894, against the Cleveland Spiders. That day he went four for four in the first game and five for five in the second game, to add nine hits to the one that ended the previous game, totaling ten.

As with Delahanty, I examined multiple newspaper accounts of Kelley’s performance. In the September 1 game Kelley managed two hits — a double and a single — in three ABs and also reached on a base on balls. The September 1 game was played in Baltimore, the Orioles won 5–2 and it wasn’t necessary for them to bat in the ninth inning.13 The Cleveland Leader reports that Kelley managed a double in the first and a single in the seventh, which implies that Kelley’s two other plate appearances were likely in the third and fifth innings.14 One of them was a walk and the other had to be the second hit. (Kelley also came within one batter of batting in the eighth inning but Kid Gleason appears to have been the final out.) The ICI game-by-game data sheets also indicate that Kelley had a BB to go along with a double and a single.15 At the very least, his final at bat of the September 1 was unquestionably a hit.

Then we come to the doubleheader of September 3 in which Kelley went nine-for-nine across the two games. In fact, his performance in the second game is noteworthy because four of his five hits were doubles, which tied the NL (and MLB) record for most doubles in a game by an individual. Not only that, it was done in a six-inning game against none other than Cy Young. Baltimore had 22 hits, 12 of them doubles, off Young in that game, which may have been the most hits that Young gave up in six innings in his career. One reason for the preponderance of doubles may have been a ground rule that limited extra-base hits to two, and Kelley lost a home run due to this.16 Umpire Tim Keefe called the game off on account of darkness after six full innings had been played.

Jake Gettman

The last consecutive ABs with a hit performance that needs to be included in this discussion is that of Jake Gettman, who played with the Senators in 1897 and at the time of his acquisition by Washington was known as the “Keeler of the Texas League.”17 Gettman registered a mark of ten hits in ten consecutive ABs that began on September 10, 1897, with a four-for-four performance against the Cleveland Spiders, continued with a five-for-five performance on September 11 in the first game of a doubleheader against the Cincinnati Reds, and concluded with a single in his first AB in the second game. As I have just demonstrated, Gettman’s streak equaled the third best record of the nineteenth century — Kelley’s 10 in 1894 — and was third to Jake Stenzel’s 11 in 1893 and Delahanty’s 11 of a few months earlier in July 1897. In their coverage of Gettman’s feat, The Washington Post described him “… making ten successive hits out of ten turns at the bat, which will stand as a batting achievement for the season.”18 The Post were apparently unaware that Delahanty had recorded eleven hits in eleven consecutive ABs earlier in the 1897 season. Sporting Life published a short article that read:

“Washington, D. C., Sept. 12. — President Nick Young announced yesterday afternoon that Gettman’s feat of making 10 safe hits out of 10 consecutive times at the bat established a record in the National League. In Friday’s game against Cleveland Gettman made four hits, with a total of eight bases — two singles, a double and home run — and Saturday the first six times he faced the Cincinnati pitchers he drove out four singles, a three bagger and a home run, a total of 11 bases, and a grand total consecutively of 19 bases. This record is liable to stand unmarked for a long time.”19

Young may have been caught up in the fact that Gettman played for Washington, but apparently he, like The Washington Post, was not aware of the Delahanty performance, not to mention the previous performances of both Stenzel and Kelley.

BRIAN MARSHALL is an Electrical Engineering Technologist living in Barrie, Ontario, Canada, specializing in the application of power electronics as it relates to machine automation. Brian is a longtime researcher in various fields including power electronic engineering, entomology, NFL, Canadian Football and MLB. Brian has written many articles, winning awards for two of them, and two books in his 63 years. Brian has been a SABR member since 2013 and is a longtime member of the PFRA. Growing up, Brian played many sports, including football, rugby, hockey, and baseball, along with participating in power lifting and arm wrestling events, and aspired to be a professional football player, but when that didn’t materialize, he focused on Rugby Union and played off and on for 17 seasons in the “front row.”

Conclusion

This article has identified five errors in the record of hits in consecutive at bats as published in the sixth edition of Total Baseball. The sources of these errors vary, but it would appear based on erroneous contemporary statements by both the National League president and published newspaper reports, there was general unawareness of the individuals who recorded streaks of hits in consecutive at-bats, at least through the time when the 1927 issue of Balldom was published.20 The following changes should be made to create an accurate list of record-holders:

1. Jake Stenzel holds the NL record at 11 hits in 11 consecutive ABs and should be added to the list.

2. Ed Delahanty had 11 hits in 11 consecutive ABs, not 10.

3. Joe Kelley had 10 hits in 10 consecutive ABs, not 9.

4. The NL record should stand as 11 hits in 11 consecutive ABs; shared by 2 players.

5. Tris Speaker tied, rather than set, the MLB record at 11 hits in 11 consecutive ABs.

Notes

1John Thorn, Pete Palmer, Michael Gershman and David Pietrusza, Editors with Matthew Silverman and Sean Lahman. Total Baseball: The Official Encyclopedia of Major League Baseball, Sixth Edition. New York, NY: Total Sports, 1999, 236­–237.

One of the primary results of the analysis done for this paper is to show what happens to team BA over the course of a season and to see if there are any league-wide similarities over the course of a season. Once this analysis is complete, we will be able to establish how many games into the season are necessary to draw a conclusion about a team’s batting ability.

At the beginning of a season, people will sometimes say it’s too early to draw any conclusions about a team. For example, on April 12, 2018, with the San Francisco Giants’ record at 5-6, Grant Cohn wrote, “It’s way too early to make statements etched in stone about the Giants.”1 But just 17 days later when the Giants’ record was 13-14, C.W. Nevius stated, “ [D]on’t tell us it is early. If last year taught us anything, it is that the way a team starts a season can be an excellent predictor of how it ends a season.”2 How long does it take to be able to draw a reasonable conclusion? Does it require 50 games, 40 games, 20 games, or is it even fewer? The surprising conclusion from this analysis is that at the 16-game mark (roughly 10 percent of the season) you can be fairly certain whether a team will be weak-hitting or strong-hitting for the entire season.

Methodology

Retrosheet, provides game logs for every MLB game played during a season. These game logs provide hitting, pitching, and fielding data for both teams, which include hits and at bats for each team for the game. In order to perform the analysis in this paper we wrote a Visual Basic program to extract hits and at bats from the Retrosheet data for each game during a season. The data were aggregated game by game. This allowed team BA to be calculated after every game and a season-long series of team BA to be constructed. MLB data for the five years 2013–17 were used to provide the data for the analysis. The final team BA for every team, for each year, was compared with the final team BA shown in Baseball-Reference.com in order to ensure that the calculations were accurate. No discrepancies were found.

Results: Part 1

The data described above are used to produce a graph of a team’s BA as the season progresses. Figure 1 shows the plots for four randomly chosen NL teams in 2017.

Figure 1: Team Batting Average Through Season in 2017

(Click image to enlarge.)

Team BA varies considerably over the course of a season. The Giants’ BA declined consistently over the first 35 games of the season before bottoming at .225, and then climbing thereafter to finish at about .250. Philadelphia’s BA peaked at .260 at game 34, then declined to .240 over approximately the next 20 games, before finishing at .250. Seeing how team BA changes through a season is interesting, but those raw data can be used to answer more interesting questions. The team BA at the end of the season is the most accurate representation of how they batted in aggregate. We can use the data to find out how quickly teams approach their final season BA. To do that, the difference between the team BA at any point in the season and the final team BA is calculated. The results for the same four teams in Figure 1 are shown in Figure 2.

Figure 2

(Click image to enlarge.)

The graphs shown in Figure 2 are all within about five points of the final team BA by game 120 of the season, and three of the four are within five points by game 100. Except for the Cubs, the Figure 2 curves are roughly flat after game 100, which suggests that team BA for most teams doesn’t change too much after that point of the season. However, four teams is too small a sample to draw any general conclusions, so this analysis is repeated for all MLB teams for 2017. The results are shown in Figure 3.

Figure 3: BA Difference From End of Season For 2017

(Click image to enlarge.)

The results shown in Figure 3 clarify the smaller sample result in Figure 2. In 2017, team BA rose from game 20 to game 70 for MLB. For MLB as a whole, team BA rose by about 13 points from game 20 to game 70. Thirteen points is a large increase. On average, team BA improved significantly until about halfway through the season. Of course, this is only one year’s results. Does the same thing happen in other years? Figure 4 shows what happened in MLB overall for the years 2013–17.

Figure 4

(Click image to enlarge.)

Figure 4 shows that the general trend of team BA increasing over the first half of the season also occurs in 2013–17. In addition, the tendency increases from 2013–17. The increase in team BA over the first half of the season is larger in 2017 than in any of the other years.

This result matters because people may draw erroneous conclusions if they don’t know that team batting averages tend to rise until about mid-season. For example, in an article about no-hitters written roughly one-quarter of the way through the 2018 season, Dave Sheinin states, “Meantime, the league wide batting average of .245 (down 10 points from 2017 and 26 points from 1999) is at a 46-year low.”3 Sheinin is comparing end of season MLB baseball batting averages with an early season MLB batting average. Based on the result of this paper’s analysis, it’s very likely that the MLB batting average at the end of the 2018 season would be higher than .245, which would refute the point Sheinin is trying to make.

Finally, the Figure 4 result provides an answer to the perennial question of whether pitchers or hitters have an advantage early in the season. Jason Catania explored this question at the beginning of the 2014 season and concluded, “So while you might have expected pitchers to have an advantage early on relative to the rest of the season … the results don’t always bear that out, at least in recent years.”4 In contrast to what Catania found, Figure 4 shows (at least recently) that pitchers have an advantage over hitters in terms of batting average during the early stages of a season.

Results: Part 2A

There is another interesting question that can be examined, given the time series of team BA that was used to generate the previous results: How many games into the season does it take to determine a team’s batting prowess? Obviously, a game or two is not sufficient, but how many games into the season are required to draw a reasonably accurate conclusion about whether a team will be a strong- or weak-hitting team over the course of the season? “Common wisdom” has said that it can take 30-40 games to know the true character of a team. Those numbers are anecdotal. What do the actual data say?

To analyze this question, we compared team batting averages to the league average at 16-game intervals through the first half of the season. Sixteen games is chosen because it represents about 10 percent of the season. Those differences are compared to the difference from the league batting average at the end of the season. For example, in 2017, the Giants were batting .233 after 16 games, while the NL overall batting average was .240. At the end of the season, the Giants were batting .249 while the NL overall batting average was .254. The differences between these pairs of numbers, -.007 and -.005, are multiplied by 1000 to become one point in Figure 5. The same analysis is done for all fifteen NL teams for 2013–17 to generate the 75 datum points shown in Figure 5. The same analysis is done separately for the AL (because of the designated hitter) with the results shown in Figure 6.

Figure 5: The NL, 2013-17

(Click image to enlarge.)

Figure 6: The AL, 2013-17

(Click image to enlarge.)

A linear regression is run to establish the relationship between team BA differences at game 16 and team BA differences at the end of the season. The regression lines are the dotted lines in the two figures, with the equations and regression coefficients shown in the upper right corner of each figure. The coefficients of 0.26 for the NL and 0.21 for the AL show two things. First, the relationship between the differences in team BA at game 16 and team BA at game 162 is positive, so a higher (lower) team BA difference at game 16 will tend to indicate a higher (lower) team BA difference at game 162. The magnitude of the coefficients indicates that if the team BA at game 16 is 10 points above (below) the league average, then the best estimate of team batting average at game 162 will be 2.6 (NL) and 2.1 (AL) points above (below) the league average at game 162. The t-statistic associated with the NL coefficient of 0.26 is 4.8 and the t-statistic associated with the AL coefficient of 0.21 is 4.6. Both of these t-statistics are statistically significant at the one percent level, and indicate that there is a strong relationship between the difference in BA at game 16 and the difference in BA at game 162. In other words, looking at a team’s BA compared to the league average at game 16 of the season can give you a pretty good idea of how the team’s BA will be compared to the league at the end of the season. The diagnostics associated with the regressions in Figures 5 and 6 are shown in the Appendix.

Results: Part 2B

The fact that there is a statistically significant relationship between team BA differences at games 16 and 162 is important, but not very useful in practice. However, it would be useful to know how likely it is that a weak (strong) hitting team at game 16 will be a weak (strong) hitting team through the rest of the season. The data in Figures 5 and 6 allow us to answer that question. We ignore teams whose BA is within five points of the league average at game 16 (those between the two heavy vertical lines). These teams are hitting near the league average, so for one of them to finish the season above or below the league average would not be very surprising.

That leaves Figures 5 and 6 divided into six quadrants that are labeled Q1, Q2 etcetera. The points in Q1 represent teams that were more than five points below the league average at game 16 and were more than five points below the league average at the end of the season. For these teams, their performance at game 16 accurately predicted their below average performance at game 162. Points in Q3 represent teams that were batting more than five points below the league average at game 16 but are more than five points above average at season’s end. These teams saw significantly improved batting performance over the course of the season. Similar statements can be made for the teams in Q4 and Q6 except that teams in Q6 saw significantly worse batting performance as the season progressed.

The numbers of teams in each quadrant allows us to assess a probability that a team that is in Q1 or Q4 at game 16 will stay there. For example, in Figure 5, there are 26 teams who were batting more than five points below the league average at game 16. Thirteen of those teams were also batting five points or more below league average at game 162. The analogous numbers for the AL in Figure 6 are 32 and 16. Combining the data for the two leagues together yields a total of 29 out of 58 teams that remained in Q1 between game 16 and game 162. This is exactly half, or 50 percent of the teams. The combined numbers for both leagues in Q4 are 26 out of 60, or 43 percent. These results show that a below-average batting average team at game 16 has a 50 percent chance of being a below-average batting average team for the whole season. The data in Q4 show that above-average hitting teams at game 16 have a 43 percent chance of staying above-average for the whole season. It’s also important to note that a below-average hitting team at game 16 has only a 6 out of 58 chance, roughly 10 percent, of ending the season with a BA more than five points above the league average. An above-average hitting team at game 16 has a 10 out of 60 chance, 17 percent, of hitting more than five points below average by the end of the season.

These results suggest that weak or strong hitting teams at game 16 tend to stay that way. But what happens as the season progresses? Data that are applicable at only one point in the season aren’t very useful. Therefore the analysis just described was also done at the 32, 48, 64, and 80 game marks of the season. The results are shown in Figure 7.

Figure 7

(Click image to enlarge.)

Figure 7 shows what happens as the season progresses. The Q1 and Q4 results show that the percentages of weak (strong) hitting teams that stay that way over the course of the season increase as the season progresses. For example, in Q1, 70 percent of the teams that are hitting poorly at game 64 of the season will stay that way, compared against 50 percent at game 16. Only two out of 57 teams—3.5 percent—that were hitting below average at game 64 ended the season more than five points above the league average. The Q3 results as a group show that the chances of a weak hitting team improving to hit five points or more above the league average by the end of the season start at ten percent and decline as the season progresses. It is interesting to compare the Q1 and Q4 results as groups. The lower percentages in Q4 show that it is more likely that teams that are hitting well early in the season will see deteriorating hitting performance. The slightly higher percentages in Q6 as a group compared with Q3 tell the same story.

Conclusion

Data for 2013–17 show that team batting averages tend to rise over the first half of the season for MLB as a whole (Figure 4). The difference between team BA and the league average at games 16, 32, 48, 64, and 80 is plotted against the difference between team BA and the league average at the end of the season (Figures 5, 6). The results show that there is a statistically significant relationship between these two differences, even at game 16 of the season. In other words, it only takes about 10 percent of the season to get a reasonably good idea if a team is going to be a strong- or weak-batting average team for the whole season. Finally, Figure 7 shows that a team that is batting at least five points below (above) the league batting average at game 16 has a 50 percent (43 percent) chance of hitting more than five points below (above) the league average at the end of the season.

DOUGLAS JORDAN is a professor at Sonoma State University in Northern California where he teaches corporate finance and investments. He has been a SABR member since 2012. He runs marathons when he’s not watching or writing about baseball. Email him at douglas.jordan@sonoma.edu.

DAVID MACIAS is a Faculty Member at Sonoma State University in Northern California where he teaches Accounting and Income Tax. David has also been a manager in a Research Organization and a SABR member since 2018. The article “Team Batting Average: A comprehensive Analysis” is his first contribution to the BRJ. He plays golf when he’s not watching baseball. Contact David at maciadav@sonoma.edu.

Notes

1 Grant Cohn, “Missed Opportunity,” The Press Democrat (Santa Rosa, CA), Sports section, page 1, April 12, 2018.

2 C.W. Nevius, “Creaky Giants ship continues to take on water,” The Press Democrat (Santa Rosa, CA), Sports section, page 1, April 29, 2018.

3 Dave Sheinin, “No-hitters (and near-misses) show how MLB is changing — but is it for the better?” Washington Post, May 11, 2018. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/sports/wp/2018/05/11/no-hitters-and-near-misses-show-how-mlb-is-changing-but-is-it-for-the-better/?utm_term=.cc69f31525f1

4 Jason Catania, “Do Hitters or Pitchers Have the Upper Hand Early in the MLB Season?” April 1, 2014, https://bleacherreport.com/articles/2013296

We will investigate this question with both subjective and quantitative approaches. We will take a look at temporal (historical), spatial (geographical), and social (Twitter) aspects of this issue. We will then consider some objectively measurable quantities (victories, attendance figures, head-to-head competitions, social buzz, etc.) to arrive at a plausible conclusion.

HISTORY AND SUBJECTIVE ANALYSIS

In 1903 three major league teams played within the five boroughs which now comprise New York City. The Giants, Yankees (also known as the Highlanders), and the Dodgers (also called the Robins and the Superbas) all vied for local fans. John McGraw ruled his “Jints” with an iron hand and won a number of pennants and a World Championship (1905). Whether the Dodgers (one pennant) or the Yankees (no pennants) were the second-favorite team in town is immaterial. The New York Giants ruled New York. From 1903 till 1919, New York was a National League City.

At that point, one could not easily envision McGraw’s Giants succumbing to any challenge in the foreseeable future. In fact, these very Giants would win four successive pennants (1921–24) with world titles in 1921 and 1922. (Who could have predicted that they would not win another World Series for over three decades?)

But Babe Ruth ushered in the Roaring Twenties and his 1920 Yankees would draw over 1,000,000 fans, in the Giants’ own Polo Grounds, no less. The Bambino would hit 54 home runs, outhomering 14 of the remaining 15 Major League teams. Ruth did not dominate the sport; he transcended the game. He did even better in 1921, and everybody wanted to see The Babe.

The die was cast. McGraw wanted the Yankees to leave the Polo Grounds, which they did in 1923 for a grand new stadium which would only solidify the position of the Yankees in the hearts of New Yorkers.

Then came Lou Gehrig. In 1925, the Iron Horse began a streak without missing a game for a decade and a half. In 1936, Joe DiMaggio came aboard, and would lead the Yankees to four straight World Series titles. Even with the likes of Carl Hubbell and Mel Ott … from 1920 till 1939, New York was an American League City.

From 1940 through the late 1950s, the three New York teams dominated post-season play, especially the Dodgers and the Yankees. The Bombers were nearly unbeatable in October. And heated debates on street corners throughout the boroughs about the three New York City center fielders—Willie, Mickey, and The Duke—were reflective of the passion New Yorkers had for baseball. During this period, one is tempted to say that New Yorkers were really aligned with their boroughs, giving the National League a 2-1 edge over the Junior Circuit. However, the attendance figures don’t tell the whole story, especially in light of the fact that the Dodgers and Giants would soon abandon New York for greener pastures. For now, let’s say that New York was pretty much split on this question from 1940 till 1957.

The year was 1958. With the Dodgers now in Los Angeles and the Giants now in San Francisco, New York was clearly an American League City from 1958 till 1961, with the Yankees winning three Pennants and two World Series in these four years.

The same was also true in both 1962 (Yankees were World Series winners against the Giants) and 1963 (they lost the World Series to the Dodgers) …and possibly in 1964 (and they lost again, this time to the St. Louis Cardinals). New York was still an American League City. This was true even though the National League had returned to New York with the birth of the Mets in 1962.

But 1964 was also a year of transition. The Yankees fired manager Yogi Berra after losing the World Series (after which Berra promptly went to the Mets). The Yankees were getting old with icons like Mickey Mantle and Whitey Ford showing signs of their age. The hallowed House That Ruth Built, Yankee Stadium, was also showing its age, while the New Breed (as the Mets were called) moved from the venerable Polo Grounds to Shea Stadium, a ballpark with no posts or girders to obstruct the vision of the fans.

As time went on, the Mets were slowly getting better and better, while the Yankees kept getting worse and worse. The Amazin’s (as the Mets were also called) won the World Series in 1969, under the tutelage of Dodgers legend Gil Hodges and nearly won another world title in 1973 under Yankees icon Yogi Berra. From 1965 till 1973, New York was a National League City.

But the pendulum was swinging back because of a bombastic shipbuilder by the name of George M. Steinbrenner. The Boss would become the principal owner of the Yankees and would not quit until his Bombers were back on top of the heap. From 1973 thru 1981, the Yankees won four pennants and two World Championships. His “Bronx Zoo” teams, Billy Martin, Thurman Munson, Reggie Jackson, et al, provided fodder for the back page of the New York Daily News virtually every day, and twice on Sundays. In a journalistic sense, the Mets did not even exist. From 1974 till the early 1980s, New York was an American League City. 

The pendulum came back again in the early 1980s. With superstars like Dwight Gooden, Darryl Strawberry, Keith Hernandez and Gary Carter, the Mets would win the World Series in 1986. They owned New York, not only that year, but for the next few years as well. However, they were to win no more pennants until 2000. The Yankees actually had the best record in the major leagues for that decade. However, neither New York team wore the world crown from 1987 onwards … so, primarily based on the second half of the decade, New York was a National League City from 1982 until 1989.

Over the next seven years, the Mets finished only once with a winning season (1990). The Yankees did not start out well, but they began to turn the corner in 1993, and actually led the American League East division in 1994, only to be stymied by a work stoppage. The tide was turning back to the American League. However, at this point, let us say that New York was pretty much split on this question from 1990 till 1995.

All of this was to change in 1996. George Steinbrenner was still at the controls and players like Derek Jeter, Mariano Rivera, Jorge Posada and the like would bring a new era of winning to the Yankees. They would win World Series titles in 1996, 1998, 1999, 2000, and 2009.

Regarding the 2000 Series, New York would host a Subway Series for the first time since 1956. The Yankees went on to defeat the Mets in five games, with most media reporting that there seemedto be more Yankees fans at Shea Stadium than Mets followers at Yankee Stadium.2

In any event, from 1996 to the present, New York is an American League City.

The following table summarizes our subjective calculations:

TABLE 1: NEW YORK CITY PREFERENCES

Note that from a geographical point of view, the boroughs of Queens and Brooklyn seem to be Mets territory while the Bronx, Staten Island, and Manhattan have more Yankees rooters. Long Island pretty much belongs to the Mets while southern Connecticut and northern New Jersey is saturated with Bombers. Measuring fanship by ticket sale location versus team predominantly preferred on Facebook yields slightly different results, but the map below depicts the general fanship borders by borough.3, 4

NEW YORK MAP OF STADIUMS AND BOROUGHS

Figure 1: New York City Map Showing Stadiums and their Proximity to each Borough5

(Click image to enlarge.)

QUANTITATIVE ANALYSIS

It is time now to switch gears and to crunch the numbers. From this quantitative approach, we will not only consider the “league-wise head-to-head” win-loss records of the four teams in questions (New York Giants, Brooklyn Dodgers, New York Yankees, and New York Mets), but also attendance figures. While fans do not always turn out for a winner, history has clearly indicated that when teams win, they are more likely to draw more fans than when they lose.

It pretty much follows, then, that if a team is better on the field and more fans are coming to the home field of the better of two teams (or the best out of three teams), it seems plausible to conclude that the league which is represented by this team is the preferred league in the city.

The Win-Loss records of the teams in question were easy to obtain.6The following three tables reveal how the New Yorkers performed on the field.

TABLE 2: PENNANTS AND WORLD SERIES

*No World Series in 1904 or 1994.

TABLE 3: YANKEES VS NY NATIONAL LEAGUE IN WORLD SERIES

TABLE 4: INTERLEAGUE PLAY

If New Yorkers love a winner, then, based on the data above, the Big Apple is clearly an American League city.

We next took a look at the attendance figures. Unlike the Win-Loss records, the attendance figures were much harder to analyze due to a number of factors, especially when trying to compare the National League versus the American League. This was primarily due to the fact that until 2000, the Senior Circuit used turnstile numbers while their counterparts in the American League used ticket sales.7

Most probably, all things being equal, the National League’s method of reckoning would have given them a figure less than what would have been reported for the American League. For example, if, in 1990, the Mets reported 2,000,000 as their season’s attendance and the Yankees reported the same number, chances are the Mets would have sold more than 2,000,000 tickets. But by how many? That’s the question.

What we decided to do was to adjust National League attendance figures from 1903 through 1999, by multiplying them by a generous factor of 1.1. So, in the example above, the 1990 Mets would have had an Adjusted Attendance of 2,000,000 *1.1 = 2,200,000. This would mean that 200,000 tickets went unused.8

The following tables summarize the New York City attendance figures from 1903 through 1957, (Giants, Dodgers, and Yankees) and from 1962 through 2017 (Mets and Yankees).9

TABLE 5: NEW YORK CITY ATTENDANCE FIGURES, 1903–57

TABLE 6: NYC ATTENDANCE FIGURES, 1962–2017

These numbers pretty much speak for themselves, no?

A final comment about league preference: the fact is that from 1903 through 1957, the National League played approximately twice as many games as the Yankees did in New York City, because there were two National League teams in residence. This would seem to give an enormous edge to the Senior Circuit … yet, the numbers do not seem to bear this out.

To be sure, there have been ebbs and flows, and there were times when McGraw’s Giants and the Amazin’ Mets owned the city, but by and large—both on the field and in the stands—it seems that for a majority of seasons, a majority of New Yorkers preferred the American League. This has been especially true in recent times. The last time the Mets outdrew the Yankees was in 1992, even though they won the National League pennant in 2015. And with the 2018 Yankees boasting several media-friendly, marketable stars such as Aaron Judge and Giancarlo Stanton, we don’t see the trend changing for the foreseeable future.

SOCIAL MEDIA ANALYSIS

Another element we’d like to discuss is the social media aspect of fanship. Which team generates a larger buzz in social media? When a team is discussed on social networking websites, is it generally positive or negative? Using specialized software we were able to quantify and analyze Twitter discussions of the current New York teams.

Using the rtweet package in R we conducted the following analysis on tweets from October 13, 2018, through October 23, 2018, by searching terms “New York Yankees” and “New York Mets.”111 During this time period, both teams were out of the playoffs and looking towards their offseason. The search terms include both the city name and the mascot as to eliminate superfluous tweets when the terms “Yankees” or “Mets” would be used out of the context of baseball. We are assuming that if a tweet contains one of these search terms, then it represents a fan of that specific team expressing their feelings about their team. We are assuming outside actors to be very limited.

Figure 2: The New York Yankees Generate a Larger Twitter Buzz than Their National League Counterpart

(Click image to enlarge.)

At first glance, we can see there is a clear favor in mass of tweets favoring the Yankees. More people are tweeting about the “New York Yankees” than the “New York Mets.”

Taking a deeper look, when people tweet about these teams, what is their sentiment?

Figure 3: Yankees Fans Generate More Emotion in Their Tweets than the New York Mets

(Click image to enlarge.)

The raw counts show more Yankees fans expressing more emotion towards their team, but that is a factor of having more tweets about the Yankees. Let’s look at emotion words per tweet about that team.

Figure 4: Tweets Involving the Yankees Involve More Negative Emotions than the Mets

(Click image to enlarge.)

Figure 4 reveals some very interesting points. While the Yankees tweet more about their team, on average, the Yankees fans are more negative towards the Yankees than Mets fans toward the Mets. The Yankees fans express more sadness, anger, and distrust towards their team while the Mets fans express more trust. Although the Yankees fans are more active on Twitter, they are more negative and pessimistic than their Mets fan counterparts.

Based on this analysis, we consider the current social landscape of both teams to be close. However, due to the overwhelming mass of tweets which include the term “New York Yankees” both negative and positive, the scale slides in favor of the Yankees “owning” New York.

CONCLUSION

New York City’s storied history of great American and National League baseball give each league claim to be the apple of the Big Apple’s eye. Throughout the last century plus, both leagues have fought on the diamond, in World Series, in fan attendance, geography, and even most recently, social networking websites. We’ve analyzed each area and we tip the scales in favor of New York being an American League City.

DUSTY TURNER is a Major in the United States Army who is currently an Assistant Professor at the United States Military Academy at West Point and teaches Sabermetrics. He has previously served as an Army Engineer and Operations Research Systems Analyst. Contact Dusty at dusty.s.turner@gmail.com or via twitter @dtdusty.

GABRIEL B. COSTA is a Catholic priest and mathematics professor who is currently on an extended Academic Leave from Seton Hall University. He is a member of SABR and has published in the BRJ in the past. You can contact him at gabriel.costa@westpoint.edu.

APPENDIX: ALL TIME TEAMS

As an addendum to this discussion, we would like to present a comparison between an All Time Yankees Team and an All Time New York City National League Team.

We made our selections and evaluations using the following guidelines:

• We took the liberty of moving some players to a different position (e.g., leaving Joe DiMaggio in center field while stationing Mickey Mantle in left field).
• We considered players’ records for only the years they played in the Big Apple (1903 through 2013). For example, Sandy Koufax would make an All-Time Los Angeles Dodgers team, but not its Brooklyn counterpart.
• We gave the edge to one player over another only if we felt it was clear that he was truly superiorto the other.
• We picked two catchers for each team.
• We chose a pitching staff composed of five starting pitchers and one reliever.

TABLE 7: THE ALL TIME TEAMS

Comment: The Iron Horse was the greatest first baseman ever and the consummate clean-up hitter.

Comment: Had Robinson Cano stayed in New York, he may well have been the greatest keystone sacker to ever play there.

Jeter may well be the second greatest shortstop ever, ranking behind only Honus Wagner.

Comment: A-Rod has too much baggage.

Comment: NL tandem has edge in power, but AL has edge in hitting, fielding and rings.

Comment: Mickey over Duke…but not by that much…call it a push.

Comment: Only Solomon could determine which one rates over the other.

Comment: Melvin was the Master, but there was/is only one Sultan.

Comment: AL has four Hall of Famers with Pettitte a possibility … but NL staff comprised of Big Six, The Meal Ticket and Tom Terrific gets the nod.

Comment: Nobody is close to the Great Mariano.

Comment: Can’t do better than these two icons.

Prediction: Because of superior hitting and Mariano Rivera, the Yankees would defeat NYC NL in a seven-game Series, 4-2.

Notes

1   “New York Fans In Yankees State Of Mind, Quinnipiac University Baseball Poll Finds; But Teams Are Close In New York City.” March 31, 2017. https://poll.qu.edu/new-york-state/release-detail?ReleaseID=2447.

2   Lapointe, Joe. “BASEBALL: SUBWAY SERIES; Strangers in a Strange Land: Yankee Fans at Shea.” The New York Times. October 26, 2000. Accessed February 22, 2019. https://www.nytimes.com/2000/10/26/sports/baseball-subway-series-strangers-in-a-strange-land-yankee-fans-at-shea.html.

3   TOM GIRATIKANON, JOSH KATZ. “Up Close on Baseball’s Borders.” The New York Times. April 24, 2014. Accessed February 22, 2019. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/04/23/upshot/24-upshot-baseball.html.

4   “Infographics: Where Mets and Yankees Fans Live.” Vivid Seats. Accessed February 22, 2019. https://www.vividseats.com/blog/infographics-where-mets-and-yankees-fans-live.

5   Joe Cheng, Bhaskar Karambelkar and Yihui Xie (2018). Leaflet: Create Interactive Web Maps with the JavaScript ‘Leaflet’ Library. R package version 2.0.0. https://CRAN.R-project.org/package=leaflet

6   “MLB Stats, Scores, History, & Records.” https://www.baseball-reference.com/.

7   Belson, Ken. “The Official Attendance Can Become Empty of Meaning.” The New York Times. September 22, 2012. Accessed February 25, 2019. https://bats.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/09/22/the-official-attendance-can-become-empty-of-meaning/.

8   Is 1.1 a reasonable guess? Clearly this factor could be raised or lowered. Our strong suspicion is that it should be lowered to perhaps 1.05. In any case, for the sake of argument, all Adjusted comparative National League seasonal attendance figures (from 1903 through 1999) were multiplied by 1.1.

9   Baseball Almanac, http://www.baseball-almanac.com/teams/laatte.shtml.

10   Michael W Kearney (2018). rtweet: Collecting Twitter Data. R package version 0.6.7 Retrieved from https://cran.r-project.org/package=rtweet

11   R Core Team (2018). R: A language and environment for statistical computing. R Foundation for Statistical Computing, Vienna, Austria. URL https://www.R-project.org/.

A young man from rural Akron, Iowa, Heeren had some familiarity with one major-league baseball player known as Ducky Holmes. In 1941, Heeren’s uncle, Robert Tucker, was a first baseman and pitcher for the Dayton Ducks, a Middle Atlantic League team managed by one Howard “Ducky” Holmes. The Ducky Holmes in my book is James William Holmes, who played for and managed the Sioux City Packers in 1908. The photo caption is correct about that, but it incorrectly adds that he “caught for the St. Louis Cardinals in 1906.”

It was Howard, not James, who was a catcher for St. Louis that year. Although Howard Holmes had an extensive career in baseball, his time as a big-league player consisted of a mere nine games for the Cardinals. But the conflation of Duckys does not end there. Enthusiastically handing me articles and records he had judiciously gathered from reliable Internet sources, Heeren proved that at least three different baseball players by the name of Ducky Holmes played in the major leagues during the same era.

