He built a practice in which he saw athletes, enter­tainers, and statesmen, but also the mill workers of his adopted Youngstown, Ohio. He beat off and eventu­ally surmounted challenges from the medical establishment, and he became a treasured citizen of his hard-working city.

Reese’s origins were as humble as they were harsh. Born May 6, 1855, in Rhymney, Wales, he lost his father three months later. When he was eleven, his mother died. Orphaned, Reese went to work in the Welsh iron works. He was taken in by an ironworker named Tom Jones who taught him the trade of bonesetting, a term Welshmen used for the manipu­lative treatment of muscle and tendon strains, not the setting of breaks. Reese remained under Jones’ tute­lage until he left for the United States in 1887.

Like many immigrants of the times, Reese was com­pelled to come to America because there were no jobs in the old country. He sailed steerage class to America without his family, sending for chem six months later. When they arrived, Reese left his job as a roller’s helper at Jones & Laughlin Steel in Pittsburgh and moved to Youngstown, where he took a job at the Brown-Bonnell Mills. Family history says he success­fully treated an injured mill worker for a dislocated shoulder in 1889. From this point on, other workers began coming to Reese for help with their injuries.

Eventually, the call on his skills became so great that he became a fulltime bonesetter in 1894. This called down the wrath of the medical establishment, which charged him with quackery and practicing medicine without a license. To get around this charge, Reese took advantage of the strict Language of the state law and began charging patients what they could afford rather than a set fee. His policy, primarily ap­plied to factory workers, was tersely stated: “Pay me when you get it.”

Simultaneously, Reese did what he could to satisfy his critics. He even enrolled in medical school at Case University in Cleveland, in 1897. He didn’t last long, because he couldn’t stand the sight of blood dur­ing surgery. His teachers recognized his skill, though, and gave their blessing to his practice of muscle and ligament manipulation, which resembled osteopathy, a medical theory founded in the United States during the late nineteenth century.

Reese’s struggle with the medical community ended in 1900. By then he had developed strong ties in the community, had made influential friends, and had made it clear that he refused to treat acute illnesses and was practicing his trade within strict Limits. His practice was formally recognized by the State of Ohio, and open opposition by medical authorities ceased. 

Treating ballplayers

According co David Strickler, Reese’s grandson-in-law, who wrote his biography, Child of Moriah (Four Corners Press), the first baseball player treated by Reese was Jimmy McAleer, a Young­stown native who was an outfielder for the Cleveland Spiders at the time. McAleer, who later became man­ager of the St. Louis Browns, spread the word about Reese’s talents. lo 1903, the Pittsburgh Pirates offered Reese the position of full-time team physician. Reese, preferring to stay at home, refused the offer and con­tinued to treat any ballplayer who came to him for help.

Many did. Strickler’s book lists fifty-four players created by Reese, twenty-eight of whom are in the Baseball Hall of Fame, including Honus Wagner, Cy Young, Ty Cobb, Rogers Hornsby, Eddie Collins, Grover Cleveland Alexander, Walter Johnson and John McGraw. Scores more visited him but weren’t listed because Reese never sought publicity and some players did not want anyone knowing they might be hurt. In the mid-twenties, Sporting Life paid tribute to Reese’s contribution to baseball this way: “[he] has prolonged the active life of countless baseball stars and preserved them for the fans of the country to cheer.”

From his experience with players, Reese became an expert in treating sore arms, bad backs, and charley horses. Reese noted that most of his patients were pitchers. “It’s not the curveball pitchers who come the more often …but the boys who try to throw the ball past a batter, the speed ball pitchers…If the sore­ness is in the elbow it’s a speedball pitcher nine times out of ten; if in the shoulder, a curveball pitcher.”

Several players credited Reese with saving their careers, including longtime Cleveland pitcher George Uhle and Pittsburgh and Brooklyn infielder Glenn Wright. While Reese provided cures, the repairs were not painless. Wagner said Reese hurt him, “like the devil, but always does the work.” Reese himself liked Wagner and described their first meeting, ”because they call me ‘bonesetter’ he [Wagner] was trembling clear down to his shoes. And the minute I placed my hands on his back he fainted dead away.”

The Bonesetter was not always happy with his ballplaying patients. He believed many of them reinjured themselves because they would not follow his directions. Reese disliked sports that put their par­ ticipants in harm’s way. Present-day Youngstown is a gridiron hotbed, but Reese did not share the passion.

He hated football. He treated George Halas only af­ter the future ‘Papa Bear’ persuaded him his bum knee came from sliding into a base and not from be­ing hammered by a tackler.

Reese’s patient list was not confined to athletes. He treated Theodore Roosevelt, presidential candidate and Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes, and fellow Welshman and former British Prime Minister David Lloyd George. Will Rogers was among his show busi­ness clients, along with countless showgirls who needed treatment for strained muscles or twisted ankles. Billy Sunday was also among his patients, both as a player and an evangelist.

Reese died of heart failure in 1931 at the age of sev­enty-six. His passing was heavily covered by the Youngstown Vindicator. His obituary noted that he had always treated patients in order of appearance. The famous had to stand in line like everybody else. Patients paid what they could afford, while the widows and orphans of mill workers were not charged at all.

John D. ‘Bonesetter’ Reese came to America to seek a better life for himself and his family, a motive the sons and daughters of immigrants understand. He built his life around the opportunity given him in his adopted nation. That simple fact best describes ‘Bonesetter’ Reese’s life and his contribution to his fellow citizens of Youngstown and to our national game.

Bonesetter’s All Star Clients Team

Pitchers: Cy Young, Christy Mathewson, Big Ed Walsh, Grover Cleveland Alexander, Addie Joss, Chief Bender and Stanley Coveleski.

Catchers: Gabby Hartnett and Roger Bresnahan.

First basemen: George Sisler and Frank Chance.

Second basemen: Eddie Collins, Rogers Hornsby and Napoleon Lajoie.

Third basemen: Home Run Baker and Jimmy Collins.

Shortstops: Honus Wagner and Donie Bush.

Outfielders: Ty Cobb, Shoeless Joe Jackson, Tris Speaker, Edd Roush and Max Carey.

Manager: John McGraw.

Aaron and Mays were matched because they both were born in Alabama. Of course, other great players were born there, including Heinie Manush, Satchel Paige, Billy Williams, and Early Wynn, but as expected, it was a two-way race. Aaron rode the crest of his home run popularity to a victory of 39 votes to 30 for Mays.

It was another two-way race in California where Ted Williams beat out Joltin’ Joe by 38 to 34. It was even closer in Pennsylvania where Honus Wagner edged Stan Musial 31-1/2 to 29-1/2, with Christy Mathewson coming in third.

The survey was conducted in the Spring of 1974, so performance for that season had no bearing on the vote. The Society is assessing the contribution that baseball has made in this Country and the review is keyed to the coming centennial observance of the National League and the 75^th anniversary of the American League in the Nation’s bicentennial year of 1976. Last year the Society voted on the greatest foreign-born players, with Juan Marichal of the Dominican Republic winning over Luis Aparicio of Venezuela in a very close vote.

Major league baseball players have been born in all 50 states, including one in Alaska. But in several states the representation was so small that an automatic selection was made of Roger Mans in North Dakota, Dave McNally in Montana, etc. However, ballots were issued covering 44 states.

The ballot included names of the top players in each of those states, including Maryland where Babe Ruth was born, and Georgia, birthplace of Ty Cobb. As it happened, Jimmy Foxx, Lefty Grove, and Al Kaline got a vote or two in Maryland, and Jackie Robinson and Bill Terry kept Cobb from sweeping the bases in Georgia. Only in Kansas did Walter Johnson get all 77 votes cast for that state, and he didn’t have very much competition.

On the other hand, members voted for 11 different players in Illinois and in Indiana. In each case a player not then in the Hall of Fame — Robin Roberts in Illinois, and Chuck Klein in Indiana — was selected over five players already enshrined at Cooperstown. There may be a message there.

Did the voters favor modern players over the old-timers? Not necessarily. Roger Connor, 19th Century slugger, won in Connecticut. In Ohio Cy Young and George Sisler snowed under Pete Rose; and Rogers Hornsby and Tris Speaker didn’t leave many votes for Frank Robinson and Ernie Banks in Texas.

Here are the full voting results:

SURVEY OF BEST BASEBALL PLAYERS BY STATES

ALABAMA — Henry Aaron 39; Willie Mays 30; Satchel Paige 4; Heinie Manush 2; Joe Sewell 1; Billy Williams 1; Early Wynn 1.

ARIZONA — Hank Leiber 42; Solly Hemus 19; Alex Kellner 12.

ARKANSAS — Brooks Robinson 38-1/2; Arky Vaughan 15; Dizzy Dean 13-1/2; Lou Brock 6; George Kell 2; Lon Warneke 1.

CALIFORNIA-   Ted Williams 38; Joe DiMaggio 34; Harry Heilmann 3; Bobby Bonds 1; Joe Cronin 1;   Tom Seaver 1/2; Duke Snider 1/2.

COLORADO —   Johnny Lindell 47; Roy Hartzell 13; Tom L. Hughes 8; Gene Packard 3.

CONNECTICUT Roger Connor 46; Jim O’Rourke 14; Jimmy Piersall 12; Tom Corcoran 4.

DELAWARE —   Vic Willis 40; Hans Lobert 25; Chris Short 7; Sadie McMahon 2.

1. C. — Maury Wills 56; Paul Hines 10-1/2; Doc White 8; Lu Blue 2-1/2.

FLORIDA —   Al Lopez 38-1/2; Bill White 16-1/2; Steve Canton 16; Boog Powell 5; Dave Johnson 1.

GEORGIA — Ty Cobb 75; Jackie Robinson 2; Bill Terry 1.

HAWAII — Mike Lum 64; Matt Wilcox 2; Prince Oana 1.

IDAHO —   Harmon Killebrew 72; Vernon Law 4; Larry Jackson 1.

ILLINOIS — Robin Roberts 25-1/2: Lou Boudreau 12; Joe McGinnity 9-1/2; Jim Bottomley 8-1/2; Red

  Ruffing 8; Fred Lindstrom 4; Ray Schalk 2-1/2; Phil Cavarretta 2; Larry Doyle 2; Red   Schoendienst 2; Ted Kluszewskji1.

INDIANA — Chuck Klein 16-1/2; Sam Rice 13-1/2; Sam Thompson 13-1/2; Mordecai Brown 7-1/2; Edd Roush 7; Amos Rusie 5-1/2; Max Carey 4-1/2; Gil Hodges 3; Babe Adams 2; Billy Herman 2; Fred Fitzsimmons 1.

IOWA —   Bob Feller 40-1/2; Cap Anson 33; Dazzy Vance 1-1/2; Fred Clarke 1; Red Faber 1.

KANSAS — Walter Johnson 77.

KENTUCKY — Earle Combs 26-1/2; Pee Wee Reese 16-1/2; Jim Bunning 13-1/2; Pete Browning 12; Bobby Veach 3-1/2; Carl Mays 3; Gus Weyhing 2.

LOUISIANA–   Melvin Ott 44-1/2; Bill Dickey 25-1/2; Ted Lyons 7.

MAINE — George Gore 37; Fred Parent 18; Bill Carrigan 15.

MARYLAND —   Babe Ruth 71-1/2; Jimmy Foxx 3; Al Kaline 2; Lefty Grove 1-1/2.

MASSACHUSETTS Pie Traynor 34-1/2; Mickey Cochrane 26-1/2; John Clarkson 7-1/2; Tim Keefe 3; Joe Kelley 1-1/2; Jack Chesbro 1; Wilbert Robinson 1; Jimmy Ryan 1; Wilbur Wood 1.

MICHIGAN —   Charlie Gehringer 62; Kiki Cuyler 5; Ed Cicotte 4; Hal Newhouser 3; Jack Fournier 1; Ed Reulbach 1.

MINNESOTA–   Chief Bender 68; Joe Bush 5; Gene DeMontreville 1; Jerry Koosman 1; Wes Westruin 1.

MISSISSIPPI Buddy Myer 28; Guy Bush 21; Claude Passeau 7; George Scott 7; Hugh Critz 4; Gee   Walker 4.

MISSOURI —   Carl Hubbell 29; Yogi Berra 20-1/2; Zack Wheat 13; Jim Galvin 4-1/2; Casey Stengel 4;   Jake Beckley 2; Clark Griffith 1; Charlie Grimm 1; Elston Howard 1; George Van Haltren 1.

MONTANA — Dave McNally (no contest)

NEBRASKA —   Grover Alexander 61-1/2; Sam Crawford 8; Bob Gibson 6-1/2; Richie Ashburn 1.

NEVADA —   Jim Nash (no contest)

NEW JERSEY-   Joe Medwick 28; Goose Goslin 27; Billy Hamilton 13; Don Newcombe 3; Johnny Vander Meer 2; George Case 1; Kid Gleason 1; Mike Tiernan 1.

