The oldest professional baseball park in the United States—Rickwood Field in Birmingham, Alabama—adds another chapter to its rich history this summer when it hosts the San Francisco Giants and St. Louis Cardinals in a regular-season game.1 The specialty game will coincide with Juneteenth celebrations and honor Hall of Famer Willie Mays, who played for the Birmingham Black Barons at Rickwood Field in 1948.2

The Giants-Cardinals contest will be the first American or National League game held at Rickwood Field as well as the first in Alabama.3

MLB RECOGNIZES THE NEGRO LEAGUES

In December 2020, Commissioner Rob Manfred announced that Major League Baseball was correcting “a longtime oversight” in the game’s history by officially recognizing that the Negro Leagues were deserving of the designation “major”—joining the Federal League, American Association, and several other defunct leagues that share that status.4 The announcement said that MLB was proud to showcase the contributions of those who played in seven distinct leagues from 1920 through 1948. “With this action, MLB seeks to ensure that future generations will remember the approximately 3,400 players of the Negro Leagues during this time period as Major League–caliber ballplayers. Accordingly, the statistics and records of these players will become a part of Major League Baseball’s history.”5

“I’ve always recognized Negro League players as major-league quality,” Larry Lester, a co-founder of the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum in Kansas City, said. “I didn’t need an official governing body to tell me that. I’m happy they did. They finally recognized that Black men played the game also.”6

IMPACT ON OTHER STATES

Alabama is one of four states that had their connection to the major leagues altered with MLB’s announcement. In the past decade, MLB has scheduled regular-season games in North Carolina, Nebraska, and Iowa—all of which had hosted regular-season Negro League games:

NORTH CAROLINA – Called the “Fort Bragg Game,” the July 3, 2016, contest between the Atlanta Braves and the Miami Marlins was the first regular-season event of any professional sport played on an active military base.7 The game was also labeled a major-league first for the state of North Carolina—and held that distinction until MLB’s announcement recognizing the Negro Leagues.8 Now, a May 25, 1948, game between the Homestead Grays and the Philadelphia Stars at Talbert Park in Rocky Mount holds the distinction of being the first standings-relevant major-league game played in the state. Lefty Bell went nine innings for the Grays in Homestead’s 9–3 victory over the Stars, both members of the Negro National League. Wilmer Fields collected four runs batted in for the winners.9

NEBRASKA – The Kansas City Royals’ 7–3 victory over the Detroit Tigers in June 2019 before a sellout crowd of 25,454 at Omaha’s TD Ameritrade Park was called Nebraska’s first major-league game. Eighteen months later, after MLB’s announcement, that distinction changed to a Kansas City Monarchs-Chicago American Giants game at Landis Field in Lincoln on July 27, 1939. Nearly 1,000 fans saw the Monarchs win, 3–2, by scoring two runs on a bad-hop, bases-loaded single in the bottom of the ninth.10

IOWA – Manfred’s announcement that MLB was recognizing the Negro Leagues as major leagues came between the announcement of a regular-season game on the site where Field of Dreams had been filmed and that game’s first pitch.11 The August 12, 2021, matchup pitted the New York Yankees against the Chicago White Sox, two historic franchises, with the White Sox featured in the film. John Thorn, MLB’s official historian, pointed out that Iowa had a rich major-league history long before the Yankees and White Sox came to town.12 Although no teams recognized as major league by MLB had franchises in Iowa, barnstorming was a major component of Negro League operations. At least 30 games between Negro League teams that counted in the standings were played in the Iowa communities of Charles City, Council Bluffs, Davenport, Des Moines, and Sioux City from 1937 to 1948. The first was apparently in Des Moines on May 27, 1937—following three previous attempts that were rained out—between the Cincinnati Tigers and the Birmingham Black Barons. Birmingham used a five-run outburst in the top of the fifth to go ahead in its 8–4 win.13

FIRST MAJOR LEAGUE GAME AT RICKWOOD FIELD

The specialty game this summer will not only celebrate the Negro Leagues and Willie Mays, it will commemorate the 100th anniversary of the debut of major-league baseball at Rickwood Field. Black Barons pitcher Bill Powell said playing at Rickwood was special: “I don’t know what it is, but when I was playing at Rickwood Field, I was always itching to get to the ballpark. We played all over the United States, and when we got here, you just loved coming here to play in this park. There was just something about the baseball in that park.”14

The change in status for the Negro Leagues means that a game played 100 years ago at Rickwood between the Black Barons and the Cuban Stars has moved to the front of the line as the first major-league game played at the historic ballpark—and in the state of Alabama.

While North Carolina, Nebraska, and Iowa never had Negro League franchises that called their states home, Alabama had two Negro League franchises that are now recognized as major league: the Birmingham Black Barons and the Montgomery Grey Sox.15 The Black Barons benefitted by playing their home games at Rickwood, the crown jewel of southern baseball. Built in 1910 for the Barons, a Class A Southern Association team comprising white players, by their owner, A.H. “Rick” Woodward, the venue also hosted Negro League contests.16 The ballpark name, combining the nickname and part of the last name of the owner, was suggested by a fan in a newspaper contest.17

With the growing popularity of Black baseball in Birmingham, Woodward saw an economic opportunity and rented out his ballpark to Black teams for a percentage of the gross ticket sales.18 A 1919 Labor Day doubleheader at Rickwood between Black teams from Birmingham and Montgomery drew 15,000 spectators. The Birmingham Age-Herald reported that the doubleheader saw “the largest crowd of Negroes that ever attended a ball game in the United States and next to the largest, irrespective of color, that ever jammed into Rickwood.”19

The same year that Rube Foster organized the Negro National League in 1920 (the earliest Negro League to be recognized as major league), the Birmingham Black Barons were formed. The team’s original nickname, Stars, was quickly changed to Black Barons, a reference to the white team in Birmingham. The Black Barons were a founding member of the Negro Southern League. In 1923, Birmingham hotel owner Joe Rush purchased the team and joined the Negro National League as an associate member, meaning the Black Barons were affiliated with the league but their games didn’t count in the standings.20 The transition to the new league came in July after the Black Barons dominated the Negro Southern League with a 24–8 record in the first half of the 1923 season.21

The move by the Black Barons to the Negro National League was touted by the Birmingham News as the first baseball team from Birmingham to have membership in a major-league association.22 A large interracial crowd attended the first home game in the new league on July 19, 1923, against the Milwaukee Bears.23 The Bears jumped out to an early 2–0 lead and had the locals wondering whether the Black Barons were out of their class. The Black Barons battled back and pulled ahead, 4–3, with two tallies in the bottom of the eighth inning. Milwaukee pushed across a run in the top of the ninth to knot the score at 4–4. After a scoreless 10th inning, the contest was halted due to darkness.24

Birmingham ended the 1923 season as an associate member of the Negro National League with a record of 15–23.25 When the Chicago American Giants, the premier team of the Negro National League, traveled to Birmingham later in the season to take on the Black Barons, the Chicago Defender commented: “For the first time in the history of the Negro National League the American Giants of Chicago will leave home during the middle of the season and make a trip South, playing in Birmingham on Aug. 20, 21 and 22. These three days will be gala days in the Southern metropolis and many people are expected to come out and witness the new Southern entry into the Negro National League play Rube Foster’s club, thrice winners of the league pennant.”26

The first official major-league baseball game in the state of Alabama took place the following year on April 28, 1924, at Rickwood Field after the Birmingham Black Barons became full members of the Negro National League. A crowd of 10,600, the second largest to ever see a Negro League game at Rickwood Field at that time, poured into the ballpark to witness the successful debut of the Black Barons. The Cuban Stars pushed across a pair of runs in the top of the third on three singles and a throwing error to take a short-lived lead. The Black Barons answered back immediately in the bottom of the frame with a five-run outburst on five singles and a dropped fly ball. Both teams scored an additional run to make the final 6–3, Black Barons.27

NOTABLE BIRMINGHAM BLACK BARONS PLAYERS

The Birmingham Black Barons fielded a team on and off in various Negro Leagues for 33 seasons. They won five Negro American League titles in the 1940s and 1950s.28 During their seasons that are now recognized as major league, the Black Barons’ rosters included four Hall of Famers.

Midway through the 1927 season, the Black Barons purchased a young, hard-throwing pitcher from the Chattanooga Black Lookouts named Leroy “Satchel” Paige.29 Paige won his first major-league game while posting a 7–2 record for the Black Barons in his rookie season.30 His first big game with his new team in late June was notable for a hit-and-run, but not the sort common to baseball lingo. When a Paige heater smacked St. Louis Stars catcher Mitchell Murray on the hand, Murray charged the mound waving his bat. Paige outran Murray to the dugout, but not the bat. The bat struck Paige above the hip. A near riot ensued, with players massing from both benches along with knife- and rock-wielding fans. After police restored order, the umpire tried to resume play after ejecting Paige and Murray. The Black Barons refused to take the field without their pitcher, thus forfeiting the game.31

In 1929, his third season with the Black Barons, Paige struck out a record 17 Detroit Stars batters in a 5–1 win on July 29.32 He ended his tenure with the Black Barons when he was sold to the Nashville Elite Giants in 1931.33

Another Hall of Famer who made his major-league debut with the Black Barons was George “Mule” Suttles. Early in his career, the power-hitting first baseman’s home run total was hampered by the dimensions of his home park at Rickwood: 411 feet to the left-field fence and 485 feet to the center-field wall.34 (The outfield dimensions at Rickwood Field have periodically changed over the years.) The long distances to left and center fields were inspired by Shibe Park, home of Connie Mack’s Philadelphia A’s. After meeting Woodward shortly after the opening of Shibe Park in 1909, Mack agreed to come to Birmingham to help design the new ballpark.35

After two major league seasons with the Black Barons, Suttles blossomed into a star with the St. Louis Stars during the 1926 season. In just 89 games that season, Suttles produced 32 home runs, 28 doubles, 19 triples, 15 stolen bases, and 130 RBIs. He ended the season with a .425 batting average.36

Rube Foster’s brother Bill, who was inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame in 1996, appeared in just one game for the Black Barons in 1925, pitching a one-hit complete game shutout before returning to his original team, the Chicago American Giants.37 Foster was a hard-throwing lefty with pinpoint control and a great changeup. On the last day of the 1926 season, he won both ends of a crucial doubleheader to clinch the pennant for the American Giants.38

In the final year that the Black Barons are recognized as major-league caliber, 1948, a 17-year-old center fielder collected two hits in the second game of a doubleheader.39 Those were the first two of 3,293 hits for Willie Mays during his Hall of Fame career.40 His two hits came off of Cleveland Buckeyes’ hurler Chet Brewer, who had broken into the league with the Kansas City Monarchs in 1925, six years before Mays was born.41

The Black Barons featured other notable players besides their four Hall of Famers. Ted “Double Duty” Radcliffe played for the Black Barons in the mid-1940s as a catcher and a pitcher, hence the moniker “Double Duty.” During a 1932 Negro World Series doubleheader early in Radcliffe’s career, he caught Paige in the first game and then pitched a shutout in the second game.42

Reece “Goose” Tatum played two seasons for the Black Barons in the early 1940s, earning his first major-league hit in the summer of 1941. While Tatum’s major-league baseball career was short-lived, he went on to become the main attraction of the Harlem Globetrotters basketball team.43 Tatum’s connection between baseball and basketball was facilitated by a new part owner of the Birmingham Black Barons, Abe Saperstein, who founded the Globetrotters.44

RICKWOOD FIELD

Rick Woodward was determined to enhance his jewel of Southern baseball, which had been built in 1910 at a cost of $75,000.45 Starting in 1924, he extended the grandstand roofs in phases down the right- and left-field bleachers to protect the fans from the brutal Alabama summer sun. A 40-foot-high scoreboard was erected in left-center, and the iconic Spanish mission–style façade with twin parapets was added to Rickwood’s front gate in 1928.46 The unique steel-frame light towers, which reach out past the grandstand roof, were added in 1936.47

Rickwood Field also became the home ballpark of an affiliated minor-league team in the 1930s as the Birmingham Barons became the farm team of various major-league teams—the Cubs, Reds, Pirates, A’s, Red Sox, Yankees, Tigers, and, since 1986, the White Sox.48

The Black Barons joined the Negro American League in 1937. They enjoyed their greatest success in the 1940s, winning three Negro American League championships.49

The integration of major league baseball by Jackie Robinson in 1947 signaled the gradual decline of the Negro Leagues. Toward the end of their existence, the Black Barons became more of a traveling team and finally folded after the 1962 season.50

Rickwood Field continued to be the home park for a Double A affiliate of major-league teams through the 1987 season. The White Sox moved the Birmingham Barons to a new ballpark in Hoover, Alabama, a suburb of Birmingham, in 1988.51

In order to preserve the legendary ballpark, a group of Birmingham fans, businesses, and civic leaders formed the “Friends of Rickwood” in 1992. Over the next decade more than $2 million was spent maintaining and restoring Rickwood Field.52 The following year, the National Parks Service’s Historic American Building Survey officially recognized Rickwood Field as the oldest professional baseball park in the United States.53

Due to the preservation efforts over the past several decades, Rickwood Field has continued to thrive. The Rickwood Classic is an annual event in which the Birmingham Barons play one regular-season game at the old ballpark while wearing throwback Negro League uniforms. A full slate of high school games and wood-bat tournaments are held there each year.54 It is also the home field for Miles College, a historically black college in suburban Fairfield, and has served as a location for baseball films such as Cobb (1994), Soul of the Game (1996), and 42 (2013).55

JOHN SHOREY is a history professor emeritus from Iowa Western Community College, where he taught an elective course on Baseball and American Culture for 20 years. He has written articles and chapters on a variety of baseball topics for various publications and is a regular contributor to Baseball Digest. He has presented his research at the Cooperstown Symposium on Baseball and American Culture along with other baseball conferences.

KEVIN WARNEKE, who earned his doctoral degree from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, is a fundraiser based in Omaha, Nebraska. He co-wrote The Call to the Hall, which tells the story of when baseball’s highest honor came to 31 legends of the game.

Notes

1 “Rickwood Field to host MLB, MiLB games in 2024,” MiLB.com, June 20, 2023, https://www.milb.com/news/rickwood-field-to-host-mlb-milb-games, accessed November 19, 2023.

2 “Rickwood Field to host MLB.”

3 Bob Nightengale, “MLB to play 2024 regular season game at Birmingham’s historic Rickwood Field,” USA Today, June 20, 2023, https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/mlb/2023/06/20/birminghams-rickwoodhistoric-rickwood-field-to-host-mlb-game-in-june-2024/70336931007/, accessed November 19, 2023; Patrick Andres, “Giants, Cardinals to Play 2024 Game at Birmingham’s Historic Rickwood Field,” Sports Illustrated, June 20, 2023, https://www.si.com/mlb/2023/06/20/giants-cardinals-to-play-in-birmingham-2024-rickwood-field-willie-mays-juneteenth, accessed November 19, 2023.

4 A note on the confusing capitalization: Major League Baseball, when capitalized, identifies the current corporate entity that is made up of the 30 teams in the American and National Leagues. The major leagues, lowercase, is a descriptor of baseball’s top level of play, which Major League Baseball announced in 2020 included the Negro Leagues. Note also that MLB, in its press releases, capitalizes major league in all uses.

5 “MLB officially designates the Negro Leagues as ‘Major League,’” MLB.com, December 16, 2020, https://www.mlb.com/press-release/press-release-mlb-officially-designates-the-negro-leagues-as-major-league

6 Kevin Warneke and John Shorey, “This small Nebraska town hosted Negro League clubs and possibly a Major League game,” Flatwater Free Press, March 31, 2023, https://flatwaterfreepress.org/this-small-nebraska-town-hosted-negro-league-clubs-and-possibly-an-official-major-league-baseball-game/

7 John Schlegel, “Stars and Spikes: July 3 game at Fort Bragg!” March 8, 2016, MLB.com, https://www.mlb.com/news/braves-marlins-play-fort-bragg-game-on-july-3-c166636990, accessed October 30, 2023.

8 Arthur Weinstein, “Braves, Marlins make history in game at Fort Bragg military base,” Sporting News, July 3, 2016, https://www.sportingnews.com/us/mlb/news/braves-marlins-fort-bragg-field-mlb/d9yjuy7bczvq1wkgxli0a615g, accessed November 19, 2023.

9 “Homestead Grays (HOM) 9 Philadelphia Stars (PH5) 3,” Retrosheet, https://www.retrosheet.org/NegroLeagues/boxesetc/1948/ B05250HOM1948.htm, accessed February 6, 2024.

10 Warneke and Shorey, Flatwater Free Press.

11 John Shorey and Kevin Warneke, “Major League Baseball in Iowa,” The National Pastime 51 (2023), 63.

12 John Thorn tweet, August 21, 2021, https://twitter.com/thorn_john/status/1425441694481330179

13 Shorey and Warneke, 64.

14 Allen Barra, Rickwood Field: A Century in America’s Oldest Ballpark (New York: Norton, 2010), ix.

15 The Montgomery Grey Sox achieved major-league status for one season when MLB designated the Negro Southern League as major-league caliber for the 1932 season.

16 Barra, 21–22.

17 Barra, 24.

18 Barra, 58.

19 Barra, 58.

20 Larry Powell, Black Barons of Birmingham (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2009), 10.

21 “Negro Southern League (1920–1951),” Center for Negro League Baseball Research, https://www.cnlbr.org/Portals/0/Standings/Negro%20Southern%20League%20%20(1920–1951)-2020.pdf, accessed November 20, 2023.

22 “Black Barons Play First Game As Big Leaguers Thursday,” Birmingham News, July 17, 1923, 26.

23 The Birmingham News story incorrectly identified the Milwaukee team as the Giants. The correct moniker for Milwaukee in 1923 was the Bears.

24 “Black Barons Tie First Big League Game,” Birmingham News, July 20, 1923, 18.

25 “Negro National League Standings (1920-1948),” Center for Negro League Baseball Research, https://www.cnlbr.org/Portals/0/Standings/Negro%20National%20League%20(1920-1948)%202016-08.pdf, accessed November 20, 2023.

26 “Black Barons Face Hard Week’s Work,” Birmingham News, July 29, 1923, 34.

27 “Record Crowd Sees Rushmen Annex Opener,” Birmingham News, April 29, 1924, 16.

28 “Birmingham Black Barons,” the Negro Leagues, https://www.mlb.com/history/negro-leagues/teams/birmingham-black-barons, accessed November 20, 2023.

29 Powell, Black Barons of Birmingham, 19.

30 “Satchel Paige,” Baseball Reference, https://www.baseball-reference.com/players/p/paigesa01.shtml, accessed November 20, 2023.

31 Larry Tye, Satchel: The Life and Times of an American Legend (New York: Random House, 2009), 43.

32 Powell, 20.

33 Robert Peterson, Only the Ball Was White (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 1992), 133.

34 Powell, 29.

35 Barra, Rickwood Field, 2–4.

36 “Mule Suttles,” Baseball Reference, https://www.baseball-reference.com/players/s/suttlmu99.shtml, accessed November 20, 2023.

37 “Bill Foster,” Baseball Reference, https://www.baseball-reference.com/players/f/fostebi99.shtml, accessed November 20, 2023.

38 National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum, National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum 2022 Yearbook (Lynn, MA: H.O. Zimman, 2022), 75.

39 James S. Hirsch, Willie Mays: The Life, The Legend (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2010), 43.

40 “Willie Mays,” Baseball Reference, https://www.baseball-reference.com/players/m/mayswi01.shtml, accessed November 20, 2023.

41 Hirsch, 42–43.

42 Powell, 48.

43 Powell, 50.

44 Mark Ribowsky, A Complete History of the Negro Leagues, 1884 to 1955 (New York: Carol Publishing Group, 1995), 248.

45 Hirsch, 41.

46 Barra, 75–79.

47 Barra, 117.

48 “Birmingham Barons,” Baseball Reference, https://www.baseball-reference.com/bullpen/Birmingham_Barons, accessed December 18, 2023.

49 “Negro American League Standings (1937–1962),” Center for Negro League Baseball Research, https://www.cnlbr.org/Portals/0/Standings/Negro%20American%20League%20(1937-1962)%202016-08.pdf, accessed December 18, 2023.

