I witnessed all of it from the Bronx, where I had been working for the New York Yankees since 1958. Talk about a decade of change: I’d started as an usher in the original Yankee Stadium and by the end of the 1970s I was the renovated Stadium’s official tour guide. Yankee Stadium was well on the way to becoming the mecca for outdoor events in the United States, but the stark realization was beginning to sink in that nearly five decades of wear and tear since Ruth’s day was taking a toll on the superstructure. Furthermore, “Yankee Village,” the neighborhood surrounding the Stadium, was in decline. “The realistic truth is that people won’t go there anymore because it is not a nice place to go,” claimed Dick Young of the New York Daily News.

If it weren’t for Mayor John Lindsay, the 1970s might have been the final decade of the Yankees in the Bronx. Other sites were proposed for a new stadium. New Jersey lured Stadium tenants the New York Giants football club to the Meadowlands, where a new home for them opened in 1976. But Mayor Lindsay struck a deal with New York City to perform a major renovation: it would cost around $28 million and require the team and the offices to temporarily relocate to Shea Stadium, home of the Mets, for two years.

Of course a major player in the renovation deal was the newly minted owner of the Yankees, Mr. George M. Steinbrenner. As Sam Roberts of the New York Times reported, “Mr. Arthur R. Taylor, president of CBS, unloaded the New York Yankees in 1973. He oversaw the sale of CBS’s share of the Yankees to a group of investors led by George M. Steinbrenner for $10 million. CBS had purchased 80 percent of the team for $11.2 million in 1964.” In 1966, the team finished last in the American League for the first time since 1912, and the team struggled, rarely ranking higher than fourth by the time CBS sold its share.

A highly decorated WWll veteran (OSS agent, Navy Cross and the Silver Star), CBS vice president Michael Burke had been instrumental in purchasing the Yankees for CBS through his friendship with Yankees co-owner Dan Topping. Although Burke was promised the president’s role to stay on with the team, a buttoned-up Steinbrenner was not appreciative of his appearance, putting Burke on a slippery slope to his ouster. Burke was gone by April 1973, manager Ralph Houk and general manager Lee MacPhail by the end of the year.

Perhaps the greatest acquisition of the Steinbrenner era was not, as one might think, a great ballplayer, but a savvy baseball veteran of over four decades, Indians general manager Gabe Paul. Shortly before he left Cleveland to come to the Yankees, he traded Graig Nettles to the Yankees for a few nondescript players. After coming to the Yankees he brought in Chris Chambliss, Dick Tidrow, and Oscar Gamble from his former club. He also got Dock Ellis from the Pirates, Bucky Dent from the White Sox, and acquired key players Lou Piniella, Mickey Rivers, Ed Figueroa, Willie Randolph, and Ken Brett. Another major upheaval of the decade: the introduction of free agency to major league baseball. On New Year’s Eve of 1974, Paul signed Catfish Hunter, who had been declared a free agent in arbitration by Peter Seitz. Paul also signed free agent Reggie Jackson in 1976.

The face of the game had also changed with the controversial 1973 adoption of the designated hitter rule by the American League, and as it happened the first appearance of the DH era was made by a Yankee, Ron Blomberg. The Stadium was such a locus of change that two Yankees players, Fritz Peterson and Mike Kekich, swapped wives and lives. The two left-handed starters were close friends and roommates on the road, and both men became enamored with each other’s wives. The subject of changing partners came up late in 1972 at a party in writer Maury Allen’s house. Six months later the deal was consummated as the two pitchers literally exchanged lives, kids, houses, and all, with each man moving into the other family’s home.

But as all that was occuring, the renovation of the Stadium loomed. What fans referred to as the Stadium’s “aura and mystique”—the lingering light of the great ballplayers, the great personalities, and the great events that were held here—would end for good on September 30, 1973, with the final game of the season.

The closing of the Stadium’s doors opened another door in our pop culture: collectibles. Everybody wanted a piece of this historic edifice! Gabe Paul offered a token of appreciation to the approximately 6,000 season ticket holders by giving them actual Stadium chairs which were removed by the Invirex Demolition Co. Only around 4,000 ticket holders’ chairs were accounted for. The rest were put on sale to the public. Department store E.J. Korvette managed to get a boatload of the chairs and sold them at $7 each. A few hundred also made their way to War Memorial Stadium, a minor league ballpark in Greensboro, North Carolina, where the seats were in use until that stadium was renovated in the early 1990s. In one case of appreciation for Stadium memorabilia, collector-author Bert Sugar signed two checks, each $1,500, made payable to the New York Yankees to appropriate some of the artifacts that were left behind. In a very short time some of the removed artifacts, including the chairs, were selling for thousands of dollars.

With reconstruction completed, the Yankees returned to their newly refurbished Stadium in 1976. The major renovations included a cantilevered support system which required 106 cables that surrounded the Stadium, replacing the obstructive girders that supported the mezzanine and upper level. The hard wooden seats were replaced with softer plastic seats. A new mercury-vapored lighting system replaced the banks of lights that had been installed in 1946.

