ROOTS OF THE GAME

Early in the 19th century, athletic clubs formed in America to promote leisure and exercise. Two “fraternities” were spawned from these clubs, the “sporting” fraternity and an offshoot called the “base ball” fraternity. During the 1830s, amateur “town ball” clubs were formed, many in the Northeast. A variation on “town ball” was called the “New York game,” and the earliest set of published game rules, the Knickerbocker Rules, was written on September 23, 1845, by William R. Wheaton, a member of the Knickerbocker club. An early use of the statistical box-score was during a game between the New York Knickerbockers and the New York Nine. (The New York Nine prevailed by a 23–1 score.) In the years that followed, the “New York game” persisted over other forms of “town” ball, largely due to the influence of the fast-growing New York press during the middle of the 19th century. These early amateur games were often followed by elaborate parties. But in Baseball: An Encyclopedia of Popular Culture, Ed Rielly states that “as soon as the New York Knickerbockers organized and started competing against other teams, spectators began betting on the outcome. Betting quickly became a problem, as the chance to win a wager fostered a desire to limit one’s risk by predetermining the outcome.”1 Winning and losing took on a different tone as the stakes, literally, went up.

By the early part of the 1850s, baseball had become increasingly organized. In 1856, the game was christened the “national pastime” in the New York Mercury, a newspaper of the era. In the year that followed, the amateur baseball clubs banded together to form the National Association of Baseball Players.

THE NEW YORK CITY MUTUALS AND THE BEGINNING OF CORRUPTION

After the Civil War, the good will of the game began to fade as amateur teams focused more and more on winning, and owners sought out the best talent and paid them “under the table.” Fixing or “hippodroming” of games fostered predetermined outcomes. In 1865 the first documented report of baseball corruption appeared. Three members of the New York City Mutuals, whose leader at that time was William Magear Tweed, conspired with a gambler to throw a game to the Eckfords of Brooklyn.

TAMMANY HALL, “BOSS” TWEED, AND CORRUPTION

The Society of St. Tammany was initially a fraternal organization run along the lines of a social club, but in the 1830s the Society grew more political in nature. The “hall” in the name was a reference to the headquarters of the organization. “Boss” Tweed became the head of the Tammany Hall political machine in 1863. As a member of many boards and commissions, he controlled political patronage in New York City and was able to ensure the loyalty of voters through the jobs he could create and dispense on city-related projects. The powerful cadre that surrounded Tweed was known as the “Tweed Ring,” and the extent of the corruption fostered by the Ring had never been seen in New York City. They controlled elections by bribery and the fraudulent counting of votes, filling elective offices with their cronies. Office-seekers could not get elected without Tweed’s support. The “Ring” wanted to exercise political power, but they also wanted to enrich themselves at the public expense. One infamous example: in 1858, the city allocated $250,000 to build a new courthouse behind City Hall. Upon completion in 1871, the final tab came to a staggering $12,000,000 with 75 percent of that total used as graft for fraudulently contracted bills. The courthouse stands today—with a recent complete renovation—as a monument to the corruption that Tammany Hall foisted on New York City.

For Tammany, baseball was another avenue for pursuing financial gains. The corruption uncovered in the 1865 Mutuals/Eckfords game was merely the tip of the iceberg.

Henry Chadwick, a journalist whom many consider the “father of baseball,” started writing about the game in 1857. Daniel E. Ginsburg in The Fix Is In noted that “Chadwick was the unquestioned leader in pushing for an end to corruption in baseball. He risked libel suits constantly as he worked to expose gambling related corruption in the game and clean up the sport he loved.”2

THE BEGINNING OF PROFESSIONAL BASEBALL

Even the sterling 1869 barnstorming season across the country by the Cincinnati Red Stockings (not beaten in 64 contests) was touched by the fingers of corruption. Tammany affiliate John Morrissey, leader of the Troy Haymakers and a famous pugilist who won the National Boxing Championship in 1853, was said to have placed a wager of over $50,000 on a game between the undefeated Red Stockings and his Haymakers. According to Ginsburg, Morrissey was so concerned with losing his money that he instructed his team to quit the game if they felt they might lose.3 Sure enough, after Troy had tied the score at 17 in the fifth inning, Troy seized an illegitimate opportunity to walk off the field. Although they forfeited the game, there was no mention of Morrissey having to fork over any cash. A few years later, Morrissey became a member of the anti-Tammany Hall movement.

Steven Riess wrote in Touching Base: Professional Baseball and American Culture in the Progressive Era, “amateur and professional baseball always had close links to Tammany Hall. Several prominent politicians got their start in politics through Tammany sponsored baseball teams.”4 The teams provided a means to attract ambitious, athletically inclined young men to politics. By 1869, Tammany was contributing generously to the upkeep of the Mutuals, who were all on salary, making them a truly professional team. When the New York City Council voted the team $1,500 towards a trip to New Orleans in 1869, Tweed countered with $7,500 from his own pocket, another way to secure votes.

Interest in professional baseball grew, and the first professional organization, The National Association of Professional Base Ball Players, a.k.a. the National Association (NA), was formed at a March 17, 1871, meeting held at Collier’s Café on Broadway and 13th in New York City. The league was run by the players, an undisciplined group with little business acumen, and it lasted only until 1875. John Thorn in Baseball in the Garden of Eden writes, “the low state of the National Association (NA) after the 1875 campaign could be chalked up to rampant corruption and drunkenness, as well as to radically unbalanced competition that permitted Boston to win the championship four years running.”5

The National League was formed at a meeting in the Grand Central Hotel on Broadway, between Bleecker and Bond, on February 2, 1876. William Hulbert, a midwesterner and the self-appointed mastermind behind the transference of the NA to the National League, felt that there was too much corruption in the Eastern teams. Under a ruse to gather representatives from some of the NA clubs, Hulbert claimed that he wanted to discuss some thorny problems that were undermining the game. Ironically, a locked hotel room was the venue for the introduction of the National League.

In 1877 the first major-league scandal took place, involving four ballplayers from the Louisville club. Although two of the players had previous ties with Tammany, there are no hard facts to suggest that Tammany had played a major role. There were more scandals in the ensuing years, but none necessarily perpetrated by Tammany Hall.

THOMAS NAST AND THE FAll OF TWEED AND TAMMANY

Seemingly, Tweed could not be touched. There was one man, however, who felt that Tweed was a detriment to society and had to be stopped. Thomas Nast, cartoonist for Harper’s Weekly, was that man. Nast’s most notable drawings include his rendition of a fat, jolly Santa Claus, as well as the Republican elephant and the Democratic Party’s donkey. But his greatest contribution was his full-bore attack on Tweed and his associates. Thomas Nast was an artist who realized that with his drawings, he could expose Tweed and fight his corrupt politics. “Tweed could not believe that his mighty sword was being taken down by a pen and lamented, ‘I don’t care what the papers say! A lot of people can’t read a single word! But oh, those drawings! Anybody can understand what they mean.”’6 Tweed did what he knew best and tried to buy Nast out for a reported sum of $500,000, to no avail.

Nast made life miserable for Tweed. His initial attempt to sketch him (in September 1868) ironically coincided with The New York Times drawing attention to the corruption of the Tweed Ring and Tammany Hall. Nast would eventually get his sketch and publish his first cartoon focusing on Tweed in April 1870. By June 1871 he would be depicting Governor John Hoffman as a cigar-store “Indian” being pushed by Tweed and his henchmen as a commentary on the fact that Tammny would be backing Hoffman in the 1872 US presidential election. As John Adler reported in Doomed by Cartoon, the day after the cigarstore image appeared, The New York Times called attention to Nast’s latest shot at the Ring. “Harper’s Weekly should be in everybody’s hands. The current number contains one of Nast’s best drawings-a drawing which would alone gain a large reputation for its designer.”7

In September 1870, the Times began attacking Tammany, and by 1871 was in full swing to expose the depth of corruption that existed in Tammany Hall. Edward Robb Ellis in his book, The Epic of New York City: A Narrative History, reported the headline which was the opening salvo against the Tweed Ring and subsequently, Tammany Hall. “THE SECRET ACCOUNTS ….PROOFS OF UNDOUBTED FRAUDS BROUGHT TO LIGHT…. WARRANTS SIGNED BY HALL AND CONNOLY UNDER FALSE PRETENSES.”8

Tweed was finally brought into court in January of 1873, but the trial ended with a hung jury. His second trial later that year was prosecuted much more diligently and Tweed’s cronies were kept out of the jury pool. Ultimately, as told by Ellis, Tweed was found guilty of 102 offenses and sentenced to twelve years in prison but served only one—in living quarters fit for a king. On the day that he was released, he was rearrested on a civil charge and sent to the Ludlow Street jail where he lived in a two-room suite that actually belonged to the warden. Minimum security was the order-of-the-day. Tweed lived the life of Riley. One afternoon in December 1875, accompanied by two security guards, Tweed took a carriage ride to his family’s brownstone on Madison Avenue. Then, in an elaborate getaway scheme which cost him $60,000, he walked out the back door to a waiting wagon which spirited him to a rowboat on the Hudson River. He hid out in the Palisades for three months and was then escorted to Staten Island where he hopped a schooner to the Everglades in Florida. He was picked up by a fishing boat that took him to Cuba where he boarded a ship to cross the Atlantic and landed in Vigo, Spain on September 6, 1876. Unfortunately for Mr. Tweed, he was traced to Spain. Although there were no photographs of Tweed that could identify him, the Spanish authorities amazingly recognized Tweed from a Thomas Nast caricature and turned him over to American authorities. Once back in the Ludlow Street jail, the broken Tweed caught a cold and eventually died of bronchial pneumonia on April 12, 1878. The two Tammany bosses who succeeded Tweed, “Honest John” Kelly through 1886 immediately followed by Richard Croker, brought along their own versions of corruption which were different from Tweed’s but no less damaging. Rev. Charles Parkhurst was a leader in the temperance movement and a longtime social reformer. Oliver Allen, in New York, New York, points out that Parkhurst’s observations, after a personal three-week tour of the Tenderloin (an area of New York City where vice and corruption flourished), persuaded the state legislature in 1894 to initiate an inquiry.9 The Lexow Committee, designed to embarrass Democrats aligned with Tammany, launched a thorough investigation of Tammany’s ties to New York vice and corruption.10 The committee unearthed evidence that the police were engaged in vice operations and were responsible for rigging elections and for police brutality. Another result of the Lexow Committee findings was the defeat of Tammany Hall in the 1894 municipal election. Sensing that the tides were turning against him, Croker resigned and sailed to England where he stayed for three years.

“BIG BILL” DEVERY

Tammany’s grip had been loosened, but the change in regime was not complete, and some of the leaders to rise after Tweed’s ouster also had ties to baseball. One was the corrupt police chief, William “Big Bill” Devery, whose motto was “See, hear and say nothing; eat, drink and pay nothing.” The reform police commissioner in 1895, Teddy Roosevelt (TR), vowed to nab a few upperechelon Tammany members, including Devery, but TR even had to fight members of his own party who were corrupted by the Tammany faction of the opposing party. He lasted only one year as commissioner. (Perhaps this was a blessing in disguise as he went on to become the President of the United States.) Devery eventually became instrumental in bringing an American League baseball team to New York. Ban Johnson, American League president, had been denied a New York team for two years, but Devery would change that. Johnson had brought his Western League to major league status on a par with the National League by offering a cleaner brand of baseball. By its second year of existence, the American League fielded teams in Baltimore, Boston, Chicago, Cleveland, Detroit, Milwaukee, Philadelphia and Washington. But Johnson felt that he desperately needed a New York team in order to survive. Tammany Hall, in control of the city’s real estate, thwarted every attempt on the part of Ban Johnson to establish a suitable site to erect a ball park.

In 1895, Andrew Freedman—a close friend and business partner of Tammany boss Croker—became owner of the New York Giants. As stated by Frank Graham in his book, The New York Giants: An Informal History of a Great Baseball Club, “For eight years Freedman ruled the Giants and almost completely wrecked them. Had he not been restrained he would have wrecked the league as well.”11 Freedman and Croker worked together to block Johnson’s efforts to plant an AL team in New York.

But the unpopular Freedman irritated the other team owners when he attempted to syndicate the game into what would be known as the National League Trust. As Graham further reported, “Common stock would be used in payment for the eight clubs with New York to receive 30 percent, Cincinnati, St. Louis, and Boston, 12 percent; Philadelphia and Chicago 12 percent, Pittsburg 8 percent and Brooklyn 6 percent.”12 Al Spalding, another “father” of baseball and an integral part of its early development, could not stand by and watch this travesty unfold. By way of an improperly held election in the spring of 1902, Spalding bluffed Freedman into thinking that his bold attempt to refashion baseball to fit his own needs had succeeded only in splitting the league wide open and that further measures on his part were bound to fail. As a result of this, Freedman promised to resign as soon as he could find a suitable buyer.

Meanwhile, another faction existed in Tammany Hall that was able to circumvent the efforts of Freedman to block Johnson and the AL. Devery and “Pool Room King” Frank Farrell were able to locate a rocky site for Johnson on Broadway between 165th St. and 168th St. The ballpark on the site would become known as “American League Park,” or more commonly “Hilltop Park.” Farrell and Devery became the first owners of the American League New York franchise that we now know as the New York Yankees. They purchased the Baltimore Orioles on January 9, 1903, for $18,000 and moved the team to New York City.

JACOB RUPPERT

George Ehret’s Hell Gate Brewery had the top-selling beer 1877–1888, with Jacob Ruppert Sr.’s Knickerbocker beer trailing just behind.13 After his son Jacob Ruppert Jr. took over the running of the brewery, as reported by Glenn Stout in Yankees Century, Knickerbocker needed a little push to grab the top spot in the market. Ruppert the younger joined Tammany, and his membership helped put him where he wanted to be: Number One. Knickerbocker was poured in every Tammany held bar in the city, and Ruppert eventually dominated the market.14 Tammany recognized Ruppert’s rise by giving him a spot on the finance committee alongside Andrew Freedman, the man reviled by National League team owners. Ruppert was then tapped by Boss Croker to run for Congress in order to cultivate the much needed and rising German vote. Ruppert followed the Tammany line while serving four terms 1899–1907.

Upon leaving Congress in 1907, Ruppert immersed himself in his brewery business. Stout claimed that “he owned yachts, raced horses, bred dogs and collected exotic animals, jade, porcelain, first editions, and mistresses.” But he always had an interest in owning a baseball team, preferably the New York Giants. Giants’ manager John McGraw introduced Ruppert to civil engineer Captain Tillinghast L’Hommedieu Huston, who made his fortune in the Spanish-American War, and then in Cuba. But the Giants wouldn’t be the team that Ruppert and Huston would acquire.

By 1914 the Highlanders/Yankees had fallen lower and lower in the standings, and Devery and Farrell were experiencing growing tensions in both their business and personal relationships. They were bleeding money, basically through a lack of any business acumen. American League president Ban Johnson, not wanting to see his New York franchise go under, set up a meeting with Farrell, Devery, Huston, and Ruppert to discuss the possibility of selling the franchise. A deal was consummated whereby Tammany Hall’s Bill Devery and Frank Farrell would sell their interests in the New York Yankees to former Tammany Hall Congressman Jacob Ruppert and Cap Huston for the sum of $465,000—quite a windfall from the $18,000 that they had spent on their charter.

By the late 1930s the influence of Tammany was beginning to wane, and the Society was officially disbanded in the 1960s. Jacob Ruppert, for his contributions to the game of baseball and the New York Yankees, was elected to the Hall of Fame in 2012.

TONY MORANTE has been a SABR member since 1995 and a baseball fan since 1949 when his father, an usher at the original Yankee Stadium, brought him to his first game. He started working in Yankee Stadium in 1958 as an usher and came aboard full-time in 1973 in the Group/Season Sales Department. Morante, with the encouragement of George Steinbrenner, instituted the Yankee Stadium Tour program and gave his first tour of the stadium in 1979. He is Director of Tours to this day. He serves as Vice-President of the Bronx County Historical Society and is writing a book about New York baseball.

SOURCES

Samuel Hopkins Adams, Tenderloin (New York: Random House 1959).

John Adler, Doomed by Cartoon (Garden City, NY: Morgan James Publishing LLC, 2008).

Robert F. Burk, Never Just A Game (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina 1994).

Edwin G. Burrows & Mike Wallace, Gotham: A History of New York City to 1898 (New York: Oxford 1898).

Edward Robb Ellis, The Epic of New York City; A Narrative History (New York: MacMillan 1966).

Mark Gallagher, The Yankee Encyclopedia (West Point, NY: Leisure Press 1982).

Daniel E. Ginsburg, The Fix Is In (Jefferson, NC and London: McFarland 1995).

Warren Goldstein, A History of Early Baseball (New York: Barnes & Noble 1989).

Mark Gallegher, The Yankees Encyclopedia (West Point, NY: Leisure Press 1982).

Frank Graham, The New York Giants (Carbondale, Il., Southern Illinois University Press 2002).

Christopher Gray, New York Streetscapes (New York: Abrams, Inc. 2003).

Syd Hoff, Boss Tweed and the Man Who Drew Him (Syd Hoff 1978).

Noel Hynd, The Giants of the Polo Grounds (New York: Doubleday 1988).

Seymour J. Mandlebaum, Boss Tweed’s New York (Chicago: Elephant Paperbacks 1990).

J. D. McCabe, Jr., Lights and Shadows of New York Life (New York: Farrar, Strauss and Giroux 1970).

David Nemec, The Great Encyclopedia of 19th Century Major League Baseball (New York: Donald J. Fine Books 1997).

George Washington Plunkitt, Honest Graft (St. James, NY: Brandywine Press 1997).

Steven A. Riess, Touching Base (Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois: 1999).

William Ryczek, When Johnny Came Sliding Home (Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Co. 1998)

M.R. Werner, Tammany Hall (Garden City, NY: Country Life Press 1932).

Richard Zacks, Island of Vice (New York: Doubleday 2012).

Notes

1 Edward J. Rielly, Baseball: An Encyclopedia of Popular Culture (Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 2000), 110.

2 Daniel E. Ginsburg, The Fix Is In (Jefferson, NC and London: McFarland, 1995), 5.

3 Ginsburg, 10.

4 Steven A. Riess, Touching Base (Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois: 1999), 55.

5 John Thorn, Baseball in the Garden of Eden (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2011).

6 Syd Hoff, Boss Tweed and the Man Who Drew Him (Syd Hoff, 1978), 36.

7 John Adler, Doomed by Cartoon (Morgan James Publishing, LLC, 2008), 136.

8 Edward Robb Ellis, The Epic of New York City: A Narrative History (New York: MacMillan 1966), 348.

9 Oliver Allen, New York, New York (New York: Macmillan Publishing, 1990), 180.

10 Allen, New York, New York, 180.

11 Frank Graham, The New York Giants (Carbondale, IL: G.P. Putnam, 2002).

12 Graham, The New York Giants, 25-26.

13 Christopher Gray, “Where the streets smelled like beer,” The New York Times, March 26, 2012, RE6. www.nytimes.com/2012/03/25/realestate/upper-east-side-streetscapes-empires-of-rival-brewers.html?_r=0.

14 Glenn Stout and Richard Johnson, Yankees Century (New York: Houghton Mifflin 2002), 67.

The majority of Chicago-set baseball films have included (and occasionally showcased) the Cubs. Among them are Joe E. Brown’s Elmer, the Great (1933) and Alibi Ike (1935), the Grover Cleveland Alexander biopic The Winning Team (1952), the Dizzy Dean biopic The Pride of St. Louis (1952), and the family comedy-fantasy Rookie of the Year (1993). Sometimes, a fictional Chicago club is depicted. One example is Boulevardier from the Bronx (1936), an eight-minute Warner Bros. cartoon featuring the exploits of the Chicago Giants, whose star pitcher—a rooster—is named Dizzy Dan. (At the time, Dizzy Dean still was pitching in St. Louis; he did not join the Cubs until 1938.)

The town’s other big league nine has not been completely shut out onscreen. But it should surprise no one that two of the highest-profile Chisox films spotlight the Black Sox Scandal, and are worth comparing because they offer vastly different points of view. Eight Men Out (1988), based on the Eliot Asinof book, is one movie about baseball history that does not glorify its subjects. The Sox are portrayed in ensemble style as a rowdy, hard-playing bunch, easily the best major league team of the era. As depicted by director-writer John Sayles, however, they are also victims, oppressed as much by jowly Charles “The Old Roman” Comiskey (Clifton James), the team’s penny-pinching owner, as by underworld kingpin Arnold Rothstein (Michael Lerner).

Meanwhile, Field of Dreams (1989), adapted from W.P. Kinsella’s novel, deals with the Black Sox from a wholly different perspective. Field of Dreams is the It’s a Wonderful Life of baseball movies, a wistful fantasy about love, hope, and the timelessness of the game. Here, the defamed ballplayers are restored to their glory when their spirits come to play in an eternal, pastoral ball field. Their sins are not dramatized and, consequently, an idealized vision of American innocence is recaptured.

Eight Men Out is deeply cynical. At one point, Eddie Cicotte (David Strathairn) observes: “I always figured it was talent made a man big, you know. … I mean, we’re the guys they come to see. Without us, there ain’t a ballgame … but look at who’s holding the money and look at who’s facing a jail cell. Talent don’t mean nothing.” A heckler yells at Shoeless Joe: “Hey, Jackson! Can you spell ‘cat’?” Jackson (D.B. Sweeney) retorts: “Hey, Mister! Can you spell ‘shit’?”

In the nostalgia-tinged Field of Dreams, however, Shoeless Joe (Ray Liotta) utters “Man, I did love this game. I’d have played for food money” and “I used to love traveling on the trains from town to town. The hotels … brass spittoons in the lobbies, brass beds in the rooms. It was the crowd, rising to their feet when the ball was hit deep. Shoot, I’d play for nothing!”

Various non-baseball films also reference the scandal. In The Godfather: Part II (1974), gangster Hyman Roth (Lee Strasberg) declares: “I loved baseball ever since Arnold Rothstein fixed the World Series in 1919.” F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel The Great Gatsby, filmed four times (in 1926, 1949, 1974, and 2013) and as a 2000 made-for-TV movie, includes the character Meyer Wolfsheim, said to have fixed the series and clearly based on Rothstein. In the 1926 film, the character is named “Charles Wolf.” In the 1949 version, he is “Myron Lupus.”

The disparate depictions of real-life ballplayers in Eight Men Out and Field of Dreams serve to emphasize that films featuring real-life individuals offer the subjective views of their creators. They also usually present skewed representations of history. Sometimes, inaccuracies result from sloppy scholarship; more often, they exist to keep the storyline lean and comprehensible.2 Both are the case in The Stratton Story, a biopic about White Sox hurler Monty Stratton.