50 “Negro American League Standings (1937–1962).”

51 Barra, 201.

52 Barra, 205.

53 Barra, 211.

54 Bruce Markusen, “Rickwood Field features baseball’s past and present,” National Baseball Hall of Fame, https://baseballhall.org/discover/rickwood-field-features-baseballs-past-and-present, accessed December 18, 2023.

55 “Field of Dreams Game 2024,” FieldOfDreamsGameTickets, https://www.fieldofdreamsgametickets.com, accessed December 18, 2023.

Long before Aaron Judge broke the single-season American League home-run records formerly held by fellow New York Yankees Babe Ruth and Roger Maris, a young man from a small farm on the Maryland Eastern Shore was on pace to hit more dingers than any of them.1 His name was Jimmie Foxx, nicknamed “the Beast” for superhuman strength and monstrous homers, many of them among the longest in the history of the game, reportedly soaring upwards of 450 and even 500 feet, high over outfield walls, grandstands, and out of sight.2

On April 12, 1932, Opening Day, Foxx, first baseman for the Philadelphia Athletics, blasted a solo shot to begin a six-month assault on what eventually became one of the most coveted records in sports: Ruth’s 60 homers hit five years earlier. By late July, Foxx was on track to club 64, more than enough to top Ruth’s mark, and a record that would have survived Maris’s 61 in 1961 and Judge’s 62 in 2022.

If Foxx had kept hammering round-trippers at that clip, he would have been crowned the new home-run king and likely still reign as one of America’s most famous athletes. Instead, he slowed down in August, supposedly lost two homers to rainouts at some point in the season, and finished strong in September, with five homers in the last five games to end up with 58 that counted.3 Following a bittersweet 20-year career that did put him in the Baseball Hall of Fame, this gentle Beast quietly faded away as arguably the game’s least-remembered phenom.

“If you asked the average American baseball fan if they ever heard of him, you’d get a lot more noes than yeses,” said John Bennett, a SABR member who has researched and written extensively about Foxx.4

“He was one of the all-time greats,” said John Odell, curator of history and research at the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum. “You would think more people would know him. People just don’t.”5

“Foxx is the forgotten man among baseball’s all-time super sluggers. ‘Double X’ was poison to pitchers, the first man to challenge Ruth as the home run king,” John Thorn, Major League Baseball’s official historian since 2011, wrote in his 1998 book Treasures of the Baseball Hall of Fame.6

Though forgotten, Foxx remains a historical trailblazer—the first three-time winner of the Most Valuable Player award, the first to hit 30 or more homers in 12 straight seasons, and the first after Ruth to hit 500 career homers. Along the way, Foxx banged out a lifetime batting average of .325, with the seventh-highest slugging average, .609, and the 10th-most runs batted in, 1,922.

THE BABE’S SHADOW

When it came to winning public admiration, however, particularly in the long term, Foxx repeatedly struck out—a victim of bad timing, a less-than-ideal location, and his low-key personality. Foxx also had the misfortune of playing in the smothering shadow of the highly charismatic Ruth, “the Great Bambino.” Ruth performed on center stage in New York City, the media capital of the world, which helped make him an international icon and still the biggest name in the game. With a talented supporting cast, Ruth showcased himself in seven World Series with the Yankees, drawing even more national and global acclaim.7

Foxx starred off-Broadway, in Philadelphia and later in Boston with the Red Sox. He played in three World Series, all with the A’s.8 In both cities, Foxx drew cheers. But he didn’t get the national recognition bestowed on Ruth and other legendary Yankees, particularly Lou Gehrig. In the inaugural All-Star game in 1933, Gehrig played the entire game at first base while Foxx, who would win the Triple Crown and his second straight MVP award at the end of that season, remained on the bench.9

Foxx’s best years were during the Great Depression, in the 1930s, when attendance and salaries were down, and fans were more interested in finding a job than attending a game. Foxx retired in 1945, not long before baseball began being televised regularly, which helped make many of Foxx’s successors become well-paid household names while he quietly filed for bankruptcy.10 If he had played two more seasons, he would have qualified for baseball’s new player pension program.

“You made only one mistake, Jimmie,” Joe DiMaggio told Foxx. “You were born 25 years too soon.” Said Foxx, “I guess, I was born to be broke.”11

Foxx was born in Sudlersville, Maryland, on October 22, 1907. Ruth, 12 years older than Foxx, was born and raised in Baltimore, across Chesapeake Bay from the Eastern Shore, where the Beast grew up and worked on his parents’ farm. Swinging from opposite sides of the plate, the Beast and the Sultan of Swat hit many of the game’s longest homers, prompting sportswriters to call Foxx “the right-handed Babe Ruth”

He was 16 when he signed his first pro baseball contract, with the Easton (Maryland) Farmers of the Class D Eastern Shore League, where he impressed fellow players with his big bat.12 After a year in the minors, Foxx took that big bat to the big leagues as a member of Connie Mack’s Philadelphia Athletics. On May 1, 1925, he debuted with a pinch-hit single.13 Foxx was then 17 years, six months, and nine days old, easily placing him among the youngest 1% of the 20,000-plus players in major-league history at the time of their respective debuts.14

In 1932, at just 24, Foxx won the first of his two consecutive MVP awards. Yet The Sporting News, the weekly “Bible of Baseball,” gave him relatively scant notice, particularly compared to Ruth. According to the publication’s online reporting system, Foxx had six mentions by name in the magazine during the 1932 season; Ruth got 91. During the 1933 season, Foxx, en route to another MVP, was mentioned by name a few dozen times; Ruth’s name appeared more than 250 times.15

“When you study the man’s factual record and know what he did, it is actually hard for me to wrap my arms around the disproportionately low amount of recognition that he gets,” said baseball historian and author Bill Jenkinson. “He, to me, is clearly baseball’s most underrated player ever.”16

While the average baseball fan today may have never heard of Foxx, those who have studied the game place him near the top of just about any list of all-time greats. In 1998, The Sporting News ranked Foxx as the 15th greatest player ever, with Gehrig No. 6 and Ruth No. 1.17 A generation later, in 2022, Foxx’s stock had slipped a bit, at least at ESPN. In its Top 100 all-time players, the global sports station put Foxx at No. 40. Fourteen players whose careers had been over by 1998 and who had been behind Foxx in The Sporting News list—and whose profiles were boosted by TV—leapfrogged over the Beast on ESPN’s ranking. They included Mickey Mantle, Roberto Clemente, Pete Rose, Yogi Berra, and Jackie Robinson. Ruth and Gehrig remained No. 1 and No. 6.18

In terms of wins above replacement, or WAR, which measures a player’s value in all aspects of the game, Foxx ranks at number 41 in career WAR among the more than 20,000 players in major-league history. He is ahead of a long line of far more famous players who profited from TV exposure, including Ken Griffey Jr. (58), Pete Rose (67), Joe DiMaggio (69), Derek Jeter (95), and Johnny Bench (83).

On January 26, 1951, it was announced that Foxx got the required 75 percent vote of the Baseball Writers Association of America to win admittance into the Hall of Fame. Mel Ott also received the required votes. Foxx had more lifetime homers and RBIs, and a higher lifetime batting average than Ott. Yet Ott, like Ruth a beneficiary of the New York stage, drew 87.2 percent of the vote compared to 79.2 percent for Foxx. Foxx made it into the Hall in his sixth year of eligibility. Ott made it in his fourth.19

Days after being elected to the Hall, Foxx downplayed his success. “All the years I played, all the great players I saw, played against, read about and watched—I never expected this honor,” Foxx told the Associated Press. “I’ll never forget it.”20

THE “LOST” HOME RUNS

In that AP interview, Foxx said he actually hit 60 homers in 1932, but two got erased in rainouts, preventing him from tying Ruth’s record. Widespread reports of those washed-out dingers persist online and in books and other publications. Yet a review of the record in researching this paper on Foxx found no confirmed word on when or where he supposedly clubbed those four-baggers, raising the question of whether they ever happened. “It’s become one of those baseball legends,” Cassidy Lent, library director at the Hall of Fame, said when asked about the lack of evidence. “I guess it persists the way all legends persist. …It makes for a good story.”21

In addition to the rained-out homers, Foxx’s “good story” includes reports that he hit upwards of a dozen or so long drives in 1932 that would have been homers but bounced off, rather than cleared, newly raised outfield barriers in St. Louis, Philadelphia, and Cleveland.22

“That story of Foxx’s ‘missing’ home runs may never sustain a fact check,” MLB historian Thorn wrote in a 2022 email exchange.23 There may never be a definitive fact-check. Neither the Hall of Fame, MLB, nor Baseball Reference maintains records of players’ performance in rained-out games or how high the balls they hit bounced off outfield walls.24

Newspapers routinely report rained-out contests. But there’s no guarantee that they always did. And even if newspapers reported a rainout, they may not have always provided much, if any, detail. Furthermore, even if a newspaper included details—like any homers hit that day—there is no certainty that the newspaper could now be found on some bookshelf, online, or on microfilm, said David Smith, a baseball historian and researcher. “You can’t prove it didn’t happen.”25

In his 1951 AP interview, Foxx said he hit five long balls in 1932 that should have been homers—the two that got erased by rainouts, and three others stopped by an outfield design change, namely the placing of strands of wire atop a right field fence to prevent kids from sneaking in. “I hit three drives in 1932 that struck the wires and bounced back,” he is quoted as saying. “When the Babe hit his 60, those drives would have gone over. But they called the ball in play when I hit ’em and I was cheated out of three homers. That would have made 61.” The AP story didn’t identify which park this took place in, but Foxx was likely referring to Philadelphia’s Shibe Park where such wire had been placed.26

Researcher Robert Schaefer reviewed Foxx’s 1932 play-by-play record in St. Louis’s Sportsman Park, where sportswriters said he lost a dozen home runs in 1932 to a new outfield screen. In the spring 2013 issue of the Baseball Research Journal, Schaefer wrote that he found just one instance, on June 15, when a ball struck by Foxx hit the screen.27

Jenkinson had also examined this decades earlier, and said he had also shown that a batted ball by Foxx hit the screen in St. Louis that day. In addition, Jenkinson found that Foxx belted a ball on July 1 of that year that bounced off the wire contraption atop the fence in Shibe Park for a triple.28 The next day’s Philadelphia Inquirer wrote: “The triple just missed clearing the wall. It hit the very top, but bounded the wrong way after hanging momentarily.”29

Jenkinson also reviewed Foxx’s 1932 game-by-game record as part of his decades-long examination of the careers of Foxx and other players. He checked records primarily by visiting libraries, including the Library of Congress in Washington, where he searched through microfilm of old newspapers, reading game stories and box scores. Jenkinson said he found 15 of Foxx’s games rained out in 1932, most before the first pitch: “My research found that he didn’t hit a homer in any of them.”

Jenkinson is confident that the Beast, who had a reputation for being modest, didn’t deliberately fabricate the rained-out homers: “What I think is that after he retired, somebody told him he had two homers rained out in 1932, and by the 1950s, he believed it.”34 Schaefer offered another possibility: “Some old players, in talking about the old days, simply misremember some things.”30

At the Hall of Fame, curator Odell cited “an old story that Foxx kept a newspaper clipping in his wallet that he would pull out to show he had two homers rained out in 1932.” He continued, “Baseball is full of these second-hand and third-hand stories that somebody told somebody something.”31 One of these is in Ted Taylor’s 2010 book The Ultimate Philadelphia Athletic Reference Book, 1901–1954: “According to [Foxx’s] daughter, Nanci Foxx Canaday, he carried a newspaper clipping with him in his wallet until the day he died that told of additional home runs lost to rainouts that season.”32

In a 2023 telephone interview, Canaday said she didn’t recall saying such a thing. She also said her father wouldn’t have made up two rained-out homers as an excuse for failing to tie Ruth’s record. “No way,” Canaday said. “He didn’t even care about records. When Willie Mays broke Daddy’s home run record, Daddy sent him a telegram of congratulations.” Mays topped Foxx’s record for most home runs by a right-handed hitter when he hit his 535th career homer on August 17, 1966.33

WHAT MIGHT HAVE BEEN

Ruth was impressed regardless of how many more homers Foxx may have had in 1932. After the season, Ruth, then 37 and near the end of his career, said, “Foxx is the greatest batsman in major league baseball today. There’s no question about that. He’s a swell fellow—well-liked by the players and the fans. In fact, he’s such a nice kid, I was kind of sorry for him when he came so close to the record and missed.”34

An equally respectful Foxx said, “If I had broken Ruth’s record, it wouldn’t have made any difference. Oh, it might have put a few more dollars in my pocket, but there was only one Ruth.”35

While there will always be only one Ruth, a few more homers by the Beast would have forever changed the narrative. “If Foxx had busted Ruth’s record in ’32, his career and place in history would be a whole other story,” Schaefer said. “Foxx would have owned the new home-run gold standard for decades, one that future sluggers would have all chased.”36

After the 1932 season, the Brooklyn Daily Eagle asked players and managers: Who hit the ball harder, Foxx or Ruth? With strong arguments on behalf of each slugger, Cleveland Indians Manager Roger Peckinpaugh asked, “Why make a choice between the two? Just give the crown of the left-handed hitters to Ruth and concede that Foxx hits the ball harder than any other right-handed batsman.”37 While Foxx led the major leagues in homers in 1932, Ruth was a distant second with 41.

Ruth remained center stage in his final years. Yet Foxx, his apparent successor, began winning more ink and plaudits, as he did on August 15, 1933, after the 25-year-old slugger had a day like none other. “Foxx, New Ruler of Swat, Far Shy of Ruth in Personality, But a Greater Terror at Bat,” read the headline atop a story in the Washington Evening Star. The story, by the AP’s Edward J. Neil reads: “There’s a new brilliant shining today in the bonnet of pink-cheeked Jimmie Foxx, a new American League record of nine runs batted in in one game added to the walloping achievements of the new king of baseball’s sluggers. As the old dynasty of Babe Ruth fades slowly…the wonder of Foxx, the easy-going farmer boy from Maryland’s somnolent Eastern Sho’ steadily rises.” Neil added that while the younger “barrel-chested horsehide buster” lacked the “flair” and “booming personality” of Ruth, “never in all of the Babe’s 20 years of big-league play has he loosed more devastation at the plate than Foxx unleashed yesterday as the Athletics slaughtered Walter Johnson’s Cleveland Indians, 11 to 5.”38

On September 24, 1940, Foxx, 32, then with the Red Sox, hit his 500th career homer, putting him on pace to top the Babe’s record of 714. “What a man,” teammate Ted Williams was quoted in the next day’s Philadelphia Evening Bulletin. “And I’ll bet he does it, too.”39

But Foxx, battling alcohol and other health issues, including a nagging sinus problem apparently stemming from getting hit in the head with a pitched ball six years earlier, was soon reduced to a part-time player.40 He hit only 34 more home runs before retiring in 1945—after bouncing from the Red Sox to the Chicago Cubs to the Philadelphia Phillies. Historian Jenkinson quoted Williams as telling him in a 1986 interview, “Jimmie felt obligated to emulate the Bambino in every way. And that was not good. Ruth liked to party, but not as much as Foxx seemed to think.”41

Jenkinson, in his 2010 book, Baseball’s Ultimate Power: Ranking the All-Time Greatest Distance Home Run Hitters, put Ruth and Foxx first and second among the “Top 100 Tape-Measure Sluggers.” Jenkinson used his own ranking formula: a player’s longest homer, 10 longest homers, and career home-run total. Jenkinson’s findings included that in 1932 alone, 24 of Foxx’s homers went 450 feet or more, including a 500-footer over the left-center field bleachers in St. Louis. “It was,” Jenkinson wrote, “a season for the ages.”42

“THE TEAM THAT HISTORY FORGOT”

The stock market crashed in 1929, a few months after Foxx appeared on the July 29 cover of TIME magazine as the young face of the powerhouse A’s, then headed to the first of three straight World Series. They won the first two. “I worked on a farm and I’m glad of it,” Foxx told TIME. “Farmer boys are stronger than city boys….Never realized then it was helping me train for the Big Leagues.”43

Foxx was considered the best player on perhaps the most overlooked great team, the 1929–31 Athletics, who, including Foxx, had four future Hall of Famers. “The Team that History Forgot,” read the headline on the cover of Sports Illustrated on August 19, 1996. The A’s, like Foxx, were overshadowed by Ruth and the Yankees, particularly the 1927 World Series champions, widely considered the greatest baseball team of all time. “Those A’s never got the credit they deserved,” SI quoted the Washington Post’s Shirley Povich as saying. “The A’s were victims of the Yankee mystique. Perhaps the 1927 Yankees were the greatest team of all time. But if there was a close second, perhaps an equal, it was those A’s.”44

The Babe’s 60 homers were a big part of the 1927 Yankees’ mystique. His record was long seen as unbreakable by anyone other than the 6-foot-2, 215-pound Ruth himself, since he alone hit more home runs that year than most teams. But five years later, the 6-foot, 195-pound Foxx—with a sculpted body likened to that of a Greek god and sleeves cut to expose bulging biceps—rose to the challenge. He slugged four homers in the first five games of the 1932 season. After a nine-game lull, he hit 25 dingers in May and June combined, and then walloped another 12 in July.45

“I think I had about 41 homers by the first week in August,” Foxx said in September 1961 as Maris closed in on Ruth’s record. “Then I hurt my wrist sliding into second base to break up a double play. I stayed in the lineup but later learned I had a chipped bone. I was able to get base hits, but for three weeks, I didn’t have the power to hit for distance.”46

Once Foxx regained his power, he went on another long-ball rampage. He smacked 10 homers in September, five in the last five games of the season, including one on the final day, September 25. He ended up two homers short of Ruth’s 60.47 “Well, I gave her a ride to the finish boys,” Foxx’s nephew, Dell Foxx, quoted him as telling reporters after the game. Dell Foxx said, “He was disappointed but not depressed.”48

It’s difficult to compare players from different eras, given that—thanks to better diet and improved exercise—they, along with the rest of humanity, have gotten bigger and stronger. Yet Foxx appears to have been among the best of the best. “I never saw a player with more natural ability than Double X,” said Hall of Fame shortstop Joe Cronin, who spent nearly a half-century in the big leagues as a player, manager, general manager, and president of the American League. “He had everything you could ask for in a player.”49

“A LEAGUE OF THEIR OWN”

Foxx left high school to play baseball and after retiring, had a series of short-term jobs, including stints in public relations and as a paint salesman, a restaurant greeter, a sports announcer, a college coach, and as manager of the 1952 Fort Wayne Daisies of the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League, immortalized in the 1992 movie, A League of Their Own.50

Tom Hanks played Jimmy Dugan, portrayed as a former baseball player turned loud, profane, and falling down–drunk manager. The character was said to be based largely on Foxx, but former Daisies disputed the movie’s depiction of him. They said Foxx drank, but was no Jimmy Dugan. “He was always a gentleman,” said Katie Horstman. She said Foxx shared with her the key to his powerful swing after he learned that she grew up on a farm, milking cows, just as he had, and he saw her belt a towering home run. “I knew you could hit,” Horstman said Foxx told her. “That’s how I got my strong wrist action, too, from years of milking cows.”51

Several years later, on January 23, 1958, United Press quoted Foxx as saying. “I earned about $270,000 in my 20 years in the Major Leagues,” equivalent to several million dollars today. “I don’t have anything now.”52

In 1962, Foxx worked as a sporting goods salesman in a Cleveland department store, after having filed for bankruptcy. “I didn’t want to do it, but a food company I had been associated with collapsed, and all of a sudden I got a big bill that wasn’t mine. I had no choice,” he told The Associated Press. In the article, dated January 20, 1962, he was described as unable to afford a telephone but in good spirits. Asked why he was smiling, Foxx said, “Why not? I’m alive.”53

Sudlersville cheered Foxx when he played the game, but after he retired and did not move back to town, it began to see him as a divorced, broken-down has-been with a drinking problem and difficulty holding a job. “Sudlersville had pretty much disowned Daddy,” said his stepdaughter, Nanci Foxx Canaday. “I really don’t know why. But I knew Daddy could handle it. Daddy taught us if someone is mean to us, kill them with kindness. That’s what Daddy always did.”54

