Methodology for Determining Starting Line-Up Platoons

A position “platoon” is defined as two (or sometimes three) players being used in the starting line-up at the same position by their manager on a regular basis depending primarily on whether the opposing starting pitcher is left-handed or right-handed, but also right-handed batting catchers alternated by their manager on a game-to-game basis. I relied on data included under the “Defensive Lineups” tab in the website www.baseball-reference.com for each team in every year beginning in 1914 to determine starting line-up platoons. These data were made available through the painstaking efforts of Retrosheet researchers.

• For starting line-up platoons at any position (or across any of the three outfield positions), left-handed batters are identified by their names in italics. Switch-hitters are identified by an (x) after their name, and their names are italicized for their ability to bat left-handed if the player who shared their position was a right-handed batter.

• I required that a position platoon must have been in effect for at least one month to be acknowledged. This takes into account situations where a manager may have used a platoon combination to replace his intended day-to-day regular at any given position because of injury, illness, or some other reason.

• In some cases, managers platooned aging veterans with younger players. The platoon situation must be obvious, most typically dependent on whether the opposing starter was a right-handed or left-handed pitcher. Veteran players are identified with a (v) after their name.

• In a few cases, young or relatively-recent players in the major leagues were used by their managers in a starting line-up platoon even though both batted from the same side. I determined such platoons based on either one player almost never starting against, for example, left-handed pitchers, or by a clear pattern of use indicating the manager was alternating them virtually game-to-game.

• For any player who was a day-to-day regular in the starting line-up mostly at one position, but who platooned with another player at a different position, his primary position will be noted in parenthesis after his name. I do not include in this rotational mix everyday outfielders who play anywhere in the outfield depending upon which of the platooned players is in the line-up.

• Teams for each year are listed in the order of their final standing for the season. Pennant or division-winning teams are identified in bold face.

National League platoons, 1914-20

NL managers who platooned most often, 1914-1920

• George Stallings (6)—1914, 1915, 1916, 1917, 1918, 1920
• John McGraw (4)—1914, 1917, 1918, 1920
• Wilbert Robinson (3)—1916, 1919, 1920
• Pat Moran (3)—1918, 1919, 1920

Where NL teams platooned, 1914-1920

• Boston Braves (6 years)—10 OF
• Cincinnati Reds (5 years)—2 OF, 5 C
• New York Giants (4 years)—4 OF, 1 C
• St. Louis Cardinals (4 years)—5 OF, 1 C
• Brooklyn Dodgers (3 years)—3 OF
• Pittsburgh Pirates (3 years)—1 OF, 1 C, 1 1B
• Chicago Cubs (2 years)—3 OF
• Philadelphia Phillies (2 years)—1 C, 1 3B

Positions platooned: 28 OF, 9 C, 1 1B, 1 3B

National League platoons, 1921-30

NL managers who platooned most often, 1921-1930

• John McGraw (8)—1921, 1922, 1923, 1924, 1926, 1927, 1928, 1930
• Branch Rickey (6)—1920, 1921, 1922, 1923, 1924, 1925
• Wilbert Robinson (6)—1921, 1922, 1923, 1924, 1926, 1929
• Bill McKechnie (5)—1922, 1923, 1925, 1929, 1930

Where NL teams platooned, 1921-1930

• Boston Braves (8 years)—8 OF, 1 1B
• New York Giants (8 years)—9 OF, 1 C
• St. Louis Cardinals (7 years)—10 OF, 1 1B
• Philadelphia Phillies (7 years)—8 OF, 2 1B, 1 3B
• Brooklyn Dodgers (6 years)—6 OF, 1 3B
• Chicago Cubs (4 years)—5 OF
• Pittsburgh Pirates (3 years)—2 OF, 1 1B
• Cincinnati Reds (1 year)—1 C

Positions platooned: 48 OF, 5 1B, 2 3B, 2 C

National League platoons, 1931-40

NL managers who platooned most often, 1931-1940

• Bill Terry (4)—1932, 1933, 1934, 1940
• Pie Traynor (3)—1934, 1935, 1936

Where NL teams platooned, 1931-1940

• New York Giants (5 years)—5 OF
• Pittsburgh Pirates (5 years)—2 OF, 2 C, 1 3B
• Brooklyn Dodgers (4 years)—3 OF, 2 C
• St. Louis Cardinals (3 years)—3 OF, 1 C
• Cincinnati Reds (2 years)—2 OF, 1 2B
• Chicago Cubs (2 years)—2 OF
• Boston Braves and Philadelphia Phillies (did not platoon this decade)

Positions platooned: 17 OF, 5 C, 1 2B, 1 3B

American League platoons, 1914-20

AL managers who platooned most often, 1914-1920

• Hughie Jennings (4)—1914, 1915, 1919, 1920
• Bill Carrigan (3)—1914, 1915, 1916
• Pants Rowland (3)—1916, 1917, 1918

Where AL teams platooned, 1914-1920

• Boston Red Sox (5 years)—2 OF, 3 1B, 2 C
• Detroit Tigers (4 years)—3 OF, 1 C, 1 3B
• Chicago White Sox (4 years)—4 OF
• Cleveland Indians (3 years)—4 OF
• New York Yankees (2 years)—1 C, 1 OF
• St. Louis Browns (1 year)—1 OF
• Washington Senators (1 year)—1 OF
• Philadelphia Athletics—did not platoon

Positions platooned: 16 OF, 4 C, 3 1B, 1 3B

American League platoons, 1921-30

AL managers who platooned most often, 1921-1930

• Tris Speaker (7)—1919, 1920, 1921, 1922, 1923, 1924, 1925
• Miller Huggins (5)—1918, 1925, 1927, 1928, 1929
• Lee Fohl (5)—1916, 1919, 1923, 1924, 1925

Where AL teams platooned, 1921-30

• Cleveland Indians (7 years)—7 OF, 2 C, 2 1B, 1 SS
• Chicago White Sox (5 years)—5 OF, 1 1B
• New York Yankees (5 years)—5 C, 1 OF
• St. Louis Browns (5 years)—3 OF, 2 3B
• Boston Red Sox (4 years)—2 OF, 1 3B
• Detroit Tigers (4 years)—3 OF, 1 SS
• Washington Senators (3 years)—2 OF, 1 C
• Philadelphia Athletics (3 years)—2 OF, 1 C

Positions platooned: 25 OF, 9 C, 3 1B, 3 3B, 2 SS

American League platoons, 1931-40

AL managers who platooned most often, 1931-1940

• Walter Johnson (6)—1929, 1930, 1931, 1932, 1934, 1935
• Bucky Harris (4)—1935, 1936, 1938, 1939
• Joe McCarthy (4)—1935, 1936, 1937, 1938

Where AL teams platooned, 1931-1940

• Washington Senators (7 years)—7 OF, 1 2B, 1 SS
• Cleveland Indians (6 years)—5 OF, 1 C
• St. Louis Browns (5 years)—4 OF, 1 C, 1 3B
• New York Yankees (4 years)—5 OF
• Chicago White Sox (2 years)—2 OF
• Detroit Tigers (2 years)—1 OF, 1 C
• Philadelphia Athletics (1 year)—2B
• Boston Red Sox (did not platoon this decade)

Positions platooned: 24 OF, 3 C, 2 2B, 1 SS, 1 3B

The most interesting race was National League third base where Ken Reitz and Mike Schmidt finished in a dead heat. Each player captured 148 votes. The 1970s’ best fielding team also had three players from the 1960s’ best fielding team – pitchers Jim Kaat and Bob Gibson and the smooth fielding Brooks Robinson.

SABR members were invited to vote on defensive stars who had played at least six seasons of the 1970-79 period, including five in one league. Three outfielders were to be selected with no reference to a specific position.

Not surprisingly, the teams with the best records had the greatest number of all star fielders. Baltimore, with the American League’s best record for the seventies, placed four players – Grich, Robinson, Belanger, and Blair. The Reds, who won more games than any other National League team between 1970 and 1979, placed three players – Morgan, Geronimo, and Bench. The Phillies placed Schmidt, Bowa, and Maddox from their current team and Jim Kaat who spent three plus years in Philadelphia.

Here are the results of the SABR survey by league and by position.

American League

National League

This survey of the best fielders of the 1970s continues a survey made by the Society in late 1972 when the best fielders for each position were selected for each decade since 1900. That selection, made by a much smaller group, still holds up pretty well. Little additional research has been conducted in the interim regarding the defensive skills of players of the early decades of this century.

There are, of course, drawbacks in selecting standouts from a specific 10-year period. Players with moderately short careers may split their time in two different decades. This is what happened, for example, with Billy Cox, a premier infielder who broke in with the Dodgers in the 1940s as a shortstop. He later switched to third base but his NL career just barely stretched to 1954. With that one exception, the really outstanding defensive players are included in the following tabulation of the leading fielders by position for each decade since 1900.

HISTORICAL SURVEY OF BEST FIELDERS BY POSITION

The Phillies and their fans hated New York Giants manager John McGraw. This fact must be clearly understood if readers are to truly appreciate the story that follows.

Nicknamed “Muggsy” and “Little Napoleon,” John McGraw was an easy man to detest. Sportswriter Grantland Rice observed, “There were many who hated John McGraw and to many of these he gave reason… He was the leader with the rasping, cutting voice that so often poured sarcasm and invective upon umpires, the enemy and his own players.”1 Others agree. “His personality was indeed that of a ‘Little Napoleon:’ arrogant, abrasive and pugnacious. He outgeneraled his opponents while abusing them verbally and, sometimes, with his fists.”2

A man who ruled his New York Giants with an iron hand, McGraw was quoted as saying, “With my team I am an absolute czar. My men know it. I order plays and they obey. If they don’t I fine them.”3 His rationale for such a tyrannical approach to managing was simple, “Nine mediocre players pulling together under one competent head will do better work than nine individuals of greater ability without unified control.”4

Feuding with the Phillies

McGraw had tempestuous relations with all league opponents, but it was particularly fractious with the Philadelphia Phillies.5 In his book Mack, McGraw and the 1913 Baseball Season, Richard Adler acknowledges, “No love was ever lost between McGraw and the Phillies.”6 Multiple violent encounters punctuated Giants-Phillies games, most of them involving McGraw. During a 1906 game in Philadelphia, for example, McGraw and Phillies infielder Paul Sentell began fighting on the field.7 Both were ejected but resumed fisticuffs under the stands.8 So enraged were fans that they tried to attack Giants players leaving the ballpark to return to their hotel. Punches were thrown and some minor injuries sustained, with one player—Roger Bresnahan—having to barricade himself inside a grocery store until rescued by police.9

Mutual ill will continued to smolder over the years. In 1913, the Giants and Phillies were scheduled to play 22 times—11 games in each other’s city. Opportunities abounded for barely suppressed hostility to erupt into a riot, causing violence on the field, in the stands, and beyond the ballpark. Only a spark was needed.

The First Skirmish

The Giants came to Philadelphia for a four-game series starting June 30, 1913, with the Phillies holding a precarious half-game lead over New York in the standings. The first game was hotly contested as the Phillies jumped on top early, but the Giants came back to take the lead 10–6 after batting in the top of the seventh inning. The Phillies scored three runs in the bottom of that frame and then tied the score in the bottom of the eighth. The Giants, however, managed to squeeze out an 11–10 victory in the 10th.10 As exciting as the game was, what followed would be far more memorable.

“A feeling of bitterness was noticeable during the game today,” wrote one sportswriter who witnessed the affair. “The Philadelphia players and fans say that all the time the New York manager was on the coaching line he was chiding the players on the bench.”11 Another account similarly notes, “McGraw, in the coaches’ box at third, lost no opportunity to exchange ‘greetings’ with the Phillies’ players on the bench.”12

When the game ended, McGraw walked to the clubhouse, which was located in center field at National League Park, with Phillies captain Mike Doolan.13 Just ahead of them was Phillies pitcher Addison “Addie” Brennan, who “took an active part in the stream of repartee with the New York manager” during the game.14 Differing accounts appeared the next day in New York and Philadelphia newspapers as to what then occurred. From the Philadelphia perspective, McGraw pointed at Brennan and said in a loud voice, “That’s the fellow I am after and I am going to get him.”15 Quickening his pace, he approached Brennan and:

Addie, hearing the talk of McGraw, turned around, and seeing Muggsy’s warlike attitude wasted no time, but just waded in and cuffed the Giants’ battlelike leader a smash on the jaw that sent him down on the soft sod. It is likely that McGraw figured that Brennan would pitch today and picked on him with the purpose of getting him rattled ahead of time. But in picking Brennan for his pecking McGraw picked the wrong man and had to take the count.16

The fracas was over in an instant with McGraw on the ground and Phillies player Otto Knabe virtually dragging Brennan toward the clubhouse.17 Fans that saw what happened were eager to join in the fisticuffs and gathered on the street around the clubhouse exit waiting for McGraw and his players to emerge. But police shooed the incensed fans away, and the New Yorkers were able to leave the ballpark without incident.18

Once in the Majestic Hotel where the team was quartered, Giants Road Secretary John B. Foster told the press that McGraw had been knocked unconscious and had a severe cut on the back of his ear. The manager was in his room and under the care of a physician.19 Foster continued:

We intend to investigate this matter fully and demand that the man who attacked Manager McGraw be punished. It is one of the dirtiest things ever pulled … McGraw was walking with Doolan and discussing the game. It certainly looked like a frame-up, for without any warning Brennan rushed at him and hit him.20

McGraw himself declared he had said nothing to justify being attacked. While acknowledging there was a lot “loose talk” between the two teams during the series, McGraw asserted, “I cannot recall a thing that I said to Brennan, except to ask him how many times he was knocked out of the box this season.”21

New York newspapers portrayed McGraw as the innocent victim of an unprovoked attack, noting that the manager was talking with Doolan when he was attacked from behind by multiple assailants who punched and kicked him repeatedly.22 The New York Times initially reported that a mob of fans and Phillies players attacked McGraw, but quickly revised its rendition of the incident by naming Brennan as the only offender.23

The McGraw-Brennan dust-up was a front-page story the next day in Philadelphia and New York newspapers. Although umpires made no mention of the altercation in their report of the game—they probably left the field before it happened—National League President Thomas J. Lynch learned of the matter through newspaper accounts and announced an investigation would be initiated.24

Lynch visited Philadelphia on July 2 and interviewed McGraw, Foster, Doolan, Brennan, and Phillies manager Charlie Dooin.25 Later that same day he announced his decision: McGraw and Brennan would each be suspended five days and Brennan would pay a fine of $100. Lynch reasoned that both men “indulged in personalities during the game, and that the feeling aroused thereby was the direct cause of the happenings when the players were leaving the field.” The suspension would commence on July 4, and both men would be eligible to return on July 9.26

The Phillies and Giants howled over the punishment. Giants President Harry Hempstead telegraphed Lynch to protest McGraw’s suspension, stating that the club’s manager was “the object of an attack by a Philadelphia player, not even being given an opportunity to defend himself.”27 The Phillies’ ire was directed at the fact that Brennan was suspended and fined while McGraw was only suspended. Dooin stated that his pitcher had been provoked and that McGraw was as much to blame for the rumpus as Brennan. Punishment should be the same for both men.28 These objections notwithstanding, McGraw and Brennan served their suspensions and the fine was paid.29

Phillies fans were not prepared to let bygones be bygones, however, and the Giants would return to Philadelphia.