NEW HAMPSHIRE Red Rolfe 58; Arlie Latham 15; George Tyler 1; Stan Williams 1.

NEW MEXICO- Ralph Kiner 62; Vern Stephens 15.

NEW YORK —   Lou Gehrig 56-1/2; Eddie Collins 6; Warren Spahn 5; Sandy Koufax 4-1/2; Dan Brouthers 2; Hank Greenberg 1-1/2; Waite Hoyt 1; Charles Radbourn 1; Frank Frisch 1/2.

NORTH —- Luke Appling 53; Hoyt Wilhelm 10-1/2; Enos Slaughter 7; Wes Ferrell 2-1/2;

CAROLINA —   Gaylord Perry 2; Jim Hunter 1.

NORTH DAKOTA   Roger Mans (no contest)

OHIO — Cy Young 39-1/2; George Sisler 29; Pete Rose 4; Ed Delahanty 3-1/2; Buck Ewing 1.

OKLAHOMA — Mickey Mantle 52; Paul Waner 21-1/2; Johnny Bench 2; Willie Stargell 1; Lloyd Waner 1/2.

OREGON  —   Ken Williams 41; Mickey Lolich 23; Johnny Pesky 8; Larry Jansen 2.

PENNSYLVANIA   Honus Wagner 31-1/2; Stan Musial 29-1/2; Christy Mathewson 10; Hack Wilson 3; Richie Allen 1; Roy Campanella 1; Eddie Plank 1.

RHODE ISLAND Nap Lajoie 65-1/2; Gabby Hartnett 9-1/2; Hugh Duffy 2.

SOUTH —-   Joe Jackson 67; Larry Doby 3; Bobo Newsom 3; Van Mungo 2; Marty Marion 1-1/2; CAROLINA —   Al Rosen 1/2.

SOUTH DAKOTA James Scott (no contest)

TENNESSEE–   Vada Pinson 17-1/2; Tommy Bridges 16; Bobby Caruthers 14; Ben Chapman 11-1/2; Clyde Milan 7; Red Lucas 4; Jim Gilliam 2; Tim McCarver 1; Claude Osteen 1.

TEXAS — Rogers Hornsby 43; Tris Speaker 24-1/2; Frank Robinson 4; Ernie Banks 3-1/2; Eddie   Mathews 2.

UTAH —   Duke Sims 37; Fred Sanford 19; Gordon Rhodes 10; Ed Heusser 5.

VERMONT —   Larry Gardner 37; Birdie Tebbetts 34; Ray Collins 2; Ernie Johnson 2.

VIRGINIA — Eppa Rixey 53; Deacon Phillippe 10-1/2; Willie Horton 5; Granny Hamner 3; George McQuinn 3; Steve Brodie 1-1/2.

WASHINGTON-   Earl Averill 56-1/2; Ron Santo 17-1/2; Earl Torgeson 1; Rube Walberg 1.

WEST —-   Jess Burkett 40; Bill Mazeroski 18; Lew Bundette 15; Arlie Cooper 3; Andy Seminick 1.

VIRGINIA —

WISCONSIN–   Al Simmons 48-1/2; Kid Nichols 12-1/2; Burleigh Grimes 8-1/2; Addie Joss 4-1/2; Ken   Keltner 1; Andy Pafko 1.

WYOMING —   Dick Ellsworth (no contest)

SURVEY OF BEST ALL-STAR TEAM BY STATE

In the second part of the survey, Society members were asked to pick the state that could put forth the best all-star team over the last century. New York edged out Pennsylvania and California, while Ohio trailed in fourth place. Texas finished fifth and would have received more votes except that its battery was weak. If Nolan Ryan has a few more good seasons, that would help remedy that situation. Here are the state all-star teams.

*Points are based on 6 for a first place vote; 5 for 2^nd; 4 for 3^rd, etc. Other states receiving 10 or fewer points include Alabama, Indiana, Illinois, Massachusetts, Maryland, Georgia, Tennessee, and Oklahoma. Some voters substituted players, such as Jake Daubert for Mickey Vernon; Tom Seaver for Lefty Gomez, etc.

One might imagine that The Natural—written by Bernard Malamud and published in 1952—is unadulterated fiction, while the 1984 screen adaptation is a baseball fantasy with a literary origin. However, a question that has long intrigued aficionados and scholars involves how much of Malamud’s story has been culled from real life. To what extent was he influenced by baseball history and baseball lore? Even more specifically, what was Malamud’s inspiration for one of the novel’s crucial episodes: the near-fatal shooting in a Chicago hotel room of Roy Hobbs, the story’s principal character, by a black-garbed mystery woman? Was it in fact a direct reference to the blast from a rifle wielded by an overwrought fan which almost snuffed out the life of Waitkus, also in a Chicago hotel room, on the night of June 14, 1949?

Malamud (1914–86) was loath to discuss his literary sources. As reported in an editor’s note in Talking Horse: Bernard Malamud on Life and Work, “…during his lifetime as an artist and writer, [Malamud] said little in private about his own work. In public he said even less.” So determining the genesis of the Hobbs shooting, not to mention other actual baseball influences in The Natural, is purely speculative, the equivalent of piecing together a giant puzzle that keeps changing shape.

In relation to the real-life Eddie Waitkus and the fictional Roy Hobbs, the two on the surface have little in common. Edward Stephen Waitkus was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on September 4, 1919. After debuting with the Chicago Cubs in 1941, he earned four Bronze Stars while serving with the U.S. Army in the Pacific during World War II. He returned to the Cubs in 1946 and, with Hank Borowy, was traded to the Phillies for Dutch Leonard and Monk Dubiel after the 1948 campaign. “During his early career,” explained Waitkus biographer John Theodore in A Natural Gunned Down: The Stalking of Eddie Waitkus, a documentary extra found on the Director’s Cut DVD release of the movie version of the novel, “[Eddie] was called ‘The Natural’ by a few sportswriters. The writers back then also called him the ‘Fred Astaire of first basemen.’ At the plate, he had a wonderfully natural swing. Ted Williams called it one of the best swings he had ever seen.” Off the field, according to Theodore, Waitkus “was very urbane. He spoke four languages. He was a Civil War historian. He loved ballroom dancing. [He was] not your typical blue-collar baseball player.”

A two-time National League All-Star (in 1948–49), the 29-year-old Waitkus was hitting .306 when he was shot on June 14, 1949; his assailant, Ruth Ann Steinhagen, a stenographer, was a decade his junior. He did not don a Phillies uniform for the remainder of the 1949 season. However, on August 19, the ballclub sponsored “Eddie Waitkus Night,” during which the ballplayer was deluged with gifts. He rejoined the team the following season, playing in all 154 games for the World Series-bound Whiz Kids—and the Associated Press cited him as the Comeback Player of the Year. Prior to the 1954 campaign, the Baltimore Orioles purchased him. He was released by the Orioles during the 1955 season and returned to Philadelphia before retiring at year’s end. All in all, Waitkus enjoyed an eleven-year big league career, hitting .285 with 1,214 hits.

Hobbs, meanwhile, is neither big-city sophisticate, weathered war veteran, nor veteran major leaguer. He is a true innocent: a 19-year-old hot prospect, a product of rural America, and a pitcher with untold potential. Harriet Bird, the woman in black, is older than Steinhagen, and she exploits Hobbs’s youthful ardor before shooting him and then committing suicide. Her motives—and whether she indeed is acting on her own or is in cahoots with others—remain unclear. But Hobbs’s career is sidetracked, and he spends the next decade and a half languishing in obscurity with his promise an unfulfilled dream. Then, as a middle-aged rookie, he returns to baseball as a hitter and leads the last-place New York Knights up in the standings. Hobbs rises from the ashes when he is 34: an age when Waitkus was inauspiciously winding down his big league career. And there was nothing mysterious about Steinhagen. When she shot and wounded the unmarried big leaguer in room 1297A of Chicago’s Edgewater Beach Hotel, the Phillies were in town to play the Cubs—and Steinhagen had been obsessed with Waitkus for several years, dating from his time in Chicago. According to John Theodore, the 19-year-old had constructed a shrine to the ballplayer, consisting of hundreds of photos and clippings, which she would stare at for hours. Her mother reported that she even would set a place for him at the family dinner table. After his trade to the Phillies, she felt abandoned—and her infatuation became deadly.

The story of Steinhagen was extensively covered in the media. As reported in several accounts published in The New York Times and elsewhere, a note from the teenager awaited Waitkus’s arrival at the hotel that evening. It was signed “Ruth Anne Burns” and, in it, Steinhagen wrote:

It is extremely important that I see you as soon as possible. We’re not acquainted, but I have something of importance to speak to you about. I think it would be to your advantage to let me explain this to you as I am leaving the hotel the day after tomorrow. I realize this is out of the ordinary, but as I say, it is extremely important.

Steinhagen originally was planning to stab Waitkus and then shoot herself. Accounts vary as to what exactly happened when Waitkus entered her room. But what is clear is that, in an instant, Steinhagen changed her plans and shot the ballplayer but lost her nerve and failed to harm herself.

After the incident, Waitkus told reporters, “I went up to my room and called her because I thought it might be someone I knew—someone from downstate or a friend of a friend. When she opened the door, she took a look and said, ‘come in for a minute.’ She was very abrupt and businesslike. I asked what she wanted and walked through the little entrance hall over to the window. When I turned around there she was with the .22 caliber rifle. She said, ‘You’re not going to bother me anymore.’ Before I could say anything else, whammy!” He added, “She had the coldest looking face I ever saw. No expression at all. She wasn’t happy—she wasn’t anything.” Waitkus noted that he had never met Steinhagen, and was unsure if he ever had received correspondence from her. “We ballplayers get a lot of letters from girls and don’t pay any attention to them. We call them ‘baseball Annies.’”

Waitkus was rushed to Illinois Masonic Hospital, where he was reported to be in critical condition with a rifle slug lodged in muscles near his spine. The bullet first pierced and collapsed his right lung, and he received two blood transfusions as well as oxygen. The bullet was surgically removed and, on June 18, another operation was performed to remove blood from his lung cavity. All in all, Waitkus underwent four procedures, and doctors described his quick improvement as “little short of miraculous.” The ballplayer also told reporters, “I haven’t got over the whole surprise. It’s just like a bad dream. I would just like to know what got into that silly honey picking on a nice guy like me. She must be crazy, charging around with a rifle. It was safer for me on New Guinea, wasn’t it?”

For her part, Steinhagen was booked by the police and charged with “assault with intent to murder.” She told the authorities that she “just had to shoot somebody,” adding that she liked Waitkus “best of anybody in the world” and had been dreaming about him—and praying for him. According to the Times, the police “attributed Miss Steinhagen’s action to a twisted fascination for the ball player and a desire to be in the limelight.” She was committed to Illinois’ Kankakee State Hospital, where she was given shock treatments. Steinhagen never went on trial for shooting Waitkus. Instead, she remained at Kankakee until 1952, when she was declared cured and released. She then faded into obscurity, and resided for decades in Chicago. In March 2013, the Chicago Tribune reported that she had died in Chicago three months earlier at age 83, after a fall in her home.

While Waitkus, unlike Hobbs, did not have to wait a decade and a half to resume his baseball career, one can only speculate on the overall impact of the shooting on the quality of his play. Sure, he was one of the stars of the 1950 Whiz Kids, but would he have enjoyed additional all-star seasons with the Phillies? What numbers might he have put up? Might he even have been worthy of consideration for the Baseball Hall of Fame? We will never know. However, the shooting clearly affected the ballplayer’s private life. For one thing, in the late 1980s, New York Times sports columnist Ira Berkow heard from Waitkus’s son, Edward (Ted) Waitkus Jr., a Boulder, Colorado, lawyer. The junior Waitkus reported that his father had met his mother while recovering from the shooting in Clearwater Beach, Florida. “Had it not been for this horrible event in his life, my sister and I would probably not be here,” he noted. “Life is very ironic. I think sometimes that all horror that comes to us has reason….”

Given that The Natural was published in 1952, Bernard Malamud could not have known what the future would hold for Eddie Waitkus. Yet certain aspects of Waitkus’s later life did indeed reflect on the plight of Roy Hobbs as envisioned by the writer. According to Ted Waitkus, his father “had always told me he understood the four years of his career lost to World War II. ‘Everyone went,’ he would say. He, however, never quite accepted being shot, that is, the time lost because of the shooting.” He also noted, “My dad was an easy-going, trusting guy at the time, and kind of flippant with women…. The shooting changed my father a great deal, as you might imagine. Before, he was a very outgoing person. Then he became almost paranoid about meeting new people, and pretty much even stopped going out drinking with his teammates, which is what I guess they did in those days.” And he added, “When [Steinhagen] was about to be released from the mental hospital after only a few years—they said she had fully recovered—my father and my family fought to keep her in. My father feared for his life.”

