The Runmakers: A New Way to Rate Baseball Players
by Frederick E. Taylor
Johns Hopkins University Press (2011)
272 pages

“Hitting a baseball is the single most difficult thing to do in sport. . . . A hitter . . . is expected to hit a round ball with a round bat and adjust his swing in a split second to 100-mile-per-hour fastballs, backbreaking cur­veballs, and, occasionally, knuckleballs that mimic the flight patterns of nearsighted moths. . . . Even the vaunted major leaguer who hits at the magic .300 level . . . fails seven times every ten at bats.” — Ted Williams, Ted Williams’ Hit List

It has been 43 years since any baseball player has won the Triple Crown of baseball (leading the league in batting average, home runs, and runs batted in). Carl Yastrzemski, of the 1967 “Impossible Dream” Boston Red Sox, was the last player to win the Triple Crown. It was the ninth time it had been done in the previous 41 years, for an average of about once every four and a half years. The times have changed, and the Triple Crown now seems like another impossible dream. (Editor’s note: Miguel Cabrera of the Detroit Tigers won the Triple Crown just months after this article was published in 2012.)

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Table 1 lists the players who have won the Triple Crown of baseball, and Table 2 expands this list into a Triple Crown hierarchy. It has always been difficult to win the Triple Crown. In the entire 134-year history of the National League, it has been done only five times for an average of once every 26.8 years. It hasn’t been quite as difficult in the American League, as it has been accomplished nine times in 109 years for an average of once every 12.1 years. Some of the greatest players of all time never won a Triple Crown, Babe Ruth, Hank Aaron, Willie Mays, Joe DiMaggio, and Barry Bonds, to name just a few. Rogers Hornsby and Ted Williams were the only two players to win two Triple Crowns. Only once, in 1933, was the Triple Crown won in both leagues in the same year: Jimmie Foxx in the American League and Chuck Klein in the National League. It was a truly unique happening, as they both played for teams from the same city: Foxx played for the Philadelphia Athletics, and Klein played for the Philadelphia Phillies. Ty Cobb was the youngest player to win the Triple Crown (a few months shy of his 23rd birthday), and Lou Gehrig was the oldest (three months after his 31st birthday). 

Why is it so difficult to win the Triple Crown? And why has it seemed almost impossible in recent years? The answer to the first question is no great secret. Almost anyone who has played baseball knows the answer. Just hitting a baseball is difficult enough, as Ted Williams so articulately explained above. To win the Triple Crown of baseball, you have to combine hitting for strength (home runs) with hitting with skill (batting average) and do it in a timely fashion, that is, with runners on base (runs batted in). Triple Crown hitting is three times as difficult as ordinary hitting. It takes three very special talents to win the Triple Crown. You also have to have a little luck because runs batted in are from the bases and you therefore have to have teammates on base when you come to bat. 

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The answer to the second question is found partly in the nature of our times. This is an age of specialization, and baseball is no different from other activities. Baseball players emphasize either the home run or the batting average, but not both. Power hitting has become the name of the game. Twenty-six of the 50 all-time leaders in career home run percentage (with 1,000 or more games) are playing or played during the current Live Ball Enhanced Era, and eight of them ranked in the top 13 (Barry Bonds, Jim Thome, Adam Dunn, Alex Rodriguez, Albert Pujols, Sammy Sosa, Juan Gonzalez, and Manny Ramirez). Only 4 of the 50 all-time leaders in batting average (with 1,000 or more games) are playing in the current Live Ball Enhanced era (Albert Pujols, Ichiro Suzuki, Todd Helton, and Vladimir Guerrero), and none of them ranks in the top 10. Albert Pujols and Vladimir Guerrero are the only players active in the current Live Ball Enhanced Era who rank in the top 50 in both home run percentage and batting average. 