An Umpire’s Controversial Decision

The race between the Phillies and Giants for the 1913 NL pennant was close early in the season. But the Giants had established a considerable lead by the time they returned to Philadelphia in late August. New York’s record stood at 82–36 and the Phillies at 67–45 when the two clubs met for a three-game series beginning on August 28. The Phillies staked their claim as pennant contenders by winning the first two games, 7–2 and 3–2, in 10 innings. Only the third game was left to be played on August 30.30

The Giants jumped out to an early 6–0 lead, pummeling Grover Cleveland Alexander—a rare occurrence in his otherwise brilliant season.31 George Chalmers came on in relief in the fourth inning and held McGraw’s crew scoreless through the eighth. Meanwhile, the Phillies got to Giants starter Christy Mathewson, chipping away at the lead by scoring five runs in the sixth inning, two more in the seventh, and adding one more tally in the eighth to give the hometown crew an 8–6 lead.32

Then, the Giants came to bat in the top of the ninth inning and all hell broke loose.

With Chalmers still pitching for the Phillies, Moose McCormick came up to the plate as a pinch hitter for first baseman Fred Merkle. He grounded a ball to second baseman Otto Knabe who flipped it to first baseman Fred Luderus for the first out. As he was going back to the dugout, McCormick shouted at home plate umpire Bill Brennan (not to be confused with Phillies pitcher “Addie” Brennan) that spectators in the center-field seats had blinded him at the plate while he was batting.33

(As noted earlier, the clubhouse at National League Park was located in center field. Seats were placed in front and on top of the clubhouse, and they were opened to the public only when the rest of the ballpark was sold out. On this day, it was filled to capacity with 22,000 fans.)34

The following sequence of events then took place, as reported by the Philadelphia Inquirer. Umpire Brennan walked out to the center-field bleachers and ordered the fans sitting there to vacate the section.35 He was met with a thundering chorus of jeers and catcalls. Brennan walked back to the infield, approached Mickey Doolan, and ordered him to have the fans removed. The Phillies captain laughed and said there was nothing he could do.36

Growing exasperated, Brennan walked over to the Giants’ dugout and conferred with McGraw. The umpire yet again walked to center field and confronted a Philadelphia police officer who was stationed along the outfield wall. Brennan demanded that the officer remove the spectators sitting in center field. He refused and Brennan then asserted, “You are under my orders.” The officer replied, “I’m under no orders except from my sergeant or captain.”37

With the crowd growing increasingly unruly, Brennan’s officiating partner, Mal Eason, suggested to Brennan that the remainder of the game be played under protest. Brennan again journeyed to the Giants’ dugout to confer with McGraw. The New York manager rejected Eason’s suggestion. Brennan walked over to the grandstand area and announced in a loud voice, “The game is forfeited to New York, nine to zero.”38

Philadelphia sportswriters claimed the Giants protested that white shirted-spectators in the stands had prevented them from seeing the ball clearly. They belittled the charge and wondered out loud why New York hadn’t complained about the problem earlier in the game—choosing to do so only after the Phillies had taken the lead.39

McGraw, however, attributed the forfeit to the disruptive conduct of unruly patrons. He claimed, “I took advantage of the occasion to ask to have the crowd removed from the seats in center field because the crowd there was in direct line with the batters, waving their hats and coats and using glasses to reflect the sun’s rays in the eyes of my men.” He put blame for the incident squarely on the Phillies’ shoulders, stating that had the seats been cleared the game could have continued.40

Brennan also attributed the forfeit to the antics of center field fans—not their attire—and wrote in a report to NL President Lynch explaining his decision, “All started to wave papers and coats and it was impossible for me to see a ball that was pitched.41

A Riot Erupts in the Stands…

While differences exist over what prompted the forfeit, there is no dispute over what happened once it was announced. The lead story on the front page of the next day’s Inquirer offered a vivid description of what took place:

Bedlam cut loose at that instant. Screaming in rage the bleacherites by thousands poured over the low rail into the playing field. In the grand stand men rose in wild excitement and hoarsely shouted “Robber. Thief.”

A second later a cushion struck the arbitrator in the face as he was walking toward the exit under the grand stand leading to his dressing room. His walk turned into an undignified run. The bleacher crowd had first tried to stop the New York players who butted their way to safety. Then they turned toward Brennan. He was near the exit then, but they were coming rapidly. The line of police stationed round the bleachers threatened with drawn revolvers in vain.

Over the exit hundreds of grandstand spectators were crowded with any missile they could lay their hands upon. As Brennan got below they cut loose. A cushion seat struck his shoulder; a pop bottle grazed his head.

“Help, they’re killing me,” Brennan shouted, bending low and dodging under the stand.

“Outside to the player’s exit,” came the shout in the crowd. “We’ll head him off there.” A few minutes later the ball park was deserted while a mob raged along Fifteenth Street, Lehigh Avenue, and Broad Street.42

… and Spills Out into the Streets

McGraw, his players, and the umpires faced the daunting challenge of traversing the four blocks between National League Park and the North Philadelphia Station of the Pennsylvania Railroad to catch a train back to New York. The Giants manager and his men were the first to emerge from the ballpark, and as they started their journey, Phillies fans converged upon them hurling objects of various sorts. Philadelphia police officers managed to insert themselves between the ballplayers and the crowd and escorted the Giants to the railroad station. McGraw, however, somehow got ahead of his players during the ruckus, and the crowd got between them and started chasing the manager with vengeance on its mind. “A wild chase” to the railroad station ensued as McGraw sought to evade his pursuers.43

But the fans had not forgotten Brennan. The greatly despised umpire and his partner, Eason, emerged from the ballpark and were immediately set upon by angry fans. A cordon of police escorted them toward the station, but as they crossed the railroad bridge waiting fans unleashed a volley of missiles and spikes; fortunately, none found their mark. But just as Brennan, Eason, and their escort reached the railroad station, police saw McGraw and his players being chased by the angry mob. The officers abandoned the umpires to rescue the manager and his men, which gave fans the opportunity to attack Brennan. “They jumped upon him by the dozens. He was beaten to the ground, rose, was beaten down again, and finally rose again, breaking away and fleeing into the station.”44

Brennan managed to reach the station just as McGraw did. With police, guns drawn, covering their escape, luck was on the side of McGraw and Brennan. An extra-fare express train from Pittsburgh to New York was just leaving the station as the two men entered, and both jumped aboard with the angry mob closing in. The train departed, much to the disappointment of those fans seeking to settle a score with the manager and the umpire.45

What of the Giants players? McGraw, in his ignominious flight to safety, left them behind. They had to huddle in a corner on the platform at the station protected by police for 15 minutes until the regularly scheduled train to New York arrived. The crowd jeered and hurled insults but did not harm them in any way. The players boarded the train and left. Phillies fans milled around for a while, denouncing Brennan’s decision and demanding justice, but they eventually dispersed peacefully.46

Despite the multitude of objects and fists thrown, casualties were slight. Tillie Shafer was struck on the head with a brick but not seriously injured, while fellow infielder Buck Herzog sported a large scratch on his face. Someone snatched catcher Larry McLean’s straw hat off his head and absconded with it.47

The Blame Game

Yet again, Philadelphia and New York newspapers reflected sharply differing perspectives on fixing blame for the melee. Philadelphia sportswriter James Nasium held Brennan and McGraw responsible, accusing them of conspiring to steal a game the Phillies had justly won. He commented caustically, “It marked the most disgraceful feature of a season of disgraceful umpiring and the second time (the June confrontation with Phillies pitcher Brennan being the first) in as many visits to Philadelphia that John McGraw has been a party to initiating a riot on the Broad and Huntingdon streets grounds.”48

Repeating his earlier accusation that center-field fans only became a problem once the Giants fell behind, Nasium castigated Brennan as “a mongrel in the guise of an umpire,” and condemned McGraw for refusing to continue the game under protest (Eason’s suggestion). He concluded his diatribe against the men by asserting:

The mere throwing out of this game or playing it over will not suffice. The game belongs to the Phillies. And even if the game is ultimately decided in favor of the Phillies, nothing can now remove the smirch that Brennan and McGraw’s action has made upon the national sport save the removal of the former and the disciplining of the latter. If this game is to be kept clean, let it be kept clean by those who are at the head of it. You can’t expect a clean house from a filthy tenant.49

New York newspapers were contemptuous of Philadelphia’s outrage, noting glibly, “Naturally, Philadelphia is excited. They get stirred up every so often about baseball, anyway.”50 Phillies fans, furthermore, were accountable for starting the trouble.

The fans made a lot of noise and began to wave handkerchiefs and papers. Most of the men and boys were in their shirtsleeves and they stood up and also waved their arms trying to disconcert the attention of the New York batsmen.51

It was the Phillies’ unwillingness to clear fans from the center-field seats, moreover, that led to the forfeit, not any demands by McGraw or his Giants. “Umpire Brennan forfeited the game to New York after the Philadelphia Club had failed to move from a section in the centre field bleachers spectators who, the New York players claimed, interfered with the vision of the batsmen.”52

President Overrules Umpire

Phillies Manager Charlie Dooin announced following the game that he would protest Brennan’s forfeit decision and aid every effort to have the umpire driven out of organized baseball. Dooin was quoted as saying:

I do not know whether a protest will avail us anything, but we will certainly protest the forfeited game and protest it bitterly. It was sheer robbery and of the rankest sort. I cannot understand how the National League magnates will permit such arbitration of their game.53

Dooin traveled to New York on August 31 “still at white heat with indignation at Umpire Brennan for his asinine decision” to complain personally to the league president.54 Lynch listened and on September 2 reversed Brennan’s decision and awarded an 8–6 victory to the Phillies. In his ruling Lynch declared:

The official report of Umpire Brennan covering the game forfeited to New York in Philadelphia August 30 shows that neither club had complained about existing conditions regarding the spectators, and that the umpire plainly went beyond his authority in declaring a forfeiture, for which action he had neither the protection of the regular playing rules nor of any special ground rule. The umpire was clearly at fault in not having the game played to a finish.55

Board Overrules President

Lynch’s decision was applauded by most. Sporting Life, for example, called Brennan’s decision “outrageous” and “infamous,” and opined that “President Lynch had base ball law on his side and could not have done anything else.”56 But most did not include the New York Giants. The New Yorkers appealed Lynch’s decision to the NL Board of Directors, with club President Hempstead stating:

How Lynch can take that game from us I can’t understand … To throw the game out and order it replayed would have been injustice enough after the umpire awarded us the decision. But to declare us defeated without giving us any chance is, in my opinion, unconstitutional.57

In yet another precedent-setting move, the Board—comprised of Charles H. Ebbets, August Herrmann, and Charles W. Murphy—overruled Lynch on September 15 and ordered that the game be resumed “with the same men on the field and under the same status as existed on the day that Umpire Brennan awarded the game to New York.” Since the Giants would not return to Philadelphia during the season, the Board directed that the game be completed on October 2 when the Phillies were at the Polo Grounds.58

By early October, however, the game had become nothing more than a curiosity. The Giants had staked out a commanding lead for the NL pennant and would finish the season with a comfortable 12 ½-game lead over the Phillies.59 Nevertheless, as instructed by the Board of Directors, the clubs resumed the August 30 game at the exact point at which it had been stopped. With one out, outfielder Red Murray grounded out. Catcher Chief Meyers rapped a single. Eddie Grant came in to run for Meyers. Larry McLean, batting for outfielder Fred Snodgrass, hit a grounder that forced Grant at second. The game was finally officially over with the Phillies victorious by a score of 8–6.60

Revenge of the Philadelphians

Though New York had bested the Phillies by winning the NL title and were heading to the World Series, Philadelphia had the last laugh. The Giants’ opponent in the Fall Classic was none other than the Philadelphia Athletics. Connie Mack’s club was in the midst of its first successful run and had already beaten McGraw’s minions in the 1911 World Series, four games to two. The 1913 World Series would be even sweeter for the A’s as they downed the Giants by the more lopsided outcome of four games to one.61 New York City may have been home of the National League champions in 1913, but Philadelphia was home of the world champions.

