Search Results for “node/Johnny Cooney” – Society for American Baseball Research

Instant Relief: First-Batter Triple Plays

admin — Mon, 29 May 2023 07:11:50 +0000

R—O—L—A—I—D—S. The answer in the classic ad: “How do you spell relief?”

TRIPLE PLAY!!! The answer to the question, “What’s the perfect remedy for a relief pitcher sum moned into a diamond game with nobody out and two (or three) runners on base?”

Take for instance May 30, 1967, at Crosley Field in Cincinnati. In the top of the ninth the Reds were leading the Cardinals, 2-1. The Reds’ starting pitcher, Jim Maloney, gave up consecutive singles to Orlando Cepeda and Tim McCarver, putting runners at first and third with nobody out. Cincy skipper Dave Bristol then brought in Don Nottebart to face the next batter, Phil Gagliano, who grounded the first pitch to shortstop Leo Cardenas, who, after “checking” Cepeda at third, threw the ball to second baseman Tommy Helms, forcing out McCarver. Helms then whipped the ball to first-sacker Deron Johnson to retire the batter, completing a 6-4-3 ground double play (GDP). However, after initially delaying at third, Cepeda unexpectedly bolted for home trying to score the game-tying run. Johnson alertly fired the ball to catcher Johnny Ed wards who tagged Cepeda, simultaneously completing the triple play and getting the game-winning out.1

“All I wanted to do was get the batter to hit the ball on the ground and hope for a play at the plate,” said Nottebart. As a dejected Red Schoendienst, the Cardinals manager, explained, “Just before Gagliano hit the ball, our third base coach, [Joe] Schultz, had reminded Cepeda to go right home on a play like that. There’s only one place to go and that’s home. You can’t give them the double play. But Cepeda didn’t start running right away.” “It was my fault,” said Cepeda. “I learned something. I’ll never do that again.”2

In this article we present the pertinent details of other examples of Instant Relief—triple plays in which a relief pitcher got the first batter he faced to hit into a rally-terminating triple play in the National League, American League, or the defunct major leagues of the American Association (1882-91), Union Association (1884), Players League (1890), or Federal League (1914 15). The time period covered is from the founding of the National League in 1876 through 2022. “A team’s gotta be lucky to win a game like that,” said Shoendienst after the game. As it turns out, Nottebart is one of 40 relief hurlers to experience Instant Relief.

RESEARCH PROCEDURE

All of the information needed to compose this arti cle was obtained exclusively from the Smith-Boren-Krabbenhoft (SBK) Triple Play database.3 The SBK TP database was created in 1997-98. Jim Smith began compiling a list of triple plays in 1967. Initially, Jim used the official Day-By-Day (DBD) records which recorded the teams involved in TPs beginning in 1912 for the American League and 1920 for the National League, but not the fielders, batters, or runners. The official records began including the fielders (but not batters or runners) beginning in 1928 for the NL and 1930 for the AL. Smith pored through the box scores and game accounts of every major league game (as presented in The Sporting Life, The Sporting News, The New York Times, and several Philadelphia newspapers) to ascertain the batters, runners, and fielders of those TPs as well as TPs not included in the official records. By the end of 1969, Smith (with some help from Seymour Siwoff of the Elias Sports Bureau) had determined the complete details for 377 TPs from 1900 through 1969. During the 1970s, he continued his search for TPs, focusing on the nineteenth century. By 1975 Smith had identified about a hundred TPs 1876-99. And, by 1990, with valuable help from a number of fellow SABR members—in particular, Art Ahrens, Bob Davids, Joe Dittmar, Paul Doherty, Leonard Gettelson, John O’Malley, Pete Palmer, William Rich mond, John Schwartz, and John Tattersall—Jim had identified 131 TPs in the nineteenth century. Alto gether through the 1990 season, Smith’s list included 588 major league triple plays.

In 1988 Herm Krabbenhoft independently initiated a research effort to ascertain the details of each major league triple play from 1920 forward. With the dates of the triple plays given in the official DBD records, he recorded the details of each TP as described in The New York Times. In 1991, at the SABR 21 convention in New York, Herm learned of Smith’s independent triple play research project. Herm wrote to Jim on July 6, 1991, asking if he would be interested in writing a series of articles on triple plays for Baseball Quarterly Reviews (BQR), the unifying theme being “Triple Plays at XYZ Stadium (Park, Field, Grounds, etc.).” Smith responded (July 11), stating that he’d be glad to write about triple plays for BQR. During the next six years Smith authored/co-authored some 80 articles providing the details for the 620 triple plays he and Herm had documented.4

In 1993, Steve Boren began his own independent effort to document major league triple plays. Employing the same brute-force approach utilized by Smith, Steve identified 622 major league triple plays from the 1876 through 1997 seasons. In 1997 Krabbenhoft, Smith, and Boren became aware of each others’ efforts.5 They then combined their databases to produce the comprehensive SBK Triple Play Database. At the conclusion of the 1998 season, the SBK TP database had 636 documented/verified triple plays (including the four triple plays pulled in 1998). Effort has continued during the ensuing years to keep the SBK TP database up to date as new TPs were accomplished and to search for more TPs from the nineteenth century.6 For instance, in 2004 we (Steve) found the first and (so far) only TP in the 1884 Union Association. The SBK TP database now has complete details for a total of 738 documented/verified triple plays through the 2022 season.

The tables on pages 21-24 present details for the 40 “Instant Relief” triple plays included in the SBK Triple Play database.

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

As shown in Table 1 (see Appendix below), the first re lief pitcher to achieve instant relief was Paul Radford of the Boston Reds. In an American Association game on May 26, 1891, against Kelly’s Killers of Cincinnati, played at Pendleton Park (also known as East End Grounds), going into the top of the ninth session, the host Cincinnati nine (who batted first, as was not un customary for the home team to do at the time) held a five-run advantage (18-13). Boston’s hurler, south paw Bill Daley, was in the box. Jim Canavan led off with an easy fly which keystoner Cub Stricker muffed. Yank Robinson got a base on balls. Dick Johnston fol lowed with a grounder to shortstop Radford, who threw wildly to first, the error allowing Johnston to be safe and Canavan to tally. Then Jack Carney smashed a three-bagger, plating Robinson and Johnston. The next batter, Art Whitney, then worked Daley for a pass, putting runners at first and third. At this juncture, Boston manager Arthur Irwin had had enough and made wholesale changes—he derricked Daley, sending him to left field, switched Hugh Duffy from left field to shortstop, and moved Radford to the pitcher’s box. Radford, a right-handed thrower, had been Boston’s regular shortstop for the entire season (133 games, .259 batting average). Facing the righty-swinging Frank Dwyer, Radford pitched only two balls. The first one was fouled. The next one was hit as a little fly back of second. Stricker caught the ball and immediately whipped it home to catcher Duke Farrell in time to nab Carney trying to score. The backstop then rifled the ball back to Stricker who put Whitney out attempting to go to second—completing the rally-squelching triple play. As it turned out, that was Radford’s only mound appearance of the season, a one-two-three performance—one batter, two pitches, three outs.

Other Game-Ending Instant Relief TPs

In addition to the two above-described accomplishments by Nottebart and Radford, there have been four other ninth-inning first-batter-faced triple plays achieved by a relief pitcher. (See Table 1, #5 and #6; Table 2 #15; Table 3 #30, on pages 21-23, Appendix). Two of them were game-enders like Nottebart’s. The first one was achieved by Virgil Trucks on August 29, 1953, at Comiskey Park in Chicago. In a battle of the “Soxes,” the White were leading the Red in the top of the ninth by a 5-1 score. But the BoSox were threatening. The ChiSox starting hurler, right-hander Connie Johnson, had given up a single to Floyd Baker and then walked Al Zarilla (pinch hitting for Ellis Kinder). After he missed the plate on his first two pitches to Karl Olson, the Pale Hose manager, Paul Richards, called on his ace right-handed starting pitcher—Virgil “Fire” Trucks— to extinguish the kindling and prevent an inferno. After taking a called strike (making the count 2-1), Olson ripped Trucks’s next pitch down the first base line. First sacker Ferris Fain snared the ball inches off the ground, retiring Olson for the first out. Next, he casually stepped on the primary sack to double up Zarilla for the second out. Then, he nonchalantly tossed the ball to shortstop Chico Carrasquel who stepped on the middle station to triple up Baker, simultaneously precluding a conflagration and ending the game. Interestingly, according to the game account written by Edward Prell for the Chicago Tribune, “Fain could have made the triple play unassisted as Baker had already reached third.”7

The most recent game-ending first-batter triple play game achieved by a relief pitcher occurred on September 8, 1991, in Montreal. The visiting Reds were trailing the host Expos by a 4-2 score. Mel Rojas was still on the hill for Montreal in the ninth. The Reds began their last-ditch at bats with a single by Hal Morris. This prompted Montreal manager, Tom Runnells, to call on his bullpen; he brought in portsider Jeff Fassaro to square off with left-hand-batting Paul O’Neill. Cincy skipper Lou Piniella countered by sending up righty-swinging Eric Davis. Fassero proceeded to walk Davis on five pitches. So, it was up to the next batter, Chris Sabo, another right-handed hitter. Runnels went to his bullpen again, this time summoning righty-throwing Barry Jones. Piniella had to stick with Sabo since he had no left-handed-batting players left on the bench. Sabo made contact on a 1-0 pitch, sending a hard one-hopper right at the third base bag. Hot corner man Bret Barberie fielded the ball and stepped on third to force out Morris, then fired the ball to second baseman Delino DeShields who, after getting the force out on Davis by stepping on second, relayed the sphere to first-sacker Tom Foley to retire Sabo, thereby completing a game-ending around-the-horn triple play. Afterwards, Barberie mentioned that he had “thought about a triple play right before the pitch; but I never thought it would happen.” Reliever Jones said, “It happened so fast. I threw the pitch, I looked around, and the game was done.”8

Other Lefty-Righty Instant Relief TPs

The managerial chess exhibited by Runnells and Piniella has also occurred with many other first-batter-faced triple plays. Four others are of particular interest. In the game on July 30, 1924, between the Philadelphia Phillies and the visiting St. Louis Cardinals at the Baker Bowl, the Phillies had shelled the Cards’ starting hurler, Leo Dickerman, for three singles and a double (plus a safe-on-error) to jump out to a 4-0 lead in the bottom of the first. After the Cardinals picked up one run in the top of the second, the Phillies were threatening to increase their advantage in the bottom half of the inning. Eighth-batting Jim Wilson led off with a double and opposing moundsman Jimmy Ring reached first with a base on balls. With runners on first and second and nobody out, manager Branch Rickey decided that it just wasn’t Dickerman’s day. So, with left-handed batting George Harper (who had singled in his first at bat) coming to bat again, the future Mahatma went to his bullpen, bringing in a southpaw, Bill Sherdel. Phillies skipper Art Fletcher countered by calling on the right-handed batter Johnny Mokan to pinch hit. The substitution of Mokan for Harper had all of the makings of a sacrifice bunt, and the St. Louis first sacker had moved in on the grass in anticipation. But Mokan crossed up the opposition—or so he thought—stroking a drive on Sherdel’s very first offering, straight to first baseman Bottomley, who snared the ball. He then heaved the ball to shortstop Jimmy Cooney, trapping Wilson off second base. Keystoner Rogers Hornsby dashed over to first base, where he clutched Cooney’s relay, completing the triple killing. As it later developed, with the LB/RP — >LB/LP — >RB/LP maneuvering having backfired for Philadelphia, St. Louis went on to score enough runs to eventually win the game, 9-8.

The Phillies and the Cardinals were again involved on August 23, 1947, this time at Shibe Park. Through seven and a half innings, St. Louis had a two-run lead, 5-3. But the Phillies got their first two men on in the last of the eighth: Andy Seminick opened the frame with a single to center and Lee Handley followed with one to right, putting runners on first and second with no one down. The Philadelphia manager, Ben Chapman, called on lefty-batting Charlie Gilbert to pinch hit against the right-handed hurling Jim Hearn. The Cardinals skipper, Eddie Dyer, responded by calling on southpaw reliever Al Brazle. Chapman opted to stick with Gilbert (rather than bring in a right-handed pinch hitter, such as Jim Tabor). On Brazle’s first pitch, Gilbert took a called strike. On the second pitch, he attempted to bunt, but fouled the ball off for strike two. Determined to lay down a bunt at all costs, Gilbert tried again. He lifted a short foul fly that catcher Del Rice was able to catch acrobatically. After quickly regaining his balance, Rice shot the ball to shortstop Marty Mar ion, doubling Seminick, who was almost at third base. Marion then relayed the ball to first baseman Stan Musial, retiring Handley, who was then almost at second base, completing the triple slaughter. So, the right-left maneuvering (this time RB/RP— > LB/RP— > LB/LP) again did not work out for Philadelphia. But it certainly did for St. Louis—another Instant-Relief TP. Plus the Cards won the game, 5-3.

While managerial chess is often played in the late innings, here’s an example of righty-lefty maneuvering in the very first inning. On June 23, 1954, in the inaugural season of the relocated and renamed Baltimore Orioles, the O’s were hosting the Boston Red Sox at Memorial Stadium. After having held the BoSox scoreless in their first at bats, the first four Orioles batters—right fielder Cal Abrams, first baseman Dick Kryhoski, center fielder Chuck Diering, and third baseman Vern Stephens—combined for a base on balls and three hits to produce one run and load the bases against the Red Sox starting pitcher, Frank Sullivan— Stephens on first, Diering second, and Kryhoski third. Scheduled to bat next for the O’s was left fielder Gil Coan, a left-handed batter. Boston’s manager, Lou Boudreau, called on southpaw Leo Kiely to relieve Sullivan. The Baltimore manager, Jimmy Dykes, countered with righty-batting pinch hitter Sam Mele. Mele grounded a Kiely pitch to the shortstop, Milt Bolling, who fielded the ball and flipped it to Billy Consolo at second base for the force out of Stephens. Consolo then fired to Harry Agganis at first to nail Mele, completing a straightforward 6-4-3 GDP. Kryhoski scurried home while the twin killing was being executed. Diering, who had advanced to third, audaciously tried to follow, but Agganis alertly shot the ball to catcher Sammy White in time to nail him, completing an unexpected Instant Relief triple play. Who knows what the game’s outcome would have been if Diering had held at third and the next hitter, Clint Courtney, had had a chance to swing the bat? After nine innings the game was deadlocked, 7-7, and the tie was not broken until Baltimore tallied the game-winner in the 17th! By then the maneuvering and the TP were pretty much forgotten.

The most recent game combining righty-lefty maneuvering and a first-batter triple play took place on August 16, 1988, at Busch Stadium in St. Louis, in a game between the Cardinals and the Houston Astros. The Red Birds led by a 3-0 score going into the top of the eighth inning with John Costello on the hill. Gerald Young singled and Bill Doran walked, putting runners at first and second. With the left-handed bat ting Terry Puhl coming up, Whitey Herzog summoned southpaw Ken Daley from the bullpen. Astros skipper Hal Lanier went to his bench, choosing the right handed batting Jim Pankovits to pinch hit for Puhl. It took three pitches to resolve the confrontational maneuvering—with a 1-1 count, Pankovits hit a grounder to third baseman Terry Pendleton, who fielded the smash and stepped on the hot corner to force out Young. He then fired to second baseman Jose Oquendo, who, after forcing out Doran, relayed the ball to first baseman Mike Laga to retire the batter for a nifty around-the-horn triple play—an Instant-Relief TP that fully justified the LB/RP— > LB/LP— > RB/LP maneuvering from the Cards’ perspective. Daley also set the ’Stros down 1-2-3 in the ninth to secure the 3-0 victory.

Instant Relief TPs Initiated by the Reliever

As indicated in Tables 3 (#29) and 4 (#32), two of the Instant-Relief TP pitchers had a direct hand in the execution of the triple play. The first came on August 8, 1990, at the Oakland-Alameda County Stadium with the Athletics hosting the Orioles. Going into the last of the seventh, Oakland trailed, 4-1. Mark Williamson, in relief of starter Ben McDonald, was on the mound for the O’s. The first two batters for the A’s, Terry Steinbach and Walt Weiss, coaxed walks from Williamson, putting runners on first and second and bringing the potential tying run to the plate, the right-handed batting Willie Randolph. Baltimore manager Frank Robinson, eschewing the standard righty-lefty strata gem, brought in southpaw Jeff Ballard to replace the righty Williamson. Oakland manager Tony LaRussa called for a hit-and-run and Randolph smashed Ballard’s first pitch for a low liner right into the pitcher’s glove. The hurler then wheeled around and threw to shortstop Cal Ripken, who was covering second, to catch Steinbach off the base. Ripken then threw the ball to first baseman Sam Horn to catch Weiss off first—a First-Batter-First-Pitch Instant-Relief Triple Play (1-6-3).

The other (most-recent) instant-relief triple play with the pitcher taking part in the three-ply wipeout came on July 13, 1995, at the Kingdome in Seattle. In the top of the ninth, the visiting Toronto Blue Jays, leading the Mariners by a 4-1 score, were trying to add some insurance runs. Shawn Green and Alex Gonzalez had smacked consecutive singles, putting runners at second and first, respectively. Seattle manager Lou Piniella decided that his starting pitcher, right-handed throwing Tim Belcher, had gone as far as he could; Piniella brought in Jeff Nelson, another righty, to face the left-handed batting Sandy Martinez. On Nelson’s very first pitch, Martinez bunted the ball in the air between the plate and the mound. Nelson let the ball drop, then threw to second. There, shortstop Luis Sojo first tagged out Green and then grazed the bag with his foot for the force-out of Gonzalez, before throwing to second baseman Joey Cora, covering first, to retire the batter, completing a nifty 1-6-4 trifecta for Instant Relief.

Another Instant Relief triple play in which the relief pitcher was intimately (but not officially) involved was the one pulled in Cincinnati at Riverfront Stadium on April 6, 1978—Opening Day! The Reds were hosting the Astros and had a 9-5 lead going to the bottom of the seventh. Houston brought in a new pitcher, Tom Dixon, but he got hammered—Pete Rose walked, Ken Griffey singled, Joe Morgan doubled, driving in the two runners. Then George Foster singled, sending Morgan to third, and Astros manager Bill Virdon yanked Dixon. Joe Sambito then faced Dan Driessen. They battled to a full count. Just before the payoff pitch, Sparky Anderson flashed the run sign to Foster. Sambito pitched the ball and Driessen struck out swinging. Astros catcher, Joe Ferguson—who got the credit for Driessen’s out—then threw down to shortstop Roger Metzger, covering second, causing Foster to stop and retreat toward first. Morgan then danced off third, daring Metzger to try. Metzger succeeded: heaving the ball to hot corner man, Enos Cabell, who tagged Morgan for the second out. While Morgan was being eradicated, Foster again reversed his direction and headed back to second, but Cabell rifled the ball back to Metzger in time to nail Foster and complete the strikeout-initiated Instant Relief triple play: K-2*-6-5*-6*.

Afterward, Morgan said, “I know Sparky too well. I know he never sends the man with none out, only one out. So, I figured there was one out, and, well, I panicked. I figured I’d missed an out and got caught off third. Then, when they tagged me and threw to second, I thought, ‘What are you doing, dummy? There’s already three outs.’ I didn’t realize it was a triple play.” “Don’t blame me,” was all Driessen had to say. Morgan added, “I thought when Danny struck out there were two outs. So when George got trapped be tween first and second, I panicked^started jockeying toward home figuring I try to score if I get the chance. It was the first time as a base runner I’ve ever been involved in a triple play. That’s why I say I had to be stupid. I’ve got to give credit to Metzger, though, for some real quick thinking.” Sparky Anderson also commented on the triple play: “I should get a hard kick in the tail for not thinking. That was really stupid of me giving Foster the sign to run in that situation.”9

Time-Consuming Instant Relief TPs

As mentioned above, in only two of the forty instant-relief TPs in our list did the instant-relief pitcher have a direct hand in the execution. The other 38 TPs involved only infielders—except for one, which also included an outfielder—on July 1, 2014, at Dodger Stadium in an interleague game between the host NL Los Angeles nine and the visiting AL Cleveland club. As it turned out, this triple killing was also doubly challenging. At the start of the bottom of the fourth, the Dodgers were trailing, 5-2. But LA plated one run and had men on first and third (Yasiel Puig and Dee Strange-Gordon, both singled). There was no one out when the left-handed batting Adrian Gonzalez stepped into the batter’s box. Cleveland manager Terry Francona felt it would be best to bring in a fresh arm; he summoned southpaw Kyle Crockett to replace righty Justin Masterson. The Los Angeles manager, Don Mattingly, stuck with left-handed batting Gonzalez. On Crockett’s fourth pitch (on a 1-2 count), Gonzalez belted the ball into left field.

Left fielder Michael Brantley ran in fast, a little toward the line (his glove side), and caught the ball at the letters and, with the assistance of his momentum, rifled a one-hop bullet to catcher Yan Gomes. Gordon had tried to score after tagging up after the catch and was a dead duck. Meanwhile, Puig also tagged up at first and made a dash to second. Gomes fired the ball down to keystoner Jason Kipnis who tagged Puig sliding headfirst into second. At first, umpire Paul Nauert called Puig safe. Francona immediately called for a challenge of the play at second, and after a 1-minute, 29 second replay review, the play on the field was re versed. Puig was called out, which should have officially completed the Instant-Relief TP … except at that point Mattingly left the Los Angeles dugout to challenge the play at home, contending that Gordon was actually safe. After a replay review—which consumed an additional 1 minute, 34 seconds—the play on the field was upheld, thereby—finally—officially completing the Instant-Relief TP.

Because of the two challenges, that triple play took longer than what might be typically be termed “Instant.” There has been, however, one—at least seemingly—longer Instant-Relief TP. On May 11, 2000, at Pro Player Stadium in Miami, the Florida Marlins were hosting Atlanta. Going into the bottom of the fifth, Florida was in front, 5-4. It looked like the Marlins would be able to increase their advantage when their first two batters got on base—Cliff Floyd walked and moved to second when Preston Wilson singled. That brought up number five hitter Mike Lowell, a right handed batter, to face starting pitcher Kevin Millwood, also a righty.

Bobby Cox decided to go to his bullpen, calling in reliever Greg McMichael, another righty. McMichael’s first pitch was called a ball. His next pitch was a strike, which Lowell looked at. McMichael’s third pitch was another called ball. Pitch number four was another strike, which Lowell again only looked at. At 2-2, Lowell took the bat “off-his-shoulders” on the next pitch—and fouled it. The same result followed pitches six and seven—foul balls—keeping the count at 2-2. Lowell did not swing at McMichael’s next pitch, which umpire Brian Gorman called a ball. With the count now full, Lowell swung at the ninth, 10th, and 11th pitches, but fouled each one off. Finally, on McMichael’s twelfth pitch, Lowell hit the ball in fair territory—a grounder to third baseman Chipper Jones, who fielded the ball and stepped on third to force out Floyd. Jones then threw the ball to second baseman Quilvio Veras, who stepped on second to force out Wilson. Veras then relayed the ball to Andres Galarraga at first to retire Lowell and complete the rapid around-the-horn triple play—an Instant-Relief TP, even though six minutes and fifty-five seconds were consumed from McMichael’s first pitch to Lowell until the ball reached Galarraga.10

One-Pitch Instant Relief TPs

In stark contrast to the 12-pitch effort of McMichael, single pitch first-batter TPs have been thrown by at least 13 firemen—Mike Prendergast (1918), Allen Russell (1922), Bill Sherdel (1924), Ken Ash (1930), Don Nottebart (1967), Daryl Patterson (1969), Jack Aker (1972), Mike Marshall (1973), Dyar Miller (1977), Jeff Ballard (1990), Jeff Nelson (1995), Juan Rincon (2006), and Keiichi Yabu (2008). All but one of these relievers accomplished the feat with a 0-balls-0-strikes count on the batter. The lone exception was the one-pitch first-batter TP induced by Mike Marshall on June 13, 1973, at Jarry Park in Montreal. In a game between the host Expos and the visiting Padres, the home team was ahead, 3-1, when the top of the seventh session commenced. San Diego proceeded to load the bases against starting pitcher Balor Moore—Dwain Anderson led off and singled, Gene Locklear followed with a base on balls, and Enzo Hernadez then singled. That brought up Jerry Morales, a right-handed hitter. Moore fell behind by missing the plate with his first two pitches. With the count 2-0, Expos manager Gene Mauch gave Moore the hook and brought in Mike Marshall, a righty. Padres manager Don Zimmer chose to stick with Morales rather than go to his bench for a left handed batting pinch hitter, such as Leron Lee or Dave Marshall. Zimmer said (later), “I know he [Marshall] has to throw a strike.” As reported by Tim Burke of the Montreal Gazette, “Throw a strike Marshall did and Morales hit a capricious hopper slightly to [second baseman] Ron Hunt’s right. ‘[Umpire] Harry Wendelstedt obscured my view somewhat,’ said Hunt. ‘First I see it hopping high, and the next time I see it, it’s along the ground.’ He chuckled a little and then added, ‘It got under my glove a little.’”11 The baserunners were off and running. Anderson scored while Hunt was getting the ball to shortstop Tim Foli, covering the keystone to force Hernandez for out number one. Foli then relayed the ball to first baseman Mike Jorgensen to retire Morales for out number two. Meanwhile, Locklear reached third easily and Zimmer, coaching at the hot corner, waved him to keep running to the plate. Locklear stumbled a little and was nailed at the pentagon on a peg from Jorgensen to catcher John Boccabella.