Appalled by my own error, I thanked the young man, promising to somehow make restitution. Thus I embarked on a perplexing, mesmerizing quest to detail and separate the three Duckys. Little did I know that my research would yield not just three, but five professional baseball players named Ducky Holmes. Numbers four and five never advanced beyond the minor leagues, but their very existence plunged my study down a multitude of wrong-way paths. Of course, as a historian, that only deepened my stubborn need to “set the record straight.”

The following short biographies should assist anyone seeking the true identity of any one of these Duckys. Here are all five Duckys in a row:

JAMES WILLIAM “DUCKY” HOLMES (1869–1932)

Born in Des Moines, Iowa, James William Holmes, frequently referred to as William, is the first — or some would say “the real” — Ducky Holmes in baseball. Born over a decade before the others, his stretch as a professional baseball player surpasses those of his namesakes by far. A good all-around athlete who batted left and threw right, he proved capable at any position but was typically designated as an outfielder. Significantly, the annals of baseball history portray him as an archetypal bad boy of the sport. Stories of his quick-tempered nature abound. One could easily envision a Hollywood movie featuring him as the title character. There would be no need for hyperbole, as his escapades prove the adage that truth is stranger than fiction.

The son of Arch and Eliza Holmes, William grew up on a farm near Truro, Iowa, about 40 miles south of Des Moines. At one point during his youth, he worked in the hay camps and barns of the small town of Rolfe. He also caught for that town’s baseball club during the season that was reportedly “Rolfe’s greatest baseball year.”2 William began his professional playing career in Beatrice, Nebraska, sometime between 1890 and 1892, and he was sold to the Western Association’s St. Joseph club in 1893.3 In the same league the following year, he played for Des Moines, then Quincy in early 1895. His first major-league job was with the Louisville Colonels in 1895. From there, he spent nearly a decade bouncing to six more clubs, three more in the National League, then three in the American League. As a player, he posted respectable, sometimes above-average, statistics. His best year was with Baltimore in 1899, when he ended the season with a batting average of .320. By the time a knee injury suffered in 1905 with the White Sox effectively ended his big-league career, he had built a reputation for spawning quarrels and controversy.

While playing left field for Baltimore against the New York Giants at the Polo Grounds on July 25, 1898, James William “Ducky” Holmes, a former Giant, responded to fans’ jeers by referring to Giants owner Andrew Freedman as a “Sheeney.” Freedman, who was Jewish, took exception to the ethnic slur. When the umpire refused to eject Holmes from the game at Freedman’s request, he ordered Giants manager Bill Joyce to keep his players on the bench. The umpire then forfeited the game to Baltimore. This sparked an ongoing feud in what SABR’s Bill Lamb describes as a “bruising 17-month battle among National League magnates that culminated in nothing less than the restructure of major-league baseball.”4

Playing for Detroit in 1902, Ducky traded barbs with his former teammate John McGraw in a game at Baltimore. (*See below for a correction.) After getting a hit and heading for third on an infield play, he jumped high and slid into McGraw, resolutely stationed at third, striking him on the knee with both feet. Getting up, McGraw punched Ducky, who landed one on Mugsy’s jaw. The Orioles’ player-manager, destined to manage the Giants for 30 seasons, sometimes called “Little Napoleon,” and eventually enshrined in the Hall of Fame, left the field that day “never to return again as a regular player.”5

Following his stint with Chicago, Holmes purchased the Lincoln, Nebraska, team in 1906, the year it joined the Western League. He served as player-manager for the Class A club, named the Ducklings after him. After finishing second with a 75–74 record in 1906, Ducky’s team started ’07 as the Lincoln Tree Planters. Notably, the Planters’ lead pitcher was Eddie Cicotte, who later gained notoriety in the Chicago Black Sox scandal. At season’s end, Ducky sold the Lincoln Club to Guy W. Green, then purchased the Sioux City Packers in the same league. Several years later, Green contended that at the time of the sale, Holmes manipulated the Lincoln players in an effort to “land them in Sioux City.”6 He claimed that one of the men Ducky tried to influence was center fielder Bill Davidson, who moved up to the Chicago Cubs in 1909.

Ducky’s Packers captured the Western League pennant in 1908. And even if the charge that Ducky tried to recruit Lincoln players was true, it does not appear to have been successful. The next season, Sioux City finished second in the eight-team league, just a hair behind the Des Moines Boosters. Despite his questionable reputation, William “Ducky” Holmes had proven his aptitude for management. That likely persuaded Toledo Mud Hens ownership to sign him as player-manager in 1910.

However, his time with that American Association club was short lived. When he returned from a road trip, the club’s president reportedly called him to task for unspecified offenses. It was also rumored that Ducky wanted his own club and “had bought an interest in the Des Moines club of the Western League.”7 Rather than face firing, he announced his resignation on June 6. News soon surfaced that revealed he had more than baseball on his mind at the time.

The marriage of William “Ducky” Holmes to Merte Rogers, a Sioux City public school teacher, was announced on June 11. The Waterloo Evening Courier reported that the wedding had taken place several weeks earlier while “the Toledo team was playing in the Twin Cities.”8 That of course, would be during the road trip in question. The news item reporting the marriage also included the fact that Ducky had divorced the previous winter. Significantly, in a suit in Rapid City, South Dakota, his ex-wife had charged him with desertion. Yet none of the adverse publicity prevented him from being chosen as manager of the Mobile Sea Gulls of the Southern Association for 1911. But his position there proved contentious from the start.

Late in April of that season, word came of the quarrelsome Mobile manager’s suspension by the league president. Ducky was charged with insulting Umpire Collidower by referring to him as a “common vegetable.”9 The suspension didn’t last long, but neither did Mobile’s new manager. On June 12, Holmes was fired after he engaged in a fistfight with Mobile director Harry Hartwell. One newspaper account claimed that “trouble had been brewing for some time.”10 Following his suspension over the umpire incident, Holmes had been fined $500 for language on the field and for an alleged attempt to get recompense in the sale of pitcher Frank Allen to Brooklyn.11 (Allen would go to the Dodgers in 1912.) Additionally, there were charges that Ducky incited the Mobile players to mutiny, made side contracts, and attempted to keep players from the field in order to cause forfeiture of games.12 The same news story that made these charges reported that Holmes blamed his firing on Southern prejudice against a Northerner.

Taking his dispute with Mobile to the National Commission, Holmes presented his contract as evidence that he was the club’s business manager. He claimed that he should have been paid his salary for the unexpired portion of the contract.13 The end result of his claim, or if he was ever forced to pay the fine, are unknown. There is some evidence that he finished the 1911 season with the Victoria Bees, who finished last in the six-team Northwestern League. The following season found him back managing clubs in the Midwest, starting with a short stay with the Class D Nebraska City Forresters, then back to Sioux City in 1912 and part of 1913. One undated newspaper account of his resigning from the Packers on June 6, 1913, reveals that he had a ranch in Montana. That was reportedly his next destination.14 This fits with records of his time with the Union Association’s Butte Miners in 1914. But he soon returned to Nebraska, managing Lincoln in 1916–17.

In 1918, managing Sioux City again, the restless Ducky Holmes prepared to travel to France to represent the YMCA in war welfare work, but the Armistice that ended World War I canceled his journey.15 Then, in January 1919, his purported interest in the Des Moines club again surfaced. He attempted to purchase that Western League franchise from Des Moines Mayor Tom Fairweather, former president of the Sioux City club. Ducky offered to buy the Class A Boosters outright, with the intention of moving the team to Lincoln, whose club did not have a minor-league franchise at the time. When that offer was turned down, Holmes proposed to lease the Des Moines ballpark and to keep the Boosters in that city. Both offers were refused.16

A curious side note to this story is that in January 1918, a devastating fire had destroyed the former Western League Lincoln ballpark’s grandstand and the clubhouse, which served as caretaker Edward McConnell’s residence. McConnell was away at the time, but his wife and five-year-old daughter were at home and suffered serious burns. Fortunately, the ballclub carried $3,000 insurance on the grandstand. The Lincoln Daily State Journal reported that just before the fire started, Mrs. McConnell heard the sound of an automobile and voices. The story goes on to say: “It is not the belief of Ducky Holmes that anyone would intentionally set fire to the ball park.”17 This sheds some suspicion on Holmes himself, having managed Lincoln the previous season. It is conceivable that he might have had a financial interest in the concern at the time.

Unable to acquire a Western League franchise in 1919, Ducky finally settled for an amateur team in Brownville, Nebraska, in 1920. That year he managed and played third base for the Apple Pickers, and he may have owned the club. The townsfolk were elated that not only would a prominent baseball figure control its team, but that a municipal election yielded a go-ahead for Sunday baseball.18 (Some Midwestern towns banned the practice at the time.) Still living in Brownville early in 1921, Ducky umpired in a number of Class B Three-I League games and also served as “one of Charles Comiskey’s scouts.”19 In July, his contrary nature surfaced in his umpiring, as evidenced by an altercation that resulted in fines being levied on the Moline Plowboys’ manager and a player, and Holmes taking a short leave of absence, which he would soon make permanent. “Ducky Holmes is no longer on Al Tearney’s officiating corps,” the Moline Dispatch reported. “After the breakdown here last Monday it is said Ducky beat it for home in Lincoln, Nebraska.  Enuf is enuf, is the way Holmes put it.”20

In 1922, Ducky started the season managing the Fort Smith Twins of the Western Association in Arkansas. Transient as ever, he ended up in Nebraska, helming the Beatrice Blues in July. True to form, late in August, he got into a brouhaha with an umpire and was escorted from the field by the local police. He was promptly fired and “ordered out of the lot for assaulting umpire ‘Dutch’ Meyers.”21 By then, he was no longer married to Merte. She married Elmer Eugene Theno in Lincoln on January 7, 1922.

As time passed, Ducky continued working in baseball as an umpire and scout. In an undated letter from John J. McMahon, an insurance representative from Des Moines, addressed to Billy Coad, owner of the semipro Le Mars (Iowa) Orioles, the writer recommends Mr. “Ducky” Holmes, “a former Western League umpire,” to serve as umpire “in that part of the country.”22 McMahon adds that Holmes “comes reasonable and can also give you reference Chas. Dexter, a former Major League . . .” The mention of Dexter confirms that the Ducky being backed is James William. Charlie Dexter was a teammate of his when he played for the National League Louisville Colonels in the 1890s. As Coad’s Le Mars club was founded in 1926, the correspondence was typed then or later. During that year, Ducky was living in Sioux City, which is near Le Mars. Soon, stories arose that he was bargaining to purchase Lincoln’s Class A Western League Links.23

Apparently, Ducky’s plan to buy the Links failed: During the summer of 1927, a Le Mars paper announced that he had been hired to manage a new Sioux City Stockyards team.24 The city didn’t have a minor-league club at the time. In the same publication, a story appeared about his appointment as coach of the team in Merrill, a small town between Le Mars and Sioux City. Some of the players being sought by Ducky for Sioux City were then with the Merrill and Le Mars clubs.

Finally, after suffering from ill health for several years, James William “Ducky” Holmes died at the age of 63 in his hometown of Truro on August 5, 1932. He was survived by two brothers and two sisters. But he had outlived his ex-wife, Merte. Lincoln newspapers confirm that Merte, Mrs. E. E. Theno, retired from an 11-year teaching position in Lincoln in 1927. She died on October 29, 1929, while on a trip to Pasadena, California. There is no mention of children or of her first husband in her obituary.25 Local news items reveal that people in Lincoln had fond remembrances of both her and Ducky.

In 1911, the Lincoln Star, in a story about Ducky’s career up until then, states, “Holmes has made friends and enemies galore. . . . He is afflicted with a temper that easily breaks bounds, but is gifted with an equal ability to forget grudges . . .  he is the best of friends, and a man who always gives all he has to his employers.,”26 In a 1926 Lincoln newspaper story about his interest in buying the town’s Western League team, he is described as a “resourceful, heady baseball general.”27 A Rolfe Arrow story of August 18, 1932, describes him as one of baseball’s best known players, who had a remarkable career in the game. These words intimate a legacy befitting the first, or “real,” Ducky Holmes.

HOWARD ELBERT “DUCKY” HOLMES (1883–1945)

Howard Elbert Holmes, the most colorful of all the Duckys in baseball, was born in Dayton, Ohio. His full career in the sport included catching for one major-league club and a number of minor league teams, umpiring in the minors and both major leagues, founding and managing several minor-league clubs, and serving in an executive position for at least one. References to his nose as an “elongated proboscis” and “big schnozzola,” as Douglas Heeren observed, suggests that it resembled a duck’s bill.28 That may explain how he acquired the moniker Ducky. Although not as notorious for his temperament as James William “Ducky” Holmes, Howard did gain a reputation for being a “fiery manager.”29

At the age of 19, Howard “Ducky” Holmes launched his professional playing career as a catcher in 1902 with the Saginaw/Jackson White Sox in the short-lived Class D Michigan State League. He then caught for Savannah in the Sally League for several years before being signed by the Cardinals in 1906. Following his brief stay in St. Louis, he moved on to Indianapolis, then to Canton in 1907. Some records indicate that he played for the Sioux City Packers in 1908, but that is highly doubtful.

Studies of numerous reports of the Packers’ games of 1908, including lineups, never reveal a catcher named Holmes. Player-manager Ducky Holmes is frequently named, and that is, without doubt, James William Holmes. Moreover, there are never two players with the surname Holmes listed. Notably, several April 1908 news items report that the American Association Louisville club’s new catcher would be Ducky Holmes from Dayton.30 On June 25, another story revealed that “Catcher Holmes, of Birmingham, has been reinstated, and will be used regularly.”31 The term “reinstated” does leave some question. Then, late in July, Birmingham announced that catcher Holmes was released to Montreal in the Eastern League.32 So it appears that Howard started the season in Louisville, then went to Birmingham and finally to Montreal. This is the sort of detective work that would have prevented my error of placing him in Sioux City in 1908. That settled, on with the story of Howard “Ducky” Holmes.

After Montreal, Howard played for three Central League clubs over the next four years — Zanesville, South Bend, and Grand Rapids — before taking on his first managing position. In 1913, the Southern Michigan League’s Saginaw club changed its name from the Trailers to the Ducks, after its new player-manager, Howard “Ducky” Holmes. He led the Ducks to pennants that year and the next. His star hurler in 1914 was none other than 20-year-old Jesse Haines. The future Hall of Famer won 17 games. Following one more season in Saginaw, Ducky went on to manage the Class D Frankfort Taylors of the Ohio State League. That season, 1916, proved to be his last as a player and Frankfort’s last with a minor-league club. Howard spent most of the next decade umpiring.

After starting out in the Three-I League in 1917, Ducky signed with the American Association.33 In March 1921, the Nebraska State Journal reported that he was included on the staff of Western League umpires for that season. Later that year, an incident occurred that might have involved James William “Ducky” Holmes, but was likely Howard instead.

During an Oklahoma City-Tulsa game in Tulsa on August 10, 1921, disgruntled fans hurled pop bottles and cushions at umpires William Guthrie and “Ducky” Holmes. “One bottle bounced off Guthrie’s stomach,” reported the Pella Chronicle.34 Outside the park after the game, the two arbiters retaliated by assaulting Sgt. Tom Haines, a war veteran in uniform, who apparently had taken no part in their attack. The local police arrested Guthrie and Holmes, who were fined $50 and $10, respectively. American Legion posts all over the country demanded that they be fired from the Western League and barred from organized baseball. The matter was taken up with the league and with baseball’s new commissioner, Kenesaw Mountain Landis.

The quandary here is the identity of the umpire named Ducky Holmes. Not one of the related news articles gives a first name, which was often the case with James William “Ducky” Holmes. However, as William was never actually recognized as a league umpire, and Howard was an official Western League ump, that would indicate it was the latter. The pugnacious nature of the Ducky in question proves nothing, as neither Ducky was averse to fisticuffs. Moreover, there was always the possibility of misidentification by the media. Regardless, if Judge Landis ruled on the matter, it did not affect either of their careers. Neither was banned from professional baseball, and Howard went on to umpire in the major leagues. He got a trial in the National League late in 1921 but was held “to the Western” in 1922.35

Following his brief stint with the National League, Howard umpired for the American League in 1923 and ’24. An episode in St. Louis in June 1924 may have resulted in the end of his career as a baseball arbiter. He infuriated fans by ejecting Browns manager George Sisler, catcher Pat Collins, and coach Jimmy Austin. Following the game, he was confronted by an irate fan, who struck him in the eye. Holmes blamed the attack on a conspiracy by gamblers.36 Paul Farina, the disgruntled Browns fan, eventually pleaded guilty to the offense and paid a $25 fine. Explaining his actions, Farina said, “I was excited and did it in the heat of passion.”37 One story claimed that Browns owner Phil Ball made it his business to get Ducky removed from the umpire roster.38 In fact, that was his last season in the majors. He soon turned his attention back to managing.

After purchasing his hometown’s minor-league club in 1932, Howard, who also served as manager, changed the Dayton team name from Aviators to Ducks. By the following season, he’d gained permission to move the club from the Central League to the Mid-Atlantic League. He oversaw the start of lefty Johnny Vander Meer’s professional career, as the future four-time All-Star pitched for the Ducks in 1933. Firmly stationed in Dayton by 1935, when the club was associated with the Brooklyn Dodgers, Howard lived up to his reputation as a fiery manager. He was suspended for three months for striking an umpire. Demonstrating his “colorful” label, he continued to manage the Ducks by signaling from his perch on “an electric tower in back of the ball park.”39 Another incident that year involving Howard “Ducky” Holmes is the stuff of baseball legend.

Just prior to a playoff game between Dayton and Huntington on September 13, 1935, a fan presented Ducky with a real duck as a gift. When none of the Dayton players had reached base by the seventh inning, he took the bird to first base and stationed it there. Relating this story, SABR’s Ira L. Smith claims that Holmes had said, half to himself, that he’d make sure a duck got to first base before the inning was over. He adds, “Very soon thereafter that duck gained the distinction of being the first member of its species to be ‘thumbed’ off the baseball field by an umpire.”40

Howard continued managing the Dayton Ducks through 1942, with brief interruptions in 1939 and again in 1940. Early in August of that year, it was announced that he’d been appointed acting manager of the Michigan State League’s Grand Rapids team, also a Brooklyn farm club. He replaced Burleigh Grimes, who’d been suspended following a dispute with an umpire.41 So it seems the theme of umpire disputes followed Ducky throughout his career.

At one point in 1942, Howard was presented with a huge floral horseshoe by his Zanesville admirers.42 That year was the last season for the Middle Atlantic League, and also for the Ducks. During his tenure in Dayton, he not only managed, but served as president, general manager, and treasurer of the club. After his team folded, he worked in a grocery store for some time. In 1944, an article related that if he could “get away from his war job,” he would attend a meeting of the Ohio State League.43 This indicates that he was still involved in baseball, and was also doing more than working at a store. After suffering two strokes, he died at home at the age of 62 on September 18, 1945. He was survived by his wife, Lillian, who passed away in 1960. Originally buried at Woodland Cemetery in Dayton, Howard’s remains were moved to Calvary Cemetery in Kettering, Ohio, in 1946. His tombstone reads HOLMES — H E “Ducky.”

JAMES SCOTT “DUCKY” HOLMES (1881–1960)

Little is known about James “Ducky” Holmes, and news items often confuse him with the other Ducky Holmeses in baseball. What is certain is that he was born in Lawrenceburg, Kentucky, on August 2, 1881. He was a right-handed pitcher. His career description on his 1912 Imperial Tobacco card makes the claim that his first “professional engagement was with the Albany Club in the New York League in 1908.”44 Yet all other evidence has him starting with Huntsville of the independent Tennessee-Alabama League in 1904.

He spent time with Augusta of the Sally League in 1905, and his first major-league assignment was with the 1906 Philadelphia Athletics, with whom he appeared in three games. He then went back to Augusta for 1907. There, he tallied his best season, with a 26–16 won-loss record in 1906. His last major-league assignment was in 1908 with Brooklyn, where he appeared in 13 games. He definitely spent the next four seasons with Rochester, then was with Buffalo for parts of 1912 and ’13, and Newark for the rest of the latter year. A January 1914 New York Times story reported that “the veteran pitcher” Ducky Holmes had signed with Baltimore of the new Federal League, but he played for Memphis of the Southern Association that year, his last as a professional player.45

James Scott Holmes’ name as shown under his photo on his Imperial Tobacco card is simply Holmes. The back side description reads only “Ducky” Holmes. Often, news stories call him Jim rather than James. Few details about his life after 1914 are available, but obituaries reveal that he moved to Jacksonville, Florida, in 1928. He worked in the retail grocery business there before he retired around 1950. Then, following an illness of several months, he died in a Jacksonville hospital on March 10, 1960.46

Several news items that appeared after his death contribute to the misidentification caused by too many baseball players named Ducky Holmes. The Brownsville Herald, in a story reflecting on the Augusta club of 1906, refers to him as “the original Ducky Holmes.”47 As James William “Ducky” Holmes was in the game, and called Ducky, almost a decade earlier, it would not seem likely that Jim could qualify as the original. Also, a Florida newspaper story in 1959, while Jim was still very much alive, names him as one of the umpires to officiate at the first game at the original Yankee Stadium. It correctly calls the umpire Ducky Holmes but goes on to say how he once played for Augusta in the Sally League.48 However, it was Howard “Ducky” Holmes who umpired in that first game at Yankee Stadium on April 18, 1923. But Howard never played for Augusta.

The pitcher Ducky Holmes whose major league assignments included Philadelphia and Brooklyn is buried at Riverside Memorial Park in Jacksonville. His tombstone reads “James Scott Holmes.”

ROBERT H. HOLMES or ROBERT S. HOLMES (1884–?)

What little information is available reveals that right-handed relief pitcher Robert H. Holmes, possibly Robert S. Holmes, also called “Bob,” was born in Texas in 1883 or 1884. His professional baseball career consisted of four seasons, and he never rose to the major-league level. There is evidence that he too was called “Ducky.”

In 1908, he appeared in 21 games for the Altoona Mountaineers of the Tri-State League, and then in 26 games in 1909 for Waco of the Texas League. He pitched in 20 games for the Newark Indians of the Class A Eastern League in 1910, and in 37 more the next year. He never had a winning season. The clue to his “Ducky” handle arises from a New York Times report of a 1911 Newark game.

The box score story detailing Newark’s game with Jersey City says that the Indians’ Holmes “was in good form for seven innings.”49 It adds that “Ducky” blew up in the eighth. One could conjecture that the sportswriter had him confused with the other Newark pitcher, Jim Holmes. However, Jim didn’t play for that club until 1913, two years after Bob. Bob’s Imperial Tobacco card dubs him “Pitcher ‘Bob’ Holmes.”50

Unable to track down solid information about this mysterious Ducky, I did locate an R. S. “Ducky” Holmes living in Amarillo, Texas, in the 1930s and ’40s. This might be stretching it a bit, but the “R” could stand for Robert. Moreover, his Texas birthplace enhances this hunch to some degree. Speculations about his possible identity as the former pitcher include several pieces in Amarillo newspapers.

A 1938 Amarillo Globe story about girls softball reads, “Ducky Holmes is interested in forming a girls’ city league and having a tournament.”51 The name R. S. “Ducky” Holmes appears several times in the 1940s, the most helpful in 1945. A story about a Capt. R. S. Holmes Jr. describes his parents as “Mr. and Mrs. R. S. (Ducky) Holmes,” who “now live in Amarillo.” It goes on, “Mr. Holmes for years was a Rock Island Dispatcher.”52 Several stories show that the family lived in Dalhart, Texas, while Ducky Junior was growing up. But nothing turns up with the Dalhart clue. However, in a 1927 story about the Texas A&M Aggies, Ducky Holmes is mentioned as “the Aggies fifth flinger (who) has quit going out for baseball.”53 Considering the date, that Ducky is quite likely Ducky Junior. One more piece of the puzzle, perhaps an irregular piece, is a photo found in a magazine published by the New Haven Railroad for its employees in October 1946. On page 262, in a photo featuring Brakeman “Biddy” Comm and Conductor ‘Ducky’ Holmes, Conductor Ducky’s face looks remarkably like an age-enhanced sketch of Newark’s Holmes on the baseball card.54 And, R. S. “Ducky” Holmes did work for a railroad. But again, that alone does not really prove anything.

Many times there are significant leads in obituaries, but so far none have surfaced for Bob, Robert or R. S. “Ducky” Holmes that prove useful. One hope is that someone reading this will come forward and help fill in the blanks. That would certainly augment baseball history, and honor the memory of pitcher Bob “Ducky” Holmes. 

CHARLES M. HOLMES, aka DUCKY HOLMES (1907–1982)

While preparing to wrap up my research, a futile effort, I happened onto yet another minor-league pitcher named Ducky Holmes. Although he was of a later generation than the others, I could not ignore his existence.

In 1927, the Springfield (Missouri) Midgets defeated Fort Smith 9–5, and “‘Ducky Holmes,’ youthful Springfield hurler, was the winning slabman.”55 According to Baseball-Reference, a Charles A. Holmes pitched for the Western Association Midgets in 1927, and then for Quincy in 1928. A 1929 news item reported that Ducky Holmes had been released from the Quincy Indians.56 Another story revealed that Charley “Ducky” Holmes was pitching for the Moline Plowboys by June of that year.57 It also had him living in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, at the time. Baseball Reference lists C. M. Holmes with the Plowboys in 1930.

A June 1930 article in a Burlington, Iowa, newspaper detailing a game between the Burlington Bees and the Moline Plowboys calls him “Ducky Holmes, the bespectacled Moline veteran.”58 As evidenced by a story in a Cedar Rapids newspaper, he was still being considered for the Moline pitching staff early in 1931. The writer reports, “Ducky Holmes and Sally Lambert, veteran right handers, still are the property of the club. . . . Holmes was one of the most valuable flingers on the staff last year.”59 There is one 1934 story that has a Ducky Holmes pitching for the semipro Manchester Hawks.60 In all probability, he was the same Ducky who played for the Plowboys.

Thus, we have good evidence that the right-handed pitcher Charles Holmes who played for the Springfield Midgets, the Quincy Indians, the Moline Plowboys, and most likely the Manchester Hawks are one and the same. His middle initial was “M.,” and, significantly, he wore eyeglasses. And, he was called Ducky since at least 1927, when he played for Springfield.

Fortunately, we have significantly more biographical information about this Ducky than we have about Robert Holmes. Census records reveal that Charles Moore Holmes was born July 31, 1907, to Robert and Sarah Holmes. This is undoubtedly the Plowboys’ Ducky Holmes. He married Elinore B. Berry on September 28, 1935, in Rock Island, Illinois. A 1941 Cedar Rapids City Directory shows him as a foreman at the Quaker Cereal Company there. He died on January 10, 1982, at the age of 74, and was buried at Cedar Memorial Park Cemetery in Cedar Rapids. His wife, Elinore, died in 1993 and was buried beside her husband.

CONCLUSION

Throughout my probe into the quandary of the multiple Ducky Holmeses, I’ve pondered the meaning of the nickname “Ducky.” In earlier centuries, it had been a slang term for a female breast.61 Naturally, that can be ruled out. During the time frame covered in this story, it was often used as a term of endearment pertaining to a male. While doing news archives searches, I’ve found other men named Ducky who were not connected with baseball. One was accused of murder. Another was a prizefighter. Granted, two of the Duckys detailed here were combative, but neither was homicidal or fought for a living. However, it seems all these guys were around during the first half of the 20th century. So, the tag Ducky for a man, especially an athlete, may have been popular then.

Some might suggest that the frequent use of that handle was influenced by Hall of Fame left fielder Joe “Ducky” Medwick. But he came along a bit too late for that. Besides, Medwick did not cherish his nickname, as it was said he got it because he waddled like a duck. One could come up with all sorts of theories, both realistic and farfetched. For instance, Douglas Heeren half-seriously suggested pursuing the origin of the cartoon character Howard the Duck. I actually considered that there might be some connection between him and Howard “Ducky” Holmes. Another even more preposterous notion arose while I searched eBay for images. Inputting “Ducky Holmes” yielded a number of Daffy Ducks as Sherlock Holmes collectibles.

The simple explanation might just be that after James William “Ducky” Holmes gained some prominence in baseball, other players bearing his last name, and/or bearing some resemblance to a duck, got the tag. I have no doubt that there were, or maybe still are, more baseball players out there called Ducky Holmes. But frankly, I would prefer not to hear about them. Case closed.

JOAN WENDL THOMAS, a freelance writer, also writes under the name Joan M. Thomas. A longtime SABR member, she is a regular contributor to the Biography Project, and has written several book reviews for the Deadball Era Committee. Her published books on baseball include “St. Louis’ Big League Ballparks,” “Baseball’s First Lady,” and “Baseball In Northwest Iowa.” A former resident of St. Louis, she now lives in her hometown of Le Mars, Iowa. She can be reached by email at JTh8751400@aol.com.

*Correction

It was Detroit left fielder Dick Harley who spiked McGraw in 1902, not Ducky Holmes. Harley’s grandson Bob Harley, a SABR member, graciously provided four newspaper stories and the actual date of the incident (May 24, 1902). Both Harley and Holmes were in the game, but Holmes did not reach base. The erroneous information was gleaned from a widely reported story related by Detroit pitcher George Mullin. He went into detail about the spiking, but his account printed in 1907 did not provide the date of the game in question. Thomas searched in vain to determine if Holmes spiked McGraw at some other time. Mullin may have remembered remarks made by Holmes and McGraw correctly, as well as details of the play, but misidentified the player responsible for McGraw’s injury—possibly because both names begin with an “H” and because of Ducky’s reputation as a brawler.

Notes

1 Joan Wendl Thomas, Baseball In Northwest Iowa (Charleston, South Carolina: Arcadia Publishing, 2017).

2 “Noted Baseball Player Makes Final Home Run,” Rolfe Arrow, August 18, 1932.

3 Some news items, including obituaries, erroneously report the year as 1900. Others vary between 1890 and 1892.

4 Bill Lamb, “July 25, 1898: The Ducky Holmes Game,” in Inventing Baseball: The 100 Greatest Games of the 19th Century, ed. Bill Felber (Phoenix: SABR, 2013).

5 “Ducky Holmes Put Out John McGraw,” St. Louis Republic, July 22, 1907.

6 “Sporting Events,” Lincoln Evening News, June 26, 1911.

7 “’Ducky’ Holmes Out at Toledo,” Waterloo Evening Courier, June 6, 1910.

8 “’Ducky’ Holmes Holding New Job,” Waterloo Evening Courier, June 11, 1910.

9 “Ducky Holmes Suspended,” Le Mars Semi-Weekly Sentinel, April 28, 1911.

10 “Release Baseball Manager,” Galveston Daily News, June 26, 1911.

11 “Ducky Holmes Suspended,” San Antonio Express, July 14, 1911.

12 “Sporting Events,” Lincoln Evening News, June 26, 1911.

13 “Holmes Will Test His Case,” Daily Herald (Biloxi, Mississippi), December 30, 1911.

14 Dean Wheeler, “Ducky Says He Is Done — Veteran Holmes Will Retire to His Ranch in Montana,” unidentified news clipping from 1913.

15 “Ducky Going Over,” Fort Wayne News and Sentinel, October 5, 1918.

16 “Holmes Fails to Buy Club,” Des Moines News, January 27, 1919.

17 “Two Burned In Fire at Ball Park,” Lincoln Daily State Journal, January 24, 1918.

18 “Brownville for Sunday Games,” Lincoln Daily Star, April 9, 1920.

19 “Says the Moline Dispatch,” Rockford Illinois Daily Register, July 16, 1921.

20 Moline Dispatch, July 13, 1921.

21 “Nebraska Minor League Baseball, Nebraska State League, Beatrice Blues,” Nebraska Minor League Baseball History, http://www.nebaseballhistory.com/beatrice1922.html.

22 Letter on Federal Surety Company letterhead addressed to W. P. Coad, Manager, Le Mars Baseball Club, contributed by Bill Coad, grandson of W. P. “Billy” Coad.

23 “Ducky Holmes Dickers for Lincoln Franchise,” unknown newspaper, October 21, 1926.

24 “New Club at Stock Yards,” Le Mars Sentinel, July 19, 1927.

25 “Mrs. E. E. Theno, Former Lincoln Teacher, Is Dead,” Lincoln Star, October 31, 1929.

26 “Sporting Review,” Lincoln Daily Star, July 21, 1911.

27 “Ducky Holmes Dickers for Lincoln Franchise.”

28 Howard Spencer, “The Sportacle,” Sunday Times Signal (Zanesville, Ohio), September 23, 1945.

29 “Ducky Holmes Dies,” Zanesville Signal, September 20, 1945.

30 “A. A. Is Post Graduate School for Central Leaguers,” Indianapolis Sun Sports, April 27, 1908.

31 “Changes in Two Clubs,” Atlanta Georgian, June 25, 1908.

32 Atlanta Georgian and News, July 31, 1908.

33 “Three-Eye Ump Lands Place,” (Davenport) Daily Times, July 12, 1917.

34 “American Legion News,” Pella Chronicle, August 18, 1921.

35 “Newest Umpire in Major Show Is Experienced,” Arizona Republican, March 3, 1923.

36 “Umpire Hit in St. Louis,” New York Times, June 26, 1924.

37 “Hits Umpire, Is Fined $25,” New York Times, July 29, 1924.

38 “Why His Career as Umpire Ended,” Sunday Times Signal, September 23, 1945.

39 “Pilots Although Absent,” Burlington Daily Hawkeye Gazette, June 15, 1935.