ROBERT D. WARRINGTON was born in Philadelphia and works for the Central Intelligence Agency. He is a member of Society for American Baseball Research and the Philadelphia Athletics Historical Society.

Notes

Anyone who studies Deadball Era baseball will sooner or later encounter the Bonesetter as a footnote to other subjects. Because he shunned publicity, he was a shadowy figure. But the record is clear. Reese was more than just a mere curiosity. His healing talents had a genuine impact on the game of baseball during the early years of the twentieth century.

An issue of Sporting Life published in April 1924 sums up his career:

Reese has done more for baseball … than anybody else in the country not directly connected to the game. Through his remarkable miracles in bloodless surgery (and restoring muscles and tendons), “Bonesetter” Reese has prolonged the active life of countless baseball stars and preserved them for the fans of the country to cheer.1

A writer for the Cleveland Press ventured in an article of February 5, 1913, that a look at Reese’s hands showed what he could do.

Large, sinewy and knotty, they are the sort you’d expect to see upon a steel worker. The very sight of them creates an impression of power, but gives no hint of the wonderful delicacy of touch that enables them to locate instantly a displaced muscle or a tiny broken bone.2

Such praise would surely warrant a measure of curiosity about Reese on the part of researchers, but little has been published beyond Child of Moriah, a biography written by David L. Strickler, Reese’s grandson-in-law. Several factors explain the dearth of information about Reese. Strickler’ s book is out of print and difficult to obtain. I was able to read the book with the assistance of an interlibrary loan through the University of Notre Dame. Reese himself was publicity-shy and never wrote memoirs. Too, Reese has always been a footnote to larger stories. Most baseball fans have learned of him by reading biographies of stars such as Honus Wagner and Rogers Hornsby.

But even this brief acquaintance is fraught with misconceptions. Baseball authors have described him in a variety of ways. In Dennis and Jeanne Burke DeValeria’s Honus Wagner: A Biography, Reese is depicted as “part chiropractor and part masseuse, treating injuries he diagnosed as wrenched tendons and displaced muscles; he was pronounced a miracle worker after he treated Leach for a leg ailment the previous year [1902].”3 The authors note that Wagner was cured of a leg ailment in late 1903, and Reese accompanied the Pittsburgh club during the 1903 World Series for a fee of $500. Arthur D. Hittner, another biographer, notes Wagner’s first encounter with Reese in 1903:

Bonesetter was not a physician and claimed no medical training. Using massage, manipulation and a touch of mysticism, the former steel worker and oil driller had nevertheless achieved the reputation of a miracle worker throughout professional baseball.4

In his fine biography of Rogers Hornsby, Charles Alexander offers this description:

Hornsby was only one of many ballplayers who visited Reese, an elderly, totally unschooled former Welsh coal miner whose skills at skeletal manipulation were so renowned that the Ohio legislature gave him special medical certification.5

And in his Cultural Encyclopedia of Baseball, Jonathan Fraser Light puts it plainly: “Reese was a popular early trainer. He had no medical training but was good at manipulation and massage.”6

All these descriptions provide a glimpse of Reese’s work, but they all include a measure of inaccuracy as well. Yes, he was a Welsh immigrant. He learned the bonesetting trade from a fellow ironworker. But there is no evidence that Reese ever set foot in a coalmine or on an oil rig, or that he was a mystic. As for being totally unschooled, Reese owned an extensive library on anatomy, and his knowledge of the subject guided his practice. He even attended medical school at Case University in Cleveland, if for only three weeks in 1897. Baseball historians, it seems fair to say, have not brought Reese’s life into full focus.

This article aims to shed some light on Reese and his work. Reese’s experience in medical school reveals much about his character and talents. His attempt at obtaining a medical degree was driven by open opposition to his work by the medical establishment. The education of physicians and the practice of medicine at this time were much different from today’s models. Accreditation of medical schools and licensing of physicians were haphazard, and much effort was spent in getting these two important aspects of the profession in control. The actual practice of medicine was substantially different as well. There were no antibiotics, and a minor infection could easily become a life-threatening illness. Modern tools such as MRIs and other forms of imaging were decades away from discovery and use.

Reese himself was not much of a medical student. He could not stand the sight of blood and could not perform surgery, but he astounded his peers and superiors with his ability to manipulate muscles and ligaments. The head of the school told him to leave because they had nothing to teach him, saying,

You’re wasting your time here. I’ve considered all the factors in your equation, and my advice to you is to go back home and continue to work according to your own methods. Who knows? If you were to continue on here you might lose this unique ability. I don’t understand it, but I cannot deny you have it. As for your detractors, my own colleagues, I’m embarrassed to admit, ignore them! Better still, the next time they cry foul, refer them to me. I have a message for them.7

Anyone wanting to know more about Bonesetter Reese is indebted to David L. Strickler. Using family records, Strickler provides a mother lode of material about Reese’s life. In a work of almost four hundred pages, only thirty-three discuss Reese and ballplayers. But the book provides valuable information, including how Reese practiced medicine and his relationship with patients.

Reese was born May 6, 1855, in Rhymney, Wales. His childhood was marred by tragedy. His father died three months after his birth, and his mother died when he was eleven years old. He thereupon went to work in the iron factories of Wales, where his luck changed. Another ironworker named Tom Jones took him in and taught him the trade of “bonesetting,” the informal term for general-practice medicine. Reese seldom set a broken bone, despite that name; instead, his practice mainly involved the manipulation of muscles and tendons. Jones’s children eventually became trained orthopedic physicians, while Reese’s technique and focus is close to osteopathy, a branch of medicine founded by Andrew Taylor Still on the Missouri frontier in 1874. Still believed that the musculo-skeletal system was a key to good health, and his osteopathic manipulative therapy (OMT) is still taught in osteopathic medical schools.

Reese remained an ironworker until mill closings led him to emigrate to the United States in 1887. Sailing to America in steerage class, Reese left his family behind. He first settled in Pittsburgh, where he became a roller’s helper at Jones & Laughlin Steel. Less than six months after his arrival, he had saved enough money to send for his wife and children. Upon their arrival, Reese moved to Youngstown, Ohio, to work at the Brown-Bronnell Mills. Family history says that he treated an injured ironworker sometime during 1889 for a dislocated shoulder. The successful cure changed Reese’s life forever.

Demand for his medical services soon overwhelmed him. Because Reese was paid on a piecework, instead of hourly, basis, management tolerated his medical activities. The company, after all, received the benefit of getting ailing workers back on the line without paying for the service.

Treating fellow workers on the job deprived him of pay, and Reese was not one to try to make up the loss in pay by charging fellow workers. Establishing his long-held policy, Reese charged only what the patient could afford, and his fellow ironworkers could not afford much. That policy was crisp: “Pay me when you get it.”8 It cost Reese money, but he remained loyal to this way of doing things. In his obituary his standards of practice were detailed:

He saw all patients in order no matter what their rank in society. He often charged them directly in the proportion to the greatness or the smallness of their finances. It was said of him that he never charged a widow or an orphan for treatment. Until his death, he held a soft spot in his heart for mill workers, and even at his busiest times, a steel man had little trouble in seeing him, even though other and more profitable appointments had to be delayed.9

As public knowledge of his talents grew, Reese’s avocation came to occupy his off hours. Eventually he abandoned the mills in an attempt to bring order to his life. The decision was not an easy one. He was faced with giving up bonesetting altogether or not doing it at all at the mill, or else quitting the mill and asking for a fee for service. The last alternative had a hitch, for without a license, he could not charge a fee for service. With licensing restricted to school-trained physicians, Reese arrived at the policy of charging patients what they could afford as a means of providing his service without violating state law.

Reese became a full-time medical practitioner in 1894, just two years after he became a naturalized citizen of the United States. He immediately faced a major challenge from the medical establishment, which charged him with quackery and threatened arrest if he were to treat a patient. Reese’s attempt to attend medical school was a response to these complaints. He struggled with varying levels of opposition from the medical community until about 1900.

The exact source of Reese’s licensing is not at all clear. No copy of it exists today. Reese’s family claimed that it came from the Ohio legislature, but there was a state law against such individualized awards. It could well have been a proclamation from a state agency or legislative committee.

Reese enjoyed popularity and had the support of influential people. His experience in medical school did not hurt him, and he did not hurt himself by making any outrageous claims. In 1908, Reese further proved his personal and professional responsibility by referring patients with symptoms of typhoid fever to conventional physicians.10

Open opposition from the medical establishment faded as the years went by, but while he may have been grudgingly accepted, he never was quite understood by his more educated colleagues. “He is an enigma to all the physicians of the country,” one remarked, “who cannot understand his natural ability to straighten out twisted bones and replace misplaced muscles and ligaments.”11

If licensed physicians could not understand Reese and his technique, just what kind of doctor was he? Reese described his work simply:

Manipulation is the secret, if there is any, of my treatment. A thorough knowledge of anatomy is necessary, which I have studied and am still studying to acquire. My manipulation is something similar to that of an osteopath. The theory on which it is based is that muscles and ligaments may become displaced and remain so until put back where they belong.12

The medical establishment never accepted Reese, but he overcame that obstacle through his methods. In diagnosing ailments, he relied upon his knowledge of anatomy and highly developed sense of touch. During treatment he used great strength and quick movements and never used terms such as “magical” or “miraculous” to describe his cures. And he knew his limits. Reese was not afraid to admit that a case was beyond his ability.

As Reese’s practice grew, he began to treat many of the famous of the day. Among prominent patients were Charles Evans Hughes, Theodore Roosevelt, former British Prime Minister David Lloyd George, evangelist Billy Sunday, Will Rogers, and countless others, great and common alike-as well as showgirls who needed treatment for twisted ankles or leg cramps.

Reese’s ability and fame won him a rare honor in June 1926 when he was given the highest Druidic degree by the Gorsedd, an ancient Celtic institution charged with guarding ancient traditions. The Druidic degree was recognition of good works by alleviating suffering and had little to do with spiritualism or superstition. News reports of the event noted that Reese was the first American to be so honored.13

As with his licensing, the origin of his treatment of ballplayers is not easily traced, except for a diary composed of news clippings kept by the family. This diary is not entirely accurate for a couple of reasons. Many players were reluctant to make it known that they had visited the Bonesetter because they wished to keep injuries secret from opponents and team management. Another obstacle to accuracy was that Reese did not encourage publicity from treating players. A shy man, he was known to tell reporters not to report on his treatments of celebrities. There was another reason why he discouraged publicity. He simply did not need to drum up more business, for at his peak Reese saw as many as eighty patients a day.

The first player he treated was probably Jimmy McAleer, a Youngstown native who suffered from a bad cramp. The treatment occurred when McAleer was with the Cleveland Spiders. McAleer is credited with spreading the word about Bonesetter Reese. In 1894, pitcher George “Nig” Cuppy was treated for a strained arm tendon. By the turn of the century, Reese’s patient list expanded greatly. He treated members of the Pittsburgh Pirates as they prepared for the first modern World Series. Babe Adams, Honus Wagner, and Tommy Leach were among his patients.

Reese’s biography lists fifty-four players whom he treated. Of that number, twenty-eight are members of the Hall of Fame. Reese described his treatments of ballplayers plainly. “The ball players who consult me have no imaginary ailments. They come because they are in trouble and I have treated so many of them that I can tell in a jiffy where the trouble lies.”14

Reese’s assessment of pitching injuries reveals his knowledge of anatomy and of the impact that pitching has on the arm:

Strange as it may seem, most of my patients are pitchers … and it’s not the curve ball pitchers who come the more often either but the boys who try to throw the ball past a batter, the speed ball pitchers. If the soreness is in the elbow it’s a speedball pitcher nine times out of ten; if in the shoulder, a curve ball pitcher …. I can usually locate a problem and fix things up. Once in a great while, an arm fails to yield to treatment and then the pitcher is through.15

Reese’s favorite ballplayer was Wagner.

There’s one ball player I will never forget and that’s Hans [sic] Wagner. I got the surprise of my life when he came to me with his back injured. The big husky! Anyone would think he could stand all kinds of pain. I guess he can, too, but because they call me “bonesetter” he was trembling clear down to his shoes. And the minute I placed my hands on his back he fainted dead away.16

Wagner thought highly of Reese, saying, “He hurts me like the devil but always does the work.” 17

No pain, no gain: that aptly describes Reese’s treatments. Owen “Chief” Wilson of the Pirates tells how a charley horse was treated:

Why, when he grabbed that bunch of congested muscles, I thought I would croak. I did not think I ever before suffered so much pain in my young life. After he had done this, Reese told me to get to the train and hike for St. Louis that I would be all right in a day or two. 18

While baseball fans owe a huge debt to Reese for keeping their favorites in action, the Bonesetter himself was not all that pleased with many of the athletes he treated. He believed many of them would wind up injuring themselves again because they would not follow directions.