Even though fireman Marshall succeeded in hurling an Instant Relief TP pitch, a run did score while the triple massacre was being executed. That was the second instance of a base runner scoring on an Instant Relief TP; the first one, as described previously, was the one that Kiely achieved for the Red Sox against the Orioles in 1954. The only other time that a relief pitcher accomplished a first-batter triple play yet permitted a runner to score was in 2006, on May 27 at the Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome in Minneapolis. In the top of the eighth frame, with the Twins leading the Mariners, 8-4, Seattle proceeded to load the bases with no one out on a Richie Sexson double, Carl Everett walk, and an Adrian Beltre single. In the batter’s box stood Kenji Johjima, a right-handed batter. On the mound was Jesse Crain, a right-handed pitcher. Twins manager Ron Gardenhire sacked Crain, who had thrown just 16 pitches in facing only the three batters now on the sacks, replacing him with Juan Rincon, also a righty hurler. On Rincon’s first pitch, Johjima grounded slowly to second baseman Luis Castillo, who scooped up the ball and first chased down Beltre and tagged him before throwing to Justin Morneau at first base, retiring Johjima for the second out. On the 4-3 double play Sexson scored easily and Everett advanced to third. Morneau saw that Everett had taken too wide a turn at the hot corner; he fired the ball across the diamond to third sacker Tony Batista, who applied the triple-play defining tag.

CONCLUDING REMARKS

In this article we have provided the interesting aspects and details for fifteen of the forty Instant Relief TPs listed in the SBK Triple Play Database. The nuts-and-bolts details for the other 25 Instant Relief TPs are given in the Notes accompanying Tables 1-4. With regard to the frequency of instant relief triple plays, they’re moderately rare—just 5.4% of the 738 TPs in the SBK TP database. For comparison, there have been 23 perfect games, making up 7.2% of the 318 no-hit games recognized officially by Major League Baseball (excluding the Negro Leagues).12 Of the 339 cycles noted in the MLB record books (likewise excluding the Negro Leagues), only 9 (2.7%) also featured a grand slam homer.13

To wrap up this article we would like to mention that several eventual Hall of Famers participated in Instant Relief triple plays. Those who were batters are George Sisler, Lloyd Waner, Roy Campanella, and Roberto Clemente. Each of them (except Campanella) was the first out as the result of a flyout; Campanella was the second out of a groundout S-2-3-2 double play, the third out being an overly-aggressive base-runner. HOFers who were retired as baserunners in an Instant Relief TP are Sam Rice, Bucky Harris, Hack Wilson, Jackie Robinson, Orlando Cepeda, Luis Aparicio, and Joe Morgan. Of these, three were the TP-defining third out—Harris, Robinson, and Cepeda. There have not yet been any Instant Relief TP pitchers elected to Baseball’s shrine in Cooperstown (although one relieved pitcher did earn a bronze plaque in the gallery—Dazzy Vance, who twice gave way to Instant Relief TP hurlers in 1933, first to Jim Mooney and second to Bill Walker).

JAMES A. “SNUFFY” SMITH JR., who passed away in 2010, is deservedly included as a co-author of the article “Instant Relief” in this issue. He was a pioneer in researching triple plays in the major leagues. Before his passing, Smith had authored or co-authored some 80 articles on triple plays, and he had documented the complete details for 40 IRTPs included here. This article is a logical extension and expansion of an earlier article—“Instant Relief: One Pitch, Three Outs, Game Over”— co-authored by Smith and published in Baseball America (August 18, 1997, page 59). Jim presented at the SABR national conventions in Pittsburgh in 1995 and Kansas City in 1996. He won the McFarland-SABR Baseball Research Award in 1996 for the “Baseball Quarterly Review Triple Play Project.” Smith was a frequent contributor to SABR’s Baseball Records Committee Newsletter. His last contribution, “Team Totals for Triple Plays: For and Against,” appeared in the February and April issues in 2010.

STEPHEN D BOREN, MD graduated from the University of Illinois College of Medicine and completed his emergency medicine residency at Milwaukee County Hospital. He has been a member of SABR since January 1, 1979. He has published a number of articles in SABR publications and Baseball Digest. While originally from Chicago, he and his wife, Louise, and his watchdog golden retriever, Charlie, now live in Aiken, South Carolina.

HERM KRABBENHOFT, a SABR member since 1981, is hoping to see his first in-person major-league triple play this season.

(Click images to enlarge)

Acknowledgments

We should like to thank Cliff Blau for his eagle-eyed fact-checking as well as the following people for their insights and guidance in composing and reviewing this manuscript—Jeff Robbins, Gary Stone, Patrick Todgham. We also gratefully thank Steve Hirdt and Keith Costas for providing the elapsed time information for TP #33.

Dedication

We respectfully dedicate this article to the memory of the late James A. “Snuffy” Smith Jr., our friend and colleague. Jim generously shared his superb triple play research in collaborating with Herm and Steve to create the SBK Triple Play Database. Jim’s quest to track triple plays originated in 1952 when he was stationed in Heilbronn, Germany—while listening to Armed Forces Radio, he heard the game in which Cleveland second baseman Bobby Avila could have turned an unassisted triple play (but, after snaring a liner to retire the batter and stepping on the keystone to get the runner off second, he chose to toss the ball to the first baseman to triple up the runner off first, instead of chasing down the runner who was halfway to second). We, and all baseball fans, are indebted to Jim for his devoted and meticulous efforts to research triple plays. Thanks so much, Jim. It was an honor for us to collaborate with you.

Notes

1. James A. “Snuffy” Smith Jr., deceased, 2010. See the Dedication.

2. Lou Smith, “Triple Play, Near-Perfect Pitching—Reds Win, 2-1,” Cincinnati Enquirer, May 31, 1967 (33); see also: (a) Earl Lawson, Cincinnati Post, May 31, 1967 (31); (b) Neal Russo, “Triple Play, 7 Perfect Innings,” St Louis Post-Dispatch, May 31, 1967 (1G).

3. We have relied exclusively on the SBK TP database, rather than other online TP databases, such as the SABR TP Database, because we feel that the SBK TP database is more comprehensive—738 documented/verified TPs in the SBK TP database compared to 733 in the SABR TP database (i.e., excluding the TP included for the rained-out game on August 7, 1878)—and because we have hard-copy documentation from multiple newspaper accounts to support the details for each of the 738 TPs in the SBK TP database.

4. James Smith, “Memorial Stadium Triple Plays,” Baseball Quarterly Reviews, Volume 6 (Number 3, Fall 1991), 142-51. See also: Herman Krabbenhoft and James A. Smith, Jr., “American League Triple Plays— The Facts and Records,” Baseball Quarterly Reviews, Volume 9 (Number 2) 93-101 (Summer 1995); James A. Smith, Jr. and Herman Krabbenhoft, “Federal League Triple Plays,” Baseball Quarterly Reviews, Volume 9 (Number 3) 171-75 (Fall 1995); Herman Krabbenhoft and James A. Smith, Jr., “19th Century NL Triple Plays—The Facts and Records,” Baseball Quarterly Reviews, Volume 9 (Number 4) 237-42 (Winter 1995); James A. Smith, Jr. and Herman Krabbenhoft, “Players League Triple Plays,” Baseball Quarterly Reviews, Volume 10 (Number 1, Spring 1996), 60-64; Herman Krabbenhoft and James A. Smith, Jr., “20th Century NL Triple Plays—The Facts and Records,” Baseball Quarterly Reviews, Volume 10 (Number 2), 74-82; (f) Herman Krabbenhoft and James A. Smith, Jr., “American Association Triple Plays—The Facts and Records,” Baseball Quarterly Reviews, Volume 10 (Number 3, Winter 1996), 143-47; (g) James A. Smith, Jr. and Herm Krabbenhoft, “Triple Play,” Baseball America, April 14-27, 1997, 63.

5. James A. Smith, Jr. and Herm Krabbenhoft, “A Doubly Appealing Triple Play,” Baseball America, November 10-23, 1997, 39.

6. Stephen D. Boren, James A. Smith, Jr., and Herm Krabbenhoft, “Who Made the Most Triple Plays?,” SABR Baseball Research Journal, Volume 32 (2003), 107-9.

7. Edward Prell, “Triple Play Helps Sox Beat Boston, 5-1…Fain Snares Liner for 2, Chico gets 3d…Trucks’ 2d Pitch Ends Game,” Chicago Tribune, August 30, 1953 (Part 2, page 1).

8. Jeff Blair, “Triple play gives Expos series sweep,” The (Montreal) Gazette, September 9, 1991 (C3); see also: (a) Rob Parker, “Triple play snuffs out Reds’ rally in 9th,” Cincinnati Enquirer, September 9, 1991 (C1); (b) Jerry Crasnick, “Reds’ new way to lose: hitting into triple play,” Cincinnati Post, September 9, 1991 (1C).

9. Bob Hertzel, “Rain, Runs, Ridiculous: Reds Win Opener,” Cincinnati Enquirer, April 7, 1978 (Section B 1). See also: Earl Lawson, Cincinnati Post, April 7, 1978; Hal McCoy, “Sparky fined for triple kill…Charges himself $25,” Dayton (Ohio) Daily News, April 7, 1978 (36); Kenny Hand, “Astro debut fizzles 11-9 in Cincy rain,” Houston Post, April 7, 1978 (1C).

10. This time information was obtained courtesy of Keith Costas of MLB Network. Timing the TP itself via looking at the YouTube video, the time of the TP from the last pitch to the ball reaching the first baseman’s glove was about 4.7 seconds. The authors gratefully thank Steve Hirdt for his superb help and cooperation in acquiring this information.

11. Tim Burke, “The Jarry Juggernaut rolls right along,” The (Montreal) Gazette, June 14, 1973 (33); see also: Chrys Goyens. “Triple play helps…Expos gaining on Cubs,” Ottawa Citizen, June 14, 1973 (27).

12. “Official No-Hitters,” Baseball-Almanac, https://www.baseball-almanac.com/pitching/official-no-hitters.shtml (accessed January 8, 2023).

13. “Hitting for the Cycle Records,” Baseball-Almanac, https://www.baseball-almanac.com/feats/feats16d.shtml (accessed January 8, 2023).

Appendix

Details for the 40 Instant Relief Triple Plays (1876-2022)

Explanatory Notes for Tables 1-4

(A) The “I” column gives the inning.

(B) The “FT” column gives the Fielding Team; the “BT” column gives the Batting Team; an asterisk (*) indicates which team was the home team.

(C) In the “Batter” column, “PHa” indicates that the batter was a pinch hitter who was announced into the game before the relief pitcher was announced into the game; “PHb” indicates that the batter was a pinch hitter who was announced into the game after the relief pitcher was announced into the game.

(D) For the “Bases” column, a number (1, 2, or 3) indicates that the corresponding base was occupied; an “x” indicates that the base was not occupied.

(E) For the “Count” column, entries bracketed with asterisks indicate that the triple play ensued on the pitcher’s first pitch; a cell with the “?-?” entry indicates that the count or pitch number has not yet been ascertained.

(F) For the “TP Sequence” column, “F” indicates that the triple play started with a flyout; “G” indicates that the triple play began with a groundout; “K” indicates that the triple play commenced with a strikeout; the numbers indicate the fielders who took part in the triple play; asterisks indicate which fielders made the putouts.

(G) The notes given beneath the Table provide the reference for the pertinent articles written or co-written by Smith as well as the identities of the base runners and fielders involved in the triple play.

1. Tom Davis, Dixie Tourangeau, Jim Smith, and Herm Krabbenhoft, “American Association Triple Plays in Cincinnati,” Baseball Quarterly Reviews, Volume 10 (Number 2) 107-13 (Summer 1996): With Art Whitney on first and Jack Carney on third—OUT-1, Dwyer [Cub Stricker (4)]; OUT-2, Carney [Stricker (4) to Duke Farrell (2)]; OUT-3, Whitney [Farrell (2) to Stricker (4)].

2. James Smith and Herman Krabbenhoft, “Shibe Park Triple Plays,” Baseball Quarterly Reviews, Volume 7 (Number 3) 159-69 (Fall 1992): With Amos Strunk on second and Stuffy Mclnnis on third—OUT-1, Barry [Chick Gandil (3)]; OUT-2, Mclnnis [Gandil (3) to Eddie Foster (5)]; OUT-3, Strunk [Foster (5) to George McBride (6)].

3. Thomas R. Davis and James Smith, “Triple Plays at Crosley-Redland Field,” Baseball Quarterly Reviews, Volume 7 (Number 3) 149-58 (Fall 1992): With Heinie Groh on first and Rube Bressler on second—OUT-1, Lee Magee [Dave Bancroft (6)]; OUT-2, Bressler [Bancroft (6)]; OUT-3, Groh [Bancroft (6) to Fred Luderus (3)].

4. Keith Carlson, James A. Smith, Jr., and Herman Krabbenhoft, Sportsman’s Park Triple Plays,” Baseball Quarterly Reviews, Volume 8 (Number 3) 152-67 (Fall 1994): With Jack Tobin on first and Wally Gerber on second—OUT-1, Sisler [Chick Galloway (6)]; OUT-2, Gerber [Galloway (6) to Ralph Young (4)]; OUT-3, Tobin [Young (4) to Joe Hauser (3)].

5. James A. Smith, Jr., and Herman Krabbenhoft, “Fenway Park Triple Plays,” Baseball Quarterly Reviews, Volume 8 (Number 2) 34-50 (Summer 1994): With Bucky Harris on first and Sam Rice on second— OUT-1, Rice [Muddy Ruel (2) to Pinky Pittinger (5)]; OUT-2, Milan [Pittinger (5) to George Burns (3)]; OUT-3, Harris [Burns (3) to Pittinger (5)].

6. Richard B. Tourangeau and James Smith, “Braves Field Triple Plays,” Baseball Quarterly Reviews, Volume 7 (Number 3) 103-9 (Summer 1992): With Billy Southworth on first and Ray Powell on second—OUT-1, Mclnnis [Pie Traynor (5)]; OUT-2, Powell [Traynor (5) to Spencer Adams (4)]; OUT-3, Southworth [Adams (4) to Charlie Grimm (3)].

7. James A. Smith, Jr. and Herman Krabbenhoft, “Baker Bowl Triple Plays,” Baseball Quarterly Reviews, Volume 8 (Number 4) 222-31 (Winter 1994): With George Harper on first and Jimmie Ring on second—OUT-1, Mokan (batting for George Harper) [Jim Bottomley (3)]; OUT-2, Ring [Bottomley (3) to Jimmy Cooney (6)]; OUT-3, Harper [Cooney (6) to Rogers Hornsby (4)].

8. Keith Carlson, James A. Smith, Jr., and Herman Krabbenhoft, “Sportsman’s Park Triple Plays,” Baseball Quarterly Reviews, Volume 8 (Number 3) 152-67 (Fall 1994): With Johnny Hodapp on first, Bernie Neis on second, and Glenn Myatt on third—OUT-1, Myatt [Otto Miller (5) to Leo Dixon (2)]; OUT-2, Levsen [Dixon (2) to George Sister (3)]; OUT-3, Neis [Sisler (3) to Dixon (2)].

9. Thomas R. Davis and James Smith, “Triple Plays at Crosley-Redland Field,” Baseball Quarterly Reviews, Volume 7 (Number 3) 149-58 (Fall 1992): With Danny Taylor on first and Hack Wilson on third—OUT-1, Wilson [Hod Ford (4) to Tony Cuccinello (5) to Clyde Sukeforth (2)]; OUT-2, Grimm [Sukeforth (2) to Joe Stripp (3)]; OUT-3, Taylor [Stripp (3) to Cuccinello (5)].

10. Keith Carlson, James A. Smith, Jr., and Herman Krabbenhoft, “Sportsman’s Park Triple Plays,” Baseball Quarterly Reviews, Volume 8 (Number 3) 152-67 (Fall 1994): With Heinie Meine on first and Earl Grace on third—OUT-1, Waner [Frankie Frisch (4)]; OUT-2, Grace [Frisch (4) to Pepper Martin (5)]; OUT-3, Meine [Martin (5) to Ripper Collins (3)].

11. James Smith, “Ebbets Field Triple Plays,” Baseball Quarterly Reviews, Volume 6 (Number 4) 230-34 (Winter 1991): With Johnny Frederick on first and Jake Flowers on second—OUT-1, Hutcheson [Frankie Frisch (4)]; OUT-2, Frederick [Frisch (4) to Ripper Collins (3)]; OUT-3, Flowers [Collins (3) to Leo Durocher (6)].

12. James A. Smith, Jr. and Herman Krabbenhoft, “Triple Plays at the Polo Grounds,” Baseball Quarterly Reviews, Volume 8 (Number 1) 34-50 (Spring 1994): With Charlie Mead on first and Buddy Kerr on second—OUT-1, Rucker [Frankie Gustine (4)]; OUT-2, Kerr [Gustine (4) to Frankie Zak (6)]; OUT3, Mead [Zak (6) to Babe Dahlgren (3)].

13. James Smith and Herman Krabbenhoft, “Shibe Park Triple Plays,” Baseball Quarterly Reviews, Volume 7 (Number 3) 159-69 (Fall 1992): With Lee Handley on first and Andy Seminick on second—OUT-1, Gilbert (batting for Al Lakeman) [Del Rice (2)]; OUT-2, Seminick [Rice (2) to Marty Marion (6)]; OUT-3, Handley [Marion (6) to Stan Musial (3)].

14. James Smith and Herman Krabbenhoft, “Shibe Park Triple Plays,” Baseball Quarterly Reviews, Volume 7 (Number 3) 159-69 (Fall 1992): With Gus Zernial on first, Allie Clark on second, and Elmer Valo on third—OUT-1, Majeski [Billy Goodman (4)]; OUT-2, Clark [Goodman (4)]; OUT-3, Zernial [Goodman (4) to Walt Dropo (3)].

15. James Smith, “Comiskey Park Triple Plays,” Baseball Quarterly Reviews, Volume 6 (Number 4) 219-29 (Winter 1991): With Al Zarilla on first and Floyd Baker on second—OUT-1, Olson [Ferris Fain (3)]; OUT-2, Zarilla [Fain (3)]; OUT-3, Baker [Fain (3) to Chico Carrasquel (6)].

16. James Smith, “Memorial Stadium Triple Plays,” Baseball Quarterly Reviews, Volume 6 (Number 3) 142-51 (Fall 1991): With Vern Stephens on first, Chuck Diering on second, and Whitey Kurowski on third—OUT-1, Stephens [Milt Bolling (6) to Billy Console (4)]; OUT-3, Mele (batting for Gil Coan) [Consolo (4) to Harry Agganis (3)]; OUT-3, Diering [Agganis (3) to Sammy White (2)].

17. James Smith, “Ebbets Field Triple Plays,” Baseball Quarterly Reviews, Volume 6 (Number 4) 230-234 (Winter 1991): With Carl Furillo on first, Jackie Robinson on second, and Sandy Amoros on third—OUT-1, Amoros [Randy Jackson (5) to Harry Chiti (2)]; OUT-2, Campanella [Chiti (2) to Dee Fondy (3)]; OUT-3, Robinson [Fondy (3) to Chiti (2)].

18. James Smith and Herman Krabbenhoft, “Forbes Field Triple Plays,” Baseball Quarterly Reviews, Volume 7 (Number 1) 22-30 (Spring 1992): With Manny Mota on first and Dick Schofield on second—OUT-1, Clemente [Merritt Ranew (3)]; OUT-2, Mota [Ranew (3)]; OUT-3, Schofield [Ranew (3) to Andre Rodgers (6)].

19. Thomas R. Davis and James Smith, “Triple Plays at Crosley-Redland Field,” Baseball Quarterly Reviews, Volume 7 (Number 3) 149-58 (Fall 1992): With Tim McCarver on first and Orlando Cepeda on third—OUT-1, McCarver [Leo Cardenas (6) to Tommy Helms (4)]; OUT-2, Gagliano [Helms (4) to Deron Johnson (3)]; OUT-3, Cepeda [Johnson (3) to Johnny Edwards (2)].

20. James A. Smith, Jr., and Herman Krabbenhoft, “Fenway Park Triple Plays,” Baseball Quarterly Reviews, Volume 8 (Number 2) 34-50 (Summer 1994): With Russ Snyder on first and Luis Aparicio on second—OUT-1, Blair [Joe Foy (5)]; OUT-2, Aparicio [Foy (5) to Mike Andrews (4)]; OUT-3, Snyder [An drews (4) to George Scott (3)].

21. James A. Smith, Jr. and Herman Krabbenhoft, “Major League Triple Plays in Minnesota,” Baseball Quarterly Reviews, Volume 9 (Number 2) 68-71 (Summer 1995): With Joe Azcue on first and Richie Scheinblum on second— OUT-1, Scheinblum [Rich Rollins (5)]; OUT-2, Azcue [Rollins (5) to Rod Carew (4)]; Horton [Carew (4) to Bob Allison (3)].

22. James A. Smith, Jr. and Herman Krabbenhoft, “Triple Plays at Washington’s Robert F Kennedy Stadium,” Baseball Quarterly Reviews, Volume 9 (Number 2) 6-67: With Barry Moore on first and Paul Casanova on second—OUT-1, Casanova [Don Wert (5)]; OUT-2, Moore [Wert (5) to Ike Brown (4)]; OUT-3, Brinkman [Brown (4) to Bill Freehan (3)].

23. James Smith and Herman Krabbenhoft, “Municipal Stadium Triple Plays,” Baseball Quarterly Reviews, Volume 7 (Number 4) 227-28 (Winter 1992): With Cookie Rojas on first and Paul Schaal on second—OUT-1, Schaal [Chico Ruiz (5)]; OUT-2, Rojas [Ruiz (5) to Sandy Alomar (4)]; OUT-3, Otis [Alomar (4) to Billy Cowan (3)].

24. James A. Smith, Jr. and Herman Krabbenhoft, “National League Triple Plays at Pittsburgh’s Three Rivers Stadium,” Baseball Quarterly Reviews, Volume 10 (Number 1) 22-25 (Spring 1996): With Al Oliver on first and Jackie Hernandez on second—OUT-1, Hernandez [Ron Santo (5)]; OUT-2, Oliver [Santo (5) to Glenn Beckert (4)]; OUT-3, Sanguillen [Beckert (4) to Jim Hickman (3)].

25. James A. Smith, Jr. and Herman Krabbenhoft, “NL Triple Plays in Montreal,” Baseball Quarterly Reviews, Volume 10 (Number 1) 9-12 (Spring 1996): With Enzo Hernandez on first, Gene Locklear on second, and Dwain Anderson on third—OUT-1, Hernandez [Ron Hunt (4) to Tim Foli (6)]; OUT-2, Morales [Foli (6) to Mike Jorgensen (3)]; Locklear [Jorgensen (3) to John Boccabella (2)].

26. James A. Smith and Herman Krabbenhoft, “Triple Plays at Anaheim Stadium— Home of the California Angels,” Baseball Quarterly Reviews, Volume 9 (Number 2) 85-87 (Summer 1995): With Bill Stein on first and Dave Collins on sec ond—OUT-1, Collins [Ron Jackson (5)]; OUT-2, Stein [Jackson (5) to Jerry Remy (4)]; OUT-3, Stanton [Remy (4) to Tony Solaita (3)].