In 1975, Steinbrenner felt that the more genteel nature of manager Bill Virdon had to give way to the fiery Billy Martin, who had been fired by the Texas Rangers. Steinbrenner and Martin were two ego-centric personalities headed for much volatility. Martin’s ensuing multiple firings and re-hirings became a soap opera unto itself.

Volatile as the personalities at the top were, talent pushed the Yankees to the top of the league in 1976. “After so many years without postseason play, the ’76 pennant was an enormous relief,” recalled Marty Appel, then the team’s public relations director. “But after the World Series loss to Cincinnati, there was a greater determination than ever to finish the job. Mr. Steinbrenner had instilled a winning attitude that extended even to the front office. We were going to be all-in for 1977. Eyes on the prize.” Chris Chambliss’s dramatic home run against the Kansas City Royals had brought the Yankees back from anonymity after a 12-year-long hiatus from the postseason and had made a prophet out of Mr. Steinbrenner. Unfortunately, they ran into a hot Cincinnati Reds team—a.k.a. the Big Red Machine—that swept them in four games. All through this season, Thurman Munson, catcher and the newly named captain of the Yankees, continued to cement his position as the backbone of the team. He was awarded the AL MVP honors. But Munson’s position as clubhouse top dog was about to be challenged. In November of 1976, Reggie Jackson was added to the already combustible mixture of characters with a five-year contract worth $2.96 million. The Boss cavorted all around the Big Apple with Reggie for three weeks. Munson was none too happy to hear the details of the contract; after all, he had been told that he would be the highest paid Yankee by Mr. Steinbrenner.

In May 1977 an interview with Jackson appeared in Sports Illustrated with the infamous quote, “I’m the straw that stirs the drink, Munson thinks that he can stir the drink, but he can only stir it bad.” Munson took it badly. Teammates rallied to Munson as he was respected as the heart and soul of the team. Relations were strained all around.

Murray Chass of the New York Times tells the tale: “After Martin had benched Jackson a couple of times bigger trouble followed. Matters continued to deteriorate when it all exploded in Fenway Park on June 18th. When Jackson seemingly loafed after a hit to right field Billy Martin sent Paul Blair out to replace him. This was a great embarrassment to Jackson who felt that Martin never liked him in the first place. After Jackson reached the dugout the two antagonists continued to berate each until they were separated by Elston Howard and Yogi Berra. All of this occurred while the game was being nationally televised giving the audience a taste of what was going on in Yankeeland. The Boss was irate!”

Across town, the Mets showed they were not immune to drama, either. The greatest ballplayer in the Mets’ young 15-year history—pitcher Tom Seaver, who was called “The Franchise” by the Mets’ chairman of the board, M. Donald Grant—become embroiled in a contract dispute. Grant felt that Seaver’s demand for a salary of $250,000 was nothing but greed. Seaver was traded to Cincinnati for four nondescript ballplayers. Mets fans were heartbroken.

Despite daily brush fires with the Boss, Martin, and Jackson, the Yankees won the pennant, once again beating Kansas City, then bested the Dodgers in six games in the World Series. In the clincher, Reggie electrified the Stadium crowd by hitting three home runs on three consecutive pitches off three different pitchers. He won MVP honors for the Series. The victory was followed by a tickertape parade up the “Canyon of Heroes” (Broadway) which was thrilling for me to be a part of.

The drama didn’t end there. Reliever Sparky Lyle had been instrumental in the 1977 Yankees’ success, capped off with the Cy Young award, the first American League relief pitcher to achieve that distinction. The month after the parade, Mr. Steinbrenner picked up the hottest reliever on the free agent market in Goose Gossage—an embarrassment of riches and a crushing blow to Lyle. Lyle would spend a season playing an unhappy second fiddle to Goose and then was traded to Texas on November 10, 1978. Another major loss was occurring at this time. The architect of the Yankees’ success, Gabe Paul, resigned after the 1977 season and departed for Cleveland. Steinbrenner claimed Paul was getting too much of the credit for the player moves and the team’s success.

Opening Day 1978 started with another unforgettable event. Before Reggie ever came to the Yankees he had made a statement, “If I ever played in New York they would name a candy bar after me,” perhaps thinking that “Baby Ruth” bars had been named for Babe Ruth. Well. In a promotion with Curtis Candy Mfg., over 40,000 candy bars called “Reggie Bars” were issued to the fans entering the Stadium. In pure theatrical fashion, Reggie stepped up to the plate with two men on board and hit a home run. All of a sudden, the candy bars became missiles and they were launched from every part of the Stadium. It took the grounds crew half an hour to clean the field.

The main story line in 1978 was Ron Guidry’s great pitching. He won 13 games in a row from the start of the season, and on June 17, as he pitched against the California Angels, Guidry began to pile up strikeouts with his vicious slider. By the fifth inning fans started to rhythmically clap whenever he put two strikes on a batter, exhorting him to strike the batter out. Guidry, who was dubbed “Louisiana Lightning” by Yankees announcer Phil Rizzuto, wound up with 18 Ks on the day. The “two-strike clap” practice became commonplace at the Stadium after that.