After his retirement from baseball, Waitkus faded from the limelight. In 1961 he split from his wife and suffered a nervous breakdown. “In my research talking to doctors,” reported John Theodore, “they concluded that he was suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder because his symptoms were classic. He avoided people. He had anxiety. He self-medicated his depression with alcohol.” A partial return to baseball came in 1966, when he hired on as a hitting instructor at Ted Williams’s baseball camp. However, in 1972, at the all-too-young age of 53, Waitkus died of esophageal cancer. At the time, he was living in a Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts, boardinghouse. “Different doctors through the years have expressed the theory that the stress of the shooting, combined with the four operations, allowed the cancer to take hold,” explained Ted Waitkus. “Cancer of the lung or esophagus can take up to 20 years or more to be fatal. My dad was never diagnosed as having cancer. It wasn’t until after the autopsy that this came out. So I think Ruth Steinhagen was more successful than she thought.”

***

Conjecture regarding the connection between fiction and reality in The Natural dates from its publication. In his review of the book in the August 24, 1952, New York Times, Harry Sylvester observed that Malamud “draws heavily on baseball legend and history, almost interchangeably.” Since then, writers, reviewers, and historians have speculated about the players, personalities, and events that may (or may not) have influenced Malamud during the writing process.

Countless observers have assumed—and casually reported—that the entire premise of The Natural is directly linked to the Waitkus shooting. Here are some representative examples:

• “The shooting of Eddie Waitkus inspired Bernard Malamud to write The Natural, first published in 1952.” (Charles DeMotte, in “Baseball Heroes and Femme Fatales,” The Cooperstown Symposium on Baseball and American Culture: 2002)
• “What happened to Waitkus provided the inspiration for Bernard Malamud’s The Natural.” (Wil A. Linkugel and Edward J. Pappas, They Tasted Glory: Among the Missing at the Baseball Hall of Fame)
• “The incident inspired Bernard Malamud to write his 1952 novel The Natural.” (Joshua Prager, The Echoing Green: The Untold Story of Bobby Thomson, Ralph Branca and the Shot Heard Round the World)
• “…the attack [on Waitkus] was the seed from which Malamud’s story had grown.” (G. Richard McKelvey, Lost in the Sun: The Comebacks and Comedowns of Major League Ballplayers)
• “[Waitkus’] story was the inspiration for the Roy Hobbs character in Bernard Malamud’s The Natural.” (Steve Johnson, Chicago Cubs Yesterday & Today)
• “[The Waitkus case] inspired Bernard Malamud to write The Natural…” (Gordon Edes, writing in the South Florida Sun Sentinel)
• “[The book was] inspired by the 1949 shooting of Philadelphia Phillies first baseman Eddie Waitkus…” (Carolyn Kellogg, writing in the Los Angeles Times)
• “[The Waitkus shooting] inspired Bernard Malamud to write his 1952 classic novel, The Natural.” (Bob Minzesheimer, writing in USA Today)
• “[The book’s] immediate inspiration was the real-life case of one Eddie Waitkus, a first baseman for the Philadelphia Phillies who was also shot by a deranged woman in a hotel room.” (Kevin Baker, in the introduction to a 2003 reprint of The Natural)

Nonetheless, it is flat-out incorrect to declare that the murder attempt on Eddie Waitkus was the singular inspiration for The Natural. For one thing, might the shooting of Roy Hobbs have been an outgrowth of an altogether different incident: the July 1932 shooting of Chicago Cubs shortstop Billy Jurges by Violet Valli, a showgirl with whom he was romantically connected? To expand this further, might Malamud have been aware of a certain piece supposedly penned by New York Times columnist Arthur Daley—the existence of which has taken on a life of its own? In the novel (as opposed to the screen adaptation), Roy Hobbs’s ego allows him to be fatally corrupted—and it is noted in “A Talk With B. Malamud,” published in the Times in 1961, that The Natural “was suggested by a column written by Arthur Daley for this newspaper—why does a talented man sell out?” Even though there are no direct quotations from Malamud in this piece, in After Alienation: American Novels in Mid-Century, published in 1964, Marcus Klein reported that the book “was suggested, Malamud has said, by one of Arthur Daley’s columns in The New York Times, which raised the question, why does a talented man sell out?” In a Daley obituary published in Dictionary of American Biography, Kevin J. O’Keefe noted that “one of Arthur Daley’s columns concerned a talented baseball player’s betrayal of his principles and was turned into a book, The Natural, by Bernard Malamud.” In a paper titled “Daley’s Diamond: The Baseball Writing of Arthur J. Daley,” Jim Harper observed, “Daley’s treatment of gambling and fixing in sport inspired novelist Bernard Malamud to explore the theme of a talented athlete gone wrong in The Natural.”

On the rare occasion in which he discussed the genesis of the book, Malamud in fact stressed that he had Brooklyn—and the Dodgers—in mind when conjuring up The Natural, rather than any one event or any team in Philadelphia or Chicago. In Conversations with Bernard Malamud, the author observed that the book “was the experience of being a kid in Brooklyn. I lived somewhere near Ebbets Field. The old Brooklyn Dodgers were our heroes, our stars, like out of myths. Since the stadium was that near, it had to concern you.” Malamud continued, “I didn’t play much baseball as a kid but I went to Ebbets Field and Yankee Stadium, I saw Babe Ruth, Dazzy Vance, and enjoyed the Brooklyn Dodgers in action.” He added that ballplayers “were the ‘heroes’ of my American childhood. I wrote The Natural as a tale of a mythological hero… [I] tried to use [mythology] to symbolize and explicate an ethical dilemma of American life.”

On another occasion, Malamud told Paris Review interviewer Daniel Stern, “As a kid, for entertainment I turned to the movies and dime novels. Maybe The Natural derives from Frank Merriwell as well as the adventures of the Brooklyn Dodgers in Ebbets Field.” (In this interview, he also declared, without citing Waitkus or any other baseball figure, “Events from life may creep into the narrative…” and “When I start I have a pretty well-developed idea what the book is about and how it ought to go, because generally I’ve been thinking about it and making notes for months, if not years.”) In a talk given at Bennington College in 1984, two years before his death, Malamud noted, “Baseball had interested me… but I wasn’t able to write about the game until I transformed game into myth, via Jesse Weston’s Percival legend with an assist from T. S. Eliot’s ‘The Wasteland’ plus the lives of several ballplayers I had read, in particular Babe Ruth’s and Bobby Feller’s. The myth enriched the baseball lore as feats of magic transformed the game.” In all these discussions, Malamud clearly does not cite Eddie Waitkus.

During the summer of 1949, the writer and his family moved from New York City to Corvallis, Oregon, where he began teaching at Oregon State University. It was here where the bulk of The Natural was written. In a detailed, superbly researched article, “‘Them Dodgers is My Gallant Knights’: Fiction as History in The Natural,” Harley Henry offers what is perhaps the definitive connection between Waitkus and Hobbs: “We can assume that before leaving New York he had a baseball story in mind, though perhaps only a short story inspired by the shooting of the player Eddie Waitkus in June 1949, an event around which the first short section of The Natural is composed.”

In shaping The Natural, Malamud admittedly incorporated the public personas of Feller and Ruth and his youthful remembrances of the Brooklyn Dodgers. But Henry reported that he also “began to shape an ‘exile and return’ plot imitating current events, for which he fleshed out his conception of Roy—based on Feller and Ruth—with allusions to three other players, two of them active at the time: Joe Jackson, Ted Williams, and Sal Maglie.” He added that “Roy Hobbs is an amalgam of Feller’s youthful innocence, Ruth’s hungry prowess, Williams’s hostility and pride, and Jackson’s natural but corruptible talent.”

Roy Hobbs starts out as a teen pitching phenom who travels by train for a tryout. His experiences on board mirror that of the young Bob Feller as he journeyed to join Cleveland in 1936. They are described in Strikeout Story, Feller’s 1947 autobiography, a copy of which, according to Henry, Malamud brought with him to Corvallis. Additionally, another episode in the book—Hobbs’s strikeout of Walter “The Whammer” Wambold, clearly a Babe Ruth clone—mirrors the untested Feller’s whiffing of eight St. Louis Cardinals in an exhibition game. And Hobbs’s transition from potentially great pitcher to fence-busting slugger reflects the career of the Bambino. “Ruth’s legend, and its retellings after his death in 1948,” noted Henry, “were matters Malamud could not possibly ignore when he began conceiving a baseball hero that very same year.”

Hobbs’s desire to be acclaimed the best damned ballplayer ever is pure Ted Williams—and, like Teddy Ballgame, he wears number 9 in the movie. The inspiration for “Wonderboy,” Hobbs’s hand-carved bat, could be Shoeless Joe Jackson’s lumber, which he called “Black Betsy.” (In his review of The Natural, Harry Sylvester described “Wonderboy” as a “trick bat—not unlike that used by Heinie Groh of the Cincinnati Reds back in the Twenties…”) Hobbs’s coming to the majors and his heroics for the New York Knights parallel the plight of Sal Maglie, who debuted with the New York Giants in 1945 and summarily was banned from professional baseball by Commissioner Happy Chandler after joining the Mexican League. Maglie, like Hobbs, was in his thirties when he resurrected his career, returning to the Giants in 1950 and sparking the team with an 18–4 won-lost record. At the novel’s finale, a newsboy’s query of “Say it ain’t true, Roy?” (in response to allegations that Hobbs threw a ballgame) echoes the legendary “Say it ain’t so, Joe?” question put to Shoeless Joe Jackson regarding his participation in the 1919 Black Sox scandal. And Hobbs’s banishment from the game mirrors the expulsion of Jackson and his White Sox cohorts.

Hobbs’s smashing a homer that breaks the face of a clock, resulting in a shower of broken glass, may embody the flight of a ball hit by the Boston Braves’ Bama Rowell in the second inning of the second game of a doubleheader at Ebbets Field on May 30, 1946. The ball smashed into the face of the Bulova clock that adorned the top of the scoreboard, spraying Dodgers right fielder Dixie Walker with falling glass. Furthermore, it may be said that the pre-Hobbs New York Knights are a version of the inept Brooklyn Dodgers of the 1930s. The Knights’ owner, Judge Goodwill Banner, shares similar characteristics with Dodgers general manager Branch Rickey, starting with a propensity for cheapness.

Clearly, as he shaped The Natural, Bernard Malamud had in mind a range of baseball facts and folklore. The near-murder of Eddie Waitkus, the Fightin’ Phillie and Whiz Kid, was just one of them.

The Phillies and The Natural: A Cameo Appearance

If Rocky Balboa slugged home runs in Connie Mack Stadium instead of opponents in a boxing ring, one might boast of Philadelphia being the locale of at least one beloved baseball film. But such is not the case. Regrettably, the Phillies and A’s—unlike the teams in New York, Chicago, or Brooklyn—rarely have been represented in any baseball film, good or bad. However, the Phillies do make a cameo appearance in the screen version of The Natural, as well as the novel upon which it is based.

The New York Knights may be a fictional team, but their opponents are real-life National League nines. The Knights’ ineptitude is summarized in a pair of onscreen newspaper headlines: “Phils Blank Knights” and “Knights Lose—Philly Wins Four to Three.” The Knights and Phillies also match up in Roy Hobbs’s big league debut. It’s the bottom of the seventh inning, and the Philadelphia nine lead the New Yorkers by a 4–3 score. The Knights are at bat, a runner leads off first, and Hobbs is called on to pinch hit. Pop Fisher, the Knights manager, cheers him on by yelling, “Alright Hobbs, knock the cover off the ball.” But no one expects that this literally is what the rookie will do once he swings and bat meets horsehide. (In the novel, Fisher’s line is, “Knock the cover off of it.” After Hobbs does just that, Bernard Malamud writes, “Attempting to retrieve and throw, the Philly fielder got tangled in thread.”) 

ROB EDELMAN is the author of “Great Baseball Films” and a frequent contributor to “Base Ball: A Journal of the Early Game.” He is a Contributing Editor of “Leonard Maltin’s Movie Guide” and is co-author of “Matthau: A Life” and “Meet the Mertzes,” a double biography of “I Love Lucy’s” Vivian Vance and celebrated baseball fan William Frawley. He teaches film history at the University at Albany–SUNY and is an interviewee on extras on the DVD of “The Natural.”

SOURCES

Books

Alan Cheuse and Nicholas Delbanco, editors, Talking Horse: Bernard Malamud on Life and Work (New York: Columbia University Press, 1996).

Philip Davis, Bernard Malamud: A Writer’s Life (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007).

Charles DeMotte, “Baseball Heroes and Femme Fatales,” The Cooperstown Symposium on Baseball and American Culture: 2002 (Jefferson, North Carolina, McFarland & Company, 2002).