Reese also hated football. When George Halas came calling, Papa Bear had to persuade Reese that his bum knee was from a sliding injury on the diamond, not a bone-crunching tackle on the gridiron. University of Illinois Athletic Director George Huff reportedly tried to persuade Reese to come to the Urbana-Champaign campus, but like others before him, he was rebuffed. 19

Reese died of heart failure at the age of seventy-six in 1931. His passing was widely noted. It was in his obituary that a Youngstown Vindicator reporter noted that Reese exacted from him a vow of silence about the identities of the ballplayers he treated. The Bonesetter came to America to seek a better life for himself and family. We sons and daughters of immigrants understand that motive. His adopted nation gave him a productive life, and “productive” best describes the man and his works.

His legacy to baseball can be seen in this all-star team from the patient list in his biography, a twenty-five-man roster that amounts to a pretty good ballclub. In addition, I have added a list of players mentioned in Strickler and names provided me by Steve Steinberg during his research on players of the era.

Uhle apparently suffered chronic arm and elbow pain, which Reese was able to repair.21                             

Another player who could credit Reese with saving his career was shortstop Glenn Wright. Upon Reese’s death, the Youngstown Vindicator reported that Wright had injured his throwing arm in an offseason basketball game. In 1929, Wright quit the game, citing his arm problems. Reese worked on Wright’s arm that fall, and in 1930 Wright reported to the Dodgers with a strong arm that allowed him to “cut down base runners with rifle-like throws from all angles of the short field.”22

This list of players is incomplete, for Reese himself claimed to have treated hundreds of ballplayers. Because of his reluctance to seek attention, it can be safely assumed many other ballplayers visited Reese than are listed here. 

HONORABLE MENTION

Among others treated but not on David Strickler’s list are George Uhle and Jack Pfiester, both of them pitchers. Pfiester’ s treatment is detailed in Sporting Life (October 10, 1908), where it is claimed that Pfiester pitched the Merkle game with a badly injured, if not dislocated, elbow. In Touching Second, Johnny Evers says Pfiester pitched in pain the entire game. It was especially painful for him to throw a curveball. Evers says that Pfiester threw four curveballs, all to Mike Donlin in game situations.20                 

Uhle reportedly went to see Reese yearly. The old-time pitcher credited Reese with lengthening his career.

NOTES

1. David L. Strickler, Child of Moriah: A Biography of John D. “Bonesetter” Reese, 1855-1931. (Franklin, Mich.: Four Comers Press, 1984), 181.

2. Cleveland Press, February 5, 1913.

3. Dennis De Valeria and Jeanne Burke De Valeria, Honus Wagner: A Biography (New York: Holt, 1995), 122.

4. Arthur D. Hittner, Honus Wagner: The Life of Baseball’s “Flying Dutchman” (Jefferson, N.C: McFarland, 1996), 118.

5. Charles C. Alexander, Rogers Hornsby: A Biography (New York: Holt, 1995), 113.

6. Jonathan Fraser Light, The Cultural Encyclopedia of Baseball (Jefferson, N.C: McFarland, 1997), 749.

7. Strickler, Child of Moriah, 103.

8. “Famous Healer Succumbs at 76,” Youngstown Vindicator, November 11, 1931.

9. “Famous Healer Succumbs at 76,” Youngstown Vindicator, November 11, 1931.

10. Strickler, Child of Moriah, 124.

11. Strickler, Child of Moriah, 112.

12. Strickler, Child of Moriah, 344-45.

13. Reese File, Mahoning Valley Historical Society.

14. Strickler, Child of Moriah, 207.

15. Strickler, Child of Moriah, 207.

16. Strickler, Child of Moriah, 162.

17. Strickler, Child of Moriah, 128.

18. Strickler, Child of Moriah, 325.

19. Strickler, Child of Moriah, 288.

20. John J. Evers and Hugh Fullerton, Touching Second: The Science of Baseball (Chicago: Reilly and Britton, 1910), 116.

21. Strickler, Child of Moriah, 290-94.

22. “Famous Healer Succumbs at 76.”

The Glorious Beaneaters of the 1890s
Edited by Bob LeMoine and Bill Nowlin
Associate Editor: Len Levin
Publication Date: December 23, 2019
ISBN (ebook): 978-1-9701-5918-9, $9.99
ISBN (paperback): 978-1-9701-5919-6, $29.99
8.5″ x 11″, 437 pages

More than a century has passed since the “glorious Beaneaters” era of Boston’s baseball history in the 1890s. While Boston would soon have a second baseball club that would capture the hearts of New England (the Red Sox), never again would there be such dominance over a decade as the Beaneaters accomplished. The team won five pennants in the decade. Nine of these players are enshrined in the National Baseball Hall of Fame.

This SABR Digital Library book includes biographies of every player to appear with the team in the 1890s, as well as year-by year-recaps of seasons 1891 through 1899, bios of the owner and manager, articles on the ballparks they played in, recaps of 50 of the team’s most thrilling and historic games, and articles on the team’s impact on pop culture and 1890s baseball.

Legendary manager Connie Mack called that era “a turbulent decade of the so-called roughhouse days in baseball. The Boston Beaneaters were ready for any fray, ever willing to take on the pugnacious Baltimore Orioles and give them a dose of their own medicine.”

“The tumultuous 1890s witnessed a player revolt against high-handed and monopolistic management,” wrote baseball historian John Thorn, “The game was in a period of consolidation, or hibernation, or stagnation; one’s perspective depended upon whether he were an owner, fan, or player.”

This book represents the combined efforts of more than 50 writers and editors from the Society for American Baseball Research.

• E-book: Click here to download the e-book version of The Glorious Beaneaters of the 1890s for $9.99 from the SABR Store. Available in PDF, MOBI, and EPUB/Kindle formats.
• Paperback: Get the paperback edition of The Glorious Beaneaters of the 1890s from the SABR Store ($34.99 includes shipping/tax; delivery via Kindle Direct Publishing can take up to 4-6 weeks.)

Below: Find player biographies, memorable game stories, and essays
from The Glorious Beaneaters of the 1890s

Biographies

Game Recaps

Essays

Contributors: Matt Albertson, Dennis Auger, John Bauer, Charlie Bevis, Richard Bogovich, Thomas J. Brown Jr., Jean-Pierre Caillault, Matt Clever, Alan Cohen, Rory Costello, Jerrod Cotosman, Richard Cuicchi, Charles F. Faber, Bill Felber, David Fleitz, Brian Frank, Peter M. Gordon, Terry Gottschall, Gerry Goulet, Steve Hatcher, Paul Hofmann, Mike Huber, Joanne Hulbert, Bill Lamb, Kevin Larkin, Bob LeMoine, Len Levin, Dan Levitt, William H. Lyons, Mike McAvoy, Brian McKenna, Eric Miklich, Seth Moland-Kovash, Chad Moody, Bill Mortell, Rob Nee, David Nemec, Rochelle Llewelyn Nicholls, Bill Nowlin, Ralph Peluso, Mark Pestana, Richard Riis, Joel Rippel, Bob Ruzzo, Mark Souder, Glen Sparks, Lyle Spatz, Mark S. Sternman, J.W. Stewart, Trey Strecker, Andy Terrick, Stew Thornley, Richard “Dixie” Tourangeau, Gregory H. Wolf, and John Zinn.

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

“It is always wrong to consider that something which begins in a small way cannot rapidly become important.” — Plutarch

On June 5, 1942, Doreston Luke Carmen Jr. became the thin end of a very large wedge. That was the day the nineteen-year-old native of Galveston, Texas, became the first black recruit at Great Lakes Naval Training Station in Illinois. Having been jettisoned from the United States Navy during the interwar years, blacks were being allowed back into the armed forces’ most exclusive white man’s club.

The large scale reentry of blacks into the Navy would have far-reaching and often unforeseen consequences, not only for the Navy, but for American society as a whole. The United States’ entry into World War II suddenly made the armed forces the largest employer of blacks in the country, by far. Historian Morris J. MacGregor points out that in altering race relations “… the armed forces could command where others could only persuade.” And command they did, to the extent that black participation in the military during World War II became the origin of the modern civil rights movement in the nation.

In baseball, as well, World War II furnished a peek into the future. The rigid barriers of segregation gradually broke down on the fields of play as well as on the fields of war. Conflict over racial policy in the military services foretold the coming of the civil rights movement, and blacks on military service teams were unheralded and unwitting precursors of what Jules Tygiel has termed “baseball’s great experiment”: the breaching of the color line.

One such group of ballplayers came together to form a team at Great Lakes in 1944. The Great Lakes white team, the Bluejackets, under the direction of Mickey Cochrane, was well publicized and highly regarded. Some called it “the seventeenth major league team.” This is an account of another team from Great Lakes, the all-black team created in 1944—the Great Lakes Negro Varsity, as they were called. In their own way, these “Black Bluejackets” helped clear the path for Jackie Robinson.

The Negro and the Navy

By the end of World War II, the Navy had adopted the most progressive racial policies of any of the military services. But three and a half years earlier, when the United States entered the war, it was the most blatantly racist. Black men had served with distinction on mixed crews in every war since the Revolution, but during the course of WWI, the “War to Make the World Safe for Democracy,” they were relegated to the menial chores of the Messman’s (or Steward’s) Branch. During the 1920s the black man virtually disappeared from the Navy, as Filipinos and Guamanians served as “seagoing bellhops.” In 1932, with the independence of the Philippines approaching, the Navy once again began to recruit blacks, but only as “chambermaids of the Navy,” in the Messman’s Branch. Escalating manpower requirements after Pearl Harbor changed this. Civil rights groups mounted a “Double-V Campaign” to defeat racism at home as well as fascism abroad. The Army pressured the Navy to assist in assimilating blacks into the armed forces. Franklin Roosevelt, prompted by a combination of idealism and political considerations, also played a key role in forcing the Navy to open its ranks to blacks. The Navy’s initial efforts to modify its racial policies often failed because the decision to do so was thrust upon it by outsiders. Consider:

• Not only were there no black men at Annapolis (in fact, the Navy had no black officers until 1944), the Midshipmen refused to allow a black man from Harvard University to participate in a lacrosse game.
• In July 1941 a Navy commission determined that “Negro characteristics” made black recruits suitable only for messman’s duty. Six months later, the Commandant of the Marine Corps viewed the inclusion of blacks in the Navy as “absolutely tragic” and said that since the Negro could serve in the Army, his desire to enter the Navy was an attempt “to break into a club that doesn’t want him.”
• Throughout the war, the Navy, as well as the other armed services, segregated blood banks, despite the utter lack of scientific evidence to support such a policy. Not lost upon the black press was the fact that Dr. Charles Drew, a pioneer in the development of plasma transfer techniques and the director of the first Red Cross blood bank, was a black man.
• Black recruits eventually stationed at Great Lakes were required to spend Sunday evenings singing spirituals in an ill-considered attempt to foster black pride. Many blacks, especially those from the North, found this practice repellent and demeaning.

It is little wonder that Dennis D. Nelson, one of the first thirteen blacks to become Navy officers in 1944, recalled that “Recruits who felt they had been treated as sub-citizens found it likely they would be classified as sub-sailors as well.” Another one of the first black ensigns, James Hair, remembers a very hostile atmosphere at Great Lakes, as though the attitude was that “These n******s coming in is gonna change the Navy.”

The rigid segregation that the Navy imposed in training, housing, and— as we shall see—sports gave many blacks a dose of government-sanctioned discrimination that they had never experienced before. The situation of Larry Doby typified that of many recruits. Doby, who had been a popular star athlete at an integrated high school in Paterson, New Jersey, looked back upon his plunge into racism in the Navy:

“… I enlisted and wore a US sailor’s uniform at Great Lakes Naval Training Station. For the first time I was conscious of discrimination and segregation as never before. It was a shock. If you’ve never been exposed to it from the outside and it suddenly hits you, you can’t take it. I didn’t crack up; I just went into my shell. … I thought: ‘This is a crying shame when I’m here to protect my country.’ But I couldn’t do anything about it—I was under Navy rules and regulations and had to abide by them or face the consequences.”

Mickey Cochrane’s Bluejackets

In the spring of 1945, Chicago Sun columnist James S. Kearns wrote that “the most successful producer of winning sports teams in America the last three years [has been the] U.S. Naval Training Center at Great Lakes.” The following chart helps explain how he came to this conclusion:

GREAT LAKES SPORTS TEAMS
1942 to Spring 1945

*No home football field in 1942

In these three baseball seasons, the team was managed by Mickey Cochrane; in 1945 Bob Feller and Pinky Higgins managed it. Kit Crissey, in Athletes Away, has written that “The Navy scored a tremendous public relations coup when it recruited… Mickey Cochrane…. Many professional players specifically chose the Navy and Great Lakes so they could play for him, and thus he was able to field outstanding teams in 1942, 1943 and 1944.” During these three seasons, Cochrane managed 39 men who played in the major leagues before, during, or after the war.

One such major leaguer was Chet Hajduk, whose career consisted of a lone, and unsuccessful, pinch-hitting appearance for the White Sox in 1941. But Cochrane also managed two players who later would join him in the Hall of Fame: Billy Herman and Johnny Mize. Twenty-nine of these Great Lakes Bluejackets played in the major leagues for at least five years; and 18 of them played in at least eight big league seasons: Frankie Baumholtz, Tom Ferrick, Joe Grace, Billy Herman, Si Johnson, Bob Klinger, Johnny Lucadello, Johnny McCarthy, Barney McCosky, Johnny Mize, Don Padgett, Eddie Pellagrini, Frankie Pytlak, Johnny Rigney, Schoolboy Rowe, Johnny Schmitz, Virgil Trucks, and Gene Woodling. (The 1945 team, which went 25-6, included ten players with major league careers, among them: Bob Feller, Pinky Higgins, Denny Galehouse, Johnny Gorsica, Walker Cooper, Johnny Groth, and Ken Keltner.)