Other than Guidry’s great performance, the team was really struggling. They had fallen 14 games behind the league-leading Boston Red Sox when the high drama returned. On July 17, Reggie—who had recently been made DH by Martin, and not too happy at all by it—disobeyed an order by failing to heed a sign by the third base coach. He was taken to task by Martin and suspended for five games. But Billy was also hearing it from The Boss, and blurted to a reporter, “He’s a born liar. The two of them deserve each other, one’s a born liar, the other’s convicted.” Martin appeared physically and emotionally drawn.

Martin decided to resign before being fired. His replacement was Bob Lemon, who had been fired from the White Sox. But five days after his tearful farewell, Billy and Steinbrenner engineered a moment of pure spectacle at the Old Timers Day Game. During pre-game introductions by public address announcer Bob Sheppard, Billy was squirreled away in the bowels of Yankee Stadium, ready to make a surprise appearance. Sheppard then delighted the crowd with the announcement that Martin would be returning as manager starting with the 1980 season “and hopefully for many years after that.” This was followed by a seven-minute standing ovation.

Boston started to tail off as the Yankees mounted a comeback. By early September the gap was down to four games with a four-game series at Fenway on the slate. In what came to be known as “The Boston Massacre,” the Yankees swept all four games, outscoring the Red Sox, 42–9. By season’s end both teams were tied in the standings, prompting a one-game playoff at Fenway. Many people call the Boston Red Sox/New York Yankees the “greatest rivalry in professional sports” because of moments like this one: Yankees shortstop Bucky Dent hit a three-run homer in the seventh inning to put the Yankees on top. Guidry ran out of gas and was replaced by Gossage who sealed Boston’s fate. The Yankees then beat the Dodgers again in six games to win the World Series.

In 1979, the decade drawing to a close, the Yankees were lingering around fourth place for most of the season. Another comeback was not in the making. A series of minor injuries and ailments to key players including Nettles, Jackson, Gossage, and especially to their captain, Thurman Munson, contributed to the mediocrity, but none could predict the tragedy that would strike.

As reported by Marty Appel in his book Munson: The Life and Death of a Yankee Captain, Munson’s career as a catcher was probably winding down by 1979, injuries having taken their toll. Munson had never spent a day on the disabled list. When a plane crash claimed his life on August 2, it really closed a chapter on the Yankees’ decade, a decade in which Munson went from Rookie of the Year to captain of a world champion ballclub. The appreciation of what he meant to the resurgent Yankees only grew over time. He had led them to the top of the baseball world, and had reconnected them to the team’s past glories, proudly taking his place in the lineage of great Yankee catchers. The team’s first captain since Lou Gehrig, he was firmly tied forever to Yankee heritage, and he remained an old school symbol of playing the game right. The fans saw through his gruff exterior to the soul of a champion. All these years later, his image still invokes grit and determination, a time when leadership was on display daily as he pushed his teammates towards glory.

Isn’t it fitting that peace came to Yankee Stadium on October 2 with a Catholic mass? Pope John Paul ll celebrated mass with 80,000 faithful followers, wrapping up the raucous decade.

TONY MORANTE, a SABR member since 1995, is the Director of Yankee Stadium Tours. He started working at Yankee Stadium in 1958 as an usher and came aboard full-time in 1973 in the Group/Season Sales Department. Morante, with the encouragement of then-principal owner, George M. Steinbrenner III, instituted the Yankee Stadium Tour program in 1985, bringing Yankees history to life for school children, visitors and employees’ orientations. Morante served in the United States Navy and he is currently involved with the Wounded Warrior Project and the Special Operations Program through the New York Yankees. Tony is a graduate of Fordham University and he is currently Adjunct Professor there teaching “Baseball: The New York Game.”

Sources

Appel, Marty. Munson: The Life and Death of a Yankee Captain, Anchor, 2010.

Appel, Marty. Pinstripe Empire, Bloomsbury, 2014.

Durso, Joseph. Yankee Stadium; Fifty Years of Drama, Houghton Mifflin, 1972.

Lyle, Sparky and Peter Golenbock. The Bronx Zoo, Crown Publishing, 1978.

Pepe, Phil. Talkin’ Baseball: An Oral History of Baseball in the 1970s, Ballantine Books, 1998.

Stout, Glenn and Richard Johnson. Yankees Century, Houghton Mifflin, 2002.

Sullivan, Neil J. The Diamond in the Bronx, Oxford University Press, 2001.

Yankee Stadium-The Official Retrospective. Pocket Books of Simon and Schuster.