Perhaps the biggest factor working against winning the Triple Crown is the expansion over a number of seasons from 8 to 14 teams in the American League and from 8 to 16 teams in the National League. The more competition there is, the more difficult it is for one player to lead the league in all three events, but it does not make it impossible. Frank Robinson and Carl Yastrzemski won the Triple Crown in a 10-team American League. Larry Walker (1997) and Barry Bonds (2002) narrowly missed leading the National League (with 14 teams in 1997 and 16 teams in 2002) in batting average and home runs, the most difficult of the Triple Crown events to win simultaneously, and almost as difficult as winning the Triple Crown itself. Possibly the most hopeful observation of all is that five Triple Crown winners led both leagues (16 teams at that time) in all three events. 

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Table 3 lists the players who have won the so-called “Double Crown” of baseball, that is, players who have won two legs of the Triple Crown but not the third leg. The Double Crown has been won 123 times: 92 in home runs and runs batted in, 25 in runs batted in and batting average, but only 6 times in batting average and home runs. Thus, the most difficult Double Crown combination is batting average and home runs. In the 134 National League and 109 American League seasons, a player has led his league in batting average and home runs only 19 times (14 Triple Crowns and 5 Double Crowns), for an average of once every 16.8 years in the National League and once every 9.9 years in the American League. One Triple Crown was won by an American Association player (Tip O’Neill), and one Double Crown was won by a Union Association player (Fred Dunlap). Both of these leagues were regarded as major leagues at that time.

The players who have won the Triple Crown and those who have won or have come close to winning the Double Crown in batting average and home runs are listed in table 4. Ted Williams was the only player in the entire history of major league baseball to lead his league in batting average and home runs 3 times (two Triple Crowns and one Double Crown), and he narrowly missed two other times in 1949 (when he missed a third Triple Crown because he lost the batting title to George Kell .3428 to .3429) and in 1957. Rogers Hornsby led his league in batting average and home runs twice (by virtue of his two Triple Crowns), and 15 other players did it once. It hasn’t been done in the National League since 1939 ( Johnny Mize) and in the American League since 1967 (Carl Yastrzemski). 

It is interesting to look at the winners of the Triple Crown in relation to the positions they played. The position that has produced the most Triple Crowns is left field (five): Ted Williams (two), Joe Medwick, Tip O’Neill, and Carl Yastrzemski. Three center fielders (Ty Cobb, Paul Hines, and Mickey Mantle) and two right fielders (Chuck Klein and Frank Robinson) also won the Triple Crown. The infield has produced five Triple Crowns: Rogers Hornsby (two) and Nap Lajoie at second base, and Jimmie Foxx and Lou Gehrig at first base. No shortstop, third baseman, or catcher has ever won a Triple Crown. 

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It is also interesting to look at the teams that the winners of the Triple Crown played for. The St. Louis Cardinals had the most Triple Crown winners (Rogers Hornsby twice, Tip O’Neill, and Joe Medwick). The Boston Red Sox were second (Ted Williams twice and Carl Yastrzemski). The Philadelphia Athletics had two (Nap Lajoie and Jimmie Foxx), as did the New York Yankees (Lou Gehrig and Mickey Mantle). Four other teams had one each, the Philadelphia Phillies, the Detroit Tigers, the Baltimore Orioles, and the Providence Grays. 

All except three Triple Crown winners were elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame. Fred Dunlap, Paul Hines, and Tip O’Neill played when the home run was rare and therefore not recognized as a major statistic. Paul Hines and Ty Cobb won the Triple Crown with only four and nine home runs, respectively. Only later when the home run became more common and therefore extolled was the Triple Crown recognized as a prize, whereupon Dunlap, Hines, and O’Neill became retroactive winners of the Triple Crown. The fact that John Reilly (a near Triple Crown winner) and O’Neill played most of their careers in the American Association may have been another factor in their being passed over for the Hall of Fame. 

The probability of someone winning the Triple Crown in the near future is not great. Among active players, only six have even won a Double Crown: Todd Helton (2000), Alex Rodriguez (2002 and 2007), Andruw Jones (2005), Ryan Howard (2006 and 2008), David Ortiz (2006), and Matt Holliday (2007)?and none of them combined batting average and home runs or led the league in home runs and ranked as high as third in batting average. Someone will win the Triple Crown again sometime. An exceptional player will have an exceptional season, or less emphasis may come to be placed on strength and more on a balance of strength and skill. The talented player who combines strength, skill, and timeliness stands a much better chance for genuine baseball immortality than the one-dimensional power hitter who concentrates solely on hitting home runs. 