The real Stratton, a Texas farm boy, was in 1937–38 a promising major league pitcher. But in November 1938, while target-shooting on his mother’s farm, he shot at a rabbit and his revolver accidently discharged while returning it to its holster. The bullet severed the femoral artery in his right leg, gangrene soon set in, and the leg was amputated above the knee.3

Though Stratton played for the Pale Hose in the 1930s—specific years and dates are not cited in the screenplay—The Stratton Story, made in 1949, is more a reflection of post-World War II America. Douglas Morrow, who earned an Academy Award for the film’s story and scripted it with Guy Trosper, had attended a game at the Sawtelle Soldiers Home, a Southern California facility for disabled GIs. “Seeing the armless and legless spectators, Morrow had the desire to find a film story that would give them hope,” wrote film industry reporter-biographer Bob Thomas. “He thought the story should be divorced from the war. Then he remembered Monte [sic] Stratton.”4

Stratton is played in the film by James Stewart. The ex-big leaguer was the film’s technical advisor and coached Stewart on the art of pitching. He noted that the actor “did a great job playing me, in a picture which I figure was about as true to life as they could make it.”5 Despite this hype, however, The Stratton Story is loaded with misinformation. In an effort to ensure narrative clarity, none of Stratton’s siblings are present onscreen and only two of the five seasons he spent in Chicago are represented. The hurler played in the minors in Omaha and Galveston (in 1934) and St. Paul (1935), yet only Omaha is cited in the script.

Other changes are historical revisions designed to make the scenario more acceptable to viewers. In the film, Stratton shoots himself with a hunting rifle rather than a revolver. The film ends with his return to the sport in a Houston exhibition pitting the “Southern All-Stars” and “Western All-Stars,” but he really did so in a White Sox-Cubs charity game, held in Comiskey Park, organized to raise money for him.

Other “facts” also reflect the 1940s rather than 1930s. One example: Stratton’s comeback game took place in 1939. In the film, his mound opponent is Gene Bearden, who did not pitch in the majors until 1947. The last batter he faces is Johnny Lindell, whose first big league appearance was a one-game looksee in 1941. Still others are even less explicable. When Stratton is recalled from the minors, a Clark Gable-Lana Turner film, Honky Tonk, is screening in a movie theatre. The film was released in 1941, three years after Stratton threw his last major league pitch.

Perhaps the most egregious error involves Stratton’s major league debut on June 2, 1934. This was his lone big league appearance that season, coming against the Detroit Tigers, and Stratton surrendered four hits and two runs in 3 1/3 innings. Stratton entered the game with two outs in the sixth inning, relieving Phil Gallivan. Hank Greenberg had just walked and promptly stole second on Stratton. Jo-Jo White then lined out to left field.6

In The Stratton Story, the hurler comes in to pitch in relief against the New York Yankees. “Dickey, DiMaggio, Gehrig. You can’t power past them, kid,” Barney Wile (Frank Morgan), Stratton’s fictional onscreen mentor, advises the hurler. “If you’re gonna get by,” Wile adds, “you gotta out-think ‘em, cross ‘em up, give ‘em what they don’t expect.” (According to the Chicago Tribune, the real-life Wile was “Jockie Tate, a former Texas leaguer, who always had a blank contract handy in case something good suddenly turned up.”)7

Wile’s advice may be sound, but what follows is pure fiction. The first batter Stratton faces is Bill Dickey (appearing as himself). The Bombers’ backstop homers on Stratton’s first pitch. (Stratton allowed no round-trippers in his actual debut.) Also included in the sequence is stock footage of Joe DiMaggio belting a dinger and circling the bases. There is a catch, however: The Yankee Clipper did not debut in the majors until 1936.

So Monty Stratton’s real debut was not nearly as disastrous as depicted in The Stratton Story. The question is: Why rewrite history? Simply put, having Stratton face Hall of Famer Dickey and the New York nine is more dramatically potent than having him pitch to Jo-Jo White.

The Yankees’ success also allowed for some repartee that surely would have delighted George Steinbrenner. Stratton tells his wife, “Honey, do you know there’s a tailor in Chicago that gives a suit of clothes away to any ballplayer that hits the scoreboard in center field? As of yesterday the New York Yankees are the best-dressed team in baseball.”

In June 1948, during the film’s pre-production, Roy Rowland—assigned to direct The Stratton Story—shot footage of the White Sox at Comiskey Park. By the time filming began, Sam Wood had replaced Rowland. Meanwhile, the Hollywood Reporter announced that Gregory Peck would be playing Stratton while Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, the studio producing the film, hyped Van Johnson for the part. But in the end, Stewart got the role.

The studio also reported that 72 pro ballplayers appeared onscreen. Many were at one point or another affiliated with Chicago teams; the list begins with Merv Shea, Hank Sauer, Peanuts Lowrey, Catfish Metkovich, Gene Mauch, Tuck Stainback, Lou Novikoff, Bobby Sturgeon, Steve Mesner, Lou Stringer, Red Kress, Al Zarilla, and Gus Zernial. Most significantly, Jimmy Dykes, who became the Sox player-manager fifteen games into the 1934 season and helmed the team into the 1946 campaign, appears as himself. Of Stratton’s teammates, Ted Lyons has the most screen time, but the real Lyons is not in the film. Instead, he is played by actor Bruce Cowling.8 Legend has it that Ronald Reagan, who three years later played Pete Alexander in The Winning Team, desperately wanted the Stratton role. But he was under contract with Warner Bros., which refused to lend him to MGM.9

Across the years, other real-life Chicago ballplayers have appeared onscreen. The Giants-White Sox Tour (1914) is the first notable feature-length documentary to spotlight big leaguers. Variety, the motion picture trade publication, described it as a “long reeled picture of the baseball players’ trip around the world the past winter… with here and there snatches of a baseball game played between the natives and the teams in foreign countries. The well-known ballplayers who went along are shown individually at different times, with Germany Schaefer always in the foreground whenever the camera was working…”10 (Schaefer had played for the Chicago Orphans [aka the Cubs] in 1901 and 1902.)

Some onscreen Chicago ballplayers are more obscure: Frank Shellenback, Ray French, and Smead Jolley had small roles in Alibi Ike; Shellenback also appeared in Joe E. Brown’s Fireman, Save My Child (1932). Others are Hall of Famers; Ernie Banks has appeared in over a dozen feature films, television movies, and television series. (He was billed as “Steamer Fan” in Pastime [1990], a baseball film, and played a cabbie in a 1985 Hill Street Blues episode.) A highlight reel of other Cooperstown inductees with Chicago connections begins with Rube Waddell, who pitched for the Chicago Orphans in 1901 and appeared as himself in the documentary shorts Rube Waddell and the Champions Playing Ball with the Boston Team (1902) and Game of Base Ball (1903); Leo Durocher, who managed the Cubs from 1966–72 and was seen in Whistling in Brooklyn (1943), The Errand Boy (1961), and such TV series as Mister Ed, The Munsters, and The Beverly Hillbillies; and Frank Thomas, who played The Rookie in Mr. Baseball (1992).11

Some films have actually featured the ballparks themselves. In this regard, Wrigley Field far outweighs Old Comiskey Park and its successor as onscreen locations or references. (Wrigley Field Chicago should not be confused with Wrigley Field in Los Angeles, built in 1925. Besides serving as a Pacific Coast League park, it was a playground for exhibition games featuring Tinseltown celebs. Countless films and TV shows were shot there, from the Babe Ruth feature Babe Comes Home [1927] through “The Mighty Casey,” a 1960 Twilight Zone episode, the Home Run Derby TV show, and “Herman the Rookie,” a 1965 installment of The Munsters.)12

An infinitesimal number of films feature on-location images of Old Comiskey. But one—a non-baseball film—is extra-special. Only the Lonely (1991) includes a sequence shot not long after the 1990 season, just prior to the park’s demolition. The hero is a Chicago cop (John Candy) who shares his first date with the woman he is courting by taking her to Old Comiskey, where they share an on-field picnic.

The then-new ball yard briefly appears, but the focus is on the soon-to-disappear park, which is paid homage via the line, “Boy, it’s a shame they’re gonna tear this all down.” The sequence reportedly was filmed on a Friday, with the demolition beginning the following week. Jacolyn J. Baker, an Only the Lonely location manager, described it as “a special night,” adding: “Everybody knew that this was going to be the last time anybody would be in Comiskey Park… In between takes, people were playing catch on the field. You felt that this was about to be taken away. It was really special.”13

Wrigley Field’s iconic status has more than occasionally been celebrated onscreen. The Chicago location of While You Were Sleeping (1995), a Sandra Bullock-Bill Pullman romantic comedy-drama, is established via a series of city landmarks. One, of course, is The Friendly Confines, as much a symbol of its town as Yankee Stadium is to New York. In Sleepless in Seattle (1993), baseball is a byword for romance, a loving family, and bliss. As the film opens, Sam Baldwin (Tom Hanks), a Chicago architect, has just lost his wife to cancer. As Sam mourns the loss of his beloved, there is a split-second flashback to a memory of a happier time as he, his late wife, and their young son pose outside Wrigley Field.

The first onscreen image in The Break-Up (2006) is a long shot of Wrigley during a game. The second is the red-and-white Wrigley sign. Die-hard Cubs fan Gary Grobowski (Vince Vaughn) is in the stands, and he rests his face in his hands in agony as a fly ball drops between three Cubs fielders. His pal Johnny O (Jon Favreau), who is garbed in White Sox regalia, laughs hysterically.

One of the more celebrated Wrigley references occurs in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off (1986), in which the title character (Matthew Broderick), a high school senior, cons most of the world into thinking he is deathly ill so that he can skip school. Ferris is joined by his girlfriend and best pal and the trio spends a day enjoying Chicago’s amenities. How could the afternoon pass without a Wrigley visit?

Ferris’ main nemesis is Ed Rooney (Jeffrey Jones), the pompous school dean determined to bust him. Rooney happens to be inside a pizza parlor and beside a TV set on which the Cubs contest is being broadcast. The home nine are in the field, the inimitable voice of Harry Caray notes that Lee Smith is on the mound, and the unnamed batter hits a long foul ball into the leftfield stands. Who do you suppose nabs it? None other than Ferris Bueller! But Rooney is oblivious. He asks the score and is told “nothing-nothing.” His doltishness is ever-apparent by his next question: “Who’s winning?” The not-amused pizza man tells him, “The Bears.”

Not all screen characters seeing a live Cubs game actually do so inside the park. About Last Night… (1986), a romantic drama based on David Mamet’s play Sexual Perversity in Chicago, is framed by softball games in Grant Park during successive summers in which Danny (Rob Lowe), the hero, and Debbie (Demi Moore), the heroine, meet and then become reacquainted after breaking up. In between, they watch a Cubs game not from Wrigley but from a nearby rooftop, where they can be alone. About Last Night… also features a peek into what some women might discuss at ballgames. Debbie and her pal Joan (Elizabeth Perkins) are chatting, and Debbie observes: “That second baseman’s got a really nice ass.” To which Joan responds: “I refuse to go out with a man whose ass is smaller than mine.”

In Hardball (2001), aimless Conor O’Neill (Keanu Reeves) finds direction in coaching pre-teen Little Leaguers from the Cabrini-Green housing project. At one point, Conor escorts the kids to a Cubs game. The boys are close enough to the field to attract the attention of what then was a premier Cubbie. “Yo, check it out,” one of the boys yells to his pals. “That’s Sammy Sosa over there … right there.” Alas, another boy points out that it is not Sammy, and the Sosa spotter is dissed by his pals. But then he spots the real Sosa, garbed in a warm-up jacket and wielding a bat. Quickly, the kids grab Sammy’s attention. He smiles, kisses his fingers, moves them to his heart, and shoots them a “V” for victory. The music swells on the soundtrack, and the boys are in baseball heaven.

Not only is The Blues Brothers (1980) among the higher-profile Chicago-set films of recent decades, it also features a baseball reference that is the equivalent of a grand-slam homer. At one point, the brothers Jake (John Belushi) and Elwood (Dan Aykroyd) elude the police but are not trouble-free; Jake points out to Elwood, “Those cops have your name, your address …” But not to worry. As Elwood explains: “They don’t got my address. I falsified my renewal. I put down 1060 West Addison.”

Surely, those cops are not real Chicagoans; if they were, they would not need Elwood Blues to tell them: “1060 West Addison. That’s Wrigley Field.”

ROB EDELMAN teaches film history at the University at Albany. He authored “Great Baseball Films” and “Baseball on the Web,” and, with his wife Audrey Kupferberg, “Meet the Mertzes,” a double biography of “I Love Lucy’s” Vivian Vance and famed baseball fan William Frawley. A frequent contributor to “Base Ball: A Journal of the Early Game,” he has written articles on baseball and pop culture for many publications.

Notes

1. J. Weintraub, “Why They Call It the Second City,” Chicago Reader, July 29, 1993.

2. Rob Edelman, “The Winning Team: Fact and Fiction in Celluloid Biographies,” The National Pastime, Number 26, 2006.

3. “Stratton’s Leg Amputated Above Knee,” Chicago Tribune, November 29, 1938.

4. Bob Thomas, “Hollywood Highlights.” Spokane Daily Chronicle, February 24, 1948.

5. “Monty Stratton, 70, Pitcher Who Inspired Movie, Is Dead,” The New York Times, September 30, 1982.

6. www.retrosheet.org.

7. Irving Vaughan, “Plowboy to Mound Ace Is Story of Stratton’s Career,” Chicago Tribune, November 29, 1938.

8. Patricia King Hanson, Executive Editor, American Film Institute Catalog of Motion Pictures Produced in the United States, Feature Films, 1941–1950, Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: University of California Press, 1999.

9. “Monty Stratton, 70, Pitcher Who Inspired Movie, Is Dead,” The New York Times, September 30, 1982.

10. Rob Edelman, “The Baseball Film to 1920,” Base Ball: A Journal of the Early Game, Volume 1, Number 1, 2007.

11. www.imdb.com.

12. www.wikipedia.org.

13. Michael Corcoran, Arnie Bernstein, Hollywood on Lake Michigan, Chicago: Chicago Review Press, 2013.

This actor-baseball connection is no twentieth-century phenomenon. It dates from the last decades of the nineteenth century, prior to the dawn of the motion picture (not to mention the popularity of radio and television). Back then, the best-known American actors were New York-centric stage stars: They may have toured the provinces, but they always came home to Manhattan. And more than a few were fervent sports fans. “Many actors are fond of athletic enjoyments,” observed the New York Dramatic Mirror in 1889. “The natural game has no stauncher worshippers than those of its devotees that are connected with the stage.”1

Two such fan-atics were De Wolf Hopper and Digby Bell. Not only were they best pals and acclaimed entertainers: They also predated Tallulah Bankhead as fervent New York Giants devotees. The duo regularly attended Giants games; they and other late-nineteenth-century notables were members in good standing of “The High and Mighty Order of Baseball Cranks of Gotham,” a group that inhabited their own section in the Polo Grounds grandstand. Indeed, in his 1927 memoir, Hopper noted that “Digby Bell had converted me to baseball. … We were at the Polo Grounds every free afternoon.”2 They also followed the team on road trips and palled around with players. One of endless examples: On April 21, 1889, the New York Times reported that, on the previous day, Edward “Ned” Williamson, “the popular short stop of the Chicago Club,” arrived in New York and was feted at a supper by restaurateur Nick Engel. Among those present were Hopper, Bell, and a blend of baseball folk, entertainers, and civic figures.3

Hopper and Bell also were acknowledged baseball experts. In a review of A Ball Player’s Career, a reminiscence penned by Cap Anson in 1900, an unnamed writer began his critique by noting, “Joy untold will burst into the hearts of thousands of lovers of the National game when they learn that ‘Pop’ Anson has written a book. Who knows more about baseball than he? Why, not even Digby Bell or De Wolf Hopper.”4 Thirty-eight years later, New York Times columnist John Kieran dubbed the duo “as rabid a pair of fans as ever rooted home a run or roasted an umpire.”5

Legend has it that Hopper and Bell were even partially responsible for dubbing the team the Giants. Some sources claim that the name caught on in June 1885 when Jim Mutrie, the team’s manager, referred to his players as “My big fellows! My Giants!” after an extra-inning triumph over the Philadelphia Phillies. Others note that Mutrie might have employed the name earlier that season. However, in 1936, Horace C. Stoneham, the team’s president, declared that the nickname was directly related to Hopper and Bell. An “editorial note” printed in the New York Times claimed that, upon arriving home from a successful road trip in 1883, the actors were among a group of fans who told Mutrie that the team had played “like giants.”6

*****

The lives of Digby Bell and De Wolf Hopper reflect on both the American theater and the baseball world during the last two decades of the nineteenth century. Bell was born in Milwaukee in 1849 and died in Miss Alston’s Sanitarium on West 61st Street in Manhattan 68 years later. He won fame as an actor-comedian who, as noted in his New York Times obituary, was “one of the best known of American light opera singers. Some of his best known roles were in the operas of Gilbert and Sullivan.”7 But baseball was never far from his thoughts. On September 12, 1888, the Times reported that Bell was in excellent spirits. Boccaccio, an opera featuring the actor, had just opened at Wallack’s Theatre and was a “pronounced success.” The paper noted that Bell “was thinking how pleasant it was not to have anything new to study, no rehearsals, and nothing more serious to worry about than an occasional defeat of the Giants, for he is a baseball crank of the first magnitude. …”8

The year before, Bell had traveled with the team to Boston. Upon returning, he observed, “I never saw the boys play better in my life. They hit the ball hard, ran the bases like sprinters, and their fielding – well, it was just superb.” He added, “Don’t I wish that De Wolf Hopper had been in Boston! Why, he would just go into ecstasies if he saw the manner in which the Giants handled [King] Kelly and his eight shadows.” Bell then went on to offer a detailed description of the “unjust” decision-making on the part of “Umpire Sullivan.”9

Hopper, who was born in New York City in 1858, was described in his 1935 New York Times obit as the “noted musical comedian, whose career on the stage extended into the youthful memories of the oldest theatregoers …”10 The fifth of his six wives was Hedda Hopper, the actress and gossip columnist of note; William Hopper, their offspring, was best known for playing private detective Paul Drake on the long-running Perry Mason TV series. But Hopper’s lasting fame was linked to his countless renderings over a 45-year timespan of “Casey at the Bat,” the Ernest Lawrence Thayer classic. He first performed “Casey” at Wallack’s Theatre on August 14, 1888, less than a month before Bell’s Boccaccio played that venue. The actor then was appearing with the McCaull Opera Company in Prince Methusalem – both he and Bell were McCaull regulars – and Hopper recited the poem during the second act to amuse the New York Giants and Chicago White Stockings players who were in attendance as guests of the management. (Coincidentally, one noteworthy winning streak ended just as Hopper debuted “Casey at the Bat.” Earlier that day, the White Stockings bested Tim Keefe by a 4-2 score, thus handing the Giants star hurler his first loss after 19 straight victories.) 

Hopper’s “Casey” connection was not limited to the stage. In 1916 he starred onscreen in Casey at the Bat, a feature-length drama that is an extension of the poem. The actor plays Casey, a grocery clerk and “the baseball hero of Mudville,” who is devoted to his niece (May Garcia). On the day of an important game against Frogtown, she injures herself while climbing a tree and he refuses to leave her side. The yells of the fans persuade Casey to come to the rescue of his team in the ninth inning, but he strikes out as he notices a messenger in the ballpark who he thinks has arrived with bad tidings about the child.11

Happily, there is a filmed record of Hopper actually reciting “Casey.” In 1922 he did so in a DeForest Phonofilm, utilizing the sound-on-film technology developed by Theodore Case, and the result is a fascinating, unintentionally funny curio. Hopper, garbed in a tuxedo, a slightly askew bowtie, and the most obvious hairpiece, emerges from behind a curtain. “I am very glad that ‘Casey at the Bat’ has been asked for,” he tells the camera, boastfully adding that if he “should forget a line or two here or there … most anyone could prompt me.” He then recites the poem, becoming so involved in its emotion that his eyes close and pop open at the appropriate dramatic moments. Hopper orates as if he is trying to reach the patron in the last row of a theater balcony; back in 1922, sound-on-film was revolutionary and actors knew nothing of playing down to the camera. But to say that Hopper chews the curtain behind him is no understatement. He trills his r’s and wr’s; at the finale, as he describes how there is no joy in Mudville, he is practically bawling. After completing the recitation, Hopper bows slightly, smiles, and disappears behind the curtain.12

But Hopper’s love of baseball transcended his fame as the premier “Casey” interpreter. At his death, he was performing in Kansas City, Missouri, despite his failing health and, as reported in the New York Times on September 24, 1935, “A strange rounding out of fate appeared in the actor’s last words, which referred to his interest in baseball. … At 11 o’clock last night Mr. Hopper had insisted upon sitting up in bed to smoke a pipe while he looked over the sports pages of a newspaper. Physicians insisted that he needed a rest and tried to persuade him to go to sleep. But he waved them aside with a characteristic gesture. ‘See you tomorrow, Doc,’ he said. ‘I never sleep until 3 A.M. anyway. Run along while I see what the (St. Louis) Cards did.’” The following morning, a nurse discovered that Hopper had died in his sleep.13

In an homage to Hopper published in the paper, it was noted that by 1888 the actor “had been a baseball fan for years, had spent every free afternoon at the game and had with Digby Bell put on an annual Sunday night benefit for the local team.”14 Certainly, the duo was not the first to entertain entire ballclubs. For example, on July 16, 1877, the Boston and Chicago nines were in the audience at Chicago’s Adelphi Theatre. On May 5, 1884, the Grand Rapids team was on hand for a performance of Iolanthe in Grand Rapids; the following evening, they were joined by the Muskegon team for a performance of Olivette in Muskegon. But Hopper and Bell were the first to do so regularly.

In their presentations, they often concocted baseball-related entertainment. Such was the case when Hopper debuted his “Casey” recitation. Another example: On October 15, 1888, the New York Times reported that Hopper and Bell were among the organizers of a “roaring benefit” at the Star Theatre for the New York nine, which had just been crowned “League champions of 1888.” “Enthusiastic patrons of the pastime willingly paid $5 and $10 for seats,” the paper reported, adding, “It was estimated that the benefit would net the players between $4,000 and $5,000.” Some of the era’s top actors performed, and many of the numbers were baseball-related. “De Wolf Hopper and Harry Kernell entertained the audience in their own peculiar way for not less than half an hour,” the Times observed, “and the former made some felicitous remarks about the national game.” The finale, featuring Hopper, Bell, and British-American actress/contralto Laura Joyce Bell, Digby’s second wife, was “a comic baseball scene. Digby Bell, wearing a bird cage for a mask, a washboard for a protector, and boxing gloves, stood behind a china plate, where Laura Joyce Bell gracefully wielded a bat and waited eagerly for Hopper, standing in a low-neck dry goods box, to pitch. The scene was irresistibly comic.”15

And still another: On June 10, 1891, the Times reported, “Friday will be baseball night at Palmer’s Theatre. Manager Mutrie of the Giants and Capt. Anson of the Chicago club have accepted an invitation from Manager Harry Askin of the ‘Tar and Tartar’ company and Digby Bell for that night.” The paper added that “Mr. Sydney Rosenfeld and Digby Bell in collaboration have fixed up a lot of bright lines sparkling with diamond dust, so that the players will feel quite at home. Digby Bell will also recite his poem, ‘The Boy on the Fence’…”16 (Various sources list alternate titles for Bell’s creation. Some call it “The Boy on the Left Field Fence.” In 1909 Bell cut an Edison recording titled “The Tough Kid on the Right Field Fence.” It was hyped in The Edison Phonograph Monthly for its “realistic baseball talk indulged in by the youngster from a ‘deserved’ seat on the right field fence. He tells the home team how to play the game and what he thinks of them when their playing isn’t up to his standard. The Record ought to be a real treat to everyone who understands the language of our national game.”17 The following year, Bell recorded a second baseball ditty: “The Man Who Fanned Casey.” And yet another was “A Baseball Monologue.”)