Harry M. Stevens, shown at left with Yankees owner Jacob Ruppert, was the Yankees’ official concessionaire through the 1963 season. (National Baseball Hall of Fame Library)

The 12-page official program of the new “Greater New York Base Ball Club of the American League“ at its home opener on April 30, 1903, was published by Harry M. Stevens, who had built a concessions empire since the 1880s that extended from the Midwest to New England. Stevens had made a fortune in New York City the previous decade managing the concessions at the Polo Grounds, home of the National League Giants, the new club’s now immediate rival; Madison Square Garden; and the upstate Saratoga Racecourse. The association of Stevens’ firm with the new American League franchise (at first called the Highlanders) would enable Harry to become a key force in the emergence of the franchise as a dynasty in major-league baseball.1

The advertisements scattered throughout the inaugural program and scorecard, priced at 5 cents, reflected the goal of concessionaires everywhere: to enhance and profit from the fan experience at the ballpark. In addition to player rosters and space to keep score, the card included advertisements for Philip Morris cigarettes, Dewar’s scotch, Coca-Cola, Horton’s ice cream cones, Atlas motor oil and grease, Pommery champagne, and Henry Rahe’s Café across the street. At Rahe’s, fans could order Jac. Ruppert’s Extra Pale, Knickerbocker, and Ruppiner beers. One ad tried another way to pique fan interest: “Any baseball player who will hit the ‘Bull Durham’ cut-out sign on the field with a fairly batted ball during a regularly scheduled league game will receive $50.00 in cash [almost $1,700 in 2022].”2

THE BUSINESS OF CONCESSIONS

But profits for the new franchise from selling scorecards and advertisements alone would be small. By contrast, catering to the fans’ desire for refreshments during the game would provide the Highlanders’ owners, gambler Frank Farrell and former New York City Police Chief Bill Devery, with a vital source of revenue to supplement income from ticket sales. In selling concession rights to an experienced and shrewd entrepreneur like Stevens, the club could avoid the burden of procuring food and beverages, hiring cooks, vendors, and other salespeople, setting prices, and meeting fans’ expectations for superior quality. (Some clubs at the time, such as the Chicago Cubs, sold concessions themselves.)

When the Highlanders opened for business at American League Park – soon after called the Hilltop due to its location on a ridge in northern Manhattan – the question of what food and drink to sell at ballparks already had a long and controversial history. Initially, baseball owners were slow to provide concessions and other entertainment to fans. However, unauthorized bars, liquor booths, rum shops, and “restaurants” – saloons – often popped up near ballparks and siphoned off potential revenue from the teams. Gradually, clubs came to offer items such as cherry pie, cheese, chewing tobacco, tripe, chocolate, and onions, like food sold at fairs, racetracks, circuses, railway stops, and other outdoor venues. In the 1880s, Chris Von der Ahe, a German immigrant and later Stevens’ mentor, bought a team, the St. Louis Browns of the American Association, to increase profits at his bar near Sportsman’s Park, the Browns’ home. He later added an amusement park with a Bavarian-style beer garden, a water flume ride, an artificial lake, and a racetrack near the outfield. The American Association, known as the “Beer and Whiskey League,” prohibited gambling on its grounds and disapproved of the racetrack but permitted beer sales. In contrast, teams in the more established National League sought a more respectable clientele by having higher ticket prices and forbidding the sale of liquor at games.

The controversy over alcohol in ballparks raged well into the twentieth century when the growing temperance movement lobbied baseball clubs to eliminate bars and hard liquor, and to sell beer more discreetly. (Soft drink manufacturers marked their beverages as “temperance drinks” – often soda water sweetened with syrup.) However, it was impossible for the New York American League club to fully board the Prohibition bandwagon after Jacob Ruppert, who inherited a fortune in the family brewing business, purchased the team on January 11, 1915.

Harry M. Stevens set up shop at the Hilltop with a proven business model that improved on Von der Ahe’s approach. Unlike Von der Ahe, Stevens put the fan experience of watching the game above everything else. Stevens may have been the first concessionaire to have his vendors patrol the stands during the games. He placed drinking straws in glass soft-drink bottles so spectators could watch the play as they sipped, and varied product offerings by the city to accommodate local tastes. Eventually, Stevens controlled so many venues that several items on his menu became standard ballpark fare, including peanuts, nonalcoholic beverages, and ice cream.

Later baseball legend credited Stevens with introducing hot dogs to ballparks, but there is no evidence that in 1903 he offered frankfurters on his menus, either at the Hilltop or elsewhere. Hot dogs, initially working-class street food, were first introduced to the United States by German immigrants who settled in the Midwest after the Civil War. Around 1867, Charles Feltman, a German-American restaurateur, began selling sausages in rolls at Coney Island. In the 1880s Von der Ahe introduced a “wiener wurst” in St. Louis, where they became a staple at Browns games. The food also may have grown in popularity in New York City with the arrival of Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe in the early 1900s.

There is no information on the profits Farrell, Devery, and Stevens made from concessions sales in the early years at the Hilltop. However, circumstantial evidence from major-league clubs elsewhere suggests they were substantial. One team reported making more than $2,000 in 1908. Another earned an estimated $1,000 on Coca-Cola sales, with a cut of 40 cents on a case of 24 bottles selling at a nickel apiece. By 1910, Stevens had a son at Yale, rode around in a “swell” automobile, sat in a box at the theater, smoked dollar cigars, dined at swanky Sherry’s restaurant, and lived in a series of fancy Midtown hotels.3

The best indicator that business was good was Harry Stevens’ steady rise as a central player in the business affairs of the Highlanders and other clubs. With the money rolling in, Stevens became a dependable financier to whom owners could turn if they needed to meet a payroll or just the money to paint an outfield fence. Even as he developed his business with the Highlanders, he served on the New York Giants board of directors, with whom he had long been identified. Stevens considered becoming a partner with Brooklyn owner Charles Ebbets in 1908 and an owner of the Giants after the death of John T. Brush in 1912. Thus, when Jacob Ruppert and businessman Tillinghast L’Hommedieu Huston bought the New York American League team in 1915, the new owners awarded Stevens the concessions rights, no doubt partly due to his large bankroll.