The 1942 team, with an overall record of 63-14, was the only one of Cochrane’s Bluejacket squads to have a losing record (4-6) against major league competition. The following year, the sailors won seven of thirteen games against big league teams. However, this 1943 team, which compiled a 52-10-1 record, was 0-1 against the Negro Leagues. In the only game ever played during World War II between the Bluejackets and an all-black team, Ted “Double Duty” Radcliffe’s Chicago American Giants defeated the Navy team, 7-3. With Lt. Bob Elson announcing the game, the American Giants battered Tom Ferrick and Vern Olsen for seven runs on 17 hits through seven innings. Johnny Schmitz finished up, allowing no runs on two hits in the final two innings. Ralph Wyatt, Lloyd Davenport, and player-manager Ted Radcliffe had three hits apiece for the Giants. Pitcher Gentry Jessup went the distance, despite surrendering a dozen hits and seven walks. Three double plays helped hold the Bluejackets to three runs.

Radcliffe recalls that it was only the speed of his star center fielder, Davenport, that held Johnny Mize to a double and a triple for two of his four hits. Had the ballpark been enclosed, Mize would have had at least two home runs, but Davenport was able to chase these clouts down in time to prevent Mize from scoring. The Chicago Defender wrote that the 10,000 fans in attendance were “startled” by the outcome. Perhaps the Navy was, too. “They wouldn’t let us come back again,” says Radcliffe.

The 1944 team was the best ever assembled at Great Lakes, largely due to an excellent pitching staff. Virgil Trucks went 10-0, en route to a Navy career pitching record of 28-1. His 0.88 ERA was slightly better than Bob Klinger’s 0.93, but a bit behind Si Johnson’s 0.73. Jim Trexler, the only member of the team who never played in the major leagues, went 14-1. The other pitchers were Lynwood “Schoolboy” Rowe and Bill Brandt. Every position player had been, or would become, a major leaguer, and none batted below .340. The lineup consisted of: Johnny McCarthy (1B), Billy Herman (2B), Albie Glossop (SS), Merrill “Pinky” May (3B), “Schoolboy” Rowe and Mizell “Whitey” Platt (platooning in LF), Gene Woodling (CF), DickWest (RF, a catcher in the majors), and Walter Millies (C). Infielder Roy Hartsfield was the only utility player on the Great Lakes squad.

They won their first 23 games of the season before losing, on July 5, to a Ford Motor Company team in Dearborn, Michigan. (The Ford team was managed by Rabbit Maranville, who had played for the Navy’s Atlantic Fleet team during World War 1.) After this defeat, later avenged, they ran off a sixteen-game winning streak, before losing to the Brooklyn Dodgers on August 8. They ended the season with nine straight victories. Against major league teams, they beat the Phillies, Red Sox, Browns, Cubs, White Sox, Giants, and Indians, while losing to the Dodgers. Their overall record was a stunning 48-2.

Trucks thought this team could have won the pennant in either major league. Skipper Mickey Cochrane gave the base newspaper, the Great Lakes Bulletin, the following midseason assessment: “We’ve got a good team. Give me one more outfielder, and an extra infielder and we’d tackle them all—in the American or National League.”

The Black Bluejackets

By the autumn of 1943 enough black sailors had entered Great Lakes for the Navy to begin a black sports program. The first all-Negro team to represent the base was a basketball team in the 1943-44 season. Coached by Stanford’s All-American Forrest Anderson, this squad won 19 of 22 games, outscoring its opponents by an average score of 56-36. Four members of this team, Jim Brown, Larry Doby, Art Grant, and Charley Harmon, later played on the 1944 baseball team.

Many of Doby’s teammates felt that he was better at basketball (and football) than he was at baseball. Later in the war, in the Pacific, Mickey Vernon first noticed Doby’s great athletic ability—on a basketball court, not a baseball diamond. Harmon, whose favorite sport was basketball despite his future career in the National League, had played on the University of Toledo team that made it to the NIT final game against St. John’s University in 1943.

Jim Brown’s later career as basketball coach at DuSable High School in Chicago bespeaks his knowledge of the game. A powerhouse through the 1950s and 1960s, during Brown’s tenure, his 1953 DuSable Panthers became the first all-black team with a black coach to play for the Illinois state high school basketball championship. So it is small wonder that the Great Lakes Negro basketball team got the base sports program off to such a successful start. DePaul University basketball coach Ray Meyer recalls the Great Lakes black team working out at DePaul. Several members of the team inquired about enrolling at the school to play basketball. Meyer had to regretfully decline the offer, since “nobody was playing black players” in those days, and he would not have been able to put together a schedule. “With three or four of them joining big George Mikan, we would have had a team nobody could have touched,” recalls Meyer.

Before the 1944 baseball season began, the Navy took a new tack in addressing the problem of race relations. Focusing on the importance of White officers directly in command of Black sailors, the Navy sought to identify the more mature non-commissioned officers with experience in integrated situations. These NCOs, many of whom had been in charge of physical training and drill instruction, were commissioned as officers and assigned to Black units. The Navy adopted a new official policy which rejected all “theories of racial differences in inborn ability.” To help educate these newly commissioned ensigns, the Navy published, in February 1944, an important booklet entitled Guide to the Command of Negro Naval Personnel. A full decade before the United States Supreme Court’s historic Brown v. Board of Education decision, the Navy explicitly renounced segregation and Jim Crow social arrangements:

The idea of compulsory racial segregation is disliked by almost all Negroes, and literally hated by many. This antagonism is in part a result of the lesson taught the Negro by experience that in spite of the legal formula of “separate but equal” facilities, the facilities open to him under segregation are in fact usually inferior as to location or quality to those available to others.

One of the new officers promoted from the ranks was Elmer J. (“Al”) Pesek, who was commissioned on April 10, 1944. His assignment was to manage Great Lakes’ first all-black baseball team, the Negro Varsity of 1944. It is unlikely that Pesek had heard of any of the players he would be managing, but he soon discovered a promising pool of talent. Some had starred in the Negro Leagues, and others would make their mark in Organized Baseball after the war.

A Navy manual published at the beginning of the season listed the players and their prior baseball affiliations (ages are shown where available):

The New Kensington Elks may not have been much of a team. But the Birmingham Black Barons, Cleveland Buckeyes, Homestead Grays, Newark Eagles, and Pittsburgh Crawfords were established members of the Negro Leagues. The future major league careers of Doby and Harmon vouch for their abilities. Brown, Campbell, Coates, Randall, and Watts all proved to be capable hitters. Herb Bracken would lead the pitching staff with a 13-1 record. And Ensign Pesek knew he had a great pitcher when he told the Great Lakes Bulletin prior to the season that his biggest problem would be finding a catcher able to handle the formidable stuff of John Richard Wright.

At 5’11” and 168 pounds, Wright pitched for Navy ballclubs throughout World War II. After the war, he became the second black player—after Jackie Robinson—to be signed by Branch Rickey to a Dodgers contract. Before the war, he had been an outstanding pitcher for one of the most famous teams in the history of the Negro Leagues: the Homestead Grays. His teammates there included future Hall of Famers Josh Gibson, Cool Papa Bell, and Buck Leonard. In 1943 his record was 30-5, and he started four games in the Negro League World Series, twice shutting out the Birmingham Black Barons on the way to a 4-3 series triumph. He also pitched in the Negro League All-Star game that year, before a record crowd of 51,723 in Chicago’s Comiskey Park. While players such as Richardson, Doby, and Harmon were just beginning their careers while at Great Lakes, John Wright, to those familiar with the Negro Leagues, had already arrived.

The Season

The “Negro Varsity” joined five other teams from various military bases and technical schools in the Chicago area to form the Midwest Servicemen’s League (MSL). A double round-robin was scheduled, with the teams playing other, non-conference games against semipro, industrial, and independent clubs. After the first round of games in the MSL, an all-star team of league members would play against Mickey Cochrane’s Bluejackets on June 17. Seven of Pesek’s black players eventually would be selected to play in this game. However, at no time did the full Great Lakes Negro Varsity play the white Bluejackets. The closest the two teams came to meeting each other came in the last week of April, when rain canceled a scheduled six-inning practice game.

After a practice game in which the Negro Varsity barely defeated Waukegan (Illinois) High School, 1-0, John Wright got the team off to a propitious start, hurling a three-hitter in a 3–2 win over Chanute Field in downstate Rantoul, Illinois. After two more victories, the team lost three straight games to even its record at 3–3. One of these losses was to the Cincinnati-Indianapolis Clowns of the Negro American League. Wright pitched one of his worst games of the season in the 7–5 loss, yielding 11 hits and seven walks. After another three-game winning streak, the team missed a chance to defeat the Douglass Aircraft nine on June 6 when, as the base newspaper informed its readers, the game “was postponed because of the Invasion.”

On June 14 Ensign Pesek sent John Wright to the mound against Ft. Custer in Battle Creek, Michigan. In a tough loss, Wright drove in both Great Lakes runs with a home run as the team lost, 3–2. Wright gave up only four hits, but Ft. Custer benefited from five Great Lakes errors plus some questionable umpiring. “With the bases full in the ninth inning,” according to the Great Lakes Bulletin, “John Wright hit a pop fly to Peanuts Lowry, former Chicago Cub. The umpire refused to call it an infield fly. Lowry trapped the ball, forced Charles Harmon at home and then William Campbell was doubled.” All three of Ft. Custer’s runs came in the sixth inning, two of them unearned due to a throwing error by Wright. This loss dropped the black Bluejackets’ record to 6-4.

Herb Bracken, Jim Brown, Leroy Clayton, Larry Doby, Charley Harmon, William “Sonny” Randall, and Wright were chosen to represent the Great Lakes Negro Varsity on the MSL’s all-star team that played the white Bluejackets three days later. Tall, slender righthander “Doc” Bracken took the mound that day to face a ballclub that had mowed down every opponent in its path to that point. In a game that the soft-spoken St. Louis native modestly recalls today as “one of the better games I pitched that year,” Bracken hurled a brilliant one-hitter, but lost the game, 3–0. The lone hit was a second-inning double by Johnny McCarthy, who then took third on what was ruled a passed ball. Bracken says he tried to sneak a quick-pitch by the hitter, but crossed up catcher Leroy Clayton instead. McCarthy later scored on a double-play grounder by Dick West. Bob Klinger pitched for Cochrane’s team and held the all-stars to four hits. But the story of the game was Bracken. Years later Larry Doby would recall this game as proof of how the Navy’s policies of segregation unfairly deprived blacks of the chance to represent the base in sports. Several members of the team recall trying to play especially well in this game, not because they were playing against White major leaguers, but because they were playing against a good team. Like athletes everywhere, they bore down whenever they faced a good opponent.

On July 8, Wright pitched a seven-inning no-hitter against the Naval Aviation School at 87th and Anthony in Chicago. He struck out ten, walked two, and drove in three runs in the 14–1 shellacking.

On July 12, the sailors avenged their earlier loss to Ft. Custer (and Peanuts Lowry) with a 1–0 victory at Constitution Field, scoring the game’s only run with two out in the ninth inning. After three more wins, the team traveled to Rantoul, Illinois, and beat Chanute Field, 5–2. “Trailing 2-0 with two out in the sixth,” reported the Great Lakes Bulletin, “the Negro nine went ahead with four successive home runs by Larry Doby, Charley Harmon, Bill Randall, and Jim Brown. Brown squeezed Harmon home for the fifth run in the ninth.”

After an easy win at Urbana against the University of Illinois Signal School, the black Bluejackets clinched the MSL title by defeating Glenview NAS, 6-2, before 10,000 spectators at Great Lakes’ Constitution Field. Bracken yielded six hits as he won his seventh game of the season. Larry Doby hit a home run, and Andy Watts hit a double and two singles, as the team improved its record to 20–7.

The Negro Varsity won eight of its last ten games to finish the season with a record of 32–10. They played one game in front of 25,000 fans in Cleveland’s Municipal Stadium. After splitting two games against the Colored Athletics in Grand Rapids, Michigan, they defeated the Negro Leagues’ Chicago American Giants, 5-2, in East Chicago, Indiana.

Other games that Pesek’s black Bluejackets played in 1944 are lost from the historical record. Bracken and Watts recall the House of David as being the best team they faced that year, even better than Cochrane’s. Jim Brown says that they also played a barnstorming team that included Satchel Paige and Dizzy Dean. None of these games—and who knows how many others?—were reported by the press.

The Great Lakes Bulletin did not print the season statistics for the Negro Varsity, as it did for the White Bluejackets. It did point out that Wright’s final record was 16-4, and that Bracken led the staff with a 13-1 record. While stationed at Pearl Harbor, Bracken received a handsome trophy from the Navy for his 1944 accomplishments. Charley Harmon was the team’s leading hitter. The Navy presented the MSL championship team members with rings. After the war, when Andy Watts showed his Cleveland Buckeyes teammate, Sam Jethroe, the Navy ring, Jethroe said it was better than the one he received for being a member of the Buckeye team that won the Negro World Series in 1945.