Hopper and Bell were thrilled whenever their Giants copped what then was the equivalent of a World Series victory. In 1894 the Giants bested the Baltimore nine to win the Temple Cup, which was presented to the team in a ceremony at the Broadway Theatre. The venue was decorated with bunting, flags, pennants, and other baseball-linked items. The New York Times reported on October 11 that Hopper, Bell, and “a few other cranks have interested themselves sufficiently to undertake the distribution of seats and boxes for the occasion. Yesterday Messrs. Hopper and Bell astonished the members of the Stock Exchange by appearing in their midst. In the interest of the cause three choice boxes were sold for $100 each, and seats in the orchestra were readily bought, the brokers paying $5 each for them.” The proceeds were divided among the Giants players.18

During this period, newspapers featured accounts of the efforts of Hopper, Bell, and others to organize baseball-related benefits for ailing colleagues. On May 25, 1886, two actor-nines – one consisting of comedians and the other of tragedians – battled each other in the Polo Grounds in what the New York Times described as “a match … for the benefit of the family of the demented playwright, Bartley Campbell.” Playing for the comedians were Hopper, Burr McIntosh (“a new and handsome leading man [with] a record as a heart wrecker”), Francis Wilson (“the funny man in ‘Ermine’” and later the first president of Actors Equity), and Robert C. Hilliard (“the Adonis of Brooklyn society”); the tragedian nine consisted of dramatic actors and stage managers. McIntosh, a former Princeton University sprinter who a quarter-century later would play Squire Bartlett onscreen in D.W. Griffith’s Way Down East, was described as “the best ball player in either of the teams, and he opened the scoring with a home run which gladdened the hearts of the ladies and which made the gentlemen envious.” Additionally, three kegs of beer were placed near third base. All ballplayers who made it to third were encouraged to take a swig of the brew. The five-inning contest ended with the comedians on top, 19-7.19

Then, as reported in the Times on July 31, 1887, a “game of baseball has been arranged by members of the theatrical profession at present in the city, to take place at the Polo Grounds Thursday, Aug. 4, for the benefit of the popular soubrette, Miss Rachel Booth, whose illness during the past season has so seriously interfered with the fulfillment of her business engagements.” The “nines, umpires, and scorers” were selected from a long list of “well-known actors,” among them Hopper, Bell, Hilliard, William Hoey, umpire-turned-actor Frank Lane, and Maurice Barrymore, father of John, Lionel, and Ethel.20 And then on September 7, 1888, Hopper and Bell participated in a Polo Grounds contest pitting actors and journalists, which the Times labeled “one of the funniest games of ball in the annals of American history.” Hopper manned first base; his “long frame was attired in a loud red-and-yellow striped bathing suit, a life preserver, a pair of boxing gloves, and a straw bonnet, (which) would have made the veriest pessimist believe there was something worth laughing at in life after all.” Bell, meanwhile, was garbed “in his ‘Black Hussar’ schoolboy suit” and “pitched in the English bowling style.” The game was a benefit for Carl Rankin, a well-known minstrel who was terminally ill; he passed away two months later.21

Using time-lapse photography, the film shows the demolition of the famous Star Theatre. Judging from the various exposures, the work must have gone on for a period of approximately thirty days. The theater opened in 1861 as “Wallack’s Theatre,” and was re-christened the “Star” in 1883. It was well known for it’s excellent productions, and a number of celebrated actors and actresses worked there, among them Ellen Terry. The celebrated English actor Henry Irving made his first stage appearance in America at the Star. Using time-lapse photography, the film shows the demolition of the famous Star Theatre. Judging from the various exposures, the work must have gone on for a period of approximately thirty days. The theater opened in 1861 as “Wallack’s Theatre,” and was re-christened the “Star” in 1883. It was well known for it’s excellent productions, and a number of celebrated actors and actresses worked there, among them Ellen Terry. The celebrated English actor Henry Irving made his first stage appearance in America at the Star.

*****

It was during this period that show folk were banding together to form organizations of various types and for various purposes. In 1874 a group of actors established the Lambs Club, a social club; Hopper served as its president from 1900 to 1902. In 1888 Edwin Booth founded The Players, for the purpose of “the promotion of social intercourse between the representative members of the dramatic profession and the kindred professions of literature, painting, sculpture and music, and the patrons of the arts.”22 Hopper and Bell were among those involved with the White Rats of America, a male-only labor union formed in 1900, which lobbied for actors rights and against the monopolistic practices of vaudeville theater owners.

Meanwhile, athletic clubs of all kinds were sprouting up. The April 5, 1890, edition of the New York Clipper included a lengthy list of scheduled events for dozens of these organizations, from the Canadian Amateur Athletic Association to the Scottish American Athletic Club, the Acorn Athletic Club, and the Lorillard Debating and Athletic Association.23 Quite a few were baseball-oriented. The Amateur Baseball League, for example, comprised teams representing the New Jersey Athletic Club, Staten Island Cricket Club, Staten Island Athletic Club, and Englewood Field Club, with a championship series played each season.24

One such organization even linked actors with athletics. In 1889, Hopper, Bell, and other baseball-loving celebrities established the Actors’ Amateur Athletic Association of America, otherwise known as the Five A’s (or 5 A’s). On the afternoon of April 25, its organizers convened at Manhattan’s Bijou Opera House, where they adopted a constitution, agreed on the regulations that would govern the group, and elected officers. As reported in the New York Times, the constitution “provides that any gentleman who derives his living from the theatrical profession is eligible to sic membership if, of course, he is in good standing.” The organization was described as “a representative social athletic club of theatrical men, and the athletic feature will be carried out as soon as practicable.” Additionally, a “clubhouse will be secured, and will be fitted up with gymnasium, library, billiard and pool tables, bathing facilities, and other conveniences.” Dues were $1 per month; those who joined were assessed an initiation fee of $5; those wishing a life membership were charged $50.25

Given his standing as a theatrical luminary and his fascination with baseball, it was not surprising that De Wolf Hopper became the Association’s president. The first vice president was Burr McIntosh. William H. Crane, an actor-producer who enjoyed a 50-plus-year career primarily on the stage, was the second vice president. Not all the officers were performers. Two in fact were then affiliated with the Fourteenth Street Theatre. J. Wesley Rosenquest, its manager (and later owner), was the treasurer, while James T. Maguire, its business manager, was the secretary. Those on the governing committee were performers. The most prominent were Digby Bell and John Drew, described by critic-columnist-writer Ward Morehouse as the “leading light comedian of the era,” who was the uncle of John, Lionel, and Ethel Barrymore.26 Among the others on the committee: Robert Hilliard; Frank Lane; and Nat C. Goodwin, a comic actor best known for his mimicry.

The following month, the Association rented the clubhouse of the Land and Water Club, near Whitestone, Queens, but quickly realized that the cost would be prohibitive. So they sublet the property; for the time being, members could exercise on a track operated by the Manhattan Athletic Club. Almost immediately, they formed a “nine” and began scheduling ballgames. The May 10 Brooklyn Daily Eagle reported that “De Wolf Hopper and Bob Hilliard will be in their glory to-day. There is no matinee today and at the Manhattan Athletic Club’s grounds … the actors’ nines of the County Fair Club and the American Actors’ Athletic Association will play a match at 4 P.M.”27 The following month, the group held its inaugural track-and-field meet. Members competed in foot races, high jumps, mile walks, and broad jumps, with baseball represented via “throwing the baseball” and “running bases” contests.28 The New York Herald categorized the actor-athletes as “the heavy men, the juvenile men, the walking gentlemen and the deep, scowling villains of the stage,” adding that the “elongated comedian De Wolf Hopper stood on the field as judge and frequently became very much excited. Digby Bell … was also a judge and graced the meeting with his own peculiar smile. …” Lastly, the “obstacle race” winner even came away with the “De Wolf Hopper Cup.”29

Then in July, it was back to baseball as the Five A’s traveled to Middletown, New York, to battle a squad from the New York State Homeopathic Asylum for the Insane. Here, the thespians were bested by the “insane young gentlemen,”30 but this victory came with a bit of chicanery. As reported in the New York Press, an “elaborate spread was prepared for the Actors before the game, and to this the jolly Thespians afterward laid their defeat. While the overfed Actors were dozing in various parts of the field the erstwhile lunatics knocked out 20 runs. The actors scored but 8. Of course this was a tremendous victory for the Asylums, and their joy nearly sent the convalescent patients back to padded cells.” On a second visit, “the wily Asylums again tried to steer the actors up against a sumptuous spread, but they were not to be taken in. …The Asylums’ pitcher went back to his pristine wildness …” and he and his teammates lost to the Five A’s, 17-2.31

It was at this time that the Association rented a property, at 43 West 28th Street, that would serve as its clubhouse and headquarters and be furnished in “a ‘rich, not gaudy’ manner.” Amenities would include “a parlor gymnasium and a plunge bath.”32 By then, membership had topped 320. And the Five A’s were not the only organization to settle into a new residence: For part of the 1889 season and all of 1890, the New York Giants played their home games in what would be the second of three different Polo Grounds. Upon seeing the spacious new ballyard, slugger Roger Connor predicted that no player ever would belt a ball over the center-field fence. Not surprisingly, however, Connor himself was the first to do so, and a policeman reportedly retrieved the horsehide and returned it to the ballplayer. As noted in the New York Press, “Connor presented it to De Wolf Hopper, who will have it gilded, appropriately inscribed and hung up in the (Five A’s) club house. …”33

Additionally, more ballgames featuring the Five A’s were scheduled. On August 15 they took on a reporters’ nine at the Polo Grounds. McIntosh was the Association’s pitcher, while Hopper was an umpire; the final score was 13-12 in favor of the actors. More than 1,200 patrons paid 50 cents each to watch the contest, with the money split between the organizations.34 And the following year, they even played exhibitions against two pro teams. One, appropriately, was the New York Giants. It was noted in the April 16, 1890, New York Sun that the Five A’s “did not do themselves justice yesterday. … For three innings they played fairly good ball, but one or two bad plays completely broke them up, and then it became simply a question as to how many runs the big fellows would make.” (The final score of the nine-inning contest was 34-2 in favor of the Giants.)35 The actors also suited up against Ward’s Wonders, a Brooklyn club in the newly formed Players League.36 The Wonders were captained and managed by John Montgomery Ward, who in 1885 established the Brotherhood of American Base Ball Players, a secret organization that supported players rights. The Players League, which ceased to exist after one season, was an offshoot of the Brotherhood.

The Five A’s filed its certificate of incorporation in March 1890; its listed purpose was “to encourage all manly sports and to promote physical culture and social intercourse.” 37 It also was announced that, on Decoration Day, an Association nine would trek to New Jersey to take on the Red Bank Athletic Club. The following month was a busy one for the group. On June 12, they sponsored a track-and-field event at the Manhattan Athletic Club grounds. The competition included races, dashes, walks, hurdles, high jumps, and a “throwing baseball for members” contest.38 Then on June 25, they took on the Manhattan Athletic Club’s baseball team in a game that, as announced in the New York Times, “promises to be quite a notable one among amateur baseball people.”39

Off the playing field, the Association sponsored benefits to raise money both for themselves and for charity. On June 10, 1889, the New York Press reported that Five A’s members participated in a benefit at Palmer’s Theatre to solicit funds for victims of the Johnstown Flood, which had occurred a week and a half earlier.40 Five days later, the National Police Gazette noted that they “gave a matinee performance at the Metropolitan Opera House last week, in aid of the building fund. It was a big affair: The house was packed; the lobbies were full of girls selling flowers and fellows standing around and buying them. Our athletic actors got up a splendid programme.” Some were baseball-related: Hopper and actor Wilton Lackaye, for example, appeared in a comic skit in which they respectively played Cleopatra and Mark Antony. In it, Antony “dresses himself in a baseball umpire’s outfit and Cleopatra rushes around with a big lobster attached to her girdle.”41 Exactly one year later, a second benefit was organized at the same venue. The National Police Gazette described one of its highlights as a “monster minstrel exhibition” featuring more than 20 performers, among them Hopper and Bell.42

In January 1891 members served as ushers in a program at the Broadway Theatre. That May, the organization put together yet another entertainment at the Metropolitan Opera House, with the program including everything from the De Wolf Hopper Opera Company chorus backing up Della Fox as she performed her song “Columbia” to a scene from Romeo and Juliet. The finale featured the “Five A’s Circus,” spotlighting a hodgepodge of riders, acrobats, gymnasts, vaulters – and Hopper as the ringmaster.43 In February 1893 the Association organized a benefit, held at the Star Theatre, with the New York Times reporting that the “house was crowded, and the audience appeared to greatly enjoy the efforts of a score of well-known performers. …”44 Then in May 1894 a Five A’s benefit was held at Tony Pastor’s Theatre. The Times noted, “Many of the leading vaudeville artists now in the city have volunteered for the occasion. …”45

Not all those associated with the Five A’s were acknowledged stars. One of the more notable was a future legend of the silent cinema who then was a 20-something struggling to establish himself on the stage. In 1892 the “Professional Cards” sections of quite a few issues of the New York Dramatic Mirror cited review quotes from various productions featuring William S. Hart (“Mr. W.S. Hart, [as] Phasarius, has the most difficult part in the play, but he renders it most acceptably,” wrote the Louisville Courier Journal), and added that he may be contacted through the Five A’s. The Mirror also ran the following: “W.S. Hart, Leading Support, MacLean-Prescott Company” and “W.S. Hart, Leading Man, Mlle. Rhea’s Company, 1892-93.” His address remained in “care (of) Five A’s, 43 West 28th Street, New York.”46

Nonetheless, all was not sunshine and smiles with the Five A’s. In May 1893 the organization’s hierarchy began publicly condemning what the New York Times described as the “financial forgetfulness” of many of its members. More than 100 of them reportedly were in arrears of their dues, not to mention the cost of beer and wine that had been imbibed in the clubhouse. That May each one received a letter, signed by “Alfred D. Lind, Attorney and Counsellor at Law,” threatening legal proceedings if the funds remained unpaid. The club, noted Lind, “has a lot of dead timber on its hands and it wants to get rid of it. Many of its members think it is a big thing to belong to this great club of professionals, but they think it is too much for a good thing to pay for it.”47 The following month, two of them were the first to be sued: Lee Harrison, an actor, who owed the Five A’s $51.65; and Charles Davis, the business manager of Proctor’s Theatre, who owed $17.90. “I’ve started the ball rolling with these two suits,” declared Lind, “and others will follow.”48

Then in January 1894, the Association nearly was evicted from its quarters. Its rent had not been paid for two months and it was reported in the New York Sun that the Five A’s “has been in difficulties for some time. It recently tried to collect some $7,000 outstanding dues.”49 The New York World noted that its members in good standing were “much depressed” over the eviction. While the crisis was averted when enough money was collected to meet the rent, it was announced that “the club is now looking for smaller quarters.”50

Apparently, none were found and, within a couple of years, the Five A’s quietly disappeared from the public record. No longer were there media accounts of their fundraisers and sporting contests, baseball and otherwise. A host of other businesses soon occupied their West 28th Street clubhouse, including music publishers, florists, and “dramatic agents”; one was the fledgling William Morris agency, which went into business at this address as “William Morris, Vaudeville Agent.” Most interestingly, in 1896, Vitascope, an early film-production company, built an open-air studio on its roof. Two years later, in relation to the Five A’s, the New York Dramatic Mirror quietly noted that “the society gave up its clubrooms several years ago.”51

By then, the ballyhoo that accompanied the Five A’s inception had dissipated – and De Wolf Hopper and Digby Bell were immersing themselves in other theatrical enterprises. When Bell died in June 1917, more than 500 Lambs Club members and an unspecified number of Players Club representatives attended his funeral. Hopper was one of the pallbearers.52 And when Hopper died, in September 1935, two of the subheads on the New York Times report of his funeral arrangements were: “Delegations from Players and Lambs to Attend Services” and “Every Branch of the Theatrical Profession to Be Represented Among Pallbearers.” 53

Of course, by that time, no pallbearer was aligned with the Actors’ Amateur Athletic Association of America.

ROB EDELMAN is the author of Great Baseball Films and Baseball on the Web (which Amazon.com cited as a Top 10 Internet book), and is a frequent contributor to Base Ball: A Journal of the Early Game. He offers film commentary on WAMC Northeast Public Radio and is a longtime Contributing Editor of Leonard Maltin’s Movie Guide and other Maltin publications. With his wife, Audrey Kupferberg, he has coauthored Meet the Mertzes, a double biography of Vivian Vance and super-baseball fan William Frawley, and Matthau: A Life. His byline has appeared in Total Baseball, The Total Baseball Catalog, Baseball and American Culture: Across the Diamond, NINE: A Journal of Baseball History and Culture, The National Pastime: A Review of Baseball History, The Baseball Research Journal, and histories of the 1918 Boston Red Sox, 1947 Brooklyn Dodgers, 1947 New York Yankees, and 1960 Pittsburgh Pirates. He is the author of a baseball film essay for the Kino International DVD Reel Baseball: Baseball Films from the Silent Era, 1899-1926; is an interviewee on several documentaries on the director’s cut DVD of The Natural; was the keynote speaker at the 23rd Annual NINE Spring Training Conference; and teaches film history courses at the University at Albany (SUNY).

Photo credits

Digby Bell, Harvard Theatre Collection.

Notes

1 “Athletic Actors,” New York Dramatic Mirror, May 4, 1889: 6.

2 De Wolf Hopper and Wesley Winans Stout, Once a Clown, Always a Clown (Boston: Little Brown and Company, 1927), 76.

3 “Short Stops,” New York Times, April 21, 1889: 3.

4 “Morality in Books,” New York Times, June 2, 1900: BR12.

5 John Kieran. “Sports of the Times: Si Sets Things Right,” New York Times, September 5, 1938: 21.

6 “Nickname of ‘Giants,’” New York Times, February 22, 1936: 11.

7 “Digby Bell, Actor, Dies in 69th Year,” New York Times, June 21, 1917: 13.

8 “A Cold Night for Digby Bell,” New York Times, September 12, 1888: 8.

9 “Sullivan Has Friends Who Say Boston People Who Criticize Him Are Cranks,” New York Times, August 18, 1887: 3.

10 “De Wolf Hopper, 77, Dies in Kansas City,” New York Times, September 24, 1935: 23.

11 Rob Edelman, Great Baseball Films (New York: Citadel Press, 1994), 51.

12 Edelman, 51-52.

13 “De Wolf Hopper, 77, Dies in Kansas City.”

14 “Hopper Idol of Playgoers for Half Century,” New York Times, September 24, 1935: 23.

15 “The Pennant Is Theirs,” New York Times, October 15, 1888: 5.

16  “Theatrical Gossip,” New York Times, June 10, 1891: 8.

17 The Edison Phonograph Monthly, Vol. VII, No. 5, May 1909: 18.

18 “To Receive the Temple Cup,” New York Times, October 11, 1894: 6.

19 “It Was a Comic Victory. Actors Make a Frantic Attempt to Play Ball,” New York Times, May 26, 1886: 5.

20 “Actors To Play Baseball,” New York Times, July 31, 1887: 12. Throughout her life, Ethel Barrymore – who was born in 1879 and debuted on Broadway in 1895 – prided herself on her love of baseball. Barrymore family biographer Margot Peters noted that Ethel “knew the batting averages and pitching records of every player in the major leagues; during the World Series, she hung over her radio.” In 1951, she cited her all-around major-league all-star team: Hal Chase [first base]; Charlie Gehringer [second base]; Pie Traynor [third base]; Honus Wagner [shortstop]; Babe Ruth [left field]; Tris Speaker [center field]; Ty Cobb [right field]; Mickey Cochrane [catcher]; and Walter Johnson, Christy Mathewson, and Carl Hubbell [pitchers]. Then on October 12, 1952, she was the mystery guest on What’s My Line?,, the TV game show. Given the time of year, it was not surprising that the first question panelist Dorothy Kilgallen asked her was, “May I assume that you are not in baseball?” After her identity was established, host John Daly observed, “I understand that you have a rather substantial interest in a thing called baseball.” After she acknowledged this, Daly asked Barrymore if she was in town for the World Series. She responded that she had seen “all of them on television.” Margot Peters reported that on June 17, 1959 – the day before her death – Ethel “listened to a Dodgers-Milwaukee Braves doubleheader.”)  

21 “A Comedy of Errors: Yesterday’s Benefit Ball Game Between Actors and Journalists,” New York Times, September 8, 1888: 3.

22 theplayersnyc.org/history.

23 “Athletic. Coming Events,” New York Clipper, April 5, 1890: 8.

24 The Sun’s Guide to New York (New York: R. Wayne Wilson and Company, 1892), 88.

25 “Actors’ Athletic Club,” New York Times, April 26, 1889: 4.

26 Ward Morehouse, Matinee Tomorrow: Fifty Years of Our Theater (New York: Whittlesey House, 1949), 2.

27 “The Babies Win,” Brooklyn Daily Eagle, May 10, 1889: 1.

28 Outing: An Illustrated Monthly Magazine of Sport, Travel and Recreation,

The Outing Company Limited, April 1889-September 1889: 59-60.

29 “Thespian Athletes on the Field,” New York Herald, June 13, 1890: 9.

30 Documents of the Assembly of the State of New York (Albany: James B. Lyon, State Printer, 1890), 93-94.

31 “Lunatics As Ball Tossers,” New York Press, March 23, 1890: 19.

32 “Theatrical Gossip,” New York Times, July 31, 1889: 8.

33 “Diamond Tips,” New York Press, July 11, 1889: 4.   

34 “A Plucky Rally,” Brooklyn Daily Eagle, August 16, 1889: 1.

35 “Sport With the Base Ball,” New York Sun, April 16, 1890: 4.

36 https://covehurst.net/ddyte/brooklyn/1890.html.

37 “General Metropolitan News,” Chicago Tribune, March 20, 1890: 2.

38 “Actors as Athletes,” New York Times, June 13, 1890: 2.

39 “A Great Baseball Day,” New York Times, June 24, 1890: 3.

40 “Stars of Hope for Johnstown,” New York Press, June 10, 1889: 2.

41 “Masks and Faces,” National Police Gazette, June 15, 1889: 2.

42 “Masks and Faces,” National Police Gazette, June 14, 1890: 2.

43 “Notes of the Stage,” New York Times, May 24, 1891: 13.

44 “Degradation of Amusement,” New York Times, February 27, 1893: 8.

45 “Theatrical Gossip,” New York Times, May 3, 1894: 8.

46 “Professional Cards,” New York Dramatic Mirror, February 6, 1892: 7; February 20, 1892: 7; April 23, 1892: 8; May 7, 1892: 14; September 17, 1892: 17; October 19, 1892: 17; November 5, 1892: 17; December 10, 1892: 17; etc. 