40 Ira L. Smith, “Birds, bees, beasts and baseball,” SABR Baseball Research Journal #1, 1972, https://sabr.org/research/birds-bees-beasts-and-baseball.

41 “Holmes in Grime’s Post,” New York Times, August 7, 1940.

42 “Ducky Holmes, Former Dayton Baseball Team Manager, Dies,” Zanesville Signal, September 19, 1945.

43 Howard Spencer, “Ohio State League Meeting Scheduled for Tuesday,” Sunday Times-Signal, December 3, 1944.

44 1912 Imperial Tobacco c46 No. 60, Ducky Holmes, Rochester.

45 “Newark Players for Federal League,” New York Times, January 31, 1914.

46 “James Scott Holmes,” The Sporting News, March 23, 1960.

47 Harry Grayson, “Rucker Hurt Arm Pitching Out of Town,” Brownsville Herald, July 21, 1943.

48 Red Smith, “Views of Sport,” The News (Sarasota, Florida), April 10, 1959.

49 “Eastern League,” New York Times, July 7, 1911.

50 1912 Imperial Tobacco No. 79, Holmes, Newark.

51 “In Case You Are Interested Department,” Amarillo Globe, July 20, 1938.

52 “‘Hump’ Veteran Back in States,” Amarillo Globe, June 1, 1945.

53 “Aggies Making Strong Battle for Gonfalon,” Bryan Daily Eagle, May 2, 1927.

54 “The ‘Canal Line’ Crew, I Know a Railroad, October 7, 2006, http://iknowarailroad.net/photoalbum/page262.htm.

55 “Barage of Hits Wins for Joplin,” Joplin News Herald, September 3, 1927.

56 Gilbert Twiss, “Twisters,” Decatur Review, June 5, 1929.

57 “Plow Boys Go to Keokuk,” Moline Dispatch, June 24, 1929.

58 “Moline Takes 2–1 Victory in Hurling Duel,” Burlington Gazette, June 13, 1930.

59 “Parker Has Strong Squad of Veterans at Moline This Season,” Cedar Rapids Evening Gazette and Republican, April 9, 1931.

60 “Dyersville Spills Manchester to Gain on Valley Leaders,” Telegraph Herald and Times-Journal (Dubuque, Iowa), August 17, 1934.

61 William Brohaugh, English Through the Ages (Cincinnati: Writers Digest Books, 1997).

From then on, Jackson was the injured innocent, unaware that teammates had tried to rig the series outcome until after the fact, and entirely blameless in the affair. Even here, however, Jackson had trouble keeping the details of his story straight. His appearance on the witness stand in support of a civil lawsuit that he filed against the White Sox ended in disaster. Jackson was cited for contempt by the trial judge and subsequently charged with perjury by the Milwaukee County District Attorney. That charge ultimately went unprosecuted, and Jackson was still protesting his innocence at the time of his death in December 1951.

The text below examines the evolution of Joe Jackson’s public statements on the Black Sox Scandal. A forensic examination of those statements follows. We precede that exposition with a brief, Jackson-centric recap of the 1919 World Series and its aftermath.

THE 1919 WORLD SERIES AND EARLY INQUIRIES ABOUT CROOKED PLAY

The talent-laden Chicago White Sox were the Series betting favorites until a late surge of Cincinnati money gave the Reds a slight edge. Still, the Sox remained the choice of most sportswriters and other baseball insiders. But Chicago got off poorly in Game One when a sudden fourth-inning meltdown by pitching ace Cicotte triggered a lopsided 9–1 defeat. Then, a curious one-inning control lapse by 23-game winner Williams proved the difference in a 4–2 Game Two loss. A three-hit, 3-0 shutout thrown by undersized Dickey Kerr temporarily righted the Sox in Game Three, but Chicago bats thereupon went silent. The American League’s best hitting team went an astonishing 26-consecutive innings without scoring.1 Shutout defeats in Games Four and Five left the vaunted Sox on the brink of elimination just midway through the extended best-five-of-nine series.

Although hardly without accomplices in underachievement, a fair amount of the blame for the Sox predicament rested with clean-up hitter Joe Jackson. Through the first five games, Shoeless Joe had batted a soft .316 (6-for-19), with two runs scored and zero RBIs. Down 4–0 after four innings in Game Six, Chicago bats suddenly revived. A Jackson single in the sixth plated the first run, and the Sox went on to post a 10-inning, 5–4 victory. Thereafter, Eddie Cicotte put the Sox back in contention with a route-going 4–1 triumph which featured two more RBIs by Jackson. In Game Eight, however, a nightmarish outing by Lefty Williams — he did not survive the first inning — quickly put the Sox in a deep hole. With Chicago trailing 5–0, Jackson hit a solo home run in the bottom of the third. But Cincinnati kept up the attack against Sox relievers, and held a seemingly insurmountable eighth-inning 10–1 lead when a last-ditch Chicago rally cut the margin to 10­–5. Two of those Sox runs were tallied by a Jackson double that upped his series RBI total to six. In their final at-bat, Chicago attempted another rally. But with two on and two out, a Jackson grounder to second brought the 1919 World Series to a close.

• Related link: Check out SABR’s Eight Myths Out project to learn more about common misconceptions about the Black Sox Scandal

A day after the World Series ended, a widely syndicated column by Chicago sportswriter Hugh Fullerton insinuated, without explicitly saying, that the Series had not been played on the up-and-up. But otherwise, the Cincinnati triumph, while unexpected by most, was well-received. Those seeking culprits for the Sox downfall did not focus on Joe Jackson. Superficially at least, his Series stats (.375 batting average, with a club-high six RBIs and the championship’s only homer) were considered outstanding. Blame for the Sox defeat was more readily pinned on Lefty Williams (0–3, with a 6.61 ERA), shortstop Swede Risberg (.080 BA in 25 at-bats, with four errors in the field), right fielder Nemo Leibold (.056 BA in 18 at-bats), and manager Kid Gleason.

Unbeknownst to the public, the Series outcome was not accepted at face value by two of the game’s most powerful actors: Chicago White Sox club owner Charles Comiskey and American League president Ban Johnson. Shortly after the Series conclusion, each began his own discreet inquiry into the series bona fides. And neither much liked what such probes uncovered. Information furnished to Comiskey investigators by St. Louis sources lent substance to the report — first received by Comiskey just after the series began — that Sox players had agreed to dump the series in return for a payoff from gamblers. In late December, these fix assertions were repeated by in-the-know gamblers Harry Redmon and Joe Pesch during a face-to-face meeting with White Sox brass. Notwithstanding that, Comiskey subsequently extended handsome new contract offers to players implicated in the fix by his informants: Joe Jackson, Swede Risberg, Lefty Williams, and outfielder Happy Felsch.2 Ban Johnson, meanwhile, had uncovered independent evidence that Sox players had been corrupted, purportedly bribed by a St. Louis businessman-gambler named Carl Zork. For the time being, however, Johnson chose not to make such revelations public.

While scandal simmered quietly out of public view, American League rooters focused on a tight three-way 1920 pennant chase involving the White Sox, New York Yankees, and Cleveland Indians. But early that September, fan attention was mildly diverted by the announcement that a Cook County (Chicago) grand jury had been impaneled to probe allegations that a recent Cubs-Phillies game had been fixed. The grand jurors would also investigate the locally popular but illegal practice of baseball game pool selling. Soon thereafter, prominent Chicago citizen Fred Loomis and sports reporters like Joe Vila of the New York Sun were publicly calling for the grand jury probe to be expanded to include inquiry into the integrity of the 1919 World Series.3 Behind the scenes, AL president Johnson was urging the same course upon a longtime acquaintance, Judge Charles A. McDonald, the presiding judge of the Chicago criminal courts and the overseer of the grand jury. Judge McDonald was agreeable, and within weeks the 1919 World Series became the dominant subject of the grand jury’s work.

EXPOSURE AND ADMISSION

In an extraordinary breach of normal secrecy requirements, the grand jury proceedings were publicly revealed on a daily basis, with many newspapers printing near-verbatim accounts of witness testimony. Thus by September 25, it was widely reported that eight White Sox players, including Eddie Cicotte, Joe Jackson, and Lefty Williams, had been targeted for indictment by the grand jury on conspiracy and fraud-related charges grounded in their play in the 1919 World Series.4 Two days later, the burgeoning scandal exploded. In an interview first published in Philadelphia and then circulated nationwide, self-admitted fix insider Billy Maharg alleged that Game One, Game Two, and Game Eight of the Series had been dumped by the Sox at gamblers’ behest.5

The following morning, Eddie Cicotte was summoned to the law office of Alfred S. Austrian, counsel for the Chicago White Sox corporation. Under interrogation, a stressed-out Cicotte quickly broke down, revealing those aspects of the World Series fix that he was privy to. He also identified the other fix participants, including Joe Jackson.6 Cicotte was then whisked before the grand jury where he elaborated on his admissions about the Series conspiracy under questioning by Assistant State’s Attorney Hartley Replogle.7

The first public statement attributed to Joe Jackson about the fix allegations disclaimed any personal knowledge of the matter. “I am willing to go before anyone at any time, any place to testify to what I know. I know little except rumors,” said Joe early that morning. “I know I have never been approached with any gambling propositions. If anyone ever does approach me, I’ll knock their block off.”8

Jackson soon got his wish to testify. After being confronted privately with Cicotte’s admissions in the Austrian law office, Jackson telephoned the chambers of Judge McDonald. At first, Jackson maintained his innocence to an openly skeptical McDonald. During a second call placed shortly thereafter, Jackson asked the judge for the chance to appear before the grand jury and make a clean breast of his involvement in the World Series fix.

Neither the content of Jackson’s telephone conversations with Judge McDonald nor the particulars of their subsequent conversation in chambers was contemporaneously memorialized. But testifying four years later during Jackson’s civil suit against the White Sox, McDonald stated that Jackson related various fix details to him, and identified his co-conspirators as Eddie Cicotte, Chick Gandil, Swede Risberg, Lefty Williams, Happy Felsch, Buck Weaver, and Fred McMullin.9 In particular, McDonald “distinctly” recalled that Jackson told him that during the Series “he had made no misplays that could be noticed by the ordinary person, but that he did not play his best.”10

On the afternoon of September 28, 1920, Jackson testified under oath before the grand jury. At the core of the Jackson testimony rests a contradiction. On the incriminating side of the ledger, Jackson provided a fairly detailed account of the fix from his perspective, including his acceptance of $5,000 before the start of Game Five. Notwithstanding that, Jackson insisted that he had done nothing in the field to earn his payoff, citing his World Series stats as proof that he had given his best efforts at all times during the action.

Jackson’s testimony about the corruption of the World Series was precise and specific. He had not attended the mid-September players-only fix meeting at the Ansonia Hotel in New York. Nor had he been present for a follow-up meeting with gamblers in Chicago’s Warner Hotel, although Lefty Williams had told him about it afterwards.11 Rather, Jackson had been propositioned privately by teammate Chick Gandil. At first, Jackson rebuffed him. But in time, Joe agreed to join the plot to throw the Series in return for a $20,000 payoff, to be “split up some way” after each series game.12, 13 When he went unpaid after the Sox lost Game One, Jackson asked Gandil, “What’s the trouble?” but Gandil assured him that “everything is all right,” as Gandil had the money. Then, Jackson testified, “We went ahead and threw the second game,” only to be unpaid again. Jackson now asked Gandil, “What are you going to do?” and Gandil replied, “Everything is all right” once more.14 When no money was forthcoming after Game Three, Jackson told Gandil that “somebody is getting a nice little jazz, everything is crossed.” But Gandil responded that the fault lay with fix backers Abe Attell and Bill Burns. The two gamblers had crossed him.15

On the evening before the White Sox were to return to Cincinnati for Game Five, Lefty Williams entered Jackson’s room at the Lexington Hotel and threw $5,000 onto the bed. At that, Jackson asked, “What the hell had come off here?” Williams replied that Gandil “said we got the screw through Abe Attell. He got the money but refused to turn it over to [Gandil].” But Jackson suspected that Gandil actually had the payoff money and had “kept the majority of it for himself.”16 When Jackson later complained to Gandil, Chick told him that he could either “take that [$5,000] or leave it alone.”17 That evening, when Jackson told his wife that he “got $5,000 for helping throw [Series] games,” Katie Jackson told Joe that “she thought it was an awful thing to do.”18 Jackson put the $5,000 — “some hundreds, mostly fifties” in denomination — in his pocket and took the money with him to Cincinnati.19

Regarding the other conspirators, Jackson testified that Cicotte had told him that he had received $10,000 up front, and scolded Joe as “a God damn fool” for not getting paid the same way.”20 Risberg and Williams told Jackson that they received $5,000 each, but Jackson did not believe them. He suspected that Gandil, Risberg, McMullin, Cicotte, and Williams had cut up the bribe money “to suit themselves.”21 Jackson understood from “the boys” that Happy Felsch had also received $5,000, but had no knowledge of any payoff money paid to Buck Weaver.22 All Jackson knew about Buck was that Gandil had told him that Weaver “was in on the deal.”23

Despite having agreed to the fix and then accepting a payoff, Jackson nevertheless insisted that he had done nothing on the field to earn the money. Throughout the series, he “had batted to win, fielded to win, and run the bases to win.”24 Joe admitted that while he saw some questionable plays by teammates, particularly Cicotte and Williams, Jackson himself had not done anything to throw World Series games. He had “tried to win all the time.”25 After the Series was over, Jackson did not discuss the fix with his co-conspirators, and left Chicago for his home in Savannah the following evening.26 Jackson was ashamed of himself for accepting the $5,000, and had offered to reveal everything that he knew about the fix to White Sox management later that fall. But club brass had not brought him in.27

Jackson was also suspicious of late-1920 season performances by Cicotte and Williams, but declared himself anxious to win the pennant and then capture the World Series.28 This led to a poignant exchange near the end of the Jackson testimony. ASA Replogle: “You didn’t want to do that last year, did you?” Jackson: “Well, down in my heart I did. Yes.”29 Shortly thereafter, the grand jury proceedings recessed for the day.

Upon leaving the courthouse, Jackson was besieged by waiting reporters. Back in his hotel room later that evening, Jackson expounded upon various fix details. For example, following telephone calls that he had placed to an unsympathetic Judge McDonald, Jackson had gone to the jurist’s chambers. Once there, “I said I got $5,000 and they promised me $20,000. All I got was the $5,000 that Lefty Williams handed me in a dirty envelope. I never got the other $15,000. I told that to Judge McDonald. He said he didn’t care what I got. … I don’t think the judge likes me. I never got the $15,000 that was coming to me,” said Joe.30

Jackson further explained that his grand jury revelations were prompted by the attitude of Gandil, Risberg, and McMullin. When he had threatened to expose the series fix unless paid in full, Jackson was brushed off. “They said to me, ‘You poor simp, go ahead and squawk. … Every honest ballplayer in the world will say you’re a liar. You’re out of luck. Some of the boys were promised a lot more than you and got less.’ That’s why I went down and told Judge McDonald and told the grand jury what I know about the frame up,” Jackson told the press.31

Jackson concluded his extemporaneous monologue with this revelation: “And I’m going to give you a tip. A lot of these sporting writers that have been roasting me have been talking about the third game of the World’s Series being square. Let me tell you something. The eight of us did our best to kick it and little Dick Kerr won the game by his pitching. Because he won it, those gamblers double crossed us because we double crossed them.”32

The following day, Lefty Williams confessed his involvement in the Series fix, first in the Austrian law office, thereafter before the grand jury. In the process, Williams named Jackson as one of the eight Sox players who had been in on the deal.33 Williams also identified several of the gamblers who had agreed to finance the fix. The next day, the Chicago Evening American published a confession of fix participation given by Sox center fielder Happy Felsch to reporter Harry Reutlinger. Felsch now regretted his acceptance of a $5,000 bribe, but offered no excuses for his involvement. “I’m as guilty as the rest of them. We are all in it alike,” said an unhappy Happy. “Cicotte’s story is true in every detail,” Felsch continued. “I don’t blame him for telling. … I was ready to confess myself yesterday, but didn’t have the courage to be the first to tell.”34

Meanwhile, the other White Sox players who had been cited as grand jury targets publicly protested their innocence, with Buck Weaver in particular vowing to retain the best lawyer available to fight any criminal charges that might be brought against him.35 Buck would not have to wait long for such charges. On October 29, 1920, the Cook County Grand Jury returned formal indictments which accused eight White Sox players and five gamblers of multiple counts of conspiracy to obtain money by false pretenses and/or a confidence game.36

Shoeless Joe Jackson, right, and Assistant State’s Attorney Hartley Replogle pose together during Jackson’s grand jury appearance on September 28, 1920, in Chicago. (COURTESY OF BLACKBETSY.COM)

A NEW-FOUND CLAIM OF INNOCENCE

It appears that Cook County prosecutors presumed that those White Sox players who had confessed their fix involvement to the grand jury would turn State’s evidence and testify against the other accused. But pretrial negotiations with Daniel Cassidy, the Detroit lawyer (and personal friend) who represented Eddie Cicotte, foundered, while Joe Jackson and Lefty Williams were reportedly seeking legal counsel to fight the charges. Out in California meanwhile, Fred McMullin asserted that Happy Felsch had told him that his newspaper confession was a “phony.”37 Days later, Joe Jackson signaled a coming change in his story, publicly declaring, “I never confessed to throwing a ball game and I never will.”38 This evidently proved too much for Judge McDonald, who promptly informed the press that “Jackson’s testimony was made under oath to the grand jury. If he denies that testimony when he is brought to trial, he will be guilty of perjury and prosecuted under that charge.”39

In early November, developments in the baseball scandal were briefly overshadowed by an event of far greater national significance: the political elections of 1920. But election results would also have profound effects upon the course of the Black Sox case. Swept into office on the nationwide Republican Party tide was a new Cook County State’s Attorney, recently retired Chicago judge Robert E. Crowe. And joining Crowe in office would be an entirely new cadre of staff attorneys, none of whom was familiar with the Black Sox case. As a team of prosecutors headed by newly installed Second ASA George E. Gorman scrambled to catch up, the Black Sox defense made its first tactical move: a court application which included sworn repudiation of their grand jury admissions by Joe Jackson and Lefty Williams.

Drafted by criminal counsel Thomas D. Nash (defendants Weaver, Felsch, Risberg, and McMullin) and Benedict J. Short (Jackson and Williams), a defense motion for a bill of particulars was supported by affidavits signed by Buck Weaver, Jackson, and Williams.40 The bill of particulars averred that (1) while acquainted with gambler codefendants Bill Burns and Hal Chase, they had “no business transactions or personal relations” with the two ex-major leaguers; (2) that they had never met the other gambler codefendants (although Williams had once been introduced to strangers named Sullivan and Brown);41 and (3) that they were “entirely innocent” of the charges made against them.”42 When it came time for trial in July 1921, however, neither Weaver, Jackson, nor Williams testified before the jury.43 Nor did any of the other accused players.44 But out of the jury’s presence, Eddie Cicotte, Jackson, and Williams did take the stand mid-trial in support of a defense motion to preclude prosecution use of their grand jury testimony. Significant for our purposes, the Black Sox defense did not challenge the bona fides of the grand jury transcripts, nor claim that any of their content was inaccurate or unreliable. Indeed, the authenticity and correctness of the transcripts was conceded. Rather, the defense sought suppression on the grounds that the Cicotte, Jackson, and Williams grand jury testimony had been induced by broken off-the-record promises of non-prosecution made by authorities, and were thus inadmissible in evidence.45

At the hearing’s close, trial judge Hugo M. Friend found the denials that any such promises had been made elicited from former ASA Replogle and Judge McDonald persuasive, and ruled the Cicotte/Jackson/Williams transcripts available for prosecution use. In redacted form,  the grand jury admissions of the trio were subsequently read to the criminal trial jury at length via colloquy between Special Prosecutor Edward A. Prindiville and grand jury stenographers Walter Smith and Elbert Allen — all to no avail as it turned out.46

Silence proved a sound defense strategy, as the jury acquitted the accused of all charges after deliberations taking less than three hours.47 Public reaction to the trial’s outcome for those acquitted was subdued, but the Black Sox case was far from over. Within hours of the verdict, Commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis permanently banished the accused players from Organized Baseball, their acquittal in court notwithstanding. Thereafter, a number of the former defendants, including Joe Jackson, instituted civil lawsuits against the Chicago White Sox.48

The particulars of a new Jackson account of the World Series fix emerged during the deposition phase of his lawsuit. And the story now told by Jackson was dramatically different from the sworn testimony that he had provided the grand jury in late September 1920. Appearing before court commissioner Girard M. Cohen on April 23, 1923, Jackson swore that “I knew absolutely nothing about the throwing of the World Series until two or three days after it was over.”49 Jackson further averred that “I played my best during the Series, threw everything that I had into the effort to bring victory to my team. I think the facts and figures [of my performance] will bear me out.”50

Regarding his acceptance of fix-connected cash, Jackson revised the timing of that event. He now asserted that “two or three days after the Series was over, Lefty Williams … came to my room with two envelopes in his hand. Williams was in an intoxicated condition. He told me that each envelope contained $5,000 in cash. He threw one of the envelopes at my feet and told me that certain players had used my name in negotiating with the gamblers and that the players had informed the gamblers that I was to help throw the games against my own team.”51 Jackson maintained that he was “dumbfounded” by Williams’s revelations and immediately informed him that “they had a lot of nerve to use my name under the circumstances.”52 Lefty then departed the room. “The very next day,” Jackson continued, “I went to Charles Comiskey’s office with the envelope to interview the club president concerning the transaction with Williams,” but was denied admittance by White Sox team secretary Harry Grabiner, who told Jackson “to beat it.” When he came to Savannah the following February to sign Jackson to a new contract, Grabiner already knew about the $5,000 given Jackson by Williams, and told him that White Sox brass had “the absolute goods on Cicotte, Williams and Gandil concerning their dishonest and crooked play during the 1919 Series.”53 Jackson then signed the new three-year contact proffered by Grabiner, the terms of which would subsequently become the gravamen of the civil lawsuit filed by Jackson against the club.

MILWAUKEE PERJURY CITATIONS

Of the Black Sox-related civil lawsuits filed in Milwaukee, the only one that ever went to trial was that of Joe Jackson. The specifics of that litigation are not germane to this article. Suffice it to say that Jackson sought recovery of the unpaid portion of the three-season deal that he had signed with the White Sox in February 1920.54 At first blush, the setting seemed a congenial one for the plaintiff. His attorney, local firebrand Raymond J. Cannon, was an aggressive and wildly successful civil litigator, having reportedly won over 100 cases in a row.55 The Jackson case, moreover, would be tried before Wisconsin Circuit Court Judge John J. Gregory, a competent and amiable veteran jurist, progressive in his social views (except in divorce matters) and widely perceived as plaintiff-friendly. Gregory was also an avid baseball fan. But before the trial was out, the proceedings would turn into a nightmare for Joe Jackson.

Things began well for the plaintiff, with Jackson’s direct examination by attorney Cannon drawing favorable press reviews.56 The tide abruptly turned, however, when Jackson underwent cross-examination by George B. Hudnall, lead attorney for the White Sox defense. Hudnall was armed with the transcript of Jackson’s September 28, 1920, grand jury testimony.57 He pressed the plaintiff on the inconsistencies between his current account of scandal events and what he had previously told the Cook County grand jury. Remarkably, Jackson did not attempt to harmonize the two or explain away their differences. Instead, he asserted that he had never said the words reposed in black and white on the grand jury transcript pages.

As Cannon sat by helplessly, Hudnall then led Jackson on a painstaking tour of the testimony that Jackson now maintained he had never given. Page space limitations preclude a thorough rendering of the Hudnall-Jackson colloquies, but the following are representative: When referred to his grand jury testimony that the World Series fixers had “promised me $20,000 and paid me $5,000 (at JGJ4-9 to 10),” Jackson told Hudnall, “I didn’t make that answer.”58 When asked about what Chick Gandil had said to him about the fix payment shortchange (at JGJ6-10 to 13), Jackson’s response was the same. He denied giving the testimony attributed to him in the grand jury transcript.59 Thereafter, Hudnall: “Were you asked and did you give this answer? Question: What did you say to Williams when he threw down the $5,000? Answer: I asked him what the hell had come off here (quoting JGJ6-25 to JGJ7-5).” Jackson: “No, sir. I don’t know anything about that.” Hudnall: “And you did not so testify before the grand jury?” Jackson: “No, sir. I didn’t.”60 Similarly, when referred to his grand jury testimony about the “jazz” given the players by fixer Abe Attell, Jackson denied the authenticity of the response reported at JGJ9-10 to 13. Hudnall: “You didn’t make any such answer before the grand jury?’ Jackson: “No, sir.”61

Elsewhere, Jackson again denied that he had given the answers contained in the grand jury transcript about his acceptance of the money delivered by Williams before Game Five. Insisted Jackson, “I didn’t make the answer like you are reading from there. No, sir.”62 Regarding his grand jury testimony about the $10,000 bribe paid Eddie Cicotte, Jackson replied, “I say that I did not make the answer that you read there.”63 Nor had Jackson testified about fix payments to Swede Risberg and Fred McMullin during his grand jury appearance. Hudnall, incredulously: “Those questions were not asked and you did not make those answers?” Jackson: “No, sir.”64 Also repudiated by Jackson were transcript excerpts pertaining to pre-Series conversations with Gandil, fix payments to Happy Felsch, Katie Jackson’s reaction to Joe’s involvement in the fix, and, by this writer’s count, 119 other particulars of Jackson’s sworn grand jury testimony.65, 66,  67

Throughout the Jackson cross-examination, Judge Gregory sat impassively. But inside, the normally genial jurist was seething. Several days later, Gregory made his displeasure with Jackson known. As soon as the jury had retired to deliberate its verdict, the plaintiff was unexpectedly summoned to the well of the court. There, Gregory informed Jackson that “you stand here self-convicted of the crime of perjury. You came to the wrong state, to the wrong city, to the wrong court.” Gregory then ordered bailiffs to take Jackson into custody, setting his bail at $5,000.68 Jackson was released shortly thereafter and back in court the following morning, but Judge Gregory was still rankled by the irreconcilability of the sworn testimony that Jackson had provided the grand jury and his testimony under oath at the civil trial, reiterating his view that Jackson “stands self-convicted and self-accused of perjury. Either his testimony here or his testimony before the Chicago grand jury was false. I think the false testimony was given here.”69

The jury’s verdict did little to improve Gregory’s mood. It returned a $16,711.04 judgment in Jackson’s favor. Astonished and indignant, Gregory lit into the jurors for ruling in favor of a “perjurer” and promptly vacated their verdict, specifying fraud and perjured testimony as the basis for the court’s action.70 When later explained to the press by foreman John E. Sanderson, however, the jury’s verdict had a defensible rationale. According to Sanderson, the panel had disregarded Jackson’s claims of innocence, but had awarded him his unpaid salary for the 1921 and 1922 seasons (plus the final days of the 1920 campaign) on the principle of condonation. As the jury viewed the proofs, the post-Series investigation of Comiskey’s detectives had left the Chisox boss aware of Jackson’s Series perfidy well before he tendered Jackson a new three-season contract in February 1920. By so doing, Comiskey had condoned (or forgiven) Jackson’s World Series misconduct. That being so, Comiskey could not avoid making good on that contract simply because the public had discovered what White Sox brass had known about Jackson all along.71

Although perjury during civil litigation rarely receives law enforcement attention, Milwaukee County District Attorney George A. Shaughnessy announced his office’s intention of investigating the Jackson testimony. “We will go over it carefully to see if there is anything that seems to warrant prosecution for perjury. If we find anything, we will make complaint, a warrant will be issued, and Jackson re-arrested,” he said.72, 73 By April, the district attorney was satisfied that Jackson, and Happy Felsch, as well, had testified falsely and obtained warrants for their arrest.74 On May 18, 1925, Jackson failed to appear for pretrial proceedings on a perjury complaint and a bench warrant was issued for his arrest by Judge George F. Page.75 But as long as Jackson stayed out of Wisconsin, there was little chance of his being apprehended. As far as can be discovered, proceedings on the perjury complaint outstanding against Jackson went no further.76

RENEWED CLAIMS OF INNOCENCE

Happily for Jackson, few outside Milwaukee paid heed to his civil lawsuit. By then, the world had moved on, with baseball, fueled by the unprecedented exploits of pitcher-turned-everyday-slugger Babe Ruth, embarked upon a golden age. To most fans, the Black Sox scandal and the likes of Shoeless Joe Jackson were ancient history.

Contrary to popular belief, the Black Sox did not remain silent after their banishment from the game.77 Jackson was among the most talkative, resolute in his claims of innocence but either erratic or inventive in his recall of scandal details. In 1941, Jackson told Washington Post sportswriter Shirley Povich that “I’m as innocent as you are. I had no part in that fix in 1919.”78 He then cited his World Series stats as proof of clean play. Jackson also complained about the “shoddy tricks” used by prosecutors against him, maintaining that the claim that he had confessed guilt was bogus. “There was no confession by me. That was trumped up by the court lawyers. They couldn’t produce it in court. They said it was stolen from the vaults. Does that sound right?”79 Povich was far too young to have covered the Black Sox trial in 1921, and reported Jackson’s assertions without reservation. Presumably, Povich was unfamiliar with the fact that only the original transcriptions of the Cicotte/Jackson/Williams grand jury testimony had been stolen. The theft was discovered well before trial, with the transcripts thereafter recreated by means of the grand jury stenographers’ handwritten notes. At trial, the Jackson grand jury confession was read at length to the jury.

Jackson reiterated his claims of innocence the following year to sportswriter Carter (Scoops) Latimer, an old friend.80 “I’m innocent of any wrongdoing,” Joe asserted, adding that “the Supreme Being is the only one to whom I’ve got to answer.”81 As before, Jackson cited his World Series statistics as proof of his innocence. He also debunked the notorious post-grand jury appearance “Say It Ain’t So, Joe” anecdote as a fabrication concocted by a “sob sister” sportswriter.82 Left unmentioned were the incriminating details about the fix that Jackson made to the press that same afternoon.83

The best-known of the Jackson apologias was published in the October 1949 issue of Sport magazine.84 Presented as a first-person Shoeless Joe narrative (as told to sportswriter Furman Bisher), the piece was treated as the last word on the Black Sox scandal — as Jackson would die only two years later — by Bisher and other Jackson sympathizers too young to have any personal memory of the affair. But Jackson’s reminiscences were marred by faulty recollection, confabulation of events, and the occasional outright falsehood. Indeed, the very first sentence of the piece — “When I walked out of Judge Dever’s courtroom in Chicago in 1921 … I had been acquitted by a twelve-man jury in a civil courtroom of all charges and I was an innocent man in the records”85 — was historically inaccurate. The jurist who presided over the trial was Judge Friend, not Dever, and Jackson and the others were found not guilty (different from innocent) by a criminal court jury, not a civil court one.86

The story then proceeds to the stunning allegation that Jackson was so troubled by World Series fix rumors swirling about that he went to club owner Comiskey’s hotel room in Cincinnati the night before Game One and pleaded to be removed from the line-up, lest his reputation be besmirched by playing in a rigged championship match.87 And this, Jackson said, was all witnessed by syndicated sports columnist Hugh Fullerton “who offered to testify for me at my trial later.” In fact, neither Fullerton nor any other witness was summoned to the stand by the Jackson defense.88 Three years later, however, Fullerton did testify as a White Sox defense witness in the Jackson civil suit. More important, Fullerton’s testimony contains no mention of Jackson trying to beg off playing in the 1919 Series. Nor does the alleged event appear anywhere in Fullerton’s writings on the scandal, inexplicable given that star player Jackson begging Comiskey to keep him out of the World Series would have been a sensational story that any sportswriter would have rushed into newsprint — had it ever happened.

The article takes another shot at the “Say It Ain’t So, Joe” anecdote, this time describing it as a fabrication invented by Chicago Daily News reporter Charley Owens. According to Jackson, the only person that he spoke to outside the courthouse after his grand jury appearance was a deputy sheriff whom Jackson gave a car lift home.89 But if this was true, where did the Chicago Daily Journal, Chicago Tribune and other news outlets get the specific fix details (Jackson’s complaint about being shortchanged on his bribe payout; his resentment of the brush-off given him by Gandil, Risberg, and McMullin; the thwarted Black Sox attempt to throw Game Three, etc.) attributed to Jackson? Like other followers of the fast-breaking scandal, the gathered pressmen were then unaware of such fix minutiae. Jackson’s revision of scandal events also made the far-fetched claim that prosecutors “kept delaying the trial until I personally went to the State Supreme Court judge, after which he ordered the case to be tried.”90 As the record documents, the issue was actually joined by a prosecution motion for a continuance of the proceedings presented to Circuit Court Judge William E. Dever who denied the application. Jackson, represented by able and experienced criminal defense lawyer Benedict Short, was no more than a silent bystander in the matter.91

Jackson even got small things wrong — his final White Sox contract, for example. It was a three-season deal, not five.92 He also got the story about the reputed origin of Comiskey’s feud with Ban Johnson backward. It was Johnson who had sent the smelly fish to Comiskey, not vice versa.93 There were others, as well. But misstatements large and errors small made no difference to Jackson admirers. And Shoeless Joe was still protesting his innocence when felled by the last of a series of heart attacks in December 1951.

FORENSIC ANALYSIS

Joe Jackson was a great ballplayer and, by all accounts, a nice man. But when it came to the Black Sox Scandal, Jackson inarguably perjured himself. The only issue, as observed by Judge Gregory in 1924, is whether Jackson lied under oath to the Cook County grand jury when he admitted entering the conspiracy to fix the outcome of the 1919 World Series, or whether it was Jackson’s duly sworn assertions of innocence in the matter thereafter that were false. The paragraphs below are devoted to forensic analysis of the question. Ultimately, the credible evidence — and reason, too — admits but one conclusion: Joe Jackson, while hardly an instigator or a proponent of the fix, was a knowing participant in the plot to rig the 1919 World Series; his protests of innocence, although prolonged, ring hollow.