Rob Edelman, Great Baseball Films (New York: Citadel Press, 1994).

Kenneth T. Jackson, editor, Dictionary of American Biography, Supplement 9: 1971–1975 (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1994).

Steve Johnson, Chicago Cubs Yesterday & Today (Minneapolis: Voyageur Press, 2008).

Marcus Klein, After Alienation: American Novels in Mid-Century (Cleveland: World Publishing Company, 1964).

Bruce Kuklick, To Every Thing a Season: Shibe Park and Urban Philadelphia 1909–1976 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991).

Lawrence M. Lasher, editor, Conversations with Bernard Malamud (Jackson and London: University Press of Mississippi, 1991).

Wil A. Linkugel and Edward J. Pappas, They Tasted Glory: Among the Missing at the Baseball Hall of Fame (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, 1998).

Bernard Malamud, The Natural (New York: Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, 2003).

G. Richard McKelvey, Lost in the Sun: The Comebacks and Comedowns of Major League Ballplayers (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, 2008).

Alyssa Milano, Safe at Home: Confessions of a Baseball Fanatic (New York: William Morrow, 2009).

Joshua Prager, The Echoing Green: The Untold Story of Bobby Thomson, Ralph Branca and the Shot Heard Round the World (New York: Pantheon Books, 2006).

Richard Scheinin, Field of Screams: The Dark Underside of America’s National Pastime (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1994).

John Theodore, Baseball’s Natural: The Story of Eddie Waitkus (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2002).

John Thorn, Pete Palmer, Michael Gershman, and David Pietrusza, Total Baseball, Fifth Edition (New York: Viking, 1997).

Newspaper and Magazine Articles/Papers

Ira Berkow, “Sports of the Times: The Shooting of a Baseball Idol,” The New York Times, August 12, 1988.

Peter Carino, “History as Myth in Bernard Malamud’s The Natural,” NINE: A Journal of Baseball History and Culture, Fall 2005.

Gordon Edes, “Ballplayers Are at the Mercy Of Twisted Fans,” South Florida Sun Sentinel, July 9, 1995.

Ron Fimrite, “A Star With Real Clout,” Sports Illustrated, May 7, 1984.

Jim Harper, “Daley’s Diamond: The Baseball Writing of Arthur J. Daley,” American Society for Sport History, 1989.

Harley Henry, “‘Them Dodgers is My Gallant Knights’: Fiction as History in The Natural,” Journal of Sport History, Summer 1992.

Louther S. Horne, “Baseball Star Shot By Girl Fan Rallies,” The New York Times, June 16, 1949.

——. “Gain by Waitkus ‘Near Miraculous’; Operation on Ball Player Succeeds,” The New York Times, June 81, 1949.

Carolyn Kellogg, “Batter up! 9 baseball books to kick off the season,” Los Angeles Times, March 31, 2011.

Bob Minzesheimer, “John Grisham tosses out a baseball morality tale,” USA Today, April 9, 2012.

Mervyn Rothstein, “Bernard Malamud Dies at 71,” The New York Times, March 19, 1986.

Daniel Stern, “Interviews: Bernard Malamud, The Art of Fiction No. 52,” The Paris Review, Spring 1975.

Harry Sylvester, “With Greatest of Ease,” The New York Times, August 24, 1952.

“A Talk With B. Malamud,” The New York Times, October 8, 1961.

“Arraigned, Indicted, Held Insane in 3 Hours, Girl Who Shot Waitkus Is Sent to Asylum,” The New York Times, July 1, 1949.

“Girl Who Shot Waitkus Gains,” The New York Times, September 14, 1950.

“Waitkus Assailant May Go Free,” The New York Times, August 8, 1950.

DVD

“A Natural Gunned Down: The Stalking of Eddie Waitkus,” documentary extra on the Director’s Cut DVD release of The Natural.

Websites

(The Glory of Baseball) http://thegloryofbaseball.blogspot.com/2005/06/real-life-roy-hobbs.html.

I will never forget the response the Braves received when they moved from Milwaukee to Atlanta. It was great. Before the Opening Day parade, the team had a caravan that went through Tennessee, the Carolinas, and Alabama. I went along as the new broadcaster and remember the unbelievable welcome. 

It wasn’t that the folks didn’t know baseball; the Atlanta Crackers had a very rich heritage for many years under Earl Mann. And the Birmingham Barons weren’t far away. There were a lot of minor-league towns in the South and a lot of mill towns where all the cotton mills had teams. Baseball was a big item, and the people were ready for big-league baseball. They welcomed us with open arms. 

I had been working for the Chicago White Sox, where I was Bob Elson’s sidekick. They told me I would get the number-one job because Elson was getting older, but I wondered how long I would have to wait, as Red Barber said, before getting into the “catbird seat.” 

I had known [Braves’ General Manager] John McHale since I worked for Davenport in the old Three-I League. In fact, he took me out to dinner on my honeymoon! I also knew Bill Bartholomay, part of the Braves ownership group and a former Chicago insurance executive who was close to the White Sox owners. But the key man for me was Jim Faszholz, whose brother pitched for the Cardinals in the ’50s. He had been an intern in the TV studio where I did the six and ten o’clock sports news during my two years in St. Louis. When he became director of broadcasting for the Braves, that helped make up my mind to go there.

The fans in Georgia already knew me; the White Sox had a big network, with more than 90 stations, including one in Atlanta. We had gone there to play an exhibition game in May 1965—the White Sox against the Milwaukee Braves. The move to Atlanta had already been announced, so it was a lame-duck year for the Braves. Before the game, they had a big luncheon, and I got a tremendous reception. McHale and Bartholomay were there and came up to me at the game that night. “You really got a great welcome here today,” they said. “Why don’t we talk about you moving south with us?” In August, Jim Faszhold followed up, and I knew I was going to go to Atlanta to be their first announcer. I had been on a year-to-year contract with the White Sox anyway. 

It was a good move for my family. They were all baseball fans, so that made it easy. Mark was ten, Patti Joy was 12, and Arlene was the team mother when Mark was in Little League. I started doing commercials and did about a thousand a year—more than all the players on the team combined. I had a clothing store, a car dealership, and a Sears store. Plus I was the voice of Delta Airlines. I did the six o’clock news before going to the ballpark. It was the first time I ever made any big-league money, so it worked out well for me. 

It also happened to be a very interesting season for the Braves. The team led the league with 207 home runs and would have been in contention with any pitching at all. Hank Aaron and Eddie Mathews were still together and had a lot of firepower around them in the lineup; Rico Carty, Joe Torre, Gene Oliver, Mack Jones, and Felipe Alou hit a lot of home runs. 

Tony Cloninger, a Southern boy from Iron Station, North Carolina, had won 24 games for the lame-duck Milwaukee Braves in 1965 and was supposed to be the team’s number-one pitcher. He had earned the right to pitch the first game in Atlanta. Unfortunately for Cloninger, another Deep South native, Bob Veale, was announced as the Opening Night pitcher for Pittsburgh. Veale was a big lefty who was tough, so Cloninger knew he probably wasn’t going to get many runs of support. Sure enough, Veale was on his game. Torre hit a home run but the Pirates hit two [including the game-winner by Willie Stargell] and won, 3–2. It was a cold, rainy night, and Cloninger pitched the whole game—13 innings. He was never quite the same after that. Bobby Bragan, an Alabama native, had moved to Atlanta with the team and knew there was a lot of Southern pride involved in the outcome. But Pittsburgh won the opener. 

I participated in the opening ceremony and all the things that go with the glitter of a great grand opening, welcoming big-league baseball to the Deep South. It was exciting to be part of everything new—a new city for the Braves and the fact that other teams were coming there for the first time. 

I had been there several times at the end of spring training, when teams barnstormed north from Florida. The White Sox used to get on a train and stop in Savannah, Macon, and Atlanta en route to play their Triple-A team in Indianapolis. 

Even though the Braves were not a really great ballclub, the fans came out. They increased the team’s attendance by about a million more than they had drawn the year before. The fans knew Eddie Mathews, who had actually played for the Atlanta Crackers in Ponce de Leon Park. One of the great minor-league ballparks, it featured a magnolia tree in fair territory. Luke Appling started there, and Chuck Tanner played there. A lot of big-league ballplayers went through Atlanta on their way up. 

So did Ernie Harwell, who later became a Hall of Fame announcer. He was working for Earl Mann when the Dodgers came through town. Branch Rickey heard him and asked what it would take to sign him for Brooklyn. Earl Mann wound up getting a player for him: a catcher named Cliff Dapper. 

By coming south with the Braves, Mathews became the only man to play for the same team in three different cities. He had broken into the majors when the team was still based in Boston. In 1966, however, he was definitely on the downside of a great career. In fact, Bobby Bragan started platooning him, benching him against lefthanded pitchers. When Bobby got fired in the middle of the season, Billy Hitchcock put Mathews back into the lineup against lefties. In his very first game under Hitchcock, Mathews hit a home run to help Denny Lemaster beat Sandy Koufax, 2–1. That gave the ballclub a good feeling, and it responded to the new manager, posting a 33–18 mark.1

Later that year, Paul Richards traded Mathews to Houston—a situation that did not make Paul many friends. Eddie found out when a reporter called to get his reaction. And then the team spelled his name wrong in the official press release. That was no way to treat a Hall of Famer.

During their tenure as teammates (1954–66), Mathews and Aaron hit 863 home runs—a number not reached by Ruth and Gehrig, Mays and McCovey, Maris and Mantle, or any other tandem. I had known about them when they also had Joe Adcock and Wes Covington in the lineup up in Milwaukee. If you were a home-run hitter in that lineup, you always had a chance to get a ball to hit. There was always somebody behind you, so they couldn’t pitch around you. 

Aaron had been a pretty good home-run hitter before but had hit a lot of opposite-field home runs in Milwaukee. When he got to Atlanta and saw Fulton County Stadium, he became almost a dead-pull hitter. The ball just flew. But I don’t think anybody thought Hank could challenge Babe Ruth’s lifetime record until 1972, when he announced he was going for it. 

It’s funny how things work out sometimes; when the Braves announced they were moving from Milwaukee to Atlanta, Aaron said he didn’t want to go. But he adjusted pretty quickly. He was from Mobile, so his parents were able to come to a lot of games. His brother Tommie was in the organization too. And the welcome he received helped to change his attitude, even though he got some vicious hate mail when he went after Ruth’s record a few years later. 

Rico Carty, who often batted behind Henry that first year, was the best two-strike hitter I ever saw. He was even better than Aaron. If Rico got two strikes against him, you could bet in Vegas that the next pitch was going to go to right field. He could hit with power to all fields. And he hit some long home runs. It was always an adventure, though, when Rico was playing left field. Maybe that’s why Bobby Bragan tried to make him a catcher. Because he was such a good hitter, nobody noticed he wasn’t a very good catcher.#endnote2

Bragan loved versatility. Felipe Alou moved to first base from the outfield, Woody Woodward played second and short, and Mike de la Hoz played third, second, and short. Felipe Alou might have been the Player of the Year that first season in Atlanta. We always knew he was a doggone good ballplayer, but he put it all together that year. He hit 31 home runs, a career high for him, but he did it as the leadoff man because there were so many other sluggers on the team. He was a very popular player with a great smile, and he was always accessible. 

Despite all the sluggers on the team, the best singlegame performance came from a pitcher. On July 3, Tony Cloninger became the first National Leaguer—position player or pitcher—to hit two grand slams in one game. He also drove in another run for a nine-RBI performance when the Braves beat the Giants, 17–3. Nobody thought Tony would hit two—even when he came up a second time with the bases loaded. He was a good hitter, but we were hoping for a single or a fly ball. 

Not too long after that, the team decided to change managers. Bobby Bragan had lost the club, and John McHale felt it was time to make a change. So they hired a former Auburn star, Billy Hitchcock, to keep the manager’s seat in the Alabama family. He settled the ballclub down. He had been a pretty good ballplayer in his time, and the players felt he was the right guy for the job. The fact that he started Mathews in that first game against the left-handed Koufax gave the team a good feeling. 

Hitchcock’s biggest contribution came the next year when he brought Phil Niekro out of the bullpen as an emergency starter when Ken Johnson took ill in Philadelphia. Phil stayed in the rotation for the rest of his baseball life. I remember being at the booster luncheon when Hitchcock made the announcement. We couldn’t believe it, since Phil had made no starts in 1966 and had only two saves and a 4–3 record. 

When we first arrived in Atlanta, people kept asking me about the team’s chances. I thought to myself that they weren’t going anywhere unless they got some pitching help. We had been a little hopeful going into a new town, especially with Cloninger as the bell cow of the rotation, but who knew he would drop from 24 wins to 14? Three years later, when they got into the playoffs against the Mets, they had Ron Reed and Pat Jarvis to pair with Niekro. In 1966, Reed had just come out of the NBA, and Niekro was in the bullpen. They didn’t have a catcher who could handle his knuckleball until they traded Gene Oliver for Bob Uecker in ’67. 