47 “Five A’s After Delinquents,” New York Times, May 18, 1893: 8.

48 “Five A’s Members Sued,” New York Herald, June 15, 1893: 13.

49 “Five A’s and No W’s,” New York Sun, January 16, 1894: 2.

50 “The ‘5 A’s’ Nearly Evicted,” New York World, January 16, 1894: page number undecipherable.

51 “Questions Answered,” New York Dramatic Mirror, October 8, 1898: 14. 

52 “Digby Bell’s Funeral,” Billboard, June 30, 1917: 4.

53 “De Wolf Hopper Funeral Friday,” New York Times, September 25, 1935: 23.

Of paramount concern was the question of how to deal with renegade players — the contract-breakers and league-jumpers who tried the patience of owners and tested the limits of baseball law. Of this group, one Anthony J. Mullane stood out as an especially iniquitous example, and much attention was paid him and his fellow transgressors in the run-up to 1885 and beyond. The helter-skelter player moves were paralleled by changes in franchise locations, ownership and league affiliation.

In terms of what was actually happening on the field, the perennial tug-of-war between pitcher and hitter tilted noticeably toward the pitcher in 1884, meaning that administrative bodies would be looking for ways to help batters through rules changes.

THE MULLANE CASE

Twenty-five year-old Tony Mullane had yet to acquire the colorful nicknames we associate with him today, “The Count” and “The Apollo of the Box,” but he had begun already to establish himself as one of the most talented and durable of nineteenth-century pitchers. He was also attaining a reputation as a revolver extraordinaire.

After a brief five-game trial with NL Detroit in 1881, Mullane enlisted for a tour with AA Louisville in 1882. He next signed with Chris Von der Ahe’s St. Louis Browns for a higher price in 1883, before really getting into hot water with his contract maneuvers in 1884.

Taking advantage of the Union Association’s disregard for the two established leagues’ reserve clause policy, Mullane accepted a whopping $2,500 offer from Henry Lucas and prepared to twirl for the St. Louis entry in the fledgling UA. But before the season could even begin, the young ace had second thoughts about jumping leagues, and returned to the AA fold, signing on with the new Toledo club for the same $2,500 salary the Unions had promised. Notwithstanding Mullane’s superb year between the points, the Blue Stockings crossed the finish line in eighth place, at 46-58. On October 25, firmly on the path to disbanding, the team brokered a deal with Von der Ahe to make Mullane, along with Curt Welch, Sam Barkley, Tom Poorman, and manager Charles Morton, available — naturally, for a hefty sum.

With a 10-day waiting period stipulated between release from one team and signing with another, Von der Ahe took the peculiar precaution of having the players appear before a notary and sign a pledge to finalize their contracts with St. Louis on November 4.

While the other ballplayers in the Toledo fire sale followed through on their preliminary pledge, Mullane once again went rogue. Approached by the Cincinnati club in the interim, and offered a $5,000 contract ($1,500 above the Browns’ offer), Tony took a generous $2,000 advance and inked the Cincinnati deal on November 4, thus provoking the enduring ire of Von der Ahe and the league itself.

Mullane’s singular case, along with a great many more mundane instances of contract and league-jumping, would bring swift and forceful action at the winter meetings.

IN FLUX

When it came to the number and locations of their franchises, the nineteenth century major leagues had made a habit of inconsistency. Although the NL generally held to an eight-member circuit, with occasional dips to six, they managed only twice to field the same eight teams two years running.1 The AA, meanwhile, had grown from six in 1882, to eight in 1883, to 12 in 1884.2 And of course, the Union Association underwent a dizzying swirl of transformations in its short career.

More changes were in the offing for 1885. At the end of October 1884, about the same time Toledo was selling off its cluster of stars to the Browns, another AA entry was liquidating its assets. The Columbus Buckeyes had done themselves proud in their sophomore campaign with a second-place finish but, facing insolvency, they decided to unload a large contingent of players. Charter AA member Pittsburgh coughed up $6,000 for the rights to Tom Brown, Fred Carroll, Jim Field, Rudy Kemmler, Bill Kuehne, Fred Mann, Ed Morris, Frank Mountain, John Richmond, and Pop Smith — nearly the entire Columbus reserve list.

THE ARBITRATION COMMITTEE

The first postseason meeting of note was that of the Arbitration Committee on Friday, November 7, 1884. Held at the Fifth Avenue Hotel in New York City, it included representatives of “those professional associations of the country which are signers of the National Agreement”3 namely, the National League, the American Association, and the Eastern League. The Northwestern League would have been included, too, had it not just disbanded.

The leading business taken up by the Committee was the state of the Eastern League. Several of its clubs were in bad financial straits and League Secretary H.H. Diddlebock advised the Committee that those which did not make good on their debts by the Spring would be expelled. In fact, the Eastern as a whole was on quite tenuous ground and it was ordered that it (the Eastern League) must provide evidence of at least six active clubs by the time of the next Committee meeting in April or forfeit membership in the National Agreement.

An amendment to Section 3 of the National Agreement made the minimum player salary under the reserve rule $1,000, to apply to all Leagues, including the Eastern and the Northwestern (assuming those bodies returned in 1885). An amendment to Section 5 prohibited a released player or a player from a disbanded club from signing or playing with another club until the expiration of 10 days from the notice of release or disbandment.

The Committee also reiterated its stand against reinstatement of players who had jumped to the Union Association in 1884, citing specifically their denial of Clarence “Kid” Baldwin’s application for reinstatement. Informal discussions took place on a number of other subjects, e.g., putting an end to the “growing evil of drunkenness,” the Columbus sale to Pittsburgh, and the coming elections for President and Secretary in both the League and the Association. The Mullane case was discussed, and although it was not in a position to make any binding decisions, the Committee let it be known that it considered his expulsion “absolutely necessary.”4 The date and location of the Spring meeting were set for the first Friday in April, in Philadelphia.

THE NOVEMBER NL CONVENTION

The National League’s ninth annual convention, a two-day affair, began Wednesday, November 19, at the Fifth Avenue Hotel in New York. All eight League clubs were represented, Boston, Buffalo, Chicago, New York, Providence sending two men each, Philadelphia sending three, and Cleveland and Detroit, only one apiece. The first order of business was the reluctant acceptance of President Abraham G. Mills’ resignation. It didn’t take long for the convention to unanimously vote League Secretary Nick Young as Mills’ successor. Rather than seek a new Secretary, the two offices were combined, making Young both President and Secretary, as well as “custodian of funds.”5

After the official awarding of the 1884 Championship to the Providence Grays, a new five-man Board of Directors was installed, consisting of Young (ex-officio), Spencer Clinton of Buffalo, John B. Day of New York, Al Reach of Philadelphia, and a representative from Detroit to be named later.

Two Committees were next appointed, the Printing Committee and the Schedule Committee, both consisting of the same three members (Day, Arthur Soden of Boston, and Al Spalding from Chicago). John I. Rogers of Philadelphia was then appointed as NL member to the Arbitration Committee, replacing the resigned Mills.

With the routine administrative business out of the way, the first major player-related issue was taken up: the appeal for reinstatement of players expelled for abrogating the reserve clause by jumping to the Union Association. The case of Frederick Lander “Dupee” Shaw became the League’s exemplar in the matter.

Shaw, a pitcher with the Detroit Wolverines, had decided to stage a midseason walkout rather than pay a fine levied by the club. Going back to his Boston-area home to sulk, he shortly was offered a job with the Boston Union team, and within a week it was reported he had joined them.6 The left-hander went on to become a 30-game winner (combined NL and UA) and one of four pitchers to rack up over 400 strikeouts. But at season’s end, he was ready to return to the NL fold.

Despite the impressive performance credentials, the League was not ready to forgive and forget — not for Shaw, nor for any of the other renegades. The official resolution was denial of all reinstatement applications, the board’s proclamation stating, “This League will never consent to the reinstatement of any player who has deserted, or may hereafter desert any club identified with this League while held by the reserve rule.”7

Cognizant of the widespread dominance of pitching over batting in 1884, the Convention opened a discussion on amending rules governing the delivery of the ball. Central to the issue was whether overhand delivery should be prohibited. Proponents (of prohibition) argued that the greater speed of overhand throwing was a detriment to the hitting and fielding aspects of the game. They pointed, too, to the wear and tear, not only on pitchers’ arms, but to their battery-mates behind the plate. On the opposing side, it was noted that enforcement of such prohibition was a near impossibility for umpires, and that freedom of choice in delivery allowed for more strategy on the pitcher’s part.

With no solution imminent, action was deferred to the second day of the convention. But before the discussion was closed entirely, one of the delegates floated a new idea: that pitchers might be required to keep both feet on the ground while making their delivery, thus cutting down on speed. The idea was promptly embraced, and the rule adopted ran as follows: “A fair ball is a ball delivered by the pitcher while standing wholly within the lines of his position, and facing the batsman, with both feet touching the ground while making any one of the series of motions he is accustomed to make in delivering the ball to the bat…”8

Further attempts were made to improve life for hitters. The batter’s box was expanded from three feet to four and a half feet, allowing for greater freedom of movement. And an odd new amendment to Rule 14, Section 2, would permit a bat to be shaved or flattened by a half inch on one side — the idea being to enhance bat control and to reduce foul balls.

The balk rule was more clearly defined. Where the rule previously said, “A balk is a motion made by the pitcher to deliver the ball to the bat without delivering it,” the new wording said a balk occurs if the pitcher “when about to deliver the ball to the bat, while standing within the lines of his position, make any one of the series of motions he habitually makes in so delivering the ball to the bat, without delivering it.”9

There was an interesting take-back against the batters’ side, as Rule 65 was reworded to say that a fair ball hit over any fence less than 210 feet from home-plate would be a ground-rule double, thus precluding a repeat of 1884’s home-run barrage over the right-field fence at Chicago’s Lake Front Park.

The Spalding ball was retained as the League’s official sphere, and all printing concessions (score cards, show-bills, etc.) were awarded to John B. Sage of Buffalo. Appointment and control of umpires was put in President Young’s hands. The issue of Philadelphia’s admission fee exemption (they were allowed to charge only 25 cents rather than 50, largely due to the fact they had a powerful AA rival in town charging only 25) was deferred to the next League meeting, which was planned for early March.

THE DECEMBER AA CONVENTION

The American Association held its annual convention during the second week of December, the Fifth Avenue Hotel in New York again being the venue of choice. The New York Clipper referred to it in advance as “the most important meeting the Association has yet had,” saying the delegates would be called upon to take up “a number of subjects of vital interest to the future welfare of the organization.”10

The Board of Directors held their preparatory meeting on Tuesday, December 9. The AA board included Brooklyn owner Charlie Byrne, Philadelphia co-owner Lew Simmons, Baltimore manager Billy Barnie, Louisville manager Jim Hart, and Von der Ahe of St. Louis, and was chaired by Association President Denny McKnight. After making the official award of the 1884 championship to the Metropolitans, the Board delved into its major piece of business: the Mullane case.

John J. O’Neill, a Missouri Congressman with connections to the St. Louis club, acted as counsel for the club and laid out the charges of dishonorable conduct against the pitcher. O.P. Caylor of Cincinnati — probably the only party possessing any sympathy toward the accused – stood in as defense counsel. Caylor could do little but try to point out similar offenses by other players which had gone unpunished. He noted, too, that St. Louis itself had acted less than forthrightly when it lured Mullane away from Louisville in 1883. (Von der Ahe must have felt a sting on that point.) But to no avail. The Board’s ruling is worth quoting in full:

“Whereas, Tony J. Mullane has been guilty of conduct tending to bring discredit on the baseball profession, causing discontent and insubordination among all professional players, and setting an example of sharp practice almost equivalent to actual dishonesty; therefore, it is

“Resolved, That this Board of Directors feel that such conduct must not be tolerated, and consequently they decree the suspension of said Mullane for and during the season of 1885, and they also order that he repay to the Cincinnati Club before Jan. 1, 1885, $1,000 of the money advanced him, and that he shall not play ball with any professional club during the season of 1885, or this suspension shall be increased to final expulsion.”11

The Clipper’s final pronouncement on the case recognized that the blame lay not only with the player: “There is no difference between the action of a club which endeavors to secure a contract surreptitiously and that of a player who breaks a written engagement.”12 The point surely hit home with the Cincinnati club, as they, by virtue of the Board’s decision, found themselves out $1,000 (half of the advance they had given Mullane).

The annual Association meeting proper began the next day, Wednesday the 10th. Delegates from nine of the 12 1884 teams were present: Baltimore, Brooklyn, Cincinnati, Indianapolis, Louisville, New York, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, and St. Louis. McKnight and W.C. Wykoff were reinstalled as president and secretary, and Von der Ahe was made vice-president. The Board of Directors was reduced to five, Byrne, Barnie, and Von der Ahe retained, Nimick of Pittsburgh added, with McKnight the chair, ex-officio.

The first important action taken was the reduction of the Association to eight teams, these being Baltimore, Brooklyn, Cincinnati, Louisville, New York, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, and St. Louis. Indianapolis was thus left out in the cold, as was the Virginia franchise. Columbus and Toledo had of course already disbanded. Applications for membership were received from Newark and from the Washington team of the UA, but, as one Cincinnati paper put it, “it was deemed best to make the Association an octagon.”13 The only consolation for Indianapolis and Virginia was a promise to respect their player contracts for a year, and, in fact, a telegram was sent to the NL and the Eastern League soliciting similar pledges from those bodies.

Brooklyn’s Byrne put forward a proposal to change the system of dividing gate receipts between home and visiting clubs. Instead of the standard guarantee of $65 to the visitors, Byrne suggested a 25 percent share of receipts. The proposal fell one vote short of the required two-thirds to pass.

Constitutional amendments were taken up on Thursday the 11th, and several relatively mundane changes were made. Official scorers were given three days (rather than 24 hours) to submit scores. The Association president was invested with many “arbitrary” powers, including almost complete control over the umpires. He was granted authority to suspend any player, manager or umpire found guilty of open drunkenness. An amendment to Article 6, Section 2, said that if gate-money were refunded due to an early game stoppage, the guarantee to the visiting club would not be paid.

To underscore the sentiment of the Mullane decision, new language was added to Article 6, Section 4, stating, “Any eligible player who may be proved guilty of signing contracts with two clubs covering the same period of time, and receiving advance money from either, shall be expelled.”14 In addition, Section 7 added the stipulation that a club, manager, or player who would “in any way evade the spirit and letter of the ten-day clause” could be fined between $100 and $500.15

On-field activity was addressed through a number of modest changes. One moved the start of the season from May 1 to April 20, with season’s end moving from October 15 to October 1, though provision was made to allow makeup games to be played up to October 10. Fines were dictated for clubs that would leave the field before a game ends, such as in a disagreement over an umpire’s decision. The choice of first “at-bats” would be given to the home club, rather than leaving it to a coin toss. The Association adopted the NL’s stricter definition of a balk where the pitcher’s preliminary movements were concerned. The foul-bound catch rule was, for the moment, retained.

The Convention adjourned at 7:00 PM on the 11th, with the next meeting scheduled for March 2, 1885, in Baltimore.

THE UNION ASSOCIATION DECEMBER MEETING

When the board of the AA handed down its verdict on Mullane’s suspension on December 9, an indignant O.P. Caylor threatened to withdraw his Cincinnati club from the Association. This sparked a little jeu d’esprit from Billie Barnie, who dashed off a telegram to the owners of the Cincinnati Union team, inquiring as to their interest in stepping in should the Porkopolis slot in the AA become vacant. Caylor, being apprised of the communique, hastily backpedaled on his threat.

This was but one of a dizzying series of feints, dodges, and rumors lending confusion to the fate of the Union Association as the year 1884 came to a close. UA President Henry Lucas could take pride in his own champion St. Louis Maroons, but on the whole his upstart circuit was clearly in trouble. Only five of the original eight clubs — St. Louis, Cincinnati, Boston, Baltimore, and Washington — completed the full season of over 100 games. Chicago’s Unions, withering in the face of competition from the NL White Stockings, up and moved to Pittsburgh in late May but could not make it to the finish line there either, shutting down in September. Four other teams never got to play more than 25 games. It was unclear whether any club besides St. Louis had actually met expenses for the year.

Yet, reports persistently flooded the baseball channels about possible player transactions and club moves for the 1885 season. In October, Ned Williamson was said to be signing with the Maroons. At the same time, a Union team in Philadelphia was rumored. Larry McKeon of Indianapolis supposedly signed on with the UA’s Kansas City, and the same club offered large contracts to two catchers, Jocko Milligan and Jack O’Brien. In late November came reports of attempts to form Union clubs in the abandoned AA cities of Toledo and Columbus. Lucas visited Indianapolis in December and promoted the idea of that city joining. It was hinted at one point that the UA of 1885 might have no eastern clubs at all, that Lucas would establish a “Western Association.” The Cincinnati Enquirer, on the premise that Cleveland and Detroit would not continue as NL members in ‘85, ran an article encouraging them to shift over to the UA.16 In late December, Lucas was in Cleveland, trying to further that interest.

Whatever optimism was generated by all this fodder suffered serious deflation when reports began surfacing at the AA Convention that Lucas was actively pursuing an avenue by which to secure NL membership for his Maroons. While the idea of Lucas jumping leagues was regarded in some quarters as an improbability, due to the obstacles for all parties concerned, the likelihood of such an eventuality was, to others, soon apparent, requiring only a little more time for covert machinations to fully play out.

In the meantime, the Union Association finally got around to its annual meeting on December 18 in St. Louis. Besides the host party, delegates from only three other cities – Milwaukee, Kansas City, and Cincinnati – managed to show up. Indianapolis, looking for a home after being voted out of the AA, sent a proxy. Washington and Boston, not sending delegates, were dismissed from the league, and the resignation of the Baltimores was accepted. A few constitutional amendments were adopted. One called for a guaranty fund, to be held by the President, to which each team would make a $500 deposit as surety of their club remaining in operation. The President was granted full authority over umpires’ appointments, salary payments, and fines. In step with one of the AA’s amendments, a forfeit of $250 was mandated for any club failing to play out a game.

It was decided that the UA should be an eight-team league in 1885, and applications for membership were received from Columbus, St. Paul, Cleveland, and Detroit. All other matters, including any changes to actual playing rules, were deferred to the January meeting, to be held in Milwaukee.

JANUARY MEETINGS AND THE FATE OF THE UNIONS

Visiting Philadelphia at the end of December, Henry Lucas was asked about the status of his purported shift to the NL. He responded, “I do not see how we can join the League. As long as the National Agreement remains in force I could not join and play some of the men I now have under contract. These men have made me in baseball, and I will stick to them.”17 At the same time, Chris Von der Ahe was writing President McKnight that he would “not under any circumstances consent” to a rival St. Louis franchise in the NL.18

Within a week, however, Lucas was telling a reporter in Indianapolis that he had secured the transfer of St. Louis to the NL in place of Cleveland, and that negotiations for UA Cincinnati to replace Detroit were “well under way.”19 At least part of that claim was genuine.

On January 10, delegates of the National League hustled back to the Fifth Avenue Hotel for a special meeting. Cleveland had submitted its withdrawal from the League on January 5 — one day after Lucas’ Indianapolis interview — and action was needed to fill the vacancy. Although several potential replacements were discussed, Lucas’ team was undoubtedly the front-runner.

Two major stumbling-blocks stood in the way. One was the issue of the league-jumpers. The St. Louis Union team was loaded with former NL and AA stars who made Lucas’ club the giant that it was. For him to give up those players blacklisted for breaking the reserve clause would mean starting from Square One, a place he obviously did not wish to be.

The second huge obstacle was Von der Ahe. The National Agreement stipulated unanimous consent to confirm new membership in either league, and at the moment it appeared Chris was in no mood to give his blessing to a second ballclub in the Gateway City.

The delegates nonetheless went ahead and voted to admit the former St. Louis Unions to the League, and then waited to see how things would shake out.

While this tempest was brewing, the scheduled January 15 meeting of the UA in Milwaukee went forward, but in a sadly anticlimactic fashion, as the only clubs represented were Milwaukee and Kansas City – President Lucas neither appearing nor making any communication to the group. Those delegates present proceeded to disband the Association, while holding out the possibility of reorganizing in some new form. In fact, it was shortly thereafter reported that a “Western Association” was to be formed, containing teams in Milwaukee, Kansas City, Toledo, Columbus, Indianapolis, Cleveland, St. Paul, and Minneapolis.

With the assent of Von der Ahe to the Lucas membership still not forthcoming, NL president Young booked the Fifth Avenue Hotel for January 21 to convene yet another special league meeting. Hedging his bet in case the St. Louis deal fell through, Young at the same time solicited Indianapolis to apply for NL membership. After a full day of discussion without resolution, the decision was made to appoint a committee consisting of three NL club representatives to meet with a similar contingent of AA reps at the Association’s upcoming January meeting, for purposes of finding a solution to the dilemma.

Before such meeting could take place, however, the presidents of the rival St. Louis clubs came together — Von der Ahe inviting Lucas to a private conference on Sunday, January 25 – and in a mere half-hour the two moguls worked out an amicable resolution between themselves, thus averting a potential new NL-AA war. Von der Ahe blamed misunderstanding and “ruinous rumors” for keeping the two at odds as long as they were.20

The AA went ahead with its special January 27 meeting at the Monongahela House in Pittsburgh, but now, brandishing plowshares instead of swords, they confirmed their acceptance of the NL’s new St. Louis entry. A further resolution reiterated the strong stance against all contract/reserve-jumping players. It was also decided to move the season start from April 20 to April 18.

On the following day, back in New York, a trio of National League reps and another of American Association reps met to formalize the final agreement on the Lucas deal. It was a brief, self-congratulatory affair, and the League magnanimously agreed to return the favor if the AA should, for example, wish to install an American club in Chicago. Additionally, the two groups determined to appoint a joint standing committee that might deal with future conflicts in a more contained and expeditious manner.

A joint meeting of League and Association schedule committees took place February 17 in New York, its main concern being to avoid conflicts between the League and Association clubs in New York, St. Louis and Philadelphia.

MEETINGS OF MARCH AND APRIL

Echoing sentiments already expressed in the pages of the Clipper, Gothams great John M. Ward weighed in on the question of the reserve-jumpers in a letter to that paper.21 Declaring that there was but one capital crime in baseball — “crookedness” — and that that alone deserved the ultimate penalty of expulsion, the noted “clubhouse lawyer” argued that reserve-jumpers should not suffer de facto expulsion (blacklisting) for breaking a rule to which they had not agreed in the first place. Ward looked less kindly upon the contract-breakers and acknowledged the propriety of fines or suspensions on that front — but again, not the “ultimate” penalty.

The AA held its next regular meeting at the Eutaw House in Baltimore, March 2 and 3. In a preliminary conference, the Board of Directors considered an application for reinstatement by Dave Rowe, who had jumped from AA Baltimore to UA St. Louis, where he enjoyed an excellent year as Lucas’ center fielder. Cincinnati took the Clipper-Ward position and spoke up for reinstatement of reserve-jumpers, but in the end, Rowe was shot down. The convention then passed a resolution instructing Arbitration Committee members to vote against all reinstatement efforts.