Baltimore native Gil Dunn moved to the Eastern Shore in 1953 and opened a pharmacy. He was surprised and saddened to see the lack of local interest in Foxx, a boyhood idol. Dunn erected a Foxx museum in his store in the 1960s and wrote the Beast, asking if he had anything he would like to contribute. Not long after, Foxx, unannounced, drove to the pharmacy with a donation: a trunk full of memorabilia. “You might as well have this all,” Dunn quoted Foxx. “No one else seems to want it.”55

REMEMBERING “UNCLE JIM”

Years after Foxx died in 1967 at 59—he choked on food while having dinner with his younger brother, Sam—his nephew Dell delivered a speech about “Uncle Jim” to the Sudlersville Lions Club. Dell Foxx does not recall the date of his speech, but he kept a copy of it. “This man never attracted the attention or the salary of Babe Ruth,” he wrote. “He was an amazing hitter, but he was no showman on or off the field. When others complained that he didn’t receive his share of attention, he would smile and say, ‘It’s all right. It’s a lot of fun anyway.’”56

“But it’s sad, really,” Dell Foxx added, “because of all the super sluggers in baseball, Jimmie Foxx is still the least known and remembered. There have been no books written about him, and many fans who still marvel at Babe Ruth have never heard of old ‘Double X.’”57

Since then, a half dozen books have been written about Foxx, but none made him anything near a household name. By comparison, dozens of biographies of Hall of Famers such as Ruth, Gehrig, and Mays have burnished their already robust legends.58

In 1981, following Dunn’s lead, Sudlersville reembraced Jimmie Foxx posthumously. It dedicated a small park in his honor and posted a sign reading, “Welcome to Sudlersville, Birthplace of Jimmy Foxx.” (Foxx changed the spelling of his first name from Jimmy to Jimmie after he entered the big leagues, but town folks still remember him as Jimmy.) On October 24, 1987, the Sudlersville Community Betterment Club dedicated a stone memorial in Foxx’s honor in the park at the corner of Church and Main Streets. Hundreds of people attended, including family, friends, elected officials, sportswriters, and former players.59

“It was overdue,” said Betterment Club member Loretta Walls. “He deserved it.”60

Unable to attend, Ted Williams mailed a hand-written tribute: “I’ll never forget my old teammate and how nicely he treated me as a young brash rookie and what an impression he made on me when I first saw him hit. I really don’t believe anyone ever made the impact of the ball and bat sound like it did when he really got a hold of it… Born in farm country, I really don’t think he ever left it. He was as down to earth as anyone I ever met.”61

Over the years, relatives, sportswriters, and fans have suggested Foxx may have been an even better player and better remembered if he’d been more aggressive, more of a showman, and more selfish. At the memorial dedication, Hurtt Deringer of the nearby Kent County News rejected such talk. “I think he was best as he was,” Deringer said, “a man genuinely liked by everyone in baseball. His niceness just shone through.”62

In 1992, Chestertown, another Eastern Shore town, dedicated a statue to its hometown baseball hero, Bill “Swish” Nicholson. Nicholson, like Foxx, was a former farm boy. He led the Cubs in homers in eight straight seasons and also led the National League in homers and RBIs in 1943 and 1944. But he was no Hall of Famer.63 “If Chestertown had a statue for Swish, Sudlersville should have one for its Hall of Famer, Jimmie Foxx,” said Walls. She helped rally community support to build one.64

On October 25, 1997, a life-size bronze statue of the Beast was dedicated in Sudlersville, near his memorial. At the dedication, former Maryland Governor Harry Hughes said, “We recall Jimmie Foxx as an example for all youth who would play the game.”65 A natural athlete, Foxx had been a state sprint champ in high school.66 In the majors, he was primarily a first baseman but early on he’d been a standout catcher. Foxx ended up playing every position except second base and center field in the big leagues. Late in his career, he pitched 232⁄3 innings over 10 games. He had a 1–0 record with an earned run average of 1.52.

Nephew Dell Foxx looked much like his uncle and was a model for the statue. Now a retired banker, he recalls playing high school baseball on the Maryland Eastern Shore in the 1950s, where fans in the stands compared him unfavorably to the Beast. Speaking from his home in North East, Maryland, a 45-minute car ride from Sudlersville, Foxx said: “I’d be at bat while a bunch of old men sat behind the screen, mumbling, ‘He sure doesn’t hit like his uncle.’” With a chuckle, Foxx added: “I remember thinking, ‘Not many people hit like my Uncle Jim.’”67

On October 20, 2007, baseball historian Jenkinson helped Sudlersville celebrate the 100th anniversary of Foxx’s birth. In doing so, he advised the town how to treat the memory of “The Gentle Beast.” Said Jenkinson, “History has not been fair to Jimmie. As the years pass, his legacy and memory continue to diminish in the minds of most Americans. Despite his imperfections, he was an amazing man who should endure as one of the nation’s true athletic icons.”

“So, what do we do?” Jenkinson remarked “Tell the truth…. Foxx was a marvel.”68

The Sudlersville Community Betterment Club helped spread the word. It printed a pamphlet, Jimmy Foxx: Honoring Our Hometown Hero. The club quoted what Double X had said decades earlier when asked to name his “greatest day in baseball.” Foxx picked Game 5 of the 1930 World Series, on October 6, when he squared off in the ninth inning of a scoreless contest against fellow future Hall of Famer Burleigh Grimes of the St. Louis Cardinals. “I was nervous. But Grimes was cool as ice,” Foxx said. “He was deliberately slow in getting ready to pitch, so I stepped out of the box. I got some dirt in my hands and stepped in again. He raised his hand to his mouth in his spitter motion. Then he threw the first pitch. I knew in a flash second it wasn’t a spitter. For it was coming in close. It was a curve, and I swung.”69

He went on: “Well, that was it—the big thrill. I heard the Athletic bench yell all at once, and there it went. Some fan reached up and pulled it down when it hit the left field bleachers for a home run” that won the game and successfully positioned the A’s, two days later, to capture their second consecutive World Series championship, four games to two.70

According to the next day’s Philadelphia Inquirer, Foxx called the winning shot, telling teammates as he picked up his big bat and headed to the plate, “I’ll just bust up this ball game right now.”71

In 1997, the Eastern Shore Baseball Hall of Fame Museum opened at the Arthur W. Perdue Stadium in Salisbury, home of the Class A Delmarva Shorebirds. With old bats, balls, uniforms, photos, and displays, the shrine honors hundreds of pro and amateur players from the Eastern Shore, including a former farm boy unknown to most of America. However, says Newt Weaver, a member of the museum’s board of directors, that former farm boy, Jimmie Foxx, “is our biggest draw—him and his 534 home runs,” including the 58 in 1932.72 

TOM FERRARO got a Joe DiMaggio bat at age 5, making him a lifelong Yankee and baseball fan. Another passion, dating back to childhood, was being a reporter, at his high school and college newspapers and then The Hagerstown (MD) Morning Herald, United Press International, New York Post, Bloomberg News, and Reuters. He spent most of his half-century career covering a subject that doesn’t come close to the beauty of the national pastime: national politics.

Source

All stats are from Baseball Reference except as noted.

Notes

1 “Jimmie Foxx 1932 Game by Game Batting Logs,” Baseball Almanac, https://www.baseball-almanac.com/players/hittinglogs.php?p=foxxji01&y=1932 Foxx hit 40th homer on July 23, 1932, the 96th game of the season, to put him on pace to finish with 64.

2 Bill Jenkinson, Baseball’s Ultimate Power: Ranking the All-Time Greatest Distance Home Run Hitters (Guilford, CT: Lyons Press), 237.

3 “Jimmie Foxx 1932 Game by Game Batting Logs.”

4 John Bennett, telephone interview, January 2023.

5 John Odell, telephone interview, March 14, 2022.

6 John Thorn, Treasures of the Baseball Hall of Fame (New York: Random House, 1980), 61.

7 “Babe Ruth World Series Stats,” Baseball Almanac, https://www.baseball-almanac.com/players/playerpost.php?p=ruthba01&ps=ws

8 “Jimmie Foxx World Series Stats,” Baseball Almanac, https://www.baseball-almanac.com/players/playerpost.php?p=foxxji01&ps=ws

9 “1933 All-Star Game Box Score, July 6,” Baseball Reference, https://www.baseball-reference.com/allstar/1933-allstar-game.shtml.

10 Curt Smith, “TV brought baseball to fans who had never seen a game,” National Baseball Hall of Fame, https://baseballhall.org/discover/television-brought-baseball-to-millions; Andrew Martin, “MLB Legend Jimmie Foxx Had To Become A Working Man Years After HOF Induction,” Medium, May 14, 2022, https://historianandrew.medium.com/mlb-legend-jimmie-foxx-had-to-become-a-working-man-years-after-hof-induction-d9223bd64326

11 Bob Broeg, Super Stars of Baseball (St. Louis: The Sporting News, 1971), 85–86.

12 Franklin Snyder, interview in Annapolis, Maryland, July 26, 2023. Snyder, a retired Maryland homebuilder, remembers Jimmie Foxx. “He and my father [Frank] played together,” Snyder said, pointing at an old black-and-white photo of their team, the Easton Farmers. “That’s my father, in front of Jimmie Foxx. My father was the catcher. Jimmie Foxx played first base. My father told me Jimmie Foxx was a heck of a player. Big bat”; “About Jimmie Foxx,” National Baseball Hall of Fame, https://baseballhall.org/hall-of-famers/foxx-jimmie

13 “Jimmie Foxx,” Baseball Reference BR Bullpen, https://www.baseball-reference.com/bullpen/Jimmie_Foxx.

14 “Jimmie Foxx Debuts May 1, 1925,” Baseball Sisco Kid Style, May 1, 2015, https://baseballsiscokidstyle.blogspot.com/2015/05/jimmie-foxx-debuts-may-1-1925.html; “Player Batting Season & Career Stats Finder,” Stathead Baseball, https://stathead.com/tiny/biDjg Note that there are duplicate entries in those results because of players such as Roy Campanella debuting in different major leagues; Red Bradley, who was 18 at his debut, appears in error.

15 Online search of The Sporting News Archives.

16 Bill Jenkinson interview, March 2023.

17 “Baseball’s 100 Greatest Players by The Sporting News (1998),” Baseball Almanac, https://www.baseball-almanac.com/legendary/lisn100.shtml.

18 “Top 100 MLB players of all time,” ESPN.com, February 1, 2022, https://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/33145121/top-100-mlb-players-all Players whose career was over in 1998 who had leapfrogged Foxx were, in ascending order: Yogi Berra, Jackie Robinson, Joe Morgan, Tris Speaker, Josh Gibson, Pete Rose, Bob Gibson, Sandy Koufax, Johnny Bench, Roberto Clemente, Tom Seaver, Frank Robinson, Mike Schmidt and Mickey Mantle. One player who had been ahead of Foxx in 1998 fell behind him on the 2022 list: Pete Alexander.

19 “Foxx, Ott enter Hall of Fame together,” National Baseball Hall of Fame, https://baseballhall.org/discover/inside-pitch/ott-foxx-enter-hall-of-fame-together

20 Associated Press, “Foxx Figures Breaking of Ruth Record Would Help,” Hagerstown (Maryland) Morning Herald, January 29, 1951.

21 Cassidy Lent, telephone interview and follow up email exchange, 2023.

22 Broeg, Super Stars of Baseball, 84. Robert H. Schaefer, “Double X and His Lost Dingers,” Baseball Research Journal: Spring Vol. 42, No. 1, 2013 (Phoenix: Society for American Baseball Research, 2013), https://sabr.org/journal/article/double-x-and-his-lost-dingers/; Norman Macht, The Grand Old Man of Baseball, Connie Mack (University of Nebraska Press, 2015), 16.

23 John Thorn, email exchanges, 2023 and 2024.

24 David Smith, telephone interviews, 2022 and 2023.

25 Smith.

26 Associated Press, “Old Double X Says New Home Run Champ Needed,” Springfield (Missouri) News-Leader, January 29, 1951. Foxx told the AP: “Sure. I would have liked to break the Babe’s record. I think it would be a good thing if someone broke it now.” Details about Shibe Park from Macht, The Grand Old Man of Baseball.

27 Robert Schaefer, email exchange, 2022. See also Schaefer, “Double X and His Lost Dingers.”

28 Jenkinson, telephone interview.

29 James C. Isaminger, “Mackian,” Philadelphia Inquirer, July, 2, 1932, 12.

30 Jenkinson. Editor’s note: The original text of the article stated that Jenkinson had identified 10 of Foxx’s games that were rained out in 1932 before the first pitch. The number of games has been corrected to 15. The author regrets the error.

31 John Odell, telephone interview, March 14, 2022.

32 Ted Taylor, The Ultimate Philadelphia Athletic Reference Book, 1901–1954 (Bloomington, IN: Xlibris, 2010), 126.

33 Nanci Foxx Canaday, telephone interview, 2023.

34 Jack Cuddy, “Babe Ruth Thinks His Home Run Record Is Safe,” Paterson (New Jersey) Morning Call, December 20, 1932, 25.

35 Joseph J. Veccihione, New York Times Book of Sports Legends (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1991).

36 Schaefer, telephone interview, 2023.

37 Henry P. Edwards, “Hard to Tell Which Hits a Ball Harder, Babe Ruth or Foxx,” Brooklyn Daily Eagle, February 5, 1933, 44.

38 Edward J. Neil, “Foxx, New Ruler of Swat, Far Shy of Ruth in Personality, but Greater Terror at Bat,” Washington Evening Star, August 15, 1933, 29.

39 “Boston Red Sox slugger Jimmie Foxx hits his 500th home run,” This Day in Baseball, https://thisdayinbaseball.com/boston-red-sox-slugger-jimmie-foxx-hits-his-500th-home-run/

40 Bill Jenkinson, “The Real Jimmie Foxx,” The National Pastime: From Swampoodle to South Philly (Phoenix: SABR, 2013), https://sabr.org/journal/article/the-real-jimmie-foxx/

41 Jenkinson, telephone interview, 2023.

42 Jenkinson, Baseball’s Ultimate Power, 184, 237

43 “Philadelphia’s Foxx,” TIME, July 29, 1929.

44 William Nack, “Lost in History,” Sports Illustrated, August 19, 1996.

45 “Jimmie Foxx 1932 Game by Game Batting Logs.”

46 Mark Millikin, Jimmie Foxx, The Pride of Sudlersville (Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 1998), 255–56.

47 “Jimmie Foxx 1932 Game by Game Batting Logs.”

48 Dell Foxx, personal copy of his speech to the Sudlersville Lions Club, date unknown.

49 Stephen Stilianos, “Jimmie Foxx,” Pennsylvania Center for the Book, Spring 2008, https://pabook.libraries.psu.edu/literary-cultural-heritage-map-pa/bios/Foxx_James

50 John Bennett, “James E. Foxx,” All-American Girls Professional Baseball League, https://www.aagpbl.org/profiles/james-e-foxx-jimmie-and-double-x-and-beast/689

51 Katie Hortsman, telephone interview, July 2023.

52 United Press, “Bosox Name Jimmy Foxx Minneapolis Farm Coach,” Hartford Courant, January 24, 1958, 21

53 Associated Press, “Jimmie Foxx Handling Bats Again,” The Kansas City Star, January 21, 1962, 31.

54 Nancy Canaday Foxx, telephone interview, 2023.

55 Gil Dunn, “#1 Fan Remembers the Great Jimmie Foxx,” Sudlersville’s Celebration of the Anniversary of Jimmie’ Foxx’s Birth 1907–2007 (pamphlet), October 20, 2007.

56 Dell Foxx speech.

57 Dell Foxx speech.

58 A Google search finds dozens of biographies of popular Hall of Famers, many of whom played in New York, including Mickey Mantle, Willie Mays, Yogi Berra, Jackie Robinson, Babe Ruth, and Lou Gehrig.

59 Dunn, “#1 Fan Remembers.”

60 Loretta Walls, telephone interview, 2023.

61 Ted Williams, hand-written remarks read at Foxx’s tribute, October 25, 1997.

62 Mark Millikin, Jimmie Foxx, 264.

63 Gary Livacari, “Another Edition of Baseball’s Forgotten Stars! Bill ‘Swish’ Nicholson!” Baseball History Comes Alive, https://www.baseballhistorycomesalive.com/another-edition-of-baseballs-forgotten-stars-bill-swish-nicholson/

64 Loretta Walls, telephone interview, March 24, 2023.

65 “Jimmie Foxx – Player,” Eastern Shore Baseball Hall of Fame Museum, http://www.esbhalloffame.org/index.cfm?ref=30200&ref2=149.

66 Bill Jenkinson, “The Real Jimmie Foxx,” The National Pastime: From Swampoodle to South Philadelphia, 2013, https://sabr.org/journal/article/the-real-jimmie-foxx/

67 Dell Foxx, telephone interview, October 10, 2023.

68 Jenkinson, spoken remarks at Sudlersville’s 100th anniversary celebration of Jimmie Foxx’s birth, October 20, 2007.

69 John Carmichael, My Greatest Day in Baseball as Told to John Carmichael and Other Noted Sportswriters (New York: Grosset & Dunlap, 1951). Foxx’s day as told to Lyall Smith.

70 Carmichael, My Greatest Day.

71 “Foxx Predicted He Would Win Game with Homer,” Philadelphia Inquirer, October 7, 1930, 22.

72 Newt Weaver, telephone interview, June 12, 2023.

Mary Dobkin at age 77, while speaking to the press about the TV movie “Aunt Mary.” (Historic Images)

Nineteen-seventy-nine was quite a year for Baltimore. The Orioles returned to the World Series for the first time in eight years and one of the city’s most impactful residents got well-deserved national recognition. Her name was Mary Dobkin. Aunt Mary. Nearing 80 years of age with spryness belying her declining physical condition—which included prosthetics because of the amputation of both feet and half of a leg—Dobkin stood in the box of Commissioner Bowie Kuhn at Memorial Stadium under a nighttime sky in mid-October. Baseball’s decision makers had bestowed upon her the honor of throwing out the ceremonial first pitch for Game Six of the World Series against the Pittsburgh Pirates.1

Doug DeCinces, the home team’s third baseman, was her battery mate. Though not a nationally known VIP, Dobkin was baseball royalty in Chesapeake Bay’s environs; she created teams for kids who wanted to play baseball but otherwise wouldn’t have had the opportunity.

Dobkin’s story is heartbreaking, which makes her resilience even more inspiring. When she and her parents came from Russia to America, her mother left the family and her father died. An aunt and uncle, already with five kids, took Mary in and they moved to Baltimore. The family either never went looking for her or gave up too soon when 6-year-old Mary wandered the streets during a cold night, suffering frostbite and a loss of consciousness.

A Good Samaritan took Mary to the hospital. Speaking only Russian, and with severe physical challenges, which eventually led to her amputations, Mary was never reclaimed by her aunt and uncle. She became a ward of the city and lived at the Johns Hopkins Hospital until she was in her late 30s. But her spirit would not be quashed by her lifelong problems, which the frostbite had triggered. “By all known rules, I should have died,” she said. “If God was good enough to let me live, I made up my mind that I would work with children for the rest of my life.”2

Mary learned English through radio broadcasts and newspapers, which is a familiar tale for twentieth-century immigrants. Baseball was both an outlet and a salve. “Then one summer she got to attend therapy camp,” reads a 1979 Los Angeles Times profile. “From her wheelchair, she was taught to catch and hit a baseball. It was magic. Quiet, reclusive Mary Dobkin returned to the hospital a new person, ignited by direct experience with baseball.”3

She combined her dedication to kids and love of baseball in the early 1940s.4

Baltimore’s leading newspaper, the Sun, reported on Dobkin being more than an organizer when one of her teams got selected to play at Memorial Stadium in 1954. It was part of an Interfaith Night sponsored by B’nai B’rith, Knights of Columbus, and the Boumi Temple Shrine. She was a coach. “Miss Mary goes out to the ball field and directs some of the teams some nights, either from her wheelchair or on her crutches or from the aluminum beach chair her boys bought her,” the Sun reported.5

Dobkin learned the fundamentals of baseball from TV broadcasts of Orioles games and often hosted kids at her apartment to join her in this endeavor. Neither her sex nor her infirmity, marked by 110 operations, were an issue in gaining their confidence. “The boys themselves wanted me to manage their team and never once have they made reference to the fact that I’m a woman doing what normally is a man’s job,” she said.6

Her efforts impressed local merchants and the business community, who launched the Dobkin Children’s Fund. Donations included “many thousands of dollars’ worth of sports equipment and facilities.” The number of boys in Dobkin’s operation was estimated to be “about 200” in 1958.7

That year, Dobkin was honored by the TV show End of the Rainbow, described on IMDb as a show that ran in 1957–58, with co-hosts Bob Barker and Art Baker going across America and surprising “the less-fortunate who helped others when they could barely help themselves.” Dobkin’s bounty included uniforms and equipment for her teams in baseball, basketball, and football along with a television and $1,000 for the Mary Dobkin Children’s Fund.