The Triple Crown performances of the past were truly remarkable. Let’s hope that we will witness such performances in the future. Be on the lookout for the player who has the potential for leading his league in both batting average and home runs. A player with the ability to combine hitting for accuracy with hitting for power will inevitably have a lot of runs batted in. Maybe the dream of a Triple Crown winner is not an impossible one after all. 

In the meantime, each major league should give an annual Strength, Skill, and Timeliness (SST) Award. Only players ranking in the top five in batting average, home runs, and runs batted in or players ranking first in two of those events would qualify. For each of the three events, the league leader would get five points, the runners-up would get four points, and so on through the top five. The player with the most total points would win the SST Award. If this award had been in effect the past five years, Albert Pujols would have won the award three times and Matt Holliday and Ryan Howard once each (2007 and 2008, respectively) in the National League. Alex Rodriguez would have won the award twice and David Ortiz and Mark Teixeira once each (2006 and 2009, respectively) in the American League. No American League player would have qualified in 2008. 

We live in an age of specialization. In the baseball world, batters try to concentrate on getting hits or hitting home runs. Players who do both are rare, and those who do both with runners on base are even rarer. Being able to do more than one of these things is a great talent. Any team would like to have such a player in its batting order. Giving an annual SST Award would be a great way to recognize players who come closest to the Triple Crown ideal. 

FREDERICK E. TAYLOR worked for the departments of Commerce and Defense and was a professor at several universities. His interest in baseball began in the 1930s when he saw his first major league game in which Lefty Grove and Jimmie Foxx played for Boston and Connie Mack managed Philadelphia. Dr. Taylor is the author of “The Runmakers: A New Way to Rate Baseball Players,” from which his article in this “Baseball Research Journal” is excerpted, courtesy of The Johns Hopkins University Press. His email address is: ruthfredtaylor@verizon.net.

Business woman. Community leader. Socialite. Baseball executive par excellence. Keeper of the Negro Leagues’ flame. Hall of Famer. Throughout her lifetime Effa Manley wore all these hats and more, but none more proudly than that of her beloved Newark Eagles, the Negro National League franchise that she and husband Abe Manley owned and operated from 1934 until 1948. The Most Famous Woman in Baseball, Bob Luke’s excellent new biography of her, shows us how Effa left her indelible mark on the Eagles, the community of Newark, and the game of baseball.

Effa was born to Bertha Ford Brooks, a married seamstress of mixed Native American and European heritage. Her biological father was Mrs. Brooks’ employer, a white stockbroker. Following this extramarital union, Brooks and her first husband divorced, and she soon remarried an African-American man. Effa was thus raised in an African-American family alongside five black step-siblings. Early in her life she identified as white, sometimes using it to her advantage to gain employment in shops that didn’t hire African-Americans. That said, she was still thoroughly a member of the black community in her social and family life, and would later become active in racial causes in the city of Newark.

Abe Manley, Effa’s future husband, hailed from Hertford, North Carolina. As a young man he made his way up the Eastern seaboard working a variety of jobs before settling in Camden, New Jersey, where he began making serious money running numbers. He became treasurer of the Rest-A-Way Club, Camden’s all-purpose social club for the city’s Negro elite, an establishment with an $8,000 piano and poker pots worth twice that much. In 1932 a bombing of the club led Abe to relocate to Harlem where he began courting Effa. In the summer of 1933 they were married, Abe lavishing his new bride with a five-carat ring, mink coats, and other luxuries.

Both Abe and Effa grew up loving baseball, and Abe had briefly owned a ballclub, the Camden Leafs, for part of the 1929 season. With his large bankroll and an enthusiastic business partner in Effa, Abe applied for and won a franchise in the Negro National League in late 1934. He and Effa became owners of the NNL’s Brooklyn Eagles, but before getting to work building the team, they turned their attention to league matters at the owners’ meeting of January 1935.