In lesser business, an attempt at abolishing the foul-bound catch was defeated by a five-to-three vote. A new resolution granted either team the right to demand that a postponed game be replayed. And Billie Barnie declined to consent to the Eastern League’s proposal for a team in Baltimore.

The NL was back at the Fifth Avenue Hotel March 7 for what the Clipper termed “the most important Spring meeting ever held.”22 The first action was the unanimous endorsement of the January 21 election of the St. Louis club. A new amendment empowered President Young to levy fines of $250 against players or managers whose misconduct went unpunished by their own clubs. The standing committee recommended at the AA’s January meeting was endorsed, and Soden, Spalding, and Day appointed as League reps. They wasted no time calling a confab with AA reps, Byrne, Simmons, and Von der Ahe, and the sextet produced a joint resolution banning future payments of advance money to players or managers. Bob Ferguson was named head of the League umpires for 1885.

At the prodding of Henry Chadwick, one important playing rule received clarification, that concerning the new “both feet stationary” rule. A new definition, to be included in the President’s instructions to the umpires, said that “any movement whatever of the forward foot” was prohibited, but that the lifting of the back foot “was not to be regarded, as it cannot be lifted until the ball leaves the pitcher’s hand anyway, and therefore…does not violate the rule.”23 No warning would be given when a pitcher moved his forward foot: a “foul balk” would be called, two of which would give the batter his base.24

Finally, the question of reinstatement was addressed, as Newton Crane, Henry Lucas’ legal counsel, presented arguments on behalf of four St. Louis players seeking to return: Fred Dunlap, Orator Shaffer, Dave Rowe, and Charlie Sweeney. By a majority vote, the League followed the Association’s lead, and all applications were denied, seeming to ring the death knell for reinstatement in 1885.

Crane, interviewed back in St. Louis the next week, said that, at least in the case of Sweeney, it was only one negative vote — from Henry Root of Providence — that prevented the player’s return. Sweeney had been only suspended, not blacklisted, and the other club representatives were favorable to his plea, but Root apparently still held a grudge against the hurler who deserted him in the midst of a pennant race.

In New York, Lucas summed up the irony of the players’ situation to a Times reporter: “I induced them to desert, and if they committed any crime surely I was a party to it. Now the League has taken me into its fold and it refuses to reinstate them.”25

The Girard House in Philadelphia was the site of the Arbitration Committee’s annual Spring meeting on April 3. Day, Rogers, and Young represented the League, Barnie, Caylor, and McKnight, the Association, and George Ballard, Mike Scanlan, and Diddlebock stood in for the Eastern League.

The first important order of business was the Eastern League’s repeated request to locate a club in Baltimore, and this was again denied.

The Committee did not take up the cases of any of the blacklisted players already ruled on at the NL or AA meetings. It did, however, reinstate several players who had been expelled from “minor associations” for lesser infractions. The most notable names in this group were “Kid” Baldwin, Chris Fulmer, and Abner Powell, all of whom had been bounced by the Northwestern League. In light of this, and at a time when the threat of blacklisting was reportedly used to free clubs of indebtedness to players, the Committee saw fit to make an amendment to the National Agreement declaring “none of the united associations shall have the power of expelling a player unless the sentence is confirmed by the Arbitration Committee.”26

THE SECRET MEETING

One day after the Arbitration Committee’s meeting, a small group of National League officials convened in New York for a session that was not immediately reported in the papers. But small hints began to appear. Upon his return to St. Louis on Monday the 6th, Henry Lucas told the St. Louis Globe-Democrat that he had done his best to plead his case with the other League officers and, although he could not say for certain what the outcome would be, “You can say positively that I am going to stick to the League.”27 Curiously, the same paper reported the next day that Jack Glasscock was in town playing a practice game with the former Union nine, and that he expected to see his fellow Cleveland-deserters, Jim McCormick and Fatty Briody, soon.

The Clipper of April 11 gave no indication it was even aware of the April 4 meeting. But the Boston Journal of the same date dropped a bombshell, announcing: “A SENSATION IN BASE BALL: Unconditional Surrender of the League to Lucas.”

The Journal reporter had a contact among the club presidents — he assured his readership it was not Soden — according to whom, Albert Spalding had informed the group that Chicago “would drop out of the League unless Mr. Lucas…was enabled to secure the best talent that the country afforded.” And the only way to do that was “to give St. Louis the blacklisted men and Sweeney.”28

Much of what Spalding reportedly said was cribbed from Lucas’ own recent diatribes, but he also played on the financial heartstrings of the moguls, suggesting that with a well-stocked Maroons team, “the attendance at the St. Louis games would be very large, and visiting clubs would reap a harvest,” while, without the blacklisted men, “St. Louis would be dead to the League.”29 He also let it be known that the same profit incentive — or disincentive — would play a factor in going forward with major renovations he was contemplating for the Windy City ballpark. After some group discussion, it was decided to call a special meeting on April 18.

RETURN TO THE FOLD

Strangely, for an event of such magnitude, the NL didn’t play all its first-stringers in the April 18 meeting, which was held — you guessed it — at the Fifth Avenue Hotel. Day, Soden, and Rogers were there for New York, Boston, and Philadelphia. J.E. Allen, not Root, appeared for Providence, Al Spalding sent his brother Walter for Chicago, and Nick Young had proxy for Buffalo, Detroit, and St. Louis.

The oddly-assembled crew gave little time to preliminaries and were in short order voting on two resolutions: first, to reinstate Dunlap, Schaffer, Hugh Daily, and Emil Gross, with a fine of $500 each as their final punishment; second, to reinstate Sweeney, Glasscock, McCormick, Briody, and Dupee Shaw, with a fine of $1,000 each. Both proposals carried with only Providence and Philadelphia voicing initial objections before throwing in with the majority.

In the wake of the momentous League action, Denny McKnight convened his generals again in Pittsburgh on April 27. Von der Ahe, knowing an opening when he saw one, immediately applied for the reinstatement of Dave Rowe and Tom Dolan, but his was the only vote in favor: the AA held firm to the blacklist.

The next business was to deal with shenanigans in New York that had been fomenting since at least November, when John Day fired Gothams manager Jim Price and replaced him with Mets manager Jim Mutrie. Day, president of the Metropolitan Exhibition Company which owned both New York clubs, had begun a campaign of building up the NL Gothams at the expense of the AA Mets. The maneuvering continued when Mets stars Tim Keefe and Dude Esterbrook were suddenly released by the team, then disappeared with Day for an ocean cruise of some two weeks’ duration, and finally docked again in Manhattan signed with the Gothams. The Association recognized this little game of hide and seek for just what it was — a means to transfer players between teams without worrying about the 10-day rule.

Considering the extremely questionable ethics, the ownership was probably lucky to get off with a $500 fine for its ruse. For good measure, Jim Mutrie was banned from future employment in the AA.

It was then time to address the NL’s reinstatement decision. Declaring that the League had violated the National Agreement by reinstating players without approval of the Arbitration Committee, the Association declared it would no longer honor the reserve clause and voted unanimously “to suspend all further intercourse with the League until they had repudiated their open violation of the National Agreement.”30

The Association’s volley on the reinstatement brought a quick response from Nick Young, who denied the NL had violated the Agreement. In the League’s view, they had every right to reverse a resolution they (the NL) had passed in 1884, and besides, the Arbitration Committee was a judicial body, there to interpret laws, not create or remove them.

CODA

From there, the parties maintained a hostile but distant stand-off. After all, it was finally time to play ball again: the 1885 AA season had already opened, and the NL’s was about to begin. In June, the AA passed a series of amendments bringing them into line with current NL practices: the abolishment of the foul-bound catch, the removal of restrictions on the pitcher’s delivery (i.e., permitting overhand throwing), and giving the home-team captain the choice of first innings.

On August 20, a group of Association club presidents assembled in Atlantic City voted to revoke adherence to the ten-day waiting period for released players. In the AA’s view, the League had already abrogated the National Agreement by reinstating reserve-jumpers, and the Association thus was no longer bound by the Agreement where it did not suit them.

About a week later, hints emerged that the AA would finally capitulate on the blacklist question.31 According to a later report in Sporting Life, “Von der Ahe. . . recommended the reinstatement of Dave Rowe and has also asked President McKnight to take a mail vote on the question of reinstating the blacklisted players.”32 Rowe was back on the playing field September 16 and by the close of the season Tom Dolan, George Bradley, Jack Gleason, and Sam Weaver all returned to the baseball brotherhood.

Even a certain notorious ambidextrous pitcher was back in uniform before winter set in. On October 4, at Cincinnati, in the first of a series of six postseason exhibition games between the Reds and the St. Louis Browns, Tony Mullane made his first on-field appearance of 1885. He pitched masterfully, allowing only three scattered hits, but poor field work behind him resulted in a 5-1 victory for the St. Louis team.

Despite having his way with both the League and the Association, and getting all his UA stars back, Henry Lucas was frustrated in his hopes for glory in the established leagues. The outlaw owner who was responsible for so much of the turmoil of ‘84 and ‘85 saw his team finish dead last, 49 games behind the NL champion Chicago White Stockings.

Sources

In addition to the sources cited in the Notes, the author also consulted:

Boston Herald, Cleveland Leader, , St. Louis Post-Dispatch, and Kerr, Roy. Big Dan Brouthers: Baseball’s First Great Slugger (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland, 2013).

Lansche, Jerry. Glory Fades Away (Dallas: Taylor Publishing Co., 1991).

Nemec, David. The Beer And Whisky League (New York: Lyons & Burford, 1995).

The Great Encyclopedia of 19th-Century Major League Baseball (New York: Donald I. Fine Books, 1997).

Notes

1 The eight-member NL of 1882-1883 was a slightly different eight from that of 1883-1884, the former including Troy and Worcester, and the latter including New York and Philadelphia in their place.

2 The AA actually sported 13 teams in 1884, but Virginia was technically a midseason replacement for Washington.

3 “The Arbitration Committee Meeting,” New York Clipper, November 15, 1884: 554.

4 New York Clipper, November 15, 1884.: 555

5 “The League Convention,” New York Clipper, November 29, 1884: 587.

6 “Base-Hits Everywhere,” New York Clipper, July 19, 1884: 275.

7 “The League Convention,” New York Clipper, November 29, 1884: 587.

8 Constitution and playing rules of the National League of professional base ball clubs (Chicago, Illinois, A.G. Spalding & Bros., 1885), 31.

9 Ibid.

10 “The American Convention,” New York Clipper, December 13, 1884: 620.

11 “The American Convention Proceedings. The Meeting of the Directors,” New York Clipper, December 20, 1884: 634.

12 “The American Convention,” New York Clipper, December 20, 1884: 640.

13 “Fourth Annual Meeting of the American Base Ball Association,” Cincinnati Commercial Tribune, December 11, 1884: 4.

14 “The American Convention Proceedings. The Annual Meeting,” New York Clipper, December 20, 1884: 635

15 Ibid.

16 “Why Cleveland and Detroit Should Join the Unions,” Cincinnati Enquirer, December 14, 1884: 10.

17 New York Clipper, January 3, 1885: 668-669.

18 New York Clipper, January 10, 1885: 684.

19 Ibid.

20 “The Lucas Deal Completed,” New York Clipper, January 31, 1885: 732.

21 “The Reserve-Rule and Contract-Breakers,” New Yok Clipper, February 14, 1885: 763.

22 “The National League,” New York Clipper, March 14, 1885: 828.

23 Ibid.

24 Constitution and playing rules of the National League of professional base ball clubs, 31.

25 “The Association Refuses to Reinstate the Deserters,” New York Times, March 8, 1885: 2.

26 “The Arbitration Committee Meeting,” New York Clipper, April 11, 1885: 52.

27 “Lucas Will Go On In the League,” St. Louis Globe-Democrat, April 7, 1885: 4.

28 “A Sensation in Base Ball: Unconditional Surrender of the League to Lucas,” Boston Journal, April 11, 1885: 6.

29 Ibid.

30 “The American Meeting — Its Momentous Action,” New York Clipper, May 2, 1885: 99.

31 “Other Base Ball. Notes,” Boston Journal, August 25, 1885: 3.

32 “Diamond Dust,” St. Louis Globe-Democrat, September 8, 1885: 4, and “Notes and Comments,” Sporting Life, September 16, 1885: 4.

Pete Rose roamed around the diamond during his 24 big-league seasons. Depending on when one saw him, the picture of Charlie Hustle with a glove on his hand varies. He was primarily a second baseman from 1963 through 1966. He shifted to the outfield in 1967, and played eight full seasons there through 1974 – even winning a pair of Gold Gloves in 1969 and 1970. During the final phase of his career, from 1979 through 1986, he was a first baseman.

Yet Rose also played third base in about 18 percent of his games – chiefly from 1975 through 1978. His move from left field to third base in early May 1975 often receives credit as a pivotal moment in the success of the 1975 Reds — and with good reason. The batting order became much more potent because Rose continued to set the table and George Foster soon took over left field. Also, keeping Rose’s bat in the lineup over light-hitting utility types John Vukovich, Doug Flynn, and Darrel Chaney did not come at a cost in defense. As Rose emphasized to sportswriter Joe Posnanski for a July 2009 article in Cincinnati magazine, “I wasn’t a great third baseman. But I worked my ass off. I don’t know if people realize how hard I worked.”1

And quite simply, the team began to win consistently. When Rose made his first start at the hot corner on May 3, 1975, Cincinnati was playing only .500 ball (12-12). The rest of the way, the Reds went 96-42 (.696).

There was a good bit of history behind the move. Third base had been an unsettled spot for Cincinnati during the mid-1960s. In fact, Rose had gotten a brief trial there at the beginning of the 1966 season, and it didn’t work out. From 1967 through 1971, Tony Pérez played at third, out of his natural position. That move as well was enabled by Rose’s switch from second base to left field. Pérez shifted to first base in 1972 after the blockbuster November 1971 trade with Houston, in which (among several other players) the Reds obtained infielder Denis Menke and dealt away slugging first baseman Lee May. Menke hit a combined .218 during his two seasons as the primary starter at third base, though, and so he was shipped back to the Astros for pitcher Pat Darcy.

In 1974 the team stuck Dan Driessen’s bat at third base. A natural first baseman, he was rocky with the glove at third (.915 fielding percentage at that position in 122 starts). Catcher Johnny Bench also started 30 games there, and various other players accounted for the remaining 10.

General manager Bob Howsam did not view Driessen as a viable ongoing option – in fact, he never appeared at third base again during his remaining 13 seasons in the majors. That December, The Sporting News ran an article called “Howsam Sees Safety in Numbers at Hot Sack.” The GM mentioned four players who could compete for the third-base job in 1975:

• Arturo DeFreites: This young Dominican eventually played 32 games for the Reds in 1978 and 1979. In that brief big-league career, he was mainly a pinch-hitter, playing a bit at first base and in the outfield – but not at third (his part-time position in the minors).
• Joel Youngblood: Cincinnati’s second-round draft pick in 1970, Youngblood went on to a 14-year career in the majors, mainly in the outfield. When the San Francisco Giants put him at third base regularly in 1984, his fielding percentage was an abysmal .887.
• Ray Knight: Knight, a tenth-round pick in 1970, was a very good true third baseman who had gotten his first major-league trial in 1974. He remained in the minors in 1975-76 but eventually took over at third base with Cincinnati in 1979 after Rose left the Reds via free agency. Knight later won a championship and was the World Series MVP with the New York Mets in 1986.
• John Vukovich: The Reds obtained this utilityman in an October 1974 trade. The article said, “While Vukovich has an outstanding glove, his bat is suspect.”2

Before spring training in 1975, according to Reds beat writer Earl Lawson, “listening to Howsam, one gathers that DeFreites rates as the No. 1 candidate among the youngsters.” Darrel Chaney, mainly a shortstop, was also in the mix.3 Sparky Anderson told Vukovich, “The third base job is wide open.”4 Vukovich got the opportunity, based largely on his defensive ability, and though there was talk of a platoon, he started most of the games at third base in April.

As had been feared, though – despite expressions of confidence from the brass in the off-season – Vukovich didn’t hit. In fact, as Joe Posnanski described at length in his 2009 book The Machine, Anderson hung the derisive nickname Balsa on him for his soft bat.5 Chaney and Flynn got some starts, but the three players were hitting a collective .157 (14 for 89) on May 2 when the exasperated Anderson felt he had to make a move to secure more offensive production from his lineup.

Posnanski also provided much colorful inside detail on various other aspects of the situation. There was how Anderson asserted his authority over the team, as seen in his handling of Vukovich. There was the flash of inspiration that spurred Sparky to try Rose at third. But above all, there was the psychology involved. When Cincinnati’s manager in 1966, Don Heffner, had moved Rose, it was an order. Anderson didn’t tell, he asked.6 Appealing to Rose’s desire to help the team made it happen (though when the Hit King was chasing Ty Cobb’s record as playing manager in 1985, another motive was visible).

Previous insight came from John Erardi and Greg Rhodes, who wrote The Big Red Dynasty (1997). They noted that Anderson also had to find playing time for his many well-qualified outfielders and Dan Driessen – and that preserving his own job was also a part of moving Rose. Howsam, who was away in Arizona, thought it was a mistake when he saw the box score of the May 3 game – and said “Oh my God” when he found out it was for real. Reds broadcaster Marty Brennaman talked about Rose’s initial adventures in the field. The book also recounted how Rose’s teammates “were all over him”7 for his unpolished play.

As a United Press International feature described it that July, “Pete Rose plays third base like a mad bull. He barricades the ball, stomps after it, or hurls himself in its vicinity, whatever he feels it takes to catch, stop or somehow slow down the ball. … ‘Finesse!’ he shouts. ‘I don’t play with finesse. Aggressive. That’s what I am. That’s the way I play third base.’ ”8

Further quotes were entirely in character. “I love to play third. You know why? ’Cause I get to touch the ball after each out. … Third base is more fun than the outfield. I feel more a part of the game. Closer to it.” He made the same point that he did to Posnanski more than 30 years later: “Hard work. I work hard, that’s it. I think if you work hard enough you can do just about anything, or come close to it. I may not look too smooth out there, but I’m working, I’m getting the job done.”9

Rose committed just 13 errors in 349 chances at third in 1975, a respectable .963 fielding percentage. When asked that July if hitters were able to bunt on him, the reply was again as one would expect. “‘Yeah, three or four have tried it,’ says Rose with a hard, straight face. The subject is serious to him. ‘But I threw ’em out. No problem.’”10 Fielding in the postseason wasn’t a problem either, as he cleanly handled all the relatively few chances that came his way.

In his 2004 biography, Pete Rose: Baseball’s All-Time Hit King, author William Cook noted another important dimension of the move. “[Rose] remarked that the advantage it gave the Reds, other than getting the powerful bat of George Foster into the lineup, was that it gave the Reds a set lineup to play every day. Sparky Anderson agreed with that assessment, stating that after he moved Rose to third and inserted Foster in left he concerned himself mainly with the Reds’ pitching and hardly paid any attention to the starting eight for the rest of the season.”11

Rose started an average of 157 games a year at third with the Reds from 1976 through 1978. There was precious little time for his backups, first Bob Bailey and later Ray Knight. After the 1978 season, Rose signed with the Philadelphia Phillies. He shifted to first base for the Phillies – reflecting the presence of Hall of Famer Mike Schmidt at third. Rose returned to the outfield with some frequency in 1983 and again in 1984, by which time he was with Montreal. However, he played only five more games at third (all in 1979).

Nonetheless, Pete Rose’s years at the hot corner formed a vital chapter in his career. If this move hadn’t taken place, perhaps the Los Angeles Dodgers might have won the NL West – and the pennant – for five straight years. In that case, nobody would have written books about the Reds dynasty.

Notes

Gil Hodges’ Hall of Fame fate resides in the hands of the newly constituted Veterans Committee. Much time and energy has been devoted to the Hall, and many fans have opinions about unqualified players who have been inducted and vice versa. Noted Sabermetrician Bill James wrote a book, The Politics of Glory, detailing the history of the HOF, and pre­senting some arguments about which players might or might not merit selection. I will use his 15-point list of arguments as a guideline for Gil Hodges’ case. No one argument makes an entire case, but it is interesting to see how many can be used in Hodges’ favor. The num­bering is based on James’ list:

3. Was he the best player in baseball at his position? Was he the best player in the league at his position?

This is probably the best argument for Hodges’ induction. He was the best first baseman in the NL in the fifties (if we consider Stan Musial an outfielder), and possibly the best in the majors. Hodges led all first basemen of the 1950s in the following categories: HR (310), G (1,477), AB (5,313), R (890), H (1,491), RBI (1,001), TB (2,733) and XBH (585). He made the All-Star team eight times, every year from 1949 to 1955 and again in 1957, the most of any first baseman of the time (again, dis­counting Musial). Hodges won the first three Gold Gloves at his position and was considered the finest defensive first baseman of the era as well. In addition, he was second among all players in the 1950s in HR and RBI, third in TB and eighth in R (fourth in NL).

Hodges was voted by respected baseball statistics organization STATS Inc. as the best defensive first baseman of the 1950s. The organization also retroac­tively selected All-Star teams for all years, both leagues. Hodges was named the retroactive All-Star first baseman four times, tying him for 13th place in number of times selected as a first baseman. Ahead of Hodges and in the Hall are Brouthers, Gehrig, Mize, Anson, Cepeda, Chance, Foxx, Sisler, and McCovey. The only players in the top twelve not in the Hall are Keith Hernandez and Ed Konetchy, while Hall of Fame first basemen such as Tony Perez, Jim Bottomley, and George “Highpockets” Kelly merited fewer STATS, Inc. selections.

In the first edition of The Historical Baseball Abstract, James wrote, “The fifties were packed with first basemen who were outstanding for a few years­ but none was consistently strong throughout the decade.” He also states that Kluszewski, Hodges, and Vic Wertz were the contenders for the best first base­man of the decade. Hodges outpaces them in Boswell’s Total Average (a base-out percentage) and in Palmer/Thorn’s basic Linear Weights. Table 1 gives the player’s career totals, and then his numbers on a per/154 game basis.

(Click image to enlarge)

4. Did he have an impact on a number of pennant races?

In Hodges’ first ten years as a starting player, the Dodgers finished as low as third only twice, finishing in first place or tied for first six times. Hodges created a significant percentage of his team’s runs in the years 1948-1959. By Bill James’s Basic Runs Created formula, he created 12.3% of the Dodgers’ runs over that time. Over a similar period in his Reds career, Hall of Famer Tony Perez created just under 12% of his team’s runs.

Although this category seems to be more about con­tributions of players, Hodges also played a major role in the 1969 pennant race as the manager of the Miracle Mets. The seven-year-old expansion team, which had finished in 9th place at 73-89 the previous year, won 100 games despite having only two players (Cleon Jones and Tommie Agee) who had more than 400 at-bats. 