HIGHLANDERS TO YANKEES

Stevens’ position with the Yankees was bolstered after the 1920 season, when Ruppert and Huston hired Ed Barrow, Harry’s longtime friend and former business partner, from the Boston Red Sox to become the business manager of the Yankees. Barrow had spent a lifetime in baseball as a minor-league manager, minor-league owner, minor-league president, and major-league manager. Before he joined the Yankees, Barrow had never won a pennant as a general manager. But with Ruppert’s support, Barrow created one of the greatest dynasties in sports history. In his 24 years with the club, the Yankees won 14 American League championships and 10 World Series.4

Barrow and Stevens had been friends since the 1890s, when both men frequented the Pittsburgh sports scene. Barrow landed a job in a hotel that catered to sportsmen. Barrow and Stevens were partners, hawking scorecards, refreshments at the ballpark, and playbills to local theaters.5 The partnership soon broke up amicably after Barrow decided to remain in baseball and not accompany Stevens to New York City to sell food and drink for the Giants. But they remained close.

Stevens came to hate Huston, who wanted to break the concessions contract with the Stevens family and install his son as the concessionaire at the Polo Grounds, which the Yankees shared with the New York Giants. Meanwhile, Barrow was caught in the middle of the squabbling between Huston and Ruppert over how to run the team, especially Huston’s criticism of Miller Huggins’ effectiveness as on-field manager. Huston in any case wanted out, and after negotiations for the sale of the club to a third party fell through, he tried to find a purchaser for his half of the team. Ruppert did not want a new partner, so he bought out Huston himself. After completing the transaction, Ruppert offered Barrow the chance to buy 10 percent of the Yankees for $300,000. Barrow borrowed the money from Harry Stevens, intending to repay the loan with future dividends. Ruppert promoted Barrow to team treasurer and gave him a spot on the Yankees’ board of directors. Stevens’ contract with the Yankees was secure.

At this point in his career, Stevens styled himself as “publisher and caterer … from the Hudson to the Rio Grande” – the latter a reference to his racetrack in Juarez. With the opening of Yankee Stadium on April 18, 1923, the financial heart of Stevens’ far-flung concessions empire shifted from the Polo Grounds across the river to the Bronx. The new facility was the largest in baseball and could accommodate about 60,000 hungry customers. (At the height of the Yankees’ popularity in the 1920s and 1930s, about 80,000 fans could be squeezed in.) This size was not daunting to Stevens, who was used to overseeing large crowds. (He catered the famous Dempsey-Carpentier heavyweight championship bout – an early “Fight of the Century” – in Jersey City in 1921, where almost 90,000 people attended.) It was said of his firm that it served up to 250,000 spectators at various ballparks and racetracks on summer afternoons. As Stevens’ ties to the Yankees grew, Harry and his sons – especially Frank – became close friends with national idol Babe Ruth, who conspicuously consumed Stevens’ frankfurters. Ruth gave the elder Stevens a signed picture of himself that read, “To my second dad, Harry M. Stevens.” After he hit 60 home runs in 1927, Ruth presented Harry with a poster showing an image of every ball he hit out of the park. Each had the date of a blast, and they were numbered from 1 to 60.

Concession salesmen worked exclusively on commission, and sales were often dependent on the weather. (National Baseball Hall of Fame Library)

 

THE BUSINESS OF CONCESSIONS

Concessions provided an important part of the Yankees’ profits throughout the following years. In the 1929 season, the last before the great stock-market crash, about one-third of the team’s net income – $271,028 – came from selling food and drink. This was higher than the crosstown Giants (whose concessions were still managed by the Stevens company) and the second highest in the major leagues.6 During the Depression in 1933, the Yankees made $59,000 from concessions sales even though the team lost money overall.

In May 1934 Harry Stevens, 76 years old, died of pneumonia. Two of Harry’s sons, Frank and Joe, who informally ran the company in their father’s final years, formally took over. After that, business at Yankee Stadium remained profitable for the company and the club.7 In the 1940s the Stevens empire operated not only in Yankee Stadium and at the Polo Grounds but at Ebbets Field in Brooklyn, Braves Field and Fenway Park in Boston, and high-profile racetracks like Churchill Downs, Pimlico, Belmont Park, Saratoga, Hialeah, and Narragansett. Stevens’ venues also included minor-league parks, dog tracks, state fairgrounds, and polo fields. Other concessions networks operated around the country, most notably that of the Jacobs brothers, Sportservice, Inc., which had its headquarters in Buffalo and operated in venues not served by Harry M. Stevens. Several smaller, profitable chains prospered on the West Coast. But while concessions firms came and went, the Stevens empire seemed eternal, like Yankee Stadium itself.8