Our analytical starting point is the grand jury testimony given under oath by Joe Jackson on the afternoon of September 28, 1920. As previously noted, Jackson’s account of the World Series fix was specific regarding events that he was involved in, full of peculiar detail, and highly incriminating, his claim of actually trying his best on the field notwithstanding.94 Jackson biographer Donald Gropman and other Jackson defenders confronting the issue usually try to explain away Shoeless Joe’s grand jury testimony by describing it as no more than regurgitation of information supplied to him by his interrogators.95 And regrettably, false confessions are a phenomenon that the criminal justice system has to deal with on a far-too-frequent basis. The Jackson grand jury testimony, however, betrays none of the indicia of a false confession. Here is why.

The essential component of the false confession is knowledge of the details of the underlying offense by those questioning a suspect — for if the questioner does not know what happened, how can he implant such information in the mind of someone else? When Joe Jackson was first confronted about his fix involvement in the Austrian law office, his inquisitors had only limited information about the matter. Club boss Comiskey, present but silent during the questioning, had presumably imparted the intelligence uncovered by his operatives to Austrian. But Comiskey’s minions had spent most of their time on the West Coast, trolling for dirt on Chick Gandil, Swede Risberg, and Fred McMullin. They also spent time investigating reports on Buck Weaver and Happy Felsch. But no fix-related information had been uncovered on the other Black Sox.96 Rather, the only specific intel that Comiskey had about the fix that implicated Eddie Cicotte, Joe Jackson, and Lefty Williams was the hearsay supplied to him by disgruntled St. Louis gamblers Harry Redmon and Joe Pesch. And that intel lacked detail. Sox attorney Austrian knew even less, while ASA Replogle’s grand jury probe had produced only scandal headlines. It had yet to uncover hard evidence against the targeted Sox players.97

Nor had Eddie Cicotte been over-enlightening. Summoned to the Austrian office ahead of Jackson, a distraught Cicotte readily admitted his own complicity in the plot to fix the Series outcome. And he specifically named Joe Jackson as one of “the men who were in on the deal.”98 But otherwise, Cicotte had not been particularly forthcoming. And he supplied Austrian, and later Replogle, with none of the fix-specific detail — about being propositioned privately by Chick Gandil; about the hold up of fix payoffs blamed on Abe Attell; about the $5,000 delivered to his hotel room by Lefty Williams prior to Game Five; about the denomination of the payoff currency, etc. — that Jackson would reveal to the grand jury later the same day. In short, Jackson’s detail-specific grand jury testimony could not have been implanted in his mind by Austrian or Replogle, since neither they nor Comiskey were aware of such details at the time.99 Only Jackson knew them.

For Jackson’s grand jury testimony about his fix involvement to be some sort of implanted fabrication, one must also conclude that every other Black Sox who named Jackson as a fix participant — Eddie Cicotte, Lefty Williams, inferentially Happy Felsch, even Chick Gandil100 — maliciously accused an innocent man. No reason why his teammates would implicate Jackson falsely has ever been advanced because there is none. Nor is there any readily apparent reason for Judge McDonald to have testified falsely about Jackson’s admission of fix complicity in chambers prior to his grand jury appearance when McDonald appeared as a witness in the Jackson civil trial.

Finally, there are the Jackson quotations published in the Chicago Daily Journal, Chicago Tribune and elsewhere the day after Joe’s grand jury appearance. Once again, Jackson revealed fix details to the press unknown to Austrian, Replogle, and Comiskey. Indeed, some details — that attempts to dump Game Three had been frustrated by Dickey Kerr’s shutout pitching; that his confession was motivated by the brush-off about fix payment received from Gandil, Risberg, and McMullin — even went unmentioned during Jackson’s grand jury testimony. This next-day reportage, ignored by Jackson supporters and mostly neglected by scandal chroniclers, has never been discredited and further demolishes the notion that Jackson’s grand jury confession of fix guilt was contrived by some third party and then parroted to the panel by Joe as the scandal broke.

Interestingly, Jackson himself never asserted that the details of his grand jury testimony were fictions invented for him by others. Rather, Jackson insisted that he had never spoken the words memorialized on the grand jury transcript pages. This, of course, contradicted the concession of grand jury transcript accuracy made by the Black Sox defense during the criminal trial in Chicago. It was also belied by the testimony of grand jury stenographer Elbert Allen and panel foreman Henry Brigham, both of whom authenticated the transcript and its content during the Jackson civil trial in Milwaukee.101 In the end, Jackson’s dogged witness stand repudiation of his grand jury testimony was mind-boggling, so utterly preposterous that even plaintiff’s counsel Cannon effectively abandoned Jackson’s innocence claim in summation. Instead, Cannon focused his closing argument for judgment on the legal principle of condonation, maintaining that his client should be awarded his unpaid 1921–1922 contract salary because Comiskey had known that Jackson was a participant in the 1919 World Series fix, but had chosen to sign him to a new three-season contract despite that.

Balanced against the force of Jackson’s grand jury admissions of complicity in the fix is … pretty much nothing. Jackson and present-day supporters invariably cite his Fall Classic stats — the Series-leading batting average at .375, the club-high six RBIs — as proof of honest play. But statistics are always malleable, subject to partisan manipulation. More rigorous examination of how the 1919 World Series unfolded, for example, just as plausibly yields a damning assessment of Joe’s performance. During the first five games, the outer limit of the fix duration in most minds, clean-up batter Jackson notably under-produced, failing to drive in a single White Sox run. Most of Jackson’s gaudy stats were compiled only after the fix had been abandoned and the Black Sox had begun trying to win.

Jackson’s revised account of his World Series conduct, unveiled in the affidavit prepared by his criminal trial attorney and later embellished during his ensuing civil suit against the White Sox, also does the Jackson cause little good. Aside from its obviously self-serving nature, Jackson’s new story was plagued by implausible and/or inconsistent particulars. In same, for instance, Jackson was not so traumatized by rampant fix rumors that he had gone to club boss Comiskey’s hotel room prior to Game One and begged to be let out of the lineup (as he later told Furman Bisher). Rather, Jackson swore during his civil deposition testimony that he knew nothing of the fix until days after the Series was over, and was “dumbfounded” when Lefty Williams finally clued him in.

Of necessity, the revision of fix-related events also required movement of Williams’ delivery of the $5,000 payoff to Jackson from before the start of Game Five. It was now relocated to three days after the Series was completed. Not only did this contradict his own sworn grand jury testimony (and that of Williams, as well), it made no sense, as why would Jackson be hanging around a Chicago hotel room three days after the World Series was over? Clearly, there were no post-Series celebrations in town that he needed to attend. Far more likely was Jackson’s grand jury testimony that he and his wife had left Chicago for their home in Savannah the evening after the Series concluded. Jackson’s insistence that he had later tried to turn over the bribe money to Comiskey also rang false. At the civil trial in Milwaukee, it was established that the $5,000 was deposited in the Jackson account at the Chatham Bank & Trust Company in Savannah.102

That Joe Jackson was a likable fellow and persistent in his claims of innocence does not change the historical record. On the evidence, the call is not a close one, as a mere reading of this essay’s factual narrative should make plain. As he admitted under oath after first being confronted, Jackson was a knowing, if perhaps unenthusiastic, participant in the plot to fix of the 1919 World Series. And damningly, Jackson was just as persistent in his demands to be paid his promised fix payoff money as the Series progressed as he would later be in his disavowals of fix involvement. In the final analysis, Shoeless Joe Jackson, banished from playing the game that he loved while still in the prime of his career, is a sad figure. But hardly an innocent one.

WILLIAM F. LAMB is the editor of “The Inside Game,” the quarterly newsletter of SABR’s Deadball Era Committee, and the author of “Black Sox in the Courtroom: The Grand Jury, Criminal Trial and Civil Litigation” (McFarland, 2013). Prior to his retirement, he spent more than 30 years as a state/county prosecutor in New Jersey.

Notes

1 The White Sox led the league in team batting average with .287 and were secondin OPS and OPS+.

2 Comiskey later maintained that the evidence of player corruption uncovered by his investigators was inconclusive, and that the new contracts offered Jackson, Risberg, Williams, and Felsch had been predicated upon the legal advice of Alfred Austrian, counsel for the White Sox corporation. A far-more critical view of Comiskey’s conduct is provided in current Black Sox scholarship’s seminal work. See Gene Carney, Burying the Black Sox: How Baseball’s Cover-up of the 1919 World Series Fix Almost Succeeded (Dulles, Virginia: Potomac Books, 2006).

3 Decades later, it was revealed that Loomis’s call for a probe of the 1919 series had been ghostwritten by Chicago Tribune sportswriter James Crusinberry. See “A Newman’s Biggest Story,” Sports Illustrated, September 17, 1956, 69-70. Crusinberry himself would later be a significant witness in early grand jury proceedings.

4 See e.g., the Boston Globe, Chicago Tribune, and New York Times, September 20, 1920.

5 Philadelphia North American, September 27, 1920.

6As per notes of the Cicotte admissions taken down by Austrian and now preserved at the Chicago History Museum, Black Sox File, Box 1/Folder 2.

7 Unlike that of Joe Jackson and Lefty Williams, the grand jury testimony of Eddie Cicotte has not survived intact. But substantial portions of the Cicotte grand jury testimony were embedded in the transcript of his sworn January 14, 1924, deposition for the Jackson civil case and thereafter read into the civil trial record.

8 Chicago Evening Post, September 28, 1920.

9 Jackson repeated what he told McDonald in chambers, and more, when he subsequently testified before the grand jury. For space reasons, most particulars of the Jackson-McDonald conversation are omitted herein. But the complete testimony of Judge McDonald is preserved in the still-extant but difficult-to-access transcript of the Jackson v. Chicago White Sox civil case, pages 528-554.

10 McDonald civil trial testimony, page 552. See also Chicago Tribune, February 5, 1924. Decades later, Happy Felsch reportedly stated, “Playing rotten, it ain’t that hard to do once you get the hang of it. It ain’t that hard to hit a pop-up while you take what looks like a good cut at the ball.” Eliot Asinof, Bleeding Between the Lines (New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1979), 117.

11  Jackson grand jury testimony [hereafter JGJ]5-21 to JGJ6-8. The long-lost transcript of the Jackson grand jury testimony first resurfaced in 1988, and is now viewable on various websites. See e.g., www.blackbetsy.com.

12 JGJ6-13 to 16.

13 JGJ6-17 to 24.

14 JGJ9-4 to 19.

15 JGJ4-19 to 23.

16 JGJ6-25 to JGJ7-9.

17 JGJ7-10 to 12.

18 JGJ4-20 to JGJ5-3.

19 JGJ12-5 to 12.

20 JGJ16-25 to JGJ17-12.

21 JGJ 17-23 to JGJ19-6.

22 JGJ16-9 to 14.

23 JGJ20-3 to 7.

24 JGJ11-11 to 24.

25 JGJ12-20 toJGJ13-24 and JGJ 14-3. Like Cicotte, Jackson was victimized by specious accounts of his testimony circulated by the Associated Press. Among other things, newspapers that subscribed to the AP wire printed that “Jackson said throughout the series he either struck out or hit easy balls when hits would have meant runs.” See e.g., Los Angeles Times, September 29, 1920. In fact, Jackson had said nothing of the sort.

26 JGJ15-13 to 14.

27 JGJ14-18 to 19; JGJ12-13 to 16.

28 JGJ22-11 to JGJ23-3; JGJ23-16 to JGJ24-5.

29 JGJ24-6 to 7.

30 Initially published in the Chicago Daily Journal and Chicago Tribune, September 29, 1920, and then re-printed nationwide via the AP wire. See e.g., Cincinnati Post and New Orleans State, September 29, 1930, and Philadelphia Inquirer, September 30, 1920. Unlike the more famous “Say it ain’t so, Joe” anecdote, the authenticity of these Jackson remarks has never been credibly challenged.

31 Chicago Daily Journal, Chicago Tribune, September 29, 1920, and other newspapers nationwide.

32 Ibid.

33  During his grand jury appearance, Williams testified that eight White Sox players had agreed to the series fix, naming for the record “Cicotte, Gandil, Weaver, Felsch, Risberg, McMullin, Jackson, and myself.” See transcript of grand jury testimony of Claude Williams, September 29, 1920, page 30-20 to 24.

34  Chicago Evening American, September 30, 1920.

35 As reported in the Boston Globe, Chicago Evening Post, and New York Times, September 29, 1920.

36  The original indictments returned in People of Illinois v. Edward V. Cicotte, et al, can be reviewed via the website www.cookcountyclerkofcourt.com. Joe Jackson was among the Sox players charged, while indicted fix backers included professional athletes-turned-gamblers Abe Attell and Bill Burns, and banished star Hal Chase. Separate indictments were returned against a number of Chicago-area baseball pool operators. In March 1921, the original Black Sox indictments were administratively dismissed by SA Crowe, replaced by superseding indictments that re-charged all of the previously accused while expanding the roster of non-player defendants by five, including St. Louis gambler Carl Zork.

37 Los Angeles Times, November 13, 1920.

38 As reported in the Boston Globe and Los Angeles Times, November 24, 1920.

39  As quoted in the Boston Globe and Chicago Tribune, November 24, 1920. Although the venue would prove different from that envisioned by McDonald, his observation that Jackson risked exposing himself to a perjury charge proved prophetic.

40  A “bill of particulars” is a pretrial pleading that seeks more specific information about the charges from the prosecution.

41 Notorious Boston bookmaker Joseph “Sport” Sullivan and the shadowy Rachael Brown (probably Nat Evans, a capable lieutenant and business junior partner of reputed, but unindicted, fix financier Arnold Rothstein) were among the gamblers indicted in the Black Sox case.

42 An excerpt from the bill of particulars appears in Black Sox Scandal Research Committee Newsletter, Vol. 6, No. 2 (December 2013), 10.

43 Outside the jury’s presence, Cicotte, Jackson, and Williams testified in support of a defense motion to suppress their grand jury testimony. That testimony, however, was restricted to events attending their grand jury appearances, with no prosecution questioning about the actual fix of the World Series permitted by Judge Hugo Friend. At the hearing’s end, the motion was denied and redacted versions of the Cicotte/Jackson/Williams grand jury transcripts were later read to the jury at length. But to no avail, as the defendants were acquitted notwithstanding their grand jury admissions of guilt.

44 The only defendant who testified in his own defense at trial was gambler David Zelcer.

45 Partial transcripts of the motion proceedings survive in the Black Sox archive maintained at the Chicago History Museum (Box 1/Folder 4). The proceedings were also memorialized in reportage by the Chicago Herald Examiner, Chicago Tribune, and Savannah Daily News, July 26, 1921, and elsewhere. If defense claims were true, admission of the grand jury transcripts in evidence would have violated the constitutional due process rights of the accused.

46 Redaction means the removal of extraneous or inadmissible portions of the evidence. In the case of the Cicotte/Jackson/Williams grand jury transcripts this entailed the deletion of the names of the other defendants (Gandil, Felsch, Weaver, etc.) from the text, the anonym Mr. Blank being inserted wherever such a name appeared.

47 In the writer’s view, the prosecution presented a compelling case at trial against defendants Cicotte, Jackson, and Williams, and a strong one against codefendants Chick Gandil, Swede Risberg, and David Zelcer (if not versus the remaining accused). For one hypothesis about the verdict, see William Lamb, “Jury Nullification and the Not Guilty Verdicts in the Black Sox Case,” Baseball Research Journal, Vol. 44 (Fall 2015), 47-56.

48 The first of these lawsuits was instituted by Buck Weaver in October 1921, and sought unpaid salary for the 1921 season per the three-year contact that he had signed previously. Originally filed in Chicago Municipal Court, the Weaver suit was quickly transferred to the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois on diversity of citizenship grounds, the White Sox being incorporated in Wisconsin. In April 1922, Happy Felsch, Joe Jackson, and Swede Risberg filed state court suits against the White Sox in Milwaukee. Same posited various injury claims.

49 The press was barred from the Jackson deposition, and only ill-informed snippets appeared in newsprint until verbatim excerpts of the deposition were published by syndicated sports columnist Frank G. Menke. See e.g., the Lincoln (Nebraska) Star, April 23, 1923. Menke had previously authored a fawning portrait of Raymond J. Cannon, Jackson’s brash young civil attorney, and would prove a reliable Jackson apologist throughout the proceedings.

50 Per Menke in the Lincoln Star, April 23, 1923.

51 Menke, Lincoln Star.

52 Menke, Lincoln Star.

53 Menke, Lincoln Star.

54 For a detailed accounting of the civil litigation attached to the scandal, see William F. Lamb, Black Sox in the Courtroom: The Grand Jury, Criminal Trial and Civil Litigation (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc., 2013), 149-198.

55 According to Menke, “From Baseball to $100,000 a Year,” Atlanta Constitution, July 17, 1921, and elsewhere. Cannon, a decent ballplayer himself and once a semipro teammate of Jackson co-plaintiff Happy Felsch, was also actively engaged in trying to revive a major league players union.

56 See e.g., “Find Shoeless Joe Excellent Witness,” (Lincoln) Nebraska State Journal, January 31, 1924. Closer to home, local reportage was also initially favorable to the plaintiff. See the Milwaukee Sentinel, January 30, 1924: “Jackson made an excellent witness. He looked well on the stand. His answers came quickly and cleanly.”

57 One of the many fabrications that mar enjoyment of Eliot Asinof’s popular treatment of the Black Sox scandal is the assertion that the Jackson grand jury testimony had long been lost, and that Jackson was ambushed when the transcript “suddenly reappeared [from] Hudnall’s briefcase.” Eight Men Out (New York: Henry Holt & Company, 1963), 289-290. The claim is absurd. The transcript of Jackson’s grand jury testimony (and that of Eddie Cicotte and Lefty Williams, too) had been used extensively during the earlier Black Sox criminal trial and was tantamount to a matter of public record. Nor was the Jackson side surprised by Hudnall’s possession of it, plaintiff’s attorney Cannon having made a motion to preclude the transcript’s use at the civil trial. That motion was denied by Judge Gregory.

58 Jackson v. Chicago White Sox civil trial transcript [hereinafter JTT], page 151.

59 JTT, page 156.

60 JTT, pages 159-160.

61 JTT, page 162.

62 JTT, page 220.

63 JTT, pages 197-198

64 JTT, page 200.

65 JTT, page 188.

66 JTT, pages 154-155.

67 JTT, page 160.

68 As reported in the Milwaukee Journal and Milwaukee Sentinel, February 15, 1924. The day before, Judge Gregory had found plaintiff’s rebuttal witness Happy Felsch in contempt for repudiating what was incontestably his signature on his 1920 White Sox contract. Felsch was thereupon taken into custody, but released later that evening when two local attorneys posted his $2,000 bail.

69 JTT, pages 1686-1687. See also, the Milwaukee Evening Sentinel, February 15, 1924. The perjury-related crime of false swearing can be deemed a sort of self-accusing, self-convicting offense. In one of its forms, false swearing does not require the demonstration that a particular statement given under oath was false. Conviction can rest upon proof that the accused uttered inconsistent statements on the same subject matter while testifying under oath at two different judicial proceedings. It does not matter which of the two inconsistent statements is false, just that one of them has to be (e.g., giving two different birth dates).

70 JTT, pages 1694-1696. See also, the Milwaukee Journal and Milwaukee Evening Sentinel, February 15, 1924.

71 As reported in the Milwaukee Journal and Milwaukee Evening Sentinel, February 15, 1924.

72 Over more than 30 years as a state/county prosecutor, the writer recalls only three perjury prosecutions, each of which involved false witness testimony during a very serious criminal case. Prosecutors generally take little interest in alleged perjury during civil litigation, leaving the affected parties and/or the court to pursue their own remedies.

73 As per the Milwaukee Journal, February 16, 1924, and Chicago Tribune, February 17, 1924. The perjury arrest of Jackson ordered by Judge Gregory was a contempt of court-type sanction. Criminal proceedings against Jackson could only be instituted by a law enforcement agency, like the Milwaukee County District Attorney’s Office.

74 As reported in the Chicago Tribune, April 10, 1924.

75 As reported in the Milwaukee Sentinel and Sheboygan (Wisconsin) Press, May 18, 1925. That same date, Felsch appeared before Judge Gregory and pled guilty to a reduced charge of false swearing. He was sentenced to a one-year term of probation.

76 Decades later, it was reported that the charge had been dismissed. See the Milwaukee Journal, March 13, 1986. In 2010, letters to the Milwaukee County District Attorney’s Office from the writer about the disposition of the Jackson perjury complaint went unanswered.

77 A complete accounting of statements uttered by the Black Sox is provided in Jacob Pomrenke, “After the Fall: The Post-Black Sox Scandal Interviews,” Black Sox Scandal Research Committee Newsletter, Vol. 8, No. 1 (June 2016), 6-9.

78 Shirley Povich, “Say It Ain’t So, Joe,” Washington Post, April 11, 1941.

79 Povich, Washington Post.

80 Back in 1908, Latimer, then a cub reporter for the Greenville (South Carolina) News, had hung the Shoeless Joe moniker on Jackson after Joe had discarded tight-fitting new spikes for a few innings during a minor league game.

81 Carter (Scoops) Latimer, “Joe Jackson, Contented Carolinian at 54, Forgets Bitter Dose in His Cup and Glories in His 12 Hits in ’19 Series,” The Sporting News, September 24, 1942.

82 Latimer, The Sporting News.

83 See again, the Chicago Tribune, Cincinnati Post, and New Orleans State, September 29, 1920.

84 See “This Is the Truth,” by Shoeless Joe Jackson as told to Furman Bisher, Sport, October 1949.

85 “This Is the Truth,” 13.

86 Months prior to the trial, Judge William E. Dever had rendered a significant pretrial ruling in Black Sox defense favor, denying a prosecution motion for an indefinite continuance of the proceedings. The short peremptory trial date then set by Dever prompted State’s Attorney Crowe to administratively dismiss the original indictments returned in the case, and re-present the matter to the grand jury for superseding charges.

87 This sensitivity and desperate reaction to pre-series fix rumors was a stunning departure from events recounted in Jackson’s sworn April 1923 civil case deposition. Then, Jackson had claimed to be oblivious to the series corruption until Lefty Williams informed him about it several nights after the series was over.

88 “This Is the Truth,” 14. A number of witnesses were presented at the criminal trial by the Gandil defense. None of the accused players testified before the jury at trial, but Jackson, Eddie Cicotte, and Lefty Williams did take the stand out of the jury’s presence in support of the unsuccessful defense motion to suppress their grand jury testimony.

89 “This Is the Truth,” 14.

90 “This Is the Truth,” 83.

91 Lamb, Black Sox in the Courtroom, 89-90.

92 “This Is the Truth,” 83.

93 “This Is the Truth,” 83.

94 Under then-applicable Illinois criminal law, the offense of conspiracy was committed the moment that two or more persons agreed to commit an unlawful act. No action (overt act) needed be taken by the conspirators in furtherance of their plan for the crime to have been committed. See People v. Lloyd, 304 Ill. 23, 136, N.E. 505 (Ill. Supreme Ct. 1922). Given that, the purported abandonment of the plot to throw the World Series by Jackson (or any of the other Black Sox defendant) had no legal effect. Nor did the criminal law principle of renunciation apply once a bet on the Series outcome had been placed by an in-the-know gambler with some unsuspecting White Sox backer. At that moment, the crime of conspiracy was irrevocably committed.

95 Donald Gropman, Say It Ain’t So, Joe! The True Story of Shoeless Joe Jackson (New York: Citadel Press, 3rd ed., 2001), 185-190.

96 Gene Carney, “Comiskey’s Detectives,” Baseball Research Journal, Vol. 38, No. 2 (Fall 2009), 108-116.

97 For a session-by-session account of developments during the first Cook County grand jury investigation of the fix, see again, Lamb, Black Sox in the Courtroom, 29-79.

98 As per notes of the Cicotte interview taken by Austrian now reposed in the Chicago History Museum’s Black Sox archive (Box 1/Folder 2).

99 For further demolition of the argument that Jackson’s grand jury testimony was false and implanted in his mind by others, see Craig R. Wright, “The Austrian Conspiracy,” www.BaseballsPast.com, 2015.

100 “This Is My Story of the Black Sox Series,” by Arnold (Chick) Gandil, as told to Mel Durslag, Sports Illustrated, September 17, 1956.

101   JTT, page 599, et seq. (Allen); JTT, Page 648, et seq. (Brigham). During his testimony, Allen recited the 128 or so answers that Jackson had denied giving to the grand jury during his testimony earlier in the civil trial.

102   JTT, page 1169 et seq. (deposition of bank teller John J. Cornell admitted in evidence).

This event did not occur out of left field (as it were). Joe Nuxhall was already well-known before his big-league debut. It was widely reported earlier that year that the Cincinnati Red had signed the 6-foot-3, 195-pound ninth-grader to a major league contract.1 He’d thrown two no-hitters and two one-hitters in his “knothole league” the previous year.2 Joe’s father had himself played semipro ball, and had been training his son to be a pitcher since Joe was a little kid.3 Joe sat on the Reds’ bench that Opening Day, and it was anticipated that he would see game action at some point that season.4, 5 When Joe was finally called up to the active roster on June 8 — after his junior high school graduation, of course — there was a feature story in which he was quoted, “Would I like to get into a big-league game? What do you think I’ve been waiting for all these months?”6, 7

Of course, it’s also well known that Joe’s debut performance fell far short of the hype. Pitching against the St. Louis Cardinals, after retiring two of the first three hitters he faced, he fell apart in a manner one might expect of a junior high student: wild pitch, walk, single, walk, walk, walk, single. Five runs later, he was yanked from the game.8 Five days later, he was on his way to the Birmingham Barons farm club, where he essentially replicated his Reds debut performance.

Today it seems absurd to think it was a good idea for a boy — technically still a minor — to be allowed to compete alongside full-grown men. And yet, although Joe was a once-in-history fluke player as a 15-year-old, there have been several times in the history of professional baseball when teams allowed 16-year-olds (themselves not much closer to physical maturity9) to make that same leap onto a major-league roster. But that’s what happened on fifteen separate occasions between 1872 and 1956.10

In this article, we will explore three aspects of the phenomenon of the 16-year-old major-leaguer:

1. Who were the fifteen boys who make up this exclusive club?
2. How did it come to pass that 16-year-olds were even allowed to play major-league ball in the first place?
3. Is it possible that a 16-year-old could ever again play in the major leagues?

1. The Fifteen 16-Year-Old Major Leaguers

Jacob Doyle

Position: Shortstop, Second Base
Born: November 26, 1855
Debut: April 20, 1872
Team: Nationals of Washington (National Association)
Age: 16 years, 146 days

The first 16-year-old player in major league history stepped onto the field for the first-ever game the National Association version of the Nationals played, and his stint at baseball’s then-highest level ended after his ninth game on May 25.13 Little is known about how Jacob made his way onto the team. The newspapers around the District of Columbia saw fit only to note his appearances in box scores, not his origin story. Given the nascence of organized professional baseball, the presence of a school-aged boy in a top professional game likely seemed unremarkable. Jacob acquitted himself nicely enough: 11 hits, including a double, in 41 at bats for a .268 batting average. He even managed a base hit off eventual two-time 50-game winner and future Hall of Famer Al Spalding. Nevertheless, Jacob’s entire career spanned those nine games for the Nationals, who themselves disbanded after eleven games in total, all losses. (This being the era of “erratic schedule and procedures,” they were not the only team to close shop before a full slate of fixtures could be played.14) Jacob Doyle passed away in 1941 at the ripe old age of 85.

Jim Britt

Position: Pitcher
Born: February 25, 1856
Debut: May 2, 1872
Team: Atlantics of Brooklyn (National Association)
Age: 16 years, 67 days

Unlike his predecessor above, this 16-year-old actually logged a full season as the sole pitcher for the Atlantics, hurling all 336 innings of the team’s 37 games and shouldering their entire 9–28 record. Alternately referred to in the Brooklyn Daily Eagle as both “Britt”17 and “Brett”18 — sometimes in the same story19 — there’s no mention of how this particular 16-year-old happened to land with the Atlantics in the first place. The team must have had high hopes for Jim, though, particularly after some of the thrashings he administered to amateur teams in exhibition play.20,21,22 However, once the season switch flipped to “regular” mode, the effectiveness of the team, and of Jim, waned. The Atlantics were one of a handful of clubs to use a single pitcher the entire season, and it was noted of the club that “[having] no change pitcher, when Jim failed to be effective[,] their strong point was at an end.”23 Remarkably, Jim hung on with the Atlantics for the 1873 campaign as well, during which he hurled another 480⅔ innings and compiled a 17-36 record. He left the Atlantics after his age 17 season and played several more seasons for lesser Brooklyn-based clubs before moving to the West Coast.24 Jim Britt passed away at age 67 in 1923.

Frank Pearce

Position: Pitcher
Born: March 30, 1860
Debut: October 4, 1876
Team: Louisville Grays (National League)
Age: 16 years, 188 days

Frank holds the distinction of being the first 16-year-old “one-and-done” player, but he would not have appeared at all were it not for a grisly injury-cum-cruel insult suffered by the Grays’ starting pitcher, Jim Devlin, during the team’s penultimate game of the season against the Hartford Blues. Devlin had reached first base in the fourth inning on a muffed grounder, and while taking second on a high throw to that bag, “he slid just before reaching it, his foot caught in the large iron ring holding the base-bag down, wrenching and twisting his foot severely.” Devlin knocked the base bag several feet away with his slide and was lying on his back in agonizing pain when Blues second baseman Jack Burdock came back with the errantly thrown ball and tagged Devlin, who was called out by umpire Dan Devinney to complete the insult. Devlin was carted off the field on the shoulders of two teammates but, being the only pitcher on the roster, bound up his ankle and pitched the fifth. He then thought the better of it and insisted on coming out, and so Frank, a pitcher with a local amateur team, was conscripted to finish the match. He pitched “creditably” enough, yielding only four runs in the final four innings on five hits despite eight errors committed behind him.25 Frank promptly disappeared into local amateur ball, playing into the early 1880s before becoming a local collector and traveling salesman.26 Frank Pearce died in 1926 at the age of 66.

Leonidas Lee

Position: Outfielder, Shortstop
Born: December 13, 1860
Debut: July 17, 1877
Team: St. Louis Brown Stockings (National League)
Age: 16 years, 216 days

Leonidas is among the more interesting 16-year-olds who played at the top level of the game. Ostentatiously christened Leonidas Pyrrhus Funkhouser — his father was a leading businessman in St. Louis and a member of the Sons of the American Revolution27 — Leonidas had already attended Princeton University before joining the St. Louis ballclub during his summer vacation. As his family was well-established in St. Louis, given the prevailing social taboo against gentlemen engaging in roughneck activities such as “base ball,” perhaps Leonidas chose “Lee” as an alias to spare his family name embarrassment. While the circumstances under which he came to join the “Brown Sox” are a mystery, he appeared in four league games and fared nicely with a 5-for-18 performance, including a double, although his fielding left something to be desired (four errors in 11 chances at four different positions). He graduated from Princeton the following June and made his way to Omaha.28 Now reestablished as a Funkhouser, Leonidas was an up-the-order hitting outfielder and first baseman with that city’s Union Pacifics club in 1882, on which his brother Mettelus also appeared, but he would never again reach the major leagues.29, 30, 31 Leonidas moved on to Lincoln, Nebraska, where by 1902 he held officer-level positions with several companies simultaneously.32 Funkhouser/Lee died in 1912 en route from Florida to Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania, for a summer retreat.33

Piggy Ward

Position: Third Base
Born: April 16, 1867
Debut: June 12, 1883
Team: Philadelphia Quakers (National League)
Age: 16 years, 57 days

Piggy was the youngest player in big-league history for more than six decades, arriving just 57 days after his 16th birthday. He was also the first 16-year-old player to emerge from his maiden appearance to enjoy a fairly lengthy career, whereas Doyle, Pearce, and “Lee” were all out of the game before they turned 17, and Britt made it through just one more season. After a hiatus following his sole teenage appearance, Piggy re-entered the majors at age 22, then again at 24. He was a bench player until achieving nearly full-time status with the 1894 Washington Senators, playing mainly second base and slashing a respectable .303/.446/.375, including 80 walks — good for tenth in the league. He then faded into minor league obscurity for the next 12 seasons, retiring for good in 1906 after his age 39 season. In his very first big-league appearance back in 1883, though, Piggy — referred to as a “handball expert”34 — was tried out at third base, and although he did ring up two assists there, he also went 0-for-5, striking out twice, and then slipped out of pro ball until popping up with the Johnstown and Shamokin clubs in the Pennsylvania minors in 1887 to begin his second act in the game. As did so many in his day, Piggy Ward came to a rough end: he fell off a telephone pole in Altoona, Pennsylvania, in 1909 and died three years later after suffering paresis resulting from his injuries.35

Willie McGill

Position: Pitcher
Born: November 10, 1873
Debut: May 8, 1890
Team: Cleveland Infants (Players League)
Age: 16 years, 179 days

Despite that he was out of the bigs by 23, Willie still fashioned the best career of any major-leaguer who debuted as a 16-year-old: 14.6 fWAR, split between his pitching and hitting. Invited to try out for Cleveland’s Players League club during 1890 spring training, Willie made his debut for the coincidentally nicknamed Infants on May 8 against the Buffalo Bisons.36 He made an immediate impact due to his appearance (“he is like the little girl’s definition of a sugar plum, ‘round and rosy and sweet all over’”), stuff (“throws barrel-hoops and corkscrews at the plate … with a swift, straight ball that is as full of starch as though it had just come out of a laundry”), and performance (struck out ten batters while going 1-for-4 with a walk at the plate in a 14-5 victory).37 Willie delivered an impressively average season for a high-school-age boy. Once the Players League folded after season’s end, Willie, who’d been playing without a contract anyway, moved on to King Kelly’s Cincinnati “Killers” club of the American Association, then was sold to the St. Louis Browns early that next season.38 He eventually pitched in the National League with Cincinnati, Chicago, and Philadelphia until his final season in 1895 at age 22. He broke his pitching hand the following year, spoiling any chance for a return to the bigs, although he continued pitching in the minors and in top Chicago amateur leagues for more than a decade afterward.39, 40 Willie McGill eventually became head baseball coach at Northwestern University before moving to Indianapolis, where he died in 1944 at age 70.41

Tom Hess

Position: Catcher
Born: August 15, 1875
Debut: June 6, 1892
Team: Baltimore Orioles (National League)
Age: 6 years, 296 days

A good deal of mystery surrounds the saga of Tom Hess. Listed on Baseball-Reference as having started his minor-league career in 1890 with Albany at the age of 14,42 Hess was another 16-year-old one-gamer, playing catcher for the Orioles in a 23-1 laugher over the Chicago Colts. Nothing is known about how Hess ended up on the Orioles in the first place — only that he entered the game in the fifth inning for the O’s that June day and exited in the seventh after getting busted in the kneecap with a ball. Despite the pummeling the Baltimores laid on the Chicagos, Hess did nothing at the plate, making out both times.43 Hess was released by the Orioles about a week later and returned to Albany to finish out the season for the Senators there.