“The fight against the predominance of the pitcher is almost as ancient as baseball itself.” — Irving Sanborn, “Consider the Pitcher,” Baseball Magazine, September 1920

Pittsburgh Pirates pitcher Burleigh Grimes demonstrates his spitball before a game at Forbes Field in Pittsburgh in 1928. Grimes was one of 17 major-league pitchers who were grandfathered in to continue throwing the spitball after it was banned in 1920. (SABR-RUCKER ARCHIVE)

1920 was a seminal year for baseball. Events had conspired to bring the Deadball Era to an end, and make way for the Lively Ball Era. This was no gradual transition: the rise in offense in 1919 (mainly in the AL) intensified and spread to the NL in 1920 and was confirmed as more than a fluke in 1921. The curtain went up on the new as quickly as it came down on the old.

On center stage was the ball. Yet the driving force was not so much what the owners ordered done to the ball by its makers as what they ordered not done to the ball by its hurlers and done with the ball by the umpires. What were commonly called “freak” pitches were the focus, and the spitball was lumped together with them in the eye of the storm. Just what impact did rule changes with these pitches have on the end of the Deadball Era? What other factors were involved?

The spitball had an enormous impact on the game since its origin in the early 1900s. One of its biggest foes, Baseball Magazine editor F. C. Lane, acknowledged its power:

It is a tricky and dangerous ball to control. But once mastered, as only a few have been able to master it, it is all but unhittable.
— “Should the Spitball Be Abolished?” June 1919

In Babe Ruth’s Own Book of Baseball, he (or his ghost- writer) explained:

The theory of the spitter is simple enough. The ball is wet on one side. Naturally that makes a slippery spot which reduces friction and gives added speed to the opposite side where friction is applied. All spitballs break down, but by turning the wet spot one way or the other, the pitcher can make the ball break in or out as he desires.

The spitter was also a psychological weapon, a powerful decoy. Spitball pitchers went through the motions of “loading up” (putting saliva on the ball) before almost every pitch by bringing the ball and glove to the mouth. They went through this ritual even when they were not “loading up,” to sow confusion in the minds of batters. Some spitballers, like Urban Shocker, threw the pitch only a few times a game, yet the batter never knew when it was coming.

Shocker is a great pitcher. But honestly I don’t know whether he is a great spitball pitcher. In nine innings today he threw exactly four spitballs. I was surprised. I expected a flock of them. But he came up with everything a good pitcher should have.

— Ed Walsh, 1924 Reach Guide

The two greatest purveyors of the pitch were Jack Chesbro and Ed Walsh. In 1904, Chesbro won 41 games for the New York Highlanders (forerunners to the Yankees). Sadly, he is most remembered for one spitter he lost control of on the final day of the season, in the ninth inning of a tie game with a runner on third base. With that wild pitch, the game and the pennant belonged to the Boston Americans, in one of Boston’s biggest wins over New York in the 20th century. Walsh led the Hitless Wonders, the Chicago White Sox, to victory in the 1906 World Series and won 40 games for them in 1908.

Discussion on whether the pitch should be outlawed goes back almost as far as the pitch itself. In 1907, Chicago White Sox manager Fielder Jones spoke out strongly against it, even though he had a star in spitballer Ed Walsh (Sporting Life, August 8, 1907). In 1909, a debate on the spitter was the feature in the Reach Guide. Baseball writers were split on whether the pitch should be banned, and some were prescient in their remarks:

While the spit ball is sloppy, dirty, and disgusting, it is, I fear, impossible to get rid of.

— W.A. Phelan, Chicago Journal

More than a decade would go by before the pitch’s foes were able to legislate its ban. Many arguments were used against it. Its unsanitary nature at the time of the deadly flu epidemic of 1918-19 certainly didn’t help its cause. Already in 1907 a Cleveland public health doctor spoke of the connection between the pitch and tuberculosis:

What would a man’s feelings be with a batted ball covered with microbes coming at him like a shot out of a gun?

— Dr. Martin Friedrich, Sporting Life, May 18, 1907

There were the fielding and throwing problems the slick ball created. There were the delays it caused, as the pitcher brought both ball and glove to his mouth before each pitch, whether he planned to throw the “wet one” or not. In an age when two-hour games are so rare, we can only chuckle at the humorous argument.

These two-hour games wore on the nerves. They made the Boss Bug [fan] late for supper and when this happened the real Boss Bug grew peeved and knocked the game for making him late for meals.

— “Scribbled by Scribes,” The Sporting News, May 20, 1920

Then there was the argument about the spitter’s impact on the arm. Such a concern was not even mentioned in the 1909 Reach debate. Chesbro and Walsh had meteoric yet tragically short careers, but in 1908 both men were still pitching effectively. Respected umpire and columnist Billy Evans spoke out passionately against the pitch in Harper’s Weekly.

I have seen a score of pitchers drop out of the majors, because of the strain placed upon their arm through using the spitball.
— May 2,1914

The history of the spitball is that it has ruined many an arm of steel.
— June 13, 1914

At the same time, in the mid-teens there was a lull in great spitball pitching. It is interesting to note that there were more outstanding spitball pitchers in the 1920s than there were in the entire Deadball Era. Some observers even felt that the spitter was no longer a dominant pitch in the teens, that with the passing of Ed Walsh, it was practically eliminated.

New Ed Walshes may arise, but we much doubt . . . Big Ed was almost in a class by himself, and the moulder [sic] of men seldom duplicates such a feat.

— The Sporting News, March 15, 1917

At least as old as the spitball were “freak” pitches that involved “doctoring” the ball to change its aerodynamics. Back in the 1890s Clark Griffith created the scuff ball by using his spikes to roughen its surface. As the decade of the teens moved forward, pitchers began to develop more trick pitches: the shine ball, emery ball, paraffin ball, licorice ball, mud ball, and more. All these pitches gave the ball added and unusual movement as it approached the plate.

They were all (including the spitter) based on the concept that contrasting surfaces (of rough and smooth) affected the ball’s flight and revolution and gave it a peculiar hop, usually dropping down. These pitches brought success to their hurlers and frustration to hitters, since they were so difficult to make contact with. Once they added such a pitch to their repertoire, pitchers like Russ Ford (emery ball), Eddie Cicotte (shine ball), and Hod Eller (shine ball) became much more successful. While there were rules against some of these pitches, like the emery ball, they were not easy to enforce.

As with the spitter, artifice and deception were part of the weaponry. There was ongoing discussion whether Cicotte’s shine ball was real or simply imagined. A 1917 article called the pitch a “mythical flicker” and “mental hazard” for superstitious players (New York Times, September 26, 1917). Sportswriter Tom Meany expressed the “mind game” that pitchers used:

Batters who are always seeking to detect some sign of chicanery on a pitcher’s part sometimes become so engrossed in looking for illegal pitches that they forget to hit the legal ones.

— Baseball’s Greatest Teams, Barnes, 1949

All these pitches had an enormous effect on the confidence and thus the hitting of batters — because of what the ball did, what it might do (sail and hit the batter), and what it was reputed to do.

There were so many “doctored” pitches, surreptitiously prepared, that sentiment was building that the pitchers had gone too far. Among the owners the position was emerging that all trick pitches should be swept away. In February 1920, the Joint Rules Committee enacted laws that banned all “freak” pitches, including the spitter.

A couple of years earlier, National League President John Tener had explained his opposition to the “wet one”:

I dislike the spitball because it affords an opening to so many other illegal deliveries. An umpire must continually watch a spitball pitcher so that he does not use his spitter as a subterfuge to cover up something else.

— New York World, February 10, 1918

The Sporting News argued it would be too difficult for umpires to control “freak” pitches if the spitter were legal (September 11, 1919). Years later, shortstop Roger Peckinpaugh, whose long career spanned both the Deadball and Lively Ball Eras almost equally, explained it best:

It wasn’t the spitball exactly they wanted to ban. They wanted to get rid of all those phony pitches. All of those pitches were in the disguise of the spitter. You see, the pitchers went to their mouths, but then they might throw you a shine ball or a mud ball or an emery ball. … So as I understand it, the only way they could stop them fooling with that baseball was to bar the spitter, not let the pitcher go to his mouth.

If a pitcher didn’t go to his mouth and still threw one of those freak pitches, the umpire would know damn well the guy was doctoring the ball. That’s how they stopped it.

— Donald Honig’s The Man in the Dugout

Pitchers of the “freaks” could masquerade as spitball pitchers too easily. Every pitcher has been obliged to suffer for the sins of the freak delivery artists.

— F.C. Lane, “Has the Lively Ball Revolutionized the Game?” Baseball Magazine, September 1921

Umpire Billy Evans agreed that pitchers had only themselves to blame, with all the ways they had “doctored” the ball (St. Louis Post-Dispatch, March 27, 1921). Perhaps Cincinnati pitcher Hod Eller was right when he wrote in an article entitled “Why the New Pitching Rules are Unjust”:

The world has gone mad over freak deliveries.

— Baseball Magazine, August 1920

The rule changes took place against the backdrop of rumors of a “fix” in the 1919 World Series, even though the Black Sox Scandal had not yet broken wide open. The owners had looked the other way far too often, whether the issue was gambling or emery balls. It was time for a bold and dramatic move, and they made one.

Ultimately, the rule changes were instituted to help the hitters and bring more fans into the ballparks. Washington owner-manager Clark Griffith may have turned on his former profession, but he was forthright.

Why encourage the which the pitcher has on batting? … Batting is the most interesting part of the game. It ought to be encouraged.

— “Ban the Spitter,” Baseball Magazine, July 1917

His star pitcher Walter Johnson made a remarkable admission to a New York paper just a few months after the new rule was instituted:

Hitting plays the most important role in a ball game. There is no getting away from the fact that the baseball public likes to see the ball walloped hard. The home runs are meat for the fans. ‘Babe’ Ruth draws more people than a great pitcher does. It simply illustrates the theory that hitting is the paramount issue of baseball.

— Evening Telegram, August 22, 1920

In his landmark diatribe against the spitter, F.C. Lane expressed his opposition to it:

Last, and most important of all, the spit ball hurts batting and therefore strikes straight at the heart of the game’s popularity. … The game has become one-sided; too much of a mere pitchers’ duel. Something should be done for the downtrodden batter. … One of the simplest and easiest ways to lighten the batter’s load is to throw out the spitball.

— “Should the Spitball be Abolished?” Baseball Magazine, June 1919

Simply put, it was time to swing the pendulum back toward the batter. Ironically, as hitting dominated the 1920s, Lane would become one of the most outspoken foes of what he called the “home run epidemic,” the “fever of batting which has run riot,” and the “orgy at bat” (Baseball Magazine, July 1921, August 1925, and June 1927, respectively).

It is hard to understand nowadays just how rare and special a home run was before 1920. After an eighth-inning three-run blast beat the Yankees in a 1917 game, New York writer Walter Trumbull described it this way:

There is nothing more extraordinary than a home run. No scene in melodrama can so grip the chords that thrill. … A circuit clout is the greatest transmitter of emotions. It makes smiles grow where none grew before, or smothers laughter beneath a pall of gloom.

— New York World, April 26, 1917

And in 1919, Boston’s Babe Ruth electrified the baseball world, and drew large crowds wherever he played, when he hit an almost unthinkable 29 home runs. The entire American League had hit only 96 circuit clouts the year before.

Where did the existing spitball pitchers stand? Before the winter meetings, there was still some support to protect them. Even AL president Ban Johnson, in a letter to St. Louis Post-Dispatch editor John Wray on August 31, 1919, wrote:

No great restrictions will be placed upon the spitball pitchers of the present day.

But the sentiment had shifted by the time of the February 1920 meetings in Chicago (after the 1919 World Series). Echoing the sentiment of W.H. Lanigan a decade earlier (“Into the cuspidor with the spit ball,” Reach Guide, 1909), existing spitballers were given one more year to throw that pitch and learn a replacement. By 1921, the spitter would be gone from major league baseball.

This was ominous news indeed for baseball’s spitballers. They had gotten a reprieve, but only for a year. They banded together and organized a lobbying effort. Appropriately, Spittin’ Bill Doak of the St. Louis Cardinals was one of the leaders of the group. They began to appeal to the sympathy of the writers and the fans. At the same time, their argument gave a strong hint of legal action based on an unfair labor practice by baseball’s owners. Spitballer Jack Quinn of the Yankees framed the issue:

Cutting out the spit ball after permitting me to pitch it all my life is like reaching into my pocket and taking money from me.

— New York Evening Telegram, May 20, 1920

The spitballers had a remarkable stroke of good fortune. Four members of their exclusive fraternity were in the 1920 World Series between Cleveland and Brooklyn. The Dodgers’ Burleigh Grimes was impressive with a shutout win in Game Two and a tough loss in Game Seven. The Indians’ Stan Coveleski was spectacular: three complete-game wins and only two earned runs and two walks in 27 innings. How could baseball possibly pull the rug out from two of its biggest stars? (The other two spitballers were Cleveland’s Ray Caldwell and Brooklyn’s Clarence Mitchell.)

Table 1: Grandfathered Spitballers After 1920 Ban

(Click image to enlarge)

While sentiment shifted toward these pitchers, The Sporting News remained firm in its support of the ban and accused the owners of waffling for selfish reasons.

They [owners] are unalterably opposed to doing anything for baseball or for anything or anybody else, when the act involves the loss of a dollar’s worth of baseball property to themselves.

— February 3, 1921

In the end, the owners did back down and permitted the existing spitballers to continue using the pitch. Still, the owners got what they wanted: a ban on trick pitching, no new spitballers, and protection for the familiar faces and arms that threw the “wet one.” These men were permitted to throw the pitch for the rest of their careers. Hurlers of other trick pitches faced no similar protection. In 1924, the Reach Guide tried to explain the distinction in “Passing of the Spitball Pitcher.”

Not everyone could throw a spitball. It required years of painstaking effort to master. A pitcher who had reached the major leagues with it had accomplished something. It would be unfair to throw him out with the others who tampered unfairly with the ball. So baseball held one brief for the spitter, it voted to allow him to live out his career.

How much impact did the ban on the spitter have on the end of the Deadball Era? After all, 17 spitballers were protected, and offense still rose significantly. It is true that future spitballers were banned and, as the 1920s progressed, the spitball fraternity continued to shrink. But earned run averages and batting averages rose right away, at the start of the 1920s, not the end of the decade.

After 1919 the spitballers maintained their advantage of about 10% fewer earned runs than all major league pitchers. Yet their numbers were impacted negatively along with pitching as a whole, and the Lively Ball Era took off in 1920 in spite of these hurlers. It was simply tougher to pitch after 1919.

Clearly, factors other than the banning of the spitter (beyond the “club” of 17) drove the new age of hitting. In 1920, batting averages and home runs began to climb dramatically in both leagues. The 1920s saw “The Reign of the Wallop:”

Batting is king. All other departments of the game are now subordinate subjects. The increased crowds at the present games strongly indicate that the public likes the present era of free and fancy swatting. … And if the public prefers the new game, the magnates prefer it.

— W.R. Hoefer, Baseball Magazine, July 1923

First, the ban on freak pitches other than the spitter (as well as a ban on new spitballers) had an enormous impact on the game. Hitters faced less effective pitchers, with fewer weapons at their disposal. Moreover, for years pitchers had ignored mastering the curveball, instead depending on “trick” pitches. Youngsters took the popular and easier route of learning the “latest” new pitch. They had “discarded the twirler’s best weapon, a fast-breaking curve” (umpire and syndicated columnist Billy Evans, The Times, St. Louis, May 20,1924). Pitchers were now in desperate straits — they had no pitch to fall back on.

In the 1920s there was much discussion about the absence of the curveball and its slow return to the game. NL president John Heydler spoke of the time would be needed after the rule changes, for and minor league pitchers to develop “legitimate pitching devices” like the curve and change of pace (Evening Telegram, New York, July 8, 1920).

Just before former Yankee manager Wild Bill Donovan was killed in a train wreck in December 1923, his last conversation with baseball colleagues was widely publicized: he was lamenting the dearth of good curve ball pitchers in the game. A few months later, Baseball Magazine discussed this issue in a lengthy article by Irving Sanborn entitled “The Decline of Curve Ball Pitching” (April 1924).

In case the new rules were not clear enough for future major league pitchers, emphasis was added. Immediately after Rule 30, Section 2, Spalding’s Official Guide (1921) noted:

Young pitchers should take special cognizance of this section. From now on, it will be foolish for pitchers to experiment with freak deliveries … absurd for a beginner to waste his time on anything except straight baseball …

Ty Cobb gave his perspective on the history of pitching in 1925:

Pitching has gone through three periods. First came the pitchers who developed the fastball and curve. Then came along the spit-ballers [sic]. Finally there were the trick pitchers such as Russell Ford with his emery ball. They have barred all that and we are back at the beginning again. It is going to take the pitchers of today some time to develop the curve to its full efficiency again.

— New York Evening Post, August 11, 1925

Furthermore, the increased confidence of hitters should not be overlooked. Because many of the trick pitches were hard to control, there was an intimidation factor at play: batters had been afraid of being hit. Now most of the tosses that used to worry batters and make them look foolish were part of the past. Also, is it possible that the disruption of World War I, with the dramatic cutback in the number of minor-league teams, may have hurt pitchers more than it impacted hitters?

The Lively Ball Era is somewhat of a misnomer. Despite all the rumors and anecdotal evidence about a “juiced” or “rabbit” ball, it is generally accepted that the owners did not order a livelier ball and that the ball itself was not altered. The words of NL President John Heydler, a man of impeccable integrity, that there was no change in the ball’s construction, were confirmed by numerous independent tests. (One of the most widely publicized was that done by Columbia University chemistry professor Harold Fales and announced at the NL summer meetings in mid-July 1925.) Besides, as Bill Curran notes in Big Sticks (William Morrow, 1990), if the owners had wanted to enliven the ball, they would have had no reason to hide this change. Why risk a conspiracy when the public’s faith in the game was already shaken by the Black Sox Scandal?

Baseball researcher Bob Schaefer recently uncovered a fascinating interview with George Reach of A. J. Reach and Company, manufacturer of AL baseballs (Baseball Digest, July 1949). He admits that his company did tinker with the liveliness of the ball from time to time. He credits the tighter tension of the wool yarn more than the makeup of the ball’s core (rubber vs. cork) with the changes. He suggests that the Lively Ball Era could have been helped along by his company’s shifting standards. Yet in September 1921, this very same George Reach was quoted in Baseball Magazine:

We try to manufacture the best baseball that money can buy. There has been no change whatever in our methods of manufacture since 1910. … We have never been requested by the league officials to make any change whatever nor have we made any changes of our own volition [other than the introduction of the cork-centered ball in 1910-11].

This article went on to say that Reach’s words must be accepted “on faith” because of the reputation of “a man whose word would not be lightly questioned by anyone who has ever seen him.”

There was also a lengthy article in The Sporting News (March 12, 1936) by columnist and cartoonist Edgar F. Wolfe (under his pseudonym of Jim Nasium), written shortly after the death of Tom Shibe. Shibe was the President of the Philadelphia Athletics and part owner of the Reach Company. He had insisted that the ball had not been changed in the late teens or 1920s, “barring improvements in the method of manufacture.”

It is possible to reconcile the denials of the owners, even those of ball manufacturers like Tom Shibe, with the fact that the ball may indeed have become livelier. It is time to consider this as one of the factors that affected play, without making it the key factor. Ball manufacturers were always trying to make a better and longer-lasting ball. (This was the impetus for the introduction of the cork-centered ball in 1910.) The use of better raw material — namely, Australian wool — after World War I deserves more attention than it has received. (It may have contributed to the rise of offense in 1919.) AL President Ban Johnson wrote to Baseball Magazine in September 1921:

It [Australian wool] permits of a firmer winding, a harder ball, and naturally one that is more elastic.

This higher grade of yarn, which had more spring and could be wound tighter, coupled with mechanical improvements in the winding and sewing machines, did result in some change.

The funny thing about it was that Tom Shibe, working only to improve the quality of the ball and make it more durable, never realized the effect that this would have on the playing of the game.

— Jim Nasium, The Sporting News, March 12, 1936

The Sporting News technically could state “the 1914 and the 1925 ball are twins, so far as their component parts are concerned” (editorial, July 23, 1925). It moved to shakier ground when it wrote (in the same editorial) that “not one iota, molecule or microbe of difference exists today in the manufacture and material of the ball from the original contract.”

Even the Fales study noted that the seams of the 1920s ball seemed to be more countersunk and flush with the leather than the ball of the Deadball Era. The almost seamless ball (better sewing machines?) would have been harder to grip, with less “break” than its predecessor, thus making it easier to hit.

It is also possible to reconcile the explosion of hitting that started in 1920 with changes in the liveliness of the ball that may have occurred earlier (per Mr. Reach). Until Babe Ruth came along and showed the way, hitters did not try or know how to take advantage of a livelier ball, if there was one.

Perhaps the era was ushered in more by “lively bats” than by lively balls. Babe Ruth revolutionized the game by swinging for the fences from the end of the bat. Managers began designing their offense around the big blast, rather than “small ball.” The “Inside Game” of bunt, steal, and sacrifice was quickly disappearing. This new hitting style meant that balls went farther and hit the gaps quicker than before.

A number of issues remain to be explored: Are the test studies, like that of Professor Fales, still available for review? After all, he concluded that the 1920s balls did not change in elasticity from those of the Deadball Era. It also should be noted note that strikeouts per game dropped significantly in the 1920s. This seems counter intuitive, with hitters free-swinging from the end of the bat. Perhaps the elimination of trick pitches may have set this off.

The tragic death of Cleveland’s Ray Chapman, hit by a pitch thrown by Yankee submarine pitcher Carl Mays, resulted in a change that benefited hitters tremendously. Until that time the same ball stayed in play for long periods of time, even after it became grimy and dirty and thus a poor target for a hitter to see. Chapman might have had a difficult time picking up the darkened ball. Henceforth, the umpires were instructed to replace scuffed and soiled balls.

Mike Sowell, in his classic book The Pitch That Killed, notes that umpires were directed to introduce clean balls at the start of the 1920 season. But owners complained of needless increased costs, and the umpires backed off somewhat, at least until the Chapman tragedy. Not surprisingly, the lowest earned-run averages of the Lively Ball Era came in its first year. This could also be explained by the early stages of the new hitting styles and the relearning of the curve ball.

Hitters now had a bright white ball to target throughout the game. The change was huge. There were 43,224 balls used in the National League in 1924, a dramatic increase from a total of 14,772 used in 1916 (Baseball Magazine, September 1925). Even more impressive is that 32,400 more balls were used in 1925 than in 1915 (New York Sun, January 4, 1926).

Finally, the introduction of better hitting backgrounds in many ballparks gave the hitter an even clearer view of the ball. Taken together, these changes had a profound impact on improving hitting, both for average and for power.

The fans loved the new style of play. Attendance climbed dramatically, clearly driven by more than the end of the war. The 1920s saw an average of well over 9 million fans a year, as compared to less than 6 million in the teens (Total Baseball).

There is very positive evidence in the jammed ball-yards that the multitude finds the cruder, more robust, freer walloping game of the present more attractive. And in baseball, more perhaps than any other sphere, the majority rules.

— Baseball Magazine, July 1923

New York Giants pitcher Hugh McQuillan might have complained that the lively ball was making “bums out of pitchers” (New York Herald Tribune, June 21, 1925), but talented pitchers with great control like Grover Cleveland Alexander and Walter Johnson continued to excel. And the dearth of great spitballers had ended. In the 1920s, a number of great and near-great spitballers dominated the game: Coveleski, Faber, Grimes, Quinn, and Shocker.