The winds of war dispersed the Great Lakes Negro Varsity baseball team for good shortly after the season ended. Some players never left the United States, while others were sent to the Pacific. Several played on integrated teams later in their Navy careers. Bracken, for example, was one of two black players on a team in Pearl Harbor. Watts played on an all-Black team in an otherwise White league on Guam, where he hit .519 while playing against major league veterans Pee Wee Reese, Hal White, Johnny Rigney, and Mace Brown. (One of Watts’ teammates on Guam was Charley Harmon’s brother, William.)

During the long decades of segregated baseball, there always remained a slender thread of contact between the races on the diamond with exhibition and training games. The military service teams during World War II continued this legacy and expanded upon it. Many major league players played with or against blacks for the first time during their military careers. By no means was integrated baseball limited to the Navy. In 1945 the Army organized a well-publicized tournament of teams representing the European and Mediterranean Theaters of Operation. Upwards of 50,000 GI’s watched such Negro League stars as Willard Brown, Leon Day, and Joe Greene participate in the championship finals in Nuremberg.

Epilogue

On February 27, 1946, the Navy issued the following order:

Effective immediately, all restrictions governing the types of assignments for which Negro naval personnel are eligible are hereby lifted. Henceforth, they shall be eligible for all types of assignments in all ratings in all activities and all ships of the Naval Service. . . . In the utilization of housing, messing and other facilities, no special or unusual provisions will be made for the accommodation of Negroes.

Nineteen days later, Jackie Robinson walked to the plate in Jersey City, New Jersey, for his first at-bat as a member of the Montreal Royals.

JERRY MALLOY (1946–2000) was a pioneer researcher who has been honored by the creation of an annual Negro League Conference named for him, as well as a book prize. His first great contribution to baseball history was “Out at Home: Baseball Draws the Color Line, 1887.” This monumentally important essay, published in The National Pastime in 1983, transformed our understanding of Black baseball and won commendation from C. Vann Woodward, the preeminent historian of American race relations. Malloy’s subsequent work included a contextual republication of Sol White’s “History of Colored Baseball with Other Documents on the Early Black Game, 1886–1936.” The late Jules Tygiel, also a Chadwick Award recipient, said of him, “His articles for SABR were pathbreaking and exceptional and rank among the very best this organization has ever published. Even more so, I doubt that the best among us have ever been as generous with their research and support as was Jerry.”

In the fall of 1933, the Detroit Tigers had just completed a 75-79 season, good for fifth place in the American League, 25 games behind the Washington Senators. The Tigers were still searching for that elusive first world championship; their most recent trip to the World Series having been in 1909. The club hadn’t been in serious contention since 1916, when Ty Cobb, Sam Crawford, and Bobby Veach roamed the outfield in Detroit. With two games left in the 1933 season, manager Bucky Harris had handed in his resignation on September 27. Tiger owner Frank Navin was suddenly in the market for a new skipper for his team.

He knew he needed a strong leader to light a spark under his perennially lethargic club. The Tiger locker room had taken on the atmosphere of a country club in recent years. But in addition to the club’s on-the-field problems, the Depression had caused attendance at Navin Field to drop to a third of what it had been ten years earlier. Navin had contemplated selling the franchise. Ty Cobb was reportedly involved in an effort to purchase the team, but it never came to fruition. So the Tigers boss had three crises to deal with: Finding a manager, improving the team, and boosting attendance.

Navin felt he had the answer to all three problems in the Yankees’ Babe Ruth. The Sultan of Swat, who would be 39 in 1934, was clearly nearing the end of the line as a player, but he still had some pop left in his bat. He had hit .301 with 34 home runs and 104 RBIs for New York in 1933. Good numbers, certainly, for just about anyone not named Ruth. For several years, Ruth had made no bones about his interest in becoming the New York manager. The Yankees owner, Colonel Jacob Ruppert, however, did not reciprocate that interest, and in fact was seeking to be rid of Ruth altogether. Yankees manager Joe McCarthy and star first baseman Lou Gehrig, were barely on speaking terms with the home-run king, so perhaps Ruppert reasoned that dumping Ruth would be addition by subtraction. That’s where Navin saw an opening.

Ruppert gave Navin permission to talk to Ruth about the Detroit managerial job. During the World Series that fall, Navin and Yankees general manager Ed Barrow discussed the framework of an arrangement that would have allowed Ruth to become the Tigers’ player-manager. Navin contacted Ruth by telephone, requesting that he come quickly to Detroit in order to work out the details. Ruth anticipated being offered the job, but nonetheless didn’t appear to be in any hurry to sit down with Navin. The Bambino put the meeting on hold in order to travel to Hawaii with his wife, Claire. Apparently, he had a commitment to play in a golf tournament, along with a few baseball exhibitions. Ruth abruptly ended the telephone call by saying that they could get together when he returned from the trip.

Upon hearing about this, Barrow warned Ruth, “You’re making a mistake. You’d better go see him now.” “There’s plenty of time,” Ruth replied. “The season doesn’t begin for six months. I’ve got these things all set in Hawaii. I’ll call him when I get back.”1 Perhaps Ruth felt that he was a lock for the job, and that he could afford to make Navin wait. If that was the case, Ruth had overplayed his hand. The Tigers owner wanted to get the deal settled, and didn’t appreciate such flippant treatment from a ballplayer.

While in Hawaii, Ruth did get around to corresponding with Navin, but it did not go well. Navin was put off by Ruth’s salary demands, as well as his desire for a percentage of the gate. The Tigers owner suddenly grew cool to the whole idea, and walked away from a deal.

It may have been the best move he never made.

This being the Depression, the Tigers were not the only team facing financial difficulties. In Philadelphia the Athletics were losing money as well. Attendance at Shibe Park had been steadily plummeting, from 839,176 in the World Series-winning pre-Depression year of 1929 to 297,138 in 1933. To stay afloat, Athletics owner/manager Connie Mack was desperately trying to cut expenses. He had already begun by trading slugger Al Simmons and two other players to the Chicago White Sox for $100,000 in 1932. As recently as August of 1933, Navin had asked Mack to “put a price on (Mickey) Cochrane,” the Athletics’ star catcher. “Forget it, Frank,” was Mack’s reply at the time. “I’d never sell him.”2 Navin assumed that was the end of it. After the season, however, Mack made it known to his fellow owners that he was willing to part with Cochrane, as well as ace hurler Lefty Grove, in a package deal for $200,000. He found no takers; such an asking price was too high for any team in that financial climate.

It was at this point that H.G. Salsinger, a Detroit News sportswriter, helped to change the course of baseball in Detroit. Salsinger was somewhat of a confidant of Navin. He told the owner that Cochrane would not only solve the team’s catching problems, but would also be the answer to the vacant managerial position, providing the leadership that was so lacking on the team. Salsinger had bounced the idea off Cochrane and Cochrane had told him, “I’d like nothing better.”3 Based on this information, Navin began pursuing discussions with Mack regarding Cochrane. According to Mack: “I saw this was Mickey’s chance. I owed him something extra for his loyalty, so I just couldn’t stand in his way when he could better himself. That’s the only reason I ever let Mickey leave me.”4 Mack still wanted $100,000 for Cochrane, though, and Navin did not have that type of money on hand. So he borrowed the money from his partner, Walter Briggs, which started the ball rolling.

On December 12, 1933, Mack had a busy day. He sold Grove, leadoff man extraordinaire Max Bishop, and 17-game-winner Rube Walberg, to the Boston Red Sox for $125,000 and two inconsequential players. He also finalized the deal with the Tigers, who acquired Cochrane in exchange for catcher Johnny Pasek and $100,000. Finally, he sent Pasek and former 20-game-winner and World Series hero George Earnshaw to the Chicago White Sox for $20,000 and Charlie Berry, who would remind no one of Cochrane as the Athletics’ new catcher. It was one of the darkest days in Philadelphia baseball history, but one of the brightest for the Detroit Tigers.

An excited Cochrane exclaimed “I’ll be happy to manage the Tigers for Mr. Navin, who impresses me as a great fellow and a man who will help me build. He said he’d give me a chance and his record proves it, as Hughie Jennings was there for many years, Ty Cobb for six years, and Bucky Harris for five. I see no reason why I can’t make the grade as a manager.”5

The addition of Cochrane was the catalyst through which the Tigers’ fortunes drastically improved. Cochrane had played with Philadelphia for nine seasons, including three trips to the World Series, winning in 1929 and 1930. He had been the league’s MVP in 1928. Although his years in Philadelphia had established him as a star player, the time Cochrane spent in Detroit would propel him to near-legendary status in the Motor City and beyond. He spent only four years in Detroit, but his competitive nature and leadership abilities resurrected the Tigers franchise to elite status while they played championship baseball.

In some ways Cochrane was not ready to be a playing manager for the Tigers. He did not like the limelight that the position brought to his life, and the light only got brighter as he began his tenure. From the very beginning, however, Cochrane displayed a winning attitude. After all, that is what he was accustomed to from his time in Philadelphia. He expected the Tigers to have the same attitude from the very beginning, and he wasted no time in trying to instill his way of thinking.

From the day he arrived in Detroit in January of 1934, Cochrane began spreading the word about the Tigers turning the page and becoming a contender again. He made the circuit of luncheons, banquets, social gatherings, and newspaper interviews. Cochrane was confident but not cocky. At a Kiwanis Club luncheon, he asserted, “I played with the Athletics for nine years and in that time we never finished out of the first division and I do not intend to do so now.” At another engagement he remarked, “I’m not foolish enough to expect a pennant the first season and maybe not the second, but I promise you an improved team.”6

Once spring training began, Cochrane didn’t waste any time instilling a new attitude in the Tigers. One of the local headlines read, “Cochrane Cracks Training Whip to Get Tigers into Fighting Trim.” He added 20 minutes of calisthenics to the routine of training camp. He conducted clinics on the fundamentals of sliding and defensive positioning. He imposed a midnight curfew and had a 9:00 A.M. wakeup call for the three-hour morning practices, which started not a minute after 10:30. He even ordered the hotel chef that “no man may order more than one steak a day.”7

One of the changes Cochrane made was a symbolic one. Before the 1930 season, the Tigers had done away with the classic Old English “D” on the front of their home jerseys. The logo had been worn since the club’s early days, including during their pennant-winning run of 1907-09. The new look apparently didn’t do much for Cochrane. He saw to it that the Old English “D” was put back on the uniforms and caps, in hopes that it would restore the Tigers’ champion pedigree. Indeed, there was a new boss in town, and baseball in Detroit was about to undergo a seismic change.

Cochrane’s new attitude quickly rubbed off on the rest of the Tigers. He made the players believe in themselves, and once the summer heated up, so did the team. More and more fans began coming back to Navin Field, as the ballpark became a place where they could watch some exciting baseball and forget about the worries of the Depression for a couple of hours. The Tigers led the American League in attendance in 1934 with 919,161, their highest mark since 1924, and nearly triple their total of 1933.

One of the biggest beneficiaries of Cochrane’s arrival was the young Detroit pitching staff. In particular, Cochrane is credited with turning the 24-year-old Schoolboy Rowe from a thrower into a pitcher. Rowe, in only his second big-league season in 1934, compiled a 24-8 record. Another second-year man, Elden Auker, won 15. Tommy Bridges improved from 14 wins to 22. The staff was one of the biggest keys to the Tigers’ success, as the team finished with a record of 101-53, seven games ahead of the Yankees, to capture the American League pennant.

As for Cochrane in 1934, he averaged .320 and was named the league’s Most Valuable Player for the second time in his career (having also won in 1928). Despite Lou Gehrig’s having won the Triple Crown that season, Cochrane’s success as a player and a manager helped sway the voters in his favor.

After the pennant-winning 1934 season, Packard Motor Car Company president Alvan Macauley chimed in: “The Tigers have been an inspiration not only to this community but to this whole country. It was their never-say-die, refuse to be licked spirit that brought them through and that is the spirit Detroit needs and America needs today.”8 Cochrane said, however, that “Too much of the credit has been given to me. It belongs equally on the shoulders of these stalwart lads. No one man but all of them, playing as a smooth working unit, made this possible, this happy night of celebration possible.”9

The Tigers lost the 1934 World Series to the St. Louis Cardinals in seven games, despite having led three games to two. The loss was a crusher. The Tigers, and the city of Detroit, felt that there was some unfinished business to attend to come spring of 1935. …

JOHN MILNER grew up in Michigan before moving to Texas in 1990. He has been a Tigers fan throughout his life due to the strong in uence of his grandfathers and dad, who instilled a love of the team in him from an early age. He work has appeared in “Sock It To ’Em Tigers: The Incredible Story of the 1968 Detroit Tigers” and “Detroit Tigers 1984: What a Start! What a Finish!” John would like to dedicate his contribution to this book to his grandfathers, John H. Milner and  omas Mullennix, who  lled his head with stories of Schoolboy Rowe, Mickey Cochrane, Hank Greenberg, Goose Goslin, and the rest of the Tigers from this era. While growing up, John listened to Ernie Harwell describing Tigers games on the radio on many humid summer evenings in Michigan. He is currently a high-school counselor in Kerrville, Texas. He and Yvette, his beautiful wife, have two wonderful children, J.T. and Olivia.

Sources

Bevis, Charles, Mickey Cochrane: The Life of a Baseball Hall of Fame Catcher. (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland Press, 1998).

Lowe, John, “Mickey Cochrane Tied Historically to Detroit Tigers & Oakland Athletics ALDS,” Detroit Free Press, October 4, 2013.

The Sporting News

Baseball-reference.com

Bevis, Charlie, “Mickey Cochrane,” The Baseball Biography Project. sabr.org/bioproj/person/a80307f0

Klumpp, Jeremy, “The Trade for Mickey Cochrane.” groundruledouble.wordpress.com

Baseball Hall of Fame Library, Player File for Mickey Cochrane.