However, there is some dispute as to whether Tom Hess was a 16-year-old major leaguer at all, as well as whether the player in question was even Tom Hess in the first place. David Nemec’s book, The Rank and File of 19th Century Major League Baseball, maintains that the player for the Orioles that game was a man of unknown provenance named Jack Hess, and that Tom Hess was a career minor leaguer who did not pass through Baltimore at all. As evidence, Nemec cites gaps in Tom’s minor league record between 1895 and 1899.44 However, Baseball-Reference shows Tom as having played minor league ball each season from 1890 through 1909, including A-level minor league ball in 1891; while Jack’s record is complete from 1890 to 1897, without gaps, including playing B-level minor league ball in 1892. Given this, and the lack of conclusive evidence contradicting Baseball-Reference’s record, we’ve included Tom Hess here. He passed away in 1945, aged 70.

Joe Stanley

Position: Pitcher
Born: April 2, 1881
Debut: September 11, 1897
Team: Washington Senators (National League)
Age: 16 years, 162 days

Joe was one of the few 16-year-olds with a big-league career spanning several years, with an unusual twist: he debuted for the Senior Circuit Senators as a one-and-done teenage pitcher, then returned to the Junior Circuit Senators as a 21-year-old outfielder. There he remained for six seasons and 215 games, with two mop-up mound appearances. In that teenage debut game in 1897, with his squad being crushed by the Cincinnati Reds, 14-5, after seven innings, Senators manager Tom Brown called on Joe to take one for the team. The 5’9”, 150-pound pitcher was brought in along with 5-foot-7, 168-pound catcher Tom Leahy to serve as his “mustang pony battery”45 and finish the first game of a doubleheader. Joe, a local “District lad,” was “nervous” and ended up walking three and throwing a wild pitch while yielding another five runs in the final two frames, a number the Senators matched in their half of the ninth before finally falling, 19-10. He also went 0-for-2 at the plate.46 (It should be noted that this account from the next day’s Washington Times stands at odds with the record of Joe’s one-game performance as reflected in Retrosheet: ⅔ IP; no runs, hits, walks or strikeouts; one wild pitch; 0-for-1 at the plate. For consistency, it is this record reflected above.47) From there, Joe next showed up on the Newport News club of the Virginia League in 1900, then in Raleigh and New Orleans during the 1901 season before making his way up to the American League Senators that season. He bounced up and down between the bigs and the bushes before settling into the minors from 1910 through his retirement in 1917. When Joe Stanley died in Detroit in 1967, he had been one of the last living nineteenth century players.48

“Coonie” Blank

Position: Catcher
Born: October 18, 1892
Debut: August 15, 1909
Team: St. Louis Cardinals (National League)
Age: 16 years, 301 days

The first 16-year-old player of baseball’s modern era, “Coonie” (or more likely “Connie”49, 50) capped a momentous year of baseball by playing in his one and only big-league game for his hometown Cardinals. Coonie started the year on a St. Louis “trolley league” team that had traveled to Springfield, Missouri, for an exhibition series against the Class C Midgets of the Western Association.51 The Midgets liked him well enough to try him out as their catcher before quickly releasing him.52, 53 He moved on to the Guthrie and Muskogee clubs in the same league during May before making his way back to Springfield by July, where he stuck into August.54, 55, 56 Then, on the 15th of that month, Coonie found himself substituting for starting catcher Jack Bliss in the first game of a late season doubleheader in St. Louis as the Redbirds were winding up a stretch of 14 games in 13 days before hitting the road. He was less than impressive during the game: the Brooklyn paper mentioned that “the Dodgers ran wild on the sacks,” and that Coonie would “need a lot of seasoning.”57 He wouldn’t get it: Coonie was one-and-done as far as the majors were concerned. There’s no record of where he went after his sip of coffee, and he was out of pro ball entirely by age 18. Coonie Blank died in his hometown in 1961.

Roger McKee

Position: Pitcher
Born: September 16, 1926
Debut: August 18, 1943
Team: Philadelphia Phillies (National League)
Age: 16 years, 336 days

The first 16-year-old major-leaguer of the World War II era, Roger Hornsby McKee is also the first whose rise to the majors was well-chronicled in contemporaneous newspaper reports. The previous year he’d earned several mentions in the nearby Asheville, North Carolina, daily paper as a star pitcher for his hometown Shelby American Legion Juniors team. Roger was 9-1, averaged 14 strikeouts per game, and batted .500 in 1943.59 He was signed August 12 by the Phillies as a “17”-year old, his smiling face appearing in papers across the country via AP Wirephoto.60 Roger made his debut in Philly less than a week later, relieving Jack Kraus in the seventh inning against the Cardinals, who were already down 5-0. Roger pitched well despite an especially tough assignment: the first four batters he faced were All-Stars Harry “the Hat” Walker (bunt single), Stan Musial (base on balls), Walker Cooper (5-4-3 double play), and Whitey Kurowski (fly out to right to retire the side without a run). He finished the game, giving up only one run in three innings. He pitched once more as a 16-year-old, four days later, yielding an ignominious result: three hits, three walks and five runs, all earned, in ⅓ inning. Roger pitched two more games that season after turning seventeen, and one final big-league game as an 18-year-old in late 1944 after a season at Class B Wilmington before shipping out to the Navy in 1945.61 After the war, Roger sailed into a long minor league career as an outfielder, retiring at age 30 before returning home to Shelby to become a postal carrier. Roger McKee passed away in 2014.62

Carl Scheib

Position: Pitcher
Born: January 1, 1927
Debut: September 6, 1943
Team: Philadelphia Athletics (American League)
Age: 16 years, 248 days

Carl, the first 16-year-old (and still youngest player) in American League history, took a slightly different path from the 16-year-olds before him. He racked up notices in newspapers around his hometown of Gratz, Pennsylvania, about his stellar pitching and hitting during 1941 and 1942. Though still a 15-year-old in August 1942, he received a tryout with Connie Mack’s A’s. Carl impressed the old man greatly. “There’s only one thing against the boy and that’s his age,” Mack was quoted as saying, “However, bring him down next year as soon as school closes [and we’ll] take care of him. In the meantime, don’t let Carl pitch too much.”63 The following year, Carl spent the entire season with the Athletics as a batting practice pitcher, a job for which he’d quit high school.64 He also pitched for the Athletics in several off-day exhibition games.65 Eventually, with the Pittsburgh Pirates and “another major league club” reportedly interested in Carl, Mack signed him to a big-league contract and brought him into his first game in relief against the New York Yankees.66 Carl was greeted roughly by hitter Nick Etten’s triple, after which Joe Gordon plated Etten with a groundout. Nevertheless, Carl “did O.K.”67 Unlike most 16-year-old rookies, Carl stuck around the majors for a while, pitching with the A’s until age 27, passing through the Cardinals that same year, and winding up his career in the Pacific Coast and Texas Leagues before retiring at age 30. Carl Scheib passed away in San Antonio in 2018 at the age of 91.

Tommy Brown

Position: Shortstop
Born: December 6, 1927
Debut: August 3, 1944
Team: Brooklyn Dodgers (National League)
Age: 16 years, 241 days

Tommy Brown holds two distinctions: he is the youngest 16-year-old player of the twentieth century, and he is the only starting position player on this list. He appeared in more games as a 16-year-old than any other player in major league history. The Dodgers did not bring Tommy to Ebbets Field as a novelty — they brought him there to play. Signed by the club after an open tryout, he was assigned to their Class B Newport News farm club and showed some serious skills there. Tommy was leading the Piedmont League in triples, as well as socking 21 doubles and even a towering home run over a right-center field fence, practically forcing the then last-place Brooklyns to purchase his contract on July 28.68, 69, 70 So popular was Tommy in Newport News that they held a “day” in his honor before he left, and the local paper continued to report on his performance while he was with the Dodgers.71 But Tommy wasn’t a big deal just in Virginia — New York papers wrote feature pieces heralding the arrival of the Dodgers’ new boy wonder.72 Unique among 16-year-olds, Tommy was immediately installed by his team as their starting shortstop. He had a promising start, clouting a double and scoring a run in his debut, and was batting .278 after his first six games. Alas, his youthful inexperience eventually caught up with him: his batting average plummeted below .200 for good by Labor Day, and his 16 errors in only 364 innings marked him as one of the worst defenders in the league. He was strong-armed but wild, earning the nickname Buckshot Brown, because “you know how buckshot scatters.”73 Tommy started 1945 with the Dodgers’ top affiliate in St. Paul before finishing the season back in Brooklyn, where he became the only 17-year-old to date to homer in a big-league game. He found his niche as a backup shortstop with the Dodgers, Phillies, and Chicago Cubs through 1953, eventually settling into the high minors before retiring for good in 1959. As of this writing, Tommy Brown is alive and well and living in Brentwood, Tennessee.74

Putsy Caballero

Position: Third Base
Born: November 5, 1927
Debut: September 14, 1944
Team: Philadelphia Phillies (National League)
Age: 16 years, 314 days

Ralph “Putsy” Caballero was a two-sport star in his native New Orleans and was named to the all-American Legion team twice by the time he’d graduated high school in 1944 at age 16. But rather than taking a dual basketball/baseball scholarship to Louisiana State University, he decided to travel to Nashville to attend a tryout with the Cubs. His high school baseball coach was also a scout for the New York Giants; however, the Philadelphia Phillies, who had just undertaken efforts to sign high school-age talent, swooped in with an $8,000 bonus offer and stole Putsy out from under Giants manager (and fellow Louisiana native) Mel Ott.75 Although Ted McGraw, the Phillies scout who signed him, predicted Putsy would be a major leaguer in one year, he actually made his big-league debut just a week later in the eighth inning of an 11-1 blowout at the hands of the Giants.76 Putsy did mop-up duty at third base, where he handled one chance, a pop fly from (coincidentally) Mel Ott, and went 0-for-1 at the plate, a popout to short. He appeared in three more games as a 16-year-old: twice as pinch runner, and once as a pinch hitter-turned-third baseman in another blowout. Putsy spent parts of seven more seasons with the Phillies, finishing his career at age 27 in 1955 after three more seasons with their AAA teams in Baltimore and Syracuse. He went into his father-in-law’s extermination business and then ran his own business until his retirement in 1997. Putsy Caballero passed away in New Orleans in 2016 at the age of 89.77

Alex George

Position: Shortstop
Born: September 27, 1938
Debut: September 16, 1955
Team: Kansas City Athletics (American League)
Age: 16 years, 354 days

The first of the two 16-year-old players of the 1950s was a locally famous four-sport superstar at Kansas City’s Parkhurst High School who graduated early and was all set to enroll and play basketball and baseball at the University of Kansas when the Athletics came calling. On September 15, they signed him to a contract with an $18,000 bonus, spread over two years, that mysteriously fell outside the Bonus Baby rules of the time, which stated if a first-time amateur received a bonus over $4,000, he had to be placed on the team’s big-league roster for two seasons.78 Even so, while the A’s could have — indeed, should have — sent Alex immediately to the minors for seasoning, they instead inserted him into the very next day’s game against the Chicago White Sox as a pinch hitter. Sherm Lollar, the catcher, told him every pitch that was coming, and Alex still struck out.79 It didn’t get any better for Alex from there: he appeared at the plate eleven times in five games, struck out in seven of those trips, took one walk and got one hit, a drag bunt single.80 The following season he was sent to Class D Fitzgerald in the Georgia-Florida League and rode buses for the next eight seasons, rising as high as AA, but never getting another crack at the majors. Alex quit baseball in 1963 at age 24, then went into ad sales for local radio and TV stations in Kansas City. As of this writing, Alex George still lives in Prairie Village, Kansas, a suburb of his hometown.81

Jim Derrington

Position: Pitcher
Born: November 29, 1939
Debut: September 30, 1956
Team: Chicago White Sox (American League)
Age: 16 years, 306 days

Jim was a bona fide Bonus Baby, having signed for $78,000.82 The White Sox had high enough hopes for him that they signed the 16-year-old knowing that, by major league rules, they would have to carry him on their big-league roster for two seasons. They had good reason to be optimistic: Jim, ace pitcher-first baseman for South Gate High School, had been named Los Angeles All-City Player of the Year earlier that summer of 1956, during which he went 10–2, struck out 159 in 88 innings, had a 0.23 ERA, batted .452, and threw at least two no-hitters.83, 84, 85 Jim was given the start of the final game of the 1956 season in Kansas City against the Athletics and, for a still-growing boy, pitched a man-sized game: 31 batters faced, six innings, six runs (five earned) on nine hits (two homers) and six walks (five on 3–2 pitches), and three strikeouts. He took the 7–6 loss when the Chisox fell just short on their comeback bid. Jim came to bat twice, striking out his first time up but singling to right on his second trip, before he was lifted for pinch hitter Larry Doby in the seventh.86 Jim remains the youngest pitcher since 1876 to start a major league gam. Bonus Baby rules dictated his return to the big club in 1957, during which he appeared in 37 innings across 20 games, including five starts, and finished with a 4.86 ERA. After that, Jim suffered the same fate so many other 16-year-old major leaguers did: he kicked around the minors for a few years before retiring from the game after the 1961 season at the tender age of 21. After baseball, Jim Derrington worked at a variety of jobs and coaching gigs in the LA area, where he still lives as of this writing.87

Those are the fifteen 16-year-old major leaguers. In major–league terms, nearly all of them performed awfully, as would be expected. So the question now becomes:

2. Under what circumstances could a 16-year-old have been allowed to play major-league baseball in the first place?

It should barely rate mention that a 16-year-old boy would be a suboptimal choice for a spot on a major-league roster, not only because his physical strength is still more than a decade away from its peak, but also because his baseball skills are still in the early stages of development.88 After all, it’s a safe bet that most players on any given major league roster have already been playing the game for more than 16 years, let alone having been alive for that long. Experience matters.

Nevertheless, there are certain rare circumstances when it might actually make sense for a 16-year-old to be included on a major league roster. Three major circumstances are:

A. The game of baseball was so new, hardly anybody was an expert at playing it. This was obviously true in the very early days. The first clubs that played what most resembles today’s game of baseball were founded in New York between the late 1830s and mid-1840s. However, key rules — such as nine innings per game, nine men per side, and ninety feet between bases — were not officially codified until 1857 by the Convention of Base Ball Clubs, and the first professional league launched a mere 14 years later.89, 90 At that time, playing baseball for money was still considered by many to be a disreputable activity, the province of gamblers and corruptible players, casting a pall on its integrity.91 Even as the game began to “[gain] in popularity, never before equaled by anything of the sort invented,” many believed the game should remain an amateur affair, contested strictly for love of competition and not for the crass goal of making money and thus reducing the game ”to the level of horse racing and other gambling pursuits.”92, 93 This controversy may have had the effect of restricting the flow of some of the better ballplayers to professional leagues during its first few years.

In addition, the earliest baseball leagues for children did not form until the 1880s (and even those that were established did not flourish). Children could play sandlot ball, but with substandard equipment that was invariably adult sized.94 As such, it would have been exceedingly difficult for children to acquire advanced baseball expertise. Since organized baseball activity was essentially non-existent for children before 1871, a large age cohort of boys from this era could not have achieved enough proficiency to ensure a tightly-aged group of the highest-skilled professional players. Of the cohort we would consider to be of peak professional baseball age, only a small sliver — much smaller than today — would have been available to play, simply because so many had still not played the game to a serious enough degree to do so professionally.

In other words, just about anybody of this era with a rugged enough body who could learn to play the game as an adult with a passable level of skill would have been considered suitable to play professional “base ball.” As a result, the early and middle 1870s saw some of the highest compositions of both teenage players95 — and players96  over 35— in professional baseball history.

B. World War II. This particular war took a drastic toll on professional baseball’s player pool. Unlike the first World War, which for the United States spanned only the 1917 and 1918 seasons, the second great war lasted almost four complete seasons. In the immediate shock of Pearl Harbor and the declaration of a two-front war, the major leagues continued with business as usual, as affirmed by President Roosevelt’s famous “Green Light” letter.97, 98 Even so, more than 500 major-leaguers and over 4,000 minor-leaguers “swapped flannels for khakis” during this period.99

This obviously created a shortage of professional-quality ballplayers, so the pool of candidates had to be widened outside the boundaries of draft age, which in November 1942 Congress expanded to ages 18 to 37.100 As a result, 1944 saw ten 16- and 17-year-old players in the majors, by far the most of any season in history.101 (The 1944–45 seasons also saw the highest composition of players age 38 and older by a wide margin.102) Several ballclubs actively sought underage ballplayers — notably the Dodgers (six) and Phillies (five) — to “man” positions for their teams.103 The Dodgers conducted tryouts across the country, sending letters to 20,000 coaches and others “requesting recommendations of promising athletes.” One camp in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, drew 252 teenage hopefuls.104 Perhaps not surprisingly, these two clubs also occupied the bottom two slots of the 1944 National League standings. Other clubs such as the Giants — led by Mel Ott, a former 17-year-old major leaguer himself — recruited underage players to populate the rosters of their minor league affiliates. This allowed them to call up minor leaguers — themselves bereft of true major league skill, but at least possessing the quality of adulthood — to sip their own cups of coffee courtesy of the wartime talent shortage.105

C. The Bonus Baby Rule. Implemented by MLB in 1947, the Bonus Baby rule was intended to prevent the wealthiest clubs — e.g., Yankees, Boston Red Sox, Dodgers, Cardinals — from using their vast financial resources to sign all the best amateur talent and then stash them away in their farm systems.106 The original Bonus Baby rule was weak and eventually rescinded in 1950, but was reinstated in 1952 in stronger form: any “Baby” signed for more than a $4,000 bonus was required to be assigned to the major league roster for a full two years, or else be exposed to the waiver wire.107

This led to some teams deciding that signing incredibly young, barely proven talent would be worth the risk of major bonus money and potentially wasting a mandated roster spot on them — at least in principle. In practice, the rule was routinely circumvented by many teams, accompanied by rumors of secret under-the-table payments to signees to avoid the two-year-rostering part of the rule.108 This may have been true of Alex George in 1955, who relayed in an interview that his bonus was $18,000, paid to him across two years. It is likely that the Athletics found some loophole that allowed them to exceed the $4,000 Bonus Baby Rule limit while also allowing them to ship Alex out to Class D Fitzgerald for his second season.

The rule also led to the signing of Jim Derrington, the only acknowledged 16-year-old Bonus Baby, who remained with the White Sox for his age-17 season. Typical of how disrespected the rule was, even Jim’s bonus was misstated: widely reported as being $50,000, Derrington confirmed in an interview that the true amount was $78,000, simply because “that’s the way it was done.”109

The Bonus Baby rule led to an uptick in both 17- and 18-year-old big-league players as well. In the seven seasons between the war and the second Bonus Baby rule, only two 17-year-olds reached the majors; during the years 1953-1957, fifteen littered various big-league rosters.110 Also, in 1955 there were nine 18-year-old big leaguers, and in 1957 there were eight, the highest totals in a single season since 1912.111

The Bonus Baby rule was rescinded in December 1957 for multiple reasons — it penalized “honest” teams, young Babies suffered “arrested development” sitting unused on a big-league bench for two whole seasons, and the rule was so widely flouted anyway.112,113. Without it, the incentive to place a 16-year-old boy on a big-league roster disappeared for good.

There has not been a 16-year-old major league player in the six-plus decades since, which leads to the question:

3. Is it possible that a 16-year-old could ever play in the major leagues again?

Technically, yes. Practically, no.

Two sets of rules govern a team’s acquisition of first-time amateur talent, pertaining to either the First-Year Player Draft or signing of amateur free agents.

The draft is the only way for players in the United States and Canada to join a team in either Major League Baseball or their affiliated minor leagues — together: Organized Baseball.114 (The professional leagues independent of Organized Baseball, such as the Frontier League and Atlantic League, provide no direct path to the big leagues and explicitly stipulate a minimum age of 18 years.115, 116) As of 2019, to be draft-eligible a player must have completed four years of high school or at least one year of junior college. There is no explicit age requirement, which leaves open the possibility that a player could be eligible for the draft as a four-year high school graduate at age 16. A player is also eligible if he graduates from high school in three years (i.e., received a diploma after 11th grade) and he will be 17 years old within 45 days after the draft, again leaving open the possibility of being drafted at age 16.117

So, technically, a drafted player could enter Organized Baseball at the age of 16 and go directly to the major leagues to play. In real terms, however, draft rules are designed to make this a practical impossibility. During the first 54 years of the amateur draft, the youngest player ever selected was Alfredo Escalera, age 17 years and 114 days, in 2012.118 Beyond this, only four drafted high schoolers have gone directly to the majors once they were selected: David Clyde in 1973, and Tim Conroy, Brian Milner, and Mike Morgan, all in 1978, and all having already turned 18.119

A player living outside the US and Canada (i.e., a foreign player) has a marginally better chance of making the major leagues at age 16, although it is still practically as unlikely. A foreign player may enter Organized Baseball under contract as an amateur free agent if he is age 16 at the time of the signing, but only if he turns 17 prior to September 1 of the first season covered by the contract.120 Therefore, it is technically possible for a 16-year-old whose birthday is in late August to be signed during the winter and then play almost an entire season in professional ball as a 16-year-old. Jefferson Encarnacion (born August 28, 2001) did this in 2018. However, he, along with the vast majority of 16-year-old professional ballplayers, played in the Dominican Summer League (DSL), a short-season rookie league designed specifically to launch the careers of still-underage foreign-born talent signed as amateur free agents.

As such, very few foreign players make it onto an American diamond as 16-year-old professionals. According to Baseball-Reference, from 2009 through 2018, there were 355 sixteen-year-old professional baseball players. Ninety-three percent of them played exclusively in either the DSL or the Venezuelan Summer League (suspended in 2015). Of those 16-year-olds that did play pro ball in America, fifteen played in the Gulf Coast League, eight in the Arizona League, two in the Pioneer League and one in the Appalachian League — all rookie leagues. Not a single player during this period made it even as high as short-season A at age 16.

Adding all this up, it is clear the system is simply not designed to shortcut 16-year-old players directly onto major league rosters. Indeed, since the founding of the DSL in 1985, the youngest Dominican player to reach the majors has been Adrian Beltre, who debuted at 19 years and 78 days, and only after he had apprenticed in the minor leagues for 318 games.

To illustrate once more the extreme unlikelihood of a 16-year-old player ever again making a big-league roster, briefly consider the case of one of the best and most-hyped high school players of our time: Bryce Harper, who first broke through America’s consciousness on the cover of Sports Illustrated in June 2009. That October, he earned his GED after his sophomore year specifically to accelerate his eligibility for the draft by one year. To satisfy draft eligibility requirements, he enrolled in a Nevada junior college for the 2010 season, where he put up astounding numbers (.443/.526/.987 in 272 plate appearances).121 The Washington Nationals selected Bryce Harper number one overall in the 2010 draft. He was already age 17 years, 224 days. And instead of putting the greatest underage hitter in recent memory directly onto their major-league roster, the Nationals sent him to the minors for 164 games of seasoning. This is consistent with contemporary baseball practice. Since 1996, only two drafted players have gone directly to the majors without minor-league experience, both college graduates past their 21st birthdays.122

The inescapable conclusion is that — given the vast physical and developmental differences between high school age boys and grown men, combined with the stringent way in which the acquisition of amateur talent is regulated, and the process by which major league organizations develop that talent — we will not see another 16-year-old play major league baseball again.

CHUCK HILDEBRANDT has served as chair of the Baseball and the Media Committee since its inception in 2013. Chuck is a two-time Doug Pappas Award winner for his oral presentations “‘Little League Home Runs’ in MLB History” (2015) and “Does Changing Leagues Affect Player Performance, and How?” (2017), and authored the cover story for the Spring 2015 Baseball Research Journal, “The Retroactive All-Star Game Project.” Chuck lives with his lovely wife Terrie in Chicago, where he also plays in an adult hardball league. Chuck has also been a Chicago Cubs season ticket holder since 1999, although he is a proud native of Detroit. So, while Chuck’s checkbook may belong to the Cubs, his heart still belongs to the Tigers.

Table 1: Season and Career Records for All 16-Year-Old Major Leaguers

(Click image to enlarge.)

Notes

1 “Lad of Fifteen Picked by Reds To Do Hurling,” Cincinnati Enquirer, February 19, 1944.

2 “Maybe You Need Different Glasses, Deacon! Things First Look Rosy, Then Gloomy,” Cincinnati Enquirer, March 5, 1944.

3 Davis J. Walsh, ”Reds to Expect Great Things From Hamilton Rookie, Joe Nuxhall,” The Daily Herald (Circleville (O.)), March 29, 1944.

4 Si Burick, “15-Year-Old Joe Nuxhall Tagged A Typical Southpaw; “Plays Hooky” To Sit With Reds On Opening Day,” Dayton (O.) Daily News, April 19, 1944.

5 Oscar Fraley, “Two Items: Definite With Deacon; Baseball To Keep Rolling, View Of McKechnie, Who Also Opines That Redlegs Cannot Be Counted Out — Nuxhall Is Lauded.” Cincinnati Enquirer, May 26, 1944.

6 Paul B. Mason, “Kid Pitcher Thrilled By Big League Chance,” The Times Recorder (Zanesville, O.), June 13, 1944.

7 Al Cartwright, “School’s Out, Nuxhall Joins Reds,” The Dayton (O.) Herald, June 8, 1944.

8 Except where noted, all career and game statistics are sourced from either Baseball-Reference.com or Retrosheet.org.

9 Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, “2 to 20 years: Boys Stature-for-age and Weight-for-age percentiles,” published May 30, 2000 (modified November 21, 2000).

10 Baseball-Reference.com Play Index, “For Single Seasons, From 1871 to 2018, For age 16, sorted by earliest date,” accessed February 15, 2019, https://www.baseball-reference.com/tiny/C9qSv (case-sensitive).

11 “Weighted Runs Created Plus (wRC+) is a rate statistic which attempts to credit a hitter for the value of each outcome (single, double, etc) rather than treating all hits or times on base equally, while also controlling for park effects and current run environment,” Steve Slowinski, “wRC and wRC+,” February 16, 2010, accessed February 15, 2019, https://library.fangraphs.com/offense/wrc/. Note: 100 represents average.

12 “Wins Above Replacement (WAR) is an attempt by the sabermetric baseball community to summarize a player’s total contributions to their team in one statistic,” Steve Slowinski, “What is WAR?,” February 15, 2010, accessed February 15, 2019, https://library.fangraphs.com/misc/war/. Note: fWAR represents Fangraphs’s calculation of the statistic, as distinct from bWAR, which is Baseball-Reference’s calculation.

13 Although in 1968 the Special Baseball Records Committee ruled that the National Association, which was active from 1871 to 1875, was not to be considered a major league, consistent with the National Association’s appearance in major league research sources such as Retrosheet, it is included here.

14 John Thorn, “Why Is the National Association Not a Major League … and Other Records Issues, May 4, 2015, accessed February 19. 2019, https://ourgame.mlblogs.com/why-is-the-national-association-not-a-major-league-and-other-records-issues-7507e1683b66.

15 “ERA- … [is a] park and league adjusted [version] of ERA … These ‘minus’ stats make it easier to compare pitchers regardless of the underlying run environment, as different parks, leagues and seasons can influence a pitcher’s raw numbers. League average is set to 100 for each season and each point below or above 100 is one percentage point better or worse than league average,” Steve Slowinski, “ERA- / FIP- / xFIP-“, April 8, 2011, accessed February 15, 2019, https://library.fangraphs.com/pitching/era-fip-xfip/.

16 Fangraphs’s reported WAR for Jim Britt, of 5.3 for a pitcher who is 9-28 with a 120 ERA-, does not “pass the smell test,” so Baseball-Reference’s version of WAR is reported here.

17 “Sports and Pastimes. Base Ball,” Brooklyn (N.Y.) Daily Eagle, May 21, 1872.

18 “Sports and Pastimes. Base Ball,” Brooklyn (N.Y.) Daily Eagle, April 8, 1872.

19 “Sports and Pastimes. Base Ball,” Brooklyn (N.Y.) Daily Eagle, May 4, 1872.

20 “Sports and Pastimes. Base Ball,” Brooklyn (N.Y.) Daily Eagle, April 20, 1872.

21 “Sports and Pastimes. Base Ball,” Brooklyn (N.Y.) Daily Eagle, April 27, 1872.

22 “Sports and Pastimes. Base Ball,” Brooklyn (N.Y.) Daily Eagle, May 1, 1872.

23 “Sports and Pastimes. Base Ball,” Brooklyn (N.Y.) Daily Eagle, May 21, 1872.

24 David Nemec, Major League Baseball Profiles, 1871-1900, Volume 1: The Ballplayers Who Built the Game (Lincoln, Nebraska: Bison Books), 21

25 “Base-Ball. Louisvilles vs. Hartfords,” The Courier-Journal (Louisville, Ky.), October 5, 1876.

26 Nemec, Major League Baseball Profiles, 1871-1900, Volume 1: The Ballplayers Who Built the Game, 67.

27 David Nemec, Major League Baseball Profiles, 1871-1900, Volume 2: The Hall of Famers and Memorable Personalities Who Shaped the Game (Lincoln, Nebraska: Bison Books), 321

28 “The Colleges. A Rainy Class Day at Princeton. The Festivities Marred by the Disagreeable Weather. A List of the Graduates — A Description of he New Library at Lehigh University to be Dedicated This Week,” The Times (Philadelphia), June 19, 1878.

29 “The Jumbos Floored. Another Expedition of Muscular Giants Bagged Between Bases., The Stannards of St. Louis Follow the Footprints of the “Reds,” And Retire from the Field Minus Their Scalps,” Omaha (Neb.) Daily Bee, August 28, 1882.

30 “Well Whitewashed. The Union Pacifics Receive Nothing But Goose Eggs, While the Council Bluffs Get One Tally,” Omaha (Neb.) Daily Bee, September 25, 1882.

31 “Again Downed. The Union Pacifics Suffer Another Defeat at the Hands of the Council Bluffs Nine,” Omaha (Neb.) Daily Bee, October 23, 1882.

32 “Leonidas P. Funkhouser,” The Courier (Lincoln, Neb.), March 15, 1902.

33 [News item without title], The Haddam (Kan.) Clipper-Leader, June 21, 1912, 2.

34  “A Great Battle of Bats. Victory Won After Twelve Innings. A Remarkable Game of Base Ball at Recreation Park — The Philadelphia Club Defeats the Cleveland by a Score of 4 to 3 — The Athletics Win,” The Times (Philadelphia), June 13, 1883.

35 “Piggy Ward Dead, Once Played Here,” Hartford (Conn.) Courant, October 26, 1912.

36 Society for American Baseball Research, Baseball’s First Stars (Phoenix: SABR), 105.

37 “Haddock Hammered. Cleveland Paying Buffalo Back With Interest. The Internationals Also Beaten — League and Association Scores — Sports of All Sorts,” The Buffalo (N.Y.) Express, May 9, 1890.

38 Nemec, Major League Baseball Profiles, 1871-1900, Volume 1: The Ballplayers Who Built the Game, 127.

39 Society for American Baseball Research, Baseball’s First Stars, 105.

40 Nemec, Major League Baseball Profiles, 1871-1900, Volume 1: The Ballplayers Who Built the Game, 127.

41 “William (Wee Willie) McGill, Major League Pitcher in 1890s, Dies Here,” The Indianapolis Star, August 31, 1944.

42 Tom Hess player card, accessed February 15, 2019, https://www.baseball-reference.com/register/player.fcgi?id=hess–001tho,

43 “Pity Poor Anson. His Colts Scamper in Confusion Before the Orioles. Overwhelmed by a Score of 23 to 1. Great Batting and Fine Fielding and Base-Running Against Chicago — President Harrison Sees the Washington Game — Other Contests,” The Sun (Baltimore), June 7, 1892.

44 David Nemec, The Rank and File of 19th Century Major League Baseball: Biographies of 1,084 Players, Owners, Managers and Umpires (Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland), 107

45 “Slugging Won the First Game. The Reds at Last Find Their Batting Eyes And Pound McJames To Their Hearts Content. ‘Twas Different in the Second Game at Washington — Baseball News,” The Cincinnati Enquirer, September 12, 1897.

46 Cincinnati Enquirer, September 12, 1897.

47 Joe Stanley player card, accessed February 15, 2019, https://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/S/Pstanj103.htm.