The program had an emotional wallop for the woman who represented toughness, perseverance, and encouragement for Baltimore’s kids. She shared a promise that she’d made during her own childhood: “If God is good enough to let me live to be a grown-up, I’ll devote my whole life to helping children.”8

But Dobkin’s appearance did not happen solely because of the production staff. The board members of the children’s fund had written letters advocating for Dobkin to be a guest on This Is Your Life, a 30-minute show that usually focused on the lives of celebrities. Ralph Edwards produced both shows. The board never heard back about This Is Your Life but did hear from End of the Rainbow.9

No less an authority than the Baltimore Police Department certified Dobkin’s impact on the community. Captain Millard B. Horton said, “We all recognize that there is a juvenile problem in these underprivileged areas, but Miss Dobkin is one of the few people who really went out and did something about solving it.”10

Don Gamber was one of the kids who played for Dobkin. “Mary was friends with the crossing guard, Miss Helen, and she used to ask her to take us to the Fifth Regiment Armory to see the Ringling Brothers Circus every year,” recalls Gamber, a pitcher and outfielder on Dobkin’s teams. “One time, she called my mom and said, ‘Pat, can I take your boys for a surprise?’ She brought me, my brother John, my cousin Danny, and some other neighborhood kids to Memorial Stadium to throw a surprise birthday party for Bubba Smith after a Colts practice.

“Mary was selfless and she loved the kids. She didn’t take any crap. Other managers didn’t like her. She argued with umps. There were certain kids that she got close with. I was one. She knew that I had a lot of talent with baseball and football and introduced me to Bob Davidson, owner of a Ford dealership on York Road. He got me involved in Ford Punt Pass and Kick competitions. Mary got me tryouts with the Orioles, Pirates, and Reds.”11

At the beginning of 1960, a front-page story appeared in the Evening Sun describing the questionable future of the fund. Even with donations, Dobkin didn’t have the means to pay rent for the clubhouse at 1323 Harford Avenue.12

Moved by Dobkin’s efforts, some people paid for newspaper ads asking for contributions. In March, Samuel Stofberg and Stanley Stofberg sponsored an announcement revealing that the donations had allowed the fund to pay for part of the clubhouse but more would be needed to pay each month; the fund didn’t own it outright.13

Through donations inspired in part by personal newspaper advertisements, Dobkin got enough to start another clubhouse in the Armistead Gardens neighborhood. It was sorely needed. Dobkin’s efforts gave kids an outlet that protected them from submitting to self-destructive activities. When an adult saw some kids wearing her team’s uniforms and asked her whether they had a game, Dobkin said, “Those kids are wearing my uniforms because they don’t have anything else to wear to school.”14

The consistent goodwill toward Dobkin and the kids she supervised did not go unnoticed. In January 1964, she wrote a letter to the editor of the Evening Sun highlighting the generosity of the holiday season reflected in parties held by the Baltimore Polytechnic Institute’s junior class and faculty members; Toys for Tots donations from the US Marine Corps First Engineer Battalion; and the American Sokol-Club and St. Francis Xavier Church giving space for parties. “We hope members of our community will continue to help us with our year-round program for underprivileged children as long as the need exists,” she wrote.15

In March, the Evening Sun ran a feature story that allowed her to dispel a misperception about the donations, which included a block of 500 tickets to a Baltimore Bullets basketball game. “Whenever I get publicity, it seems that people get the notion that we’re rich and have all we need,” said Dobkin. “That just isn’t the case. In September we were broke.”16

Dobkin also ran a softball team for girls called Dobkin’s Dolls.17

In 1966, a banquet honoring her 25 years of generosity drew luminaries including Rocky Marciano, Johnny Unitas, Brooks Robinson, Dave McNally, Jim Palmer, Steve Barber, and announcer Chuck Thompson, who served as the toastmaster. Robinson said what the people in Chesapeake Bay’s environs had known since the early 1940s: “Mary Dobkin can’t be repaid in full for the wonderful work she has done in Baltimore.” Unitas noted her impact as well: “The work Mary has done has cut down juvenile delinquency and I hope there will be many more Mary Dobkins.”18

In 1973, Dobkin was part of a group of two dozen Baltimore citizens honored during the City Fair for being “Special Baltimoreans.” They were selected by a committee from “among several hundred nominations…for outstanding contributions to the quality of city life.”19

Dobkin’s life became the basis for Aunt Mary, a 1979 Hallmark Hall of Fame movie starring Jean Stapleton. It aired on CBS on December 5, about seven weeks after Dobkin’s moment in the World Series spotlight. Harold Gould and Martin Balsam had supporting roles. According to the Baltimore News-American, watching Aunt Mary was part of a homework assignment for “thousands of Baltimore school children,” along with reading a copy of the script.20

Jay Mazzone, a former Dobkin player who was a batboy during the Orioles’ 1966–71 heyday, perhaps best represented Aunt Mary’s determination because of a similar situation—doctors amputated his hands after his snowsuit caught fire when he was 2 years old. In Aunt Mary, Tim Gemelli plays an amputee whom Dobkin recruits; Gemelli didn’t have a right hand at birth.21

At the time that the TV movie was in production, Dobkin had endured 155 operations.22

She recalled that her involvement with underprivileged kids began when she realized they didn’t have equipment that other kids had. East Baltimore wasn’t Pikesville or Reisterstown, after all. So she organized a raffle for a radio. Once the kids had an outlet for their restlessness, the streets were quieter. The merchants calmer. Amos Jones owned a food joint called the Dog House and praised Dobkin because there were no more break-ins, so he decided to buy uniforms for Dobkin’s Dynamites.23

Jones’s tale was one of several represented in the movie. Dobkin provided color commentary during the broadcast for Sun writer Michael Wentzel, who watched it in her East Baltimore apartment along with some of her friends. The events portrayed were steeped in fact. “That is for real,” Dobkin would say. “She would say it often during the film,” Wentzel wrote. A rock crashing through the glass in Dobkin’s living-room window. Dobkin blowing a whistle into the phone when she gets obscene phone calls. The tough kid named Nicholas.24

Many of the players kept in touch with their guidepost through adulthood, including Nicholas. “The real one stopped in earlier to say hello,” Dobkin said on the night of the broadcast. “He’s an engineer now.”25

Aunt Mary condenses the real story into a 1954–55 setting and emphasizes the pioneering aspect of her coaching. A key scene involves Dobkin subtly threatening a racist sporting goods store owner to provide a uniform for a Black player on her team, lest Tommy the Torch, a neighborhood arsonist, use his skills. Racial integration on Dobkin’s teams happened in 1955. Aunt Mary ends with her bringing a girl on the team; she actually busted the gender line in 1960.26

New York Times TV critic John J. O’Connor praised Stapleton’s portrayal as “an effective blend of compassion and toughness.”27 O’Connor’s counterpart at the Boston Globe, Robert A. McLean, was equally positive: “The best part is that Aunt Mary is for real, and it’s her life story that Stapleton portrays with depth and dignity and a fine flair for humor in the face of adversity.”28

The Sun’s Michael Hill also endorsed this story of Baltimore’s grande dame of baseball. After praising Stapleton’s performance, he wrote: “Indeed, the strength of ‘Aunt Mary’ is its near-perfect casting. Martin Balsam is his usual fine self as the across-the-hall neighbor, Dolph Sweet is perfect as the impresario of A.J.’s Dog House, the team’s sponsor, and even the kids, normally stumbling blocks in films like this, are quite believable.”29

Sun TV critic Bill Carter concurred: “[Stapleton] is an actress of intelligence; she knows how to cut through the schmaltz to the basics,” he wrote.30

Stapleton recalled meeting Dobkin early in the shooting of the movie in Los Angeles, though the Baltimore icon didn’t stay around to see the entire production. “She had a great PR talent,” Stapleton said. “She was always looking for publicity for the team and herself. She was a great lady.”31

Notes

1 Kay Mills, “Aunt Mary story filmed in Calif.,” Baltimore Evening Sun, May 1, 1979, C1.

2 Michael Hill, “‘Aunt Mary,’” Baltimore Evening Sun, December 5, 1979, B1.

3 Michael Jaffe, telephone interview, December 28, 2022.

4 Cecil Smith, “They Still Love Lucy,” Los Angeles Times, May 23, 1977, 79.

5 Peter Werner, telephone interview, March 7, 2022.

6 Robbie Rist, telephone interview, February 3, 2023.

7 Telephone interview with Robbie Rist, February 3, 2023.

8 Hill, “‘Aunt Mary.’”

League Park as seen from the air. Note the large bleacher section in left field. (Strongsville Public Library / Public Domain)

In 1914 and 1915, for the only time in baseball history, two baseball teams, one a major league team and the other a minor league team, played a full schedule of games in the same ballpark.1 It came about in an unusual fashion.

A Federal League club, managed by Cy Young, had played at Cleveland’s Luna Park in 1913. In that season, the Federal League was considered an independent league. It was in its first season and had started out as a six-team Midwestern league with modest goals. The Cleveland Green Sox finished second in the league with a 64–54 record. Most of the players were unknown and were not a part of the scene beyond 1913 in Cleveland or anywhere else.

Only four members of the 1913 Green Sox 30-man roster were heard from again. John Potts, an outfielder who batted .341 in 92 games, played the 1914 season with Kansas City when the Federal League was recognized as a major league. Frank Rooney, a first baseman who batted .300 in 100 games, played 12 games with Indianapolis in the Federal League the following season. Harry Juul, a pitcher who went 7–7 in 1913, went 0-3 for the Federal League Brooklyn Tip-Tops in 1914. Gil Britton, after batting an unremarkable .211 in 21 games with Cleveland in 1913, completed that season with the Pittsburgh Pirates, appearing in three games. He was hitless in 12 at-bats.

In 1914, the Federal League expanded to eight teams and declared itself a major league, adding teams in Baltimore, Brooklyn, and Buffalo to the holdovers from Chicago, Kansas City, Indianapolis, Pittsburgh, and St. Louis. The Federal League’s attempt to put a team in Cleveland in 1914 was pre-empted by owner Charles W. Somers of the Cleveland Naps (now the Guardians) of the American League. Somers had been an owner in the American League since it came to Cleveland in 1900 as a minor league, led the drive that brought Sunday baseball to Cleveland in 1911, and was an early proponent of the farm system. By the end of the 1913 season, the Cleveland minor league chain included teams in Toledo; New Orleans; Portland, Oregon; Ironton, Ohio; and Waterbury, Connecticut. He had developed a working relationship with manager Walter McCredie of Portland in 1908 and had obtained ownership stakes in the other teams over the next five years.2

Somers’ intent was to keep a Federal League team with big-league caliber players out of Cleveland. He did not want to compete for the Cleveland fan base. The preemptive move by Somers was to relocate his Toledo team in the minor-league American Association to Cleveland and have two teams—one major league and one minor league—share the fourth incarnation of League Park. The American Association team, known as the Bearcats in 1914 and the Spiders in 1915, had several players with major-league experience. None of them had played with the 1913 Cleveland Green Sox.

In 1914 and 1915, not only did the two teams coexist, but some of the players went back and forth between them. One of those players, Sad Sam Jones, after going 10–4 for the Bearcats in 1914, went on to play 22 seasons in the American League with a career record of 229–217. He went 16–5 for the World Series champion Boston Red Sox in 1918 and 21–8 for the New York Yankees in 1923, their first world championship season.

Somers, along with preempting a Cleveland entry in the Federal League, had been a combatant in the war between the new major league and Organized Baseball. Before the 1914 season, he’d had all he could handle in fighting off the Federal League raid on his pitching staff. The raiders were particularly after his top three pitchers, who had gone a collective 58–33 in 1913. He retained most of his players with higher than usual salaries. The most substantial loss was that of pitcher Cy Falkenberg, who had gone 23–10 in 1913. He went to Indianapolis in the Federal League in 1914. After Falkenberg’s departure, rumors circulated that three other pitchers would jump to the new league. Somers opened his wallet and signed Vean Gregg in March. Gregg had been 20–13 in 1913 and would go on to a 9–3 record in 1914.

The most controversial case was that of pitcher Fred Blanding, who had gone 15–10 for the Naps in 1913. Blanding had jumped to Kansas City of the Federal League but, before the ink was dry, he had second thoughts and returned to Cleveland, setting off a firestorm of legal maneuvering. Kansas City sought to have its contract with Blanding honored but did not prevail in court.3 Blanding went 4–9 for Cleveland in 1914.

Another pitcher, George Kahler (5–11 in 1913), appeared to have been lured away by the Buffalo team in the Federal League but sent back the advance money and stayed with the Naps. In 1914, he went back and forth between the two Cleveland teams. After starting the season with the Naps and only appearing in two games, he was sent to the American Association, where he went 15–11.

The Naps were coming off a 1913 season that saw them finish third in the American League. Nap Lajoie was still with the team and, at age 38, had batted .335. The top player was Shoeless Joe Jackson, who had batted .373 with 63 extra-base hits.

But the success of 1913 would not carry over.

The Naps began the 1914 season losing their first seven decisions (five in a row by one-run margins) and never recovered. Lajoie was 39 years old and his career, which had begun in 1896, had experienced an inevitable downturn. He joined Cleveland in 1902 and his batting average was .345 in his first 12 seasons with the team.

After opening the season with an 0–7 road trip, the Naps played 12 of their next 15 games at home. When they left Cleveland and turned the ballpark over to the American Association team, their record stood at 7–14 (there had been a 3–3 12-inning tie against the St. Louis Browns on April 30). In the last game before departing, they defeated the Browns and former teammate Bill James, 4–0.

James ((William Henry James, not to be confused with William Lawrence James, who spent four seasons with the Boston Braves), had gone 2–0 in two starts against his former mates in the past two weeks. In 1911 and 1912 with Cleveland, he had done little to distinguish himself. The Cleveland Plain Dealer implied that he had spent more time in transit between Cleveland and Toledo than he had spent pitching for the Naps. James was on the long end of the decision in his next game in Cleveland as the Browns won, 10–5, on June 1. During that game, Jackson had his only League Park homer of the season. Unfortunately, his defensive lapses that day contributed to the Browns win.

It was the Deadball era, but the Naps’s home run output, especially at home, was anemic even by contemporary standards. They were last in the league in homers with 10, only four of which were hit at League Park. Jackson’s homer on June 1 was the only one that went over the fence. The team finished last with a 51–102 record. It was Cleveland’s first season with more than 100 losses since joining the American League in 1900. The franchise did not lose as many games in a season again until 1971.

Abe Saperstein created the Harlem Globetrotters and is widely credited with pioneering the three-point shot. (Dolph Briscoe Center for American History)

“Death to Flying Things” is one of the all-time great baseball nicknames, routinely included in lists of such things. Indeed, it serves double duty, attributed to two players: Robert Ferguson and John Chapman. Ferguson joined the Atlantic Club of Brooklyn in 1866 and played for various clubs through 1884. He managed clubs into 1887 and died in 1894, aged 49. Chapman was of the same generation. He also played for the Atlantics in the 1860s. He had a shorter playing career, through only 1876, but a longer managerial career, running various major- and minor-league clubs up to 1899, dying in 1916, aged 73.

Sadly, neither Ferguson nor Chapman was called “Death to Flying Things” during their playing careers, or for many years after. The nickname is entirely spurious. This article will attempt to explain where the supposed nickname came from in the first place, and how it got assigned to two different persons.

HOW WE KNOW THE NICKNAME IS SPURIOUS

First, we must establish that it is indeed spurious. In one sense, this is unknowable. Stating that it was not used during either player’s career just means that no examples have been found. This does not, in principle, mean that they might not be found in the future. Nonetheless we can have high confidence that no such examples are waiting to be found. This comes from the nature of baseball nicknames. When we talk about players’ nicknames, we really mean two distinct varieties: the baseball version of ordinary nicknames, and colorful sobriquets that replace the player’s real name. “Death to Flying Things” is of the latter sort, which has distinct and readily identifiable characteristics.

The first variety acts like an ordinary nickname, used in place of the person’s given name and suitable for ordinary speech. Both Ferguson and Chapman had ordinary nicknames: “Bob” and “Jack” respectively. It is entirely likely that they were called these in ordinary speech, both referring to them and directly speaking to them. The baseball version is somewhat more colorful, but still plausibly used in everyday speech. It does not stretch the credulity that Adrian Anson’s players might have called him “Cap,” that George Ruth’s teammates might have called him “Babe,” or that any of various southpaw pitchers were called “Lefty.”1

John C. Chapman might have been called “Young Jack,” or perhaps Al Spink made that up, as well. (SABR-Rucker Archive)

Stan Hack, who spent his entire big-league career (1932 –47) with the Chicago Cubs, was one of baseball’s all-time top leadoff batters.1 In 1931, playing with the Sacramento Solons, he compiled a .352 batting average and earned the nickname “Smiling Stan.” As Edward Burns wrote in the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle, “No matter how hard the coaches rode the rookie, Stanley would beam his contagious smile.”2 The sobriquet stuck with Hack throughout his baseball career as both a player and a manager.

Bill Veeck Jr. worked for the Cubs from 1934 to 1941. His roles included serving as a liaison between fans and executives, a statistician, an office staffer, and the treasurer.3 In 1962, after stints as the principal owner of the Milwaukee Brewers (1941–45), the Cleveland Indians (1946–49), the St. Louis Browns (1951–53), and the Chicago White Sox (1959–61), Veeck wrote his autobiography, Veeck As In Wreck. In a chapter about gamesmanship, Veeck defined the term as “the art of winning without really cheating.” He provided an example:

During my days with the Cubs, we had a great third baseman, Smiling Stan Hack. I well recall that in 1935, the sale of ‘Smile-with-Stan-Hack’ mirrors was exceptionally brisk to the bleacherites. Now that I think of it, it was rather strange how the makeup of female bleacherites seemed to need attention when the opposition was hitting. … And if a beam of light occasionally shone in the batter’s eye on a particularly important pitch … well, what better pitch to choose? Unladylike? Of course. Unsporting? Perhaps. Ineffective? Oh no. Awfully, awfully effective. And, until it happened too often, perfectly legal.4

This account also appeared verbatim in a newspaper article published shortly after the book.5

After retiring as a player following the 1947 season, Hack went on to coach and manage several minor league teams, in addition to managing the Cubs from 1954 to 1956. During the 1960–1964 seasons, he took time off from baseball to operate the Stan Hack Landmark restaurant with his wife in Grand Detour, Illinois. After returning as a manager for the 1965 and 1966 seasons, Smiling Stan permanently retired from baseball and continued operating the restaurant.6 Hack passed away at age 70 on December 15, 1979. In the next day’s Chicago Tribune, David Condon quoted Veeck telling the same story, but situating it in a different year:

“Right now I can see Stan’s smile,” said Bill Veeck, an old friend who had kept in close contact with Hack. “It inspired one of my first zany ideas in baseball. I think it was the year after the 1932 World Series and I was determined to capitalize on Hack’s popularity and his smile. I believe it was after we’d sent him down to the minors for a short spell,” continued Veeck. “Anyhow, I thought up the slogan ‘Smile with Stan Hack’ and a concessionaire made me some mirrors with a grinning picture of Stan on the back. They were sold, on target day, in the bleachers. We still [? … thought? … felt? … hoped? … expected? … ?] that fans should not only enjoy Stan’s smile, but they should take advantage of the sunshine and reflect the mirrors in the faces of opposing batsmen. I believe we were playing Pittsburgh. Anyhow, the other team was furious. Umpires stopped the game, confiscated the mirrors, and threatened a forfeit if any more turned up. I’ve always hoped Stan saved one of those mirrors so he could occasionally look at it and enjoy his own smile as so many of us did.”7

THE STAN HACK MIRROR

According to the description provided in a 2016 auction, the mirror is 2.25 inches in diameter. The manufacturer was Parisian Novelty Co, Chicago. “The image is printed on fabric substance with a very fine texture.”8 See Figure 1 and Appendix A.