Notes

While addressing the crowd at Cooperstown’s Doubleday Field during Hall of Fame weekend later that summer, Thomas Tull, the film’s producer — whose credits range from The Dark Knight to The Hangover to Ninja Assassin — observed that 42 is “the most important film I’ll ever do.” And he added: “After making Batman, Superman, and other superhero movies, the greatest ‘superhero’ movie that could be made is about Jackie Robinson.”1

Yet this recent Jackie film is not the first.2 Way back in 1950 — 63 years earlier — the ballplayer’s struggles were depicted in The Jackie Robinson Story. That film may cover essentially the same territory as 42, but the earlier version is a mirror of its era and a valuable social history. Beyond the rare pleasure of seeing the real number 42 playing himself and reciting his lines, the scenario deals with issues that transcend singles, doubles, and dingers. The Jackie Robinson Story dates from the dawn of the civil rights movement; when it was released, 21-year-old Martin Luther King Jr. had recently received his B.A. from Morehouse College and was a second-year student at Crozer Theological Seminary. Brown v. Board of Education was four years in the future and the signing into law of the Voting Rights Act would be 15. No one could foretell the scope of the demand by black Americans to embrace equal rights with white Americans, but Hollywood, after years of marginalizing black characters, was belatedly acknowledging its biased depiction of African-Americans; previously, the industry consistently had trivialized them as stereotypical mammies and janitors, train porters and shoeshine boys whose eyes popped out of their heads while they fractured the English language.

The Jackie Robinson Story put forth the idea that for every exclusionary bigot in America, there is a man who is fair and humane, a man who would judge Jackie solely on his performance between the foul lines. In other words, for every racist, there is a Branch Rickey. The Jackie Robinson Story heralded a new, refreshing — and, by 1950s standards, radical — celluloid depiction of black Americans and racism American-style. Plus, its star was not the lone future Hall of Famer appearing onscreen. Dick Williams, then a 20-year-old Brooklyn minor leaguer, is in two sequences, playing two different roles. “First, I was a second baseman,” he recalled. “They shot that in one day. The next day, they needed a pitcher. So I did that, too.”3 In the film, there is extensive footage of Williams as the Jersey City hurler who pitches to Jackie in his first minor league game.

Of course, not all Brooklyn-centric baseball films highlight Jackie Robinson, or even the Dodgers. Rhubarb (1951) is a slapstick about a tough, spirited alley cat who is taken in by the eccentric millionaire owner of the big-league Brooklyn Loons. Upon his master’s demise, Rhubarb becomes the principal heir, inheriting $30-million — not to mention those lovable Loons. Baseball also plays a small but significant role in The Chosen (1982), an adaptation of the Chaim Potok novel. The setting is World War II and the story opens with boys playing ball in a Brooklyn schoolyard. One team is consists of Americanized Jews while the other is made up of Hasidic Jews; their competition illustrates their collective assimilation into the American mainstream at a time when those left behind in Europe were being slaughtered by Adolf Hitler.

But films like Rhubarb and The Chosen are the exceptions. Prior to the Dodgers abandoning Brooklyn for the California orange groves, the borough and its big league nine were inexorably linked by Hollywood. On occasion, they were united in entire films, while other storylines only featured Dodgers references or sequences. As a whole, however, these films capture the flavor of baseball Ebbets Field-style, with the wear-your-emotions-on-your-sleeve enthusiasm of the Dodgers diehards.

Perhaps the quintessential Brooklyn baseball film is one that is little-seen and barely remembered. Though the names of Hall of Famers Christy Mathewson, Walter Johnson, Dazzy Vance, Grover Cleveland Alexander, and Tony Lazzeri are casually dropped into the script, neither the Dodgers nor Ebbets Field are cited by name. Still, It Happened in Flatbush (1942) embodies the essence of the borough during a long-ago era. Though the on-screen image is that of the Brooklyn Bridge, the opening credits feature a soundtrack of “Take Me Out to the Ball Game.”

The scenario charts what happens when Frank Maguire (Lloyd Nolan), a washed-up ex-ballplayer who “used to be shortstop for Brooklyn,” is resurrected as the team’s skipper. Upon his hiring, the team’s owner tells Maguire: “See you in New York” — and he is quick to respond: “Not New York. Brooklyn.” The woman who eventually inherits the club is no baseball fan. We know this because she resides in Manhattan, whose residents are referred to as “foreigners.” And Brooklyn is labeled “the best baseball town in America,” with its residents loudly, endlessly arguing — and not just about sports. But bats and balls are at the core of the story. One fan even rushes onto the field to belt an umpire, while another proudly declares: “Baseball belongs to the people, and the Brooklyn team belongs to us.”

The Dodgers are cited by name in other period titles. Once Upon a Honeymoon (1942) stars Ginger Rogers as a Brooklynite who came of age near Ebbets Field and who quips: “Foul balls used to light in my backyard” before sighing “Dem lovely Bums.” The opening sequence in Arsenic and Old Lace (1944) features loudmouthed Dodgers fanatics and brawling players at Ebbets Field. The It Happened in Brooklyn (1947) scenario stresses that every genuine Brooklynite knows that the Ebbets address is “Bedford and Sullivan”; upon arriving home after four years in the military, Brooklynite Frank Sinatra immediately spots a poster advertising a ballgame (“Game Today Ebbets Field Dodgers vs. Cubs”). The musical The West Point Story (1950) includes a “Brooklyn” production number, one of whose lines is: “They know my shield from Ebbets Field to Cheyenne…” The Dodgers first — and lone — World Series title is acknowledged in The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit (1956), the tale of a stressed-out suburbanite (Gregory Peck) who travels into Manhattan by train every workday. On one occasion, the man sitting beside him dourly declares: “There’s no use trying. I just can’t get used to it.” “Used to what?” he asks. His fellow commuter responds: “The idea of the Brooklyn Dodgers as world champions.”

Big Leaguer (1953) was made two years after Bobby Thomson’s shot-heard-round-the-world resulted in the Dodgers’ embracing defeat yet again. Though the film is New York Giants-centric — with Edward G. Robinson playing “Hans” Lobert, an ex-big leaguer who runs a Giants’ Melbourne, Florida tryout camp — the finale features a game between the Giants prospects and Dodgers rookies. The Brooklynites are leading, 7–4, in the ninth inning when Carl Hubbell, on hand to evaluate Lobert’s players, offers insight into the heart of baseball by observing: “The game’s now getting interesting.”

Among all the actors who’ve played fans of all stripes, the one who embodies the essence of the baseball zealot is William Bendix. Certainly, Bendix’s role in baseball movies extends way beyond his characterization of The Bambino in The Babe Ruth Story (1948) — arguably one of the worst-ever baseball biopics. For indeed, during World War II, one of the character types found in a typical military unit in a typical Hollywood war movie is played most memorably by Bendix: the energetic Brooklynite, a lovable “woiking class” Joe who endlessly blabs on about Dem Bums while bullets from the guns of the heinous “Japs” and “Krauts” zip by overhead. For after all, weren’t our boys in uniform battling Hitler, Tojo, and Mussolini to preserve baseball as much as mom’s apple pie and the red, white, and blue?

In Guadalcanal Diary (1943), Bendix plays Taxi Potts, an affable jokester and Brooklyn cabbie-turned-US Marine. The film opens with Potts and his fellow GIs on board a transport somewhere in the South Pacific, heading for a Japanese beachhead. “If I was back home, I wouldn’t be on no boat…,” he quips. “Ebbets Field. That’s for me. Watchin’ them beautiful Bums… Just leadin’ the league… That’s all, just leadin’ the league… You got any dough which says the Yanks’ll take the Bums in the Series?” (The year is 1942 and, later on, the Marines listen to a World Series radio report in which the Bronx nine faces off against… the St. Louis Cardinals!) But Potts’s Dodgers devotion is endless. Just before landing at Guadalcanal, he admits: “…times like these kinda make me wish I was back in Brooklyn, drivin’ my cab with the fast meter and keepin’ an eye on them Bums.” While digging a foxhole, he notes: “Maybe if we dig deep enough, we’ll come up somewhere around Ebbets Field.”

Not all of Bendix’s Borough of Churches characters are in the military. In Lifeboat (1944), he plays Gus Smith, a stoker on a freighter destroyed by a German U-boat. “What a day for a ballgame,” he feverishly declares while struggling to maintain his sanity on the lifeboat. The Cardinals may be “the team to watch this year” because they “got hitters… Stan Musial’s been clubbin’ ’em,” but he adds: “If the Dodgers only had a guy like Ernie Bonham, or even Johnny Humphries.” He then conjures up a fictional game between Brooklyn and Pittsburgh. The pitching matchup will “probably be [Whitlow] Wyatt for the Dodgers, [Rip] Sewell for the Pirates. I think I’ll take Rosie (to) Ebbets Field. It’s gonna be a good game this afternoon.”

The actor also portrays a baseball-loving Brooklynite in a trio of Hal Roach “streamliners”: films with lengths between that of a short subject and feature. Their titles are Brooklyn Orchid (1942); The McGuerins from Brooklyn, also known as Two Mugs from Brooklyn (1943); and Taxi, Mister (1943), all of which chart the misadventures of Tim McGuerin (Bendix) and Eddie Corbett (Joe Sawyer), the rough-hewn but affable co-owners of a Brooklyn taxi company.

The McGuerins from Brooklyn may have been advertised as a comedy in which Bendix and Sawyer “…Bat Out Laughs Like the Dodgers Bat Out Runs,” but baseball is most prevalent in Taxi, Mister. The scenario has McGuerin pitching on a sandlot ball team; Corbett is the catcher; their nine is named for one of the most celebrated Brooklyn neighborhoods: Flatbush. A mobster plots to do in McGuerin during a game but, in a sequence which ends in a free-for-all, the pitcher’s ability to throw a wicked curveball allows him to knock out the bad guy.

On other occasions, real-life Dodgers show up onscreen. Whistling in Brooklyn (1943) stars Red Skelton as a popular radio sleuth who is involved in off-the-air murder and mayhem; he comes to Ebbets Field and mixes with Leo Durocher, Arky Vaughan, Ducky Medwick, and Billy Herman, among others. Plus, as Herman comes to bat, who should appear on-camera but the inimitable Hilda Chester, Dodgers fan extraordinaire. (Hilda, Leo, Pee Wee Reese, Pete Reiser, Eddie Stanky, and Red Barber appear in Brooklyn, I Love You, a Paramount short subject spotlighting the Dodgers’ 1946 campaign.) Billy Loes, Carl Erskine, Russ Meyer, and Roy Campanella play themselves in Roogie’s Bump (1954), a Rookie of the Year precursor involving a little boy who, via the maneuvering of Red O’Malley, a deceased Dodgers pitching star, becomes the “miracle kid with the super zoom ball” who fires horsehides with the “speed of light.” Walter O’Malley is not to be seen but his influence is obvious, as hurler O’Malley is nothing less than saintly, and even is patronizingly referred to as the “Great O’Malley.”

Three years later, the Dodgers abandoned Brooklyn and O’Malley no longer was “great” — at least in the souls of Brooklynites. Sweet Smell of Success came to theaters in June 1957, scant months before the team’s Brooklyn swan song. In the film, slimy press agent Sidney Falco (Tony Curtis) tells the secretary of ruthless newspaper columnist J.J. Hunsecker (Burt Lancaster): “Don’t try to sell me the Brooklyn Bridge. I happen to know it belongs to the Dodgers.” But Falco was of course dead-wrong. This repartee is contrasted to another Tony Curtis film: Some Like It Hot (1959), which is set in Chicago in 1929. The following dialogue may be lost on twenty-first-century viewers who are neither baseball, movie, nor American history savvy, but it resonated with then-contemporary moviegoers. At one point, saxophonist Joe (Curtis) queries his pal Jerry (Jack Lemmon), a double-bass player: “Jerry boy, why do you have to paint everything so black?… Suppose the stock market crashes. Suppose Mary Pickford divorces Douglas Fairbanks. Suppose the Dodgers leave Brooklyn…”4

For decades after their departure, Brooklyn Dodgers nostalgia permeated American movies. In Kramer vs. Kramer (1979), a father (Dustin Hoffman) who hails from the borough tells his son (Justin Henry) about his childhood: “We listened to the radio… We didn’t have diet soda. We had egg creams… We didn’t have the Mets, but we had the Brooklyn Dodgers. And we had the Polo Grounds. And we had Ebbets Field. Oh boy, those were the days.” Fact and fiction merge in Simple Men (1992), featuring a central character who was the Dodgers’ all-star shortstop during the 1950s — and who is decidedly not Pee Wee Reese. After his playing career ended, the ballplayer (known as “Dad,” played by John MacKay) became an anarchist who allegedly tossed a bomb at the Pentagon during the late 1960s, killing seven people. But in no way is his baseball career marginalized. “I saw your father play with the Dodgers back in ’56,” a cop tells one of his sons. “He was the greatest shortstop who ever lived, no matter what anyone says about him.”

Brooklyn (2015), based on Colm Tóibín’s novel and set in the early 1950s, is the story of Eilis Lacey (Saoirse Ronan), a shy Irish lass who leaves her smalltown home, sets off for America, and settles in the title borough. Once there, Eilis is pursued romantically by Tony (Emory Cohen), a blue-collar Brooklynite of Italian extraction who lives and breathes Dodger-blue. At one point, Eilis is told that she will “have to go to Ebbets Field if you want to see (Tony) in the summer.” She then asks Tony: “They’re that important to you?” And he responds: “Put it this way, if our kids end up supporting the Yankees or the Giants, it would break my heart.”