48 Nemec, The Rank and File of 19th Century Major League Baseball: Biographies of 1,084 Players, Owners, Managers and Umpires, 77

49 “Bonehead-Bonehead-Bonehead-Bonehead. Bartlesville Takes Three Straight From Midgets — Worst Game of the Season,” The Springfield (Mo.) Republican, July 6, 1909.

50 “Monett Beats Sarcoxie. Only Four Local Men Play In Cassville Game,” The Springfield (Mo.) Republican, August 7, 1909.

51 “Baseball,” The Springfield (Mo.) Republican, April 4, 1909.

52 “Baseball,” The Springfield (Mo.) Republican, April 6, 1909.

53 “Baseball,” The Springfield (Mo.) Republican, April 15, 1909.

54 “Railroaders Walloped Senators. Foot Racing Qualities of Visitors Declared Good,” The Guthrie (Okla.) Daily Leader, May 14, 1909.

55 “Line Drives,” The Muskogee (Okla.) Times-Democrat, May 26, 1909.

56 “Bonehead-Bonehead-Bonehead-Bonehead. Bartlesville Takes Three Straight From Midgets — Worst Game of the Season,” The Springfield (Mo.) Republican, July 6, 1909.

57 “Even Break at St. Louis Ends Superbas’ Western Trip. Swamp the Cardinals in the First Game and Lose the Second When Scanlon Blew Up — Record, Five Game Won; Ten Lose and Two Tied — Play at Boston To-Morrow,” The Brooklyn (N.Y.) Daily Eagle, August 16, 1909.

58 McKee’s record reflects only the two games (out of a season total of four) that he pitched while still age 16.

59 “‘Mail-Order’ Rajah Signed by Phillies,” Brooklyn (N.Y.) Eagle, August 13, 1943.

60 “Baseball Break,” Des Moines (Ia.) Tribune, August 12, 1943.

61 “Pitcher McKee Enters Navy,” Mount Carmel (Pa.) Item, January 3, 1945.

62 Alan Ford, “Local baseball legend McKee passes away,” September 4, 2014, accessed February 15, 2019, https://www.shelbystar.com/20140904/local-baseball-legend-mckee-passes-away/309049793.

63 “Sport Shots,” Mount Carmel (Pa.) Item, September 1, 1942.

64 Jim Sargent, “Carl Scheib,” accessed February 15, 2019, https://sabr.org/bioproj/person/93562fe6.

65 “Gratz Hurler Bought by Phila. Athletics,” The Elizabethville (Pa.) Echo, September 9, 1943.

66 “Sport Shots,” Mount Carmel (Pa.) Item, September 10, 1943.

67 “Sport Shots,” Mount Carmel (Pa.) Item, September 9, 1943.

68 C. Paul Rogers III, “Tommy Brown,” SABR BioProject, accessed February 15, 2019, https://sabr.org/bioproj/person/7913ae6c.

69 Vann Dunford, “Codde Right, Dodgers Trim Cards By 9 To 3. Blast Couple of Hurlers for Eleven Bingles,” Daily Press (Newport News, Va.), June 18, 1944.

70 “Brooklyn Dodgers Purchase Tom Brown,” Daily Press (Newport News, Va.), July 29, 1944.

71 Vann Dunford, “Dodgers Lose ‘Pitler Day’ Tilt To Tars, 16-2. Norfolk Homers Spell Locals’ Doom As Visitors Thump Out 17 Safe Hits,” Daily Press (Newport News, Va.), July 31, 1944.

72 “Newcomers,” Daily News (New York), August 4, 1944.

73 “Schultz Ignores Low, Outside One — Poles 15 Hits,” Brooklyn (N.Y.) Eagle, September 5, 1944.

74 Rogers, “Tommy Brown,” https://sabr.org/bioproj/person/7913ae6c.

75 Jim Sweetman, “Putsy Caballero,” The Whiz Kids Take the Pennant — The 1950 Philadelphia Phillies (Phoenix: SABR), 45.

76 Stan Baumgartner, “Caballero, 16, Signed by Phils,” The Philadelphia Inquirer, September 10, 1944.

77 Sweetman, “Putsy Caballero,” 45.

78 Dan Blom, “Prairie Village’s Alex George played major league baseball with the Kansas City Athletics as a 16-year-old,” October 30, 2014, accessed February 16, 2019, https://shawneemissionpost.com/2014/10/30/prairie-villages-alex-george-played-major-league-ball-kansas-city-athletics-16-year-old-33366.

79 “Lollar Called Pitches, But A’s Rookie Whiffed Anyhow,” Sporting News, September 26, 1955.

80 Blair Kerkhoff, “Can you imagine a 16-year-old playing in the majors? This Rockhurst grad did, for the KC Athletics”, The Kansas City Star, June 8, 2018.

81 Blom, “Prairie Village’s Alex George.’

82 Brent P. Kelley, Baseball’s Bonus Babies: Conversations With 24 High-priced Ballplayers Signed from 1953 to 1957 (Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland), 84.

83 “Four Valley League Players on All-City,” The Valley News (Van Nuys, Calif.), June 10, 1956.

84 “South Gate’s Derrington Signs Chisox Bonus Pact,” Los Angeles Times, September 11, 1956.

85 “Derrington Registers His Second No-Hitter,” Los Angeles Times, May 30, 1956.

86 Robert Cromie, “Bonus Hurler and Sox Lose to A’s, 7 to 6,” Chicago Daily Tribune, October 1, 1956.

87 Tom Birschbach, “He Started for the White Sox at 16, but Was Through at 22,” Los Angeles Times, June 29, 1991.

88 Samantha Olson, “How Old Is Usain Bolt? Fastest Man In The World Tests His Age In 100-Meter Sprint,” August 14, 2016, accessed February 16, 2019, https://www.medicaldaily.com/usain-bolt-fastest-man-world-394814.

89 John Thorn, “Origins of the New York Game: How did a regional game become the national pastime?,” accessed March 4, 2019, https://ourgame.mlblogs.com/origins-of-the-new-york-game-bf9b330042d6.

90 John Thorn, “Nine Innings, Nine Players, Ninety Feet, and Other Changes: The Recodification of Base Ball Rules in 1857,” August 22, 2012, accessed March 4, 2019, https://ourgame.mlblogs.com/nine-innings-nine-players-ninety-feet-and-other-changes-the-recodification-of-base-ball-rules-in-39684873f818.

91 Aaron Feldman, “Baseball’s Transition to Professionalism,” accessed February 16, 2019, https://sabr.org/sites/default/files/feldman_2002.pdf.

92 “Base-Ball,” Louisville (Ky.) Journal, May 1, 1868.

93 “Base Ball Gambling,” The Brooklyn (N.Y.) Daily Eagle, April 10, 1868.

94 “History of Little League,” accessed February 16, 2019, https://www.littleleague.org/who-we-are/history/.

95 “For Single Seasons, From 1871 to 2018, From Age 16 to 19, sorted by greatest number of players matching criteria in a single season,” accessed February 16, 2019, https://www.baseball-reference.com/tiny/oNjtV (case-sensitive).

96 “For Single Seasons, From 1871 to 2018, From Age 35 to 99, sorted by greatest number of players matching criteria in a single season,” accessed February 16, 2019, https://www.baseball-reference.com/tiny/BqfEi (case-sensitive).

97 “Major Leagues Plan ‘Business as Usual,” The State Journal (Lansing, Mich.), January 14, 1942.

98 Shirley Povich, “’Green Light’ from No. 1 Umpire Rallies Game Through Nation,” Sporting News, January 22, 1942, 1.h

99 Gary Bedingfield, “Baseball in World War II“, accessed February 16, 2019, http://www.baseballinwartime.com/baseball_in_wwii/baseball_in_wwii.htm

100 “Draft age is lowered to 18,” accessed February 16, 2019, https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/draft-age-is-lowered-to-18

101 “For Single Seasons, From 1871 to 2018, From Age 16 to 17, sorted by greatest number of players matching criteria in a single season,” accessed February 16, 2019, https://www.baseball-reference.com/tiny/2pwJ9 (case-sensitive).

102 “For Single Seasons, From 1871 to 2018, From Age 38 to 98, sorted by greatest number of players matching criteria in a single season,” accessed February 16, 2019, https://www.baseball-reference.com/tiny/xwihn (case-sensitive).

103 “For Single Seasons, From 1942 to 1946, From Age 16 to 17, sorted by most recent date,” accessed February 16, 2019, https://www.baseball-reference.com/tiny/7R65w (case-sensitive).

104 Don Basenfelder, “Rickey Scouts Scour U.S. for Teen-Age Prospects,” The Sporting News, August 5, 1943, 7.

105 Ken Smith, “Mel Ott to Test 20 Youngsters,” The Sporting News, February 10, 1944, 12.

106 Steve Treder, “Cash in the Cradle: The Bonus Babies,” November 1, 2004, accessed February 16, 2019, https://www.fangraphs.com/tht/cash-in-the-cradle-the-bonus-babies/.

107 Robert F. Burk, Much More Than a Game: Players, Owners, and American Baseball since 1921 (Chapel Hill, N.C.: The University of North Carolina Press), 127.

108 Treder, “Cash in the Cradle: The Bonus Babies,” https://www.fangraphs.com/tht/cash-in-the-cradle-the-bonus-babies/.

109 Kelley, Baseball’s Bonus Babies: Conversations With 24 High-priced Ballplayers Signed from 1953 to 1957, 84.

110 “For Single Seasons, From 1871 to 2018, For age 17, sorted by greatest number of players matching criteria in a single season,” accessed February 16, 2019, https://www.baseball-reference.com/tiny/5y1s8 (case-sensitive).

111 “For Single Seasons, From 1871 to 2018, For age 18, sorted by greatest number of players matching criteria in a single season,” accessed February 16, 2019, https://www.baseball-reference.com/tiny/GMFGZ (case-sensitive).

112 Edgar Munzel, “Bankrolls Now Only Limit on Bonus Bids,” Sporting News, December 18, 1957, 11.

113 Ray Gillespie, “Busch to Lead Fight to Put End to Bonus Rule,” Sporting News, October 9, 1957, 1.

114 For the purposes of the draft, The United States also includes its territories, e.g., Puerto Rico.

115 “Player Eligibility,” accessed February 16, 2019, https://www.frontierleague.com/league/player-eligibility/

116 “Open Tryouts For Many Atlantic League Teams,” accessed February 16, 2019, http://atlanticleague.com/about/newswire/index.html?article_id=411

117 “MLR 3(a)” The Official Professional Baseball Rules Book (New York: Office of the Commissioner of Baseball, 2018), 32.

118 Globalize LLC, “Royals Draft The Youngest Player In Baseball History,” June 7, 2012, accessed February 16, 2019, http://www.i70baseball.com/2012/06/07/royals-draft-the-youngest-player-in-baseball-history/

119 “Straight to the Major Leagues”, accessed February 16, 2019, http://www.baseball-almanac.com/feats/feats9.shtml. (NOTE: Although Brian Milner is listed at this source as having gone directly to the majors in 1978 from Texas Christian University, contemporaneous reports of the time confirm that he was indeed drafted out of Southwest High School in Fort Worth Texas. Example: “Pro Draft,” The Tampa Times, June 8, 1978, page 10.)

120 “MLR 3(a)”, The Official Professional Baseball Rules Book, 32.

121 Bryce Harper player card, accessed February 16, 2019, http://www.thebaseballcube.com/players/profile.asp?ID=156293 (case-sensitive).

122 “Straight to the Major Leagues,” http://www.baseball-almanac.com/feats/feats9.shtml.

Major League Baseball (MLB) was the last of the four major US sports to implement a replay review system. Opposition to replay review included arguments that “bad calls” are traditionally part of America’s national pastime, and concerns over game delays and the limitations of instant replay technology.1 Despite strong resistance, MLB implemented a limited replay review system in 2008.2 The initial system mandated that umpires on the field select play calls to be reviewed rather than team managers. The limited replay review system was in effect through 2013.

In January 2014, MLB announced an expansion of the replay review system.3 The expanded version extended play challenges to team managers and increased the types of plays that may be reviewed.4 The new rules, which are still in effect as of this writing, allow each team manager two challenges to start each postseason game, divisional or wild card tie-breaker game, and one challenge to start every other game including the All-Star Game. If a challenge is upheld, the manager retains the ability to challenge another play call, but never more than two in a regular season game.5 The umpire crew chief also has the discretion to review a potential home run call at any time during a game. Beginning in the eighth inning, a crew chief may initiate a play call review of any other reviewable call if the team manager has no challenges remaining. To accommodate the expected increase in play call challenges, seven minor league umpires were promoted to the major leagues and the Replay Operations Center was established.6

The new rules brought about changes in the staffing at the team level as well. MLB authorized teams to hire video review coordinators. A review coordinator would quickly assess footage from multiple camera angles and counsel team managers whether to challenge a play.7 The review coordinator is largely invisible to spectators, but two additional changes are noticeable to those watching a game. First, the “dirt-kicking, cap-flipping, vein-popping argument” that has been part of baseball’s tradition of challenging play calls has been replaced by a modern watch party, as predicted before the 2014 season by Paul White in USA Today.8 Second, base running is arguably more physical as “the swipe, pop and phantom tags are disappearing because they are less efficient at guaranteeing contact with the runner.”9

For sabermetric enthusiasts, of course, a new replay review system means new measures of performance for replay review analysis. In the spring 2015 issue of the Baseball Research Journal, Gil Imber presented three new measures of performance including the Review Affirmation Percentage (RAP), Team Success Percentage (TSP), and Manager’s Challenge Success Percentage (MCSP). RAP is the percent of play calls affirmed and thus not overturned. RAP includes analysis of play calls reviews challenged by both umpires and team managers. TSP is the percent of play calls overturned regardless if the play call review was challenged by umpires or a team manager. MCSP is the percent of play calls overturned when the play call was challenged by the team manager.10

PURPOSE OF THE STUDY

The purpose of this study was to examine MLB play call challenge data (RAP, TSP, and MCSP) in relation to a variety of variables. Data from play call challenges (N=1352) during the 2015 MLB season were analyzed across the 30 MLB teams, the types of play calls reviewed (home run, ground rule/automatic double, fan interference, stadium boundary calls, force play, tag play, fair/foul on balls hit in the outfield, trap play in outfield only, batter hit by pitch, timing play. touching a base, passing runners, and record keeping), umpire positions, and innings the play was challenged. Specific areas examined included the relationships between the MCSP and teams, RAP and types of play calls, RAP and umpire positions, and RAP and the inning the play was challenged.

Method

Data from play call challenges during the 2015 MLB regular season (N=1352) were obtained from baseballsavant.com in January of 2016. Specific play call challenge variables included MLB team challenger, the types of plays reviewed (catch or drop, fair or foul on balls hit in the outfield, fan interference, ground rule/automatic double, hit by pitch, home run, home-plate collision, play at first, record keeping, rules check, stadium boundary, tag play, tag-up play, timing play, touching a base, and trap play), position of the umpire making the call (first base, second base, third base, and home plate), and the inning the play was challenged (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, and 9+). Once the data were coded, entered and cleaned (duplicated challenges were excluded), they were analyzed using Statistical Analysis Software (SAS). A variety of analyses were used to generate descriptive data and examine trends related to MCSP and MLB teams, RAP and types of play challenges.

Results

MCSP and Teams

Of the 1352 play call challenges, 50.74% were overturned (TSP = .5074; RAP = .4926). The umpires challenged 172 play calls, more than any individual team. However, the umpires had the highest RAP of .7126. It is important to note umpire challenges apply to all games, while the manager challenges only apply to that team’s games. Therefore, although the umpires are over four times higher than the team average, they are only about 1/7 of the total number of challenges. The Rays challenged the most play calls of any team (n = 53) and the Tigers challenged the least (n = 27). The mean of number of challenges per team was 44.61. The Yankees had the largest percent of play calls overturned (75%; MCSP = .75) and the Rays had the fewest (32.08%; MCSP = .3208). The mean MCSP was .5440 (see Table 1).

(Click image to enlarge.)

A Chi-square was conducted to examine the differences in MCSPs among MLB teams.  MCSPs did statistically differ among MLB teams, X² (30, N = 1352) = 86.25, p = <.0001. As shown in Table 1, The Yankees, Mariners, Diamondbacks, Royals, and Twins were more likely to have a play call overturned than the Rangers or Rays.

A correlation analysis examined the relationship between the number of play calls challenged and MCSP values. The number of play calls challenged by a team were moderately negatively correlated with MCSP (r = -.495). Therefore, the analyses indicated the more plays a team challenged the lower the MCSP value.

Seventy-three percent of play calls reviewed were either tag plays (40.75%) or plays at first (32.32%). During the 2015 MLB regular season, there was only one double reviewed and two timing plays reviewed. The type of play call most frequently overturned was fan interference (66.66%; RAP = .3333). Rules check, timing plays, and automatic double types of plays were not overturned during the 2015 regular season.

A Chi-square was used to examine the statistically significant differences in RAP values among types of play calls reviewed. RAPs did statistically differ by type of play reviewed, X² (16, N = 1352) = 94.28, p = <.0001. As shown in Table 2, play calls on fan interference, plays at first, force plays, and hit by pitch were more likely to be overturned than rules checks, timing rule, automatic double, home-plate collision, or tag up play calls.

(Click image to enlarge.)

RAP and Umpire Position

The position of the umpire that was reviewed the most frequently was first base (39.94%). A Chi-square examined the differences between RAP values among umpire positions.  RAP values did statistically differ among umpire positions, X² (3, N = 1352) = 50.31, p = <.0001. Umpires positioned at first base (RAP = .3981) were more likely to be overturned than umpires positioned at third base (RAP = .6529) or home plate (RAP = .6053; see Table 3).

(Click image to enlarge.)

RAP and Inning of Play Call

More plays were reviewed during the seventh inning (n=189) in the 2015 regular season than any other inning. The fewest number of plays — 119 — were reviewed during the fourth inning. Plays reviewed in the first inning had the highest percent of calls overturned (66.01%; RAP = .3399) and plays reviewed in the eighth inning had the lowest percent of calls overturned (53.33%; RAP = .6467; see Table 4). A Chi-square indicated RAP values did statistically differ among innings the play call was reviewed, X² (8, N = 1352) = 44.96, p = <.0001. Play calls challenged in the first, second, or third inning were more likely to be overturned than plays challenged in the eighth or ninth. (See Table 4).

(Click image to enlarge.)

A logistical regression analysis examined the relationship between the inning the play was challenged and RAP values. The regression model was adjusted for MLB team and umpire position. What inning the play call was challenged significantly predicted RAP scores, t(1317) = -6.19, p < .0001. The inning of a challenge also explained a significant proportion of variance in RAP scores, R² = 0.1358, F(1,1317) =38.27, p < .0001.

Discussion

Our 2015 MLB replay review data analyses bear similarities to analyses of the 2014 replay review data.11 Imber stated that based on the 2014 MLB replay review data, “the more reviews experienced by a given team, the greater the chance that some of these reviews were unsuccessful and/or frivolous.” Similarly, this study indicated a negative correlation (r = .495) such that the more play calls a team challenged, the lower the team’s MCSP value—and thus, lower the likelihood the review would be overturned. In both the 2014 and 2015 regular seasons, the umpires had the highest RAP at .769 and .7126, respectively. These trends may in part be due to the choice of teams to request a review from the umpire rather than use a manager’s challenge. Teams more successful at getting umpires to initiate a play call review would have a lower frequency of manager play call challenges. Moreover, it may be assumed that teams would be more likely to request the umpire initiate a review rather than use a manager’s challenge when the play call in question is indeed very questionable.

Another trend from the 2014 MLB regular season that carried over to 2015 was that the RAP increased as the game progressed.12 There are several possible reasons for this. Umpires may have improved as each game advanced. Managers’ judgment in challenging play calls may have gotten poorer as each game continued. However, the most likely reason is that to use a manager challenge early is the game is a greater risk than using one later in the game. Play challenges can also be used as part of a strategy to provide more time for a pitcher during high leverage situations in the game.

The MLB replay review system has changed some aspects of America’s favorite pastime.  It has added a new element to team strategy, new team staff positions, and new data to be analyzed. Data from the 2015 MLB regular season indicated RAP is impacted by team, type of play call, umpire position, and most statistically significantly, inning the play was challenged. Teams should continue to invest in understanding and maximizing the opportunities presented by the replay review system.

ANNE C. MARX SCHEUERELL is an Associate Professor of Sport Management in the Francis J. Noonan School of Business at Loras College in Dubuque, Iowa. Her research is in sport analytics and sport as a platform for socio-cultural change. She earned her master’s degree from Arizona State University and her doctorate degree from the University of Arkansas.

DAVID B. MARX is a Professor Emeritus of Statistics at the University of Nebraska in Lincoln, Nebraska. He works in the area of spatial statistics as well as in sports statistics. His Ph.D. is from the University of Kentucky and he was previously employed at the University of Arizona and University of Arkansas.

Notes

1 Zachary D. Rymer, “Breaking Down the Pros and Cons of Instant Replay in MLB.” Bleacher Report. October 03, 2017. Accessed September 19, 2018. http://bleacherreport.com/articles/1156392-breaking-down-the-pros-and-cons-of-instant-replay-in-mlb.

2 Associated Press. “MLB Approves Replay in Series That Start Thursday.” ESPN. August 27, 2008. Accessed September 17, 2018. http://www.espn.com/mlb/news/story?id=3554357

3 Paul Hagen, “Expanded replay approved, to begin this season.” MLB.com. January 16, 2014. Accessed February, 2015 from http://m.mlb.com/news/article/66737912/mlb-approves-expanded-instant-replay-beginning-with-2014-season

4 MLB Replay Review Regulations. (n.d.) Accessed February 25, 2019. http://m.mlb.com/official_rules/replay_review.

5 Hagen, MLB.com, 2014.

6 Gil Imber, “Confirmed: MLB Hires 7 New Umpires to Full-Time Staff,” Close Call Sports & Umpire Ejection Fantasy League. Accessed September 19, 2018. http://www.closecallsports.com/2014/01/mlb-hires-umpires-baker-blaser-rackley.html.

7 B. Walker, “Replay Wizards Becoming Key Positions on MLB Teams.” Spokesman.com. March 21, 2014. Accessed September 19, 2018. http://www.spokesman.com/stories/2014/mar/22/replay-wizards-becoming-key-positions-on-mlb-teams/.

8 Paul White, “How Instant Replay Will Truly Change Baseball,” USA Today. February 28, 2014. Accessed September 19, 2018. http://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/mlb/2014/02/27/how-instant-replay-will-change-baseball/5879639.

9 David Manel, “How Has Instant Replay Changed Baserunning?” Bucs Dugout. May 20, 2015. Accessed September 19, 2018. http://www.bucsdugout.com/2015/5/20/8626635/tagging-sliding-replay.

10 Gil Imber, “Reviewing Instant Replay: Observations and Implications from Replay’s Inaugural Season.” Baseball Research Journal 44, no. 1 (2015). Accessed September 19, 2018. https://sabr.org/research/reviewing-instant-replay-observations-and-implications-replay-s-inaugural-season.

11 Imber, “Reviewing Instant Replay,” BRJ, 2015.

12 Imber, “Reviewing Instant Replay,” BRJ, 2015.

On January 31, Red Sox outfielder Mookie Betts won his arbitration hearing, securing him the highest salary ever awarded for a first-time arbitration-eligible player at $10.5 million. That was $3 million more than the Red Sox’ bid, and a whopping $9.5 million raise from Betts’s 2017 salary.

Two weeks later, in a contentious hearing on February 15, Marcus Stroman lost his case against the Toronto Blue Jays, resulting in a 2018 salary of $6.5 million, $400,000 less than what he’d filed for.

And in a forgotten headline, on February 6, Jonathan Schoop and the Baltimore Orioles managed to overcome their $1.5 million gulf in salary filings without an arbitrator, settling on an $8.5 million salary for 2018.

These cases represent the three possible outcomes of the MLB arbitration process: a player winning the hearing, a team winning the hearing, and a mutually agreed upon settlement prior to a hearing. However, the likelihood of each outcome varies significantly based on salary filings and player performance. This study seeks to examine this system and arrive at conclusions about whether players and teams with high gaps in filings are more or less likely to follow the arbitration process through to a hearing.

Delving a step deeper into the salary filings themselves, Betts, Stroman, and Schoop may have filed for salaries substantively different from what their skill sets were worth a mere 10 years ago. Given the recent proliferation of advanced metrics in baseball, the evaluation of talent has changed significantly. This study further examines whether compensation and skill premiums for particular aspects of a player’s game have changed over time.

On these two general points of inquiry, this study builds a comprehensive picture of the MLB arbitration process. By understanding how the arbitration process affects incentives for negotiation and settlement, it applies economic logic of contract theory to a controlled environment of arbitration. And by examining trends in valuation and compensation, the study draws conclusions about how baseball’s information revolution affects bargaining for contracts and salary. Ultimately, this reveals two conclusions: risk aversion from players and teams in arbitration hearings, and the proliferation of advanced metrics and skill-based valuation of players as reflected in compensation.

MLB Arbitration Overview

Before discussing the data and model strategy, it is important to examine the arbitration system, whose design significantly affects salary filings and the incentive structure for players and teams. There are two major components to consider: eligibility standards for arbitration and the arbitration procedure itself.

Arbitration dates to the 1973–74 offseason. Under current rules, players with between three and six years of service time are eligible to have their salaries decided by arbitration. Two major exceptions to this eligibility window exist. First, any player with more than six years of service time can elect to engage in the arbitration process with a consenting team. However, since these players are also eligible for free agency, they rarely opt for arbitration and instead negotiate contracts directly with teams. A notable exception was David Ortiz, who in 2012 elected to enter arbitration with the Red Sox rather than exploring the free-agent market.

The more important exception to the eligibility standards is the class of players known as “Super Twos.” Players in the top 22 percent of service time for those between two and three years of service time are eligible for arbitration one year early, for a total of four years. Super Twos are often the top young performers in the league and are rewarded with a bonus year of arbitration eligibility. Entering arbitration one year earlier can have multiplicative effects on earnings in subsequent years, and thereby may affect the incentives of the player.

Turning from eligibility to process, Major League Baseball’s arbitration system can be classified as a “final-offer arbitration” (FOA) system. In this format, both parties submit a bid or proposal to resolve a dispute and present evidence in favor of their valuation. The arbitrator then chooses one of the two bids and cannot derive a value in between the bids. This feature distinguishes MLB’s arbitration system from others such as the National Hockey League’s, where arbitrators are free to select either bid or assign any value in between. As a result of MLB’s final-offer system, bids are often significantly less extreme, since presenting an outlier bid would likely result in losing the entire difference between the two bids rather than the difference with a midpoint.

In terms of process, eligible players and teams unable to come to terms by a mid-January deadline enter the filing period. Here, teams and players are still able to negotiate contracts, but must first file salary figures that constitute their bids in a potential arbitration hearing. If the parties are still unable to reach an agreement after filing, they proceed to a hearing, but remain free to settle at any point before it commences.

In this ultimate phase, players and teams present their respective cases in front of a panel of three arbitrators using admissible evidence such as quality of performance — as measured by both publicly and non-publicly available data — comparisons to previous salary, comparison to like arbitrations, and injury history. Arbitrators then render a decision within 24 hours.

Given these rules, arbitration provides a clearly controlled and regulated laboratory for studying the changes in valuation patterns and effects of contract theory in baseball. With most players signing one-year deals, the confounding effects of multi-year agreements, incentive based bonuses, opt-out clauses, and perks such as no-trade clauses are removed. In arbitration, value is directly linked to performance and the perceived ability to sustain that performance in the future.

MLB Performance and Evaluation Trends

Complementing this understanding of the MLB arbitration system are important trends and transformations in the thought around evaluation and performance measurements in baseball. Here, the post-Moneyball environment and the information revolution have brought about many changes.

Three emergent categories in this transformation are advanced metrics, batted-ball data, and Statcast. The first of these was the earliest entrant into the baseball information revolution, gaining prominence in the late 20th century and producing hallmark sabermetric statistics. The main achievement of these advanced metrics was removing bias from conventional measures and isolating the individual contributions of players. This has led to more precise evaluation of talent levels and the underlying skills possessed by baseball players.

The second and third classes of data — batted-ball information and Statcast data — consist of information on player and ball movement during games. These statistics do not evaluate the outcomes of any given play but instead provide data on a player’s strength, speed, and skills. These metrics further divorce skills from outcomes and are particularly relevant for arbitration cases as players and teams may be able to point to underlying skills (or defects) as indicators of a player’s value rather than using outcome-oriented data that may be biased by the presence of other players in data events. In contrast to sabermetrics, the availability of Statcast data is highly regulated and asymmetrical. While some Statcast information is publicly available, a large number of data and measurements are only available to teams. Therefore, Statcast is not admissible in arbitration hearings and is not used in this study.

Nonetheless, the impact of Statcast data on baseball trends is important to note. Since Statcast was introduced in 2015 — in the middle of the season  — it provides a natural experiment for changes in player performance and valuation due to changes in the data landscape. As an example, the Statcast metric “Launch Angle” measures the angle of a batted ball. With the increasing availability of these data and research showing fly balls to be more productive in run-scoring, many hitters have altered their swings to add loft — a trend that is perceptible in the non-Statcast measure fly-ball rate. Thus, while Statcast data are not used in this study, the impact of Statcast may be observed through other metrics that reflect changes in player behavior.

Literature Review

By and large, the previous literature that drives this study falls into two major categories: models for evaluating free-agent contracts based on performance statistics and evaluations of the FOA system.

Modeling Compensation with Metrics

Wasserman (2013) examined non-performance indicators of free-agent compensation such as player-agent influence, market size, and month of signing. In this study, Wasserman controlled for player performance using an aggregate measure of player value — Wins Above Replacement (WAR) — and found that performance is significant in predicting salary at the 1 percent level in all regressions. Building upon this work and breaking down WAR into its component measures would show which metrics are better indicators of compensation, yielding a more robust examination of the correlations between performance and compensation. In addition, breaking down WAR into component parts would allow this study to trace changes in valuation and compensation of various skills over time.

In this realm, Pollack (2017) has examined the relationship between various metrics and compensation. Pollack’s approach was novel in that it examined only arbitration contracts and free-agent contracts signed the year previous to their inclusion in the dataset, thereby isolating the year-over-year change in salary. In this study, Pollack found a significant relationship for on-base percentage and isolated power with compensation. Furthermore, by examining the individual annual cross sections for the effects of OBP and ISO, Pollack found that OBP’s effect on salary relative to ISO had grown over time, evidencing a more analytic approach to compensation, as OBP is heralded as the poster-child of the Moneyball revolution. Extending this work to arbitration salaries and isolating the effects of more advanced metrics such as weighted runs created plus (wRC+) could reaffirm Pollack’s conclusion.

FOA and Alternative Dispute Resolution

The second body of literature relevant to this study situates the MLB arbitration system in the context of other alternative dispute resolution (ADR) mechanisms. Scholars such as Carrell and Manchise (2013) compare FOA to more traditional interest arbitration methods, citing the advantages of FOA in promoting compromise and early settlement due to the winner-take-all structure. The arbitration hearing presents the evident risk of losing the entire difference between salary bids rather than settling on a midpoint.

Monhait (2013) builds on these claims, pointing to the effectiveness of the FOA system at inducing settlement as evidenced by the fact that from 1974 to 1993, only 9 percent of eligible players completed the process with a hearing. The frequency has been even lower in recent years, with only 2.5 percent of players who filed for arbitration going to a hearing in 2011 and no players entering a hearing in 2013.

Twenty years earlier, Burgess and Marburger (1993) found that team victories in arbitration hearings led to salaries 9 percent lower than comparable players who settled, and that player victory led to salaries 14 percent higher than comparable players who settled. This theory adds to Carrell and Manchise’s argument that the potential to lose salary through an arbitrated decision may nudge the sides toward early settlement.

The two main claims made by this paper are anchored by key texts in the previous literature. First, recognizing that sabermetrics have influenced the thoughts of negotiators and valuation of players, this study demonstrates that the effect of advanced metrics on salary has grown in recent years. Second, while large gaps in salary filings reflect large gaps in valuation and longer roads to compromise, I argue that given the constraints of FOA, players entering a hearing bear the risk of losing large sums of money and therefore settle early when the difference in bids grows.

Data Overview

The data drawn for this study consist of pooled cross-sectional data aggregated from two major sources — MLB Trade Rumors and Fangraphs — and contains arbitration filing information and performance indicators for all players who filed contract figures for arbitration in a seven-year period from 2011 through 2017. The performance statistics are lagged one year, such that a player’s value in year t will be evaluated using performance in year t-1. While considering career averages for statistics is an alternate option for evaluation, arbitration-eligible players often face higher variation in year-over-year playing time. As such, the best indicator of a player’s projected usage during the span of the one-year arbitrated contract is his usage in the preceding year. Overall, this creates a population of 269 players used in the analysis: 146 pitchers and 123 batters.1 The majority of players in the population are only present for one year and do not reenter the arbitration process. Only nine players entered the arbitration process the traditional-maximum three times and no players reached the Super Two maximum of four arbitration filings.

The variables contained in the data consist of descriptive variables — Name, Year, Team, and Position — and filing data taken from MLB Trade Rumors’ annual arbitration tracker, which aggregates arbitration filings and settlements. These filing variables contain both the Team Filing and Player Filing, as well as Midpoint, Settlement Amount, Bid Difference, a binary variable for arbitration hearings, Hearing Outcome, Salary in year t-1, Service Time, and a binary variable for Super Two status.