Our pitching was pretty thin in ’66. We had a 40-year-old rookie named Chi Chi Olivo, an over-thehill closer named Ted Abernathy, and a former Rookie of the Year (Don Schwall) who never amounted to much after his first season. Ken Johnson turned out to be the ace with 14 wins, the same as Cloninger, but the only other pitcher in double digits was Lemaster (11). Wade Blasingame, a 16-game winner in ’65, hurt his arm, and Pat Jarvis and Dick Kelley were just coming up. Clay Carroll, the late reliever, led the team with 11 saves. 

As for me, I worked hard in 1966, too. I shared the broadcast booth with Larry Munson and Ernie Johnson. We went from booth to booth, changing in the middle innings, so I was doing both radio and TV. It was an interesting transition, to say the least. You could put it all under one banner—the newness kept the enthusiasm going. 

More importantly, bringing major-league baseball to the Deep South did wonders for race relations. I don’t think there’s any doubt about it.3 The advent of the Atlanta Braves also opened doors for other cities, including Dallas, Miami, and Tampa Bay. It expanded the game and created legions of new fans. I felt honored to be part of it. 

DAN SCHLOSSBERG, a former sportswriter for the Associated Press is author or coauthor of 35 books, including this year’s “The 300 Club: Have We Seen the Last of Baseball’s 300-Game Winners?” (Ascend Books, 2010). He is managing editor of the syndicated BallTalk Radio and the founder and president emeritus of the North American Travel Journalists Association.

Notes

1 That’s a .647 winning percentage; the winning percentage under Bragan had been .468.

2 Carty caught 17 games in 1966.

3 Just a few years before baseball came to town, segregation and discrimination had been almost universal, not just in Georgia but throughout the Southern states. The KKK had rallies not far from Atlanta. And let’s not forget that Hank Aaron had been reluctant to move from Milwaukee to Atlanta. Fortunately, it turned out to be a move made in baseball heaven for both him and the ballclub. The Braves had other black stars, including Felipe Alou, Rico Carty, and Mack Jones, who also helped prove that color didn’t matter.

All of these questions have not been answered in detail, but enough research results have been obtained to present an interim report. Fortunately, this report can be made at a time when additional attention has been focused on inside-the-park homers based on the recent exploits of Willie Wilson of the Kansas City Royals. Of his six roundtrippers hit in 1979, five were within bounds, a total that has not been achieved in many years. In 1966, Richie Allen of the Phils and Sonny Jackson of the Astros each hit three, and in 1958, Mickey Mantle also hit three for the Yankees.

Considering that only 31 IPH were hit in the majors in 1979, five by one player is a substantial number. Ruppert Jones of Seattle and Robin Yount of Milwaukee were next with two each.

Some of the major league clubs still do not tabulate those hit in their own parks, although cooperation with SABR in that regard is improving. Baltimore, for example, has records of all those hit by Oriole players or against Oriole pitchers since the club came back into the American League in 1954. The same holds true for the Minnesota Twins since 1961, and the Montreal Expos and San Diego Padres since 1969. The Detroit Tigers also have been keeping tabs on their IPH for the last 20 years, and most other clubs have scattered information on this subject. These records, plus the research of SABR members, have given us a “ball park estimate” of about how many have been hit in recent years.

To put the matter in proper perspective, we also did research on selected seasons back to 1900. We have no intention of going back further than that because some parks in the 19th century had open areas in the outfield, making IPH the typical home run rather than those hit out of the park. On the other hand, there were some balls hit over the fence in at least one park that were ground rule doubles. Ironically, by today’s standards, home runs hit within the confines even as recently as 1910-15, were called by some reporters “real” or “bone fide” home runs. The implication was that those hit over the fence, particularly if it was a short distance fence, were a little tainted in that the outfielder was robbed of a chance to play the ball.

This might be a good place to define an inside-the-park home run. Basically it is a drive that stays within the fences and is playable. It would include the rare instance, for example, where a fair ball might roll under the tarpaulin. It does not include cases where the ball might roll under an exit gate, bounce through a hole in the fence or bounce over the outfield fence. Those were legitimate home runs — at least the bounce home run was until 1930 — but we do not include those hits as IPH because they ultimately become unplayable.

The number and percentage of IPH have been gradually reduced since 1901 when about 35 percent were inside jobs. Of course, the home run totals were not very great in those days, with the combined figure for both leagues being 454 in 1901 and only 357 in 1902. Several new parks were built in the next 15 years and by 1915 the IPH percentage was reduced to less than 25 percent. With the advent of the lively ball in 1920, the number of fourbaggers increased considerably, but the percentage and even the real numbers of IPH continued to drop off. The percentage declined from about seven-to-eight percent in 1930 to three-to-four percent in 1950.

With the near standardization of field dimensions as a result of the construction of new parks in the l960s and 1970s, the percentage of IPH went down to about one percent of the total. For example, in 1966, one of the recent seasons for which we have solid IPH data, there were 2743 homers hit, of which 30 were inside jobs. In 1979, there were 3,433 roundtrippers hit, including 31 IPH.

To get a feel for how many IPH were hit and where, we conducted surveys of certain seasons and parks. A big boost was received early in the project by discovery of material left by the late Lee Allen at the Hall of Fame which included all the 360 IPH hit by Cincinnati players from 1900 to 1955. Those were the years when the Reds played in League Park, Redland Field and Crosley Field. This was essentially the same ballpark, but it was altered considerably over the years. This was a haven for IPH in the early years of this century, particularly in 1901 when 50 IPH were hit there by home and visiting clubs. That was a very high figure which has not been duplicated at any other park in one season. Sam Crawford, the great triple hitter, extended himself and hit 12 IPH (out of total of 16 homers) that season, which is a record.

Cincinnati IPH went down considerably the next season as total NL home runs shrunk to 98, the lowest figure in this century, but team IPH figures ranged from 20 in 1909 to seven in 1921. In 1931 no Cincinnati player hit a four-base blow within the grounds, and the numbers thereafter were very small. The fact that the Reds were one of the leading home run teams in the mid-1950s made no difference. In 1955 they hit a total of 181, but nary one inside the park.

Some of the other parks and seasons checked were those of the Boston Red Sox 1912, Boston Braves 1915-27, Brooklyn Dodgers and New York Giants 1907, New York Yankees 1907 and 1923, Pittsburgh Pirates 1911, 1922-27, and 1945, and Washington Senators 1921-23 and 1933-37.

Braves Field in Boston was ideal for IPH from the time of its opening in August 1915 to the start of the 1928 season when it was altered drastically to aid the club’s long-ball hitters. In those dozen years, the Braves easily had the largest playing field in the majors. Balls hit sharply to right-center could roll 550 feet to the flagpole. In those 12 years, according to research conducted by Paul Doherty, only seven balls were hit out of the park. Another seven bounced into the stands or rolled under the gate, etc. All 209 of the others were IPH. On April 29, 1922, the New York Giants hit four IPH in one wind-swept game at Braves Field, two by George Kelly. As a visiting player, Rogers Hornsby hit eight IPH there from 1915 to 1927. In 1928 the outfield fence was moved in considerably and balls started to fly out of Braves Field. Unfortunately, the majority of them seemed to be hit by opposition players.

Pittsburgh’s Forbes Field (1909-70) was a large park where relatively few homers were hit until after World War II. Many of the great triple hitters on that club, such as Tommy Leach, Honus Wagner, Owen Wilson, Max Carey, Pie Traynor, Kiki Cuyler, Paul Waner, and Arky Vaughan, also hit a fair number of IPH in their particular eras. In 1925, the year that Cuyler hit 26 triples, he also hit eight IPH, the best season total in at least the last 60 years. When Cuyler was traded to the Chicago Cubs after the 1927 season, his chances for a high career total of IPH were sharply reduced. Wrigley Field was one of those parks (and still is) where it was extremely difficult to achieve four bases without hitting the ball into the stands.

Griffith Stadium in Washington was in many ways the Forbes Field of the American League. In 1945, for an extreme example, the Senators hit only one home run there and it was an IPH by

Joe Kuhel. It was a discouraging place for power hitters, except for the big muscle men like Ruth, Gehrig, Foxx, Greenberg, and Joe DiMaggio, all of whom could hit them out of most any park. Sam Rice, who was five-foot-nine and weighed about 150 pounds, played 19 seasons in Washington and never hit the ball into the stands at Griffith Stadium. His nine homers there were all within the grounds. That is not a record for that park, however, as teammate Buddy Myer hit all but one of his 14 IPH in Griffith Stadium.

Rice also hit IPH in other parks, including the first in Yankee Stadium on April 25, 1923. The “House that Ruth Built” didn’t have the squared off fairly even dimensions of spacious Griffith Stadium; it had an uneven configuration in that it had a short distance in rightfield that tapered to extremely deep in center. More than 20 IPH were hit in the new park in its initial season, probably because the outfielders were a little uncertain how to play the garden. Babe Ruth, who had ten IPH in his career, hit four at Yankee Stadium in 1923.

The Polo Grounds in New York was another park where plenty of home runs were hit into the stands, but a fair number were also hit inside the grounds. The right and left field foul lines were the shortest in the majors and even a little guy like Rabbit Maranville could pull one in there; yet, if a player could hit the ball past the center fielder he had a good chance of making four bases before the ball could be retrieved. When parks like this were closed down, the number of IPH was systematically reduced.

The only other big playing field of the old days which is still in use is Comiskey Park in Chicago. Ironically, it has not been a favorite place for hitting IPH, in spite of its size, because of its well balanced configuration. On the other hand, the lines of Baker Bowl in Philadelphia, usually referred to as a Bandbox, were not symmetrical and a batter occasionally could connect for a homer there inside the grounds. In fact, Kiki Cuyler hit two in one game at Baker Bowl on August 28, 1925, in the first and eighth innings.

Now that we’ve described the types of parks where IPH can be hit most frequently, we should identify what type of player hits them most frequently, the slugger or the fast runner. We probably gave away the answer at the beginning when we noted that Willie Wilson hit five IPH in 1979. With 83 stolen bases to his credit, Wilson, it is safe to say (in spite of his sturdy build), gets his extra base hits primarily because of his legs rather than his bat. Wilson hit only one ball into the stands in 1979.

We found that IPHs are essentially an extension of the three-base hit. If a player hits a sizeable number of triples, is a fast runner and plays his home games in a large park, there is a good chance that he has hit a number of home runs inside the lot. Another factor that could be added to the list is the size of the player. If he was a small player in addition to being fast and a sharp hitter, that feature enhances the possibility that many of his home runs, even if he hit just a small number, were IPH.

Three historical examples were Tommy Leach, Rabbit Maranville, and Sam Rice. Leach, the diminutive outfielder-third baseman for the Pirates in the first decade of this century, led the NL in home runs in 1902 with only six and was a contender the next year with seven. In 1903 he hit all seven inside the park, including two in one game. Leach hit 62 homers in his career and 48 were IPH, including four grand slams. When Leach hit the last home run of his career, for the Cubs against the Cards in St. Louis on October 4, 1914, the St. Louis reporter covering the game marveled at the tremendous speed and spirit of the aging star as he scored standing up just ahead of the relay throw.

Maranville, who was just getting established at short for the Braves as Leach was fading out, was five-feet-five and 155 pounds, an inch or so shorter than Leach, but five pounds heavier. He was probably not as fast as Leach, but a colorful, aggressive little player. He was not much of a hitter, and connected for only 28 homers, but 22 of them were IPH, including two in one game. Rice, discussed earlier, hit a total of 34 home runs and a check of each one revealed that 21 were IPH.

The total number of fourbaggers a player hits has no bearing whatsoever on how many he hits inside the park. To use two extreme examples, Tommy Thevenow, NL infielder between 1924 and 1938, hit two homers in his career of 1229 games and both were IPH, (He also hit one IPH in the 1928 World Series when his drive got by Babe Ruth.) Ted Williams hit 521 in his career and only one was IPH. That one was on Friday, the 13th of September, 1946, when Ted took advantage of the Boudreau shift in the pennant-clinching 1-0 victory over Cleveland. He hit the ball to leftfield, which was practically deserted.

In the tabulation of more than 1600 inside the park homers since 1900, we have noted many strange happenings involving the crazy caroms, outfield collisions, and even a ball rolling up the sleeve of a warm-up jacket. Obviously, Williams’ IPH was not the most unusual. In fact, in a game 35 years before, Stuffy McInnis of the A’s caught the Red Sox outfielders even more out of position than Williams did the Indians. At the beginning of the seventh inning on June 27, 1911, McInnis swung at a warm-up pitch from Boston hurler Ed Karger. It went sailing into the outfield, but Tris Speaker and his fellow gardeners were not even out there yet. McInnis ran around the bases and was credited with a home run by Umpire Ben Egan who upheld American League President Ban Johnson’s new rule that there would be no warm-up pitches before the start of an inning.