27. James A. Smith, Jr. and Herman Krabbenhoft, “National League Triple Plays at Cincinnati’s Riverfront Stadium,” Baseball Quarterly Reviews, Volume 10 (Number 2) 70-72 (Summer 1996): With George Foster on first and Joe Morgan on third—OUT-1, Driessen [Joe Ferguson (2)]; OUT-2, Morgan [Ferguson (2) to Roger Metzger (6) to Enos Cabell (5)]; Foster [Cabell (5) to Metzger (6)].

28. James A. Smith, Jr. and Herman Krabbenhoft, “National League Triple Plays at Busch Stadium in St. Louis,” Baseball Quarterly Reviews, Volume 10 (Number 2) 65-69 (Summer 1996): With Bill Doran on first and Gerald Young on second—OUT-1, Young [Terry Pendleton (5)]; OUT-2, Doran [Pendleton (5) to Jose Oquendo (4)]; OUT-3, Pankovits [Oquendo (4) to Mike Laga (3)].

29. James A. Smith, Jr. and Herman Krabbenhoft, “Triple Plays in Oakland’s Coliseum,” Baseball Quarterly Reviews, Volume 9 (Number 2) 72-75 (Summer 1995): With Walt Weiss on first and Terry Steinbach on second—OUT-1, Randolph [Ballard (1)]; OUT-2, Steinbach [Ballard (1) to Cal Ripken, Jr. (6)]; OUT-3 [Ripken (6) to Sam Horn (3)].

30. James A. Smith, Jr. and Herman Krabbenhoft, “NL Triple Plays in Montreal,” Baseball Quarterly Reviews, Volume 10 (Number 1) 9-12 (Spring 1996): With Eric Davis on first and Hal Morris on second—OUT-1, Morris [Bret Barberie (5)]; OUT-3, Davis [Barberie (5) to Delino DeShields (4)]; OUT-3, Sabo [DeShields (4) to Andres Galarraga (3)].

31. Ronald Kabacinski and James Smith, “Triple Plays at Navin Field, Briggs Stadium, and Tiger Stadium,” Baseball Quarterly Reviews, Volume 7 (Number 1) 12-21 (Spring 1992) and (Number 4) 253 (Winter 1992): With Harold Reynolds on first and Dave Valle on third—OUT-1, Vizquel [Skeeter Barnes (5)]; OUT-2, Valle [Barnes (5)]; OUT-3, Reynolds [Barnes (5) to Cecil Fielder (3)].

32. “1995 American League Triple Plays,” The 1996BQR Yearbook, 74: With Alex Gonzalez on first and Shawn Green on second—OUT-1, Green [Nelson (1) to Luis Sojo (6)]; OUT-2, Gonzalez [Sojo (6)]; OUT-3, Martinez [Sojo (6) to Joey Cora (4)].

33. SBK Triple Play Database: With Preston Wilson on first and Cliff Floyd on second—OUT-1, Floyd [Chipper Jones (5)]; OUT-2, Wilson [Jones (5) to Quilvio Veras (4)]; OUT-3, Lowell [Veras (4) to Andres Galarraga (3)].

34. SBK Triple Play Database: With Adrian Beltre on first, Carl Everett on second, and Richie Sexson on third—OUT-1, Beltre [Luis Castillo (4)]; OUT-2, Johjima [Castillo (4) to Justin Morneau (3)]; OUT-3, Everett [Morneau (3) to Tony Batista (5)].

35. SBK Triple Play Database: With Jason Kubel on first and Michael Cuddyer on second—OUT-1, Cuddyer [Casey Blake (5)]; OUT-2, Kubel [Blake (5) to Asdrubal Cabrera (4)]; OUT-3, Redmond [Cabrera (4) to Victor Martinez (3)].

36. SBK Triple Play Database: With Adrian Gonzalez on first and Brian Giles on second—OUT-1, Giles [Jose Castillo (5)]; OUT-2, Gonzalez [Castillo (5) to Ray Durham (4)]; OUT-3, Kouzmanoff [Durham (4) to John Bowker (3)].

37. SBK Triple Play Database: With Yasiel Puig on first and Dee Strange-Gordon on third base—OUT-1, Gonzalez [Michael Brantley (7)]; OUT-2, StrangeGordon [Brantley (7) to Yan Gomes (2)]; OUT-3 Puig [Gomes (2) to Jason Kipnis (4)].

38. SBK Triple Play Database: With Buster Posey on first, Angel Pagan on second, and Denard Span on third—OUT-1, Crawford [Ryan Zimmerman (3)]; OUT-2, Posey [Zimmerman (3)]; OUT-3, Span [Zimmerman (3) to Anthony Rendon (5)].

39. SBK Triple Play Database: With Kendrys Morales on first and Justin Smoak on second—OUT-1, Smoak [Jeimer Candelario (5)]; OUT-2, Morales [Candelario (5) to Ian Kinsler (4)]; OUT-3, Pillar [Kinsler (4) to Efren Navarro (3)].

40. SBK Triple Play Database: With Tucker Barnhart on first, Freddy Galvis on second, and Nick Senzel on third—OUT-1, Akiyama [Kris Bryant (5)]; OUT-2, Senzel [Bryant (5)]; OUT-3, Barnhart [Bryant (5) to Anthony Rizzo (3)].

SABR Digital Library: Dazzling Debuts: First At-Bat Home Runs

wpadmin — Thu, 31 Oct 2024 19:22:58 +0000

Dazzling Debuts: First At-Bat Home Runs
Edited by Giselle Stancic, Bill Nowlin, and Jacob Pomrenke
Associate editors: Len Levin and Carl Riechers
Publication Date: October 31, 2024
ISBN (ebook): 978-1-960819-30-7, $9.99
ISBN (paperback): 978-1-960819-31-4, $24.95
8.5″ x 11″, 167 pages

Every baseball player experiences a series of firsts when they step onto the field: the nervous excitement of entering the locker room, the pride of putting on the team uniform, the awe-inspiring moment of exiting the dugout and crossing the white lines. But when a player walks up to the plate and hits a home run in his first major-league at-bat, he creates a wave of excitement among the fans, achieves a rare feat for the record books — and experiences the thrill of a lifetime in his professional career.

Dazzling Debuts: First At-Bat Home Runs celebrates those moments – from inside-the-park homers to grand slams to those hit by pitchers. Some foreshadowed many homers to come; in other cases, the first at-bat homer was the only one the player ever hit.

Each major-league franchise is represented in one way or another, and we also look at first at-bat home runs hit in the Negro Leagues, Japan, Korea, Mexico, and Puerto Rico. We hope to have conveyed some of the excitement of a player entering a game and promptly hitting one outta here!

Explore more online

Our special Featured Spotlight web project complements the new Digital Library book available above. At SABR.org/dazzling-debuts, explore the Dazzling Debuts companion website to find 60 biographies, more than 50 thrilling game recaps with play-by-play accounts, photographs and videos of their memorable swings, plus exclusive oral history interviews of players reliving their first at-bat homers in their own words — including Ed Sanicki (1949), Cuno Barragan (1961), Al Woods (1977), Dave Machemer (1978), Jon Nunnally (1995), and Daniel Nava (2010).

E-book: Click here to download the e-book version of Dazzling Debuts for FREE from the SABR Store. Available in PDF, MOBI, EPUB/Kindle formats.
Paperback: Get a 50% discount on the Dazzling Debuts paperback edition from the SABR Store ($15.95 includes shipping/tax; delivery via Amazon Kindle Direct can take up to 4-6 weeks.)

Below: Find player biographies, memorable game stories, and essays from Dazzling Debuts: First At-Bat Home Runs

Biographies

Game Recaps

September 9, 2022: Welcome to the show: Rangers’ Josh Jung hits a home run in his first at-bat

September 8, 2004: Greg Dobbs’ first-at-bat homer not enough for Seattle in 9-5 loss to Cleveland

September 4, 2006: Charlton Jimerson’s home run in first at-bat ends Cole Hamels perfect game bid

September 3, 2011: Tommy Milone blasts three-run homer in pitching debut for Nationals

September 29, 1986: Cleveland’s Jay Bell homers in his first major-league at-bat

September 20, 1981: Twins’ Gary Gaetti hits first of 360 home runs in his first at-bat

September 2, 2012: 19-year-old Jurickson Profar hits home run in first at-bat for Rangers

September 2, 2006: Kevin Kouzmanoff blasts first big-league pitch for grand slam

September 2, 1975: Johnnie LeMaster’s first at-bat, inside-the-park home run is one for the record books

September 14, 1949: Ed Sanicki rips home run off Rip Sewell in his first big-league at-bat for Phillies

September 12, 1986: Terry Steinbach’s home run in debut overshadowed as Cleveland beats Oakland, 9-3

September 12, 1965: Brant Alyea debuts for Washington with soggy circuit clout

September 11, 1942: Paul Gillespie cheers war-weary Cubs fans by hitting home run in first at-bat

September 1, 1961: New coach, new catcher, but still no victory for Cubs

May 7, 1999: Carlos Lee gives White Sox instant offense with home run in his first at-bat

May 7, 1956: Giants bullpen implosion spoils Bill White’s stellar major-league debut

May 4, 2006: Mike Napoli hits home run in first career at-bat as Angels snap 6-game losing streak

May 4, 1989: Freshman Junior Félix’s first swing is fantastic, but Angels rally for extra-inning win over Blue Jays

May 31, 1942: Reds’ Clyde Vollmer becomes youngest player to homer on first major-league pitch he sees

May 24, 1972: Angels’ Don Rose homers in first at-bat and earns his only career win

May 19, 1994: Garey Ingram makes it look easy with home run in first at-bat for Dodgers

May 19, 1962: In his third game, Boston’s Bob Tillman gets his first major-league at-bat and homers

May 17, 1996: Jermaine Dye has a ‘dream’ debut as first Atlanta Braves player to homer in his first at-bat

May 14, 1993: Rockies’ Jay Gainer joins an exclusive club, homering on the first pitch he sees in majors

June 5, 2008: Cardinals reliever Mark Worrell crushes home run in first career at-bat

June 27, 2003: Dave Matranga’s home run, only career hit, ‘affected my entire life’

June 21, 1978: Dave Machemer begins Angels’ career with home run in first at-bat

June 19, 1963: Tigers’ Gates Brown hits pinch-hit home run in his first career at-bat as Carl Yastrzemski leads Red Sox to blowout victory

June 19, 1890: Billy Gumbert’s arm and bat propel Pittsburgh to win in his major-league debut

June 18, 1961: Don Leppert debuts with home run, pickoff in Pirates’ win over Cardinals

June 12, 2010: Boston’s Daniel Nava hits grand slam on first pitch he sees in major leagues

June 10, 2002: Marcus Thames homers off a future Hall of Famer in his first at-bat for Yankees

June 10, 1938: Boston’s Bill LeFebvre homers in first, only at-bat of rookie season

July 23, 1964: Bert Campaneris homers twice, steals a base, and shines on defense in winning debut

August 8, 1921: Browns rookie Luke Stuart hits inside-the-park home run in first major-league at-bat

August 6, 2008: Orioles drubbed in road trip finale, but rookie Luis Montañez makes history

August 31, 2005: More than 100 years in the making, Jeremy Hermida hits a one-of-a-kind grand slam

August 28, 2009: John Hester homers in first at-bat as Diamondbacks pummel Astros

August 27, 1974: Benny Ayala becomes first Met and first Puerto Rican to homer in first major-league at-bat

August 26, 1947: Pitcher Dan Bankhead becomes an integration pioneer, homers in Dodgers debut

August 2, 2012: Padres’ Eddy Rodríguez hits only career home run in his first major-league at-bat

August 13, 2016: Tyler Austin and Aaron Judge hit back-to-back homers in first major-league at-bats

April 8, 1986: Will Clark produces thrill in major-league debut

April 6, 2004: Mets’ Kazuo Matsui homers on first pitch; Tom Glavine beats Braves on Opening Day

April 29, 1995: Jon Nunnally’s first-at-bat home run is bright spot in Royals’ loss to Yankees

April 23, 1952: Giants’ Hoyt Wilhelm hits home run in first career at-bat, then earns first career victory

April 22, 1946: Boston native Eddie Pellagrini hits game-winning Red Sox homer in first at-bat

April 21, 1898: Bill Duggleby’s debut slam clears contentious sign in Philadelphia

April 2, 2007: Elijah Dukes starts major-league career with a home run, but Yankees beat Devil Rays on Opening Day

April 17, 2001: Blowout at Busch: Diamondbacks blast Cardinals 17-4

April 16, 1929: Earl Averill homers in first plate appearance during Indians’ debut

April 16, 1887: Mike Griffin becomes first major-league player to homer in his first at-bat — or does he?

April 16, 1887: George Tebeau stakes a claim to being first major-league player to homer in his first at-bat

April 13, 1954: Tom Alston makes Cardinals history as first Black player to take the field

April 12, 1955: Baseball lifer Chuck Tanner shows he’s here to stay with a home run on the first pitch

April 12, 1906: Boston’s Johnny Bates becomes first twentieth-century player to homer in first career at-bat

April 10, 1992: Padres pitcher Dave Eiland makes history with home run in first at-bat

The Dazzling Debuts book is a collaborative effort of 33 members of the Society for American Baseball Research (SABR). Contributors include: Joe Adona, Malcolm Allen, Jorge Colón Delgado, Mike Cooney, Rory Costello, Richard Cuicchi, Joey Elledge, Carlos Fragoso, John Fredland, Dave Gagnon, Craig Garretson, Paul Geisler Jr., Chip Greene, Yoshihiro Koda, Sean Kolodziej, Tara Krieger, Justin Krueger, Bryan Lake, Len Levin, Bill Nowlin, Laura H. Peebles, Zac Petrillo, Jacob Pomrenke, Bill Pruden, Carl Riechers, Tom Schott, Barrett Snyder, Giselle Stancic, Stew Thornley, Michael Trzinski, Joseph Wancho, Bob Webster, and Phil Williams.

The companion website includes contributions from 57 additional SABR members: Davy Andrews, Jeff Angus, Mark Armour, Ed Attanasio, Jeff Barto, Anthony Basich, Gary Belleville, Charlie Bevis, Kurt Blumenau, Brian Bratt, Jude Butler, Warren Corbett, Tom Crisp, Larry DeFillipo, Charles F. Faber, Matt Faltas, Doug Feldmann, Dan Fields, Scott Fiesthumel, Zak Ford, John Gabcik, Gordon J. Gattie, Hayden Goethe, Andrew Harner, Tom Harris, Paul Hirsch, Paul Hofmann, Mike Huber, Bob Hurte, Norm King, Zach Kleiman, Herm Krabbenhoft, Gerard Kwilecki, Bill Lamb, Barb Mantegani, Seth Moland-Kovash, Victoria Monte, Chad Moody, Shawn Morris, Charlie O’Reilly, Tim Odzer, Tony Oliver, Pete Palmer, Chris Rainey, Joel Rippel, Tim Ryan, Rick Schabowski, Herb Schaper, Jason Scheller, Louis H. Schiff, Wyatt Schroeder, Joe Schuster, Jacob Shanker, David E. Skelton, Everett Williams, Tomotada Yamamoto, and Don Zminda.

Jimmy Cooney in Two Unassisted Triple Plays

admin — Tue, 13 Nov 1984 16:00:15 +0000

The Twenties were still “Roaring,” Lindbergh was in Paris, Coolidge in Washington and Prohibition was the law of the land as Americans celebrated Decoration Day in 1927. It was the “Golden Age of Sport” and newspapers heralded the exploits of Grange, Dempsey, Tilden and Jones. In baseball the New York Yankees were hammering their way to another flag led by Babe Ruth, who already had 13 home runs to his credit.

Record crowds turned out in both major leagues for traditional holiday doubleheaders. In the National, the pennant-bound Pirates, riding an 11-game winning streak, hosted the second-place Chicago Cubs in a morning-afternoon pair which attracted a record 60,000 spectators to Forbes Field. In the opening contest the fans were treated to a bit of baseball history from an unexpected source. While both lineups were studded with future Hall of Famers, it was the Cubs’ Jimmy Cooney, a journeyman shortstop, who captured the day’s headlines by turning an unassisted triple play.

As he approached his ninetieth birthday, the former infielder recalled the events which earned him a permanent place in baseball’s book of records. The Pirates were leading, 5-4, in the fourth inning and had runners on first and second with no one out. “Our pitcher, Tony Kaufmann, was trying to pitch outside to Paul Waner, a pull hitter,” Cooney explained. “I was holding Lloyd Waner on second. He was very fast. Kaufmann got one a little too far in and Waner whacked it over his (Kaufmann’s) head. I took a run over and stabbed it one-handed and stepped on second. The guy on first (Clyde Barnhart) thought it was a hit over the pitcher’s head and came sliding into me.”

Jimmy’s quick action shut off the Pirates’ rally and paved the way for an eventual ten-inning, 7-6 Chicago victory.

“Joe McCarthy was our manager,” Jimmy added. “He came running out on the field to shake my hand.”

The play was the sixth of its kind performed in the major leagues up to that point. Incredibly, the seventh occurred the next day in Detroit, where the Tigers’ first baseman, Johnny Neun, duplicated the feat against the Indians. Forty-one years would pass before another unassisted triple play would be seen in the majors.

Although Cooney spent just seven years in the big leagues, most of them partial seasons, he was involved in a number of unusual plays. While playing for the St. Louis Cardinals in 1925, he was the second victim in an unassisted triple play by shortstop Glenn Wright of the Pirates. Jimmy thus holds the distinction of being the only man in major league history to be involved in two of these fielding gems.

A year earlier, in a game against the Phillies, the Cards were down by four runs when the Phils placed their first two batters on base to open the second inning. Bill Sherdel, known as “Wee Willie,” was summoned from the bullpen.

With the Cardinal infield drawn in anticipating a bunt, pinch-hitter Johnny Mokan popped Sherdel’s first offering to the right side. Jim Bottomley, the first baseman, grabbed the ball out of the air and whipped it down to second to Cooney, who relayed it back to Rogers Hornsby covering first to complete a triple killing.

“One ball pitched and three outs,” Jimmy remarked. “I don’t think that’s happened very often.” As for Sherdel, “he was as cocky as a little bantam rooster after that,” according to Jimmy.

To spend an afternoon with Jimmy Cooney is to drift back in time with the most experienced of guides. Scrapbooks bulging with photos and clippings serve as catalysts for a string of delightful reminiscences by the old shortstop, who turns a tale as skillfully as he once turned double plays.

A lifelong resident of Rhode Island, Jimmy was born on August 24, 1894 in Cranston, a manufacturing city next door to Providence. Around those parts the name Cooney long has been synonymous with baseball. His father, Jimmy Cooney, Sr., played professional ball for 13 years, including three seasons in the National League with Chicago and Washington during the 1890s. As the regular shortstop for Cap Anson’s club in 1890-91 the elder Cooney was the top fielder at his position for two consecutive seasons.

Jimmy’s younger brother, Johnny, pitched and later played the outfield for the Boston Braves and Brooklyn Dodgers for 20 years between 1921 and 1944. In keeping with family tradition, Johnny led National League flychasers in fielding in 1936 and 1941. In the latter year, at age 40, Johnny Cooney was runner up to Pete Reiser in the league batting race.

Two other brothers, Harry and Frank, were outstanding semi-pro players. Harry also put in four years with Portland and Worcester of the New England League. At one time an entire team of Cooneys, the four brothers along with several uncles and cousins, performed as a unit against local amateur teams.

An interesting footnote to Jimmy’s career is that both he and his father played shortstop for the major league Cubs and minor league Providence Grays a generation apart.

Jimmy, Sr., passed away at the age of 37, but his influence was felt by his four sons. “My father was the reason we all liked baseball. My brothers and I practiced in the street in front of our house. We broke a few windows, too,” Jimmy recalled with a laugh.

Jimmy’s baseball odyssey began as an 18-year-old in the summer of 1913 when he left the semi-pro ranks to sign with Worcester. His professional debut saw him hit an even .300 in 73 games. This performance was rewarded by his sale to the Boston Red Sox for 1914. The Cranston teenager made the jump from sandlot to the majors in less than five months.

However, a long apprenticeship in the minors, interrupted by military duty during World War I, was to be served before he gained a foothold in the Big Time.

After brief looks by the Red Sox in 1917 and the New York Giants two years later, Jimmy was picked up by the Cardinals in 1924 on the recommendation of their manager, Branch Rickey.

Coming off four outstanding seasons with Milwaukee (American Association), the well-seasoned Cooney responded by hitting .295 in 110 games and led N.L. shortstops in fielding with a mark of .969, then a record.

Although be performed capably for the Cards, he was benched in favor of Tommy Thevenow in 1925. The next year he went to the Cubs, where he teamed with second baseman Sparky Adams to lead the league in double plays. Once again he was the league’s top fielding shortstop and tied Travis Jackson for fewest errors, committing just 24 in 141 games.

Nevertheless, Jimmy faced competition for his job in 1927, this time from Chicago’s high-priced rookie Woody English. Less than a month after his unaided triple play in Pittsburgh, Jimmy was traded to the Phillies. The move from a contender to the cellar did not please the veteran, but he went about his work in typical fashion, capturing his third fielding crown in four years.

An off-season deal sent him back to Boston, where he joined kid brother Johnny with the Braves. The family reunion was shortlived, however. After 18 games Jimmy’s big league days ended with his sale to Buffalo in June, 1928.

At Buffalo Jimmy wore the hats of player, team captain and finally manager. A season of barnstorming along the western seaboard with a group of players knocked out of work by the depression put the cap on Jimmy’s two decades in professional baseball.

Returning to Rhode Island that fall with his wife and two sons, Jimmy went to work for a printing concern. He kept his hand in the game by managing the company team in industrial league play. He also put in 30 years as a reserve patrolman with the Cranston police force.

Having been close to baseball as both participant and spectator for more than 70 years, Jimmy offered some thoughts on the game. “I think it was tougher back then,” he said. “There were more fights. The pitchers would throw at you all the time. Of course, we had no helmets. You got used to it.” He spoke of one well-known hurler who “. . . threw the first ball at your head every time he pitched. It didn’t matter who you were, Hornsby or Cooney.”

One of his greatest thrills came during his short stay in the American League when he faced the immortal Walter Johnson. He recalled the advice offered by his colleagues that day. “Some of the older fellows on the bench told me to start swinging on my way up to the plate,” he related.

“That’s how fast he (Johnson) was! But I was lucky. I got a single off him and a double later.”

Because he played during baseball’s financial “Dark Ages,” his top major league salary was $5,500. “The player who got seven or eight thousand was a rich man. If you got $5,000, you were doing all right,” he said.

Jimmy was managing Buffalo when night baseball made its International League debut in the early 1930s. His best pitcher under the lights was Dave Danforth, a former big leaguer who practiced dentistry during the off-season. Jimmy revealed that Danforth’s strong hands enabled him to raise the seams on a new ball, thereby adding a devastating hop to his fastball. He baffled hitters at twilight, but according to his manager, “He couldn’t get anybody out in the daytime!”

Cooney spent the winter of 1924-1925 in Cuba playing for Marianao. Among his teammates on the island were fellow Americans Jess Petty, Freddie Fitzsimmons and Charlie Dressen and legendary black slugger Christobal Torrienti. Jimmy’s exciting brand of play earned him the nickname “Torpedo.” “I hit .390 down there,” he said. “Maybe I should have stayed there!”

Jimmy played for, with and against some of the greatest players in history. The stories generated by these characters would fill volumes: Hornsby reading a racing form during Rickey’s pre-game meetings; spring training with the Cubs on Catalina Island, where Charley Grimm entertained with his banjo; Joe McCarthy demonstrating the evils of drink to Hack Wilson with a worm and a glass of whiskey; Jimmy’s antics one day in Brooklyn when he continued around the bases after being forced at second, causing an uproar as the harried Dodgers chased him into the visitors’ dugout in an attempt to retire him again; keeping his thirsty Buffalo players in tow during trips to Montreal in Prohibition days.

Jimmy’s stay in the majors was short despite some impressive seasons in the minors. He set an American Association record for assists one season and tied another record with 22 consecutive errorless games. In 1923 he made 12 straight hits in one streak while leading the league with 60 steals.

A number of teams, among others the Dodgers, A’s and Reds, expressed interest in the fielding wizard, but the Milwaukee management demanded $40,000 for his services, a considerable sum for the time. The steep price attests to Jimmy’s worth but probably impeded his return to the majors. He was nearly 30 when he finally secured a regular job with St. Louis. From then on the calendar worked against him.

There is no hint of regret, however, for all the time and effort expended in pursuit of his vocation. “It was a lot easier than working in a mill, playing baseball out in the sunshine,” he said.