The performance metrics themselves are drawn from Fangraphs and contain four main categories. First are traditional counting statistics such as at-bats and hits for batters, and innings pitched and strikeouts for pitchers. The second group consists of rate statistics, which are averages such as ERA or weighted averages such as slugging average. The third group consists of sabermetrics that employ advanced mathematical methods in their calculation. These include weighted on-base average (wOBA) for hitters and batting average on balls in play (BABIP) for pitchers. The final group consists of batted-ball data such as ground-ball percentage and contact rate. Ultimately, this yields a set of 59 variables for pitchers and 43 variables for hitters.

Table 1: Pitchers Summary

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Table 2: Hitters Summary

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Summary and Descriptive Statistics

Table 1 and Table 2 compare salary filing, settlement information, and select performance metrics for pitchers and hitters, respectively. Generally, the group of hitters has slightly higher salary filings and settlements than pitchers, with the mean settlement for hitters being just over $4 million and the mean settlement for pitchers at $3.7 million. Both groups had average bid differences of around $1 million and settlements for either group were just below the midpoint between the two bids (i.e. closer to the team filings). In addition, both groups had mean service times of around 3.6 years, indicating that the average player is entering the arbitration process for the first or second time. This comes as no surprise given that players with more service time may have signed long-term contracts; teams sought to avoid incremental annual raises and players sought long-term guarantees of money.

In terms of performance, the group of players filing for salary arbitration exhibits noticeable variation from average players. Pitchers have pitched to an ERA of 3.19 and an ERA- of 80.33. As such, the mean pitcher in the population has an ERA 19.77 percent better than the league-average pitcher.2 In terms of WAR, this sums to 1.67 wins above a replacement-level player over the course of a season.

The average hitter has a triple-slash line (average/on-base average/slugging average) of .268/.334/.432 and a wRC+ of 109.4, indicating performance 9.4 percent better than the average major-league hitter. These hitters have produced a mean WAR of 2.6, commensurate to a solid starting player. Clearly, the average player entering the filing period of the arbitration process is better than the average MLB player. This may be a case of selective sampling, since only good players are tendered contracts and offered the option to enter arbitration. However, it could also be an indication that better players are relatively more willing to challenge their teams and seek higher salaries rather than settling early.

Table 3 examines the group of players who entered an arbitration hearing. Here, pitchers followed the arbitration process to completion more frequently than hitters: 21.23 percent of pitchers in the population went to arbitration hearings, compared to 11.29 percent of hitters. Pitchers also lost their hearings more frequently than hitters, only winning 13 of the 31 cases (42 percent), while hitters won seven of 14. The average award in these cases was $3.4M for pitchers and $4.2M for hitters. When compared to the entire group of players who exchanged salary figures, the mean settlement through hearings for pitchers was roughly $300,000 lower than the overall mean settlement. For hitters, the hearing settlements were roughly $200,000 higher than the overall mean.

Table 3: Arbitration Hearing Summary

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Empirical Considerations and Model Design

Given various qualities of the data such as small sample sizes, repeated cross sections, and potential for omitted variable bias, many considerations must be made in developing an effective empirical strategy and in designing a model. Considering these factors, the first two models below analyze why players and teams choose arbitration hearings over settlement, and the final model attempts to identify growing skill premiums and the dollar-value of performance indicators.

Predicting Likelihood to Enter Arbitration Hearing

For the FOA models, particular considerations must be made for the independent variable, as there are multiple methods for constructing the regressor. First, the absolute difference in bids can be useful in determining how larger differences and a perceived gulf in filings impact hearing likelihood. However, this introduces bias from large contracts, which naturally have larger gaps in salary filings. This bias can be controlled through the inclusion of a dummy variable for the size of the contract.

To address additional omitted variable bias, further control variables are placed for performance — assuming that the quality of performance affects a player’s arbitration incentives — and for Super Two status — assuming that the level effects of early arbitration have an effect as well. This yields the following model, where the probability of a hearing is dependent on the coefficient multiplied by the absolute difference between bids plus the effects of the controls:

Alternatively to the absolute difference regressor, using a relative independent variable that measures the bid difference relative to the size of the contract combines the effects of contract size and bid difference into one variable. The controls for WAR and Super Two status remain, yielding the following model:

Relationships between Measures of Player Value and Salary Filing

For the performance metric valuation models, the high level entry and exit of players between each annual cross section necessitates considerations in the empirical approach. Table 4 illustrates the two main problems with conducting regressions at an annual cross section level to measure changes over time. First, compared to pooled data, each individual year may not have enough observations to provide insight on the relationships between performance and salary. Second, inconsistent variation in mean filing between years may surround the data in too much random noise to decipher trends. The peak mean filing was in 2016 at $5.66 million and the lowest was the next year, 2017, at $3.92 million. A remedy to these problems is to use three-year rolling periods as opposed to annual cross sections. This method allows proper analysis by creating a larger sample size in each period and also tunes out sample-related noise by pooling adjacent years together.

Table 4: Mean Player Filing By Year

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Furthermore, the risk of multicollinearity between independent variables must be considered as well. As players with strong performance in some areas likely have strong results in others, using multiple performance variables in the same regression may bias coefficients and reduce significance. As an example, a player with low ERA would likely also have a low FIP (fielding independent pitching). Including both of these variables in the same regression would dilute the effects of either measure on salary and reduce the accuracy of the model.

In order to isolate the values of individual metrics and skills, each independent variable must be tested for its effect on salary in separate regressions. This comes with some limitations, as the explanatory power of each coefficient may not be precise. However, by comparing the fit, standard errors, and coefficients for each independent variable across regressions, the model can provide some insight on which metrics are more relevant in determining salary than others.

These two major considerations produce the following model, where a regression for each individual performance metric S is repeated five times, restricting each iteration to a different three-year rolling period in the data set:

Here, the dependent variable being considered is not either bid, but rather the settled or arbitrated salary. The model allows us to measure whether — the dollar value of a one-unit increase in performance metric S — has changed over time. If the literature is true, then the  and statistical significance for advanced metrics are expected to rise in more recent periods.

To address omitted variable bias in these regressions, controls are placed for service time and for positional adjustments. Since players generally receive strong raises for each year regardless of their performance, players with more service time will naturally have higher salaries, and controlling for this in model becomes crucial.

For positional controls, certain positions are frequently paid more lucratively than others. For example, while starting pitchers and relief pitchers may have similar levels of performance as measured by ERA, the starting pitcher would be compensated more due to his higher utilization. In addition, certain forms of production are more valuable from one position than another. Since most first and third basemen have higher offensive profiles, each marginal unit of offensive production is less valuable from these positions.

The most effective method to create these positional controls is to create a dummy variable for relief pitchers in the pitcher regressions and a dummy variable for defense-premium positions in the hitter regressions. Here, the selected defense-premium positions are catcher, second base, and shortstop. While center field is also considered a defense-first position, many outfielders play games at multiple outfield positions and therefore the entire group of outfielders is not considered defense-premium.

Results

Testing these models, the results indicate strong risk aversion by both teams and players, significantly affecting the likelihood to enter an arbitration hearing. In addition, the results show the proliferation of advanced analytics and skill-based over outcome-based valuation of major-league players.

Examining Likelihood to Go to Hearing

As seen in Table 5, both models — measuring the bid difference either relative to contract size or in absolute terms — demonstrate highly significant negative coefficients, indicating that players with large gaps in salary filings are less likely to enter hearings. In fact, in the aggregate sample of players, an increase of $100,000 in bid difference reduces the likelihood of a hearing by 2.7 percent and a 1 percent increase in bid difference to midpoint ratio decreases the likelihood of a hearing by 1.1 percent. These figures present an incredibly significant effect considering only 16.73 percent of players in the sample even made it to a hearing. Quite evidently, teams and players are incredibly risk-averse and fear losing the arbitration hearing and being forced to agree to a suboptimal salary. Therefore, the incentive to settle is driven up by higher bid differences.

Table 5: FOA Regressions

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Furthermore, in the aggregate sample, an increase in filing midpoint by $100,000 increases hearing likelihood by 0.56 percent. As such, all else equal, players with higher filing midpoints are more likely to head to a hearing. By contrast, WAR has a negative coefficient. Therefore, while WAR indicates that better players are less likely to head to a hearing, the positive coefficient on midpoint states that “better” players are more likely to head to a hearing.

Though these indicate opposite effects, considering the effect of a high midpoint with WAR constant and vice versa, the theory provides explanatory qualities. A player with a high bid that inflates the midpoint — holding performance constant — is more likely to head to an arbitration hearing. Most likely, the group captured here is players with poor levels of performance but an aggressive salary filing — an easy candidate to be challenged in a hearing. By contrast, an increase in WAR — holding contract size constant — makes players less likely to go to an arbitration hearing. This likely indicates that good players are privileged during the arbitration process, given more time and effort in negotiations, and offered more opportunities to settle early.

The final variable of interest in these regressions is the control for Super Two status. The models indicate that Super Two status increases the likelihood of hearings substantially, by 14.3–16.9 percent, depending on the model. As such, these young players seem more likely to challenge their teams on salary evaluations. This too comes as no surprise since challenging a team in a player’s first (and bonus) year of arbitration eligibility can lead to significant level effects in subsequent arbitration hearings. A salary increase from the league minimum of $545,000 to even $1 million can snowball into much larger raises in the following years.

Interestingly, Super Two pitchers are even more likely to enter an arbitration hearing, 18.9–24.5 percent more likely than non-Super Two pitchers. One likely explanation is that pitchers are far more susceptible to injury and therefore are more likely to be non-tendered in subsequent periods. As a result, pitchers may challenge their teams more while their performance is commensurate to a higher salary, securing earnings in the immediate term.

As a final robustness check on the effect of salary filings and bid differences on likelihood to enter trial, the initial specifications were tested with an alternative performance control, seen in Table 6. FIP for pitchers and wRC+ for hitters were chosen as metrics related to and as components of WAR, but still incomplete measures of total performance since they do not aggregate other factors of performance measurement like WAR does. With these controls as well, the coefficients on the variables of interest retain their signs, significance, and relative size. Even with alternative and incomplete controls, the effect of risk aversion continues to dominate the decision on early settlement versus an arbitration hearing.

Table 6: FOA Robustness Check

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Factors Affecting and Correlated with Filings

Examining the salary filings themselves, players and teams seem to be incorporating more skill-based evaluations, using advanced metrics to determine player value. For both hitters and pitchers, conventional measures of value are slowly being replaced by sabermetric and batted-ball alternatives that emphasize more precise evaluations of talent rather than evaluation of outcomes. The results from the regression here are displayed in a line graph in order to demonstrate the changes in coefficients over time and to allow comparison of the compensation effects of various metrics. Graphs 1 and 2 illustrate the relationship of select metrics with salary over time. The vertical position of each point shows the dollar value per unit of production for the given metric — its value — while the size of the point shows the statistical significance of these metrics — the accuracy in predicting salary.3 Essentially, metrics with a high statistical significance are linked closely to salary and are useful tools for predicting salary; metrics with high dollar values are worth more per unit.

For pitchers in particular, the evidence points toward the fact that traditional measures of pitcher success and durability such as innings pitched, wins, and ERA have fallen in prominence compared to alternatives such as FIP and true ERA (tERA).

As seen in Graph 1, the relationship between innings pitched and salary decreases over the periods examined with each additional inning being worth $23,460 in the first rolling period but only $15,770 in the last period, representing a 33 percent decline. In addition, the significance of the coefficients drops as well from above 99 percent significance initially to 90 percent significance at the end.

Graph 1: Pitcher Compensation Trends

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This decline in the relationship between IP and salary can perhaps be attributed to the growing dominance of relievers and short leashes on starting pitchers. As dominant relievers such as Dellin Betances, Zack Britton, and Kenley Jansen have entered the sample of arbitration-eligible players, the emphasis on innings pitched and workhorse-style durability has waned in favor of effectiveness in run prevention. And while relievers are still compensated at a lower level than starting pitchers, their influence on the game’s strategy — leading to shorter starts and more “bullpenning” — has manifested in a reduction of the effect of IP on salary.

In addition to this, other traditional metrics of pitcher value — wins and ERA — have seen middling and inconsistent relationships with salary in the rolling periods. These metrics have seen their relationship with salary vary inconsistently between periods with total insignificance in some years and strong relationships in others without any distinct pattern. As such, while wins and ERA may have some influence on salary, there is a possible indication that other factors and measures may have a more influential effect.

What then has replaced IP, wins, and ERA? Alternatives such as FIP and tERA.4 FIP only takes into account the factors a pitcher can control, excluding all cases in which the fielders interact with the outcome of a play — thereby acting as a more skill-oriented version of ERA. While FIP was significant in the earliest period, its significance grew from 95 percent to above 99 percent in the final period, evidencing an increasingly strong relationship with salary. Much more starkly, the compensation for a one-unit change in FIP changed from $665,375 in the earliest period to $1,299,270 in the ultimate period: nearly double the effect. By comparison, the effect of a unit change in ERA — measured on the same scale as FIP — was level at around $750,000 across all rolling periods.

True ERA (tERA) attempts a similar method of evaluation but instead of entirely ignoring fielding, it incorporates effects of batted-ball data, crediting pitchers who are able to produce weak contact — thereby representing an even more skill-oriented version of FIP. Here, the effect of tERA makes a more remarkable climb than FIP, beginning at 90 percent significance and a $467,407 effect per unit on settlement and ending at a 99 percent significant, $1,087,499 effect per unit. As such, pitcher skills such as inducing groundballs and producing popups have been compensated well, even when conventional and biased measures of success may not indicate value. Teams have begun to compensate the peripherals and potential for success rather than the incidence of success itself.

For hitters as well, the movement away from traditionally valued statistics is evidenced in trends. Examining the traditional triple-slash statistics each demonstrates a different impact on salary. In Graph 2, average showed insignificant coefficients in any given period and revealed relatively smaller coefficients, evidencing that high-average hitters are not compensated strongly. On-base average factors in walks and hit-by-pitches and is compensated slightly more per one-standard deviation change. OBA is also significant at least at the 90 percent level, reflecting the post-Moneyball evaluation of players in which OBA has replaced AVG as the conventional measure of offensive prowess. Finally, slugging average evidences the strong relationship between compensation and power. In the first period, SLG was compensated at $1,397,602 per standard deviation, nearly twice the value of a unit of OBA or AVG. Clearly, power hitters are valued strongly; this has not changed dramatically over the course of time.

Graph 2: Hitter Compensation Trends

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In fact, alternative methods for evaluating power hitters — or even potential power hitters — have become more significant in salary settlements. Fly balls are highly valuable for hitters and hitting the ball in the air consistently is a mark of a highly skilled player. Fly balls are more likely to fall for an extra base hit or home run, and even in the worst-case scenario where they result in an out, fly balls can still drive in runs via sacrifice flies. As such, fly-ball rate can be used as a proxy for run-producing potential even when SLG might not capture the actualized run production. As seen in Graph 2, Fly-ball rate has made a dramatic change in correlation with salary. Initially, FB% had weak correlations and insignificant coefficients, with a 1 percent increase equating only $94,503 in additional salary. However, in the most recent period — and post Statcast introduction — a 1 percent increase in FB% resulted in a $606,693 rise in settlement and is significant at the 95 percent level. This follows a similar pattern to the tERA trend where teams and players are able to isolate and effectively leverage tools that are correlated with success even when this success hasn’t been measured.

The fly-ball rate case itself may be a manifestation of a trend in baseball data in the Statcast era, the “fly-ball revolution.” Beginning with the introduction of Statcast, the compensation for higher fly-ball rates began to take off. Recently, high profile names such as J. D. Martinez and Justin Turner made marked differences in their career paths by adding loft to the ball; fly balls are in vogue in baseball. Increased compensation for fly-ball heavy hitters through the arbitration process is the most recent manifestation of this. Even though the Statcast measure cannot be deployed in an arbitration hearing, its effect can be felt through proxies such as fly-ball rate, furthering evidence of the growing impact of advanced metrics and modern strategies on salary.

Conclusions

Clearly, when it comes to arbitration hearings, risk aversion seems to be a dominant factor in considering whether to head to an arbitration hearing or settle early. Teams and players are unwilling to risk the difference between their bids when this gap increases and are thus brought together toward early settlement. This stands as a testament to the success of the final-offer arbitration system in promoting compromise. And while controversial hearings — such as those of Stroman in 2018 and Betances in 2017 — characterized by passive-aggressive Twitter rants and inflammatory media statements will always occur, these are by and large an exception to the trend in arbitration. The arbitration system promotes a convergence in bids, and when this convergence doesn’t exist, compromise becomes all the more important. Good players are privileged with greater emphasis on striking accord early, outlandish bids are challenged, and young players are ready to take risks. All evidence a healthy and functional system.

Furthermore, in terms of the proliferation of advanced metrics and analysis in the evaluation of players, the general buckets of valuable skills have not changed: run prevention for pitchers and power for hitters are still valued at a premium. However, the tools and measures used to evaluate these skills have certainly changed over time. Less of a premium is being placed on outcome and more on ability. And with increased tools to measure these capabilities, players are being rewarded for the potential to achieve even when the actual achievement may not reach commensurate levels. Relief pitchers are being rewarded for their effectiveness at higher rates despite limited innings pitched. Batters are being rewarded for factors correlated with power rather than the true incidence of power itself. Clearly, both teams and players are becoming much smarter in their evaluation and in their presentation of cases to arbitration panels.

Revisiting the three cases above — Betts, Stroman, and Schoop — the implications of the AL East’s arbitration story lines are evident. Betts was not the most likely candidate to head to an arbitration hearing; the $3 million difference between Betts and the Red Sox was incredibly high and reflected an enormous risk for either party entering a hearing. Furthermore, as one of the best right fielders in the American League, Betts’ case likely drew significant attention from Boston and was unlikely to hurtle toward a hearing. The predicted path for Betts was likely closer to Schoop’s one-year deal or a long-term contract that bought out his arbitration eligibility. By contrast, Stroman may represent the classic arbitration case: a low-risk hearing for either party, bargaining over a small fraction of their bids. And while Stroman expressed his frustration on Twitter following the hearing, history shows that the Stromans of the world will likely end up there again. Ultimately, the final-offer arbitration system does its job: Those who disagree widely tend to work toward compromise, while those who disagree only a little take a chance and roll the dice.

NAVNEET S. VISHWANATHAN is a recent graduate of Georgetown University where he studied International Economics. A former Baseball Operations Intern for the San Diego Padres, Vishwanathan currently works for a major consulting firm in Washington, DC. He is passionate about labor economics and trade and is keen on pursuing a career in the baseball industry. Vishwanathan presented his research on arbitration at SABR 48 in Pittsburgh in June 2018. He can be contacted at navneetv54@gmail.com.

Works cited

Tyler Wasserman, “Determinants of Major League Baseball Player Salaries,” Surface (Spring 2013), https://surface.syr.edu/honors_capstone/99/.

Brian Pollack, “What Gets Paid? Analyzing the Major League Baseball Contract Market” (honors thesis, Duke University, 2017), https://dukespace.lib.duke.edu/dspace/bitstream/handle/10161/14325/Pollack2017.pdf?sequence=1

Michael Carrell and Louis Manchise, “At Impasse? Consider Final Offer Arbitration,” The Negotiator Magazine, December 2013-January 2014, http://negotiatormagazine.com/pages.php?a=AR637&p=1.

Jeff Monhait, “Baseball Arbitration: An ADR Success,” Journal of Sports & Entertainment Law  4, 2013. http://harvardjsel.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/Monhait.pdf.

Paul L. Burgess and Daniel R. Marburger, “Do Negotiated and Arbitrated Salaries Differ under Final-Offer Arbitration?” Industrial and Labor Relations Review 46, no. 3, April 1, 1993, https://doi.org/10.1177/001979399304600307.

Notes

1 Jarrod Parker (Oakland, 2015) was omitted from the analysis despite filing for salary arbitration and losing his hearing against the Athletics since Parker underwent Tommy John surgery and did not play in 2014, the year preceding his arbitration hearing. David Ortiz (Boston, 2012) was omitted since he did not enter the arbitration process as a conventionally arbitration-eligible player but as a free-agent who elected arbitration over entering free-agency.

2 100 (Indexed League Average ERA-) -80.33 (ERA- for population)=19.77%.

3 For rate statistics, one unit of production is equal to a one standard deviation change in the metric.

4 While both tERA and Skill Interactive ERA (SIERA) incorporate the effects of batted-ball data in their evaluation of pitchers, tERA is used in this analysis over SIERA since SIERA is applied in more prognostic and predictive contexts while tERA is used to evaluate past performance compared to a traditional ERA.

Table 1: Historic Probabilities of Winning for Different World Series Game Situations

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To summarize the data in the table succinctly: a team that leads the World Series by one game (1-0, 2-1, or 3-2) wins the series approximately two-thirds of the time. A team that leads by two games (2-0 or 3-1) wins the Series roughly 80 percent of the time. This means that it is vitally important for the team that lost Game 1 to win Game 2. History shows that it is very difficult to come back from an 2-0 deficit. The same reasoning applies to Game 4. Game 4 is almost a must-win game for the team that is behind 2-1 in order to avoid falling into a 3-1 hole. Only six teams (see the earlier paper for the list) have ever won the World Series after being down 3-1.

World Series results from 2014–18 illustrate these two ideas. The Mets (2015) and Dodgers (2018) lost the first game of the Series and then failed to win Game 2. Both lost in five games. The Giants (2014) and Dodgers (2017) won Game 4 to tie the Series at two games each. Each of those World Series went the full seven games which gave both of those teams a good chance to win. The Giants did prevail in 2014 while the Dodgers lost to the Astros in 2017.

What impact have the World Series results from 2014–18 had on the data presented in the 2014 article? The biggest change is that the chance of winning for a team that is behind 3–1 increased from 11.6 percent to 13.0 percent. This 12 percent (1.4/11.6) increase in the percent chance of winning is a result of the Cubs coming from behind 3–1 to win the World Series in 2016. The Cubs were only the sixth team in history (out of 46) to come back from that deficit to win. But it was a close call for the Cubs. They won Games 5 and 7 by one run and Game 7 went 10 innings. The other fairly large change is in the 2–0, 0–2 situation. Both the Royals and Red Sox (in 2015 and 2018 respectively) won the first two games and then went on to win the championship. This increases the percentage of teams that have won when being ahead 2–0 from 80.4 percent to 81.1 percent and decreases the percentage of winning for teams that are behind 0–2 from 19.6 percent to 18.9 percent.

DOUGLAS JORDAN is a professor at Sonoma State University in Northern California where he teaches corporate finance and investments. He has been a SABR member since 2012. He runs marathons when he’s not watching or writing about baseball. Email him at douglas.jordan@sonoma.edu.

During this unprecedented period for women in baseball, African American women had two strikes against them: they were women and they were black. Even with the success of the AAGPBL, female players of color were largely invisible. Three African American women, however, broke gender and racial barriers by playing in the Negro Leagues. By playing professional baseball with men, Mamie “Peanut” Johnson, Toni Stone, and Connie Morgan directly challenged the belief that women were the “weaker sex.”²

Women’s Role

The demand for workers during World War II when millions of American men served overseas led to unprecedented work opportunities for women outside of the home, although these jobs remained largely sex-segregated.³ Once the war ended and men returned from overseas, women were expected to return to domestic duties and give up their jobs.⁴ But many did not. Although after the war they were relegated to low-wage jobs considered appropriate for women, as scholar Ruth Milkman writes: “Yet a permanent shift had occurred for women as a social group, and despite the postwar resurgence of the ideology of domesticity, by the early 1950s the number of gainfully employed women exceeded the highest wartime level.” ⁵ It was in this era that Johnson, Stone, and Morgan found their way into a previously all-male occupation.

No Blacks Allowed

The official Rules of Conduct of the AAGPBL strictly enforced standards of femininity and beauty for the players.⁶ While “No Blacks Allowed” was an unofficial rule, it was no less strictly enforced. Unlike Major League Baseball, the AAGPBL never integrated. The league promoted a middle class American ideal of beauty and femininity that excluded African American women. According to Carol J. Pierman, professor of women’s studies at the University of Alabama at Tuscaloosa, the All-American “girl next door” was white, not black.⁷

Mamie Johnson tried the AAGBPL before the Negro Leagues, but “[t]hey didn’t let us try out.”⁸ After seeing an advertisement for women baseball players in the newspaper, the teenage Johnson and her friend Rita traveled to Alexandria, Virginia, for the tryout. Johnson described standing there with her baseball glove. She and Rita were the only people of color. Johnson said they looked at her and Rita but said nothing. “They wouldn’t give us the opportunity to try out.”

The refusal of the white AAGPBL to integrate women’s professional baseball led to black women playing baseball with black men, which may seem surprising in the context of postwar policing of male and female roles in America. As described by Pierman, dual segregation created a paradox for black women ball players in postwar America.⁹ Black women could neither play baseball with white women nor with men of any race. But the upheavals of postwar America would create an unexpected opportunity within the Negro Leagues.

Decline of the Negro Leagues

Since the early twentieth century, Negro Leagues teams had served as centers of cultural life for African-American communities.¹⁰ For instance, the Newark Eagles hosted NAACP fundraisers, black charity events, and ceremonies to honor black achievement.¹¹ Team owners understood the central role of Negro Leagues teams in African-American communities, and knew the teams provided a source of pride and something to cheer about at a time when race relations in America caused intense suffering. But several factors would play into the downfall of the leagues.

In 1945, Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier in Major League Baseball by signing with the Brooklyn Dodgers organization, debuting in the big leagues in 1947.¹² By 1953, increasing numbers of black players were signing MLB and minor league contracts.¹³ By the 1950s, most American homes had radios, and televisions had become common in American households and in eating and drinking establishments.¹⁴ Baseball fans could now follow the games from the comfort of home.¹⁵ At the same time a great postwar migration brought an influx of black workers to urban areas, resulting in population shifts. Many MLB stadiums were located in neighborhoods that shifted from majority white to majority black, making it easier for black fans to attend MLB games at the same time those games were featuring more and more black players.¹⁶ As fans followed their heroes like Robinson on TV, radio, and by attending MLB games in person, attendance at Negro Leagues games plummeted. As more Negro Leagues stars moved to the major leagues, many of their fans switched their allegiance and money to MLB teams. Birmingham Black Barons owner Tom Hayes said, “the golden era has passed. Teams that are to survive must retrench and proceed with caution.”¹⁷

The raid on the Negro Leagues for the best players presented a unique financial problem for team owners. The Brooklyn Dodgers president Branch Rickey, who signed Jackie Robinson, felt no compunction to honor the contracts players had signed with Negro Leagues teams. The loss of their stars resulted in critical financial losses for the team owners even after Newark Eagles owner Effa Manley leveraged to get some reimbursement for star player Larry Doby which established an important precedent.¹⁸ Amira Rose Davis, Assistant Professor of History and Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies at Pennsylvania State University, wrote, “Negro League owners were hemorrhaging players, fans, and revenue and desperately looking for a way to stop the bleeding.”¹⁹

By the early 1950s, only six teams were left in the Negro American League.²⁰ In the Los Angeles Sentinel, Negro American League President Dr. J.B. Martin cautioned, “the color line has not been erased nearly as much in baseball as you might be led to believe. There is still great resistance to colored players in organized baseball.”²¹ The decrease in gate receipts led Negro League team owners to try a variety of public relations ventures to keep the league afloat.²² In the Sentinel article, Dr. Martin wrote, “The NAL does not even bar a person because of sex if that person can play baseball.”²³ The door was open for black women to play with the boys.

Syd Pollock and the Indianapolis Clowns

Syd Pollock, the owner of the Indianapolis Clowns, told The Frederick Times-Post, “You have to give the fans something different each year and that’s our objective. We keep adding new and colorful players from time to time.”²⁴ The Clowns were a highly theatric team known as, “the Harlem Globetrotters of baseball.” The Frederick News–Post article described an upcoming game between the Clowns and Birmingham Black Barons, “Unmatched comedy, stellar big-league baseball, plus all sorts of added attractions are on tap.”²⁵ Clowns games featured comic acts which were sometimes criticized as perpetuating harmful racial stereotypes. The Clowns were also a competitive team and won Negro American League pennants in 1950, 1951, 1952, and 1954, a year they fielded two women players. With declining gate receipts and continued loss of star players to the majors, Pollock was willing to try women players as a strategy to keep the team afloat. He even hired women as umpires for some Clowns games.²⁶ According to Neil Lanctot, professor of modern American history at the University of Delaware, the theatrics paid off because the Indianapolis Clowns were the most profitable Negro American League team in the 1950s.²⁷

Marcenia Lyle Stone picked up the nickname “Tomboy” or “Toni” as a youngster. She would be a gate draw first for the New Orleans Creoles and then for the Indianapolis Clowns. (NEGRO LEAGUES BASEBALL MUSEUM)

Women Playing a Man’s Game

Pollock’s scouts discovered Toni Stone playing for the New Orleans Creoles, a Negro minor league team.²⁸ She was born Marcenia Lyle Stone in St. Paul, Minnesota.²⁹ She was a gifted athlete and became known as “Tomboy” or “Toni” at an early age³⁰. Like many women, Stone played softball because it was more accessible for women than baseball. However, she expressed a preference for baseball which antagonized her parents who emphasized the importance of education. In the Stone family home, African-American educator Mary McLeod Bethune was admired, not Satchel Paige^.31

Stone had already generated pre-game publicity for the Creoles: “A girl second-sacker…should be something to see here Sunday.”³² The Atlanta Daily World elaborated that Stone was, “more than a novelty but slightly a miracle.”³³ The Council Bluffs Nonpareil stated, in July 1950, “Something new and different in the way of a baseball attraction will be offered Council Bluffs baseball fans at American Legion park Tuesday night. Playing second base for the New Orleans Creoles will be Tony [sic] Stone-Miss Tony Stone that is.”³⁴ The article elaborated, “Yes, a girl ball player on a men’s team. And there entirely on her merits, they say.” The newspaper highlighted Stone’s play against the town team in two additional articles the same week.³⁵

For two years Stone turned down Pollock’s offer of a contract with the Clowns because “I felt I wasn’t ready, but when he said $12,000 for the season, I ran to get my fountain pen.”³⁶ Stone seized an unprecedented opportunity to play professional baseball in the Negro Leagues. The team’s star player, Hank Aaron, had just signed with MLB’s Milwaukee Braves. After signing Stone, Pollock proclaimed, “The latest masculine enterprise to fall before the advance of wearers of skirts and panties is the baseball diamond.”³⁷ Many, including sportswriter Sam Lacy, were skeptical of the authenticity of Stone’s reported salary: “At least that’s what your bosses say and that’s what they tell you to say when you’re asked the question.”³⁸

According to Davis, Stone’s image was commonly featured on scorecards, fliers, and other promotional materials³⁹. Stone said Pollock wanted her to play in a skirt or shorts, in contrast to her all-male teammates. She refused, effectively distinguishing herself from the white women playing in the AAGPBL who were required to wear skirts.⁴⁰ However, wearing a men’s baggy uniform did not insulate Stone from comments about her body. Our World remarked Stone wore an, “oversized shirt…to accommodate her size 36 bust.”⁴¹

The press was well aware the signing of Stone was a public relations strategy. As Our World reported, “they are counting on her to bring back the huge crowds that have been lost to the major league.”⁴² Ebony magazine reported, “While most sports fans were sure the Clowns signed Toni merely as an extra box office attraction (the team features baseball comedy and ‘Spike-Jones-like’ music on barnstorming tours), the young lady has surprised everybody by turning in a businesslike job at both second base and at the plate.”⁴³ A caption accompanying the article read, “Toni is never afraid to hit the dirt. Gardening and bicycling are her hobbies.” This had also been a common feminization tactic used by the AAGPBL in their publicity.

According to SABR researcher Stew Thornley, it can be difficult to determine fact from fiction when researching Negro Leagues players. Records were not systematically kept. Thornley wrote, “With Toni Stone, however, the misinformation was in part by design as the league, in attempting to enhance her status as a drawing card, shaved years off her age and added thousands to the salary she was actually being paid.”⁴⁴ An Ebony article from 1953 listed her age as 24 even though she turned 32 that year.⁴⁵ She was commonly referred to as “Miss Stone” even though she was married.

Signing Stone did increase gate receipts in 1953, and The Frederick Times-Post referred to the signing of Stone as “the female innovation of ’53,” which, “was little short of melodramatic.” According to the paper, the Clowns, “are more popular than ever before, having set new attendance records in the NAL circuit in ’53, and the demand for dates this year has them booked months in advance, and ever a wider area than in any previous season.”⁴⁶

As attendance rose at Clowns games, the team was deluged with mail and messages from players, coaches, and promotors offering the talent of potential female players.⁴⁷ According to Davis, Pollock was not interested in an all-women’s team, black women’s league, or too many women on one team because it would take away from the novelty.⁴⁸ Pollock was interested in fielding a few personally vetted women to sell more tickets. At the end of the 1953 season, a scout saw Mamie Johnson playing on an all-men’s team in the DC area. According to The Michigan Chronicle, “After the Clowns completed their season last year, Miss Johnson accompanied the team on a month’s barnstorming tour.”⁴⁹

Eighteen-year-old Connie Morgan wrote a letter to the Clowns requesting a tryout.⁵⁰ Morgan was successful and impressed the management with her “good arm” and appearance. Morgan had lighter skin, a curvy figure, and curled hair which came closer to fitting the ideal of beauty and femininity than Stone’s muscular build and darker skin.⁵¹ According to Davis, Morgan’s physical appearance meant she was more marketable than Stone.⁵² At an exhibition game against Jackie Robinson’s All Stars, photos were taken of Morgan with Jackie Robinson and featured a photo of Morgan “getting pointers from Gil Hodges of the Brooklyn Dodgers.”⁵³ Davis noted Pollock did not invite Stone to take part in the photo shoot. A picture of Jackie Robinson and Morgan graced the official scorecard of the Clowns’ for the 1954 season.⁵⁴

According to Lanctot, Stone grew disgruntled with the Clowns and wanted more playing time. However, the team manager referred to Stone as “box office bait,” and she typically played only the first few innings of games.⁵⁵ It became clear Pollock was going to sign Johnson and Morgan for the upcoming 1954 season.⁵⁶ Stone voiced her discontent to Pollock, who sold her contract to the Kansas City Monarchs⁵⁷.