BILL VEECK’S CLAIMS ABOUT THE STAN HACK MIRROR

Two questions immediately jump out from Veeck’s claims: In what season, and in which specific game (or games) did the events take place? In addition to the date, I have endeavored to determine the details of the game: the inning, the players and managers, the umpires, the duration of any delay, whether there were any ejections, and whether the game was played under protest.

Hack debuted with the Cubs on April 12, 1932, and played in 72 games that season. In 1933, he appeared in three games (each as a pinch-runner) before being sent down to the Albany Senators of the Class AA International League. Hack played in 137 games for Albany before returning to the Cubs on August 29.9 He became a full-time player in 1934, slashing .289/.363/.366 over 111 games. Bill Veeck Jr. was employed by the Cubs from January 1934 through June 22, 1941. Therefore, Veeck’s claim that, “I think it was the year after the 1932 World Series” is not tenable. In 1933, Hack spent virtually the entire season in the minors, and Veeck was not with the Cubs. The earliest possible season for the Stan Hack Mirror Game is 1934.

The events are extraordinary, and would almost certainly have been reported in the Chicago press, the press of the victimized team’s hometown, and The Sporting News.

RESEARCH PROCEDURES

1. Examine multiple game accounts for every Cubs home game during the 1934–41 seasons (the years Veeck was employed by the Cubs). This was achieved by searching Newspapers.com, GenealogyBank.com, and The Sporting News, with an emphasis on the key terms of Veeck’s claims: mirror, confiscate, and forfeit.10 Scrutinize the Hack and Veeck files available at the National Baseball Library.

2. Peruse books on the history of the Chicago Cubs.

3. Speak to people with knowledge of the Stan Hack mirror.

EXAMINATION OF GAME STORIES OF CUBS HOME GAMES (1934–41)

Table 1 summarizes my examination of game accounts from the 1934–41 seasons.

Out of the nearly 2,700 newspaper accounts I examined, only one mentioned spectators using mirrors: the Cubs-Giants game on June 7, 1938.11 Marvin McCarthy, the Sports Editor of the Chicago Daily Times wrote, “mirrors figured only briefly—for about two innings.” There was no mention of Stan Hack, and there was no mention of the umpires stopping the game, confiscating the mirrors, or threatening a forfeit. Following up on McCarthy’s article, accounts from 12 other major daily Chicago and New York newspapers were examined in search of additional information.12 None mentioned anything about mirrors or any of Veeck’s claims. That these items were not mentioned at all seems unusual and surprising in light of the importance of the game. It was the first of a four-game series between the first-place Cubs and the second-place Giants, who were separated by just half a game in the standings.

Since the Cubs emerged with a 4–2 triumph, it is surprising that the Giants manager, Bill Terry, would not have played the game under protest. It is even more incongruous considering the fuss he made in the first inning about photographers stationed along the first base line in front of the Giants dugout. The Chicago Tribune related the incident:

Soon after the game started, seven photographers went into a flying wedge formation just back of first base when [New York’s leadoff batter] Joe Moore came to bat the first time. Terry went roaring out of the Giant dugout. “I can’t see anything that’s going on,” he shouted at Umpire Larry Goetz, who was stationed at first base. He motioned for Umpire Babe Pinelli, who was officiating back of the plate. “Throw ‘em all off the field,” the roaring Mr. Terry demanded. There was a pow wow and a compromise. The photogs stayed on the field, but had to break up the flying wedge formation, thus affording an opening through which the arrogant Giant boss was able to view the proceedings.13

APPENDICES

A. ADDITIONAL INFORMATION ON THE STAN HACK MIRROR

After examining Marc Okkonen’s drawings of the Chicago Cubs, it appears to me that the picture of Stan Hack on the mirror best matches the “white-road” uniform from the 1935-1936 seasons.1 This is the center drawing in Figure A-1.

Figure A-1. 1935 Chicago Cubs Uniforms

It appears that the original photograph used for the mirror has been airbrushed. The red CHICAGO was removed to eliminate any interference with the “SMILE WITH ME” slogan and the facsimile autograph. Also airbrushed out was the right-side piping of the upper shoulder and button line. Lastly, the gap between Hack’s front teeth seems to have been airbrushed away. The diastema can be seen clearly in Figure A-2. An image of the untouched photo used for the Stan Hack mirror picture has not yet been found.

Since Veeck remained employed by the Cubs through June 22, 1941, the Stan Hack mirror could have been manufactured and used in any year between 1934 and 1941. I contacted the manufacturer of the Stan Hack mirror, Parisian Novelty Co. (now Matchless Parisian Novelty, Inc.), and inquired whether they have any records of the Stan Hack mirror. Unfortunately, they have no pertinent records for the 1934–1941 timeframe. They do not have a Stan Hack mirror in their archives.2

Figure A-2. Stan Hack

Notes for Appendix A

1 Marc Okkonen, Baseball Uniforms of the 20th Century: The Official Major League Baseball Guide, (New York: Sterling Publications Co., Inc., 1993). See also: “Dressed to the Nines”, National Baseball Hall of Fame, (accessed February 8, 2023), http://exhibits.baseballhalloffame.org/dressed_to_the_nines/detail_page.asp?fileName=nl_1935_chicago.gif&Entryid=556.

2 Jerry Adams, telephone interview, on August 18, 2023.

B. ADDITIONAL SEARCHES ON BILL VEECK’S CLAIMS ABOUT THE STAN HACK MIRROR

B-1. Searches of The Sporting News

Table B-1(a). Hits for Articles with Search Terms “Mirror” and “Mirrors” (1934–1941)

Table B-1(b). Hits for Articles with Search Terms “Forfeit” and “Forfeited” (1934–1941)

Table B-1(c). Hits for Articles with Search Terms “Confiscate” and “Confiscated” (1934–1941)

None of the articles listed as hits in Tables B-1(a), B-1(b), or B-1(c) mentioned:

• Fans using mirrors to reflect sunlight in faces of opposing players
• Umpires stopping the game.
• Umpires confiscating mirrors
• Umpires threatening to forfeit the game

Hits for Articles with Search Term “Smile with Stan” (1934–2003)

There was only one hit: December 23, 1985, page 39. “More Money Is Making Minors’ Johnson Smile”, by Stan Isle, Senior Editor.

Youth was clearly favored in the selection of National League umpires in its inaugural season, 1876. Based on Retrosheet’s game logs and biographical databases, the median age of the 61 umpires that officiated games that year was 25.2

At least three, and as many as four of those umpires were just 19 years old. Over the next two decades, another seven umpires under the age of 20 officiated major league games, as listed in Table 1. All toiled in either the NL or American Association. Neither the Players’ League nor the Union Association played a regular season game with a teenage umpire.

TEENS IN THE AMERICAN WORKPLACE

By present-day definition, 18- and 19-year-olds are “teenagers,” a term rarely used before the 1940s. But in the late 1800s, their place in society was vastly different than it is today. Secondary education was compulsory in few communities before 1900, so many children began working full time while in their early teens or younger. According to the 1870 US census, one in eight American children between the ages of 10 and 15 were members of the workforce. In 1880, 43% of white males between the ages of 10 and 19 were members of the workforce.3 Many nineteenth-century teenagers worked to help sustain family households and had done so since an early age.4

With fewer than one in 40 Americans aged 18–24 enrolled in institutions of higher learning by 1900, it was commonplace in many walks of life to see teenagers working alongside adults.5 Many luminaries of that age got their start as teens, like inventor Thomas Edison, who began working at age 12 and was a telegraph operator at 19; lawman Wyatt Earp, who transported cargo as an 18-year-old teamster; and author Mark Twain, who started his working life around age 12 and at 16 was a typesetter. The advent of professional baseball in the 1860s inspired many teenagers, but only a handful were lucky enough to be direct participants.

Roughly 7% of the ballplayers who played in the inaugural season of the National Association in 1871 were under the age of 20 (eight of 115). Even fewer of that age served as umpires during the NA’s five-year existence; seven or eight according to the Retrosheet database. So while the idea of a teenage major league umpire may seem ill-advised in the present day, to fans and ballplayers in the 1870s, their presence was infrequent but not unheard of.6

UMPIRE SELECTION AND DEMOGRAPHICS

During its inaugural seasons, the NL delegated responsibility to home teams for the selection of umpires, subject to approval of the visiting nine. Clubs relied heavily on umpires with no previous experience at the highest levels of the sport (e.g. in the defunct National Association), presumably because not enough experienced umpires or ballplayers were available. That opened the door for the NL’s three known teen umpires in 1876: John Morris, a Louisville amateur ballplayer; John Cross, a Rhode Island collegian; and Norman Fenno, a Boston Reds non-playing employee.

As was typical for NL umpires that year, Morris, Cross, and Fenno worked few games; four, one, and one, respectively. With teams cobbling together umpiring coverage from inexperienced hands, former NA ballplayers, and active ballplayers, two-thirds of 1876 NL umpires (41 of 61) worked no more than twice. All labored alone, as NL rules called for only one umpire to oversee games. Except for a few isolated trials with two-man crews, NL umpires worked solo until the 1898 season.7

The NL continued to allow home teams to select umpires for regular-season games in the 1877 and 1878 seasons, tweaking the process with regard to visiting team rights of refusal so as to reduce the likelihood of a biased umpire. During that time, only one umpire under the age of 20 worked an NL game, 18-year-old Bill Gleason, a member of a lower-level local professional team selected by the St. Louis Brown Stockings to work one of their games.

In 1879, NL President William Hulbert defined a pool of prospective umpires from which home teams, with concurrence of their opponents, could select arbiters for games. The average age of NL umpires rose to 27, with none under the age of 22. Not until 1881 did another umpire under the age of 20 work an NL game. In 1881, the Buffalo Bisons engaged a young player they’d released earlier that season, 19-year-old Dan Stearns, to umpire a three-game series for them.

Shortly after the American Association opened for business in 1882, it went a step further than the NL had in centralizing league umpires. It maintained a cadre of umpires “hired, paid, and assigned to games by the league itself.”8 The NL followed suit in 1883. With their umpiring corps now league-controlled, the median age of major league umpires topped 28.

The median age of major league umpires continued to rise throughout the nineteenth century, reaching 35 in 1900. Yet across the four major leagues that were in operation between 1876 and 1900, the median age of new umpires was only 25, as shown in Figure 3. During the twentieth century, the NL and AL collectively favored new umpires who were more mature. From 1900 to 1950, median new umpire age across the two leagues was 33, rising to 34 in 1950–2000. In the first two decades of the twenty-first century that trend reversed, with the median umpire age over that period falling to 31.

Going back to 1879, when the NL first centralized the umpiring pool, when an umpire selected from Hulbert’s list became suddenly unavailable (due to illness or other circumstance), the home team bore the burden of finding a replacement. Otherwise it faced canceling scheduled games and losing gate receipts. In those situations, teams turned to players on their rosters who they could afford to have out of the lineup (typically pitchers unavailable that day or fielders nursing an injury), local amateurs (including college players), or club employees who worked behind the scenes (scorekeepers, ticket takers, etc).

Exactly how many replacement umpires were needed for major league games in the nineteenth century is unknown. Using the number of umpires who worked only one or two games in a season as approximating the number of replacement umpires, approximately 6% of major league games in 1879 were officiated by a replacement umpire. That number fell to as low as 1% in 1899, a year in which 95% of the league’s games were worked by two-man umpiring crews.

It was as a replacement that the next few teenage major league umpires came on the scene. In 1884, 19-year-old Brooklyn Grays pitcher Adonis Terry became the American Association’s first teenage umpire when he was inserted as an emergency replacement for an assigned umpire who’d taken ill. Two years later, Morgan Murphy was a local ballplayer inserted as an emergency replacement for an NL arbiter who’d come up sick. In 1887, 19-year-old Louisville pitcher Elton “Ice Box” Chamberlain worked an AA game, presumably as a replacement umpire. The next-to-last teenage major league umpire of the 1800s, 18-year-old Washington Nationals hurler Wilfred “Kid” Carsey, who also proved to be the youngest, subbed for an AWOL umpire in the AA’s final season, 1891.

Five years later, the last teenage major league umpire of the nineteenth century made his debut, but not as a replacement. Edward Conahan, a 19-year-old ump in a New Jersey semipro league, was hired into the umpiring corps by NL President Nick Young. Though he was heralded in his first few games, scathing newspaper critiques of his subsequent work triggered his dismissal after just 10 games. More than 80 years went by before the NL had another umpire under the age of 20, once again a temporary replacement. Conahan remains the one and only teenage umpire known to have been in the employ of a major league.

THEIR STORIES

In this section, the circumstances surrounding each teenage umpire’s first assignment are described, including what is known about how they came to be selected, game results, reviews from the press, and highlights from the balance of their days. Players are listed in the order in which they first appeared as major league umpires.

KNOWN TO BE TEENAGE UMPIRES
John Morris, 19 years exactly
Debuted 7/8/1876 (NL)

The first teenage major league umpire of the nineteenth century was Kentucky native John Stuart Morris. The son of a prominent Louisville businessman, Morris was a player with Fall City’s first organized baseball club, the amateur Louisville Base Ball Club.10 During the same summer that the United States celebrated its centennial, Morris umpired a quartet of games for Louisville of the newly formed National League. The first took place at Louisville Base Ball Park, on Morris’s 19th birthday, July 8, 1876. For reasons that the Louisville Courier-Journal called “inexplicable,” the Louisvilles and their opponents, the visiting Mutuals of Brooklyn, found experienced umpire Mike Walsh an unacceptable choice to umpire their contest and settled on Morris as an alternative.11 Louisville erased a four-run deficit in the bottom of the ninth to send the hard-fought game into extra innings, and Morris had to halt the action after 15 innings on account of darkness. The Courier-Journal called the game “unparalleled in the history of professional baseball-playing,” and singled out Morris for his hand in it. “We venture to say that no umpire ever gave more satisfaction to both sides in a long fifteen-inning game as he gave yesterday,” adding that Morris’s “judgment on balls and strikes was excellent, and also in points of base running. His decisions were quickly made and adhered to, and if his umpiring failed to satisfy the Mutuals we can only say that we have given them as good as we’ve got in the shop.”12

Morris umpired three more Louisville matches during the summer of 1876, each opposite the Chicago White Stockings. On August 5, he filled in for Charlie Hautz, who was upset that the NL office had reversed his decision to award the White Stockings a win over Louisville in a game Hautz had stopped two days earlier.13 Once again, Morris’s work drew raves. “Mr. Morris umpired the game intelligently and impartially. His decisions were correct in every instance, and, on the whole, he is as fine an umpire as there is in the West at the present day.”14 Later in life, Morris took his prowess as a baseball arbiter and applied it to the worlds of business and civic affairs. He served as the director of Louisville’s Commercial Club, a businessman’s society, and built a career working for the city of Louisville as an auditor for various municipal departments.15

John Cross, 19 years, 6 months, 3 days
Debuted 8/5/1876 (NL)

Shortly after completing their first homestand of the 1876 season, the Boston Red Stockings lost a match in Providence against the independent New Havens.16 The umpire for that late April game was John Alexander Cross, a Providence native and the regular catcher for Brown University’s nine.17 Two months later, the Red Stockings had Cross umpire an NL game with the Athletics of Philadelphia at Boston’s South End Grounds.The Athletics also invited a Boston amateur to help that day, John Bergh, a local catcher who filled in for their regular and backup catchers, who were both out with injuries. Struggling early, Bergh switched positions with the Athletics’ banged-up backup, Whitey Ritterson, who was playing center field. After Ritterson was struck in the wind pipe by a foul tip, Bergh returned behind the plate for the balance of the game, which Boston won.18

Two years later, Cross, who’d left Brown to help his father run the family textile mill, returned as an NL umpire. In the first of nine games he worked that year, on May 8, 1878, he called what may have been the first unassisted triple play in NL history. After catching a low line drive on a dead run, Providence center fielder Paul Hines raced to third base, where he put out two Boston Red Stockings baserunners; or possibly just one.19 Differing accounts of the play make it impossible to know for sure whether Hines retired all three himself, but without question it was Cross who rung them all up.20

Norman Fenno, 19 years, 4 months, 29 days
Debuted 8/7/1876 (NL)

The growth of professional baseball’s popularity in the late 1860s and early 1870s was accompanied by a voracious public appetite for statistics. Numbers allowed fans to compare the teams and players they might not be able to see with those they could, or imagined they could. For fans of the Boston Red Stockings, it was Norman Fenno, who compiled team statistics for public consumption.21 On August 7, 1876, Fenno, the heretofore “efficient and obliging official scorer of the Reds,” was drafted to umpire a contest between Boston and the visiting Athletics.22 The Red Stockings had employed several different umpires in recent home games, suggesting that with Fenno they were simply trying another. The Boston Globe mentioned that Fenno had made a few wrong calls in the game, won by Boston, 6–5. Referring to Beadle’s Dime Base-Ball Player, the bible of baseball rules edited by Henry Chadwick, the Globe went on to suggest, “A brief study of Chadwick would help matters amazingly with him.”23

Over the next few years, Fenno turned his facility with numbers into N.F. Fenno & Company, a banking and brokerage firm.24 In February 1879, Fenno went over to the dark side, disappearing with $16,000 in cash and securities borrowed from his customers.25 Newspaper reports presumed he had fled to Europe, but three years later, he turned up as an agent of the Louisville and Nashville Railroad, living in Little Rock, Arkansas. Typhus took Fenno’s life at the age of 27.