Jimmy’s life in and out of baseball has been full and rich. In recent years he has kept busy tending his home on Pettaquamscutt Lake in Saunderstown, R.I. Frequent visits and calls from children, grandchildren and great grand-children keep him smiling. The daily mail usually brings letters from fans around the country. While he no longer attends games in person, Jimmy follows the Red Sox and Boston Celtics closely on television.

He is remembered as one of eight men to make an unassisted triple play, but it should also be known that Jimmy Cooney was a versatile, dependable player highly respected by his peers for the grace with which he consistently made the difficult seem routine.

He made his mark with his glove, setting a season record that was the major league standard for a number of years. He still shares the National League record for double plays started by a shortstop in one game – four, accomplished in 1926. For one whose hitting was always suspect, he compiled a respectable .262 average for his 448 big league games.

The world has been turned upside-down since a teenager from Cranston, R.I., rode a trolley to his first professional baseball job, but the flavor of those distant times has remained alive and well within the memory of James Edward Cooney.

Interesting Statistical Combinations

admin — Sat, 10 Apr 2004 03:21:02 +0000

One of many things that makes baseball the most enjoyable sport is statistics. Players are considered great because of their statistical achievements. We are all familiar with the records for home runs in a season or career. Career strikeouts. Pitchers winning 20 games in a season. Batters hitting .300. All of these are interesting and enjoyable. Something like on-base percentage, however, is a little different since it combines other, seemingly unrelated, statistics. Just because a man has a high batting average does not mean he is going to walk a lot.

The purpose of this paper is to look at combinations of statistics rather than just individual statistics. We will not be doing any detailed analysis to speak of, just looking at the statistics because they are fun. Before we go any further, a big tip of the cap to Lee Sinins, creator of the Sabermetric Baseball Encyclopedia, without which this paper would not be possible. Some statistics are from baseball-reference.com.

HIGH BATTING AVERAGE, LOW WALKS

Since we mentioned on-base percentage above, we will start off with players with more than 600 at-bats in a season who hit .300 or higher but had less than 20 walks. The batting average would be considered good, but the lack of walks could make the player less valuable than someone batting .270 with a more discerning batting eye. Through the 2003 season, there have only been five players with such seasons. One did it twice.

Player	Year	Team	AB	H	BB	AVG	OBP
Hi Myers	1922	BKN	618	196	13	.317	.331
Woody Jensen	1935	PIT	627	203	15	.324	.344
Frank McCormick	1938	CIN	640	209	18	.327	.348
Don Mueller	1955	NYG	605	185	19	.306	.326
Garry Templeton	1977	STL	621	200	15	.322	.336
Garry Templeton	1979	STL	672	211	18	.314	.331

Interestingly, over half of these occurrences are before the 1970s and all of them are before the 1980s, when players have often become criticized for being free swingers lacking discipline. One thing that is no surprise; most of these seasons came when the player was very young or in his first year as a regular player.

Another recent example of a similar combination was Jose Molina in 2003. Molina managed to have 114 official at-bats and walk only once. His batting average was just .184, but he certainly fits the spirit of the above list.

More than 100 at-bats with only one walk has happened 162 times in baseball history, mostly by pitchers. Among those pitchers were Togie Pittinger, Pud Galvin, and Bobo Newsom, the only ones to achieve this dubious distinction three times. Chuck Fulmer, John Peters, and Bill Holbert deserve special mention; of the 12 players achieving this notoriety twice, they were the only ones who were not pitchers. Peters had 379 official at-bats (the most of anyone with only one walk) for the 1879 Cubs.

Other notable non-pitchers were Nap Lajoie (his rookie year of 1896), Jake Beckley (his last season, 1907), and Dan Brouthers (his rookie year of 1879). Those with more knowledge of the history of rules might enlighten us as to whether there were rule peculiarities, particularly in 1879, that made walks less common. Notable pitchers who accomplished this were Dizzy Dean (twice), Jim Bunning (twice), Cy Young (twice), Mickey Welch (twice), Addie Joss, Walter Johnson, Ferguson Jenkins, Bob Gibson, Waite Hoyt, Grover Cleveland Alexander, Jack Chesbro, Steve Carlton, Amos Rusie, Red Ruffing, Early Wynn, Ed Walsh, Warren Spahn, Ted Lyons, Joe McGinnity, Phil Niekro, and Dutch Leonard.

LOTS OF EACH KIND OF EXTRA-BASE HIT

In all of baseball history, only five players have had at least 20 doubles, 20 triples, and 20 home runs in the same season. No player did it more than once. These are George Brett, Jim Bottomley, Wildfire Schulte, Jeff Heath, and the greatest all-around baseball player of all time, Willie Mays.

Player	Year	Team	Age	2B	3B	HR
Wildfire Schulte	1911	CHI(N)	28	30	21	21
Jim Bottomley	1928	STL(N)	28	42	20	31
Jeff Heath	1941	CLE	26	32	20	24
Willie Mays	1957	NYG	26	26	20	35
George Brett	1979	KC	26	42	20	23

Not surprisingly, all five were relatively young at the time. Also not surprisingly, Willie Mays had the most home runs of the five.

This achievement is somewhat notable because one might presume that a player who hit over 20 home runs would often have outfielders playing fairly deeply, minimizing the chances of hitting a triple.

Two other players, Ryne Sandberg and Buck Freeman, came close to joining this esteemed group, with Freeman having what is probably the oddest set of numbers of this group of players.

Player	Year	Team	Age	2B	3B	HR
Ryne Sandberg	1984	CHI(N)	24	36	19	19
Buck Freeman	1899	WAS	27	19	25	25

A few other players have done things similar to what Freeman did. Here are the players with less than 20 doubles and home runs, but at least 20 triples.

Player	Year	Team	Age	2B	3B	HR
Buck Ewing	1884	NYG	24	15	20	3
Dick Johnston	1887	Braves	24	13	20	5
Joe Visner	1890	Burghers	30	15	22	3
Jocko Fields	1890	Burghers	25	18	20	9
Bid McPhee	1890	Reds	30	16	22	3
Jake Virtue	1892	Spiders	27	15	20	2
Duff Cooley	1895	Cardinals	22	9	20	7
Geo. Van Haltren	1896	Giants	30	18	21	5
Harry Davis	1897	Pirates	23	10	28	2
Tommy Leach	1902	PIT	24	14	22	6
Sam Crawford	1902	CIN	22	18	22	3
Chief Wilson	1912	PIT	28	19	36	11
Vic Saier	1913	CHI(N)	22	15	21	14
Jake Daubert	1922	CIN	38	15	22	12
Dale Mitchell	1949	CLE	27	16	23	3

Special note should be taken that Visner and Fields were teammates. Also, note that Cooley did not have even 10 doubles or home runs. Davis had 40 extra-base hits and 70% of them were triples. Not surprisingly, none of these are recent, with Mitchell the only one occurring in the past 80 years.

LOTS OF RBI AND FEW RUNS

Sometimes players, typically leadoff hitters, may score a lot of runs but not knock in many. An example of this would be 21-year-old Lloyd Waner, scoring 133 runs while knocking in only 27 for the 1927 Pirates. Usually, if a player knocks in a lot of runs, then he is likely to score a lot of runs as well. Three players in baseball history have finished a season with more than 100 RBI and fewer than 60 runs scored.

Player	Year	Team	Age	R	RBI
Gus Bell	1959	CIN	30	59	115
Vic Wertz	1960	BOS	35	45	103
Danny Tartabull	1996	CHI(A)	33	58	101

These would certainly be cases of players doing a lot but not getting a lot of help from teammates. Though I do not know it, I would suspect these batters probably batted sixth for teams with weak bottoms of the order.

LOTS OF RBI AND NO HOME RUNS

Most of the time the people with a lot of runs batted in also have a large number of home runs. Several players have managed to have a lot of RBI yet not many home runs. The kings of this category are Hughie Jennings and Lave Cross.

Player	Year	Team	Age	HR	RBI
Hughie Jennings	1896	BAL	27	0	121
Lave Cross	1902	PHI(A)	36	0	108

Five other players managed to knock in over 100 runs while hitting only one home run.

Player	Year	Team	Age	HR	RBI
Farmer Vaughn	1893	Reds	29	1	108
Jack Doyle	1896	Orioles	26	1	101
Cupid Childs	1896	Spiders	28	1	106
Kid Gleason	1897	Giants	30	1	106
Bill Sweeney	1912	BOS	26	1	100

Vaughn deserves special mention since he was the only one of these seven to bat under .300. He hit only .280 on 135 hits yet still managed over 100 RBI. At the other end of that spectrum was Jennings, who batted .401 in 1896. Another interesting note is that Jennings and Doyle were teammates.

LOTS OF HOME RUNS AND FEW RBI

Turning our previous category around, let us now consider players who hit a lot of home runs but had comparatively few runs batted in. The following are the only players to have hit 40 or more home runs while knocking in fewer than 100 runs.

A couple of comments should be made about this list.

It should immediately be noted that, if not for the strike that ended the season early in 1994, Griffey and Williams would probably not be on the list. No team played more than 117 games that season.

Notice also that 1973 was the only year that Davey Johnson hit even 20 home runs. Petrocelli never topped 30 again and bested 20 only two other times.

Also, notice that Johnson and Aaron were teammates. This may give some indication of why these players are on the list. If a team has a lot of players hitting home runs, there are less likely to be men on base for others who hit home runs. In 1973, Johnson and Aaron were joined by Darrell Evans in hitting 40 or more home runs. Evans, though on this list for 1985, knocked in 104 runs in 1973. Notice that, in most cases, these players were teammates of other sluggers, minimizing RBI chances.

LOTS OF HOME RUNS BUT FEW DOUBLES

It is not unusual that players who hit a lot of home runs will also have a lot of doubles. Todd Helton and Albert Belle are good examples of this. Five players turned the unusual trick of having 50 or more home runs but less than 20 doubles.

Player	Year	Team	Age	2B	HR
Jim Thome	2002	CLE	31	19	52
Willie Mays	1955	NYG	24	18	51
Roger Maris	1961	NYY	26	16	61
Mickey Mantle	1961	NYY	29	16	54
Ralph Kiner	1949	PIT	26	19	54

Notable is the presence of a pair of teammates. Mantle and Maris shared more than their home run race in 1961.

It would be expected that these players would possibly be a little older, but Thome is the only one who was even 30 when he accomplished the feat. Most surprising of all would have to be Willie Mays. In 1955, Mays had 24 stolen bases (just one behind the league leader) and 13 triples (tied for the league lead). He was very fast but for some reason had only 18 doubles.

Mantle is the only other player among these who was ever noted for his speed, but by 1961 he was beginning to have problems with his knees.

Let us turn now to a few pitching statistics.

LOTS OF LOSSES BUT LOW ERA

Typically, a pitcher with an ERA below 2.00 is not going to lose a lot of ball games. Surprisingly, 15 times there have been pitchers with ERAs below 2.00 who lost 20 or more games.

Pitcher	Year	Team	Age	W	L	ERA
Jim Devlin	1876	Grays	27	30	35	1.56
Will White	1878	Red Stockings	23	30	21	1.79
Sam Weaver	1878	Cream Citys	22	12	31	1.95
Will White	1879	Red Stockings	24	43	31	1.99
Monte Ward	1880	Grays	20	39	24	1.74
Jim McCormick	1880	Blues	23	45	28	1.85
Tony Mullane	1882	Colonels	23	30	24	1.88
Guy Hecker	1884	Colonels	28	52	20	1.80
Pud Galvin	1884	Bisons	27	46	22	1.99
Silver King	1888	Cardinals	20	45	21	1.64
Harry Howell	1905	STL(A)	28	15	22	1.98
Kaiser Wilhelm	1908	BKN	34	16	22	1.87
Ed Walsh	1910	CHI(N)	29	18	20	1.27
Jim Scott	1913	CHI(N)	25	20	20	1.90
Walter Johnson	1916	WAS	28	25	20	1.90

Noteworthy is Will White’s repetition on the list. Notice also the presence of some fairly outstanding pitchers, particularly Pud Galvin, Ed Walsh, and Walter Johnson.

Certainly there is no surprise that these are all from a long time ago. Back in those days pitchers would start 50 or 60 games a season, not once every five or six days. This explains why a number of these pitchers won a substantial percentage of their games despite the 20+ losses. It is also back in the days when fielders’ gloves were poor or nonexistent. A pitcher might allow 10 or 12 runs with only one or two earned. Still, remark- able in all this is the 1.27 ERA that Ed Walsh had in 1910 and that he still finished below .500. Of course, it did not help that the White Sox had a team batting average of .211 that year.

LOTS OF WINS AND HIGH ERA

The obvious counterpart to the previous list is pitchers with 20 or more wins but ERAs over 5.00. A pitcher would have to be good to keep losing games yet keep being handed the ball. But when a pitcher’s ERA is over 5.00, he is not likely to stay in the rotation very long if the manager has any other choice. Neither is he likely to win a whole lot of games. Not surprisingly, there are not many on this list.

Pitcher	Year	Team	Age	W	L	ERA
Ray Kremer	1930	Pirates	37	20	12	5.02
Bobo Newsom	1938	Browns	30	20	16	5.07

Something unsurprising is that both pitchers were veterans, making their managers more likely to put up with the high ERA. Also, both earned some consideration since they did somehow manage to win more of their games than they lost. Kremer, remarkably, had a winning percentage of .625.

Also, keep in mind that 1930 was one of the years of incredible offensive production. That was the year of Hack Wilson’s 56 HRs and many other huge numbers. The Pirates had a team batting average of .303, helping to explain Kremer’s success.

In 1938, while the Browns did have a team batting average of .281, they finished with a record of 55-97. Apparently there weren’t a whole lot of options other than Newsom.

LOTS OF WINS AND SAVES

We will conclude with our only career statistic consideration. This one is basically in honor of Dennis Eckersley on the occasion of his election to the National Baseball Hall of Fame. “Eck” is the only pitcher in history to have more than 150 wins and saves. However, if John Smoltz continues pitching out of the bullpen with the success he has had recently, he will join Eckersley in either 2004 or 2005. Fifteen players have had at least 100 of each.

Sparky Lyle finished his career with 238 saves and 99 wins, just missing being included on our list.

Each pitcher won 13 or more games at least once. All except for Fingers, Miller, Kline, and Gossage won 15 at least once. All except for Reed had at least 20 saves at least once. Marberry is the only other who didn’t record at least 27 at least once.

John Smoltz is the only one on the list with more than half of his appearances as a starter. Considering his age, it is possible that will stay that way. Another point about Smoltz is that, thus far, there are only three seasons in which he has recorded a save, and one of those he had only 10.

One thing that this chart illustrates is the differing role of “closers” over the years. Commenting on Eckersley’s Hall of Fame election, Rollie Fingers talked about the changes during his career. Closers used to pitch two or three innings in a game. Now they typically pitch one inning. Starters used to finish large percentages of their games; now their job is to get through six or seven innings effectively. That would explain the comparatively high number of wins compared to saves for Wilhelm, McDaniel, Fingers, and Marberry.

CONCLUSION

Obviously there are many more comparisons that could be considered. These are just a few of the ones.

Debs Garms: 1940 National League Batting Champion

Jacob Pomrenke — Fri, 22 Jun 2007 03:27:37 +0000

If a baseball fan scanned the list of National League batting leaders in the New York Times on September 15, 1940, they would note a tight race among the top five hitters. Three points separated them with just two weeks left in the season1:

Cooney, Boston, .319
Mize, St. Louis, .318
Hack, Chicago, .317
Gleeson, Chicago, .316
Lombardi, Cincinnati, .316

This list contained several familiar names. Stan Hack was a solid .300 hitter. Ernie Lombardi led the league in 1938, and Johnny Mize, the 1939 batting leader was not only one hit away from the lead in average, but with 41 home runs and 120 runs batted in he was positioned to win the Triple Crown. Mize’s hope to achieve the Triple Crown and the others’ chances to win the batting title would be dashed the next day by the appearance of Pittsburgh Pirate third baseman-outfielder Debs Garms at the top of the list with a lead of more than 60 points.2 Except for the fact that Garms is the answer to a few trivia questions such as “Who broke up Johnny Vander Meer’s string of hitless innings?” or “Who won the 1940 National League batting title?” his name today is fairly obscure to all but a few baseball historians.

There are several reasons for his anonymity. Garms was a journeyman ballplayer in an era sporting the likes of Foxx, Musial, and Ruth. He never made an All-Star team or exhibited the charisma of players like Dean or Reiser. Despite a seemingly undistinguished reputation, however, teams always sought him for the attitude and hustle he brought to their roster. Of the teams Garms played for, his most notable years were with the Pitts burgh Pirates, where in 1940 he won the batting title.

The Pirates purchased Garms from the Boston Bees in 1940 as they attempted to rebuild their team after finishing sixth, a finish that cost manager Pie Traynor his job. 3 Frankie Frisch, hired to replace Traynor, inherited a team with poor morale, a team still fixated on the effects of losing the pennant during the last week of the 193 8 season.

Frisch, who had managed the Gashouse Gang St. Louis Cardinals to the world championship in 1934, was an intense individual who hated the thought of losing and was considered an ideal hire to improve the Pirates’ outlook. Prior to being hired by the Pirates, Frisch had broadcast games for the Boston Bees in 1939 and became particularly aware of the playing potential and attitude various Bees possessed.

Early in January, Charles “Chilly” Doyle, a baseball writer with the Pittsburgh Sun-Telegram, interviewed Frisch about the Pirates’ chances for 1940.4 Frisch made it clear that he wanted to redesign the team with an emphasis on fight and hustle. Left W1said was his suspicion that several Pirates, including Lloyd and Paul Waner, would have to improve their attitude or be replaced. Doyle noted that Frisch had made a few purchases from the Bees but was still looking to make other transactions to change the demeanor of the club. At the end of February, when spring training began, Frisch was still looking to make deals.

During the first week of March 1940, Garms drove his family from Texas to Bradenton, FL, for the Bees’ spring training. Upon arrival, he was informed the Pirates had purchased his contract. The Pirates were holding spring training in San Bernardino, CA, clear across the continent. After spending a few hours resting, Garms packed his family back in the car and drove them to Texas, subsequently boarding a train for California to join his new team.5

Frisch had been impressed by Garms while broadcast ing for the Bees and purchased his contract even though he did not have a particular spot in the lineup for Garms. Frisch told Doyle, “Garms will be available for infield and outfield duty. I like his style, especially his spirit.” 6 In a series of articles written during spring training Doyle noted the positive attitude Garms would bring to the Pirates through his competitive play.

Garms hustled through spring training and hit .472. He would later recall, “That whole year, [ 1940] the baseball looked as big as a grapefruit coming up to the plate.”7 Based on his hitting, Garms was named starting right fielder replacing Paul Waner. The future Hall of Famer’s diminishing skills at age 37, alleged drinking problems, and casual approach to preparing for the game irked Frisch.8 Waner never got back into the lineup on a regular basis, playing in just 89 games before being released the following December.

Subsequent assessments of Garms’ play during the 1940 season usually described him as a utility player, disregarding the fact that he had been a full-time player with the Bees. While Frisch experimented with various platoon options in the early stages of the 1940 season, Garms appeared in most of the early season games. Garms did go out of the lineup in early May, for the better part of two months, not because he was benched, but because of a knee injury he suffered in Boston.9 He returned to the lineup in a game against the Giants on June 16 and got three hits, only to reinjure his knee the next day in Boston for a second time. Occasionally pinch-hitting the next several weeks, his injury gradually healed, allowing him to begin playing on a regular basis starting July 20.

By then the Pirates were halfway through the season in sixth place with a record of 33-44. Frisch, disconcerted because of indifferent play, made several changes to the lineup, including the replacement of Lee Handley at third with Garms. Making the most of his opportunity that day, Garms had four hits to drive in five runs as the Pirates beat the Bees. Garms would be particularly effective against his former teammates that year, hitting .481, a performance based in part on how he was pitched to by the Bee staff.

Garms recalled in a conversation with his son that the Bees consistently pitched him low and away all season. He was mystified that they would continue pitching to his strength as an opposite-field hitter until he was approached one day by a Bee pitcher whom Garms had singled off the day before. He asked Garms the location of the pitch he had hit. Garms replied, “Low and away.” The pitcher then told him that Bees manager Casey Stengel had jumped on him for not pitching low and away. Why Stengel persisted in making pitchers work toward Garms’ strength seemed odd. Perhaps it was to prove a point. Stengel was apparently not happy that Bees general manager Bob Quinn had sold Garms to the Pirates in March. 10

Garms continued his hot hitting the next several weeks, hitting .400 for July, and raised his average up to .345 by the end of the month as the Pirates began climbing out of the second division. Little notice was made at the time that Garms’ average had passed that of Giants catcher Harry Danning, listed in newspapers as the league batting leader. At the beginning of August the Pirates dropped a doubleheader on August 1, then ran up an eight-game winning streak, moving into fourth place. Garms continued his hot pace, hitting .480 during this streak.

On August 21, Doyle noted that while Garms had the highest average in the league, he would have to amass 400 at-bats to win the title. It was the first time he was mentioned in connection with the batting race. At this point Frisch, thinking Garms needed 400 at-bats to qualify for the title, moved him up to leadoff in the batting order.

On August 31, Barna Rowell of the Bees was leading the league with a .328 average. Garms was hitting .369. Over the next several weeks Garms’ average continued to improve as the listed leaders’ average kept slipping. By September 11, Dixie Walker of the Dodgers led with a average with Garms at .384. Although the lead would change almost daily between Jimmy Gleeson, Johnny Cooney, Lombardi, and Walker, none of them could push their average above .320, which at that time was the lowest average to ever lead the National League.11 Observers of the game began to comment on the situation. Peter Hinkle, in a letter to the New York Times, observed:

The way the percentages of the leaders are running now it appears that the man who eventually succeeds in hitting .325 will win the title. Normally it takes a mark of .350 or better to win the individual batting champ ionship.12

In an interview appearing in the Washington Post on September 18, Dizzy Dean sounded off on various sub jects including the National League batting race. Dean pointed out that Johnny Cooney, “an old converted pitcher is right up there for the batting title with .31 7 whereas back in the old days Frankie Frisch or Jim Bottomley would hit .350 and finish sixth.” 13 The Sporting News also noted the low batting percentages, observing that Lombardi was leading the league with only a .319 average. “Not since 1919, when Edd Roush led with a .321 mark has the National League’s top batter turned in a figure as low as that owned by Ernie Lombardi…”14 Garms’ performance continued to contrast sharply with the low average leading the league. On the day Hinkle’s letter was written, Garms average reached a season-high .38 7. He was now 67 points ahead of Walker. Doyle’s arguments in August about Garms deserving the title had made little impression at the time. Now others were beginning to appreciate Doyle’s perspective. John Lardner wrote a column in the San Francisco Chronicle that argued Garms should be declared the champion. After noting that Walker was then leading the league at a .319 average Lardner asked, “So what would you say to a fellow in that same league, who is hitting .388? (sic)” Lardner extolled Garms’ accomplishments, arguing that a near 70-point advantage “is too much difference.” 15

When the Reds were in New York a few days later, their manager, Bill McKechnie, who had managed Garms as a Bee in 1937, was asked if Garms was as good as his average reflected. While McKechnie observed Garms had not performed that well while playing for him, he con ceded that Garms’ high average “must account for something.” McKechnie then asked, “What’s this I hear about a batter having to be at bat 400 times to be eligible for the championship?” A reporter replied that this was erroneous. “That’s all wrong. I asked Ford Frick [president of the National League] about that and he said that so far as he knows that is an American League rule and has not been adopted by the National League.” 16

On September 16 the Times began to list Garms as the leader. Garms at .382 was 63 points ahead of Lombardi. These observations culminated with an announcement released by the National League on September 19 that all Garms had to do was play 100 games to win the title. Frick, formally confirming what he had told reporters a few days before, stated there were no rules governing qualifications for the title. “The batting title is simply unofficial and never has been subject for league legislation.” The article goes on to note, “It is apparent the whole batting championship situation is in a state of con fusion and that Garms, with the only respectable average in the league, has a chance to be considered.”17 Bill Brandt, spokesperson for Frick said that while there were no rules governing qualifications, “he thought 100 games would be a sufficient prerequisite for the championship.”