However, profit margins in the industry remained small. In 1942 a representative of Sportservice provided a cost itemization for each dime hot dog his company sold and from which his firm earned only half a cent.9 Horse racing crowds had the highest average – one reason Harry Stevens controlled prestigious tracks around the country. Fans of track and field spent about 40 cents per capita. Baseball crowds spent 15 cents (22 cents at doubleheaders), and boxing and hockey crowds spent 8 cents. Football fans paid on average 10 cents in mild weather and 25 cents in bad weather. (They were not generally crowds who spent a lot of money, since they sat on their hands during a game and were unwilling to reach into their bulky overcoats for a dime.) Football fans spent more when it was cold: They clamored for hot food, paper rain hats, and unlimited coffee.10

Profits also depended on less predictable factors like fan moods and the weather. Experienced salespeople, who during the Great Depression were frequently older men, varied their sales pitch based on their assessment of crowd psychology. They worked exclusively on commission, getting from 10 to 20 percent of total sales. One veteran salesman at Yankee Stadium, who had refined his sales pitch, claimed he made $26 on a good day but only $3 on his worst. One of his less experienced colleagues usually pulled in $2 to $8. Sudden weather changes could be disastrous. Counting on a sweltering day, a concessionaire might prepare to sell copious quantities of ice cream and cold drinks only to find that unexpectedly cold weather might shift the demand to coffee, hot dogs, and soup.11

Managing an army of vendors at a facility as large as Yankee Stadium was complicated. Forgetting the company founder’s belief in the importance of audience preferences, Stevens company executives came to produce concessions the way Henry Ford manufactured autos: They strictly rationed supplies and insisted on the uniformity of practices – coffee was made the same way every game, and vendors were trained how to put a hot dog in a roll and apply mustard with a minimum of motion. They kept track of coffee sales by counting the number of paper cups issued. Still, there were many opportunities for vendors to cheat. Most bags of peanuts contained 50 to 60 items, but a vendor could pick up empty bags around the ballpark and reapportion his stock to make it look as though he sold more. Harry Stevens did not make his employees sew up their pockets, as did the Jacobs brothers, but the firm carefully monitored the activities of all his employees. It required all vendors to wear the prices of their wares on a printed card in their hat so they could not overcharge customers.12

DECLINE

The Yankees opened the 1964 season without Harry M. Stevens as their concessionaire.13 The team had replaced Stevens with National Concessions Service, a division of Automatic Canteen Company, a firm partly owned by the team’s owners, businessmen Del Webb and Dan Topping. The menu now included novel items such as shrimp rolls, pizza, fish sandwiches, and milkshakes.14

Having the Yankee owners control the team and the Stadium’s food and drink operation made good financial sense for the team. In any case, the formidable grip of the Stevens operation on the industry had long been weakening. The Stevens family continued to be reluctant to adapt to evolving audience tastes. (The Stevens company was the only major concessionaire to boil rather than fry its hot dogs, because the elder Harry insisted on cooking them that way.)15 The reluctance to innovate was reinforced by the large scale of the Stevens holdings, which forced management to standardize its offerings with little variation “from the Hudson to the Rio Grande.”16 Finally, a company like Stevens, with a highly variable level of concessions profits as its core business, almost inevitably would have less resilience than a larger food conglomerate for which concessions were only a sidelight.17

At Yankee Stadium, Automatic Canteen, under various names, managed concessions until the Stadium closed in 2008.18 The Yankees then created a new firm in partnership with the Dallas Cowboys called Legends Hospitality.19 That conglomerate focused on food, beverage, merchandise, retail, stadium operations, and entertainment venues like the San Francisco 49ers’ Levi’s Stadium and the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. Legends tentacles also stretched beyond food to helping teams operate stadiums and selling naming rights and personal seat licenses.

Harry M. Stevens could not have dreamed of culinary offerings at the new Yankee Stadium today. They include meatball parmesan sandwiches, egg creams, cheesesteaks, garlic fries, and Buffalo chicken quesadillas, along with Nathan’s hot dogs. Nor could he have conceived of the video menu boards scattered throughout the ballpark. But he would be on more familiar ground reading the results of a Yankee Stadium concessions case study conducted by Legends in 2014. The report found that the most effective way of increasing concessions sales per capita was to increase the average number of dollars customers spend per transaction.20 This was sound business practice, indeed, and one Harry Stevens pioneered more than a century ago.

DON JENSEN is a longtime member of the Society for American Baseball Research and has written or co-authored many books and articles on the sport. He was the 2015 winner of the Chairman’s Award of the SABR Nineteenth Century Committee. From 2018 to 2021 Jensen was editor of the award-winning annual book series Baseball: New Research on the Early Game (McFarland). He is currently editor of The Inside Game, the newsletter of the SABR Deadball Era Research Committee, and a member of the selection committee for SABR’s Larry Ritter Book Award, which recognizes the best new baseball book primarily set in the Deadball Era that was published during the previous calendar year.

NOTES

1 By 1911 the more headline-friendly “Yanks” or “Yankees” had largely supplanted “Highlanders” as the unofficial nickname of the American League Base Ball Club of Greater New York. But in the writer’s view, a certain clarity is achieved by using “Highlanders” for the club during its tenure at Hilltop Park (1903-1912) and reserving “Yankees” for thereafter.