Bob Luke describes in detail the pressing financial and organizational issues that faced the owners: adopting a constitution, preventing players from breaking their contracts for better offers overseas, protecting umpires from abuse, and establishing a central league office. As would become a theme of NNL owners’ meetings though the years, the proceedings were acrimonious and not always productive. The strong-headed Effa frequently found herself at odds with fellow owners like Cum Posey of the Homestead Grays and Tom Wilson of the Baltimore Elite Giants, particularly with regard to the the appointment of an impartial, outside party as commissioner.

Effa and Abe worked out distinct roles in managing the Eagles, their division of labor reflecting their personalities. Effa, the more vociferous partner, handled much of the player negotiations and was the primary public face of the team. Abe was quieter, more reserved, and concerned himself with player evaluation and trades. As the financier behind the operation, Abe also exerted more influence over big-picture financial decisions, like departing the crowded New York City baseball market for neighboring Newark, New Jersey following the 1935 season. Abe bought the Newark Dodgers and combined their roster with that of his Brooklyn Eagles. They were christened the Newark Eagles, and in the spring of 1936 they began play at Newark’s lighted Ruppert Stadium.

Luke explores every aspect of Effa’s role with the team, including her romantic involvement with several Eagles players. Although she loved Abe, and remained married to him until his death in 1952, that didn‘t stop her from having relationships with ball- players. Terrie McDuffie, a young hurler with a wide array of pitches, was one of Effa’s lovers, and Luke notes that “she ordered [Eagles’ manager George] Giles to start McDuffie for games when she wanted to show him off to her lady friends.” (p. 14) About a decade later, when trying to recruit Monte Irvin to return for the 1946 season, Effa met him at home wearing just a negligee and invited him in, saying, “Abe won’t be back until tomorrow.” (p. 123) To his credit, Luke doesn’t sensationalize this aspect of Effa, and makes note of other times when she showed concern for players in completely non-romantic ways. She helped former Negro Leaguers like George Crowe break into Major League Baseball, served as godmother to Larry Doby’s first child, and helped other former players land jobs or make down payments on a first home.

As busy as Effa was with the Eagles, she was passionate about social issues, the nascent civil rights movement, and supporting the war effort. While living in New York in the early 1930s, she led boycotts of Harlem businesses which served mostly black customers without employing any African-American employees. In Newark, Effa continued to push for reform of Jim Crow segregation, while also creating a haven for African-Americans at the ballpark. As she wrote in a letter to sportswriter Wendell Smith, “The important thing is large crowds of Negroes have somewhere to go for healthy entertainment.” (p. 126).

Luke paints Effa as a reformer in all areas of her life. She was someone who saw possibility and then set out to achieve it, whether that meant creating better professional opportunities for blacks in Newark, ensuring that the Negro National League operated in a more transparent manner, or creating a better performing and more profitable ballclub within the confines of Ruppert Stadium. In the offseason of 1945–46, after years of playing second fiddle to the Homestead Grays, Abe and Effa redoubled their efforts to bring a championship to Newark.

The ’46 season began auspiciously with an opening day no-hitter from Leon Day, who was making his first start after three years in the Army. The war years had been hard on the Eagles’ line-up, as they lost about a dozen players to the draft, but at the gate it was a different story, with the war-time economic boom producing healthy attendance figures. Effa knew the team would be poised for a pennant run, with its coffers well stocked from the last few years and its roster augmented by returning stars like Day. Sure enough, the Eagles took the NNL by storm, capturing the first-half pennant, and after a brief June swoon, rebounding to take the second-half crown as well. Monte Irvin paced the club with a .389 average, and they advanced to face the Kansas City Monarchs, champions of the Negro American League, in the World Series.

The series went the distance and was contested in not two but four different ballparks: Ruppert Stadium for games two, six, and seven, the Polo Grounds for game one, Kansas City’s Blues Stadium for games three and four, and Chicago’s Comiskey Park for game five. The Eagles emerged victorious in the seventh game, helped by home-field advantage but also by the absence of Monarchs’ stars Satchel Paige and Hilton Smith, who had left the team before game seven to join a barnstorming tour. Abe and Effa rewarded their championship ballclub with diamond rings and a new $15,000 luxury bus. Meanwhile, the Satchel Paige All-Stars held their own against the Bob Feller All-Stars (a team made of MLB’s best), a surprising achievement since Paige’s team lacked such stars as Jackie Robinson, Roy Campanella, Irvin, and Doby. To open-minded baseball observers, it was becoming abundantly clear that the stars of Negro ball could hold their own against major league competition.