Who has hit the most IPH on a career and season basis? This answer really should be broken down by decades, or as least by eras, because the number decreases in each period since 1900. In the deadball era of 1900-19, Sam Crawford hit 51 for his career, including 12 for Cincinnati in 1901. Tommy Leach had a career total of 48, counting three he hit in 1899. Ty Cobb, in his long career from 1905 to 1928, hit 47 IPH, but only six after 1918. By contrast, he hit nine in the one season of 1909.

Edd Roush hit 29 IPH, including four in the Federal League in 1914-15, over a career that ran to 1931. Kiki Cuyler had the best season mark for a player in that period with eight in 1925. Rabbit Maranville hit 22 in a very long career that finally wound up in 1935, and Ben Chapman closed out his playing days in 1945 with 15 IPH for his career. No significant season totals were achieved in that period, or at least research has not uncovered anything better than the four IPH hit by Chapman, the aggressive speedster with the Yankees, in 1935. The career totals also were insignificant in the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s. A total of seven IPH were found for Willie Mays in an incomplete review of his career. Willie Wilson had already achieved that total with his second homer in the 1980 season.

Complete IPH data are available on only a few outstanding players. Some of these are of the recent period, including active stars, and the results are available primarily because certain clubs or individuals have been compiling this information. On old-time players such as Sam Crawford, Edd Roush, and Babe Ruth, curiosity became so great after noting encouraging preliminary information that each home run was checked. This wasn’t as big a job with Ruth as might be expected, because SABR member Al Kermisch had already gone through most of his home runs for other purposes.

In the case of Crawford, he had done so well with Cincinnati with 22 IPH in only three years, 1900-02, the question of how he did with Detroit was begging to be answered. A very strong line drive hitter who also ran the bases well, Crawford racked up an additional 29 IPH while playing for the Tigers in spacious Bennett Field (later Navin Field) in the deadball era of 1903-17.

If Crawford could hit that many with Detroit (we reasoned), what about teammate Ty Cobb, who was a more aggressive base runner and an excellent place hitter (with hands a couple of inches apart on the bat)? This theory was well founded and research of every one of his home runs revealed that he hit 47 IPH for the Tigers, best in the AL. Research revealed also that on several occasions the Tiger Terror swelled his total by making a mad dash for home when the opposition outfielders assumed he was going to stop at third.

Another theory that seemed to apply in the deadball era, didn’t pan out very well in the modern era. While small, speedy players of the old days seemed to be good candidates for hitting IPH, a partial check of home runs by Phil Rizzuto and Luis Aparicio of the more recent era was not very fruitful. Neither hit a reasonable number of his relatively few homers within bounds. Of course, by the time they were playing, it seemed that almost all players were aiming for the fences.

There follows a list of the better known players for whom we have complete IPH data. Also listed on the right is a larger group of players for whom we have only scattered returns.

Complete IPH Numbers Interim, Incomplete IPH Numbers

During his 65-year tenure with the Giants, Eddie Brannick went from office boy to club secretary, from Manhattan to San Francisco, from schoolboy shorties to sartorial splendor, from a face in the crowd to coast-to­ coast fame.

He was born Edward Thomas Brannick, at 441 West 31st Street, New York City, on July 22, 1892. This was on the edge of the tough Irish neighborhood known as Hell’s Kitchen, where, as Brannick put it later, “it was a tossup to see if you became a bad boy or an altar boy.” He had the same name as his father, who was of Scottish descent. His mother Elizabeth’s family was Irish. Her brother, Tommy Mallon, was a semi-pro ballplayer, and it was Tommy who introduced Brannick to the game.

Brannick attended St. Michael’s Parochial School, and would make his way to the Polo Grounds to see the Giants whenever he could scare up a quarter for a bleacher seat. Before long, though, he had the opportu­nity to see his beloved Giants at close quarters-closer than he ever could have dreamed, and for longer than he could possibly have imagined.

During the heat of the 1904 pennant race, while the Giants were on the road, Giants owner John T. Brush installed a scoreboard in old downtown Madison Square Garden at Madison Avenue and 26th Street, so Giants fans could follow the action. Eddie’s cousin Jimmy Mallon was one of the youngsters hired to run the scoreboard. As news of the games came through the wire, boys would post numbers or move figures around the board to show the score, the outs, and who was on which base. Brush put the board up again during the Giants’ first Western road trip of 1905, which ran from June 1 through June 22, and Jimmy brought Eddie along to assist.

Brush suffered from locomotor ataxia, a degenerative condition of the nervous system. An invalid, he often hired errand boys. He took a liking to Eddie and, after the western road trip was over, hired Brannick as an office boy on June 27, 1905. Eddie continued to run errands for Brush that summer, and also kept Brush’s collection of newspaper clippings about the Giants in a scrapbook. The work paid three dollars a week, excellent pay for a 12-year-old in those days.

In April 1906, when the Giants returned to town for the new baseball season, Giants manager John J. McGraw asked Brush for a boy to work in the clubhouse at the Polo Grounds. Brush sent Brannick, who quit school for good at that point. The gruff McGraw took a liking to the genial lad, and a friendship began which would last until McGraw’s death in 1934.

Not that the arrangement was always carefree. Brush, who rarely tampered with McGraw’s running of the ball club, drew the line at the Giants’ intemperate use of baseballs. In 1908 he made Brannick the custodian of the ball bag. This required Brannick to sit on the bench and to dole out the baseballs as needed. “I want to tell you I kept a sharp eye on them.”

One morning Brush sent Brannick to the bank, and Brannick returned late. “If you are the custodian of the baseballs, be here on time or quit!” McGraw thundered.

“I had to go to the bank for Mr. Brush,” Eddie stam­mered.

“I don’t care where he sent you,” said McGraw. “When I say I want you here at one o’clock, that means one o’clock and not 15 minutes later. And if Brush or anyone else tells you to do something else, tell him you can’t do it because you have to be here. Do you understand?”

Years later, Brannick said, “That’s when I first knew who was really running the Giants.”

It is unclear when Brannick first started to travel with the Giants. Some sources have him making road trips with the Giants during the 1910 season, after club secretary Fred Knowles fell ill with tuberculosis. William M. Gray, a noted theatrical manager and advance agent who knew McGraw and Brush from the prestigious Lambs’ Club, was hired as interim secretary, then became secretary when Knowles was unable to return to his duties. Knowles would eventually succumb in 1911. Brannick was a natu­ral choice for the position of assistant secretary. Whether he went on the road with the Giants in 1910, it is certain that he went to Marlin, TX, with the Giants for spring training in 1911. Brannick was 18 years old.

Of the many stories told about Brannick later in life, none perhaps galled him more than the famous “match fields” story. Brannick, so the tale goes, had never been west of New Jersey in his life. As the train sped through the farmlands of Illinois, Eddie was puzzled by winter stubble on the fields.

He asked Sid Mercer, writer for the New York Globe, “What’s growing in those fields?”

“They’re growing matches,” replied Mercer.

When Brannick showed skepticism, Damon Runyon chimed in: “Where else do you think matches come from?”

Mercer nodded. “The heads should be coming up soon,” he added.

Brannick would never live it down. He would later swear that the story was bunk, but no biography of Brannick, it seems, is without the story of the gullible youngster marveling over the great match fields of Illinois, while reporters sti­fled chuckles behind him.

Brannick assisted Gray in Marlin, and then got his first chance to fly solo as a road secretary. When the Giants broke camp in Marlin and started back to New York in March, McGraw split up his players into three squads. Each took a different route from Marlin to Richmond, VA, and played exhibition games along the way. Brannick accompanied the third squad, entirely made up of prospects and managed by Otis “Doc” Crandall, himself only 24 and enjoying his first managerial experience. Crandall and Brannick suc­cessfully shepherded their charges through two weeks of barnstonning before rejoining the Giants in Richmond.

Brannick served as assistant secretary under Gray through 1911, shouldering road duties and other respon­sibilities. He stayed on under Joseph O’Brien in 1912, under John Foster from 1913 through 1919, and under James J. Tierney through 1936. Tierney made Brannick the official road secretary in 1922, and for the next 40 years Brannick led the Giants on every road trip.

It seems natural that the young Brannick would have the desire to play ball himself. This is the theme of another famous Brannick story, in which Brannick rushes to the mound to pitch for the Giants in a spring exhibition game. Various dates are given for this feat, all in the mid-191Os, but they seem to agree that the game took place in Columbus, GA. A Fred Lieb account indi­cates that Brannick’s catcher was Bradley Kocher, who was with the Giants in 1915 and 1916, and the injured pitcher was Al Williams, a Fordham hurler who went to spring training with the Giants in 1914 and later earned fame as a Navy aviator. Williams’s injury left the Giants’ second team without a pitcher that day. Brannick, so the story goes, put a friend in place to watch the turnstiles for him while he jumped into a uniform, warmed up, then pitched seven innings of one-run ball. “Brannick held a 2-1 lead until the eighth inning, when in fielding a ball he turned his ankle. Rube Schauer, whose trade was pitching, then went in and the Giants lost, 3 to 2.”

A game between a Giants squad and the Columbus ball club resembling this description (with Kocher catch­ing and Schauer blowing the lead in the ninth) occurred in spring 1916. The newspaper account of the game lists another pitcher and does not mention Brannick, who in any case did not go to spring training with the Giants in 1916. (The Giants went on to win in extra innings, further spoiling the story.) If Brannick actually pitched for the Giants, the box score has yet to be found.

It is true, however, that on June 9, 1912, Brannick pinch-hit in an exhibition game in Long Branch, NJ, which the Giants won, 11- 10. The New York Times account notes that in his ball playing debut the assistant secretary “ripped a stinging single to right field” in the top of the ninth, then scored. However, his “wabbly” fielding in the bottom half of the frame opened the door to a four-run Long Branch rally, which almost lost the game for the Giants. The Times reporter did not note who handled the turnstile duties for the Giants that day.

McGraw, though willing to humor the young man with an occasional exhibition game stint, discouraged Brannick from going further. “You give up the idea of being a big-league ballplayer and stick with the front office,” McGraw told Eddie, “and someday you MIGHT amount to something.” Brannick agreed. “That was certainly good advice for me.”

Brannick was on hand for many of the highlights in Giant history. He was guarding the ball bag on the Giants bench on September 23, 1908, during the infamous “Merkle Game.” He was checking the turnstiles at Fenway Park during the last inning of game eight of the 1912 World Series, when Fred Snodgrass dropped Clyde Engle’s fly ball. “I knew it before it happened,” Brannick said.

“John Beydler was with me and a fan came up and shook my hand in congratulation for the victory of the Giants. I said to John Beydler, ‘That jinxes it! We’ll lose now.’ … By the time I had the turnstile checked Boston had won the series.

“But don’t forget,” the Giants’ goodwill ambassador would say, “we had our good days, too.” He considered the 1921 Giants the best team he had ever seen. “They were a collection of star players everybody knew and respected,” he said. “They had the psychological edge the great champion has, like a Dempsey or a Louis, of imparting fear to an opponent before a ball was pitched.”

Whenever a reporter asked Brannick to name favorite Giants, one name always topped the list: Christy Mathewson. The tall, handsome, gentlemanly Mathewson was everyone’s hero, of course. It was with some reluc­tance, though, that Brannick once had the unpleasant duty of consigning the great Matty to an “upper” on a road trip.

The sleeper cars on trains had upper and lower berths. The upper berths were less desirable because people in them felt the train car’s swaying motions more keenly. The curtains sometimes did not block the corridor lights effectively, either. For that reason, sometime early in his tenure, Brannick was nervous when on one trip there weren’t enough lower berths in the Pullman sleeper car and six players had to take upper berths.

McGraw told the young Brannick to let the players draw berths out of a hat. Brannick laid aside a lower for Matty, but McGraw said ”Nothing doing. Let him draw with the rest. There are no stars on this ball club.”

Sure enough, Mathewson drew an upper.

This still took McGraw aback, but as he told Brannick, “That’s the way to work for me-always treat all the Giants alike.”

To Brannick’s relief, Mathewson waved it off. “When I’ m on my own,” he told the young assistant, “I always buy an upper. It’s cheaper.”

Brannick usually put Carl Hubbell in the same class as a pitcher, and also listed Mel Ott and Willie Mays as among the top Giants. Few men, of course, had the same opportunity to compare these great ballplayers that Brannick had.