Bill Gleason, 18 years, 10 months, 20 days
Debuted 10/1/1877 (NL)

Before he became a strong-armed, aggressive shortstop for the St. Louis Browns team that dominated the American Association in the 1880s, Bill Gleason played for the Minneapolis Browns of the League Alliance. A few weeks after the Browns had completed their 1877 season, Gleason umpired an October 1 NL contest between the Brown Stockings of St. Louis and Louisville.26 Gleason’s performance didn’t draw any comments from newspapers that covered that game, but multiple box scores misidentified him as a member of the St. Paul Red Caps, the rival of his Minneapolis squad.27 Before the month was out, two Grays who appeared in the game that Gleason umpired, left fielder George Hall and pitcher Jim Devlin, were expelled from the NL for their involvement in a scheme to fix games that came to be known as the Louisville Scandal.28 Fourteen years later, after Gleason had completed a major league career in which he collected over 900 hits, he umpired his second and last major league game, on Opening Day of what turned out to be the American Association’s final season.29

Dan Stearns, 19 years, 8 months, 12 days
Debuted 6/29/1881 (NL)

In 1880, Daniel Eckford Stearns became the first major league ballplayer born during the Civil War. A weak-hitting reserve with the Buffalo Bisons, he went unsigned until the first week of the 1881 season, when the Detroit Wolverines gave him a chance.30 Released a week later, Stearns joined the Buffalo fire department.31

At the end of June, Stearns took a break from wrestling a horse-drawn steam pumper to umpire a three-game series between the Bisons and the Boston Red Stockings. Buffalo downed Harry Wright’s squad in the opener, behind a 19-hit attack and the pitching of Pud Galvin. The Buffalo Commercial called the match “a roaring, red-hot game,” but chided Stearns for failing to reign in excessive kicking from both sides. “Never before have we seen such outrageous conduct towards a man chosen to act as referee in a game of ball,” claimed the Commercial, adding “Stearns was weak in not appreciating the dignity of the position he occupied.”32 After the next game, the Buffalo Morning Express gave Stearns a D for expertise but an A for effort. Stearns “tried hard to treat one side as justly as the other,” the Express reported, suggesting “the only blame that Buffalonians could offer to his work yesterday was that he did not increase the League treasury” by fining a pair of ill-mannered Red Stockings.33 For reasons unexplained, Boston objected to Stearns umpiring the finale, but relented.34 In a major league career spent with five teams over parts of seven seasons in the NL and the American Association, Stearns was perhaps best known for making the final out for the Cincinnati Red Stockings in Louisville hurler Tony Mullane’s no-hitter on September 11, 1882, the first in Association history.35

Adonis Terry, 19 years, 11 months, 26 days
Debuted 8/2/1884 (AA)

William H. Terry, later known as Adonis, was the American Association’s first teenage umpire. An 18-year-old pitching prodigy for the 1883 Brooklyns of the Interstate Association (16–9 with a 1.38 ERA) Terry had a dismal 10–16 record on August 1 of the following year, having lost six of his last seven starts for Brooklyn.36 The next day, Brooklyn manager George Taylor tabbed Terry to fill in for scheduled umpire John Valentine, who’d taken ill before Brooklyn’s home game with the Baltimore Orioles at Washington Park. The Brooklyn Eagle reported that Terry, five days away from his 20th birthday, umpired the game, won by Brooklyn in front of 3,000 “gratified spectators,” “with thorough impartiality.”37 The day after his 20th birthday, Terry umpired for a second and final time that season. He umpired 10 times during a 14-year major league career in which he won 197 regular season games and three World Series games.38 Hired as an NL umpire in 1900, Terry worked 39 games that year, including a July 12 no-hitter thrown by Cincinnati’s Noodles Hahn against the Philadelphia Phillies.39

Morgan Murphy, 19 years, 7 months, 1 day
Debuted 9/15/1886 (NL)

Morgan Murphy burst onto the Boston baseball scene in the spring of 1886 as a catcher for the Boston Blues of the New England League. In late-August, the Boston Globe called Murphy “the pluckiest catcher in the New England League,” describing his work behind the plate as “beautiful,” “unsurpassed,” and “magnificent, and at times simply superb.”40 Two weeks after that assessment, Murphy umpired an NL tilt at Boston’s South End Grounds between the Red Stockings and the visiting Philadelphia Phillies, subbing for Chick Fulmer, a member of the league’s umpiring corps too sick to officiate. Boston won the game, 5–3, with pitcher Bill Stemmyer holding off a Phillies rally in the bottom of the ninth. The game ended as would Ernest Thayer’s as-yet-unwritten classic; with Casey (in this case Stemmyer’s opposite number, Dan Casey) at the bat.

Unlike the nameless ump that eternally draws the ire of Thayer’s imaginary patrons, no threats on Murphy’s life nor claims of trickery were reported during the real Casey’s final at the bat, which ended of course with a strikeout. According to the Globe, Murphy did well throughout the contest. “His judgment on balls and strikes was good, and of the two questionable decisions he made … neither affected the score.”41 Four years later, Murphy reached the major leagues as a player, backstopping for the Boston Brotherhood Club of the Players League.42 Over an 11-year major league career, Murphy umpired five more games and became one of only six ballplayers to play in the Players League, National League, American Association, and American League.

Ice Box Chamberlain, 19 years, 10 months, 20 days
Debuted 9/25/1887 (AA)

Nicknamed “Ice Box” for his ability to stay calm under pressure, Elton Chamberlain was one of a small group of nineteenth-century hurlers known to have pitched with either hand.43 In 1887, the 19-year-old Chamberlain, along with 22-year-old southpaw Toad Ramsey and veteran Guy Hecker, gave the American Association Louisvilles a formidable pitching staff expected to challenge the two-time defending pennant winner and reigning World Series champion, the St. Louis Browns.

As Louisville dropped out of the pennant race in late August, they fell into turmoil. Ramsey was suspended for thuggish conduct and Chamberlain accused the widely unpopular Hecker of threatening “to freeze him out of the club.”44 The Louisville Courier-Journal reported a “mutiny brewing,” with everyone on the team wanting Hecker gone.45 In Ramsey’s second start back after cooling his heels for a week, he faced the last-place Cleveland club at Louisville’s Eclipse Park, with Hecker at first and Chamberlain doing the umpiring.46 Three thousand “heartily disgusted” fans saw Louisville “succumb to the Cleveland tailenders” by a 14–4 score. Ed, as the Courier-Journal called him, “umpired satisfactorily.”47 By all accounts, Hecker and Chamberlain had no altercations in the game nor during the rest of their time playing for Louisville. A winner of 157 major league games in 10 seasons, Chamberlain found his way into NL record books for two pitching performances at the tail end of his career. On September 23, 1893, he authored a darkness-shortened no-hitter against the Boston Beaneaters. Eight months later, Boston second baseman Bobby Lowe clubbed four home runs off Chamberlain, becoming the first major leaguer to do so in a game.

Kid Carsey, 18 years, 10 months, 17 days
Debuted 9/7/1891 (AA)

The youngest nineteenth-century major league umpire was Wilfred “Kid” Carsey, a rookie pitcher for the 1891 Washington Nationals. No American Association pitcher lost more games or threw more wild pitches that season than Carsey did. His 37 defeats for the last-place Nationals were 10 more than the second-place finisher, Phil Knell of the Columbus Buckeyes.

On Labor Day 1891, the Nationals and Buckeyes squared off at Washington’s Boundary Field for a doubleheader. At game time for the morning opener, scheduled umpire John Kerins was absent, his whereabouts unknown. Washington manager Dan Shannon agreed with his Columbus counterpart, Gus Schmelz, to form a two-man replacement umpiring crew with one player from each team.48 Carsey, six weeks shy of his 19th birthday, was chosen to umpire from behind the plate, with Knell selected to umpire from the field. The responsibility for calling balls and strikes rested not with Carsey, but instead alternated between the two; Carsey handled that duty when his teammates came to bat, and Knell did the same when Columbus was on offense.

Washington elected to bat first, as Association rules then allowed home teams to do, with Carsey overseeing the offerings of hurler Hank Gastright. When Nationals pitcher Martin Duke first took the field, Knell “waltzed up to the rubber and essayed to call balls and strikes.”49 In the bottom of the second, Columbus put together an 11-run rally, during which Kerins, the day’s scheduled umpire, finally appeared. After the third out, he relieved the two substitute umpires of their responsibilities.

According to a play-by-play in the Washington Evening Star, Carsey entered the game in the eighth inning, grounding out as a pinch-hitter.50 Thus, he both officiated and played in the same game; a feat rare and maybe even one of a kind. Over the next ten years, Carsey appeared in 268 major leagues games as a player and four as an umpire. Never again did he do both in the same contest.

Ed Conahan, 19 years, 3 months, 3 days
Debuted 8/8/1896 (NL)

Conahan took to umpiring early, working amateur baseball games in his hometown of Chester, Pennsylvania at the tender age of 14.51 By 1896, the 19-year-old had moved up to umpiring in the independent South Jersey League.52 In early August of that year, he earned an umpiring appointment from NL president Nick Young.53 Conahan debuted on August 8, officiating a contest at Philadelphia’s Ball Park (later known as Baker Bowl) between the hometown Phillies and the Boston Beaneaters.54 In its retelling of the Phillies win in the midst of an oppressive heat wave, the Philadelphia Inquirer dubbed Conahan’s efforts “the bright particular feature of the game,55 adding that “he’s got a great voice and renders his decisions promptly and intelligibly—a boon which will be readily appreciated by the great army of ball goers.”56 After Conahan’s next umpiring assignment six days later, the Inquirer said, “The new umpire, Conahan, unearthed by Nick Young in the wilds of Jersey,” was “a peach.” “He’s a nice accommodating lad too. He runs around and picks up the catchers’ masks for them and with deferential bow delivers himself: ‘Illustrious Sir, allow me.’”57

Glowing with praise for Conahan’s first four games as an umpire, reviews soon turned sharply negative. Multiple accounts describe Conahan’s performance in his fifth game, on August 19, as subpar.58 Things snowballed from there. Following a doubleheader split the next day between the Phillies and the Louisville Colonels, the Philadelphia Times called Conahan’s umpiring “of the rankest kind,” adding that his decisions were so confounding they “would make an angel forget his vows.”59 The Times continued its condemnations the next day, calling Conahan’s efforts in a Phillies win “yellow work.”60 The Inquirer called for Conahan’s dismissal.61 A twin bill on August 22 between the Phillies and St. Louis Browns proved Conahan’s last games as a major league umpire. Once again, the Times brutalized Conahan, calling his work “slovenly,” and the “the worst ever seen on local grounds.” The Inquirer reported that Conahan “gave a weird exhibition all through,” with one call so rotten it triggered an argument that got St. Louis’s umpire-baiting shortstop Monte Cross unfairly ejected.62

Three days later, Conahan was fired.63 He went back to umpiring amateur games in Chester and eight years later was umpiring professional baseball in the independent Pennsylvania League, New York State League, and Eastern League. He signed on as an American League umpire for the 1906 season, but was let go before the start of the regular season.64 Conahan later umpired in the Western League, the minor league American Association, the International League, the Southern Association, and the Tri-State League.65

MIGHT-HAVE-BEEN TEENS

Two umpires in the National League’s inaugural season are identified by Retrosheet as born in Cincinnati on an unknown date in 1856; William E. Walker and Enoch Clifford Megrue. Research suggests they were on either side of 20 when they first umpired major league games in the summer of 1876.

The 1900 US Census lists Walker, at that time still a Cincinnati resident, as born in January 1856. Age data in census rolls of that era can be faulty, but Walker’s entry suggests that he turned 20 months before umpiring his first NL game. A newspaper account of Megrue’s death in September of 1893 claimed he was 35-years-old, implying he might have been as young as 17 when he first officiated.66 Walker and Megrue crossed paths on a baseball diamond, both as players and as umpires, with Walker’s early success at umpiring opening a door for Megrue. In 1876, William E. Walker was both manager and substitute for the amateur Ludlow Base Ball Club of Ludlow, Kentucky.67 Located across the Ohio River from Cincinnati, Ludlow frequently played other amateur teams in the Queen City. One of those was the Cincinnati Junior Reds, whose left fielder was Enoch Clifford Megrue, a son of Cincinnati’s fire chief.68 Walker debuted as an NL arbiter in a match between the Boston Red Stockings and the Reds on June 24. Apparently pleased with his work, the Reds called Walker back to umpire a mid-July contest, and five of the Reds next six home games as well. But on August 10, Walker wasn’t available; he was working a game in Louisville. Replacing Walker for the contest at Cincinnati’s Avenue Grounds was Megrue. Accounts of the game with the Chicago White Stockings, in which Al Spalding shut out Cincinnati, were silent on Megrue’s performance.69 Walker went on to umpire a total of 29 NL games across three seasons, and after his baseball days, became a theatrical publicist.70

Megrue’s future exploits were decidedly less entertaining. He inherited a substantial sum of money after his father’s death in 1881, but squandered it over the next decade. Reduced to living on the charity of relatives, he died of alcoholism while in his 30s.71

A CASE OF MISTAKEN IDENTITY

In addition to the youngsters described above, Retro-sheet’s database identifies one other teenage major league arbiter in the nineteenth century: Michael Joseph Sullivan, a pitcher with the NL Washington Nationals, is listed as having umpired a game on October 2, 1889, several weeks before his 19th birthday. That game, held at Chicago’s West Side Park between the Nationals and the White Stockings, was in fact umpired by another Sullivan: 33-year-old Chicago-native David Sullivan. An umpire for the Union Association in 1884 and the National League in 1885, David was filling in for league umpire Pat Powers that day, according to the Chicago Tribune.72 A summary published in the Chicago Inter-Ocean also names David as the umpire for that game.73

POSTSCRIPT

Of the hundreds of major league umpires who’ve worked a regular season game since the turn of the twentieth century, only one is known to have been a teenager: 19-year-old Roger Dierking, an emergency replacement during the one-day umpires strike in 1978.74 An airline employee and part-time college umpire in Chula Vista, California, he was two months shy of his 20th birthday when he umpired at first base for a game between the San Diego Padres and the visiting New York Mets on August 25, 1978, at Jack Murphy Stadium.

In 2018, the average major league umpire was 46 years old, with 13 years of professional experience. In reporting the results of a Boston University study on the correlation between umpire age and accuracy in calling balls and strikes during that season, Fanbuzz noted that the 10 most accurate umpires were over a decade younger than average, with a decade less experience.75 Eye-opening as that finding may be, the inevitable switch to “robo umps” will make that particular distinction irrelevant in the not-too-distant future. 

LARRY DeFILLIPO is a retired aerospace engineer who lives in Kennewick, Washington with his wife Kelly. A SABR member since the late 1990s, his work has been published in The National Pastime and “Yankee Stadium 1923-2008: America’s First Modern Ballpark,” and presented at the 2023 Fred Ivor-Campbell 19th Century Baseball Conference. He’s also authored biographies of several prominent baseball figures and stories about a variety of important nineteenth-century games, for SABR’s Biography and Games Projects, respectively.

Notes

1 Peter Morris, A Game of Inches (Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 2006), 22.

2 Median age value excludes a half-dozen umpires whose dates of birth are unknown. Retrosheet’s database includes 549 individuals who debuted as umpires in one of the four major leagues that were in operation during the nineteenth century (National League, American Association, Union Association and Players’ League). Of that group, 7% (36) have unknown dates of birth, with only the year of birth known for another 15% (80). https://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/index.html#Umpires

3 Robert Whaples, “Child Labor in the United States,” Economic History, https://eh.net/encyclopedia/child-labor-in-the-united-states/, accessed December 22, 2023.

4 Lauren Bauer, Patrick Liu, Emily Moss, Ryan Nunn and Jay Shambaugh, “All School and No Work Becoming the Norm for American Teens,” the Hamilton Project, July 2, 2019, All School and No Work Becoming the Norm for American Teens.

5 Thomas D. Snyder, ed., 120 Years of American Education: A Statistical Portrait (Washington: U.S. Department of Education National Center for Education Statistics, 1993), 76, https://nces.ed.gov/pubs93/93442.pdf

6 Richard J. Bonnie, Clare Stroud, and Heather Breiner, eds., Investing in the Health and Well-Being of Young Adults (Washington: National Academies Press, 2015), 36, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/ NBK284782/, accessed August 25, 2023. As a result of facing profound physical, cognitive, and emotional changes in an ever-changing world, adolescents, according to the National Institute of Health, “tend to be strongly oriented toward and sensitive to peers, responsive to their immediate environments, limited in self-control, and disinclined to focus on long term consequences, all of which can lead to compromised decision-making skills in emotionally charged situations.” Behaviors that are the very opposite of those desirable in a professional umpire.

7 Morris, A Game of Inches, 254.

8 Larry R. Gerlach and Bill Nowlin, The SABR Book of Umpires and Umpiring (Phoenix: SABR, 2017), 161.

9. The number of umpires debuting in each epoch for whom their year of birth is known was 513 in 1876–1900; 246 in 1901–50; 354 in 1951–2000; and 92 in 2001–20.

10 “Louisville Base Ball Club,” Protoball, https://protoball.org/Louisville_Base_Ball_Club, accessed August 28, 2023.

11 “Pull, Duck; Pull, Devil!” Louisville Courier-Journal, July 9, 1876, 1. Walsh, who had worked a half-dozen National Association games the year before and nearly 20 to that point of the 1876 NL season, had umpired two games between the Grays and Mutuals earlier that week.

12 “Pull, Duck; Pull, Devil!”

13 “Who Says We’re Pie?” Louisville Courier-Journal, August 6, 1876, 1; Brian Flaspohler, “Charlie Hautz,” SABR BioProject, https://sabr.org/bioproj/person/Charlie-Hautz/; “Base Ball,” Evansville (Indiana) Journal, August 4, 1876, 1.

14 “Who Says We’re Pie?”

15 “Water Company Auditor, 63, Dies.” Louisville Courier-Journal, May 27, 1921, 3.

16 “New Haven vs. Boston,” New York Clipper, May 6, 1876, 45.

17 See, for example, “Brown vs. Amherst,” New York Clipper, June 26, 1875, 101; and “Yale vs. Brown,” New York Clipper, June 3, 1876, 75.

18 Two days later, when Ritterson’s hands gave out late in a contest with the Hartford Dark Blues, there was nobody willing or able to catch, forcing Lon Knight of the Athletics to pitch the last inning without a catcher. Larry DeFillipo, “August 10, 1876: Short-handed Athletics borrow substitute from Mutuals, as both teams careen toward expulsion,” SABR Games Project; “The Bostons Vanquish the Athletics Again,” Boston Globe, August 7, 1876, 2c.

19 “Ball Games,” Boston Globe, May 9, 1878, 1; Kathy Torres, “May 8, 1878: Three in one? Paul Hines’ unassisted triple play,” SABR Games Project.

20 Cross’s officiating performance earned him an invitation to become a regular NL umpire for the 1879 and 1880 seasons, but he declined, preferring to run the family mill instead. “Resignation of a League Umpire,” Providence Evening Bulletin, March 14, 1881, 1; “1878-NON,” Providence Journal, May 18, 1942, 8.

21 Following the 1873 National Association season, Fenno provided the Boston Globe with 28 “interesting” rows that described each player’s contributions to the two-time defending champions’ 43–16 season. “Interesting Items—The Bostons’ Record for 1873,” Boston Globe, November 10, 1873, 5.

22 “Record of the Champions,” Boston Post, November 16, 1874, 3.

23 “Base Ball,” Boston Globe, August 8, 1876, 1.

24 “N.F. Fenno & Co,” Boston Golden Rule, December 11, 1878, 3.

25 “Eastern Massachusetts,” Springfield Republican, February 6, 1879, 7.

26 “Base Ball,” Minneapolis Tribune, September 5, 1877, 2.

27 “The Game,” St. Louis Globe-Democrat, October 2, 1877, 7; “Base Ball,” Louisville Courier-Journal, October 2, 1877, 1.

28 “Why the Men Were Expelled,” St. Louis Globe-Democrat, October 31, 1877, 3. For more information on the fixing scandal, see Daniel E. Ginsburg, “The Louisville Scandal” in Road Trips: A Trunkload of Great Articles From Two Decades of Convention Journals (Cleveland: SABR, 2004), 71–72.

29 “The Base-Ball Season Opened,” St. Louis Globe-Democrat, April 9, 1891, 9. The contest featured the St. Louis Browns hosting Cincinnati, a short-lived team that would soon be dubbed Kelly’s Killers. In that game, the team’s namesake, captain and catcher Mike “King” Kelly, grew infuriated over four walks Gleason granted to Browns batters. Kelly tore off his glove and stormed off the field. Gleason allowed the petulant Kelly to bat in the next half-inning but barred him from returning to the field.

30 “Today’s Game,” Buffalo News, May 5, 1881, 9.

31 “Sporting Notes,” Buffalo Commercial, June 9, 1881, 3.

32 “Sporting News,” Buffalo Commercial, June 30, 1881, 3.

33 “Ill-Mannered Bostons,” Buffalo Express, July 1, 1881, 4. The Boston players thought deserving of fines were Jack Burdock and Pat Deasley.

34 “Sporting News,” Buffalo News, July 4, 1881, 1.

35 Charles F. Faber, “Dan Stearns,” SABR BioProject, https://sabr.org/bioproj/person/dan-stearns/

36 Based on a game log of Terry’s pitching appearances compiled by the author.

37 “The Home Nine Wins,” Brooklyn Eagle, August 3, 1884, 2.

38 Larry DeFillipo, “Adonis Terry,” SABR BioProject, https://sabr.org/bioproj/person/adonis-terry/

39 “Hahn,” Cincinnati Enquirer, July 13, 1900, 4.

40 “Bunched Hits,” Boston Globe, August 31, 1886, 2; “If ‘Murph’ Had Been Well?” Boston Globe, August 27, 1886, 3; “The Lynns Get Left,” Boston Globe, August 25, 1886, 5.

41 “Willie is a Daisy,” Boston Globe, September 16, 1886, 5.