Effa achieved another goal during the following offseason, when a non-owner commissioner, the Rev. John H. Johnson, was finally appointed to oversee the Negro Leagues. He drafted a new constitution that limited World Series venues to the two cities competing, included more protections for players and umpires, and re-affirmed a five-year ban on players who jumped their contracts to play abroad. But just as the Negro Leagues were becoming better organized, the foundation of the league, its most talented players, was starting to slip away. First went Jackie Robinson to Branch Rickey’s Brooklyn Dodgers. Then an Eagles’ star, Larry Doby, followed suit by signing with Bill Veeck’s Cleveland Indians. While Veeck compensated the Eagles to the tune of $15,000 (a figure Effa negotiated), many other Negro League stars would be signed away to the majors without their old clubs getting any compensation. In any case, money couldn’t buy players of the same skill level or cachet as those departing to MLB. As Luke keenly observes, these were times of mixed emotion for Effa and others who loved Negro League baseball and made it their life’s work. While it was rewarding to see black players finally integrate, and thrive in, the major leagues, it was equally painful to witness the decline of the Negro Leagues.

It all happened relatively quickly. Following the 1948 season, Effa and Abe’s Eagles, along with the Grays and the New York Black Yankees, opted to disband. They sold the team for the paltry sum of $15,000 (the same amount Abe had ponied up for the team’s new bus just two years earlier), and the new owner relocated the club to Houston. Without the Eagles in her life, Effa stepped up her involvement in the local Newark NAACP chapter, becoming its treasurer. Baseball was still at her core though, and she remained as outspoken as ever. Effa condemned the way major league teams had raided the Negro Leagues of their top talent and did what she could to keep the collective memory of Negro baseball alive. As journalist Wendell Smith, her sometimes adversary, noted, she was “trying to fight off the inevitable and cling to the great days.” (p. 151)

Unfortunately for Effa, while integration came to MLB’s clubhouses in 1947, it would be decades before African-Americans had any real positions of influence within its executive halls. Some great baseball minds, like Effa and Abe, or John and Billie Harden of the Atlanta Black Crackers, were left on the outside looking in, with no role available to them in organized baseball. In 2001, the Baseball Hall of Fame formed a special committee of Negro Leagues scholars to examine the records of former players and the contributions of influential owners. Effa Manley was among the select group of past executives chosen for induction. In 2006, twenty-five years after her passing, she was enshrined in Cooperstown, the Hall’s first female inductee.

Bob Luke’s research was comprehensive, using interviews and Effa’s correspondence to paint a complete picture of this complex woman. His portrayal of Effa is thorough but fair, casting light on issues like her marital infidelity without glamorizing or overstating them. He handles her complicated racial identity well, showing how Effa’s sense of self and her race consciousness evolved. As far as criticisms go, the proofreading by Potomac Books left some room for improvement; there were more typos than I expected in a hardbound edition from a major publisher. In terms of organization, the book dragged a bit in the middle chapters, as each recapped a season with an approach that became a bit repetitive: winter owner’s meeting, contract negotiations, opening day, the story of the season. That said, the chronological approach probably makes the most sense, and revisiting certain topics year after year serves to emphasize some of the major challenges Effa faced. Overall, this is a comprehensive biography of a fascinating figure in baseball history. And like the best historical baseball writing, it teaches us as much about America, in the time and place that Effa lived, as it does about the subject. Effa Manley, and this excellent biography by Bob Luke, won’t soon be forgotten.

MIKE COOK is a member of the SABR Boston Chapter and is currently serving as a SABR Digital Publications Intern. He has helped produce two titles in SABR’s Digital Library: “Run, Rabbit, Run” and “Great Hitting Pitchers” (to which he also contributed a new chapter). Mike is a former schoolteacher and professional poker player who aspires to work in baseball operations. Visit his blog at http://cooksportsresearch.wordpress.com.