At the time of this announcement 11 games remained on the schedule and Garms needed to play in only seven. In a rather prescient comment, another article mentioned, “His [Garms] mark is so much better than any of the others it doesn’ t make much difference whether he gets a hit or not.” 18 Virtually every comment on the subject noted the confusion about the requirement to attain 400 at-bats dated from the time the American League gave $500 to the batting leader based on a minimum of 400 at bats. Not only did league presidents, managers and sportswriters chime in, but fans added their comments on the subject as well. Another reader wrote to the New York Times stating Garms should be declared winner be cause he “will lead the batters by a wide margin.” 19

Frick’s opinion appeared in the news throughout the country on September 19. On the 21st Pittsburgh played the Reds. In the second game of a doubleheader, the Pirates filled the bases with two out in the bottom of the 10th inning. Garms came to bat and singled to drive in the winning run with his fifth hit of the game.

That game-winning blow was his last hit of the season as he went into a 0-for-23 slump. Garms ended the sea son playing 103 games with 127 hits in 358 at-bats finishing at .355, 36 points ahead of Lombardi and 38 points ahead of Chicago’s Stan Hack, who played in 149 games. Garms’ average also led the majors, as Yankee Joe DiMaggio led the American League with a .352 mark. Despite being considered a singles hitter, Garms finished sixth in the league with a .500 slugging average and struck out only six times the entire campaign to achieve a superlative ratio of one stiikeout per 60 at-bats. The Pirates finished the second half with a 45- 32 record, 78-76 overall to finish fourth.

While the season ended, controversy over Frick’s decision continued. Though The Sporting News sup ported Ganns as champion, it suggested qualifications for batting titles be made uniform throughout baseball. Specifically referring to Garms, they made note of the wide margin he enjoyed over his rivals despite being asked to play various positions.

The Sporting News editorial further noted, “There has never been a similar situation… when a player led the loop with such a high average and participated in a limited number of games…” This was not an accurate observation, as twice before batting titles were awarded to individuals with fewer at-bats than Garms. In 1926, Reds catcher Bubbles Hargrave was awarded the National League batting title despite having just 326 at-bats in 105 games, although his position as catcher probably worked in his favor in deciding whether he should be considered the leader. In 1914, Ty Cobb, who had been injured part of the year, was awarded the American League title de spite having 345 at-bats in 97 games. Given the level of Cobb’s sustained deeds over the years, there was little doubt he would have maintained his level of hitting over the full season. These instances were ignored in the controversy raised by Garms’ performance.

Most of the opposition to Frick’s decision centered on Garms not having the 400 at-bats required in the American League-that what was good for one league should be good for another. A good deal of the resentinent centered in Chicago, where Cub fans felt that Hack should have been declared champion based on his full-season performance. Counter to that argument was an observation made by several, including columnist Bob Ray in the Los Angeles Times, that had Garms gone 0-for-42 and achieved the 400 at bats his “adjusted ” average at .318, still would have been one point higher than Hack.20

Under modern standards, which call for 3.1 plate appearances per game, Garms was 92 plate appearances short of the requirement. Based on this measurement Garms would have needed just 16 hits in 92 at-bats, a .174 average to beat Hack.

In retrospect, the controversy over Garms’ winning of the batting title was based on several factors. He was described as “coming out of nowhere ” or being “a surprise champion.” This is certainly justified by the manner in which he became eligible for consideration. Frick’s announcement came with only 10 days left in the season. A second factor was Garms himself. Although Garms’ prior performance with the Bees indicated he was a legitimate .300 hitter, he had not solidified his reputation as a proven hitting star, as had batting title predecessors Johnny Mize, Ernie Lombardi, and Joe Medwick.

Garms also won because of peculiar circumstances that existed at the time. Observations of those familiar with the game were correct; batting averages were declining. The National League batting average for 1939 was .272. In 1940 it was .264. It would shrink further to .258 in 1941, and over the next 20 years would never rise above .266. This trend was reflected in the performance of top hitters. For the 1937-1939 seasons, 24 full-time players hit .320 or better. From 1940 to 1942 only one full-time player, Pete Reiser, hit over .320 (.343).

By mid-September 1940 no one in the National League was at .320, which from perspectives of the time were unsettling to those interested in the game. Contrasting sharply with this was Garms’ average then in the .380s range. The disparity between what was expected of a batting leader and what Garms was then hitting was too great to ignore.

One wonders whether Frick would have made the same ruling if Garms’ average was in the .320 -.330 range or if his hitting spree had occurred in the closing days of the season rather than early September. Garms’ early September performance may have been enhanced by his early season injuries. His past history suggested a declining performance the last month of the season. Perhaps the time he was out of the lineup early in the sea son may have delayed onset of the slump he experienced the last days of the season.

Controversy over Garms’ title did not immediately force a change in how batting championships were determined. His title, however, proved a sign of things to come. Two years later Ernie Lombardi was awarded the National League title based on less playing time than Garms. Although his position as catcher probably helped in being considered for the title, it is worthy of note, the closest mark to Lombardi’s .330 leading average was Enos Slaughter’s .318. If Slaughter had been recognized as champion, his mark would have been the lowest to ever lead the National League up to that time. Rules for qualifications were subsequently changed, initially to 400 at-bats, then to the present-day requirement of 3.1 plate appearances per game.

When queried about his father’s attitude toward this controversy, David Garms related that he had an almost detached attitude about the matter. Aside from recalling that Frisch had moved Garms up to leadoff in the order to gain more at-bats the elder Garms said nothing about the controversy concerning his being awarded the championship. He seemed to be content to let others worry about the numbers while he concentrated on playing his game. Through it all, Garms was as calm as the center of a statistical hurricane, just hitting a ball that “looked as big as a grapefruit coming up to the plate.”

GREG ERION has a Master’s Degree in History from San Francisco State University and teaches history at Skyline College. He would like to thank David Garms, David W. Smith, Jules Tygiel and Mary Waters for their contributions to this article. Any errors are the author’s.

Notes

“Major League Leaders,” New York Times, September 15, 1941.
“Major League Leaders,” New York Times, September 16, 1941.
The Boston Braves were known as the Bees for the 1936-1940 seasons.
Charles J. Doyle, “Changes Already Made by F1isch Expected to Bolster Spirit,” The Sporting News, January 4, 1940.
Interviews with David Garms, August 29 & 30, 2006.
Charles J. Doyle, “Bue Nemesis Bought from Boston;’ Pittsburgh Sun-Telegram, March 4, 1940.
Pete Kendall, “Ex-Major Leaguer Debs Garms Dies in Glen Rose,” Cleburne Times-Review, December 17, 1984.
Parker, Clifton Big and Little Poison: Paul and Lloyd Waner, Baseball’s Brothers (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2003).
Charles J. Doyle, various articles, Pittsburgh, Sun-Telegram, June 19, July 5, 6, 21, 25, August 1, 1940.
Garms, August 29 & 30, 2006.
“Major League Leaders,” New York Times, September 1-16, 1941. Larry Doyle led the league at .320 in 1915 and Tony Gwynn would subsequently lead the National League in batting in 1988 with a .313 average.
Peter Hinkle letter, “Low 1940 Batting Averages,” New York Times, September 14, 1940.
“Just a Joke,’ Says Dizzy Dean of N.L.,” Washington Post, September 18, 1940.
“Batting Slump Hits Both Majors,” The Sporting News, September 20, 1940.
John Lardner, “Who’s L.’s best hitter? Read on and be surprised,” San Francisco Chronicle, September 14, 1940.
Harry Keck, “National League’s Times-at-Bat Myth Exploded by McKechnic’s Curiosity,” Pittsburg Sun-Telegram. September 21, 1940.
“Garms Given O.K. in Batting Race,” Washington Post, September 20, 1940.
“Hitting Crown: Garms May Beat Out Joe D’Mag,” San Francisco Chronicle, September 20, 1940.
Ernest A. Kerstein, “Rule Which Denies Honors to Garms ls Hit by Reader,” New York Times, September 16, 1941.
Bob Ray, “The Sports X-Ray,” Los Angeles Times, December 30, 1940.

The Boston Red Stockings Organizational Meeting

Zachary Planey — Fri, 16 Sep 2016 02:29:02 +0000

January 20, 1871, Parker House, Boston — Ivers Whitney Adams had a specific plan and friends with the money to back it up—if he could secure their help. He was certainly the instigator behind Boston’s having a representative baseball team if there was to be an organized “league” in 1871. Adams called his Congress, State, and Washington Street merchant pals to the famed Parker House for a luncheon meeting on Friday, January 20, 1871. His special guests were Harry and George Wright, formerly the star brothers of the Cincinnati Red Stockings, whom Adams saw play in 1869 and 1870 in Boston as they traversed the country beating nearly all opponents.

Adams’s urgings and comments to his well-heeled friends were in the Boston Journal and Boston Daily Advertiser the next day, while other papers had shorter accounts. Even the New York Clipper printed Adams’s speech in its January 28 issue.1 He was simply asking them to contribute to a $15,000 stock-buying venture that would back his dream baseball team’s creation and foundation.

The local press printed a few names, those who were elected to front-office positions, but it was left to historian George V. Tuohey, 26 years later, to name everyone who got a Parker House invite in his iconic A History of the Boston Base Ball Club.2

In 1948 Harold Kaese’s book The Boston Braves, An Informal History was published as part of the famous G.P. Putnam and Sons baseball series. On page 5 he listed Adams’s wealth roster again, but not without error. He wrote that an F.G. Welsh became a stockholder. There was no such person, but on hand was Canton’s affable Frank George Webster, “The Dean of State Street.” The various newspapers, historian Tuohey, and finally sportswriter Kaese each mixed up an initial or two but a little research has easily corrected those minor glitches.

Though not quite all at the apex of their final wealth as 1871 began, it was an extremely impressive bunch that Adams, 33, had gathered.

John Adams Conkey (1839-1903) was an orphan by 1852. His father, John Q.A. Adams Conkey, was in the crockery business, but died in 1843; his mother, Martha Howe (Bird) Conkey, passed in 1851. The family physician, Dr. Henry E. Townsend, was Conkey’s guardian and sent him to the finest schools. As a young man Conkey clerked for Tuckerman-Townsend, noted tea merchants. Then he dealt in the China Trade for August Heard, later becoming a customs broker and forwarder, estate trustee, and bank notary. A talented thespian, he was a Newton Player and a member of the New England Historic Genealogical Society. Conkey was chosen as team vice president and became the Red Stockings’ second president in 1872, when Adams returned full-time to his businesses and outdoor sporting interests.

Harrison Gardner (1841-1899) served in the Civil War as a lieutenant in the 45th Massachusetts Regiment. Gardner worked at several prosperous firms before being named a partner of commercial merchants Smith, Hogg, and Gardner. Among his many club memberships around the city were those of the Longwood Club and the Boston Athletic Association. He was the Red Stockings’ first treasurer.

George Henry Burditt (1832-1877), was the fifth of six children of grocer William Burditt (and Eliza Welch) of Charlestown. His father died when George was five but he worked his way up into a comfortable life as a clerk, accountant, bookkeeper and by 1870, a real estate broker. He was not among the richest of the Parker House invitees, but was voted on to the Red Stockings Board of Directors that first season and was the club’s treasurer the second year. He remained a director for most of the Reds five-year existence. From the late 1860s Burditt lived in rural West Roxbury and later East Somerville where cancer took his life at age 35.

John Franklin Mills (1823-1876, born in Vermont) was the oldest of those at the lunch and maybe the most “strategic” invitee since he was the partner of Harvey D. Parker, who started the Parker House eatery/hotel. Mills worked for Parker as a waiter at a small restaurant at age 21, proved his considerable worth and ability, and when Parker opened the Parker House, Mills was the main operator. He continued in that job until just before his death.

Eben Dyer Jordan (1823-1895, born in Maine) was likely the wealthiest man at the table at that time. Despite growing up on a farm, he partnered with Benjamin L. Marsh to create the famed Jordan-Marsh retail store in the 1860s. In 1865 his store, woolen mills, and printing company were worth more than an unprecedented $27 million in annual revenues.3

Henry Lillie Pierce (1825-1896) was a member of the Massachusetts House of Representatives, a two-term US congressman in the 1870s, and was elected mayor of Boston in 1873 and 1878 before going into the insurance business. His first employment was with the Walter Baker & Co., a chocolate producer, which he took over by 1854 (when Baker died) and of which he was the sole proprietor the rest of his life. He was a trustee of the Museum of Fine Arts and had membership in several other clubs including the posh Algonquin Club. Among the dozens of causes he was involved in, one was to repeal the state and national law that prevented the enlistment of “colored soldiers” into the State militia or US Army.

Edward Augustus White (1825-1891) was in the clothing and real-estate businesses. He became an alderman and was on the Boston Common Council and Water Board, and became a fire department commissioner.

James Horatio Freeland (1827-1902) partnered early on with his brother C.W. Freeland in men’s clothing manufacturing in Worcester. He later shared ownership in three other companies, one supplying cloth goods for the Union Army in the Civil War. The Great Fire of 1872 burned Freeland out but soon he rebuilt in the form of the Continental Clothing House with Silas W. Loomis on Washington Street. He was a member of the Ancient and Honorable Society, the Central Club, Boston Art Club, and Commercial Club, among many fraternal groups.

Frank George Webster (1841-1930) was likely the richest of the group when claimed by death. As a young man he was a bookbinder, wallpaper clerk, and bank teller before his service in the Civil War. Postwar, he was in on the ground floor at the opening of Kidder, Peabody & Co. Eventually he became known as the “Dean of State Street,” where over the years he amassed his considerable fortune. Webster’s summer home at Squam Lake, New Hampshire, is on the National Register and he owned various Canadian preserves and clubs and was a member of the exclusive Union and Algonquin Clubs and The Country Club of Brookline.

Charles Hunt Porter (1843-1911) became the third president of the Red Stockings in 1873.4 Conkey, like Adams, went back to real business endeavors after one season of baseball activity. Colonel Porter, too, had fought in the Civil War (more than a dozen notable battles) and later became the first mayor of Quincy, Massachusetts, in 1889 when the town became a city. Prior to that he was also park commissioner and organized the Quincy Actives Base Ball team and played on it in the 1860s. During his entire life he was involved in politics in the “City of Presidents,” taking seats on the school board and fire department, and he formed the Quincy Water Co.

Nicholas Taylor Apollonio (1843-1911, born in Brooklyn, New York) was not listed as being at the Parker House but became the fourth Boston Red Stockings president (1874). His father was Italian immigrant Nicholas Alessandro Apollonio, a printer and City of Boston registrar for 40 years. With special permission, young Nick entered Boston English High School at age 11. He was an accountant and clerk by trade and directed operations for the Great Falls Manufacturing Co. for 35 years. Likely the first Italian to be connected with big-time baseball, he eventually became a Winchester resident and was involved with the Winchester Savings Bank, and always cared deeply about the town’s well-being. As Red Stockings president in 1876, Apollonio oversaw the transition from the chaotic National Association to the much more “organized” National League, but even more crucial to Boston fans, the sudden departure of the “Big Four” of Albert Spalding, Deacon White, Ross Barnes, and Cal McVey for Chicago in 1876. Arthur H. Soden joined the Red Stockings toward the close of that first NL season in 1876 and took over as president before the 1877 campaign began.

Richard “Dixie” Tourangeau was the creator/author of the “Play Ball!” wall calendar for Tide-Mark Press from 1981 to 2005, for which he wrote more than 250 player biographies. As the 21st century began he felt an urge to know more about 19th century teams and players. While becoming comfortable with them he was credited with finding the gravesites of Mort and Fraley Rogers for the Biographical Committee and confirming those of Dave Birdsall (cleaning his headstone) and John Dickson McBride (unmarked). Dixie, SABR 1981, lives a mile from both Fenway Park and where the South End Grounds and Huntington Avenue Grounds were located. While researching the Red Stockings creation he realized that in 1870, Ivers Whitney Adams lived a third of a mile from his house, in the Highlands, now the Mission Hill section of Boston. He has written for The National Pastime and biogs and game accounts for the SABR Braves Field and County Stadium books.

Sources

The sources for material on these men is largely gleaned from their obituaries, though some other sources have been consulted as well. The sources are listed here, alphabetically, by each man.

APOLLONIO: Winchester (Massachusetts) Star, April 7, 1911. See also Nemec, David, The Rank and File of 19th Century Major League Baseball (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland and Company, 2012), 285.

BURDITT: Boston Globe, September 18, 1926.

CONKEY: The New-England Historical Genealogical Register, Vol. LIX. Memoirs, Section 1903 Deaths (supplement to April 1905), lxxi. (Boston: New England Historic Genealogical Society, 1905).

FREELAND: Supreme Council of the Ancient Accepted Scottish Rite, “In Memoriam, Illustrious Brother,” Proceedings of the Annual Session Held in Boston, June 26, 1903 (Boston: Massachusetts Council of Deliberation, 1903), 31-33.

GARDNER: The (Brookline, Massachusetts) Chronicle, February 18, 1899.

JORDAN: Boston Herald, November 16, 1895.

MILLS: Boston Globe, April 10, 1876, and Boston Daily Advertiser, April 10, 1876.

PIERCE: Boston Globe, December 18, 1896.

PORTER: Quincy (Massachusetts) Patriot, August 12, 1911, and Boston Globe, August 11, 1911.

WEBSTER: Boston Globe, January 23, 1930.

WHITE: Boston Evening Transcript, May 14, 1891.

Notes

1 New York Clipper, January 21, 1871: 338.

2 George V. Tuohey, A History of the Boston Base Ball Club (Boston: M.F. McQuinn & Co., 1897), Part III, 62.

3 It has been difficult to determine whether or not this referred to annual revenues or net worth, though mentions of the sum appear to suggest annual revenues, which would be truly astonishing.

4 In George V. Tuohey’s book, he begins Chapter V, “The Club’s Presidents,” by saying (his information came from J.C. Morse of the Boston Herald) that all five Red Stockings presidents were then alive and living in Boston. Tuohey via Morse writes that Charles H. Porter was the third president and held office for two seasons. Then Nicholas T. Apollonio became the fourth president for both 1875 and 1876. The years attributed to each man were incorrect. The New York Clipper of December 27, 1873, printed a letter from “President” Porter on the subject of professionalism in the Association. It was dated December 15 and appeared on the bottom of the sixth column of page 306. In the very next column, at the bottom, was a one-paragraph item, “Boston Baseball Association,” which gave the “recent vote” for officers for the Club. Apollonio was elected president and Porter became a director for the coming 1874 season. Sometime between December 16 and Christmas Eve the vote had taken place and Porter was no longer president.

No Knuckles About It

wpadmin — Thu, 10 Jan 1985 22:31:52 +0000

This article was originally published in SABR’s The National Pastime, Winter 1985 (Vol. 4, No. 2).

There was a man on our block named Rooney Sullavan who would often come walking down the street while the kids would be playing ball in front of my house or Johnny McLaughlin’s house. He would always stop and ask if he’d ever shown us how he used to throw the knuckleball back when he pitched for Kankakee in 1930.

“Plenty of times, Rooney,” Billy Cunningham would say. “No knuckles about it, right?” Tommy Ryan would say. “No knuckles about it, right!” Rooney Sullavan would say. “Give it here and I’ll show you.” One of us would reluctantly toss Rooney the ball and we’d step up so he could demonstrate for the fortieth or fiftieth time how he held the ball by his fingertips only, no knuckles about it.

“Don’t know how it ever got the name knuckler,” Rooney’d say. “I call mine The Rooneyball.” Then he’d tell one of us—usually Billy because he had the catcher’s glove, the old fat-heeled kind that didn’t bend unless somebody stepped on it, a big black mitt that Billy’s dad had handed down to him from his days at Kankakee or Rock Island or some place—to get sixty feet away so Rooney could see if he could “still make it wrinkle.”

Billy would pace off twelve squares of sidewalk, each square being approximately five feet long, the length of one nine-year-old boy stretched head to toe, squat down and stick his big black glove out in front of his face. With his right hand he’d cover his crotch in case the pitch got away and short-hopped off the cement where he couldn’t block it with the mitt. The knuckleball was unpredictable; not even Rooney could tell what would happen to it once he let it go.

“It’s the air makes it hop,” Rooney claimed. His leather jacket creaked as he bent, wound up, rotated his right arm like nobody’d done since Chief Bender, crossed his runny grey eyes and released the ball from the tips of his fingers. We watched as it sailed straight up at first then sort of floated on an invisible wave before plunging the last ten feet like a balloon that had been pierced by a dart.

Billy always went down on his knees, the back of his right hand stiffened over his crotch, and stuck out his gloved hand at the slowly whirling Rooneyball. Just before it got to Billy’s mitt the ball would give out entirely and sink rapidly, inducing Billy to lean forward in order to catch it—only he couldn’t because at the last instant it would make a final, sneaky hop before bouncing surprisingly hard off Billy’s unprotected chest.

“Just like I told you,” Rooney Sullavan would exclaim. “All it takes is plain old air.”

Billy would come up with the ball in his upturned glove, his right hand rubbing the spot on his chest where the pitch had hit. “You all right, son?” Rooney would ask, and Billy would nod. “Tough kid,” Rooney’d say: “I’d like to stay out with you fellas all day, but I got responsibilities.” Rooney would muss up Billy’s hair with the hand that held the secret to The Rooneyball and walk away whistling “When Irish Eyes Are Smiling” or “My Wild Irish Rose.” Rooney was about forty-five or fifty years old and lived with his mother in a bungalow at the corner. He worked nights for Wanzer Dairy, washing out returned milk bottles.

Tommy Ryan would grab the ball out of Billy’s mitt and hold it by the tips of his fingers like Rooney Sullavan did, and Billy would go sit on the stoop in front of the closest house and rub his chest. “No way,” Tommy would say, considering the prospect of his ever duplicating Rooney’s feat. “There must be something he’s not telling us.”

BARRY GIFFORD of Berkeley, Ca., wrote The Neighborhood of Baseball.

The Cuban Connection That Integrated the Louisville Colonels

Jack Barron — Tue, 28 Jan 2025 18:49:41 +0000

Pumpsie Green. (SABR-Rucker Archive)

When Elijah “Pumpsie” Green made his debut for the Boston Red Sox in 1959, the American League team became the last of the original 16 major-league White clubs to cross the color line, 12 years after Jackie Robinson and the Dodgers broke the major-league color barrier. Thus, Green became forever the answer to a not-so-trivial trivia question. The Louisville Colonels of the American Association, a longtime Boston affiliate, integrated before the Red Sox, but the Colonels likewise finished well behind other teams in breaking through the color barrier. It took a new kind of ownership group, headed by baseball pioneer Joe Cambria, to push the Southern-based team through it.

Boston was actually presented with one of the earliest opportunities to cross the color line. In April 1945, a tryout was arranged with Boston for Jackie Robinson and two other Black players, Sam Jethroe and Marvin Williams, but the team didn’t sign any of the players. The Red Sox were likely never fully invested in the tryout to begin with and said instead that the players would not want to be assigned to their farm team in Louisville “because of the racial feelings at the time.”1 But as Bill Nowlin pointed out in his biography of Red Sox owner Tom Yawkey, Boston had other affiliated minor-league teams in cities that would probably have been more welcoming. They had an affiliate in Scranton, Pennsylvania, and in 1946 they began agreements with teams in the North including Oneonta, New York, and Lynn, Massachusetts.

Tom Yawkey also was part-owner of the Louisville Colonels dating back to 1938. Yawkey and the Red Sox have been called out over the years for not wanting to bring Black players into the organization. Although the Louisville Colonels management went on record in 1952 as saying that they would welcome Black players,2 Boston had yet to sign any to farm out to them. By then several major-league teams and their minor-league affiliates had already integrated.

The Red Sox ultimately signed Earl Wilson in 1953 and then Elijah “Pumpsie” Green in February 1956. Notably, Wilson was farmed out to the Montgomery Rebels in the Deep South South Atlantic League to play in 1955, and then was assigned to Albany in the Eastern League for 1956, as was Green. Both players likely would have been slated to play for the Colonels in 1957, but in November 1955 Yawkey parted ways with Louisville and purchased the San Francisco Seals, which became the new top Red Sox affiliate. The split with the Colonels seemed to be mutually agreeable: Louisville fans had tired of seeing the Red Sox pull the team’s best players off their roster year after year,3 and Yawkey saw a golden opportunity to get in on the ground floor of plans for major-league baseball in the Western US. As a result, Pumpsie Green suited up for the Seals in 1957. Wilson was drafted into military service for two years.