42 The others were Bill Hallman, Billy Hoy, Gus Weyhing, Hugh Duffy, and Lave Cross.

43 Other ambidextrous pitchers of the nineteenth century included Larry Corcoran and George Wheeler, and possibly Tod Brynan. Charles F. Faber, “Ice Box Chamberlain,” SABR, https://sabr.org/bioproj/person/ice-box-chamberlain/

44 “Ramsey Suspended,” Louisville Courier-Journal, August 28, 1887, 5; “Hecker Must Go,” Louisville Courier-Journal, September 19, 1887, 3.

45 “Hecker Must Go.”

46 “Six to Four,” Louisville Courier-Journal, September 23, 1887, 3.

47 “King Tom No More,” Louisville Courier-Journal, September 26, 1887, 2.

48 “Lost By Poor Fielding,” Washington Evening Star, September 7, 1891, 3.

49 “Lost By Poor Fielding.”

50 “Lost By Poor Fielding.” Carsey was hitting for pitcher Ed Cassian, who’d relieved Duke in the disastrous second inning. The accompanying box score doesn’t show Carsey batting, but it was common for box scores of that era to omit statistics for pinch-hitters.

51 “Houston Wins from Upland,” Philadelphia Inquirer, August 2, 1891, 3.

52 See, for example, “Millville, 7; Bridgeton 6,” Philadelphia Inquirer, June 24, 1896, 5.

53 “The Beaneaters Downed with Much Trouble,” Wilkes-Barre Sunday News, August 9, 1896, 1.

54 “More Like It,” Philadelphia Inquirer, August 9, 1896, 8.

55 “More Like It”

56 “More Like It.” The front page of the next day’s Philadelphia Times listed nine heat-related deaths. The heat wave, which affected the eastern half of the US, lasted 10 days and took the lives of an estimated 1,500 people. “Heat Kills Nine More,” Philadelphia Times, August 9, 1896, 1.

57 “Couldn’t Hit Gumbert,” Philadelphia Inquirer, August 15, 1896, 5.

58 “More Like the Real Stuff,” Philadelphia Inquirer, August 20, 1896, 5; “Between the Innings,” Philadelphia Times, August 20, 1896, 8.

59 “We Won and Lost to the Colonels,” Philadelphia Times, August 21, 1896, 8.

60 “Louisville Was Again a Victim,” Philadelphia Times, August 22, 1896, 8.

61 “Passed Balls,” Philadelphia Inquirer, August 22, 1896, 5.

62 “Passed Balls,” Philadelphia Inquirer, August 23, 1896, 8.

63 “Conahan Gets the Dinky-Dink,” Philadelphia Inquirer, August 26, 1896, 5.

64 “Gossip for the Fans,” Plainfield (New Jersey) Courier-News, November 20, 1905, 5; “Conahan Released,” Scranton Times-Tribune, March 5, 1906, 3.

65 “Conahan, Veteran Umpire, Dies After Operation,” Brooklyn Eagle, July 14, 1929, 3.

66 “In Bed,” Cincinnati Enquirer, September 12, 1893: 4.

67 “Reorganization of the Ludlows,” Cincinnati Enquirer, May 17, 1876, 1.

68 See, for example, “Junior Reds vs. Ludlow,” New York Clipper, June 10, 1876, 85; “In Bed,” Cincinnati Enquirer, September 12, 1893, 4.

69 “Six to Nothing,” Cincinnati Enquirer, August 11, 1876, 5; “The Chicagos at Cincinnati,” Chicago Tribune, August 11, 1876: 5.

70 “’Smiley’ Walker Stricken,” Cincinnati Enquirer, February 8, 1909, 8. Going by the name of “Smiley,” Walker’s most renowned client was Fanny Davenport, an actress who favored roles created for future silent film star Sarah Bernhardt.

71 “Dizzy from Drink,” Cincinnati Enquirer, July 29, 1891, 4; “In Bed,” Cincinnati Enquirer, September 12, 1893, 4.

72 Powers had worked the two previous games of the series. “Their Last Encounter,” Chicago Tribune, October 3, 1889, 6.

73 Box scores in the St. Louis Globe-Democrat and Cincinnati Enquirer further support that it was David handling the umpiring chores. Each listed the game’s umpire as “D. Sullivan.” “Hard Knocks for Krock,” Chicago Inter-Ocean, October 3, 1889, 6; “Chicagos, 9; Washingtons, 7,” St. Louis Globe-Democrat, October 3, 1889, 8; “Very Poor Game,” Cincinnati Enquirer, October 3, 1889, 2.

74 Chula Vista (California) Star-News, May 5, 1974, B-1; Dave Distel, “Umpires Missing, So Is Hitting by Padres,” Los Angeles Times, August 26, 1978, III-1.

75 John Duffley, “Study Finds that Old Men with Experience are Actually the Worst MLB Umpires,” Fanbuzz, July 7, 2022, https://fanbuzz.com/mlb/worst-mlb-umpires-study/

While the International Association was overshadowed by the National League, it nevertheless saw itself as a counterpoint, aspiring to approximate parity, and many contemporaries viewed it in the same light. As David Nemec notes, the organizers of the International “in no sense viewed themselves as ‘minor’ operators.”` According to the contemporary New York Clipper: “Just as the rivalry of the International Association is a benefit to the League, so is the League an advantage to the Association. Each spurs the other on.”2 Tom Melville quotes one period newspaper as saying that “international clubs have batted and fielded better than the League teams,” and another claiming that “international clubs can play as good a game as the League nines.”3 He also notes that “the International Association…was certainly presenting the National League with a very troublesome, if not outright threatening, challenge to [its] claim as the top baseball organization.”4

The main purpose of this article is to provide a concise but detailed history of the International Association, “about which little is known and confusion exists.”5 To my knowledge, it is the first such undertaking. Aside from shedding light on a significant early professional baseball organization, it enables a discussion of how close the International Association came to parity with the National League. The author has assembled a database containing the complete game results for all International clubs in each of its four seasons, including the numerous games between International Association and National League clubs. The primary source is the weekly New York Clipper newspaper, supplemented by Newspapers.com6

THE FIRST TWO PROFESSIONAL ORGANIZATIONS

The National Association of Professional Base Ball Players (NA) was founded in 1871, although professional clubs had begun operating openly two years earlier.7 Its main purpose was to provide structure for the national championship competition. The key feature of the NA was its loose-knit, decentralized structure. Membership was open to any club able to pay a nominal entry fee. There were no other restrictions or conditions such as financial backing, management strength, or host city population as a measure of potential fan base. Multiple clubs in the same city were allowed. In addition, while clubs were required to play a series of championship games with each other club, scheduling was generally left to bilateral arrangements among members with no oversight mechanism to assure compliance. There were no other professional organizations during its five-year existence, perhaps in part because of the open entry policy.

The NA’s haphazard structure produced operational instability, with many between-season membership changes and midseason failures. It had 25 different clubs, with annual membership ranging from eight to 13. On five occasions, cities had multiple clubs, including three in Philadelphia in 1875. Seventeen different cities were represented, ranging in population from the likes of New York and Philadelphia down to such small towns as Keokuk, Iowa, and Middletown, Connecticut. It was mainly an eastern organization. During its middle three years of operation, there were only two western clubs, meaning west of the Allegheny Mountains.

In 1876, the NA was replaced by the National League of Professional Base Ball Clubs, which addressed many of the NA shortcomings.8 Six of the NA’s best clubs joined, causing it to fold. The NL’s largely unanticipated creation was announced in February 1876, too late for another organization to form that season. Entry into the National League was subject to review. Membership was restricted to a single club from cities with populations of at least 75,000 to promote financial viability, although a few early exceptions were made to the population requirement. A $100 annual membership fee was required, equivalent to roughly $3,100 in 2023 dollars.9 Also, the number of members was limited to six or eight during its first 16 years of operation. In 1877, scheduling was centralized, creating the first fixed schedule, and in 1878, for the first time, all six teams completed their planned 60 games. Importantly, clubs were expected to complete their schedule. As noted by Michael Haupert: “League-created scheduling would become a bedrock upon which the stability of leagues has been built ever since.”10 In the late 1800s, the NL achieved geographical balance in most years by locating an equal number of teams in the East and West.

The National League began as an eight-team circuit. After the first season, the Mutuals of Brooklyn and the Athletics of Philadelphia were expelled for canceling scheduled end-of-season road trips. In 1877 and 1878, the NL operated with six clubs, returning to the eight-club format from 1879 to 1891. In 1877, Cincinnati disbanded in mid-June. However, a second Cincinnati club was quickly organized, beginning play three weeks later, and managed to finish the first club’s schedule.11 In 1879, Syracuse also folded, failing to complete its schedule with 14 games remaining. By modern standards, the National League initially experienced significant membership instability, with 16 different clubs in the first five years. Nevertheless, that improved upon the NA’s 25 clubs during its five-year existence and its many more midseason failures.

THE INTERNATIONAL ASSOCIATION

After months of preliminary discussions beginning in the fall of 1876, the International Association (the International) was organized at a Pittsburgh meeting on February 20, 1877.12 Twenty-one clubs were represented, although only seven later entered the initial championship competition. After the two Canadian clubs departed, the name was changed to the National Association in 1879. Aside from sponsoring the competition, its other main function was to regulate the player market, mainly to prevent contract jumping (“revolving”) via mutual contract recognition among all members, including those not contending for the championship. Our focus is on clubs involved in the championship competition. It should be noted at the outset that a national economic depression had begun in 1873 that lasted until the spring of 1879.13 It no doubt contributed to the International’s problems. This was an inauspicious time to be starting a major new economic endeavor.

The International adopted the NA’s unstructured organizational model, eschewing the National League model. In fact, it was largely inspired by a rejection of the NL’s exclusive entry policy. As we shall see, this decision was a fundamental mistake.

The result was what David Pietrusza described as a “loose confederation” of clubs.14 Initially, general membership was open to any professional club for a $10 fee, and an additional $15 was required to enter the championship competition.15 These fees are roughly $310 and $460, respectively, in 2023 dollars. Both memberships were for a single year. There were no other restrictions or conditions. In 1878, each of these fees were doubled. Applications were to be submitted each year by April 1, with the championship season running from April 15 to October 15. Game admission fees were set at 25 cents, in contrast with the National League’s 50 cents, respectively about $7.70 and $15.40 in 2023 dollars. Gross gate receipts were to be split evenly, except for a guaranteed minimum of $75 for the visiting team, about $2,300 in 2023 dollars. Geographically, the International was concentrated in the northeastern US, with 13 cities in Massachusetts and New York alone, although no clubs were in Boston, Brooklyn, or New York City. Each championship contender was required to play a specified number of championship games with each other contender. These were to be scheduled by a committee at the beginning of the season, but implementation was haphazard. Instead, bilateral scheduling among clubs seemed to be the norm and, as in the NA, no oversight mechanism existed. In fact, there seemed to be no expectation that clubs would complete their schedule of championship games. For example, an algorithm was defined for adjusting team standings for presumed midseason departures, of which there were many.

There was substantial instability in the number of championship contenders over the International’s four-year existence. Seven clubs participated in the championship competition in the initial year, followed by 13 in 1878 and nine 1879, then only four in the unfinished final season. A total of 23 different clubs competed during the four years, and 22 cities were represented. In 1879 Albany, New York, began the season with two clubs. Also, there were late entrants in 1878 and 1880, and on four occasions clubs relocated midseason. Of the 22 cities, 13 were members for only one year, and another seven for two. The Manchester Club of New Hampshire was in for three years. Only Rochester was represented in all four, albeit with three different clubs.

In-season instability was also a significant problem as many clubs failed to complete their schedules. Fourteen disbanded for financial reasons, two were expelled for rule violations, and one withdrew voluntarily, completing its season as an independent. In contrast, during this same period, the National League had 14 member cities and clubs and only two failures.

A critical result was confusion regarding the International pennant race. By midseason, newspapers often were reporting multiple standings in the same issue based on various assumptions about how the International’s Judiciary Committee would make adjustments for departed clubs. Also, members were allowed to play exhibition games among themselves during the championship season, creating additional confusion about which games counted. As Brian Martin observes, fans “were disappointed when a game believed to be for the pennant turned out to be an exhibition.”16 Last, because of the two membership classes, early in the season there was often confusion about which members were involved in the championship competition. In all three years that a champion was declared, winners were not known for sure until the Judiciary Committee’s report at the annual convention several months after the season’s end.

A large difference existed between the International Association and the National League in terms of member city population, with the NL in much larger cities. During 1877–80, it had 10 cities with populations exceeding 100,000, while the International had only four.17 At the other end, all NL cities exceeded 50,000, while the International had no fewer than 11 smaller than that, with three under 10,000. Overall, NL city population averaged about 210,000 during that four-year period, while the International averaged only about a third of that: 69,700. In fact, Ted Vincent argues that “the International…really represented…the organized expression of an immense popularity of baseball in the smaller industrial city.”18 At no point did the International Association and the National League share the same city.

Despite its shortcomings, the International Association was given favorable press by the leading national baseball newspaper of that time, the New York Clipper. Its baseball editor, Henry Chadwick, was the top baseball journalist of the era and is a member of the National Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown.19 The Clipper’s coverage of the International was similar to that of the NL regarding the championship competition and the reporting of club standings. Chadwick had taken a strong editorial position critical of the NL’s exclusive membership policy immediately upon its inception. He preferred the open entry approach of the NA, which was adopted by the International, and hoped for the newer league’s success. Neil Macdonald describes Chadwick as “the leader of the reportorial minority who opposed [the NL’s] creation.”20 One manifestation of Chadwick’s antipathy towards the National League was his attempt to undermine the claim that its restrictive business model produced higher quality baseball.21 To this end, from 1877 through 1880, he periodically published articles in the Clipper pointing out that National League clubs lost many of their numerous exhibition games against non-NL opponents. Focusing mainly on games against International clubs, these articles summarized NL losses, but the many more NL victories usually were not reported, a fact that revealed Chadwick’s agenda. The result was favorable, if biased, national publicity for the International.

THE NATIONAL LEAGUE REACTION

Although they did not compete directly for fans, the National League was concerned about the International as a competitor for players and prestige, which in turn could indirectly affect home-fan demand. One expression of this concern was the League Alliance, an agreement initiated in February 1877 between the National League and several independent clubs, ostensibly for mutual contact recognition.22 As Brock Helander notes: “The League Alliance arose as the National League…response to the perceived threat of the International Association.”23 Having expelled clubs in its two largest cities, Brooklyn and Philadelphia, its lineup was reduced to six clubs for 1877, with only two from the much more populous East. As noted above, at this time the NL’s future was still uncertain.

The weekly New York Clipper first announced the Alliance on January 20, 1877, in the same issue that it first announced the February 20 convention to organize the International Association. A National League representative, described anonymously as “a gentleman from Chicago” (likely Albert Spalding), provided the particulars of the Alliance proposal.24 Included was a statement strongly suggesting a preemptive motive: Non-NL clubs would “derive far more substantial advantages from this arrangement than from any experimental association that they might organize independently.”25 In fact, a St. Louis Globe-Democrat article on the Alliance was headlined: “War Declared Between the League and the Internationals.”26

While League Alliance member clubs would be protected from player “pirating” by other members, the subtext was that the unprotected players on non-members might be “fair game.” Also, independent clubs contemplating International membership might be deterred by fears of retribution by the National League. Concerns regarding NL motives were reinforced by a stipulation in the Alliance agreement that the Judiciary Committee charged with resolving disputes would be composed only of NL clubs, excluding non-league members. Initially, International clubs were not barred from joining. However, in the fall of 1877 the NL added a rule that non-NL clubs belonging to the Alliance could not be members of any other organization, effectively barring International clubs.27 This, of course, made clear its true purpose as an anti-International vehicle.

Another expression of National League concern was the so-called Buffalo Compact, signed at a meeting in Buffalo on April 1, 1878. It gave preferential treatment to six of the better International clubs in scheduling postseason games with National League clubs and established mutual recognition of player contracts, in effect accepting these clubs into the Alliance.28 Exceptions were granted to the rule barring membership in other organizations, allowing them to remain as members of the International. Four of the other seven 1878 International clubs reacted by refusing to schedule games with National League clubs, although none resigned over the issue. Both the League Alliance and the Buffalo Compact were generally interpreted as attempts by the National League to undermine the International by preempting possible new member clubs, limiting player availability, and sowing internal discord.29 However, the International had nobody but itself to blame for its many difficulties.

THE INTERNATIONAL’S FOUR SEASONS

The International Association completed only three of its four seasons. In 1880, at most, four clubs competed at any one time, and that just for a short period. By the end of July, only two clubs remained and the International was effectively history, fading away with no formal announcement of disbanding.

As noted above, numerous intra-International exhibition games and adjustments for failed teams confused the standings. The number of official championship games counted at season’s end typically was half or less of the total number of intra-International games. We report both below. Nevertheless, by either measure, in its three full seasons the International’s championship competition was reasonably competitive, with no dominant clubs, unlike the old National Association of 1871–75. Also, only in 1878 was there some totally “out-of-it” teams, when the Alleghenys and Hartfords combined for a 4–40 record in all International games played. In contrast, clubs at both extremes were a problem for the NA.

The 1877 Season

The seven clubs that entered the inaugural championship competition in 1877 were the Alleghenys of Allegheny City (a city later annexed by Pittsburgh); the Buckeyes of Columbus; the Live Oaks of Lynn, Massachusetts; the Manchesters (New Hampshire); the Maple Leafs of Guelph, Ontario; the Rochesters; and the Tecumsehs of London, Ontario30. Only Allegheny City, Columbus, and Rochester had 1880 populations exceeding 50,000. Newspaper reports indicated that more were expected to enter, but none did. Several other clubs joined for player contract protection only. The Buckeyes and Live Oaks both disbanded late in the season, in mid-September, while the others completed their schedules.31 By the standards of the time, this was a successful start. For example, the next professional organization, the minor four-club Northwestern Base Ball League of 1879, disbanded in mid-July after only three months of operation.32

The 1877 International standings are shown in Table 1. Each contender was supposed to play four championship games against each other contender, but it wasn’t until early September that the International decided that it would be the first four such games that would count.34 The left panel of Table 1 is the official championship standings as determined by the International Judiciary Committee and made public at the annual convention in February 1878.35 The committee also resolved an ongoing dispute between the top two contenders regarding which games would count in their championship records. The right panel of Table 1 shows all games between members, including exhibitions and championship games officially excluded because of adjustments for games with the disbanded Buckeye and Live Oak clubs. The Tecumseh Club (Figure 1) was the official champion with a 14–4 record, and the Alleghenys were not far behind at 11–5.

Note that, with the four-game requirement and seven contenders, a full season with all teams completing their schedule would have been only 24 championship games each. As it happened, with the excluded games, only the Tecumsehs had as many as 18 games that counted. The Live Oaks played no games against two members before they disbanded, and so none of their games counted for any team, per the adjustment algorithm.

Meanwhile, the National League had a 60-game schedule, with all teams playing at least 57 games that counted.36 This was another problem for the Internationals: their infrequent games made it difficult to establish brand identity. As the Clipper put it on July 28: “The contest for the championship of the International does not progress very fast, the meetings between the contesting nines being few and far between.”37

The 1878 Season

The 1878 season saw the addition of eight new clubs, with five holdovers, for a total of 13.38 Only the Buckeyes and Maple Leafs elected not to reenter.39 The net increase of six, of course, was a positive sign; the new clubs apparently found the International attractive based on the 1877 showing. The additions were New York teams the Buffalos, the Crickets of Binghamton, the Hornells of Hornellsville, the Stars of Syracuse, and the Uticas; and Massachusetts teams the Lowells, New Bedfords, and Springfields.40 Of these additions, only Buffalo, Lowell, and Syracuse had populations exceeding 50,000.

On April 20, 1878, the International’s Scheduling Committee published in the New York Clipper a complete season’s schedule of championship games for all 13 members.41 This was likely inspired by similar set schedules of championship games first announced by the National League at the beginning of the 1877 season. The committee explicitly “permit[ted] clubs to arrange State championship and exhibition games on any open dates” during the championship season.42 The exhibitions could be with International clubs. And the state championship games in several cases involved other International members, i.e., they were also championship games but not for the International, adding to the confusion.