Brannick’s personal life began to stabilize after Charles Stoneham took over ownership of the Giants in 1919. Brannick kept his job despite a front-office purge, even becoming good friends with Stoneham’s son Horace. In 1920, Brannick “took the pledge.” This was around the time when McGraw’s drinking began to take its toll; the ugly drunken brawl between McGraw and actor John Slavin was in August of that year. Perhaps his friend’s behavior was a factor in Brannick’s decision to quit drinking. Brannick became a prodigious coffee drinker instead. In June 1922 he married Kathleen Duggan. T heir marriage lasted 53 years.

On February 15, 1936, a month after the death of the elder Stoneham, James J. Tierney resigned as club secretary. New president Horace had to look no further than his good friend Brannick, who by then had already celebrated his 30th anniversary with the Giants. Brannick remained club secretary for the next 35 years. It was said of the Giants’ road secretary that he “never lost a ballplayer or a piece of luggage.” He was just as valuable to the reporters and VIPs who traveled with the Giants. Though sticking to his pledge, he always knew where to find alcohol during Prohibition, no matter which city the Giants visited. “Since the passing of McGraw,” said one reporter, “the man who can beat Eddie to grabbing the check has yet to be born.”

But Brannick’s value to the Giants went beyond his logistics skills. “Eddie was a priceless goodwill man for the whole game,” wrote Red Smith. “He was naturally gregarious with a genuine liking for people. He didn’t drink, but he could stay up all night buying. Wherever he went he made friends for baseball and the Giants. He was at home in the New York of Delmonico’s and Rector’s and in the New York of Jim Moore’s, 21 and Toots Shor’s. He was also at home in Chicago and St. Louis and Miami. To a lot of people in those towns, he epitomized New York.”

His facility with the press was particularly valuable to a ballclub whose managers-McGraw, Bill Terry, Leo Durocher-had a knack  for making enemies.  It fell to Brannick to deliver bad news, smooth ruffled feathers, and mend fences. His easy grin, friendly manner, and generous nature made friends for himself and his Giants. Not only did Brannick get along with writers, but also he was voted honorary membership in the Baseball Writers Associa­tion of America and the Press Photographers Association. His gold-mounted honorary BBWAA membership card was one of his most prized possessions.

Outside baseball, Brannick numbered actors, politi­cians, and business tycoons among his friends. Brannick was even approached to run for New York’s Fifth Congressional district, some time during the Roosevelt years, but Brannick declined. “My wife Kathleen was against my going into politics,” he said. “Besides, all I ever wanted was to be with the Giants.”

His style of dress evolved into something newsworthy as well. Just as rare as a photo of Brannick not smiling is a description of him that does not contain the word “dapper.” “He was a dude, from his floppy Panama hat to the two-toned black and white shoes,” wrote Jimmy Cannon. “The sports coats are a boisterous plaid, and his neckties are designed to frighten horses.” When Brannick went to Italy on vacation following the 1938 season, he returned with several new suits, a rich vocab­ulary of Italian words, a rosary blessed by the Pope (who had granted an audience), and a mustache. The facial hair gave his reporter friends material for several months. The amusement ended on May 13, 1939, with the Giants in next to last place with a 9-12 record. To kill the jinx, Brannick shaved off his mustache. The Giants won the next day, though not even a clean-shaven secre­tary could help them finish the season higher than fifth place.

Although Brannick got along with everyone, he inher­ited McGraw’s and Brush’s antipathy for the American League and the Brooklyn Dodgers. A fierce National League partisan, he once refused to speak to his good friend Tom Meany for several years after Meany wrote an article titled “The National, the new Minor League” in the late 1930s. Brannick said, “Tommy couldn’t have offended me more had he written disparagingly of my brother.” As for the Dodgers, he once said, “There is something about Dodgers that I can’t stand.” Friends would tease him by asking whether it was true that the Dodgers had made him an offer to be their club secretary, just to enjoy Brannick’s explosive reaction. Yet upon the occasion of his 50th anniversary with the Giants in 1955, even Walter O’Malley attended the gala in Brannick’s honor at the Waldorf-Astoria.

Brannick naturally had a box in the Polo Grounds grandstand, but loaned it to friends. Superstitious, he watched from the bleachers instead, always leaving around the seventh inning to make the rounds and check the gates. When Brannick finally watched a game from beginning to end from his Polo Grounds box, it was September 29, 1957. The Pirates sank the Giants 9-1, in their last home game in New York. Afterward, Brannick watched sadly as fans tore signs off walls, telephones from booths, and chunks of the pitching rubber and home plate from the field.

Horace Stoneham’s decision to move the Giants to San Francisco forced Brannick, the true New Yorker, to make a difficult decision: his city or his ball club? “Eddie would look lost away from Broadway,” wrote one reporter. “He’s as much a part of the main stem as a Damon Runyon character.” In the end, though, when the Giants moved West, Brannick moved with them. One of his first questions, to a San Francisco reporter, was “Will we be able to stir up something against the Dodgers?” W hen assured that a San Francisco-Los Angeles rivalry was virtually a sure thing, Eddie grinned. “Count me in on the fun.” He and his wife embraced San Francisco, though naturally they kept an apartment in New York.

Eventually, even the dynamic Brannick needed to slow down. He developed pneumonia in February 1963 and missed spring training for the first time since 1916. Two years later, he turned over the road secretary duties. At last, on February 23, 1971, he sent a telegraph to Horace Stoneham, announcing his resignation as club secretary. Stoneham informed the press, his voice heavy with emotion. The last link with the Giants of McGraw and Mathewson was gone after 65 years of service. Brannick and his wife retired to West Palm Beach, FL, living quietly until his death on July 18, 1975, at the age of 82.

R.J. LESCH (rjlesch_usa@yahoo.com) lives in Adel, Iowa, with his lovely wife, Christee. When not doing systems analysis, cheering on the White Sox or researching the Deadball Era, R. J coaches sabre (naturally) at the Des Moines Fencing Club.

Acknowledgments

The material in this article comes largely from the Eddie Brannick file in the National Baseball Library, from Retrosheet and from the online archives of the New York Times. Special thanks goes to Gabriel Schechter for his assistance and encouragement.

Baseball greats are enshrined at Cooperstown, N.Y., but they do not live there, or die there, or are buried there. Their memorial stones are scattered throughout the nation. Therefore, it is unusual that six should be found in a Catholic cemetery in Baltimore, a city which went a half century without major league ball.

In one of the older sections of New Cathedral Cemetery there is a stone marker for Robert T. Mathews. Yes, this is little Bobby Mathews, who won the first game played in the National Association in 1871. He died in 1898, still in his 40s.

The Baltimore Orioles of the 1 890s were an aggressive club under the leadership of Ned Hanlon, who also had a 13-year playing career, 1880-92. Hanlon passed on his leadership qualities to third baseman John McGraw, catcher Wilbert Robinson, and outfielder Joe Kelley. McGraw and Robinson were great players who became famous as skippers. Kelley managed for 5 years at the close of a successful playing career.

Popular writers have said these Old Orioles are buried close together, but it is more than a strong throw from the outfield which separates them. McGraw, who died in New York, is interred in a stately mausoleum shared by his wife’s side of the family. There are sizeable stone markers for Hanlon and Robinson. Kelley’s marker is in a more modern section and is just a short distance from the grave of Eddie Rommel, long-service pitcher and umpire, who died in 1970. The latter has a flat surface marker which is not easily visible.

There are other former major league players buried here, but none of prominence like the six mentioned. Their playing, managing and umpiring careers essentially spanned the history of major league baseball. It has been reported that Walter “Steve” Brodie, another Oriole of the 1890s, is resting near his former teammates, but this is not correct. Brodie is buried in Woodlawn Cemetery, which is in the same general area of town.

Here is a brief run-down on the six baseball greats buried in New Cathedral Cemetery.

                                                Born        Career Span       Died

Bobby Mathews                      1851         1871-1881         1898

Ned Hanlon                             1857        1880-1907         1937

Wilbert Robinson                   1863         1886-1931         1934

Joe Kelley                                  1871       1891-1926         1943

John McGraw                         1873         1891-1932         1934

Eddie Rommel                        1897        1920-1959         1970

I have taught or co-taught sabermetrics in the mathematics department at the United States Military Academy several times. We covered all the metrics but what always interested me most was the direction student projects took to solve or analyze various issues in baseball. In one of these courses, for example, the group project came up with a new metric for percentage of extra base hits. In reading Bill James and examining all the metrics available to enthusiastic baseball fans, it struck me that every fan has an opinion as to the best or greatest hitter ever in baseball, each using the metric that best suited their choices.

Through basic research, I found many such conclusions:

a. Ted Williams was the greatest hitter ever. 1

b. The top five hitters voted online were Ruth, Cobb, Hornsby, Gehrig, Williams. 2

c. The Britannica chose Ruth, Mays, Bonds, Williams, Aaron.3

d. Baseball’s All Time Greatest Hitters shows how statistics can level the playing field and concludes Tony Gwynn is the best.

Just Google “Greatest Hitters in Baseball All-time” and see the many results. Google found 851,000 results when I tried. Many have similar but slightly different conclusions but one thing that all seemed to have in common was their subjective nature. The basic results of (a)-(d) support that.

If raw home runs were the most important metric, the top five all time would be Barry Bonds (762), Hank Aaron (755), Babe Ruth (714), Alex Rodriguez (696), and Willie Mays (660). If hits, then Pete Rose (4256), Ty Cobb (4189), Hank Aaron (3771), Stan Musial (3630) and Tris Speaker (3514) would be the top five. Only Hank Aaron is in the top 5 in both lists. One article argues that Tony Gwynn was the all-time greatest hitter. In the table below, we present the best in the categories of home runs, extra base hits, RBIs, OBP, SLG and OP just for players who have been inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown. It is easy to see why there are disputes.

Table 1. Leaders for Players in the Hall of Fame

Table 2. Leaders for All Players

We could perform this same exercise using newer metrics instead of counting stats, but ultimately the same debate arises. Therefore, in lieu of a single metric, I propose using a multi-attribute decision-making algorithm that allows for the use of many metrics. There is no limit to the number of metrics that might be used in such an analysis. We point out that the metrics chosen for our analysis might not be the metrics chosen by many readers.

In using multi-attribute decision-making (MADM) algorithms, the attributes (in this case the chosen baseball metrics) must have assigned weights where the sum of all weights used must equal one. The MADM algorithms themselves call for weighted metrics. Additionally, there are several weighting algorithms that can be used. Some are subjective and at least one is objective. Subjective weights are, or can be, not much different from just choosing one metric, ordering, and stating the result. However, objective weighting weights allow the data elements themselves to be used in the calculation of the weights. This appears as a more objective method as it allows the user data (as many data metrics as the user desires) to be used to calculate the weights and in a ranking decision-making algorithm. The selection of the players in the analysis, and the choice of metric used, affect the calculation of the weights and in turn the ranking of the players. We choose TOPSIS, the technique of order preference by similarity to the ideal solution, to be our MAMD algorithm because TOPSIS is the only algorithm that allows these attributes (criteria and in our case metrics) to either be selected to be maximized or minimized. For example, home runs could be maximized but perhaps strikeouts, as a metric, should be minimized.

Quantitative analysis is one method that can be used where at least the reader can see the inputs and outputs used for the analysis. The mathematics used and their results are not without fault. However, the assumptions behind the metrics and which players to use or exclude can be questioned and argued just as subjective decisions might be argued among fans. In this article, we suggest a quantitative method—the technique of order performance by similarity to ideal solution (TOPSIS)—and discuss why we think it is has merit to be used in analysis.

1. Multi-attribute Decision Making (MADM)

The two main types of multi-attribute decision methods are (1) simple additive weights (SAW) and (2) the Technique of Order Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution (TOPSIS). These methods require a normalization process of the data and multiplication by weights found by either subjective methods or entropy. TOPSIS has a clear advantage if any of the attributes (metrics) being used should be minimized instead of maximized. As previously mentioned, home runs should be maximized but strikeouts should be minimized. If all attributes being utilized should be maximized both are adequate for analysis. But if we were using stolen bases (SB) and caught stealing (CS), then we would maximize SB and minimize CS.

The Technique of Order Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution (TOPSIS)

TOPSIS was the result of research and work done by Ching-Lai Hwang and Kwangsun Yoon in 1981.4 TOPSIS has been used in a wide spectrum of comparisons of alternatives including: item selection from among alternatives, ranking leaders or entities, remote sensing in regions, data mining, and supply chain operations. TOPSIS is chosen over other methods because it orders the feasible alternatives according to their closeness to an ideal solution.5 Its strength over other decision making methods is that with TOPSIS, we can indicate which metric (attributes) should be maximized and which should be minimized. In all other methods, everything is maximized.

TOPSIS is used in many applications across business, industry, and government. Jeffrey Napier provided some analysis of the use of TOPSIS for the Department of Defense in industrial base planning and item selection.6 For years, the military used TOPSIS to rank order the systems’ request from all the branches within the service for the annual budget review process. MADM and TOPSIS are being taught as part of decision analysis.