When the Colonels were put up for sale, there was immediate interest from Joe Cambria, the longtime baseball businessman, minor-league team owner, and renowned talent evaluator. After a short career as a player and manager in the lower minor leagues, Cambria progressed to running his own teams. In the 1930s Cambria reached a working agreement with the Washington Senators to sell players he signed and developed on his clubs. Players signed by Cambria who went on to play for the Senators included Mickey Vernon, George Case, and Eddie Yost. But Cambria was better known for being one of the earliest and most prolific scouts in Latin America. Cambria signed hundreds of ballplayers from Cuba, Venezuela, and other Latin American countries and funneled them into the Washington farm system. Hall of Famer Tony Oliva, Camilo Pascual, and Connie Marrero were some of his most successful Latin signees.

Since the 1930s, Cambria had focused his scouting on Cuba and spent several months each year living in the country. There he developed business ties, and on hearing the Colonels were up for sale, he assembled a team of Cuban businessmen to make a bid. His group included sugar broker Victor Menocal (nephew of former Cuban President Mario Menocal), sugar planter Louis Mendoza, and Mendoza’s associate Gonzalo de la Vega. Two American businessmen living in Cuba were also part of the investment group: Arthur Rankin, a native of Kentucky, and Edward Wheeler, an employee of Western Union.

Like most Cubans, Cambria’s business partners were enthusiastic baseball fans. With money to spend, they were eager for a chance to run a baseball organization. Given that no Cuban Winter League teams were available for purchase, the group sought ownership opportunities in the United States.4 The Louisville Colonels seemed the ideal answer for all parties involved: The Cubans would get their own team to run, the Senators would improve their minor-league system by setting up their first agreement with a Triple-A team, and Cambria would have another location to stash more of his scouting finds. This would not be the first time Cambria and Cubans were involved with a team in Organized Baseball. Cambria co-owned the Havana Cubans of the Florida International league in the 1940s and 1950s. But Cubans running a baseball team based in the United States would be a new endeavor.

Initially there was no official announcement that the Colonels would be affiliated with a major-league club, but in case the Cambria connection wasn’t enough evidence, Wheeler, the prospective ownership group’s representative in the United States, was certified by a bank in Washington DC., supporting speculation that the Senators were tied into the purchase.5 The Cuban consortium’s acquisition of the Colonels was made official on January 6,1956, and the agreement was made public. On the 9th, news followed that the Colonels would be integrated not only on the field but also in the stands at Louisville’s Parkway Field.6 The story made the front page of the Louisville papers as “custom-shattering,”7 but the city should have expected these changes. Several teams farther south had already integrated heading into the 1956 season, and Louisville was the only club in the American Association that had not yet employed Black players.

Tom Yawkey. (SABR-Rucker Archive)

Also announced was the official affiliation agreement with Washington, which would supply Louisville with players for the coming season. They would include several of Cambria’s Latin signees. Ballplayers of Latin American descent were not new to the Colonels. As early as the 1910s, Louisville rosters had included Latin players considered light-skinned enough to be accepted as White, such as Cubans Dolf Luque from 1916 to 1918 and Merito Acosta from 1919 to 1928. But Louisville had not filled its rosters with Latin players to the degree that Cambria would. As many as 16 Latin players wore a Colonels uniform during the 1956 season,8 and nearly all of them were Cambria signees. To help Louisville manager Red Marion and the coaching staff work with the Latin players and deal with the language barrier, Cambria brought in Oscar Rodriguez to be one of the Colonels’ coaches. Rodriguez was a Cuban native who for several years had coached and managed teams in the minor leagues and the Cuban Winter League.

While the new ownership group did not bring in African American players, some of the Latin American players were dark skinned and were effectively the first players to integrate the team. Technically outfielder Dario Rubinstein was the first Black Colonel when he was obtained in February 1956. The speedy Venezuelan had been Rookie of the Year in the Venezuelan League in 1955 and was considered a promising hitter. Rubinstein, however, failed to arrive in the United States in time for the season opener. He joined the team a few days after the season began. Had he arrived earlier he would have taken part in spring training at Fernandina Beach, Florida, with the other Latin signees who were too dark-skinned to join the Colonels at their official spring-training site in Winter Garden, Florida.9

After the Colonels’ Opening Day game on April 17, the Louisville Courier-Journal wrote with little fanfare that “Oleon” Castro became “the first Negro ever to wear Louisville livery.”10 (Though Louisville had employed Latin players over the years, foreign players were still very—for lack of a better word—foreign to Kentuckians in the 1950s. Cuban outfielder Julian Castro was misidentified in newspaper reports as Oleon throughout his time with the team.) Castro entered the Opening Day game in the ninth inning to pinch-hit for pitcher Tony Ponce and grounded out in his debut. The news in February that the Colonels had added Dario Rubinstein gained more attention in the press than the first official appearance of a Black player on the field for the Colonels, even in the Black newspapers. Castro’s appearance was only briefly mentioned in the Courier-Journal game story, and not at all mentioned in editions sent outside the city.

Any Courier-Journal sportswriters present at the game on the especially frigid evening in mid-April failed to mention that the Colonels’ starting first baseman, Julio Becquer, was also dark-skinned. Becquer had been a last-minute addition to the Colonels’ roster after he was transferred from the Chattanooga Lookouts, another of Washington’s minor-league affiliates. Becquer was moved off the Chattanooga team in the Southern Association since at the time “Negro players … are not being used in this league under present circumstances.”11 It was Becquer who broke the color barrier for the team.

A native of Havana, Becquer had been in Washington’s minor-league system since 1952 and made his major-league debut in 1955, appearing in 10 games with the Senators. Most of the Latin players who suited up for Louisville in 1956 were reassigned to lower minor-league teams or released after short trials, but Becquer contributed to the Colonels as a left-handed power bat all season. He hit 15 home runs and led the team in games played, most of them at first base. When the team was in dire need of fielders on the other side of the infield, he was inserted as a left-handed-throwing third baseman.

The 1956 season was disastrous for the Colonels. It started with frigid conditions, and the weather didn’t improve much over April, one of many factors blamed for keeping fans away from the ballpark all season long. The Colonels had not secured a contract with a local radio station to air their games, leaving the fans who were unable to attend games without a way to connect with the team, outside of newspaper coverage. Louisville also found itself in the same boat with minor-league teams all over the country, competing for eyeballs with the new medium of television. And though not mentioned in newspapers, it is conceivable that some fans in Louisville simply turned their backs on the Latin-heavy team and the newly integrated park arrangements. After seeing attendance figures near 140,000 for the past two seasons, less than 80,000 fans showed up to see the Colonels in 1956.12

Given the slow start and disappointing crowds, the owners coerced general manager Fred Grimm into resigning in May. The ownership group accused Grimm of not doing enough to raise interest in the team and of failing to get Colonels games broadcast on the radio. Grimm blamed the lack of fan interest on the bad April weather and a scheduling conflict with the Kentucky Derby to start off May. Reporters in turn lashed out at the owners for not doing more to put together a winning ballclub. Toward the end of May, Courier-Journal columnist Earl Ruby speculated that the Cubans’ unwillingness to take steps to draw larger crowds and strengthen the team’s roster signaled that they had lost interest in the Colonels and that worse times lay ahead.13 Ruby was proven correct. On June 1 the Colonels had a .500 record and sat in fourth place in the eight-team American Association. From there, the team’s season went into a tailspin.

Tom Yawkey had been less concerned with losing money in Louisville if the team developed players for the Red Sox, but the new Cuban owners wanted to turn a profit, or at least break even.14 As fans stayed away from Parkway Field, the team’s debt started mounting. In response, the team sold off several top assets. Some players, like pitcher Bud Byerly and Cuban shortstop José Valdivielso, were sold to the Senators, but several players were sold to other minor-league teams. Catcher Ray Holton was traded to Miami, temporarily leaving Louisville with one catcher. A leading hitter, outfielder Roy Hawes, was also dealt to Miami, as were pitcher Tony Ponce and popular infielder Yo-Yo Davalillo. The Colonels continued to sell off talent, which resulted in more losses and less fan interest, sinking the team even further in debt. At the end of the season, Louisville found itself in last place in the American Association for the first time since 1948, with its lowest attendance in nearly 20 years.15

Despite the mounting financial problems, Cambria stated in August that the Colonels would remain in Louisville in 1957, though the Cubans would likely sell their stake in the team. Clearly the Latin group had turned away from their venture. Cambria claimed the loss of interest was due in part to the difficulty of traveling to Louisville. He said the group wanted a team closer to their home.16 There was talk that the Cubans would sell the Colonels for the right price, but Cambria’s statement also stirred speculation that the group might move the team. Cambria owned another team in Tampa, Florida, an ideal location to appease the Cuban investors. Although Cambria said he and the ownership group were looking into refinancing the team’s debt to keep the club, it is doubtful that the Cubans were still involved at that point. The American Association took control of the team after the season, quashing the possibility of Cambria’s relocating it. The Colonels were handed over to the city to be run as a nonprofit foundation.17 With Cambria no longer in the mix, the team’s agreement with Washington was discontinued, and the Colonels were left unaffiliated for 1957.

Though the arrangement between the Cubans, Joe Cambria, and the Colonels was short-lived and a failure financially, it pushed change that was long overdue in Louisville: Cambria signed dark-skinned players and Louisville integrated Parkway Field.

The next step was taken in 1957. While the Colonels no longer had Cambria and the Senators supplying players, they did finally add African Americans to the team. In the Colonels’ home opener on April 18,outfielder Mitchell June became the first African American to play for Louisville.18 The team’s roster that year also included two veterans of the Negro Leagues and the minor leagues, Butch McCord and Dave Hoskins.19 However, by the 1957 season, a decade had passed since Jackie Robinson could have played for Louisville and the Red Sox, and the top talent from the Negro Leagues had long since been signed away to other teams.

CHRIS BETSCH has been a SABR member since 2019. He lives in New Albany, Indiana, and is a member of the Pee Wee Reese Chapter (Louisville, Kentucky). Chris has written a number of SABR bios and Games Project articles, as well as articles for newsletters of the Minor Leagues and Deadball Era committees.

Acknowledgments

This article was edited by Cathy Kreyche and fact-checked by Laura Peebles.

Sources

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

Figueredo, Jorge S. Who’s Who in Cuban Baseball: 1878-1961 (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland), 2007.

Scimonelli, Paul. Joe Cambria: International Super Scout of the Washington Senators (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland), 2023.

Notes

1 Bill Nowlin, Tom Yawkey: Patriarch of the Red Sox (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2018), 184.

2 “Louisville Colonels Would Welcome Race Players,” Louisville Defender, February 16, 1952:1.

3 Harold Kaese, “Too Many Talent Raids by Red Sox Blamed for Louisville Plight,” Boston Globe, December 20, 1955:18.

4 Tommy Fitzgerald, “Horse-Riding, Gun Shooting Menocal ‘Grateful’ To Buy Cols,” Louisville Courier-Journal, January 27, 1956: 28.

5 Earl Ruby, “Ruby’s Report,” Louisville Courier-Journal, January 6, 1956: 26.

6 Tommy Fitzgerald, “Negroes to Play for the Colonels,” Louisville Courier-Journal, January 9, 1956:1.

7 Fitzgerald, “Negroes to Play for the Colonels.”

8 Baseball-reference.com was used to identify some of the Latin players on the team; not all of the players on the team have birth locations listed in Bas eball-Reference.

9 Johnny Carrico, “Lack of Games Hurts Colonels,” Louisville Courier-Journal, April 5, 1956: 33.

10 Johnny Carrico, “Colonels Rally to Tip Saints 3-2 in the Ninth,” Louisville Courier-Journal, April 18, 1956: 28.

11 Wirt Gammon, “Just Between Us Fans,” Chattanooga Daily Times, April 17,1956:14.

12 Johnny Carrico, “Cols Have Proven to Be Gate Attraction,” Louisville Courier-Journal, November 7, 1956: 25.

13 Earl Ruby, “Ruby’s Report,” Louisville Courier-Journal, May 29, 1956: 24.

14 Fitzgerald, “Negroes to Play for the Colonels.”

15 “Colonels ‘ Attendance Figures,” Louisville Courier-Journal, November 7, 1956: 25.

16 Johnny Carrico, “Cubans Are in No Hurry to Sell: Colonels May Get John Herbert,” Louisville Courier-Journal, August 17, 1956: 30.

17 Johnny Carrico, “Cols Survive Another Crisis,” Louisville Courier-Journal, December 30, 1956:15.

18 The leadoff batter for the game, Clarence Moore, was also dark-skinned, but he was a native of Panama.

19 Hoskins, who played parts of two seasons with the Cleveland Indians, had broken the color line in the Texas League.

SABR 43: Research Presentations

admin — Tue, 28 May 2013 20:12:26 +0000

2013 SABR Convention: SABR 43 in Philadelphia

July 31-August 4, 2013
Philadelphia Marriott Downtown
1201 Market Street
Philadelphia, PA 191077

Presentations Schedule Committee Meetings Posters Speakers Vendors Room Information Photo Galleries #SABR43 on Twitter

SABR 43: Research Presentations

Here is the schedule of research presentations for SABR 43, July 31-August 4, 2013, at the Philadelphia Marriott Downtown in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

Research abstracts and presenter bios can be found on this page. Where available, you can also listen to select presentations and view prepared presentation slides by clicking on the links below.

To view abstracts for SABR 43 poster presentations that were on display all week during the convention, click here.

Thursday, August 1

10:30-10:55 a.m. (Salon A/B)

RP01: Miss Arlington Twirls for the Coal Heavers: Lizzie Stride (playing as “Lizzie Arlington”) Was the First Woman to Pitch in a Regulation Game in “Organized Baseball”
Brian Engelhardt

Audio: Click here to download the MP3 file and listen to Brian’s presentation (20:01; 18.3 MB)

On July 5, 1898, Elizabeth “Lizzie” Stride (using the name of “Lizzie Arlington”) pitched a shutout inning in a regulation Atlantic League game for the Reading Coal Heavers against the Allentown Peaches. Promoted as a novelty, Stride eventually would play as a “Bloomer Girl,” barnstorming with other women in games against men’s teams. Engelhardt covers not only Stride’s wide-ranging talents (she was an accomplished equestrienne and early bicyclist) but also the 1898 game that also featured three Delahanty brothers (albeit not Ed) and the men who were instrumental in Stride’s career – including Yankee architect Ed Barrow.

Brian Engelhardt <bengelhardt@comcast.net> is a native of Reading, Pennsylvania, where he resides with his wife, Suzanne, who is a good sport about a lot of things. Their three daughters are grown (and Phillies fans). A member of SABR since 2006, he has written for the SABR BioProject, The National Pastime, and the Deadball Committee newsletter. A regular contributor to the Berks County Historical Review, he also has written for several other Reading-area publications, including the (then) Reading Phillies (now Fightins’) website. At age 13, his emotional growth was permanently stunted by the combination of the collapse of the 1964 Phillies plus his mother throwing out his baseball cards because he left them laying around after she told him to pick them up “for the tenth time.” He does not easily let things go.

10:30-10:55 a.m. (Salon C/D)

RP02: The 1964 American League Pennant Race
Tim Herlich

Audio: Click here to download the MP3 file and listen to Tim’s presentation (21:37; 19.8 MB)

Philadelphia Phillies fans are all too familiar with the outcome of the 1964 National League pennant race. But how many know that the American League race that year remained undecided until the final weekend of the season? The 1964 contest involved three teams going down to the wire, including a Yankee team in the last year of its post-WWII dynasty that had copped the flag in fourteen of the previous seventeen seasons. Herlich uncovers and illuminates unnoticed details about the race and answers the questions: who were the clutch performers, and what front office and on-field decisions shaped the race’s final outcome?

Tim Herlich <Ltherlich@aol.com> has been a member of SABR since 1996. He received the Doug Pappas award for best oral presentation at SABR 39 in Washington D.C. in 2009, a tribute to the single-game strikeout record set in 1962 by Tom Cheney, which he reprised last year at the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown. Tim has contributed to the BioProject with biographies of Cheney, Ray Washburn and Billy North. Tim resides in Seattle with his wife Leslie. His favorite team is (gulp!) the 1964 Philadelphia Phillies!

11:00-11:25 a.m. (Salon A/B)

RP03: Take Her Out to the Ballgame: Ladies at the Ballpark – Past and Present
Ed Mayo

Audio: Click here to download the MP3 file and listen to Ed’s presentation (26:33; 24.3 MB)

From its beginnings as a commercial enterprise following the Civil War, baseball was played by men and watched, for the most part, by men. But baseball, early on, recognized women as an important target market. Mayo traces baseball’s efforts to attract women and how these efforts have led to the point where, today, women represent 45% of organized baseball’s fan base. He looks at attempts to make women more comfortable, separate them from rowdy fans, lure them with specials such as brass bands, good-looking players, Ladies Days (eventually leading to men complaining about discrimination) and even “Hot Pants Night” (which led to complaints from women).

Ed Mayo <ed.mayo@suncoastbaseball.com> is Professor Emeritus of Marketing at Western Michigan University, where he taught marketing strategy, marketing research, and sports marketing for 23 years. He also spent 10 years on the faculty at Notre Dame. Near the end of his academic career, Ed worked for two years with the ownership group of the Albany Diamond Dogs and was co-founder of SunCoast Sports, which provided website development and marketing planning services with other minor league baseball and hockey organizations. Ed continues to work in an advisory capacity with the sports marketing program at Western Michigan, and he is writing a book describing the side-by-side growth of professional baseball and the American automobile industry. Ed traces his baseball bloodlines to The Sporting News American League MVP in 1945, Detroit Tigers second baseman Eddie Mayo; and to his maternal grandfather, the owner of the Brooklyn franchises in three outlaw professional leagues (the Atlantic, Union, and United) in the early 1900s.

11:00-11:25 a.m. (Salon C/D)

RP04: Bob McConnell, Researcher Extraordinaire
Peter Morris

Audio: Click here to download the MP3 file and listen to Peter’s presentation (24:03; 22.0 MB)

Before the birth of SABR in 1971, there were so few serious baseball researchers that the members of that small, select fraternity all pitched in to help with any ongoing project, until the growth of SABR allowed them to specialize. SABR founder Bob McConnell, who passed away in 2012, exemplified this behavior, involving himself in numerous different research initiatives. In the late 1990s, with the committee system firmly established, he passed along his collection of biographical research materials from his greatest passion — the minor leagues — to Morris, who presents some of the highlights of that collection, shedding light on the techniques of one of SABR’s greatest researchers.

Peter Morris <moxbib@comcast.net> of Haslett, Michigan, is the author of seven books about baseball history and is a two-time winner of SABR’s Seymour Medal. He also was one of the inaugural winners of the Henry Chadwick Award.

2:00-2:25 p.m. (Salon A/B)

RP05: Blurring Color Lines: The “Integrated” Interstate League of 1926
Geri Strecker

Audio: Click here to download the MP3 file and listen to Geri’s presentation (28:39; 26.2 MB)

Historians have long noted economic necessity as one force behind the re-integration of Major League Baseball in 1947, but before that, the same motive sometimes blurred the color line in the independent game. Perhaps the most formal example was an “integrated” league of black and white teams — the 1926 Interstate League in Pennsylvania that contained three struggling white teams (Chester, Camden, and Allentown) and three Eastern Colored League (ECL) teams (Harrisburg Giants, Hilldale Club, and Bacharach Giants). Strecker illustrates a new view of race and baseball in the 1920’s through images and photos — and also the fact that the white teams offered little competition for their vastly superior ECL opponents, causing attendance at games between black and white teams to dwindle despite early positive media attention.

Geri Strecker <gstrecker@bsu.edu> is an assistant professor at Ball State University, where she teaches writing for architecture and urban design. She has published articles in NINE: A Journal of Baseball History & Culture, Black Ball: A Negro Leagues Journal, and The National Pastime. She is currently finishing a book on Oscar Charleston and another on the early history of baseball in the Philippines. She lives in old Bush Stadium, home of the Indianapolis Indians from 1931-1996.

2:00-2:25 p.m. (Salon C/D)

RP06: Rube Waddell and the Great Straw Hat Mystery of 1905
Steven A. King

Audio: Click here to download the MP3 file and listen to Steven’s presentation (29:47; 27.3 MB)

In 1905 Rube Waddell was widely considered to be the best pitcher in the American League and second only to Christy Mathewson in all of baseball. But he was unable to match up with Mathewson in the World Series between his Philadelphia Athletics and the New York Giants. Waddell claimed that he hurt his pitching arm trying to destroy teammate Andy Coakley’s straw hat in early September as the team was returning from Boston. King presents evidence that makes it apparent that the whole straw hat incident should be considered an unsubstantiated myth and alternative explanations for Waddell’s behavior are more credible.

Steven A. King <kingpain@gmail.com> is a physician specializing in pain management. The primary focus of his baseball research is New York City baseball at the beginning of the 20th century and he is writing a book on the interaction between baseball and politics in the city at that time. His most recent baseball articles are on the myth of the Amos Rusie-Christy Mathewson trade that appeared in the Fall 2012 issue of Base Ball: A Journal of the Early Game, and on why Rube Waddell missed the 1905 World Series in the 2013 issue of The National Pastime.

2:30-2:55 p.m. (Salon A/B)

RP07: Black Integration in the Major Leagues: A Different Perspective
Bryan Soderholm-Difatte

Audio: Click here to download the MP3 file and listen to Bryan’s presentation (29:26; 27.0 MB)

Without in any way diminishing the importance of Robinson, Doby, and the first wave of trailblazers who ensured that black players with superior talent and ability would find a place in the major leagues, Soderholm-Difatte argues that integration could not be considered complete until blacks with far more average major league ability were allowed to compete for — and win — starting positions. By 1960, only 21 blacks had been core regulars on their teams for at least four years. More than half of them were elite players (including nine HOFers). Soderholm-Difatte points out that blacks who were core, but not elite, regulars on the Giants, Dodgers and Braves of the 1950s were critical to the success of MLB integration.

Bryan Soderholm-Difatte <brysholm@aol.com> is devoted to the study of baseball history. He is author of the online manuscript, www.thebestbaseballteams.com, which identifies the best teams of the twentieth century in each league using a structured methodological approach for analysis and writes the baseball historical insight blog at brysholm.blogspot.com. Bryan is also a frequent contributor to The Baseball Research Journal and has an article in this year’s issue of The National Pastime.

2:30-2:55 p.m. (Salon C/D)

RP08: Syl Johnson — The Most Unlucky Pitcher In The Majors
Matthew Clifford

Audio: Click here to download the MP3 file and listen to Matthew’s presentation (27:29; 25.2 MB)

Sportswriters in the 1920s and 1930s dubbed Sylvester “Syl” Johnson of the Tigers, Cards and Phillies “the most unlucky pitcher in baseball history”. Clifford, who is developing a full-length biography of Johnson after publishing one in the SABR BioProject, describes how he came to the conclusion that Syl, who ultimately devoted forty-four years to organized baseball, was, in fact, nothing but lucky in more ways than any statistics or analysis can present. Clifford, who spoke with several of Johnson’s children, will share some enjoyable yarns about Syl.

Matthew Clifford <clifford_35@yahoo.com> is a freelance writer from the suburbs of Chicago, IL. He joined SABR in 2011 with intentions to enhance his research abilities and literary talents to help preserve the accurate facts of baseball history. Clifford has a background in law enforcement and is certified in a variety of forensic investigative techniques, all of which currently aid him with historical data collection and verification. He has discovered and reported several baseball card errors and inaccuracies of player history to SABR, Baseball-Almanac.com, Baseball-Reference.com and the research department of the Baseball Hall of Fame. Clifford’s literary contributions have been added to the SABR Biography Project.

3:00-3:25 p.m. (Salon A/B)

RP09: Twilight Time: Ed Bolden’s Philadelphia Stars and Negro League Baseball After Integration, 1947-1953
Courtney Smith

Audio: Click here to download the MP3 file and listen to Courtney’s presentation (24:38; 22.5 MB)

2013 marks the 60th anniversary of the demise of Ed Bolden’s Negro League Philadelphia Stars. Smith covers the Stars’ final four seasons, during which the Stars faced the unfortunate consequences of professional baseball’s integration — the gradual disappearance of the Negro Leagues, which provided African-Americans, such as Bolden, with leadership opportunities unavailable in the Major Leagues. Smith shows how the Negro League officials’ neglecting to develop an effective plan to co-exist with the integrated Major Leagues forced teams like the Stars to adopt strategies, such as targeting teenagers and playing fewer home games, geared toward short-term survival but leading to their gradual disappearance.