Once the spitter was banned, there was no more discussion of its danger to the arms of the protected hurlers. No wonder. The dominant spitball pitchers had incredibly long and productive careers. Coveleski pitched until he was 39 years old; Faber until he was 45; Grimes until he was 41; and Methuselah Jack Quinn until he was 49. Urban Shocker pitched until he was 37 and was stopped only by heart disease that claimed his life less than a year after he went 18-6 for the 1927 Yankees.

It’s because I’m a spitball pitcher that I am able to keep on going. The spitter is the easiest delivery there is upon the arm. If it were not so, how do you account for the success of Jack Quinn . . . Ed Walsh did not have to quit because of the spitter. It was overwork that turned the trick.

— Red Faber, New York World, December 15, 1929

Table 2: Spitballer Rankings in the 1920s

(Click image to enlarge)

ADDENDUM

Ironically, the very baseball establishment that banned the spitter later voted five of its fraternity into the Hall of Fame: Chesbro and Walsh (elected by the Hall’s Old Timers’ Committee in 1946), and Coveleski, Faber, and Grimes (later elected by the Hall’s Veterans’ Committee). None won 300 games, and Chesbro and Walsh won less than 200 games. While they continued to be about 10% more effective than pitchers as a whole, all pitchers gave up about one more full run a game than they had before 1920.

A number of factors shut down the Deadball Era: the ban on “freaks” other than the spitter, no new spitballers, the new hitting style and improved hitting backgrounds, as well as the constant flow of fresh, bright, and better quality balls. Taken together, they provided the impetus for a stunning and sudden change, one of the biggest in baseball history.

(In the 1950s and 1960s, there was a movement to legalize the spitter. Not only former hurlers Ed Walsh, Red Faber, and Burleigh Grimes supported the move; so did executive Branch Rickey and the Commissioner of Baseball, Ford Frick. Even Billy Evans, now a baseball executive, endorsed the move. The movement was not successful.)

“Bring back the spitball.”It may be the wrong answer, it may be a romantic answer, but many old-timers share that dream. To them the spitball era does, truly and clearly, represent romance. It represents the time when the pitcher was king.

— John L. Lardner, “Will They Bring Back the Spitter?” Saturday Evening Post, June 17, 1950

The rule changes that major league baseball instituted in February 1920 included two that affected the ball and pitching. Rule 14, Section 4, “Discolored or Damaged Balls,” had previously read:

In the event of a ball being intentionally discolored by rubbing it with the soil or otherwise by any player, or otherwise damaged by any player, the umpire shall forthwith demand the return of that ball and substitute for it another legal ball as hereinbefore described, and impose a fine of $5.00 on the offending player.

— 1918 Reach Official Guide

The new Rule 14 (“The Ball”), Section 4 was more expansive and punitive:

In the event of the ball being intentionally discolored by any player, either by rubbing it with the soil, or by applying rosin, paraffin, licorice, or any other foreign substance to it, or otherwise intentionally damaging or roughening the same with sand or emery paper or other substance, the umpire shall forthwith demand the return of that the ball, and substitute for it another legal ball, and the offending player shall be disbarred from further participation in the game. If, however, the umpire cannot detect the violator of this rule, and the ball is delivered to the bat by the pitcher, then the latter shall be at once removed from the game, and as an additional penalty shall be automatically suspended for a period of ten days.

— 1920 Reach Official Guide

Rule 30 (“The Pitching Rules”) had previously discussed only “The Delivery of the Ball to the Bat.” It now had a new Section 2 which stated:

At no time during the progress of the game shall the pitcher be allowed to (1) apply a foreign substance of any kind to the ball; (2) expectorate either on the ball or his glove; (3) to rub the ball on his glove, person, or clothing; (4) to deface the ball in any manner, or to deliver what is called the “shine” ball, “spit” ball, “mud” ball, or “emery” ball. For violation of any part of this rule the umpire shall at once order the pitcher from the game, and in addition he shall be automatically suspended for a period of ten days, on notice from the President of the league.

Note: In adopting the foregoing rules against freak deliveries, it is understood and agreed that all bonafide spit ball pitchers shall be certified to their respective Presidents of the American and National League at least ten days prior to April 14th next, and that the pitchers so certified shall be exempt from the operation of the rule, so far as it relates to the spit ball only, during the playing season of 1920.

The language was the same in the Reach and Spalding Guides.

STEVE L. STEINBERG has recently completed a book on Miller Huggins, The Genius of Hug. He is finishing a book on spitball pitcher Urban Shocker, Shocker! Discovering a Silent Hero of Baseball’s Golden Age. He lives in Seattle with his wife and three children.

During the 1979 season Mike Veeck proved as good as his word. Comiskey Park became ground zero for Veeck-led promotions. One such promotion was Disco Demolition Night, which took place on July 12, 1979. Ironically, the idea emerged in the wake of a “Disco Night” promotion two years earlier. Following that event, Jeff Schwartz, sales executive at WLUP, and Mike Veeck concocted the idea to have an anti-disco night. The idea reemerged in 1979 when Schwartz called Veeck to tell him that there was a new DJ at WLUP who was going to blow up disco records at a shopping mall while on the air. Immediately following this demolition of disco records, Veeck phoned Steve Dahl and asked him if he would be interested in blowing up records at Comiskey Park.2

The idea was to attract people to the ballpark by giving them a discount at the gate. Because the radio frequency of WLUP was 97.9, they decided that as part of the promotion they would admit for 98 cents anyone who brought a disco record to the park. The Veeck–Schwartz idea-turned-promotion coincided with another promotion that was scheduled for that night — teen night — which allowed teens in for half-price regardless of whether or not they had a record. The result was hugely successful in terms of numbers. Comiskey Park was filled beyond capacity. Some estimates put attendance inside the park at 50,000. And those were the people who could get in. Up to 20,000 milled about outside the ballpark.3

On the other hand, the promotion was a failure. While the park was packed — every owner’s dream — the field itself was deemed unplayable in the aftermath of the promotion, which took place between games of a twilight double-header between the White Sox and the Detroit Tigers. As a result, the White Sox organization in general had to accept a forfeit, while Bill Veeck in particular had to endure a barrage of criticism from the press.

Disco Demolition Night was not just a cultural battle between disco and rock’n’roll; it was also a clash between the subcultures of athletic and music entertainment. When we take this perspective, the experiences of owner Bill Veeck and fan Dan Ferone are heard and become part of the story — as they should, since they, the baseball fans, were the ones that lost out that evening.

By the time disco was all the rage in the United States, especially after the 1977 hit movie Saturday Night Fever, it had already been part of the European discotheque scene for some time. While everyone was getting in on the disco phenomenon — from the Rolling Stones to Sesame Street — critics such as Dahl gathered followers dedicated to anti-disco.4

Newspaper reporter Toni Ginnetti described Dahl as a “24-year-old self-avowed crusader against disco music.” The militia that he led in his crusade to “annihilate the forces of disco” was called the “Insane Coho Lips.” Critics of disco have tended to focus on its mechanical nature. Many would have agreed with a writer for Time, who characterized the disco sound as a “diabolical thump-and-shriek.” However, while the musical aspect of disco no doubt disturbed Dahl, when asked he tended to focus on disco as a cultural force. “The disco culture represents the surreal, insidious, weird oppression because you have to look good, you know, tuck your shirt in, perfect this, perfect that.” “It is all real intimidating. Besides the heavy sociological significance,” he continued, “it is just fun to be a pain in the ass to a bunch of creeps.” Although Disco Demolition Night was not the first time he led his army into cultural battle, it would prove to be the most notorious.5

While the forces of anti-disco gathered, Mike Veeck looked toward the 1979 season. He assured Dan Ferone that management would strive “to make sure that when you visit Comiskey Park you’ll see more than a baseball game . . . [and] that when you leave at the end of nine innings of baseball, whether we won or lost you will have had fun.”6 When Veeck’s promotional acumen met with Dahl’s anti-disco militancy, the result was indeed “more than a baseball game.”

Mike Veeck’s comments to Ferone demonstrate that the son was following in the footsteps of his already legendary father, Bill Veeck, who was labeled fairly recently as “the spiritual godfather of baseball promotions.” Since the 1940s Bill Veeck had made a reputation by using promotions to improve the pennant prospects of both minorand major-league teams. A driving point in Veeck’s business philosophy was that “you can draw more people with a losing team plus bread and circuses than with a losing team and a long, still silence.”7

Long before the promotions at Comiskey Park during the 1970s, Bill Veeck was engaged in promoting Chicago ball clubs. In the late 1950s he owned the White Sox and helped continue the excitement that was started earlier in the decade. Under Veeck’s ownership in 1959, the “Go-Go White Sox” won their first pennant in forty years. Even earlier, in the 1930s and 1940s, Bill Veeck worked for the North Side Cubs. He was instrumental in beautifying Wrigley Field, including the now signature ivy that distinguishes that ballpark’s outfield.8

Even before the first game of the doubleheader began, this veteran of baseball, Bill Veeck, began to suspect that things were going to be different. Unlike other days when people made their way to the South Side ballpark, this day a lot of people were carrying a “variety of obscene signs.” Veeck’s suspicions were confirmed when he saw thousands of people who were unable to get in wandering around outside of the park.9 Rowdy behavior that interrupted the first game of the twilight doubleheader foreshadowed what was to come. The first game had to be stopped several times because some of the attendees “began to throw records and firecrackers onto the field.” This created an atmosphere that was described as “ripe for trouble” by reporters of a suburban Chicago newspaper, the Daily Herald. The raucous activity got too close for comfort for the Detroit Tigers’ Ed Putman. He eventually had to leave the bullpen area because of the cherry bombs being thrown onto the field. Putman later told a reporter that a “cherry bomb landed so close to the back of my head that I could feel the explosion.”10 A writer for the Chicago Tribune reported that players from both teams “were forced . . . to play that first game under a constant bombardment of records and firecrackers.”11 Another baseball player experienced the rowdiness of the “fans.” White Sox outfielder Rusty Torres said that he was at the receiving end throughout the first game. Some of the items thrown at him were lighters and empty liquor bottles. The native Puerto Rican joked that there “was one good bottle of rum, Puerto Rican rum.” “The way things were going,” he continued, “I wish whoever threw it had left a little in the bottle.”12

Following the first game, Dahl, the master of demolition, and Lorelei, who modeled for radio station WLUP, were driven around the warning track before heading to center field. “We came out on the field, and I did a lap around the warning track in the Jeep,” Dahl later recalled. “I was bombarded by beer and cherry bombs. Lovingly. That’s how they show their love at White Sox Park.” Following this display of affection, the disk jockey for “The Loop” and his radio show cohost, Garry Meier, pepped up the crowd in anticipation of the climactic explosion of disco records. Lorelei recalled that the view from centerfield was surreal — an adjective used by many eyewitnesses. She described feeling like she was “in the middle of a beehive. All I could hear was buzzing all around me.” A fan who had seats along the third-base line that evening remembered that the crowd was so loud that “you couldn’t hear yourself think.” After leading his followers in a chant of “disco sucks,” Dahl, as promised, blew up the disco records, which was meant to be a “symbolic cooling down of disco fever.”13 Whether it had that effect on disco remained to be seen. When the smoke lifted it became clear that Dahl’s followers were anything but cooled down by the anti-disco rite.

In the wake of the explosion 5,000–7,000 people stormed the field. Not since 1925 had Comiskey Park experienced such a scene.14 Commander Dahl tried to rein in his troops, but to no avail. White Sox owner Bill Veeck stood at home plate and hopelessly pleaded with the crowd to return to their seats. Harry Caray tried futilely to get the people off the field by singing “Take Me Out to the Ball Game.” Normally, at a ballgame, Caray’s rendition would bring a crowd to its feet in a happy sing-along of the classic song, but this was not a normal situation, and this was not his normal audience. The baseball legend and the legendary song fell on deaf ears as the haters of disco tore up the playing field, stole bases, and destroyed a batting cage. While this was going on a bonfire continued to burn in center field.15

Finally, the Chicago police arrived — dressed in riot gear. Their appearance was met with applause by those who had remained in their seats. On seeing the police carrying nightsticks, the rowdy crowd on the field quickly dispersed. Close to forty people were charged with disorderly conduct. The number of reported injuries varied. Some newspapers claimed that no one was injured, while others reported that six people were wounded. The highest casualty estimate put the number at well over thirty. Chicago Police Lieutenant Robert Reilly, who was head of park detail, remarked that that evening at Comiskey Park was “as bad as the night the Beatles were here.”16

While the buzz in the ballpark intensified and then finally broke loose with the storming of the field, baseball fans tried to flee a scene that looked to be quickly descending into a riot. Dan Ferone, who had decided to keep his season tickets after all, described the atmosphere as one of “panic and fear.” Another fan, Cynthia

Lonergan, told reporters that she “was afraid of being crushed.” Records were being thrown from the bleachers like Frisbees. While the teams were ushered to the clubhouse for their safety, the fans were not so lucky. One fan remembered that between “the games when the nonsense started, a record album hit a buddy, Ron Battaglin, right between the eyes, vertically. Blood everywhere. Beer everywhere, too. He toughed it out with the help of the nectar of the gods.” When sixteenyear-old Brian Pegg settled into what he thought were great seats — roughly 20 seats from the field along the third-base line, between the dugout and the bullpen — he did not realize his memories of this evening would not be from the ballgame. Instead he remembered the firecrackers and records that were being thrown down from the upper deck. One M-80 blew up just above the head of an elderly man, and a 45-rpm record lodged itself in a woman’s shoulder blade.17

Anti-disco fanatics jumped turnstiles, scaled twostory fences, and climbed through the open windows of the old ballpark before the festivities began. Those who eventually wanted to flee when they felt things were getting out of hand, or when they had heard the second game was canceled, found that it took some time before they could find an unlocked exit. Bob Young remembered that the main gate was the only remaining exit available to those who wanted to leave.

So what was meant to keep thousands from entering ended up trapping those inside who wanted to escape. The Chicago Tribune reported that the gates were closed once 50,000 people were in the park. Mike Veeck acknowledged that the gates had to be closed. When calculating attendance, Veeck says that the “simple rule of thumb” is to “take the advance and multiply by two-thirds to see how many will show up. Where we thought 25,000 to 30,000 we had 50,000 in the park and at least 15,000 outside who couldn’t get in because we had to close the gates.”18

Not surprisingly, the second game was not able to begin at its scheduled time. In fact, over an hour after the second game was scheduled to start, the field was deemed unplayable. While initially it was stated that the game would be postponed, in the end, the promotion cost the White Sox and their fans a game by forfeit.19

In the next day’s press, Bill Veeck was roundly criticized. One reporter stated that last night was “a night when Veeck’s circus atmosphere came crashing down around him.” An editorial in the Daily Herald commented that the “king of the promoters” and the “master showman” was “lucky that the worst that happened is that his team forfeited a game as a result.” Taking a harder stand, the editors at the Chicago Tribune held Bill Veeck personally responsible for the “hucksterism that disgraced the sport of baseball.” Veeck, according to the editorial, endangered fans and players by creating an environment that included drunken teenagers and flying records. Bill Gleason of the Chicago Sun-Times simply stated that it was “the most disgraceful night in the long history of major league baseball in Chicago.”20

Privately Veeck told his son that sometimes promotions “work too well.” And he told reporters that having only “one fiasco” after being in the business for four decades was “not that bad.” However, he acknowledged that he had heard of neither the radio station nor Steve Dahl. For the papers the next day, he admitted that he could have done more research. “I didn’t investigate as carefully as I obviously should have,” Veeck said. Nonetheless, he continued, “I don’t think this has tarnished baseball, but it didn’t brighten my escutcheon as a promoter.” Rather than pass the promotional disaster onto his son, he accepted full responsibility. Nonetheless, Mike Veeck was surprised with how he had misread the situation. “I’m into music and this was my kind of concept,” the younger Veeck told Chicago Tribune reporter Richard Dozer. “But the mistake I can’t get over,” he continued, “is that I didn’t read it right.” He said he could not believe how passionate people felt about the disco issue. “When I was younger,” Mike Veeck explained, “I marched against the war but I never thought anyone would demonstrate for a cause like this.”21

The responses of both Veecks illustrated the gulf between those who were at Comiskey Park on July 12 for baseball and those who were there for Disco Demolition Night. While some were there for both, accounts reveal that there was a sharp difference between the two groups. In the reporting from the time and in more recent reminiscences many people commented on the drug use that was going on. One fan quipped, “It wasn’t Winstons they were smoking.” And the umpire crew chief that night, Dave Phillips, later described the scene as looking like “a small Woodstock drug fest.” Moreover, others have commented on how even before they entered the park they knew this game would be different. They said that the types of people going in made it feel like one was entering the park for a rock concert rather than a ballgame.22

While some baseball fans like Bob Young and Dan Ferone opted to leave the park, others let out their frustrations on the anti-disco fanatics. Phil Allen, a Steve Dahl fan, but who was present that evening as a Sox fan, said that in the section where he and his brothers were sitting, the fans were singing “Na Na Na Na, Na Na Na Na, hey a**holes, sit down.” Another person said that in “the upper deck we were throwing beer on the jerks, to no avail.”23

A number of people commented on the differences between those who were there to demolish disco and those who were there for a ballgame. The Chicago Tribune said that Disco Demolition Night — and all that came with it — had “little to do with why baseball fans come to Comiskey or any other park and even less to do with the game of baseball.” Even though he was the target of the Chicago Tribune editorial, Veeck would have concurred with the editors. Like them, he believed that those involved in the mayhem were not “real baseball fans.”24

So many people showed up at the ballpark that evening for their 98-cent admission that eventually ticket holders were not even admitted into the park. Those who arrived early enough to get admitted were not pleased with what they experienced. Terry McArdle told reporters that he had gone to Comiskey Park to see a game. “It was really sad,” he said, “that most of the people out there had no consideration for the sports fans.” Announcer Harry Caray believed he understood the reason. He reportedly said that “the people that caused the trouble were not typical baseball fans.”25

On the morning following Disco Demolition Night, it was apropos that Sports and Business shared a section in the Chicago Tribune. Fitting as well were the two headlines on the front page of the section: one announced, “When fans wanted to rock, the baseball stopped” and the other declared, “Sox promotion ends in a mob scene.” Inadvertently, the arrangement of this section of the Chicago newspaper suggests what went wrong the night before.

No one would deny that major league baseball is business. And the White Sox of the 1970s were owned by one of the shrewdest businessmen in baseball. However, when two subcultures are brought together into one venue the end result is ultimately going to be unsatisfying for one side. The Veecks had hoped to bring people to the ballpark, whether it was a season ticket holder or the person who likes to take in an occasional game. If one judges success by the number of people in the ballpark, then Disco Demolition Night, as a promotion, was extremely successful — it filled the ballpark beyond capacity. Conversely, the promotion was also a failure. The promotion brought together at Comiskey Park people who arrived for different reasons. While rock fans and baseball fans appreciate the memory of the evening, the fact remains that some ticket holders were never allowed into the park, and those that were in the park lost out on a second game.

Disco Demolition Night demonstrated the limits of promotions for sporting events. David Israel of the Chicago Tribune said the following day that he was not surprised by what occurred. “It would have happened any place 50,000 teenagers got together on a sultry summer night with beer and reefer.” Nonetheless, Israel continued, “it was a nuisance. And it really had no place at a ballpark.”26

Israel’s sentiment was echoed by many in the days that followed Disco Demolition Night. Even so, promotions have remained a regular feature of minorand major-league baseball. Perhaps, White Sox pitcher and Texan Rich Wortham’s assertion after Disco Demolition Night can be taken by promoters as a suggestion forged by experience: “This wouldn’t have happened if they had country and western night.”27

An earlier version of this article appeared as “Disco Demolition Night: Doubleheader Turns Disaster in Comiskey Park,” Illinois Heritage 7, no. 3 (May/June 2004), 6-9.

Notes

1 Mike Veeck to Daniel Ferone, 21 February 1979, private collection,

2 Jim Kirk, “25 Years Later, Disco Debacle Recalled Fondly,” chicagotribune.com (7 July 2004); Mike Veeck, interviewed by Mark Liptak, www.whitesoxinteractive.com (19 October 2004).

3 In 1969 the capacity of Comiskey Park was 44,492. In 1989 the capacity was 43,931. While 50,000 was a lot, it was not the largest The largest crowd was on May 20, 1973, when 55,555 showed up for Bat Day and a doubleheader between the White Sox and the Twins; see Philip J. Lowry, Green Cathedrals: The Ultimate Celebration of All 271 Major League and Negro League Ballparks Past and Present (Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley, 1992), 131; Richard Dozer, “Sox Promotion Ends in a Mob Scene,” Chicago Tribune, 13 July 1979; Bob Gallas and Tom Jachimec, “5,000 Disrupt Sox Ball Game,” Arlington Heights (Ill.) Daily Herald, 13 July 1979; Teamworks Media, “Disco Demolition 25th Anniversary: The Real Story,” WTTW Chicago, 12 July 2004 (one hour); Greg Couch, “For the Record,” www.suntimes.com (9 July 2004); Dave Hoekstra, “The Night Anti-disco Fans Went Batty at Sox Park,” www.suntimes.com (9 July 2004).

4 Rickey Vincent, Funk: The Music, the People, and the Rhythm of the One (New York: Martin’s Griffin, 1996), 207, 209.

5 Toni Ginnetti, “Outburst spotlights DJ’s Cause,” Daily Herald, 14 July 1979; Frank Trippett, Time, 23 July Earlier Dahl had taken his fight to Hanover Park and Lynwood. While the near-riot brought attention to the radio station, Dahl began to experience cancellations of previously scheduled appearances; see Edie Cohen, “Dahl May Find Forums Lacking,” Daily Herald, 14 July 1979. Before the promotion, Mike Veeck opined about disco to Chicago Sun-Times sports columnist Bill Gleason. He said: “It’s awful music that had to be forced upon us by the so-called tastemakers. I say ‘had to’ because of the extreme lack of taste in disco. It couldn’t have happened by itself” (Bill Gleason, “The Disco Is Here to Stay Despite Efforts of the Sox,” Chicago Sun-Times, 11 July 1979).

6 Mike Veeck to Ferone, 21 February 1979, private collection.

7 Jerome Cramer, “So, You Want to Own a Minor League Baseball Team,”forbes.com (15 September 2003), quoted in “Bill Veeck,” by Steven Gietschier, in American National Biography, ed. John A. Garraty and Mark C. Carnes (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 22:314.

8 Gietschier, “Bill Veeck,” 313–15.

9 Richard Dozer, “Veeck Protests Sox Forfeit, but Accepts Responsibility,” Chicago Tribune, 14 July 1979; see also Brian Hewitt, “Fans Riot at White Sox Park,” Chicago Sun-Times, 14 July 1979.