So why are we using TOPSIS as our MADM method and entropy as our weighting scheme? We are using TOPSIS because in our selected dataset all variables are not “larger is better.” As mentioned, for strikeouts (SO), we’d prefer a smaller value. Entropy weights allows the data themselves to be used mathematically to calculate the weights and is not biased by subjectivity as are the other weighting schemes methods such as pairwise comparison method. Again, if we were using stolen bases (SB) in our analysis then we would like SB to be maximized and caught stealing (CS) minimized.

TOPSIS Methodology

The TOPSIS process is carried out through the following steps.

Step 1

Create an evaluation matrix consisting of m alternatives (players) and n criteria (metrics), with the intersection of each alternative and criterion given as x_ij, giving us a matrix (X_ij) _mxn.

Step 2

The matrix shown as D above is then normalized to form the matrix R=(R_ij)_mxn,

using the normalization method to obtain the entries,

for i=1,2…,m; j= 1,2,…n

Step 3

Calculate the weighted normalized decision matrix. First, we need the weights. Weights can come from either the decision maker or by computation using entropy.

Step 3a.

Use either the decision maker’s weights for the attributes x₁,x₂,..x_n , pairwise comparisons method, or the entropy weighting scheme, as we use here.

The sum of the weights over all attributes must equal one regardless of the weighting method used.

Step 3b.

Multiply the weights to each of the column entries in the matrix from Step 2 to obtain the matrix, T.

Step 4

Determine the worst alternative (A_w) and the best alternative (A_b) : Examine each attribute’s column and select the largest and smallest values appropriately. If the values imply larger is better (profit) then the best alternatives are the largest values and if the values imply smaller is better (such as cost) then the best alternative is the smallest value.

where,

J₊ = {j = 1,2,…n | j)  associated with the criteria having a positive impact, and

J_{_} = {j = 1,2,…n | j) associated with the criteria having a negative impact.

We suggest that if possible make all entry values in terms of positive impacts.

Step 5

Calculate the L2-distance between the target alternative i and the worst condition A_w

and the distance between the alternative i and the best condition A_b

where d_iw and d_ib are L2-norm distances from the target alternative i to the worst and best conditions, respectively.

Step 6

Calculate the similarity to the worst condition:

S_iw=1 if and only if the alternative solution has the worst condition; and

S_iw=0 if and only if the alternative solution has the best condition.

Step 7

Rank the alternatives according to their value from S_iw (i=1,2,…,m).

Simple Additive Weights (SAW)

SAW is a very straightforward and easily constructed process within MADM methods, also referred to as the weighted sum method.7 SAW is the simplest, and still one of the widest used of the MADM methods. Its simplistic approach makes it easy to use. Depending on the type of the relational data used, we might either want the larger average or the smaller average.

Here, each criterion (attribute) is given a weight, and the sum of all weights must be equal to one. If equally weighted criteria then we merely need to sum the alternative values. Each alternative is assessed with regard to every criterion (attribute). The overall or composite performance score of an alternative is given simply by Equation 1 with m criteria.

It was previously though that all the units in the criteria must be identical units of measure such as dollars, pounds, seconds, etc. A normalization process can make the values unitless. So, we recommend normalizing the data as shown in equation 2:

where (m_ijNormalized) represents the normalized value of m_ij, and P_i is the overall or composite score of the alternative A_i. The alternative with the highest value of P_i is considered the best alternative.

The strengths of SAW are (1) the ease of use and (2) the normalized data allow for comparison across many differing criteria. But with SAW, either larger is always better or smaller is always better. There is not the flexibility in this method to state which criterion should be larger or smaller to achieve better performance. This makes gathering useful data of the same relational value scheme (larger or smaller) essential.

Entropy Weighting Scheme

Shannon and Weaver originally proposed the entropy concept.8 This concept had been highlighted by Zeleny for deciding the weights of attributes.9 Entropy is the measure of uncertainty in the information using probability methods. It indicates that a broad distribution represents more uncertainty than does a sharply-peaked distribution. To determine the weights by the entropy method, the normalized decision matrix we call R_ij is considered. The equation used is

Where k = 1/ln(n) is a constant that guarantees that 0 < e_j < 1. The value of n refers to the number of alternatives. The degree of divergence (d_j) of the average information contained by each attribute is calculated as:

d_j=1-e_j.

The more divergent the performance rating R_ij, for all i & j, then the higher the corresponding d_j the more important the attribute B_j is considered to be.

The weights are found by the equation,

Let’s assume that the criteria were listed in order of importance by a decision maker. Entropy ignores that fact and uses the actual data to compute the weights. Although home runs might be the most important criterion to the decision maker, it might not be the largest weighted criterion using entropy. Using this method, we must be willing to accept these types of results in weights.

Sensitivity Analysis

In the previous work done by Fox and Fox et al. using the pairwise comparison method of obtaining weight, sensitivity analysis was done to determine the effect of changing weights on the ranking of terrorists.10 The decision weights are subject to sensitivity analysis to determine how the affect the final ranking. Sensitivity analysis is essential to good analysis. Additionally, Alinezhad suggests sensitivity analysis for TOPSIS for changing an attribute weight.11 The equation they developed for adjusting weights based upon a single weight change that we used is:

where w_j’ is the future weight of criterion j, w_p the current selected weight to be changed, w_p’ the new value of the selected weight, wj is the current weight of criterion j. This method of doing sensitivity analysis is valid for any chosen weighting scheme.

Another method of sensitivity analysis might be to change the metric used or the baseball players used in the analysis. We accomplished this by first including strikeouts and then excluding strikeouts in our analysis. We also can alter the players used if we are using the entropy weighting methods. Changing players, as well as changing metrics analyzed, changes the weights that are calculated and in turn might change the rank ordering of the players.

Application to Baseball’s Greatest Hitters

We applied these mathematical techniques to baseball’s greatest hitters. We started by taking hitters in the National Baseball Hall of Fame (excluding pitchers and managers). We ran our analysis. Then we added some star retired players and current players: Pete Rose, Barry Bonds, Mark McGwire, Alex Rodriguez, Albert Pujols, Mike Trout, Miguel Cabrera, Sammy Sosa, and Ichiro Suzuki, sourcing their statistics from Baseball-Reference.com.12,13

Data

Based upon reviewers’ comments, we ran several separate analyses with the Hall of Fame players as well as the Hall of Famers including the additional mentioned players. We used standard metrics as the criteria for the initial analysis and then more advanced metrics for the second run of our analysis. 14

Standard Metrics

• G: Games Played
• PA: Plate Appearances
• AB: At Bats
• R: Runs Scored
• H: Hits
• 2B: Doubles Hit
• 3B: Triples Hit
• HR: Home Runs Hit
• RBI: Runs Batted In
• BB: Bases on Balls
• SO: Strikeouts
• BA: Hits/At Bats

Advanced Metrics

• OBA: (H + BB + HBP)/(At Bats + BB + HBP + SF)
• SLG: Total Bases/At Bats or (1B + 2*2B + 3*3B + 4*HR)/AB
• OPS: On-Base + Slugging Averages

In our first analysis, we used the first 11 metrics above. In our second analysis we decided to use percentage of extra base hits (2B+3B+HR/hits), runs, BB, OBA and SLG. Since OPS is the sum of OBA and SLG, we excluded it from either analysis.

Since entropy is a function of the data, we separated our collected data into sets both with only the data partitioned as stated and for our two separate groups of players. First, we performed our analysis for the Hall of Fame players and then we repeat it for these same players but with the additional players added. We used the entropy method to weigh these criteria for the analysis. We did so because we did not want bias to interfere with our weighting scheme as the other methods for obtaining weights are very subjective. Using the entropy weighting scheme as described in section 2.2, we found our weights to use in the analysis. Examining the Hall of Fame set, we used the entropy method of weighting for the 11 criteria. We found these weights for the Hall of Fame players:

We found the weights for the second set of metrics for the Hall of Fame players as:

We present the weights when all our additional players are included with the Hall of Fame players in the analysis.

Larger metric set

Smaller metric set

MADM Model Results

Using our TOPSIS procedures and using “larger is better” for all variables except SO where smaller is better, we found the top Hall of Fame hitters of all time. TOPSIS ranked them in order as: Babe Ruth, Hank Aaron, Willie Mays, Stan Musial, and Lou Gehrig using our larger group of metrics.

The next twenty are:

When we ran the analysis with the second criteria using the MADM method, SAW, because all the metrics used were to be maximized. We found that our top players were:

Note that number one in both approaches among the Hall of Fame players is Babe Ruth.

“What if” Analysis: Other non-HOF Players Included

Next, we included additional players based upon their performance, and not regarding other issues. We included Pete Rose, Barry Bonds, Mark McGwire, Alex Rodriguez, Albert Pujols, Miguel Cabrera, Mike Trout, Sammy Sosa and Ichiro Suzuki. First, we re-compute the entropy weights and then our ranking.

We present the top 20 ranked players using TOPSIS using all the chosen metrics.

The addition of the new players yielded a slightly different set of results but we see Ruth and Aaron are ranked one and two:

We also ran analysis with a smaller number of metrics as mentioned earlier. The Top 25 of all time, including our stars that are not currently in the Hall of Fame, are:

We see that using the smaller list of metrics Barry Bonds computes as first followed by Babe Ruth. The addition of the new players has made a difference in the ranking of baseball’s greatest hitters.

Conclusions

Using entropy as our method to obtain weights, which is an unbiased weighting method, we found Babe Ruth as the greatest hitter in many of our analyses, while Barry Bonds ranked number one using the smaller metric set. Arguments can be made for any of these players being the greatest hitter of all time. By using more than one sabermetric measure, applying weights to the metrics, and applying a MADM method, we can strengthen the argument for the greatest hitter of all time. Depending on the players and metrics in the analysis, we see that ranking might change. This is why the argument continues regarding who is the greatest hitter of all time?

WILLIAM P. FOX is an Emeritus professor at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, CA. He is currently an adjunct professor of mathematics at the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, VA, where he teach applied mathematics courses. He has authored over twenty books, over twenty additional chapters in other books and over a hundred journal articles.

Acknowledgments

I acknowledge and thank Father Gabe Costa, Department of Mathematical Sciences, United States Military Academy for introducing me to sabermetrics and the initial reading and suggestions on this research.

Notes

1 Tim Kurkjian, Obituary of Ted Williams, July 5, 2002, ESPN.com, accessed September 2017. http://www.espn.com/classic/obit/williams_ted_kurkjian.html

2 Ranker.com, “Best Hitters in Baseball History,” crowdranked list, accessed January 2019. http://www.ranker.com/crowdranked-list/best-hitters-in-baseball-history,

3 Britannica.com, “10 Greatest Baseball Players of All Time,” accessed January 2019. http://www.britannica.com/list/10-greatest-baseball-players-of-all-time

4 Ching-Lai Hwang and Kwangsun Yoon, 1981. Multiple attribute decision making: Methods and applications. New York: Springer-Verlag.

5 Jacek Malczewski, “GIS-Based Approach to Multiple Criteria Group Decision-Making.” International Journal of Geographical Information Science – GIS , 10(8), 1996, 955-971.

6 Jeffrey Napier. 1992. Industrial base program item selection indicators analytical enhancements. Department of Defense Pamphlet, DLA-93-P20047.

7 P.C. Fishburn (1967). Additive utilities with incomplete product set: Applications to
priorities and assignments. Operations Research Society of America (ORSA), 15, 537-542

8 Claude Shannon and Warren Weaver. 1949. The Mathematical Theory of Communication, University of Illinois Press.

9 Milan Zeleny. 1982. Multiple Criteria Decision Making. New York: McGraw Hill.

10 William Fox, Bradley Greaver, Leo Raabe, and Rob Burks. 2017. “CARVER 2.0: Integrating Multi-attribute Decision Making with AHP in Center of Gravity Vulnerability Analysis,” Journal of Defense Modeling and Simulation, Published online first, http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1548512917717054

11 Alireza Alinezhad and Abbas Amini, 2011. “Sensitivity Analysis of TOPSIS technique: The results of change in the weight of one attribute on the final ranking of alternatives.” Journal of Optimization in Industrial Engineering, 7(2011), 23-28.

12 Hall of Fame Players Baseball Statistics, https://www.baseball-reference.com/awards/hof_batting.shtml, accessed September 14, 2017.

13 Player statistics pages from Baseball-Reference.com, Mike Trout, Pete Rose, Barry Bonds, Mark McGwire, Alex Rodriguez, Joe Jackson, Albert Pujols, Miguel Cabrera, Ichiro Suzuki, Sammy Sosa.

14 Hall of Fame Batting, https://www.baseball-reference.com/awards/hof_batting.shtml, accessed October 1, 2019.