2 Marty Appel, Pinstripe Empire: The New York Yankees From Before The Babe to After The Boss (New York: Bloomsbury, 2012), 20-21.

3 David Quentin Voigt, The League that Failed (Lanham, Maryland: Scarecrow Press; Illustrated edition (June 1, 1998), 69.

4 Daniel R. Levitt, “The Making of Ed Barrow.” Base Ball, vol. 1, No. 2, (Fall 2007): 67.

5 Levitt, 68.

6 The Chicago Cubs claimed $132,162 in net concessions in 1929, the highest in the major leagues.

7 After Stevens’ wife, Mary, died in 1941, Harry’s estate was valued at $1.2 million. h​ttps:​//vin​dyarc​hives​.com/​news/​2013/​apr/2​1/val​ley-r​elish​es-ha​rry-s​tev​ens/. Accessed November 21, 2022.

8 Howard Whitman, “Selling the Crowds,” Saturday Evening Post, April 11, 1942: 25. Some independent firms worked on a single venue or with one partner only. Fred Kanen supplied $400,000 worth of food, drink, and programs to 2 million fans each year at Madison Square Garden. The Miller brothers, Frank, and Paul, had a “single plum,” the Ringling circus, for which they Millers supplied 6 million fans and the Ringling’s elephants.

9 The breakdown probably was similar for the frankfurters sold by the Stevens company at Yankee Stadium: meat, 3 cents; roll, 1 cent; vendor’s commission, 1½ cent; cost of concession rights, 2½ cents; wastage ¾ cent; and overhead, ¾ cent. There was twice as much profit to be had by selling soft drinks: wholesale price per bottle: 3⅓ cents; breakage and handling costs: ¼ cent; ice: ½ cent; vendors commission: 1½ cents; costs of concessions rights: 2½ cents; overhead: ¾ cent; paper cup: ⅙ cent. These costs totaled 9 cents, leaving a penny profit. Whitman, 62.

10 Whitman, 62.

11 Whitman, 25.

12 Whitman, 25.

13 Appel, 350.

14 Appel, 350.

15 When Bob Lurie purchased the San Francisco in1976, he wanted to introduce wine, but the Stevens Company was aghast, since it went against traditional ballpark fare.

16 That problem popped up in San Francisco as well in 1958 when the Stevens operation set up shop after the Giants move. Some local fans not only were reluctant to embrace their new club, but preferred the concessions their beloved, now-defunct Seals sold for decades.

17 Stevens took a major hit in the 1980s, when many cities forbade beer sales, a major moneymaker, before the end of the game.

18 Aramark acquired the Harry M. Stevens name in 1994.

19 Appel, 350.

20 Yankee Stadium Concessions Case Study: h​ttps:​//www​.lege​nds.n​et/ho​spita​lity/​yanke​e-sta​dium-​conce​ssion​s-cas​e-stu​dy#:~​:text​=Yank​ee%20​Stadi​um%20​Conce​ssion​s%20C​ase%2​0Stud​y%20C​ONCES​SIONS​%20GR​OWTH%​20AT,​growt​h%20f​or%20​its%2​0stan​ds%20​witho​ut%20​raisi​ng%20​food%​20pri​ces. Accessed November 21, 2022.

The “Astros Better Halves” prepare to play their husbands under the Dome in the 1970s. (PHOTOS COURTESY OF HOUSTON ASTROS)

WILL FLAHERTY is a native Houstonian and life-long Houston Astros supporter. Will is a 2010 graduate in History and Political Science from Duke University. A SABR member since 2013, Will currently resides in New York City and works for SeatGeek, a search engine for live event tickets.

Five former Yankees players and staff shared their thoughts on working in the renovated Yankee Stadium. I chose them because of the wide-ranging and different perspectives they had working and playing in the Stadium during their careers in baseball. Some of these players and staff were on teams that won the World Series and others were on last-place teams. Their careers varied from several years to just a few months in Yankee Stadium.

The makeup of the interviewees includes authors, superstars, and everyday players. I wanted to give the readers a reflection of how Yankee Stadium is special from an insider’s point of view. The interviewees are Marty Appel, public-relations director of the New York Yankees from 1973 to 1977; Dom Scala, who was the Yankees bullpen catcher from 1978 to 1986; Billy Sample, an eight-year veteran outfielder who played for the Yankees in 1985; Steve Sax, a 13-year veteran second baseman who played for the Yankees from 1989 to 1991; and Kevin Mmahat, who pitched for New York in 1989.