Courtney Smith <cms392@cabrini.edu> is a lifelong Philadelphia sports fan and an Assistant Professor of History and Political Science at Cabrini College in Radnor, PA. She graduated from Cabrini College with a degree in History and Political Science. Courtney received her M.A. and Ph.D. in American History from Lehigh University in Bethlehem, PA. Her dissertation focused on Lehigh’s athletic extra-curriculum from 1866 to 1998. Her Master’s thesis, a history of the Philadelphia Stars, forms the basis of her current scholarship projects.

3:00-3:25 p.m. (Salon C/D)

RP10: Battle at the Dock: The Federal League Tries to Sign Major League Players as They Return from the Around-the-World Tour
Daniel R. Levitt

Audio: Click here to download the MP3 file and listen to Dan’s presentation (25:17; 23.1 MB)

In late 1913 the newly minted Federal League declared itself major. The Federal Leaguers were disappointed with their limited success signing major league ballplayers in the winter of 1914, but one further opportunity remained before the start of spring training: on Friday, March 6 a boatload of star players would be returning to New York on the Lusitania from their around-the-world baseball tour. Levitt uses affidavits, photographs and other primary sources to expand our knowledge of the Federals’ elaborate plans to ride out to the incoming Lusitania on a revenue cutter and sign the players before the ship docked, and Organized Baseball’s plans to thwart it.

Daniel R. Levitt <danrl@attglobal.net> is the author of The Battle that Forged Modern Baseball: The Federal League Challenge and Its Legacy (Ivan R. Dee, 2012), winner of the Larry Ritter Book Award; Ed Barrow: The Bulldog Who Built the Yankees’ First Dynasty (University of Nebraska Press, 2008); and co-author of Paths to Glory: How Great Baseball Teams Got that Way (Brassey’s, 2003). He was also the editor of last summer’s The National Pastime on baseball in Minnesota. Dan is currently working on another book with Mark Armour.

3:30-3:55 p.m. (Salon A/B)

RP11: Bill Veeck, Satchel Paige and the Orange Bowl
Sam Zygner

Audio: Click here to download the MP3 file and listen to Sam’s presentation (22:08; 20.3 MB)

In 1956, for the first time, the city of Miami was introduced to professional baseball above the lowest rungs of the minor leagues. Sid Salomon Jr. purchased the floundering Phillies AAA affiliate, the Syracuse Chiefs, and relocated them to South Florida. He recruited the services of his good friend Bill Veeck to get things off on the right foot. On August 7, Veeck, with the help of Satchel Paige, created one of the most famous minor league games in history. Zygner discusses this game and Veeck’s attempt to break the minor league attendance record.

Sam Zygner <sflasabr@hotmail.com>, a SABR member since 1996 and Chairman of the South Florida Chapter, is the author of the book, The Forgotten Marlins: A Tribute to the 1956-1960 Original Miami Marlins, from which the research for this presentation came. He received his MBA from Saint Leo University and his writings have appeared in the Fall 2012 edition of the SABR Baseball Research Journal, NINE: A Journal of Baseball History and Culture, as well as in La Prensa De Miami (Miami, Florida) newspaper. A lifelong Pittsburgh Pirates fan, he has shifted some of his focus to Miami baseball history.

3:30-3:55 p.m. (Salon C/D)

RP12: A Probabilistic Approach to Measuring the Excitement of Baseball Games
Michael Freiman

Audio: Click here to download the MP3 file and listen to Michael’s presentation (26:00; 23.8 MB)

In a 2007 article in the Journal of Quantitative Analysis in Sports ( “On Probabilistic Excitement of Sports Games”), Vecer, Ichaba and Laudanovic introduced a probabilistic metric to measure the excitement of sports games. Freiman extends their approach from soccer to baseball, and also expands their method by judging how game events change the probability not only of winning the game but of winning the World Series. He describes and explains this Game Excitement Index, running down the method’s Top 20 most exciting games, as well as some criticisms of this approach due to the inherently subjective nature of game excitement.

Michael Freiman <michael.freiman@gmail.com> has a Ph.D. in Statistics from the University of Pennsylvania and is now working as a statistician for the U.S. Census Bureau. He has been a SABR member for more than 16 years, and has had his work published in the Baseball Research Journal and the Journal of Quantitative Analysis in Sports. He is still rooting for the 1993 Philadelphia Phillies.

4:00-4:25 p.m. (Salon A/B)

RP13: Bill Veeck Jr. — Baseball’s Promotional Genius
Millard Fisher

Audio: Click here to download the MP3 file and listen to Millard’s presentation (30:57; 28.3 MB)

Bill Veeck Jr. was baseball’s promotional genius and perhaps its only populist owner. A self-proclaimed hustler, he was the greatest public relations man and promotional genius the game of baseball has ever seen. Over the course of a fifty-year love affair with baseball, Veeck owned three major league teams and established himself as the game’s most incorrigible maverick. Fisher dispels the controversy and inaccurate reporting of past works, presenting accurate material based on documented evidence including interviews with those who worked directly with Veeck, such as Mike Veeck, Larry Doby, and Roland Hemond.

Dr. Millard Fisher is a devout baseball fan who reads extensively all types of baseball material, and particularly enjoys biographies and history of the game. He is an avid and loyal Braves fan. When not cheering for his favorite team, he speaks internationally on health issues and medicine, and has had numerous articles and research presentations that deal with those subjects. He was on the President’s committee that formulated guidelines that targeted health implications for tobacco usage. In addition, he is a consultant to several national and international organizations such as The World Future Society, The Centers For Disease Control, and the National Institutes For Health. Dr. Fisher is the President of the Magnolia Chapter in Georgia. Also, he is a frequent speaker at the National Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York.

4:00-4:25 p.m. (Salon C/D)

RP14: Markerless Motion Capture Technologies For In-Game Player Performance Assessment
Michael Eckstein

Audio: Click here to download the MP3 file and listen to Michael’s presentation (31:54; 29.2 MB)

Coaches and trainers focus upon getting successful player motions continuously repeated. Until recently, the only method available to track and capture multiple view biomechanical data was to use a “marker” system based upon attaching reflective materials to a confining and bulky Spandex® body suit. Using high speed cameras with advanced optics and telephoto lenses, an integrated Markerless MoCap hardware/software technology platform can provide “live game” baseball player performance and skills assessment. Eckstein discusses the evolution from marker to markerless systems, how the technology is deployed within a baseball stadium, and examples of how user interface formats and analytics can be used by coaches, trainers, scouts, managers and players.

Michael Eckstein <meckstein@kinatrax.com> resides in Philadelphia, and is a member of the Connie Mack Chapter of SABR. A lifelong baseball fan, for the past 30 years he has been CEO and CIO of various software development, IT project management, and networking systems companies for Fortune 500 corporations. As the President of Topaz Technology, in 2012 he became a founding principal of KinaTrax LLC to apply markerless motion capture technology platforms to in-game player performance and analytics. Past executive positions have included the CEO of the technology subsidiary of PA Blue Shield, appointment as the North American Software Consultant for the Government of Israel, and technology engagements with global companies including Glaxo, Unisys, BT North America and Novartis.

Friday, August 2

2:00-2:25 p.m. (Salon A/B)

RP15: Three Men Played in the Four Decades: 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s – or are there four? The Mysterious Case of Elmer Valo
Norman Macht

Audio: Click here to download the MP3 file and listen to Norman’s presentation (21:44; 19.9 MB)

Thanks to resources such as Retrosheet and Baseball Reference, many of baseball’s legends, myths, stories and claims can now be proved or disproved. We can verify that three players — Ted Williams, Early Wynn, Mickey Vernon — played in the four decades of the 30s, 40s, 50s, and 60s. Macht traces the history of Red Smith’s story that Elmer Valo appeared as a pinch hitter in the last game of the 1939 season, which would make him the fourth to appear in those four decades. Through interviews and analyses, Macht gets to the heart of the search for truth: whether the repeated appearance of a story in print should be sufficient grounds for a researcher to accept it.

Norman Macht <nlm@grandecom.net> hopes to finish volume 3 of his Connie Mack biography before reaching the age at which Mr. Mack retired.

2:00-2:25 p.m. (Salon C/D)

RP16: Philadelphia’s Rooftop Bleachers
Jack Rooney

Audio: Click here to download the MP3 file and listen to Jack’s presentation (24:14; 22.2 MB)

Citizens Bank Park, home of the Philadelphia Phillies, has a section of the stands, near Ashburn Alley, called rooftop bleachers. It commemorates the time in baseball history (1929-1935) when neighbors living on 20th Street charged admission for fans to see Connie Mack’s Philadelphia Athletics performing in Shibe Park. Rooney actually lived in one of those houses, and he focuses here on the A’s 1929-31 dynasty years, exploring the A’s legal action to prevent the roof top bleachers from being constructed for the 1929 World Series, and how cameramen from three movie newsreel companies filmed Series games from his roof.

John J. (Jack) Rooney. Ph.D. <rooney@lasalle.edu> is Emeritus Professor in the Department of Psychology and Director of the Master’s program in Clinical Counseling at La Salle University. He is the author of numerous articles and three books including Bleachers in the Bedroom: the Swampoodle Irish and Connie Mack (May, 2012), a humorous account of his childhood experience growing up across the street from Shibe Park/Connie Mack Stadium before and during the Depression. His commentary pieces and book reviews appear regularly in the Philadelphia Inquirer and other outlets, and he is a frequent speaker at professional and community organizations.

2:30-2:55 p.m. (Salon A/B)

RP17: What About Solly Hemus?
Mark Armour

Audio: Click here to download the MP3 file and listen to Mark’s presentation (26:13; 24.0 MB)

In David Halberstam’s book October ’64, prominent black members of the 1964 World Champion St. Louis Cardinals contrasted their admiration for manager Johnny Keane with their dislike of his predecessor Solly Hemus (and his dislike of them). It was more than mere disdain, they argue; Hemus had actively delayed Bob Gibson’s, Bill White’s, and Curt Flood’s emergence as star players. Some of the players’ complaints were such specific situations that it was possible to review contemporary news reports and game details to assess their veracity. Armour, a leading researcher of the rise of African-American stars in the 1950s and ‘60s, examines Hemus’s controversial tenure with the Cardinals, including Solly’s own recollections as well as the complaints.

Mark Armour <markarmour@comcast.net> is the founder and director of SABR’s Baseball Biography Project. He is the author of a book on Joe Cronin, and is currently at work on a history of baseball front offices with Dan Levitt. He roots for the Red Sox from his home in Corvallis, Oregon.

2:30-2:55 p.m. (Salon C/D)

RP18: There Used to Be a Ballpark: The Baker Bowl and the Hump
George Skornickel

Audio: Click here to download the MP3 file and listen to George’s presentation (21:46; 19.9 MB)

The Baker Bowl, home of the Philadelphia Phillies for 51½ seasons (1887-1938), was formally known as Philadelphia Park or Philadelphia Base Ball Grounds. Although summarily mentioned in various “ballpark books” and internet sites, none go into great detail about the park and how it changed over the years. Aiming to broaden our knowledge of an important ballpark in Philadelphia and baseball history, Skornickel provides a cohesive and detailed study of the park, including physical changes, a survey of historical events and baseball feats, and a discussion of other tenants.

George Skornickel <georgeskornickel@gmail.com> has an MS in Elementary Education and taught English as well as being the Gifted Education Coordinator for the Highlands School District. He was a teacher consultant, Director of the Young Writers Institute, Summer Institute for Teachers, and In-Service Coordinator for the Western Pennsylvania Writing Project at the University of Pittsburgh. He is a Master Teacher for the Pittsburgh Holocaust Center and is the recipient of the Janus Korczak Excellence in the Teaching of the Lessons of the Holocaust award. He is the author of Beat ‘Em Bucs: The 1960 Pittsburgh Pirates as well as numerous baseball articles. He lives in Fawn Township with his wife, Kathy, and black lab, “Maz.”

3:00-3:25 p.m. (Salon A/B)

RP19: Uncle Robbie Moves to Brooklyn
Steve Steinberg

Audio: Click here to download the MP3 file and listen to Steve’s presentation (26:05; 23.9 MB)

Wilbert Robinson, the beloved longtime manager of the Brooklyn Dodgers (affectionately known as the Robins during his years there, 1914-1931), left his position as coach of the New York Giants after the 1913 World Series and became the manager of the Brooklyn Dodgers later that fall. The circumstances surrounding his departure from his former teammate and business partner, Giants manager John McGraw, were shrouded in mystery for years, until stories of a rift between the two men emerged decades later. Steinberg compares and contrasts the contemporary accounts of Robbie’s change of jobs with what really happened, revealing a better understanding of this complicated man, McGraw, and his old friend, Robinson.

Steve Steinberg <ssteinberg@trinorth.com> is the co-author with Lyle Spatz of 1921: The Yankees, the Giants, and the Battle for Baseball Supremacy in New York, winner of the 2011 Seymour Medal. Their book on Jacob Ruppert and Miller Huggins and their partnership in laying the foundation for future Yankees’ greatness, The Colonel and Hug, will be published by the University of Nebraska Press in the spring of 2015, the 100th anniversary of Ruppert’s purchase of the Yankees. Steve and Tom Simon are co-editing a photo-laden book on the Deadball Era World Series. Steve has also written Baseball in St. Louis, 1900-1925 and many articles revolving around early 20th-century baseball, including a dozen for SABR publications. Steve has been a regular presenter at SABR national conventions.

3:00-3:25 p.m. (Salon C/D)

RP20: The Ball Park at 21st and Lehigh
Doug Skipper

Audio: Click here to download the MP3 file and listen to Doug’s presentation (27:46; 25.4 MB)

For 62 seasons, major league baseball was played at 21st and Lehigh (Shibe Park/Connie Mack Stadium). Using a wealth of photographs, including early ballpark shots, pictures of fans atop the roofs adjacent to the park, and architectural and aerial views, Skipper discusses the construction of baseball’s first steel-and-concrete ball park and its place in the community, opening day and the death of catcher Doc Powers, and the numerous World Series and two major dynasties that played in the park. He also discusses Mack’s relationship with the park’s neighbors and erection of the “Spite Fence,” the addition of the lights to the ballpark and their effect on the neighborhood, and the move of the Phillies from the Baker Bowl.

Doug Skipper <theskippers1@hotmail.com> has contributed to a number of SABR publications and profiled more than a dozen players and managers for the SABR Baseball Biographical Project. A SABR member since 1982, he is active in the Halsey Hall (Minneapolis) Chapter and the Deadball Era Committee, and is interested in the history of Connie Mack’s Philadelphia Athletics, the Boston Red Sox, and old ballparks. A market research consultant residing in Apple Valley, Minnesota, Doug is also a veteran of father-daughter dancing. Doug and his wife have two daughters, MacKenzie and Shannon.

Saturday, August 3

11:00-11:25 a.m. (Salon A/B)

RP21: Scorecard Advertisements as Social History
David W. Smith and Amy Tetlow Smith

Audio: Click here to download the MP3 file and listen to Amy’s presentation (24:09; 22.1 MB)

Depending on one’s perspective, the traditional ballpark scorecard can have several different purposes. For most fans, the scorecard has always been a convenient place to record the events of the game they are watching and these cards are often saved for many years as they are keepsakes of happy days. However, the ball clubs and their advertisers saw an excellent opportunity to promote their products by targeting a very defined audience, with a degree of homogeneity rarely available to marketers. The Smiths discuss their systematic analysis of the advertisements they catalogued while analyzing thousands of scorecards from the 19th century to the present and how the changing product lines reflected wider societal changes across the country.

David W. Smith <dwsmith@retrosheet.org> joined SABR in 1977 and has made research presentations at 17 national SABR conventions and many more at regional meetings. In 2001 at SABR 31 in Milwaukee, he won the USA Today Sports Weekly Award for his presentation on the 1951 NL pennant race. In 2005 he received SABR’s highest honor, the Bob Davids Award and in 2012 he was honored with the Henry Chadwick award. He is a past co-chair of the statistical analysis committee and the recipient of the first SABR Special Achievement award. Smith is also the founder and President of Retrosheet, a non-profit organization dedicated to the collection, computerization and free distribution of play by play accounts of Major League games. He has been a Biology Professor at the University of Delaware for 39 years. Amy Tetlow Smith <tetlow@retrosheet.org> is the Retroczarina and a lifelong Orioles fan.

11:00-11:25 a.m. (Salon C/D)

RP22: Phillie Dave Coble Plays Catch with Billy Penn
Dennis Link

In a 1939 publicity stunt, Phillies catcher Dave Coble caught a baseball thrown from the observation tower of Philadelphia’s City Hall — 521 feet above street level. The event drew thousands of spectators and made national headlines. The ’39 Phils fared miserably, but this exhibition was a hit. It was the last in a billow of ball drops from towering structures which had been taking place sporadically since 1884. Link covers a number of these attempts while delving into one of the furthest and most daring (which took place two blocks away from the site of SABR 43), raising awareness of an interesting but under-examined corner of baseball history.

Dennis Link <denx44@aol.com> has been a member of the Society for American Baseball Research since 2007. With the Connie Mack Chapter, he has helped organize SABR Day and other annual events. He is also a member of the local planning committee for SABR 43. Dennis is active in area organizations such as the Philadelphia Athletics Historical Society and Philadelphia Sports Hall of Fame. He also plays infield for the vintage league Athletic Base Ball Club. Dennis is a Syracuse University graduate and has covered sports professionally for print and TV. He currently produces web-based baseball news and historical features for the Phillies Meetup Group and is employed full-time as an administrator.

11:30-11:55 a.m. (Salon A/B)

RP23: Analyzing Batter Performance Against Pitcher Clusters
Vince Gennaro

Video: Watch Vince Gennaro’s award-winning SABR 43 presentation (YouTube)
Related link: Vince Gennaro won the Doug Pappas Award for top oral research presentation at SABR 43

Baseball data continues to grow exponentially. Over the last ten years, we have generated 95% of the game-level and pitch-level data that exists today. In other words, when the book Moneyball was written, we had less than 5% of today’s baseball data. Gennaro leverages this data using community detection algorithms to create clusters of pitchers based on similarities multiple attributes, such as frequency of pitch types, velocity, release points, horizontal break, vertical break, pitch variety, pitch location, and handedness. This research could have implications for optimizing batter-pitcher relationships and matchups by identifying how hitter performance varies across these pitcher clusters.

Vince Gennaro <VAGennaro@aol.com> is the President of SABR, the author of Diamond Dollars: The Economics of Winning in Baseball, and a consultant to MLB teams. He appears regularly on MLB Network’s Clubhouse Confidential, and is a frequent guest commentator on sports business in the media. This follows a 25-year business career, where he served as President of a billion dollar division of PepsiCo. His innovative work in baseball analytics has been featured in The Wall Street Journal, CNNMoney, and the New York Times. He teaches in the Graduate Sports Management program at Columbia University and has an MBA from the University of Chicago. His website is vincegennaro.com.

11:30-11:55 a.m. (Salon C/D)

RP24: 52 In ’52: Roberts And Shantz Make History!
Steve Krevisky and Elliot Hines

Audio: Click here to download the MP3 file and listen to Steve and Elliot’s presentation (22:32; 20.6 MB)

In 1952, Robin Roberts and Bobby Shantz combined to win 52 games between them, each winning about one-third of their teams’ games, in one of the rare times that both Philadelphia teams were in the first division in the same season. Using data from Retrosheet, Krevisky and Hines analyzed every game that Shantz and Roberts pitched in 1952. They analyze MVP votes and discuss their projection of what the Cy Young voting would likely have been, using measures such as adjusted ERA, WHIP and WAR. They also review the Philadelphia teams’ respective rosters, putting Roberts and Shantz’s season into perspective.

Steve Krevisky <Skrevisky@mxcc.commnet.edu> has been a Professor of Math at Middlesex Community College since 1985, where he often uses baseball in his math classes. He is a frequent presenter at international math and statistics conferences on math and sports, with an emphasis on baseball. He also is currently President of SABR’s Smoky Joe Wood Connecticut Chapter, chair of the SABR Games and Simulation Committee, and the Yankees manager in the Great American Fantasy League (GAFL). Steve is a frequent presenter at SABR national and regional meetings and has been on teams that have won the SABR national trivia team championships six times. He has published articles in both The National Pastime and the Baseball Research Journal, and has attended all national SABR conventions since 1986. The Big E, as Elliot Hines is often called, attended the 2002 SABR convention in Boston. He is a regular attendee at the NY Casey Stengel SABR chapter, where he has made many presentations, and often administered the trivia contests. He and Steve Krevisky have co-presented before, and he also has an ongoing list of his top 100 players. He is a big Yankees fan in general, and Mickey Mantle devotee in particular.

12:00-12:25 p.m. (Salon A/B)

RP25: Baseball in the Age of Big Data: Why the Revolution Will Be Televised
Sean Lahman

Baseball analysis has been transformed in the last decade by the ready availability of large collections of data. Lahman looks at the key factors that helped give birth to this revolution, the current state of baseball information, and some of the emerging technologies which will have an even bigger impact over the next several years. He’ll move from a quick history of the open data movement in baseball research through the open data/proprietary conflict in the context of the Big Data movement, to a discussion of looming advances in computer vision, machine learning and video processing that may further transform baseball performance analysis.

Sean Lahman <seanlahman@gmail.com> develops interactive databases and data driven stories for the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle and other Gannett newspapers and websites. He’s part of their investigative reporting team and writes a weekly column on technology and innovation. Prior to joining the Democrat and Chronicle, he was a reporter and columnist with the New York Sun. Sean served as Senior Editor for Total Sports Publishing, where he helped produce reference books including Total Baseball, The Baseball Biographical Encyclopedia, and the Sports Illustrated Sports Almanac. Since the mid-1990s, his Baseball Archive website has provided an open source database of historical baseball statistics. Sean currently serves as SABR’s Data Projects Coordinator. He has been a SABR member since 1996.

12:00-12:25 p.m. (Salon C/D)

RP26: How did Bob Carpenter Jr. Fare as the Phillies Acting General Manager
Steven Glassman

Audio: Click here to download the MP3 file and listen to Steven’s presentation (26:11; 24.0 MB)

Robert R.M. Carpenter Jr. served as the Phillies team president from 1943 through 1972. At the age of 28, he became the youngest president in National League history when the Carpenter family was awarded the franchise on November 23, 1943. Carpenter was the acting GM from 1948 until hiring Roy Hamey in April, 1954. Glassman discusses Carpenter’s numerous moves in those six years, determining which deals worked and which ones didn’t using Bill James’ Approximate Value and Win Shares, as well as WAR from Fangraphs.com. He also addresses Carpenter’s failure to integrate the Phillies during his tenure as the acting General Manager.

Steven Glassman <sportsphan@comcast.net> has been a SABR member since 1994 and regularly makes presentations for the Connie Mack Chapter. Steven is attending his eighth convention. His previous convention oral presentation was “Thank You for Your (Non-)Support” (SABR 42), and he’s also making his fourth poster presentation in the past five years. The Temple University graduate in Sport and Recreation Management has worked in the Sports Information field for Temple University, West Chester University, Albright College, and Rutgers University-Newark. He currently works as a full-time scoreboard operator for The Sports Network in Hatboro, PA. Steven is also a part-time volunteer Director of Sports Information for Manor College in Jenkintown, PA. Born in Philadelphia, PA, Steven currently resides in Warminster, PA.

12:30-12:55 p.m. (Salon A/B)

RP27: Statistical Predictors of MLB Players’ Proneness to Long Hitting Streaks
Alan Reifman and Trent McCotter

Audio: Click here to download the MP3 file and listen to Alan’s presentation (24:46; 22.7 MB)

Producing a long consecutive-game hitting streak requires excellent batting ability, to be sure. However, high batting average is insufficient to yield a long hitting streak; after all, Ted Williams never amassed longer than a 23-game hitting streak, despite a .344 career batting average, as players who walk frequently record few at-bats in some games and have little margin for error in maintaining a streak. Using regression analysis, Reifman and McCotter quantify the association between statistics such as walks, career longevity, strikeout rates and even base-stealing success with players’ longest hitting streaks, in a combined sample of current and historical MLB players, and discover some surprising results.

Alan Reifman <alan.reifman@ttu.edu> is professor of Human Development and Family Studies at Texas Tech University and has been a SABR member since 2004. He is the author of the book Hot Hand: The Statistics Behind Sports’ Greatest Streaks (Potomac Books, 2012) and has operated the Hot Hand in Sports website since 2002. Trent McCotter <treant985@triad.rr.com> is Vice Chairman of the Records Committee and is also an attorney living in Washington, D.C. He has written several articles about hitting streaks that have appeared in the Baseball Research Journal, and he often contributes streak-related notes to MLB teams and ESPN’s Jayson Stark.