10 Gallas and Jachimec, “5,000 Disrupt Sox Ball Game”; Gallas, “Sparky Won’t Play ‘Disco’ Makeup,” Daily Herald, 13 July

11 David Israel, “When Fans Wanted to Rock, the Baseball Stopped,” Chicago Tribune, 13 July 1979.

12 Gallas, “Sparky Won’t Play ‘Disco’ ”

13 Lorelei, whitesoxinteractive.com (18 March 2004); Phil Allen, ibid. (25 June 2003); “Discophobia Out of Control,” Chicago Tribune, 13 July 1979; Lorelei, www.whitesoxinteractive.com (18 March 2004).

14 According to Richard Dozer, on April 26, 1925, the White Sox lost to Cleveland 7–2 in seven innings as a result of the game being shortened because the fans stormed the field; see Dozer, “Sox Promotion Ends in a Mob Scene.”

15 Gallas, “Sox Pay for Disco Disaster with Forfeit,” Daily Herald, 14 July 1979; “Anti-Disco Rally Halts White Sox,” New York Times, 13 July 1979; Dozer, “Sox Promotion Ends in a Mob Scene”; Tom Duffy, “Tiger Rookie Stays Cool Against Sox,” Chicago Tribune, 14 July 1979; Gallas and Jachimec, “5,000 Disrupt Sox Ball Game”; Leon Pitt and Phillip O’Connor, “Fans Rampage at Sox Park — 2d Game Put Off,” Chicago Sun-Times, 13 July 1979; Phil Hersh, “Bill Veeck ‘Sad and Embarrassed’ by Disco Night,” Chicago Sun-Times, 15 July 1979.

16 Gallas, “Sox Pay for Disco Disaster with Forfeit”; Dozer, “Sox Promotion Ends in a Mob Scene”; Robert Reilly quoted in “Discophobia Out of Control.”

17 White Sox pitcher Ross Baumgarten stated he “didn’t know people could have such little regard for other people’s safety,” Hewitt, “Fans Riot at White Sox Park”; see also Hewitt, “A.L. Rules Sox Must Forfeit to Tigers,” Chicago Sun-Times, 14 July As Dan Ferone helped an elderly lady get away from her box seats he recalled being concerned about the possibility of getting hit by a flying record; Dan Ferone, conversation with author, Chicago, 2003; Pitt and O’Connor, “Fans Rampage at Sox Park — 2d Game Put Off,”; Gallas, “Sparky Won’t Play ‘Disco’ Makeup”; “Aggravated White Sox Fan Bob,” www.whitesoxinteractive.com (25 June 2003); Brian Pegg, www.whitesoxinteractive.com (25 June 2003).

18 Bob Young, conversation with author, Palatine, 2003; “Discophobia Out of Control”; Gallas, “Sox Pay for Disco Disaster with Forfeit,” Daily Herald, 14 July 1979; see also Bob Gallas, “Sparky Won’t Play ‘Disco’ Makeup.”

19 Since World War II there have only been three other American League forfeits: the last game the Senators played in Washington on 30 September 1971; in Cleveland on Beer Night on 4 June 1974; and when Baltimore forfeited a game because Earl Weaver took his team out of the game against Toronto on 15 September 1977; see retrosheet.org/ forfeits.htm; see also Bob Pille, “Sox Swallow Forfeit,” Chicago Sun-Times, 14 July 1979. “Anti-Disco Rally Halts White Sox”; Dozer, “Sox Promotion Ends in a Mob Scene.”

20 Gallas, “Sparky Won’t Play ‘Disco’ Makeup”; “A Promotional Gimmick That Got Out of Hand,” Daily Herald, 14 July 1979; “Veeck Asked for It,” Chicago Tribune, 14 July 1979. For a mocking commentary, see Mike Imrem, “Promotion Ideas Now a Dime a Demolition,” Sunday Herald, 15 July 1979; Gleason, “The Horror at Comiskey,” Chicago Sun-Times, 13 July 1979.

21 Mike Veeck to Seth Swirsky, 27 November 2001, in Swirsky, Something to Write Home About: Great Baseball Memories in Letters to a Fan (New York: Crown, 2003), 101; Gallas, “Sox Pay for Disco Disaster with Forfeit”; Hersh, “Bill Veeck ‘Sad and Embarrassed’ by Disco Night”; Dozer, “Veeck Protests Sox Forfeit, but Accepts Responsibility”; Gallas, “Sox Pay for Disco Disaster with Forfeit.”

22 Pille, “The Fans Return Quietly to Comiskey,” Chicago Sun-Times, 14 July 1979; Dave Phillips quoted in “The Promotion Night That Ended in Flames: From Setting Records on Fire to a Forfeit,” New York Times, 11 July 2004; www.whitesoxinteractive.com (18 March 2004); see also Dave Phillips with Rob Rains, Center Field on Fire: An Umpire’s Life with Pine Tar Bats, Spitballs, and Corked Personalities (Chicago: Triumph, 2004), 51–54.

23 Allen, whitesoxinteractive.com (25 June 2003); Anonymous, www.whitesoxinteractive.com (18 March 2004).

24 “Veeck Asked for It,” Chicago Tribune, 14 July 1979; Lynn Emmerman and Joseph Sjostrom, “‘These Weren’t Real Baseball Fans’ — Veeck,” Chicago Tribune, 13 July In the days that followed, Bill Veeck said, “I abjectly apologize for having put a great many White Sox fans through an evening that was scary”; Hersh, “Bill Veeck ‘Sad and Embarrassed’ by Disco Night.”

25 Emmerman and Sjostrom, “‘These Weren’t Real Baseball Fans’ — Veeck”; Gallas and Jachimec, “5,000 Disrupt Sox Ball ” Bill Gleason wrote that “the majority in the mob were exhibitionists. They came not to watch baseball but to be seen”; Gleason, “The Horror at Comiskey”; see also Pille, “The Fans Return Quietly to Comiskey.”

26 Israel, “When Fans Wanted to Rock, the Baseball.”

27 Ibid.

Business Issues

The Louisville meeting did not involve a great deal of new league business. The biggest business story leading up to and carrying over into the meeting — racist statements attributed to Cincinnati Reds owner Marge Schott — reminded many observers of baseball’s racially segregated past. In November, former Reds marketing director Charles Levy, in a deposition in support of fired controller Tom Sabo’s suit against the Reds, said Schott referred to former Reds players Eric Davis and Dave Parker as “million dollar niggers.”2

On November 14, Schott issued a statement declaring simply, “I am not a racist.” Less than a week later, on the 20th, she released another statement saying her use of the word “nigger” and ownership of a Nazi armband (she called it “memorabilia”) were not meant to offend.3 The story kept gaining traction as the Winter Meeting approached. On November 29, the New York Times quoted Schott as saying that “Hitler was good in the beginning, but he went too far.” She also claimed that her reference to “niggers” was a joke term, but denied applying it to Davis and Parker. Former Negro League player Hank Aaron, widely beloved as the game’s all-time home-run leader at the time, called for Schott to be suspended from baseball.4

Because of the Schott controversy, civil-rights leader and former Democratic presidential candidate Reverend Jesse Jackson visited Louisville during the meetings and challenged baseball to regain a leadership role in fair hiring practices and to end its “institutional racism.”5 Jackson met with the small ownership group investigating Schott, but the session ended inconclusively. If baseball did not get its “house in order,” Jackson warned, he would call for boycotts of the game and would mount a challenge against its antitrust exemption.6 While Jackson was calling for structural changes in baseball, he was surrounded at the podium by former players, including Parker and ex-Reds star Frank Robinson, a Baltimore Orioles executive. The following January, Jackson made good on his threat by calling for a boycott of games played by teams that did not have affirmative-action plans in place by Opening Day.7

Somewhat unexpectedly, but timed after Jackson’s visit, Schott on Wednesday, December 9, issued a tepid apology for her remarks. Reportedly she literally stumbled over the word “apologize”:

“I am not a racist or bigot. I have always believed in equal opportunity for everyone and that individuals should be judged by their merit, not by their skin color, religion or gender. … I acknowledge that in the past I have, on occasion, made insensitive remarks which I now realize hurt others. On those few occasions, it was my mouth but not my heart speaking. For any such remarks which were insensitive, I am profoundly sorry and I apologize to anyone I hurt. I can only say that I did not mean them. I love baseball, and if anything I have said caused embarrassment to the game, the Reds, the wonderful fans and city of Cincinnati, I am sorry.”8

Before ending her statement, like Jackson, Schott pushed some of the blame on baseball itself: “I wish to add that while I am not without blame in this matter, I am also not the cause of the problem. Minority issues have been present in baseball long before I came to the game. They must be resolved. … I pledge to you that I will work with others to accomplish meaningful reform.”9 Throughout the controversy, reporters noted that Schott frequently pointed out that she too was a minority in baseball, a woman in a man’s world. However, this fact did not stop baseball from punishing her. On February 3, 1993, Schott was fined $25,000 and banned from day-to-day operations of the Cincinnati Reds during the 1993 season.10

The meeting did include some other new business. Owners considered a few fairly small initiatives that served as omens for future changes in baseball. For example, owners reviewed data compiled by market researchers to consider league realignment (which would occur in 1994) and interleague play (which would begin in 1997). Perhaps most importantly for baseball in the 1990s, owners voted 15 to 13 to reopen the Collective Bargaining Agreement with the players union. While some feared this decision was a precursor to a 1993 spring-training lockout of the players, owners also voted to amend their bylaws to require a three-fourths majority vote to authorize such a lockout. Traditionally, owners have more leverage over players in the spring and any lockout would have been intended to force players to accept a salary cap. While owners did not repeat the lockout strategy they had used in 1973, 1976, and 1990, the lack of a settlement about the Basic Agreement did contribute to a midseason 1994 players strike. Players have far more leverage in the middle of the season since owners have every incentive to finish the season and collect revenues from attendance and media contracts. The strike led to the cancellation of the 1994 World Series.

The owners meeting was adjourned early and postponed because of the unexpected death of Carl Barger, the Florida Marlins president and chief operating officer. Barger, a former corporate lawyer, suffered from a ruptured abdominal aortic aneurysm on Wednesday during a joint ownership session in the ballroom of the Galt House East Hotel, and succumbed to the internal bleeding. The New York Times reported that he excused himself about 11 A.M. and collapsed just outside the meeting room: “Within seconds, Bobby Brown, the cardiologist who is president of the American League, was at his side administering cardiopulmonary resuscitation, and an ambulance arrived 10 minutes later to take him to the hospital.” His doctor at Humana Hospital, however, told the Times that Barger never regained consciousness and died before surgery could be performed.11 Barger had been associated with the Marlins since July 8, 1991, but his new team was yet to play its first game. The team had participated in the expansion draft a few weeks prior to the meeting in Louisville. Before joining the Florida expansion franchise, Barger was widely credited with saving the Pirates franchise in Pittsburgh. The owners adjourned their meeting after Barger’s collapse and rescheduled it for January.

Player Movement: Free-Agent Frenzy

Teams reportedly obligated $250 million in free-agent spending at the 1992 meetings. In one of the most prominent moves, the reigning National League Cy Young Award winner, right-hander Greg Maddux, departed the Chicago Cubs for the league champion Atlanta Braves for five years and $28 million.12 Contemporary news reports suggested that Maddux turned down a New York Yankees offer worth at least $6 million more. Braves general manager John Schuerholz later said that the Maddux signing “was the biggest acquisition I was ever involved with at the meetings.”13

While the Maddux transaction helped the Braves build a baseball dynasty, it was not the largest free-agent signing at the 1992 Winter Meetings.14 Peter Magowan’s new ownership group in San Francisco completed a nearly $44 million deal with former Pittsburgh Pirates outfielder and reigning National League MVP Barry Bonds, who had also won the award in 1990. Reportedly, the six-year deal for $43.75 million would be guaranteed even if the proposed sale of the Giants fell through, though departing owner Bob Lurie was quite worried about this aspect of the transaction. Indeed, a hotel-room news conference abruptly ended when a major-league baseball official reportedly whispered Lurie’s concerns into the ear of Dennis Gilbert, Bonds’ agent. As recounted by then-San Francisco Examiner beat reporter Larry Stone, “All of a sudden, the whole group got up and hastily left the ballroom through the kitchen door — Gilbert and his staff of snappily dressed associates; Willie Mays; Bobby Bonds; and a flustered looking Barry — all of whom were seated on the podium, waiting for the triumphant announcement.”15 The highly anticipated news conference occurred three days later.

The Chicago Cubs also said goodbye that winter to outfielder Andre Dawson, a 38-year-old former MVP (1987) with 399 career home runs. The 2010 Baseball Hall of Fame inductee signed with the Boston Red Sox for two years at $9.3 million.

Free-agent designated hitter and former infielder Paul Molitor left Milwaukee after 15 seasons and was an immediate success with his new team. After signing a $13 million, three-year contract with the Toronto Blue Jays, Molitor enjoyed two All-Star seasons with the team before slipping somewhat in the final year of his contract.

A number of teams re-signed their own free-agent stars to lucrative deals. For example, the Minnesota Twins re-signed 31-year-old free-agent center fielder Kirby Puckett to a five-year deal worth $30 million. Reportedly this cost the Twins $2.5 million more than a deal struck months before that was vetoed by Twins owner Carl Pohlad. At the time of the signing, Puckett was briefly the third highest paid player in baseball.

Similarly, 12-time All-Star shortstop Ozzie Smith, age 37, returned to his team, the St. Louis Cardinals for $3 million per year, renewable for each remaining year of his career so long as he remained healthy and achieved 400 plate appearances in the prior year. Smith also signed a six-year personal-services contract worth $1.2 million upon his retirement from baseball. The Detroit Tigers re-signed their five-time All-Star second baseman Lou Whitaker to a three-year contract worth $10 million. They also re-signed their free agent pitcher, righty Bill Gullickson, to a two-year contract for $4.6 million. And All-Star outfielder Joe Carter re-signed with the Toronto Blue Jays for three years and $19.5 million.

By comparison, numerous other signings at the 1992 Winter Meetings involved players who were never major stars of the game. Some impressive sums of cash nonetheless changed hands in these deals. For instance, left-handed pitcher Greg Swindell signed a four-year contract worth $17 million to play for the Houston Astros. On December 8, the Blue Jays signed former Oakland A’s right-handed pitcher Dave Stewart, a four-time 20-game winner, to a two-year contract worth $8.5 million. Former St. Louis Cardinals right-handed relief ace Todd Worrell signed with the Los Angeles Dodgers (three years, $9.5 million). In a similar transaction, 30-year-old left-handed reliever Randy Myers signed with the Chicago Cubs for three years and $11 million.

Somewhat less noteworthy, the expansion Florida Marlins signed their first free agents on December 8 — infielder Dave Magadan and 44-year-old knuckleball pitcher Charlie Hough. Magadan played only a few months as the Marlins primary third baseman before being traded in late June of 1993 to the Seattle Mariners for right-handed pitcher Jeff Darwin and outfielder Henry Cotto. The right-handed Hough served as the Opening Day starter for the new franchise in both 1993 and 1994, finishing a combined 14-25 in his final two years as a player. After failing to land Greg Maddux and other big-name free agents, the New York Yankees acquired shortstop Spike Owen for a three-year, $7 million contract.

Trades

The 1992 Winter Meetings did not feature a significant number of important trades, but teams were able to agree on a few deals. The first trade of the meetings featured Minnesota trading left-handed pitcher David West, who posted a 6.99 ERA in a limited role during the 1992 season, to the Philadelphia Phillies in exchange for right-handed pitcher Mike Hartley, who had pitched 53 games in relief during the season with an ERA of 3.44. While Hartley performed slightly worse in 1993, West played a significant role in the bullpen of the 1993 National League champion Phillies, finishing with a 2.92 ERA in just over 86 relief innings.

The California Angels traded starting pitcher Jim Abbott, who had finished third in the 1991 Cy Young Award race, to the New York Yankees for a package of players, including first baseman J.T. Snow. The left-handed Abbott’s ERA increased significantly in New York as he became a slightly below average starter, though he did pitch a no-hitter in September. Pitcher Charlie Leibrandt, a 15-game winner in each of the prior two seasons, was traded from Atlanta to Texas for his final big-league season. The southpaw finished with a 4.55 ERA in 150 innings and a 9-10 won-loss record.

At 1 A.M. after the busy Wednesday, San Diego Padres general manager Joe McIlvaine announced the final deal of the day, a trade sending right-handed pitcher Jose Melendez to Boston for promising young slugger Phil Plantier. Writer-analyst Bill James predicted that Plantier was the player most likely to slug more home runs in the decade of the 1990s than any other player.16

Conclusion

The 1992 meetings are mostly remembered for the large personalities who dominated the headlines — outspoken owner Marge Schott, Jesse Jackson, and Barry Bonds and his entourage. Columnist Hal Bodley later called the 1992 meetings a circus, though this was largely because of the great number of signings involving star players. Indeed, after the 1992 meetings, major-league owners voted 28 to 0 to forbid GMs from attending future Winter Meetings. Executive Council chair Bud Selig pushed for this largely because of frustration with the free-agent marketplace. Baseball management felt that agents and players were using the meetings to create bidding wars for players. Baseball would not reconvene in the same manner until it gathered in Nashville in December 1998.

While most publicity and news coverage about the Winter Meetings focuses on the activities and interactions of a relatively small group of major-league owners and general managers, it is important to keep in mind that the meetings are also a trade show and a job market.

Indeed, among those in attendance in 1992 was Dominic Latkovski, a graduate of local Bellarmine University, who had been working since 1990 as the Billy Bird mascot for the Triple-A Louisville Redbirds for a modest $35 per game. In hopes of emulating the famous (San Diego) Chicken and taking the act to audiences nationwide, Dominic and his brother Brennan created a video of their past performances, designed marketing materials, and manned a booth at the meetings hoping to at least break even on their investment by securing four $1,500 bookings for the 1993 season. The Latkovski brothers ended up performing 48 shows in their first year of independent operation and launched a successful business that as of 2017 continued to entertain thousands of people every summer at minor-league ballparks.17

Sources

In addition to the sources cited in the Notes, the author also consulted:

Associated Press. “Baseball Meetings Open Today; Clemens, Brown Are Top Names in Marketplace,” December 11, 1998. amarillo.com/stories/1998/12/11/spo_166-7052.shtml#.VqvUuvkrL2Q.

Chass, Murray. “Puckett Stays Put With Twins; Swindell Goes Home to Houston,” New York Times, December 5, 1992. nytimes.com/1992/12/05/sports/baseball-puckett-stays-put-with-twins-swindell-goes-home-to-houston.html.

Chass, Murray. “Jays Re-Sign Carter and Swipe Molitor,” New York Times, December 8, 1992. nytimes.com/1992/12/08/sports/baseball-jays-re-sign-carter-and-swipe-molitor.html.

Hill, Benjamin. “Latkovski’s passion fuels traveling act,” MLB.com, May 3, 2013. milb.com/news/article.jsp?ymd=20130503&content_id=46451862&fext=.jsp&vkey=news_milb.

Newhan, Ross. “Baseball Winter Meetings: Marlins’ Boss Collapses, Dies,” Los Angeles Times, December 10, 1992. articles.latimes.com/1992-12-10/sports/sp-2461_1_baseball-winter-meetings.

Schmuck, Peter. “Free-Agent Thaw Floods Baseball Winter Meetings,” Baltimore Sun, December 11, 1992. articles.baltimoresun.com/1992-12-11/sports/1992346114_1_schott-reopen-executive-council.

Walker, Ben (Associated Press). “Tragedy Marks End of Winter Meetings,” Deseret News (Salt Lake City), December 10, 1992. deseretnews.com/article/263618/TRAGEDY-MARKS-END-OF-WINTER-MEETINGS.html.

Notes

1 “The Baseball Barons’ Bread and Circuses” Time, December 21, 1992. content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,977306,00.html.

2 John Erardi, “‘Bookkeeper’ Started It All,” Cincinnati Enquirer, October 25, 1998. reds.enquirer.com/1998/10/102598sabo.html.

3 Schott’s Statement: ‘I Am Not a Racist,’” New York Times, December 10, 1992, nytimes.com/1992/12/10/sports/baseball-schott-s-statement-i-am-not-a-racist.html; Ira Berkow, “Marge Schott: Baseball’s Big Red Headache,” New York Times, November 29, 1992, nytimes.com/1992/11/29/sports/baseball-marge-schott-baseball-s-big-red-headache.html?pagewanted=all.

4 Berkow. The quotations attributed to Schott are also from this article.

5 Jerome Holtzman, “Jackson Makes Pitch for Minority Hiring,” Chicago Tribune, December 8, 1992. articles.chicagotribune.com/1992-12-08/sports/9204210874_1_minority-hiring-black-journalists-rev-jesse-jackson.

6 Maryann Hudson, “Jesse Jackson, Looking Beyond Schott, Reprimands Baseball,” Los Angeles Times, December 8, 1992. articles.latimes.com/1992-12-08/sports/sp-1797_1_jesse-jackson.

7 Danny Robbins, “Jesse Jackson Outlines Boycott: Schott Case Provides Him a Platform to Call for Improvement in Minority Hiring,” Los Angeles Times, January 13, 1993. articles.latimes.com/1993-01-13/sports/sp-1250_1_jesse-jackson.

8 “Schott’s Statement.”

9 Ibid.

10 Glen Macnow, “Reds Owner Is Suspended 1 Year, Fined/The Penalty: $25,000. Marge Schott Will Still Pay the Bills. But She Won’t Be Able to Run the Team,” Philadelphia Inquirer, February 4, 1993. articles.philly.com/1993-02-04/sports/25955938_1_cincinnati-reds-owner-marge-schott-inappropriate-language.

11 Robert McG. Thomas, “Carl Barger, 62, Team President With Pirates and Florida Marlins,” New York Times, December 10, 1992. nytimes.com/1992/12/10/us/carl-barger-62-team-president-with-pirates-and-florida-marlins.html.

12 All signings and trades referenced here are documented at “1993 Major League Baseball Transactions,” www.baseball-reference.com/leagues/MLB/1993-transactions.shtml. The player links reveal the terms of contracts.

13 Hal Bodley, “Winter Meetings are no honeymoon,” MLB News, December 5, 2008. mlb.mlb.com/news/article.jsp?ymd=20081205&content_id=3703507&vkey=perspectives&fext=.jsp&c_id=mlb.

14 For a summary of how these free agents performed through their contracts see, Rodger A. Payne, “Evaluating Free Agent Signings at the 1992 Baseball Winter Meetings,” Rodger A. Payne’s Blog, May 16, 2016. rpayne.blogspot.com/2016/05/evaluating-free-agent-signings-at-1992.html.

15 Larry Stone, “Memories of Winter Meetings Past,” Seattle Times, December 7, 2009. seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/thehotstoneleague/2010445446_memories_of_winter_meetings_pa.html?syndication=rss.

16 Chad Finn, “Top 50 Red Sox Prospects of Past 50 Years: 30-21,” Boston.com, April 2014. archive.boston.com/sports/touching_all_the_bases/2014/04/30-21.html. While Plantier hit 34 home runs for the 1993 Padres, he managed only 53 more over the remainder of his career, including 18 for the 1994 Padres. He never again achieved even 400 plate appearances and was out of major-league baseball by age 29.

17 Press Release, “The ZOOperstars to Perform at Bandits Game Friday,” Quad-Cities Online, July 21, 2009. qconline.com/archives/qco/print_display.php?id=449772.