A far less misty-eyed take is found in Smoke and Blue in the Face (both 1995), based on works by Newark, New Jersey native and longtime Brooklyn resident Paul Auster, which offer portraits of the borough pre-gentrification. At one point, one of its characters, who is old enough to recall the Dodgers in Brooklyn, tellingly explains: “If there was probably a childhood trauma that I had, other than the Dodgers leaving Brooklyn which, if you think about it, is a reason why some of us are imbued with a cynicism that we never recovered from. Obviously, you’re not a Mets fan and you can’t possibly be a Yankee fan. So baseball is eliminated from your life, because of being born in Brooklyn.” And he concludes: “Maybe I don’t like baseball because the Dodgers aren’t here anymore…”

The title character in The Angriest Man in Brooklyn (2014) is no grouchy golden ager who also misses Dem Bums. He is Henry Altmann (Robin Williams), a perpetually enraged (not to mention terminally-ill) individual. Altmann is surrounded by hostile, endlessly kvetching Brooklynites; however, a once-upon-a-happier-time is represented in a black-and-white photo of two Dodgers jacket-clad boys posing with their father in Ebbets Field.5

Finally, during the 2016 presidential race, My X-Girlfriend’s Wedding Reception (1999), an otherwise obscure low-budget throwaway, became a hot online ticket. The reason: Playing a rabbi named Manny Shevitz — remember, this is a comedy — is none other than Bernie Sanders. He is billed as “Congressman Bernie Sanders” and his yarmulke-clad character addresses the wedding guests by observing: “Today we celebrate life: a very sacred part of life.” That’s fair enough, coming from a rabbi. But then Rabbi Manny, after declaring that he, like the man who plays him, was born and bred in Brooklyn, goes on a riff about the tragedy of the Dodgers leaving the Borough of Churches. Then, as if addressing a convention of sports fans rather than a wedding party, he segues into a criticism of baseball free agency.

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

Notes

1. http://wamc.org/post/rob-edelman-now.

2. Robinson also is the central character in two made-for-TV movies. Andre Braugher plays him in The Court-Martial of Jackie Robinson (1990), involving his plight upon refusing to move to the back of a bus while in the US Army during World War II. Blair Underwood plays him in Soul of the Game (1996), centering on his interaction with Satchel Paige and Josh Gibson at the time of his signing by Branch Rickey. In Blue in the Face (1995), Keith David appears as the ghost of Jackie Robinson. And in Spike Lee’s Do the Right Thing (1989), Mookie the pizza delivery guy (played by Lee) comes to work garbed in a number 42 jersey. But Jackie is missing from another TV movie: It’s Good to Be Alive (1974), a Roy Campanella biopic.

3. Rob Edelman. “The Jackie Robinson Story: A Reflection of Its Era,” NINE: A Journal of Baseball History & Culture, Fall 2011, 40–55.

4. A link between Brooklyn past and present is found in Captain America: The First Avenger (2011), which is written up in detail in “More Baseball in Non-Baseball Films,” published in the Spring 2015 issue of the Baseball Research Journal (76–82). To summarize: The time is World War II and Brooklyn-born 90-pound weakling Steve Rogers (Chris Evans) has been transformed into the muscular title character. At one point, he hears a Dodgers-Phillies game broadcast on the radio from Ebbets Field. Only there’s a problem. The scenario may be set during the war, but this particular contest was played pre-Pearl Harbor: in May 1941. He knows this because he was in the stands; the fictional Steve Rogers was one of the 12,941 fans on hand that day. Something is amiss … and this knowledge on Rogers’s part further propels the plot.

5. Pictured in the 1955 photo is five-year-old Phil Alden Robinson (the director of The Angriest Man in Brooklyn as well as Field of Dreams), his older brother, and their father.

Prior to the assignment of two umpires to handle a game, it must have been very lonely and threatening for the man who had to face two hostile ball cubs and the fans of communities who took the successes and failures of their local heroes very seriously. The running game characteristic of baseball in its early years surely made it impossible for one official to make an accurate judgment on every play during the course of a game. So controversy was inevitable.

The New York State League was a typical lower minor league at the turn of the century. This league was successfully reorganized in 1899 through the singular efforts of John Farrell, who was to be involved in minor league baseball for many years. Farrell served as president of the “State” league until its demise in 1917. He also was president of the New York-Penn League from 1923 to 1929, as well as being a founder of the National Association and serving as its secretary-treasurer until 1931.

The New York State League was not a fly-by-night operation under inept leadership. Thus, it might serve to offer some generalizations regarding what problems had to be overcome before the professional status of the umpire could be firmly established. Perhaps what was true in the New York State League was true of the minor leagues in general.

The State League’s second year of operation is most useful in this regard. Game accounts and “baseball notes” columns are replete with incidents concerning the low regard in which umpires were held. In fact, the newspapers of three league cities, Albany, Troy, and Schenectady, agreed that “1900 will go down in baseball annals as the stormiest year in the history of the national game.” The Albany Journal held that “the umpire who escapes a slugging has exceptional luck.” In July, the Albany Times-Union went so far as to conclude that “rowdyism and the abuse of umpires has so increased that it is about time for this kind of business to be cut out or it will eventually put the national game on the `Rappahannock.'”

At the beginning of the 1900 season President Farrell made a good start in bringing order and discipline to his four man umpiring corps. He published a list of 17 rules for league officials. Several of these rules illustrate what must have been previous difficulties with the conduct of the arbiters themselves. The umpires were to provide themselves with a dark blue uniform and cap to match, to report on the field at game time under penalty of a $10 fine or dismissal, to report in “fit” condition subject to fine, to permit no rowdyism, profanity or any “act offensive to patrons.” Further, umpires were instructed not to “divulge your schedule to managers, captains, players or anyone.” Finally:

“Always remember that you are the personal representatives of the

league, engaged to enforce all rules and so conduct all contests as

to reflect credit upon yourself and the league organization. You

have absolute authority.”

So much for good intentions. President Farrell himself must bear some of the responsibility for the deteriorating conditions which followed. On May 24, he allowed heavyweight boxing champion Jim Jeffries to officiate a league game in Albany between that club and Schenectady. The game drew 4,000 spectators which was probably the major factor in Farrell’s decision. Jeffries umpired bases while Dan Ryan officiated behind the plate. More on Ryan later. The professional status of any task is difficult to achieve if the appearance is given that anyone can perform that task. Any profession requires that the performer possess some basic qualifications and experience.

Farrell was also remiss in a very important function of a league president: that of protecting his umpires. Several cases of physical assaults on umpires during the season resulted in no reported player or manager fines or suspensions. One assaulting player was one of Albany’s top pitchers, Talbot, who, insofar as it could be determined, did not miss his regular turn on the mound. In July, Schenectady club president Hathaway banned umpire Denny Houle from the grounds and the local newspaper reported that “the Schenectady public may rest assured that it has seen the last of Houle in an official capacity”. The following day two players handled the game and Farrell announced that a substitute for Houle would be procured. Houle did appear again in Schenectady, in August, in an “official capacity”.

The authority which Farrell vested in the umpires at the beginning of the season was obviously not real. A few days after this episode President Farrell instructed his umpires “to be more particular about rowdy ball playing and to put any player out of the game who violates the rules”. The president acknowledged at a league meeting that he “picked his umpires from bushes and the fruit shown indicate that the bushes are anything but trees of knowledge”.

In July he provoked a major crisis on his staff. Umpires had started the season under contracts paying them $7 a day. In mid-season he reduced this to $6. With that, all but one umpire resigned. Farrell recruited new arbiters, contending “$6 a day is enough for the umpires.” On at least one occasion, the president failed to assign an umpire to a game and players had to take over. In time, Farrell would prove to be among the most competent of all minor league officials. However, in 1900 he had much progress to make in helping establish the status of umpires on his staff.

The “men in blue” themselves must share some responsibility for their lowly state. One of Farrell’s rules for his staff, that of reporting on the field at game time, was broken many times. Sometimes they did not appear at all. This necessitated choosing a player from each club to officiate, which in turn led to charges and counter-charges of bias. In late August, no umpire appeared for the Cortland-Rome game. Cortland refused to play if the chosen Rome player handled the game so the “Roman” announced the game was forfeited to his club. There was no indication as to whether or not his decision was upheld by Farrell.

Umpire John Conroy, known as “Pompadour John,” banished Binghamton manager Calhoun “for making personal remarks about Conroy’s hair. `Conny’ is sensitive on this point apparently,” according to one account. Conroy, the one member of the staff who did not resign over the salary dispute in July, put in a particularly harrowing week at the season’s end. On August 28, in the Troy-Binghamton game, he collapsed from sunstroke. Two days later he was in a fight on the field with Utica player Dobbs. Conroy initiated the action and Dobbs was joined by teammate Childs. The police intervened with Dobbs and Childs being jailed awaiting a court appearance. On September 4, Cortland players refused to play the second game of a doubleheader in Schenectady if Conroy umpired.  Schenectady president Hathaway warned the Cortland club “no play, no money.” They played. The next day, the Schenectady paper was all over Conroy for “giving” the game to Cortland.

Another problem with the umpires themselves was that some did not give to their tasks a full professional commitment. Dan Ryan, who officiated the game in which Jeffries appeared, is a case in point. Ryan, by close to unanimous agreement, was inept. Dan’s real desire was to be an actor and the newspapers made much of this. According to the Albany Times-Union, “Mr. Ryan may be a `Rising Young American Character Actor’ who is not afraid to tackle anything from `Uncle Tom’s Cabin’ to `Hamlet’ but he is not capable of holding the indicator, as he makes a farce of things while officiating.” Or, when a rowdy Schenectady crowd threw rocks at the Albany players, Ryan “gave a sorry exhibition of lack of nerve. President Farrell should send him back to the dime show business again.” Ryan was released July 13. His next appearance was neither as an umpire nor an actor, but as a player for the independent Ilion club.

Ed Aschenbach was another who was ambivalent about his commitment. Early in the season, it was noted that he was managing a club in Virginia. In early August he was on the State League staff and being characterized as having “every other `botch’ who has officiated in this circuit beat a mile in the matter of poor and rocky judgement”. After two weeks of this he joined the Troy team as its left fielder. Asked why, he replied that he’d “live longer.” For once the Albany paper agreed with an umpire. “By the look of things in the State League he made a wise move, for if he stayed in the business he would be missing at his next birthday party.”

Newspapers of that day were less fearful of libel suits or charges of bias. No politician, foreign nation, ethnic, religious or racial group escaped their slurs. As a distinct minority group, umpires were no exception. A lone umpire, spending several days in a small town with a hostile press inciting the local club’s “fanatics” could not possibly avoid censure.

Umpire Russell, another late season addition, was called by the Schenectady writer “the rockiest and most incompetent specimen of poor judgment that President Farrell has yet landed”. Considering what had been said about Russell’s predecessors, this was saying a lot. Russell fared no better at the hands of the Albany Times-Union. When a group of fans threatened to throw him in the Hudson River, the local reporter said he deserved a “ducking.” Dan Ryan suffered at the hands of the press, but, as far as Schenectady was concerned, “compared with Houle, Ryan was a prince of umpires.” Reference was made to Houle’s “sublime stupidity,” “thick cranium,” and “stupendous ignorance.”

The report of one game involving Albany allowed that “Russell was so thoroughly frightened by the Troy players that he did pretty nearly everything they told him.” When the hapless Conroy suffered his sunstroke, the major concern of the Albany reporter was that the delay prevented the game from being completed in less than one hour. It is significant that there was never the slightest hint that any umpire was dishonest. This traditional view of umpires apparently had established itself in the State League by 1900, and perhaps throughout organized baseball.  The kindest remark made about an umpire came after the opening game of the season in Schenectady. Umpire John Carlin was said to have given “satisfaction yesterday as umpire.” After that, it was all down hill. Carlin had quit by mid-July, claiming illness.

Another plus, all things considered, was that no umpire was seriously injured. In August, Umpire Gifford came very close. Under the heading “Gifford’s Narrow Escape.” a Syracuse paper described the incident which took place in Cortland. After a disputed call, Gifford suspended the Cortland manager and a player for three days on the spot. Then he forfeited the game to Albany. Whereupon, he was “kicked, slapped and egged, and but for the timely intervention of a few men who shut him in the ticket office with Officer James Edwards and President Riley, there is little doubt that he would have been severely dealt with.” Gifford remained in his place of refuge until more police arrived and he was escorted to his hotel “followed by a jeering mob of nearly 300 men and boys.” The account went on to say that it was probable that Gifford would not appear at the ballpark the following afternoon. His further fate went unreported.

During the course of the season, by count, no less than 12 umpires were employed, Denny Houle appearing in two distinct periods of time. Even future Hall-of-Famer Tom Connolly served briefly in June and July, coming down from the National League. He did not escape charges of partiality; he failed to appear for a game, and finally resigned over the salary dispute. None of the four who began the season completed it. Amazingly, two of the arbiters, Conroy and Keefe, returned for more medicine in 1901. By all odds, the season of 1900 was the most tumultuous year for umpires in this one circuit. Quite possibly the only involved person who had nothing to say about the officiating that year was Luther “Dummy” Taylor, star righthander for Albany, who left in mid-season to begin a successful career with the New York Giants.