12:30-12:55 p.m. (Salon C/D)

RP28: The Phillies Near-Collapse of 1950
John Burbridge

Audio: Click here to download the MP3 file and listen to John’s presentation (26:40; 24.4 MB)

Before the Phold, there were the Whiz Kids. All Philadelphia recalls that the 1950 Phils won the NL crown, 35 mostly dreadful years after their only previous title, and that their pinstripers were narrowly swept (three 1-run games) in the Series by those other pinstripers. Less often recalled is that the Whiz Kids almost suffered the same fate as their 1964 brothers. Nearly surrendering a 5-game lead with 5 games left, the Phils were saved in their 154th game by Dick Sisler’s 10th-inning homer off Don Newcombe … only after what would have been the winning (and first-place tying) run for the Dodgers was cut down at the plate in the bottom of the 9th. Using firsthand reportage from newspapers on both sides, along with other research sources, Burbridge recounts an oft-forgotten final week of a season.

Dr. John Burbridge Jr. <burbridg@elon.edu> is currently a senior fellow at Elon University. From 2007 until 2012 he was a full professor in operations and supply chain management at Elon. From 1996 to 2007 he served as dean of Elon’s Martha and Spencer Love School of Business. While at Elon he introduced and has taught Baseball and Statistics which includes all of the sabermetric approaches in addition to traditional statistical thinking. John has presented at SABR Conventions and the Seymour meetings. He received his B.S., M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in industrial engineering from Lehigh University.

4:30-4:55 p.m. (Salon A/B)

RP29: 1959 Little World Series
Rick Schabowski

The 1959 Little World Series was not only an exciting round of playoffs to determine a champion, but was played amidst political, historic and economic upheaval. Minneapolis faced Havana in the final round in an atmosphere of political unrest due to the revolution and rise to power of Fidel Castro. It also marked the last time a Cuban team would compete in the playoffs. Schabowski, through interviews with participants and other research, brings this period back to life, discussing the effects of the Havana franchise’s rapid re-location to Jersey City in the middle of the 1960 season on the players, the rest of the league, and also Cuban baseball.

Rick Schabowski <RICKIU76@aol.com> has been a SABR member since 1995, and is President of the Ken Keltner Badger State Chapter. He’s also President of the Wisconsin Oldtime Ballplayers Association, one of the Directors and Treasurer of the Milwaukee Braves Historical Association, and a member of the Hoops Historians. A retired machinist from Harley-Davidson, Rick works as an instructor at Wisconsin Regional Training Partnership. He lives in St. Francis, Wisconsin.

4:30-4:55 p.m. (Salon C/D)

RP30: Home But Not Yet Home: World War I and its Impact on Professional Baseball — The Story of Win Noyes
Robert Foresman

Winfield Charles Noyes, a dead-ball era spitballer from Nebraska, displays a contributory reflection of the effect of World War I upon baseball and its players. Foresman focuses on Noyes’ time with the Philadelphia A’s and relationship to Connie Mack, baseball in Europe during the Great War and how PTSD and other war casualties affected MLB. He also discusses Noyes’ previously undiscovered involvement in the 1919 Black Sox scandal and his holding of several previously unchronicled and inconspicuous records. In telling Noyes’ story, Foresman also exposes the effect of WWI on the transition from dead-ball era to modern baseball.

Robert Foresman <robert.foresman@yahoo.com> is currently from Omaha, NE, completing his second bachelor’s degree at the University of Nebraska at Omaha. A U.S. Army veteran (Operation Enduring Freedom) and recent honors graduate at Chadron State College with a Bachelor’s in History, Rob has spoken and been invited to present lectures at several historical conferences throughout the Midwest over the past few years. Rob is excited to have the opportunity to share an important story of baseball history from Nebraska and hopes the findings he has discovered will lend to the national conversation about the effects of PTS (Post Traumatic Stress) on our American service members and their families, and also encourage others to participate in an important subject that demands our attention and further understanding.

5:00-5:25 p.m. (Salon A/B)

RP31: The Flight of the Pilots
Bill Mullins

What caused the Seattle Pilots to move to Milwaukee after only one year? By adding archival research and interviews to newspaper accounts and an array of secondary sources, Mullins brings insights into baseball politics, city politics, and the business of baseball to analyze the Pilots’ flight. He ultimately puts the greatest onus of the Pilots failure on the American League’s haste in granting a franchise to a city that was not entirely prepared to support major league baseball, combined with an ownership unwilling to endure losses.

Bill Mullins <bill.mullins55@gmail.com> is Professor of History Emeritus at Oklahoma Baptist University. He received his B.A. from Pomona College and his M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Washington. His recently published book Becoming Big League: Seattle, the Pilots, and Stadium Politics is a history of Seattle and the Pilots baseball team that left the city after only one year of play. This paper is based on research for that book. Bill lives in Federal Way, Washington and is a member of the Northwest Chapter of SABR (NWSABR).

5:00-5:25 p.m. (Salon C/D)

RP32: Sin in America’s Pastime: The Juxtaposition of the Ethics of Sins in Baseball Culture
Coral Marshall

Arguably, the two greatest sins in baseball are gambling and Performance Enhancing Drug (PED) usage. Both sins violate the rules and lusory attitude of the game (the agreement to play by said rules), yet they are framed differently by the media and punished differently by the league. Using the communicative theory utilitarian ethics, Marshall examines inconsistencies in the way the two sins are portrayed and punished, providing insight into the game, theory, and society through a qualitative, rhetorical, and argumentative lens. Punishing gambling has historically allowed the league to look strong, as uncompetitive games are not as interesting. Steroids, however, have assisted the league as attendance records increase with power. The lack of equivalency in punishments has vast implications for sport, theory, and society.

Coral Marshall <Cmarshall@crimson.ua.edu> is currently a doctoral student in the College of Communication and Information Sciences at the University of Alabama. She interned for SABR during her Master’s program in Sport Management at California State University, Long Beach, and assisted with the Long Beach Convention in 2011. She attended the Minneapolis convention in 2012 as a Yoseloff scholar. Her baseball research interests are historical in nature, and her communication research interests focus on sport and deviance. Her love of baseball comes from watching countless Angels’ games with her dad, Jeff.

For more information on SABR 43, visit SABR.org/convention.

Mike Donlin, Movie Actor

admin — Mon, 16 Apr 2001 17:17:12 +0000

Scores of professional ballplayers have made their way from the big leagues to the big screen. A few, including Chuck Connors, Bob Uecker, and John Beradino (who played for the Browns, Indians, and Pirates as Johnny Berardino), became successful actors or media personalities. Some, notably Babe Ruth, appeared in movies as themselves, or as thinly veiled versions of themselves. Still others have been extras or bit players in comedies, action-adventures, dramas-and baseball films. But one ballplayer was the first to regularly be listed in film credits as well as box scores. He is Michael Joseph “Turkey Mike” Donlin, who played in the big leagues between 1899 and 1914.

In his overview of Donlin’s career, which appeared in the Baseball Research Journal last year, Michael Betzold cites the ballplayer-turned-actor’s screen work in the final paragraphs. Additionally, in my 1994 book Great Baseball Films, I devote a chapter to Donlin as a vaudevillian and movie actor. However, given his status as a pioneer ballplayer-turned-screen performer, Donlin’s celluloid career is worthy of further scrutiny.

Make no mistake, Mike Donlin was no movie star. Nor was he movie star material. While not homely, he was not handsome; his voice was ordinary sounding; his demeanor was less than charismatic. In most of his films, he was a supporting actor and, occasionally, even an uncredited bit player. He may have worked with such pantheon directors as John Ford, William A. Wellman, and Josef von Sternberg. He may have had roles in several bona-fide classics, including The General and Beggars of Life, released respectively in 1927 and 1928. He may have been employed by the A-list film studios. And he may have appeared in films starring screen legends from Jean Arthur, Wallace Beery, and Louise Brooks to Will Rogers and Mae West. Yet just as often, his directors, co-stars, and films are long-forgotten, and his studios are strictly poverty row.

Furthermore, even when Donlin earned billing, most of his screen roles were nondescript. Rarely was he a key supporting player. His characters either added background color and atmosphere or served to move the story along.

Quite a few of Donlin’s early screen appearances are in films that no longer exist. Such is the case with his debut feature: Right Off the Bat, released in 1915, a baseball drama in which he starred as himself. It was his only celluloid leading role.

Happily, his next screen appearance came in a film that still may be viewed. It is Raffles, the Amateur Cracksman, released in 1917, in which Donlin appears in a supporting role as Crawshay, a stick-up man. He shares several minutes of screen time in the company of two celebrated actors: John Barrymore, the film’s star, who is cast as the title character, a gentleman thief; and an astonishingly young Frank Morgan twenty-two years before playing his most celebrated screen role, the title character in The Wizard of Oz. After appearing onscreen, Donlin’s Crawshay points a gun at Barrymore’s Raffles and Morgan’s Bunny Manders. His intention is to pilfer some gems, which are referred to in the intertitles as “sparklers” and “dem jewels,” but is easily manipulated by the crafty Raffles.

Donlin’s friendship with Barrymore led to his being cast in the film, as well as in The Sea Beast, a Barrymore swashbuckler released in 1926. In his 1944 biography, Good Night, Sweet Prince, Gene Fowler noted that Barrymore had “all sorts of friends,” among them Donlin, Jack Dempsey, Winston Churchill, and Albert Einstein. “It pleased [Barrymore] when any of these faces could be seen on his set or in his dressing room,” Fowler added.

Raffles, the Amateur Cracksman and The Sea Beast are of course silent films, as are more than half of Donlin’s fifty-odd screen credits. Among his “talkies,” or early sound films, is Hot Curves, a 1930 baseball comedy in which he plays a gruff scout who signs frenetic, double-talking train concessionaire Benny Goldberg (Benny Rubin) to a contract. The scout utters a line that might have been ad-libbed by Donlin, who played for the New York Giants for several seasons. It sounds like “I hope McGraw’ll be sold,” but the scout actually is referring to “McGrew,” his team’s skipper. The storyline in Hot Curves reportedly was inspired by the real-life signing of Andy Cohen by Giants manager John McGraw. Cohen, like the fictional Benny Goldberg, was Jewish, and their respective inkings were intended to lure Jewish fans to the ballpark. (By the way, fifteen years earlier, McGraw had appeared on-screen with Donlin in Right Off the Bat.)

In The Tip-Off, a 1931 gangster comedy-drama, Donlin is sixth-billed as Swanky Jones, a boxing trainer and pool room habitue who is as equally harsh in demeanor as the scout in Hot Curves. While the role mostly is nondescript in relation to anything that occurs onscreen, The Tip-Off does allow Donlin to share screen time with Ginger Rogers, then a Hollywood starlet.

In some of his sound films, Donlin (who died in 1933) appears uncredited. In order to note his presence in a number of them, you have to stumble across him while watching the film. One such appearance is in Picture Snatcher, a 1933 James Cagney crime drama. The American Film Institute Catalog, Feature Films, 1931-1940, perhaps the definitive published reference of film credits for that decade, lists the bit players who appear in Picture Snatcher, cast in such roles as “fireman,” “head keeper,” “journalism student,” and even “sick reporter” and “reporter outside prison.” None is Mike Donlin. Yet there he is, unmistakable in one brief shot. He is seen in a pool hall, and he speaks the following words into a telephone: “No, Mr. McLean, he ain’t been around here in over a week.” After a brief pause, he adds, “Yeah, I’ll tell him.”

What may be Donlin’s most memorable screen appearance is equally fleeting. In one sequence in Riley the Cop, a 1928 comedy-drama directed by John Ford, a bunch of kids are playing baseball on an inner-city street. The title character (J. Farrell MacDonald) arrives on the scene to reprimand the lads and break up their game, yet the boyish Riley is quickly convinced to join the kids in their play. He picks up a bat, and clumsily swings and misses at the first pitch tossed his way, in the process falling to the pavement. The cop does connect on his next swing, lifting a pop fly that crashes through a storefront window, necessitating the kids-and Riley-to commence scattering.

After Riley’s swing-and-miss, Ford includes an all-too-quick shot of Donlin looking on and smiling, with a cigarette dangling from his lips. While he is not billed on screen, various film references list the actor-ballplayer as playing “Crook.” Thus, the implication is that Donlin’s character is amused because he is eluding the law while Riley is indulging in a child’s game.

Yet given his background, the sequence — intentional or not — serves as an homage co Donlin’s past, and a wink-of-the-eye to anyone who recognizes him as an ex-major leaguer.

Mike Donlin Filmography

Right Off The Bat ( 1915). All Feature Booking Agency. Dir: Hugh Retickcr. Cast: John J. McGraw, Claire Merscreau, Rita Ross Donlin. Donlin plays himself.

Raffles, the Amateur Cracksman (1917), States Rights,. Dir: George Irving. Cast: John Barrymore, Frederick Perry, Frank Morgan, Evelyn Brent. Donlin plays Crawshay.

Jack Spurlock, Prodigal (1918), Fox. Dir: Carl Harbaugh. Cast: George Walsh, Dan Mason, Rush Taylor. Donlin plays Foreman.

Brave and Bold (1918). Fox. Dir: Carl Harbaugh. Cast: George Walsh, Francis X. Conlon, Regina Quinn. Donlin’s role is undetermined.

The Unchastened Woman (1918), George Kleine System. Dir: William Humphrey. Cast: Grace Valentine, Mildred Manning, Catherine Tower. Donlin plays O’Brien.

Railroaded (1923), Universal. Dir: Edmund Mortimer. Cast: Herbert Rawlinson, Esther Ralston. Donlin plays Corton.

Woman-Proof (1923), Paramount. Dir: Alfred E. Green. Cast: Thomas Meighan, Lila Lee, Louise Dresser, Mary Astor. Donlin plays Foreman.

The Unknown Purple (1923), Truart. Dir: Roland West Cast: Henry B. Walthall, Alice Lake, Stuart Holmes. Donlin plays Bur1on.

Flaming Barriers (1924), Paramount. Dir: George Melford. Cast: Jacqueline Logan, Antonio Moreno. Donlm’s role in undetermined.

The Trouble Shooter (1924), Fox. Dir: Jack Conway. Cast: Tom Mix, Kathleen Key, Frank Currier. Donlin plays Chet Connors (also credited as Chet Conners).

Hit and Run (1924), Universal. Dir: Edward Sedgwick. Cast: Hoot Gibson, Marion Harlan, Cyril Ring, Donlin plays Red McCarthy.

Oh, Doctor! (1925), Universal. Dir: Harry A. Pollard. Cast: Reginald Denny, Mary Astor, Otis Harlan. Donlin plays Buzz Titus.

Fifth Avenue Models (1925), Un1versal. Dir: Svend Gade, Cast: Mary Philbin, Norman Kerry, Josef Swickard, Jean Hersholt. Donlin plays Crook’s Henchman.

The Primrose Path (1925), Arrow. Dir: Harry O. Hoyt. Cast: Wallace MacDonald. Clara Bow, Arline Pretty, Stuart Holmes. Donlin plays Federal Officer Parker.

The Unnamed Woman (1925), Arrow. Dir: Harry O. Hoyt. Cast: Kachenne MacDonald. Herbert Rawlinson, Wanda Hawley. Donlin plays Chauffeur.

The Sea Beast (1926), Warner Bros. Dir: Millard Webb. Case: John Barrymore, Dolores Costello, George O’Hara. Donlin plays Flask.

Her Second Chance (1926), Vitagraph. Dir: Lambert Hillyer. Cast: Anna Q. Nilsson, Huntly Gordon, Charlie Murray, Donlin plays De Vries.

Ella Cinders (1926). First National. Dir: Alfred E. Green. Cast: Colleen Moore, Lloyd Hughes, Vera Lewis, Harry Langdon. Donlin plays Film Studio Gateman.

The Fighting Marine (1926), Pathe. Dir: Spencer Gordon Bennett. Cast: Gene Tunney, Marjorie Gay, Walter Miller. Feature version of 10-reel Pathe serial. Donlin’s role is undetermined.

The General (1927), United Artists, Dir: Buster Keaton, Clyde Bruckman. Cast: Buster Keaton, Glen Cavender, Marion Mack, Jim Farley. Donlin plays Union General.

Slide, Kelly, Slide (1927), MGM. Dir: Edward Sedgwick. Cast: William Haines, Sally O’Neil, Harry Carey, Junior Coghlan, Irish Meusel. Bob Meusel, Tony Lazzeri, Donlin plays himself.

Warming Up (1928). Paramount. Dir: Fred Newmeyer. Cast: Richard Dix, Jean Arthur, Claude King, Philo McCullough. Donlin plays Veteran.

Beggars of Life (1928), Paramount. Dir: William A. Wellman. Cast: Wallace Beery, Louise Brooks, Richard Arlen. Donlin plays Bill.

Riley the Cop (1928), Fox. Dir: John Ford. Cast: J. Farrell MacDonald. Louise Fazenda, Nancy Drexel, David Rollins. Donlin plays Crook.

Below the Deadline (1929), Chesterfield. Dir: J.P. McGowan. Cast: Frank Leigh, Barbara Worth, Arthur Rankin, Donlin plays Sandy.

Noisy Neighbors (1929), Parhe. Dir: Charles Reisner. Cast: Eddie Quillan, Alberta Vaughn, Theodore Roberts. Donlin plays Second Son.

Thunderbolt (1929), Paramount. Dir: Josef von Sternberg. Cast: George Bancroft, Fay Wray, Richard Arlen, Tully Marshall. Donlin plays Kentucky Sampson.

Burn Reckless (1930), Fox. Dir: John Ford. Cast: Edmund Lowe, Catherine Dale Owen, Warren Hymer, Marguerite Churchill, Lee Tracy. Donlin plays Fingy Moscovitz.

Hot Curves (1930), Tiffany. Dir: Norman Tautog. Cast: Benny Rubin, Rex Lease, Alice Day, Pert Kelton. Donlin plays Scout.

Her Man (1930), Pathe. Dir: Tay Garnett. Cast: Helen Twelvetrees, Marjorie Rambeau, Ricardo Cortes, Phillips Holmes, James Gleason, Thelma Todd. Donlin plays Bartender.

Widow from Chicago (1930), First National. Dir: Edward Cline. Cast: Alice White, Neil Hamilt0n, Edward G. Robinson, Frank McHugh. Donlin plays Desk Man.

Iron Man (1931), Universal. Dir: Tod Browning, Cast: Lew Ayres, Robert Armstrong, Jean Harlow, John Milian. Donlin plays McNeill.

Sweepstakes (1931), RKO. Dir: Albert Rogell. Cast: Eddie Quillan, Lew Cody, James Gleason, Marion Nixon. Donlin is listed in Variety as playing The Dude, a character credited on screen t0 Tom Jackson.

Star Witness (1931), Warner Bros. Dir: William A. Wellman. Cast: Walter Huston, Frances Starr, Grant Mitchell, Sally Blane. Donlin plays Mickey, a Thug.

The Tip-Off (1931), RKO. Dir: Albert Rogell. Cast: Eddie Quillan, Robert Armstrong, Ginger Rogers. Donlin plays Swanky Jones.

The Secret Witness (Terror By Night) (1931), Columbia. Dir: Thornton Freeland, Cast: Una Merkel, William Collier Jr., ZaSu Pitts. Donlin plays Mike the Speakeasy Proprietor.

Arrowsmith (1931). United Artists. Dir: John Ford. Cast: Ronald Colman, Helen Hayes, Richard Bennett, Clarence Brooks, Myrna Loy. Donlin has a bit part.

Bad Company (1931), RKO. Dir: Tay Garnett. Cast: Helen Twelvetrees, Ricardo Cortes, John Ganick, Paul Hurst, Harry Carey. Donlin has a bit part.

Beast of the City (1932), MGM. Dir: Charles Brabin. Cast: Walter Huston, Jean Harlow, Wallace Ford, Jean Hersholt. Donlin plays Reporter Going to Phone His Stuff.

A Fool’s Advice (Meet the Mayor) (1932), Warner Bros. Dir: Ralph Ceder. Cast: Frank Fay, Ruth Hall, Hale Hamilton. Donlin has a bit part.

The Famous Ferguson Case (1932), First National. Dir: Lloyd Bacon. Cast: Joan Blondell, Grant Mitchell, Vivienne Osborne. Donlin plays Photographer.

Madison Square Garden (1932), Paramount. Dir: Harry Joe Brown. Cast: Jack Oakie, Thomas Meighan, Marion Nixon, ZaSu Pitts. Donlin plays himself.

One Way Passage (1932), Warner Bro,. Dir: Tay Garnett. Cast: William Powell, Kay Francis, Aline MacMahon, Frank McHugh. Donlin plays Hong Kong Bartender.

She Done Him Wrong (1933). Paramount. Dir: Lowell Sherman. Cast: Mae West, Cary Grant, Owen Moore, Gilbert Roland. Donlin plays Tout.

Doctor Bull ( 1933), Fox. Dir: John Ford. Cast: Will Rogers, Vera Allen, Marion Nixon, Andy Devine. Donlin plays Lester Dunn.

High Gear (1933), States Rights. Dir: Leigh Jason. Cast: James Murray, Joan Marsh, Jackie Searl. Donlin plays Ed Evans.

Air Hostess (1933), Columbia. Dir: Albert Rogell. Cast: Evalyn Knapp, James Murray, Thelma Todd. Donlin plays Mike.

Picture Snatcher (1933), Warner Bros. Dir: Lloyd Bacon. Cast: James Cagney, Ralph Bellamy, Patricia Ellis. Donlin has a bit part.

Swell-Head (1935), Columbia. Dir: Ben St0loff. Cast: Wallace Ford, Dickie Moore, Barbara Kent, J. Farrell MacDonald. Donlin plays Brick Baldwin.

Search Results for “node/Johnny Cooney” – Society for American Baseball Research

Instant Relief: First-Batter Triple Plays

Appendix

SABR Digital Library: Dazzling Debuts: First At-Bat Home Runs

Explore more online

Biographies

Ace Parker

Benny Ayala

Bert Campaneris

Bill Duggleby

Bill LeFebvre

Bill White

Billy Gumbert

Bob Nieman

Bob Tillman

Brant Alyea

Buddy Kerr

Buster Narum

Carlos Lee

Charlton Jimerson

Chuck Tanner

Clyde Vollmer

Cuno Barragan

Dan Bankhead

Daniel Nava

Dave Eiland

Dave Machemer

Dave Matranga

Don Leppert

Don Rose

Earl Averill

Ed Sanicki

Eddie Pellagrini

Eddy Rodríguez

Elijah Dukes

Garey Ingram

Gary Gaetti

Gates Brown

Gene Stechschulte

George Tebeau

Greg Dobbs

Hoyt Wilhelm

Jay Bell

Jay Gainer

Jeremy Hermida

Jermaine Dye

Joe Harrington

John Hester

John Kennedy

John Montefusco

Johnnie LeMaster

Johnny Bates

Jon Nunnally

Junior Félix

Luis Montañez

Luke Stuart

Marcus Thames

Mark Worrell

Mike Griffin

Paul Gillespie

Pete Hill

Terry Steinbach

Tim Wallach

Wally Moon

Whitey Lockman

Will Clark

Game Recaps

September 9, 2022: Welcome to the show: Rangers’ Josh Jung hits a home run in his first at-bat

September 8, 2004: Greg Dobbs’ first-at-bat homer not enough for Seattle in 9-5 loss to Cleveland

September 4, 2006: Charlton Jimerson’s home run in first at-bat ends Cole Hamels perfect game bid

September 3, 2011: Tommy Milone blasts three-run homer in pitching debut for Nationals

September 29, 1986: Cleveland’s Jay Bell homers in his first major-league at-bat

September 20, 1981: Twins’ Gary Gaetti hits first of 360 home runs in his first at-bat

September 2, 2012: 19-year-old Jurickson Profar hits home run in first at-bat for Rangers

September 2, 2006: Kevin Kouzmanoff blasts first big-league pitch for grand slam

September 2, 1975: Johnnie LeMaster’s first at-bat, inside-the-park home run is one for the record books

September 14, 1949: Ed Sanicki rips home run off Rip Sewell in his first big-league at-bat for Phillies

September 12, 1986: Terry Steinbach’s home run in debut overshadowed as Cleveland beats Oakland, 9-3

September 12, 1965: Brant Alyea debuts for Washington with soggy circuit clout

September 11, 1942: Paul Gillespie cheers war-weary Cubs fans by hitting home run in first at-bat