In 1954, Pollock signed both Morgan and Johnson to contracts with the Clowns. “This season Connie Morgan of Philadelphia, is gracing the Clowns’ defensive position at second base. In addition, a second girl star has been signed in the person of Mamie (Peanut) Johnson of Washington D.C. whose specialty is pitching, and who has earned her way to a regular starting berth among the Clowns’ pitching staff.”⁵⁸ Another paper reported, “Always good for something novel each season, owner Syd Pollock of the Indianapolis Clowns, three-time champions of the Negro American League, announced this week the sale of Miss Toni Stone to the Kansas City Monarchs for an undisclosed sum.”⁵⁹ A flier featuring Stone, Johnson, and Morgan with the title “Feminine Stars” was used during games between the Monarchs and Clowns.⁶⁰ Davis asserted the inclusion of Morgan and Johnson in The Laff Book—a Clowns’ publication which featured jokes and cartoons—served to frame the women as sideshow acts, not athletes.⁶¹

The Chronicle reported Connie Morgan “was scouted personally by the Clowns’ new manager, Oscar Charleston, who claims she is one of the most sensational girl players he has ever seen.”⁶² Before signing with the Clowns, Morgan played on a North Philadelphia women’s softball team called the “Honeydrippers.”⁶³ The team name “Honeydrippers” has sexual connotations. Cheryl D. Hicks, associate professor of history at the University of North Carolina, described how black women in America have been hypersexualized: “Black women, whom whites characterized as innately promiscuous because of their African ancestry and the legacy of American enslavement were seen as less amendable to rehabilitation.”⁶⁴ Black women were viewed as “dark temptresses” and had to negotiate grotesque stereotypes while pursuing their interests.⁶⁵

Like Stone, Mamie Johnson’s childhood was spent playing baseball with the boys. Johnson stated her uncle taught her to play baseball: “I was very, very young when I started playing ball down South. That was all we had to do at that particular time. We made our own baseballs out of stone, twine, and masking tape. I learned to play with the fellows and it was enjoyable to me.”⁶⁶ Many black women played baseball on sandlots and for amateur teams, especially in rural areas like the South Carolina countryside where Johnson grew up.⁶⁷

Johnson played on sandlot, Police Athletic League (PAL), Catholic Youth Organization (CYO), and semi-professional black teams with men. She experienced strong resistance to playing with the boys through PAL until they saw she was a strong player and relented. Johnson told Cottingham she started playing “big Pro in 1953 and played 1954 and 1955 with the Clowns —but semi pro it started back in 1949.”⁶⁸ Johnson earned the nickname “Peanut” when pitching to Hank Bayles of the Kansas City Monarchs. Johnson stood 5 feet, 3 inches tall.⁶⁹ Baylis declared, “Why, that little girl’s no bigger than a peanut. I ain’t afraid of her.” She struck him out.

Like Stone, Johnson was married when she played for the Clowns, and she had a young son. When asked what her husband thought of her playing baseball she responded, “It didn’t make any difference because I was going to play anyway.”⁷⁰

Attendance and Reaction

According to newspaper accounts, the presence of Stone on the Clowns did increase attendance. On June 19, 1953, The Call reported the Clowns, “are breaking attendance records through the nation this season, climaxed by their 18,205 paid at Kansas City.”⁷¹ Lanctot wrote that a Clowns game in Birmingham in May 1953 drew the largest crowd there since 1949.⁷² A game between the Clowns and Monarchs in Detroit attracted over 20,000 attendees in June 1953. ⁷³

Like Stone before, her, Morgan’s presence generated pre-game publicity, as found in The Call in 1954. The Kansas City-based newspaper featured descriptions of her fielding while reporting on the upcoming opening of the season: “The Clowns officially open the home season for the Kansas City Monarchs at Blues Stadium this Sunday afternoon, May 30.” The paper advised, “to avoid tie-ups at the gates because of the anticipated crowds for these games, advance tickets have already been placed on sale at both the Kansas City and St. Louis stadium box offices.”⁷⁴

According to Tracy Everbach, journalism professor at the University of North Texas, Stone, Johnson, and Morgan were given credit by black newspapers for fighting gender and racial discrimination.⁷⁵ In The Call, Stone was referred to as, “the female Jackie Robinson” who would “break down the prejudice against women players in the N.A.L.”⁷⁶ Stone’s heroism was further hailed in the same article: “From Longview, Tex., and Chattanooga, Tenn., come stories of Miss Stone visiting hospitals and schools, spreading cheer and goodwill with her interviews.” On August 27, 1954, The Call went further in praising Stone and Morgan: “These two ladies prove that we no longer can refer to them as the weaker sex.”⁷⁷

Everbach notes, though, that the women received little mention in white newspapers such as The Kansas City Star, Kansas City Times, or The Sporting News.⁷⁸ The Call credited record turnout at a 1953 game in Kansas City to Stone, while the white owned-and-operated Kansas City Times didn’t mention Stone as a factor when reporting on the crowd of 18,205 at the same game.⁷⁹ On the rare occasion when the Kansas City Star did mention Stone, she was not referred to by name: “the Clowns will feature a girl at second base.”⁸⁰ According to Everbach, this was part of a larger circumstance.⁸¹ The Sporting News was the oldest sporting publication in the United States and was called “The Bible of Baseball,” but this national publication rarely mentioned the women players and when they covered the Negro Leagues, the information appeared on the back pages. In 1954, when there were three women playing in the Negro Leagues, including Stone in Kansas City, The Kansas City Star and Times ignored the three women players completely.⁸² That year the Clowns won the Negro American League Championship with two women on the roster. To many Americans, the three women of color playing professional baseball with and against men were invisible.

Not all black newspaper sportswriters were impressed with Stone, Johnson, and Morgan. The Chicago Defender’s Doc Young, described the reaction when a woman tried out for an organized baseball club: “men rose up in all their male mightiness and quickly returned her to her place in the home. And among those who applauded was the woman’s unathletic husband, who obviously had been forced to wear the apron in the family while she went out shagging flies and hitting batting practice home runs.” Young wrote, “The opinion here is that girls should be run out of men’s baseball on a softly-padded rail both for their own good and for the good of the game.” Young conceded that women “have proven themselves capable as defense workers, cab drivers, garage mechanics, factory hands, and drill press operators, they just aren’t ‘cut out’ for the game of baseball.”⁸³

Wendell Smith wrote about Toni Stone on June 20, 1953, in the Pittsburgh Courier, “She is the hunk of femininity employed by the Indianapolis Clowns.” Smith wrote that Pollock, “owned, operated, and exploited,” Stone. He added, “She is a lady making a living in a profession designed strictly for men. It is a profession in which only the hale, hearty and strong are likely to succeed, certainly not one to which gentility and refinement are the prerequisites for success.”⁸⁴ Young belittled Stone for her batting average, although he did write, “I’ll have to admit it’s not bad for a dame.” He imagined a long dialogue between Stone and her husband which included references to Stone powdering between innings, admiring the curves of the pitcher she faced, her husband apologizing for not having dinner ready, spending money on a silver mink baseball glove, planning a shopping spree, and getting angry at her husband for putting starch in her sliding pads. Smith bemoaned, “Negro baseball has collapsed to the extent it must tie itself to a woman’s apron strings in order to survive.”

Luix Virgil Overbea wrote in the Baltimore Afro American, “Although the ladies appear to be a sure fire hit at the box office, I am not going to be one of their enthusiasts. This does not mean I’m against the fair sex on the diamond, but it does mean I am for them only if they play baseball.”⁸⁵ He continued, “They’ll have to show me. My recommendation is that they try and make some of these pro women teams. I don’t want to see women in baseball togs on the basis of curiosity.”[i] It is curious Overbea suggested they play in the AAGPBL since it was well known the league allowed only white women to play. The columns by Young, Smith, and Overbea cited here demonstrate patterns of gender discrimination and enforcement of traditional gender roles that existed in the black community.

The same black press that voiced hostility, skepticism, and sexism was also found it necessary to promote the women via affirming stories. Often, their femininity was contrasted with their athleticism to maximize the “spectacle.” In The Call, Stone was a “rough-and-tumble player,” who played as hard as the men.”⁸⁶ A photo in The Call article showed Stone in an athletic pose with her legs wide apart, mouth open, and arm extended. The article described Stone as being a “tough sister,” and “murder-minded in her effort to aid her team.” The black media sometimes contrasted Stone’s athletic performance with feminine descriptions such as, “She belts home runs as easily as most girls catch stitches in their knitting, and the sports boys are goggle-eyed.” In the same article, Stone was described as “a cute second baseman.”

Connie Morgan (right) pictured here with manager with Oscar Charleston and “King Tut” (holding giant glove). (COURTESY OF NOIRTECH)

Women in a Man’s Game

The women of the Negro Leagues traveled extensively. Toni Stone grew to appreciate the rich African-American culture in the South, saying, “I wanted to travel. I wanted to go places. Now, that was my education.”⁸⁷ Stone’s upbringing included an emphasis on education. She carried on that value when she visited black colleges, black churches, and libraries. She met the prominent educator Mary McLeod Bethune, whom her family idolized. These atypical experiences caused Stone to believe, “I know who I am, and I know how to carry myself accordingly.”⁸⁸

Unlike Stone, Johnson was not interested in checking out libraries and learning about African-American history on road trips^. Johnson told Cottingham she played in “every state there is, Canada and wherever. I don’t think that there is a state I haven’t played in.”⁸⁹ SABR researcher Jean Hastings-Ardell pointed out Stone was from an Northern urban background in St. Paul, Minnesota, and her family emphasized the importance of education. On the other hand, Johnson spent much of her childhood in the rural South, where her family supported and influenced her interest in sports.⁹⁰

According to Hicks, black women were hypersexualized and their morals questioned due to their race.⁹¹ Davis wrote that the women had to deal with gendeer discrimination and assumptions about sexuality and whenever possible they stayed at the homes of local black families.⁹² Stone was often not allowed to stay at the same hotel as her teammates because the hotel managers assumed a lone woman traveling with a group of men was a prostitute, and hotel managers would direct her to local brothels to find accomodations.⁹³ Reporters often asked Stone about her sleeping arrangements and whether her teammates took advantage of her sexually. Davis wrote, “Both management and players on the team were unable or chose not to defend her presence, so Stone frequently lodged in brothels.”⁹⁴ Stone said of one of the prostitutes who welcomed her, “She was a ‘wrong woman’, but a beautiful human being. She taught me many things…the walks of life. I had no crime with her.”⁹⁵ Davis stated the prostitutes gave Stone money, food, rides, and would even launder her uniform.⁹⁶ They made her a special protective bra to wear when playing baseball.⁹⁷ These women urged Stone to “represent” black women, cheered her at games, and kept newspaper articles about her. Through these women, Stone experienced a network of women supportive of each other. Stone was a woman breaking traditional gender norms and earned a living independently by doing what had been deemed men’s work. It was something other marginalized black women could appreciate.

According to Davis, the reaction of women baseball fans to the women baseball players could be enthusiastic and appreciative.⁹⁸ Former Kansas City Monarch, Buck O’Neil said, “Women really came out to watch.”⁹⁹ Toni Stone was greeted by women fans who wanted to kiss and hug her. Stone said, “I think I brought more women to the game,” because she was approached by women and girls wanting her autograph.¹⁰⁰ Morgan was greeted with hugs and kisses by a hometown crowd in 1954.¹⁰¹

Johnson reported that on road trips, “We sleep on the bus most of the time because we travel like in the day, because we played mostly night games. When we did get up to nice towns that had nice hotel we stayed in them, but it was still a segregated thing.”¹⁰² Cottingham asked Johnson if the women (Johnson and Morgan) stayed together. Johnson responded, “Oh yes, I mean we stayed in the hotels then there was provision made for the women we would stay like in people’s home and they were very nice people. The fellows would stay mostly in the dingy hotels or whatever, but we stayed in people’s homes where it was very nice.”¹⁰³ Johnson explained how they negotiated the locker rooms and facilities as the only women on a men’s baseball team: “Well, what we did we would either change before the guys or after the guys but we share the same facilities but a whole lot of time there weren’t any facilities for changing we had to change on the bus.”¹⁰⁴

According to Davis, the historical record is sparse regarding the attitudes of male teammates and opposing players as to the inclusion of women in the league.¹⁰⁵ The men may have recognized that the presence of the women in the league boosted ticket sales, so they were essentially a meal ticket for the men. Hastings-Ardell believed the women may have been reluctant, like any team member, to publicly reproach the behavior of teammates, and a woman who reported incidents of harassment, hazing, and discrimination ran the risk of gaining a poor reputation.¹⁰⁶ According to Davis, the women did encounter verbal harassment, physical harassment, jokes, catcalls, isolation, and sexual comments.¹⁰⁷ Darlene Clark Hine described a “culture of dissemblance,” where women adopt the attitude that these were incidents of “hazing” or they were “earning respect” by being “tough” and being able to “take it.”¹⁰⁸ Stone said, “Once you make it clear there ain’t going to be no monkey business…they give you your respect.”¹⁰⁹ Likewise, Johnson was clear she was, “here to play ball and nothing else.” Johnson did admit sometimes throwing at batters on purpose, “Sometimes, honey, you just get mad.”¹¹⁰

Stone, Morgan, and Johnson faced fastballs, jeers, sabotage, sexism and Jim Crow. Like Jackie Robinson, they preferred to let their athletic talent speak for them. Unlike Jackie Robinson, their struggles, successes, and defeats have not become icons of American history. They were women playing a man’s game and largely ignored by the white press.

“Tomboyism” and Femininity

Women baseball players faced admonishment for being “tomboys^.” For some, it was a negative label and marked them as “others” and was used to mock and deprecate. For others, a “tomboy” was a strong girl.¹¹¹ The term “tomboy” is used to mark athletic girls as different from other girls. Girls who climbed trees, played sports with boys, and loved the outdoors might be embraced by her family or reprimanded. It differed among families and communities.¹¹²

Pierman pointed out the paradox women athletes face by competing in a sport which is considered a masculine endeavor, and women athletes run the risk of being branded “deviant.”¹¹³ In addition, she identified baseball as especially challenging terrain for women athletes because it has been branded both a “man’s game” and America’s “national pastime.” Therefore, it became necessary to feminize such women in the media. In the Afro American, Ruth Rolen wrote of Morgan, “The trim second baseman in her becoming blue and red uniform will be ready to ‘play ball.’”¹¹⁴ The article featured side-by-side photos of Morgan in her baseball uniform and being fitted for a dress.

Stone, Johnson, and Morgan persistently struggled to prove they were good enough to play with the men. Their struggle has been complicated by the fact they were signed to boost sagging ticket sales. Forty years after playing in the Negro Leagues, Johnson said, “People say Toni and Connie and I were gimmicks. Well, we weren’t gimmicks, we were good enough to be there.”¹¹⁵ Ray Doswell, curator of the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum concurred. “It probably was a gimmick when it started. But those three held their own. They were extremely talented.”¹¹⁶

Toni Stone of the Indianapolis Clowns speaks with young fans in the early 1950s. (THE RUCKER ARCHIVE)

1955 and After

After two years in the Negro Leagues, Stone left professional baseball because she had become disenchanted with the business of baseball and being objectified and exoticized.¹¹⁷ Stone said she felt like a “goldfish” when she played for the Clowns.¹¹⁸ Everywhere she went there were agents, scouts, fans, and reporters. Morgan stopped playing after the 1954 season and returned to business school.¹¹⁹ The Call reported, “All her opponents were male, but that didn’t bother the Philadelphia girl.”¹²⁰ The same article stated, “Her real ambition is to become a top-flight worker in a business office.” Johnson held on for one more year before returning home to her young son and husband at the end of the 1955 season.¹²¹

By playing baseball with men, these women exercised “female agency and choice which has actually challenged aspects of male supremacy.”¹²² At a crossroads in American history, when gender roles were strictly enforced yet women were pushing the envelope by continuing to work after the war ended,¹²³ Stone, Johnson, and Morgan expanded the public sphere for black women. This gain was temporary and celebrated exclusively in the black media. White female baseball players in the AAGBPL were accepted as “good” women by adhering to feminine standards and playing in a league of all women, as opposed to with and against men.¹²⁴

The narratives of Stone, Morgan, and Johnson rewrites the historical narrative by expanding the public sphere of black women within the context of the novelty of coed baseball.¹²⁵ Stone and Johnson were consistently referred to as “Miss” despite the fact they were both married. The press, and the American public, had difficulty reconciling the fact these women were participating in what had been branded a man’s sport instead of being at home taking care of husbands and children as the gender roles of the time dictated. It was part of a larger shift in American society regarding ideas about black women.¹²⁶

The reaction of black sportswriters demonstrated that sports were still viewed largely as exclusively male terrain within the black community. Journalists who wanted to see the Negro Leagues succeed financially depicted the women as “nice girls” and drew attention to their femininity to promote their inclusion in the league. Davis wrote, “black women athletes were not supposed to forgo their traditional responsibilities as wives and mothers who had decent careers as teachers, social workers, or nurses.”¹²⁷ The presence of black women athletes caused black male journalists to fear the “manliness” of the game had been devalued and black men had been “emasculated.” Malcolm Poindexter of the Philadelphia Tribune painted the picture of women baseball players emasculating men by manipulating them with their female charms when he claimed, “we saw Toni Stone’s head in Buster Haywood’s lap,” and, “womanly wiles are okay everywhere but trying to get in the starting lineup.”¹²⁸

According to Susan K. Cahn, professor of history at the University of Buffalo, baseball was a central proving ground for masculinity in America.¹²⁹ In 1957, the Science Digest featured a study conducted by the American Psychiatric Association. The study determined just 14 of 102 gay men had played baseball as children.¹³⁰ The implication was the national pastime made “normal” men out of boys. Cahn wrote, “If sport represented masculinity and sexual desire for women, female athletes might also be mannish types who sexually disdained men and desired women.”¹³¹ “Good” or “nice” women didn’t upset traditional gender norms. The perceived status of black women as being of innately questionable character made black women playing baseball even more susceptible to the label of “wrong” or “bad” women.

The women had to be careful not to appear too masculine while playing a sport deemed a man’s sport for fear of being labeled homosexual. If they complained too much about sexual harassment, it could also give rise to suspicions of them being sexually deviant and not “nice girls”. In the same vein, if they did not obey proper decorum or appeared too interested in their male teammates they could be labeled as “bad girls”. An Ebony article featured Stone wearing a dress with the caption, “Stone is an attractive young lady who could be somebody’s secretary.”¹³² The use of the term “lady” necessitates the existence of a “wrong” or “evil” woman who does not conform to feminine standards. In the same article, Stone asserted, “I am out here to play the game. I can take knocks as well as anyone else. Don’t worry I can take care of myself.” Ebony reassured its black audience that Stone was not upsetting gender roles with a photo of Stone washing windows, “Washing windows while her husband enjoys the sun,” and, “Toni Stone is an excellent housewife and cook.”¹³³

It was important to depict Stone and the other women players in domestic roles because, after nearly two decades of depression and war, the emphasis was on reestablishing traditional feminine roles in the realms of family and domesticity. Pierman wrote that women baseball players from the postwar period typically would not speak about the subject of lesbianism even decades later because they had been “Indoctrinated into a culture of sport that denied a lesbian presence, they are also women of a time of war—and then Cold War—when to be deviant was to be without rights, possibly to be hunted down, investigated, and publicly shamed.”¹³⁴ Accordingly to Cahn, the “homosexual menace” was a postwar fear as a result of wartime changes in gender roles and sexuality.¹³⁵ Women in sports were among the most suspect groups because they publicly did not fit into traditional feminine roles. During the postwar period, the government and military were taking action against gays and lesbians through purges, intense investigations, and legal prosecutions. The police were raiding gay bars and other areas of gay social activity. Cahn wrote this was due to the “perceived need to reestablish gender and sexual order in the wake of wartime disruptions.”¹³⁶ The hostility and fear contributed to a “homosexual panic^.” Black women like Stone, Morgan, and Johnson came under even greater scrutiny because racial stereotypes branded black woman as “naturally” sexually delinquent.¹³⁷

Despite the barriers, harassment, and exploitation, all three women did benefit from the opportunity to play baseball with men. They enjoyed the rare experience of being paid to play a game they loved. Professional baseball was a career option for few women and even fewer black women. The travel they experienced deeply impacted them as related by Johnson, “It was a tremendous thing to wake up and look out the window and be five hundred miles from where you were before.”¹³⁸ Travel throughout the United States and Canada gave these women an opportunity to experience different regions, people, and cultures. Few women of the era had such opportunities to travel. According to Davis, Morgan finished business school and worked for the AFL-CIO in Philadelphia, Johnson became a nurse, and Stone became a personal care assistant^.139 Both Stone and Johnson coached Little League and youth baseball. Stone continued to play baseball on men’s teams and lesbian teams.¹⁴⁰

With the reemergence of interest in the Negro Leagues in the 1970s, the three women remained a footnote in history^{. 141} However, in the 1990s Stone was featured in over twenty articles and Morgan and Johnson were rediscovered. Davis reported they became “romanticized symbols of multiculturalism.”¹⁴² A series of recognitions, awards, and books followed. However, Davis added, “The narratives that were used to recall the history of Stone, Morgan, and Johnson were similar to the ones that sanitized Rosa Parks.”¹⁴³ These stories largely ignored the roots of institutionalized racism. Instead these stories focused on the values of self-determination and persistence. The women were transformed into sports icons in a patriarchy which refused to honestly assess racism.¹⁴⁴

According to Davis, the narratives of these women etched the memory of them into American history because they transcended race and gender to accomplish their goals^.145 However, by acknowledging them merely as trailblazers, the complex realities they faced are marginalized. As reflected in the different views of their experiences, each woman had to determine for herself how to negotiate these barriers and constraints as well as manage the way they were depicted as much as they could. As Davis pointed out, to a large extent, they had little control over how they were depicted.¹⁴⁶

In the postwar period, women baseball players were publicly changing the perception of baseball as an exclusively male domain. This is part of the larger history of women’s struggles to define their role in society. For women baseball players, baseball enabled them to expand the boundaries of women’s activities, and to assert that strength, skill, aggressiveness, and competitiveness could be characteristics genuinely possessed by women.

A.J. RICHARD is a graduate student and graduate assistant at the University of Northern Iowa studying Leisure/Youth/Human Services and Women and Gender Studies. In 2015, A.J. “discovered” girls and women in baseball when a friend told her about Jackie Mitchell striking out Babe Ruth. That year she started “Women Belong in Baseball” on Facebook and Twitter to increase awareness of girls and women in baseball and the barriers they face. A.J. has been a member of SABR since 2016. A.J. can be emailed at womenbelonginbaseball@gmail.com.

Notes

1. Gabe Zaldivar, “Power Ranking The 11 Highest Grossing Baseball Movies Of All Time, Forbes, retrieved February 8, 2019 https://www.forbes.com/sites/gabezaldivar/2016/03/31/power-ranking-the-11-highest-grossing-baseball-movies-of-all-time/#25985bd67138
2. Tracy Everbach, “Breaking Baseball Barriers: The 1953-1954 Negro League and Expansion of Women’s Public Roles.” American Journalism 22(1) 92005) 14.
3. Ruth Milkman. “The Sexual Division of Labor During World War II,” in Women’s America: Refocusing on the Past, ed. Linda K. Kerber, Jane Sherron DeHart, Cornelia Hughes Dayton, and Judy Tzu Chu (New York & Oxoford University Press, 2016). 536-546.
4. Milkman, “The Sexual,” 537-540.
5. Milkman, “The Sexual,” 541.
6. All-American Girls Professional Baseball League: Rules of Conduct. Northern Indiana Historical Society. Retrieved from https://www.aagpbl.org/history/rules-of-conduct
7. Carol J. Pierman. “Baseball, Conduct, and True Womanhood.” Women’s Studies Quarterly, Vol 33, No. ½: 73.
8. Mamie Johnson, interview by the National Visionary Leadership Project, 2009, retrieved from http://www.visionaryproject.org/johnsonmamie/
9. Pierman, “Baseball,” 69-74.
10. James Overmyer, Queen of the Negro Leagues: Effa Manley and the Newark Eagles (Lanham, MD & London: The Scarecrow Press, 1998) 5 & 52-53.
11. Overmyer, Queen, 52-53.
12. Neil Lanctot, Negro League Baseball: The Rise and Ruin of a Black Institution (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004). 281-292.
13. Lanctot, Negro League, 360.
14. Lanctor, Negro League, 330.
15. Lanctot, Negro League, 360.
16. “Negro Ball Clubs Hope to Make Comeback This Season,” Ebony, May 1949.
17. Lanctot, Negro League, 342.
18. Overmyer, Queen, 217-223.
19. Amira Rose Davis, “No League of Their Own: Baseball Black Women, and the Politics of Representation.” Radical History Review. Issue 125 (2016): 72-78.
20. Lanctot, Negro League, 281-290.
21. Dr. J.B. Martin. “Negro League President Comments.” Los Angeles Sentinel, June 11, 1953.
22. Lanctot, Negro League, 380.
23. Martin, “Negro League President.”
24. “Clowns to Play Saturday,” The Frederick Times-Post. July 15, 1954.
25. “Clowns to Play,” 1954.
26. Everbach, “Breaking Baseball,” 15.
27. Lanctot, Negro League, 380.
28. Martha Ackmann. Curveball: The Remarkable Story of Toni Stone (Chicago: Lawrence Hill Books, 2010) 119.
29. Ackmann, Curveball, 3.
30. Davis, “No League,” 76.
31. Ackmann, Curveball, 21.
32. Marion E. Jackson, “Sports of the World,” Atlanta Daily World, May 11, 1950.
33. Jackson, “Sports of,” 1950.
34. “Girl Handles Fielding Chances,” Council Bluffs Nonpareil, July 25, 1950 & “Girl Player to Return Monday,” Council Bluffs Nonpareil, July 23, 1950.
35. “Negro Girl Second Baseman Will Oppose Rainbows Tuesday Night,” Council Bluffs Nonpareil, July 1950.
36. “Woman Player Says She Can ‘Take Care of Self’ in Game,” Ebony, 1953. 48.
37. Los Angeles Sentinel, February 26, 1953.
38. Sam Lacy, “A to Z,” Baltimore Afro-American, July 25, 1953.
39. Davis, “No League,” 78.
40. Davis, “No League,” 80.
41. “The Gal on Second Base,” Our World, 1953, 8-11.
42. “The Gal,” Our World, 1953.
43. “Lady Ball Player on Male Team,” Ebony, 1953.
44. Stew Thornley, “Toni Stone,” Society for American Baseball Research, retrieved December 3, 2018 https://sabr.org/bioproj/person/2f33485c
45. “Lady Ball Player,” 1953.
46. “Clowns to Play,” 1954.
47. Davis, “No League,” 81.
48. Davis, “No League,” 81.
49. “Clowns Sell Toni Stone. Sign New Female Star,” Michigan Chronicle, 1954.
50. Davis, “No League,” 81.
51. Davis, “No League,” 82.
52. Davis, “No League,” 82.
53. “Clowns’ Girl Second Baseman Thrills Birmingham Fans With Speedy Plays,” The Call, May 28, 1954.
54. Davis, “No League,” 82.
55. Lanctot, Negro League, 381-383.
56. “Clowns Sell Stone to KC Nine,” Pittsburgh Courier, March 13, 1954.
57. Ackman, Curveball, 164.
58. “Clowns’ Girl Second,” The Call, 1954.
59. “Clowns Sell Toni Stone: Sign New Female Star,” Michigan Chronicle, 1954.
60. “Feminine Stars,” Philadelphia Courier, 1954.
61. Davis, “No League,” 78.
62. “Clowns Sell Toni,” Michigan Chronicle, 1954.
63. “Honeydrippers’ Torrid Pace Scares off Opposition in North Softball Division,” Philadelphia Tribune, August 26, 1952.
64. Cheryl D. Hicks. “Mable Hampton in Harlem: Regulating Black Women’s Sexuality in the 1920s,” in Women’s America: Refocusing on the Past, ed. Linda K. Kerber, Jane Sherron DeHart, Cornelia Hughes Dayton, and Judy Tzu-Chu (New York & Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016), 437.
65. Hicks, “Mable Hampton,” 439.
66. Mamie Johnson, interview by Reba Goldman Cottingham, 1998, Negro League Oral History Collection, Archives and Special Collections, Langsdale Library, University of Baltimore.
67. Davis, “No League,” 77.
68. Johnson, interview, 1998.
69. Alan Schwarz, “Breaking Gender Barriers in Negro Leagues,” New York Times, June 12, 2010.
70. Jean Hastings Ardell, “Mamie ‘Peanut’ Johnson: The Last Female Voice of the Negro Leagues,” NINE: A Journal of Baseball History and Culture, Vol. 10 No. 1, 2000, 181-192.
71. “Clowns Setting New Attendance Records,” The Call, June 19, 1953, 10-12.
72. Lanctot, Negro League, 381.
73. Lanctot, Negro League, 381
74. “Clowns Girl,” 1954.
75. Everbach, “Breaking Baseball,” 27.
76. “Clowns to Battle Monarchs in Sunday Twin Bill,” The Call, August 27, 1954.
77. “Clowns to Battle,” 1954.
78. Everbach, “Breaking Baseball,” 21.
79. “Crowd of 18,205 Watches Monarchs Trim Clowns,” The Kansas City Times, May 25, 1953, 14.
80. “Richardson to Hurl for Monarchs,” The Kansas City Star, Mary 24, 1953, 3B.
81. Everbach, “Breaking Baseball,” 23.
82. Everbach, “Breaking Baseball,” 23-24.
83. Doc Young, “Should Girls Play Ball: No, Says Doc,” Chicago Defender, August 28, 1954.
84. Wendell Smith, “The Lady’s Playing a Man’s Game,” Pittsburgh Courier, 1953.
85. Luis Virgil Overbea, “Beating the Gun: Players in Baseball Not Excited Over Women,” Baltimore Afro-American, July 25, 1953.
86. “Clowns to Battle,” 1953, 10.
87. “Syd Pollock, Clowns’ Owner to Watch Monarchs Home Opener May 24,” The Call, May 22, 1953.
88. Susan K. Cahn. Coming on Strong: Gender and Sexuality in Twentieth Century Women’s Sports (New York, Free Press) 233.
89. Johnson, interview, 1998.
90. Hastings Ardell, “Mamie,” 186.
91. Hicks, “Mable Hampton,” 436-439.
92. Davis, “No League,” 85.
93. Ackmann, Curveball, 157.
94. Davis, “No League,” 85.
95. Ackmann, Curveball, 157.
96. Davis, “No League,” 85.
97. Davis, “No League,” 85.
98. Davis, “No League,” 85.
99. Buck O’Neill, I Was Right on Time: My Journey from the Negro Leagues to the Majors (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2010) 195.
100. Davis, “No League,” 85.
101. “Clowns Girl Player Returns to School,” The Call, October 29, 1954.
102. Johnson, interview, 1998.
103. Johnson, interview, 1998.
104. Johnson, interview, 1998.
105. Davis, “No League,” 84.
106. Hastings Ardell, “Mamie,” 185.
107. Davis, “No League,” 85.
108. Darlene Clark Hine, “Rape and the Inner Lives of Black Women in the Middle West,” Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society (1989): 912-920.
109. Davis, “No League,” 85.
110. Hastings Ardell, “Mamie,” 185.
111. Cahn, Coming on Strong, 230-231.
112. Cahn, Coming on Strong, 230-231.
113. Pierman, “Baseball,” 70.
114. Ruth Rolen, “Connie Morgan to Join Clowns,” Afro-American, March 27, 1954.
115. Candus Thomson, “Making pitch for women; Baseball: After breaking the gender barrier 40 years ago as a Negro Leagues pitcher, Mamie Johnson returns to the baseball world,” The Baltimore Sun, June 22, 1999.
116. Thomson, “Making pitch.”
117. Davis, “No League,” 88.
118. “Lady Ball Player,” 1953.
119. “Clowns Girl Player Returns,” The Call, 1954.
120. “Clowns Girl Player Returns,” The Call, 1954.
121. Johnson, interview, 1998.
122. Adrienne Rich, “Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence,” in Blood, Bread, and Poetry: Selected Prose, 1979-1985 (New York: W.W. Norton, 1986) 72.
123. Joanne Meyerowitz, Not June Cleaver: Women and Gender in Postwar America 1945-1960 (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1994) 84-98.
124. Davis, “No League,” 75.
125. Davis, “No League,” 75.
126. Cahn, Coming on Strong, 11.
127. Davis, “No League,” 75.
128. Malcolm Poindexter, “Sports View,” Philadelphia Tribune, May 11, 1954.
129. Cahn, Coming on Strong, 180.
130. Science Digest, September 1957, 37.
131. Cahn, Coming on Strong, 180.
132. “Lady Ball Player,” 1953.
133. “Lady Ball Player, 1953.
134. Pierman, “Baseball,” 77.
135. Cahn, Coming on Strong, 178.
136. Cahn, Coming on Strong, 177.
137. Hicks, “Mable Hampton,” 437.
138. Davis, “No League,” 88.
139. Davis, “No League,” 88.
140. Davis, “No League,” 88.
141. Davis, “No League,” 88.
142. Davis, “No League,” 88.
143. Davis, “No League,” 88.
144. Davis, “No League,” 88.
145. Davis, “No League,” 88.
146. Davis, “No League,” 88.