Unfortunately, membership turmoil started almost immediately, and the official schedule became largely a dead letter.43 First, the New Bedfords withdrew on May 5, shortly after entering, finishing the season as an independent. At that point the New Haven Club entered, picking up the New Bedford schedule. About two weeks later, the New Havens moved to Hartford, adopting the Hartford name. This thread was concluded when Hartford was expelled from the Association on July 17 for failing to pay a visiting International club the required share of proceeds from a home game. The Live Oaks also moved, merging with the existing independent Worcester Club in late May, and adopting that club’s name. The combined club remained an International member, assuming the Live Oaks’s record and schedule. These disturbances were compounded by several midseason failures. The Alleghenys disbanded on June 8, the Crickets on July 9, the Hornells on August 21, the Tecumsehs in late August, the Rochesters on September 7, and the Worcesters in mid-September.44 Each of these failures created another round of speculation regarding adjustments to the standings. Confusion about the championship race existed for most of the summer.

On September 21 the Clipper observed that “things have become so mixed that the [International] Association Judiciary Committee are likely to become insane before they arrive at a satisfactory conclusion” regarding the standings (Figure 2).45 A January 4, 1879, Clipper review article described the 1878 season as “chaotic,” recommending “a tighter rein [on] clubs entering for the championship competition” to exclude those “unable to carry out their engagements.”46 The 1878 tumult stood in sharp contrast to the mostly successful inaugural season.

The final standings are shown in Table 2. As with Table 1, the left panel is the official standings as finally sorted out by the Judiciary Committee and presented at the annual convention of February 19–20, 1879.47 The right panel shows all games between members, including exhibitions, state championship games, and adjustment exclusions. The Buffalos (Figure 3) were atop the official standings, with a 24–8 record, and the Stars were a close second at 23–9. Of the total of 345 games actually played between International clubs, only 154, less than half, counted in the standings. All of the New Bedford and expelled Hartford games were excluded, with the number counted for remaining clubs varying from 11 to 32. A full season would have been 48 games given the four-game requirement and assuming no departures. Meanwhile, all six National League teams completed their 60-game schedules.

The 1879 Season

The 1879 edition of the International saw nine clubs sign up for the championship competition.48 The Canadians having withdrawn, it was renamed the National Association. However, we will continue to use the International name to avoid confusion with the old National Association of 1871–75.

After the chaotic 1878 season, the new lineup saw a major turnover. Nine clubs departed, including the Buffalos and the Stars, who were admitted to the National League. On the plus side, four new clubs joined: the Albanys and Capital Citys, both from New York’s state capital; the Holyokes, in Massachusetts, and the Nationals of Washington. Both Albany and Washington had populations exceeding 50,000. The net reduction of five implied a negative market reaction to the 1878 turmoil; the open entry policy also meant “open exit.” There is no evidence that the International followed the Clipper’s advice to modify the open entry policy or took any other steps to improve its operation. While two of the three newly admitted 1879 cities had large populations, this was most likely happenstance.

As in the previous year, a significant proportion of clubs did not complete their seasons, again creating confusion about team standings.49 First, the Manchesters and Uticas disbanded in July, as did the Springfields in early September. Second, in early May the Capital City Club relocated to Rochester as the Hop Bitters Club, which then disbanded in mid-July.50 This thread ended when the International’s Judiciary Committee later determined that the relocation had been in violation of its rules in the first place, and therefore retroactively expelled the Hop Bitters.51 The standings were then adjusted to exclude all their games. On July 26, the Clipper reiterated its January 4 recommendation that the International should “limit championship contests to clubs which…carry out their appointed season’s programme [sic].”52

The 1879 standings are shown in Table 3, following the same format as Tables 1 and 2. The Albanys were the champion with a 25–13 record, and the Nationals were not far behind at 22–16. Both were new members. Note that in the official standings, again as reported in the Clipper, four clubs had 38 games that counted; the “required” number of games against each member had been increased to eight.53 Once more, less than half of the actual games played between International members counted. And again, the difference can be attributed mainly to exhibition games. The Clipper of July 12 argued that those games should be abolished because they “create confusion in making up the record.”54 National League rules prohibited intraleague exhibitions during the championship season.

A second consecutive problematic season for the Internationals may have influenced the National League’s decision to implement its player reserve system in the fall of 1879. Perhaps the International was no longer seen as a competitive threat in hiring players. In addition to offering generally lower salaries, men not signing with a winning team likely would be scrambling for a new job by midseason. With the National League, a steady paycheck until the season’s end would be much more likely.

Despite its many difficulties, the International Association nevertheless managed to complete three seasons and move on to a fourth. The next new professional organization to achieve this was the major league American Association of 1882–91.

The 1880 Season

As noted above, the 1880 season was a rump affair. Only three clubs initially entered for the International championship.55 They were the Albanys, the Baltimores, and the National Club. The Albanys and the Nationals were holdovers after finishing first and second in 1879. The International Association clearly was failing after two chaotic seasons. Nevertheless, the championship competition was launched, with newspapers dutifully reporting three-club standings. A newly formed Rochester club joined on June 8 to make it four until the Baltimores disbanded three weeks later.56 On July 9, the National Club moved to Springfield to reduce travel costs with the remaining Albany and Rochester clubs. Springfield had been an International member in 1878 and 1879. Two other clubs were falsely rumored to have joined midseason, occasionally included in the standings by some newspapers.

The coup de grace occurred when the Albany Club disbanded around July 20, leaving only the Rochesters and Nationals. On July 24, the Clipper published what amounted to an obituary, attributing the International’s demise to “bad management,” although an almost total absence of management might be closer to the truth.57 The article further noted that “the Nationals have joined the League Alliance…and thereby have been obliged to resign from the [International] Association…thus ends the ‘strange, eventful history’ of the Association.”58 There was no published announcement by the International that it had dissolved and apparently no champion was declared. Newspapers, of course, quit publishing standings. Nevertheless, for the record, Table 4 presents the standings for all games between the four 1880 members, as determined by the author. The National Club clearly dominated with a 32–11–3 record, and the other three all under .500.

THE INTERNATIONAL ASSOCIATION VS. THE NATIONAL LEAGUE

The relative strength of the International and the NL is of interest, given that it was the subject of debate among contemporaries. The most straightforward assessment is to look at the results of the numerous games between clubs in the two organizations. In fact, contemporary newspapers often published summaries of outsider victories over NL clubs for that reason. For example, the Clipper of September 28, 1878, reported a detailed analysis of 1878 National League vs International Association games.59

In evaluating the results of these exhibition games, one must keep in mind that NL clubs often did not have their A-team on the field. Exhibitions were an opportunity to, e.g., provide the “change” pitcher and/or catcher some practice, as well as any reserve players. Also, player motivation was likely lower in these non-championship contests. Nevertheless, NL clubs needed to be careful lest losses to weak clubs damage their brand, including raising suspicions of throwing games, particularly after the Louisville scandal of 1877.60 Another factor was that these games were usually on the opposing team’s home field, often meaning a home team umpire. And its players may have had an extra motivation, perceiving the game as a tryout for the visiting NL club.61 Thus, the International’s overall performance in these exhibitions must be viewed only as an upper bound on its quality relative to the National League.

Table 5 summarizes interleague game results by year for the 232 such games yielded by our search over the 1877–80 period. During those four years, International clubs were 84–139–9 versus all NL clubs, a .381 winning average.62 By comparison, the National League’s second-division clubs had an almost identical winning average (i.e., vs. all NL clubs) of .376 during the same period. A similar number of interleague games occurred in each year, varying from 54 to 63, the maximum occurring in 1880 despite the International having only four members. The winning average was also similar in each of the four years, varying from .327 to .425. Recall that this comparison yields only an upper bound on the International’s relative quality. Accordingly, these data indicate the average International Association club was certainly of lower quality than the average National League club.63

It is also interesting to look at the record of individual clubs against the National League. Table 6 presents the seven International teams with at least 10 such games in a single season. The 1880 National Club won the most with 12, but also lost 15 (plus 2 draws). The 1878 Buffalos were 10–8 and in 1879 the Worcester Club was 7–5. The significant number of games played by the Albanys and Nationals in 1880 may have been attempts at auditioning for National League membership, albeit unsuccessfully.

Another consideration is that three International clubs were “promoted” to the National League: the Buffalos and Stars for the 1879 season and the Worcesters in 1880. The Buffalos and Stars were first and second in the 1878 International race, and Worcester finished fourth in 1879. The NL actions here may have been, in part, another attempt to undermine the International by pirating some of its leading teams. Buffalo did well in 1879, finishing third in the NL with a 46–32 record, and Worcester was respectable at 40–43 in 1880, landing in fifth place in the eight-team circuit. The 1879 Stars did poorly, however, finishing in seventh place with a 22–48 record and disbanding before the season’s end. Nevertheless, the International provided the NL with half of its six new clubs in 1878–81.

DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSIONS

How close did the International Association come to achieving its aspiration of rough parity with the National League? Its history suggests that any such argument rests mainly on the 232 games against NL teams. Our analysis indicates an overall winning average of .377. However, some International clubs had more respectable individual records, and three were deemed worthy of NL membership. Nevertheless, overall, the average International club was, at most, roughly equivalent to the National League’s average second-division clubs.

The remainder of the International’s ledger provides little support for parity. First, it was basically regional, mainly confined to eastern US cities, with more than half its clubs in only two states. Columbus, Ohio, was the westernmost member, and that for only a single year, and only four other of its 22 cities qualify as western by 1870s standards.

The International’s haphazard operation is a more serious issue. This produced highly unstable membership, muddled championship competitions, and many clubs in cities that were too small to support them. These related problems arose from the adoption of the old National Association (1871–75) organizational model that Pietrusza aptly described as “rather miserable.” For example, the open-entry policy yielded 11 clubs in cities with populations under 50,000, while the National League had none. This contributed to high rates of year-to-year membership turnover and midseason failure that were a particular problem for the International. It had 14 failures, while the NL had only two during the same period. In each of its three completed seasons, the championship was in dispute for months after the season ended. In sum, operationally it was, for the most part, a proverbial train wreck. Per the Clipper, “bad management” produced its…“strange history.”65

Thus, the short answer to the question of how close the International came to parity is: “not very.” The International’s operating model was not thrust upon it. Also, during its four years of existence, apparently no attempt was made to correct the many shortcomings, despite newspapers not being shy about pointing them out. Had the National League model initially been adopted, or had the International been able to learn from its mistakes, it might have achieved rough parity. Perhaps the International Association’s main legacy was that the juxtaposition of its performance on that of the National League’s in 1877–80 provided baseball entrepreneurs clear evidence that the NL’s operating model was superior. 

DR. WOODY ECKARD is a retired economics professor living in Evergreen, Colorado, with his wife, Jacky, and their two dogs, Petey and Violet. Among his academic publications are 13 papers on sports economics, five of which relate to MLB. More recently he has published in SABR’s Baseball Research Journal, The National Pastime, and Nineteenth Century Notes. He is a Rockies fan and a SABR member for over 20 years.

Acknowledgments

The author is grateful for helpful comments from two reviewers.

Notes

1. David Nemec, The Great Encyclopedia of Nineteenth Century Major League Baseball, 2nd ed. (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2006), 130.

2 “The International Association,” New York Clipper, January 4, 1879, 325. The Clipper was a weekly newspaper self-described as “The Oldest American Sporting and Theatrical Journal.” It was the leading national baseball journal of that period.

3 Tom Melville, Early Baseball and the Rise of the National League (Jefferson NC: McFarland, 2001), 104–5.

4 Melville, Early Baseball, 104.

5 Brian Martin, The Tecumsehs of the International Association: Canada’s First Major League Baseball Champions (Jefferson NC: McFarland, 2015), 9.

6 The Clipper reported box scores on virtually all professional games. Issues can be accessed via the Illinois Digital Newspaper Collections, University of Illinois Library: https://idnc.library.illinois.edu/?a=cl&cl=CL1&sp=NYC&e=——-en-20–1–txt-txIN–

7 For a history of the National Association, see William J. Ryczek, Blackguards and Red Stockings: A History of Baseball’s National Association, 1871–1875, Revised Edition (Jefferson NC: McFarland, 2016)

8 For histories of the early National League, see Melville, Early Baseball, and Neil Macdonald, The League That Lasted: 1876 and the Founding of the National League of Professional Base Ball Clubs (Jefferson NC: McFarland, 2004).

9 These and all other conversions to 2023 dollars herein are based on a 19th century Consumer Price Index series available at the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, https://www.minneapolisfed.org/about-us/monetary-policy/inflation-calculator/consumer-price-index-1800-

10 Michael Haupert, “In the Face of Crisis: The 1876 Winter Meetings,” in Jeremy K. Hodges and Bill Nowlin, eds., Base Ball’s 19th Century “Winter” Meetings: 1857–1900 (Phoenix: SABR, 2018), 140.

11 MLB today recognizes the two as a single combined club, although at the end of the 1877 season the National League excluded both clubs from its official final standings. For example, see Woody Eckard, “The 1877 National League’s Two Cincinnati Clubs: Were They In or Out, and Why the Confusion?” Baseball Research Journal, Volume 52, no. 1 (2023), 80–85.

12 “The International Association,” New York Clipper, March 3, 1877, 387. This article reported the International’s founding convention, giving its full name as “International Association of Professional Baseball Clubs,” and the Clipper used the same name again reporting the second annual convention. A search of newspapers.com yielded only two other contemporary newspaper reports of the founding that included the full name. But both had it as “International Association of Base-Ball Players” (“Baseball: The International Association,” Chicago Tribune, February 25, 1877, 7; and “The National Game,” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, February 22, 1877, 4). The two modern historians with the most extensive coverage of the International both use the same third version: “International Association of Professional Base Ball Players” (Martin, The Tecumsehs, 264; and David Pietrusza, Major Leagues: The Formation, Sometimes Absorption and Mostly Inevitable Demise of 18 Professional Baseball Organizations, 1871 to Present (Lemurpress.com: Lemur Press, 2020), 48). This is one example of the “confusion” that exists regarding the International, as noted by Martin (see endnote 5). The reader may pick and choose.

13 Per the official business cycle dating of the National Bureau of Economic Research: https://www.nber.org/research/data/us-business-cycle-expansions-and-contractions

14 Pietrusza, Major Leagues, 28.

15 “The International Championship,” New York Clipper, March 31, 1877, 2. This article contains the complete rules governing the International Association championship competition.

16 Martin, The Tecumsehs, 100.

17 This count combines the populations of Allegheny City and Pittsburgh. All population data reported herein are from the 1880 U.S. Census.

18 Ted Vincent, Mudville’s Revenge: The Rise and Fall of American Sport (New York: Seaview Books, 1981), 142.

19 Chadwick is a Hall member as an “executive,” based mainly on his contributions to the development of baseball rules and scoring conventions.

20 Macdonald, The League That Lasted, 61.

21 For example, see Woody Eckard, “Henry Chadwick and the National League’s Performance vs. ‘Outsiders,’” Baseball Research Journal 52, no. 2 (2023), 67–76.

22 The League Alliance did not sponsor a championship competition, although newspapers occasionally reported standings. See Brock Helander, “The League Alliance,” SABR, https://sabr.org/bioproj/topic/the-league-alliance/, last accessed December 20, 2023..

23 Helander, “The League Alliance.”

24 “The League and Its Work,” New York Clipper, January 20, 1877, 339. See also “Ball to the Bat,” St. Louis Globe-Democrat, January 15, 1877, 5; “Baseball: Spalding Indulges in a Defense,” Chicago Tribune, January 28, 1877, 7; and “Spalding’s Scheme,” St. Louis Globe-Democrat, January 28, 1877, 7. Spalding was the star pitcher on the 1876 National League champion Chicago club, and its president, William Hulbert, was also the National League president. Spalding was no doubt acting as his agent.

25 “The League and Its Work,” New York Clipper.

26 “Ball to the Bat,” St. Louis Globe-Democrat.

27 For example, see “Ball Talk,” New York Clipper, December 22, 1877, 306; and “The International Association,” New York Clipper, December 29, 1877, 314.

28 For example, see Helander, “The League Alliance”; “The Buffalo Conference,” New York Clipper, April 13, 1878, 21; and “The Buffalo Conference and Its Work,” New York Clipper, April 20, 1878, 29. The International clubs were the Buffalos, Lowells, Rochesters, Springfields, Stars, and Tecumsehs.

29 See Helander, “The League Alliance.”

30 “The International Championship,” New York Clipper, May 26, 1877, 66. At this time, Allegheny City was a separate polity located across the Allegheny River from Pittsburgh. It was annexed by Pittsburgh in 1907.

31 “The International Championship,” New York Clipper, September 29, 1877, 210.

32 “The Northwestern League,” New York Clipper, July 26, 1879, 139.

33. Winning average counts draws as one half of a win each.

34 See “International Championship,” New York Clipper, September 1, 1877, 179; and “The International Championship,” New York Clipper, September 8, 1877, 187.

35 “The International Convention,” New York Clipper, March 2, 1878, 386.

36 “1877 National League Team Statistics,” Baseball Reference, https://www.baseball-reference.com/leagues/NL/1877.shtml.

37 “International Pennant Race,” New York Clipper, July 28, 1877, 138.

38 “International Ass’n Movements,” New York Clipper, April 6, 1878, 10.

39 The Buckeyes and Maple Leafs had disbanded in September of the previous year, but it was not uncommon at this time for disbanded clubs to reorganize and resume play in the next season or even in the current one.

40 The 1877 Lowells were the top independent club in the country that year, comparable in quality to the National League champion Bostons. See Woody Eckard, “The Lowell Base Ball Club of 1877: National Champions?,” Nineteenth Century Notes (SABR), Bob Bailey and Peter Mancuso, eds., (Summer 2022), 1–5.

41 “The International Association,” New York Clipper, April 20, 1878, 29.

42 “The International Association.”

43 A detailed summary of club departures can be found in “Baseball—The Buffalos and the League,” The Buffalo Commercial, November 26, 1878, 3.

44 “Baseball—The Buffalos and the League.”

45 “The International Arena,” New York Clipper, September 21, 1878, 202.

46 “The International Association,” New York Clipper, January 4, 1879, 325.

47 “The International Convention,” New York Clipper, March 1, 1879, 386.

48 “The Coming Season,” New York Clipper, March 29, 1879, 5.

49 “The National Arena,” New York Clipper, October 11, 1879, 226.

50 Hop Bitters was the name of a patent “medicine” whose manufacturer decided that owning a baseball team would be good advertising. See Tim Wolter, “The Rochester Hop Bitters: A Dose of Baseball in Upstate New York,” The National Pastime 17 (1997), 38–40.

51 “The Rochester Club,” Brooklyn Daily Eagle, July 22, 1879, 3.

52 “The National Arena,” New York Clipper, July 26, 1879, 138.

53 “The National Association Convention,” New York Clipper, February 28, 1880, 389.

54 “The National Arena,” New York Clipper, July 12, 1879, 123.

55 “The National Association’s Schedule,” New York Clipper, May 1, 1880, 44.

56 “The National Association Clubs,” New York Clipper, July 24, 1880, 138.

57 “The National Association Clubs.”

58 “The National Association Clubs.”

59 “League vs. International,” New York Clipper, September 28, 1878, 210.

60 Four Louisville players were expelled for throwing games, leading to the club’s resignation from the National League. For example, see Melville, Early Baseball, 92–93.

61 Excluding the six International clubs that joined the Buffalo Compact of 1878 and thus were protected from National League raiding.

62 Scott Simkus reports International Association results against the National League, apparently for 1877–78, although he does not state the years. He found that the International’s record was 35–55–5 (.395), a total of 95 games (Scott Simcus, Outsider Baseball: The Weird World of Hardball on the Fringe, 1876–1950 (Chicago: Chicago Review Press, 2014), 19). For 1877–78, I found 115 interleague games, with the International record at 42–70–3 (.378), a similar winning average.

63 A t-test rejects the null hypothesis of a .500 winning percentage at the 2% significance level (p = .011), despite the small sample size of four years.

64 Pietrusza, Major Leagues, 48.

65 “The National Association Clubs,” New York Clipper.