Marty Appel was born and raised in Brooklyn, New York. He began working full-time for the Yankees in 1969, when he was hired by public-relations director Bob Fishel at the age of 19 to handle future Hall of Famer Mickey Mantle’s fan mail. In 1970 Appel began working as an assistant public-relations director under Fishel. Three years later, new Yankees owner George Steinbrenner named Appel, at the age of 23, the youngest public-relations director in professional sports. Appel remained with the Yankees until 1977.1

Dom Scala became the Yankees bullpen catcher in 1978 after infielder Mickey Klutts broke his thumb warming up a pitcher before a game. The injury to Klutts infuriated Steinbrenner, who wanted to hire a full-time bullpen catcher. Scala got the job after working successfully with pitcher Dick Tidrow under the guidance of Yankees bullpen coach Elston Howard.2 Scala received the nickname of Disco from teammate Paul Blair for his likeness to John Travolta’s Tony Manero character in the 1977 movie Saturday Night Fever. Scala’s Yankees teammates were shocked that he talked like Manero and would disco dance in the players lounge before games with Mickey Rivers and Thurman Munson.3 After completing his tenure with the Yankees in 1986, Scala was an advance scout for the Pittsburgh Pirates from 1987 to 1990 and coached at Adelphi University from 2004 to 2021.4

Billy Sample was a legendary college baseball player at James Madison University, his career batting average of .388 setting a school record. In 1976, as a junior, Sample batted .421 with 27 stolen bases and led his team to the NCAA Division II Tournament.5 That June, he was drafted by the Texas Rangers. Sample played outfield for the Rangers, Yankees, and Atlanta Braves from 1978 to 1986. In 1985 Sample played 59 games for the Yankees and hit .288 with one home run and 15 RBIs. After retiring from baseball, Sample worked as a broadcaster and commentator. He is also a prolific writer: He has contributed to Sports Illustrated, the New York Times, and USA Today Baseball Weekly; self-published a book on Amazon; and produced the screenplay for the 2013 movie Reunion 108.6

Steve Sax is a former second baseman and played in the majors from 1981 to 1994. He was a five-time All-Star and won the 1982 NL Rookie of the Year and the Silver Slugger Award in 1986. Sax also played on the 1981 and 1988 World Series champion Los Angeles Dodgers teams. In his three years with the Yankees, from 1989 to 1991, Sax compiled a .294 batting average with 19 home runs and 161 RBIs. In 1989 Sax set the Yankees team record for most singles in a season with 171.7

Kevin Mmahat pitched at Tulane University from 1983 to 1986 and in the minor leagues from 1987 in 1992, where he had a 35-26 record with a 3.50 ERA. On July 5, 1991, Mmahat threw a no-hitter for the Yankees’ Triple-A Affiliate Columbus Clippers in a 6-0 win over the Louisville Redbirds in an International League game. In his time in the major leagues, he had four appearances with the Yankees in relief work in 1989.8

Melesky: Thank you everyone for your help and time. I very much appreciate it, and I greatly appreciate the recollections that you are sharing with us.

Steve, before you played for the Yankees, you were a Dodger for seven years. Were there any similarities or differences? How did Yankee Stadium and the atmosphere compare to Dodger Stadium?

Sax: One big difference that I remember between the two stadiums is the proximity to the field. In New York, the fans are very close to the field. Also, the fans in New York are more opinionated but also more knowledgeable and intense about the game. Dodger Stadium’s atmosphere is also very loyal, very involved but also will leave at the bottom of the seventh inning of the game … whereas New York was usually full for batting practice and rarely anyone left until the game was complete.

Melesky: Did you feel the tradition of past players playing at Yankee Stadium?

Sax: Oh yes, it was very highlighted at Yankee Stadium and even somewhat mystical. To know that Babe Ruth played there was almost surreal. Yankee Stadium was one of a kind and I was honored to be part of that tradition during my tenure with the Yankees. As a history buff, I never took that for granted ever and felt the nostalgia and honor each time I set foot in the Stadium.

Scala: I absolutely felt the ghost of past players from the Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig era. We also had some of the all-time greats come to Old Timers Day each year. Joe DiMaggio, Whitey Ford, Mickey Mantle, Yogi Berra, Johnny Mize, Bobby Richardson, Don Larsen. It was hard not to feel honored to be in the pinstripes. The old Yankee Stadium had the feel of no other stadium. The history and championships made you feel special and knowing all the greats that graced the locker room, dugout and field made you feel ten feet tall. I wouldn’t be the baseball lifer I am today if I wasn’t a Yankee.

Mmahat: As far as the stadium, “Wow!” is what I have been telling family and friends for years. Deion [Sanders] and I got called up the same day. The limo driver dropped us off outside the stadium in left field. Good thing Deion was with me because the grounds crew recognized him and not me. [The Yankees grounds crew] let us in and showed us to the locker room. But first we had to walk past Monument Park. I was numb. When we actually started walking on the warning track to the first-base dugout, I was very emotional, all I could think of was the [Adidas TV commercial that ran in June 1989]. It mentioned “the smell of the fresh cut grass of Yankee Stadium.”9 My dad grew up in New Orleans and was a huge fan of the New York Yankees. When I finally got to start a game in the stadium, I was overwhelmed with the history.

Appel: The original Stadium was most magnificent of that generation of ballparks. Baseball’s marketing was basically “play good, open the gates, people will come,” then gift days were added in the 1960s. The second stadium did away with the pillars, added escalators and an entertaining scoreboard and people realized it was better than the original. Over time, people grew nostalgic for the first one, and when Yankee Stadium I closed in 2008, people were saying that they preferred the original one. The current one has even more creature comforts and you can still see the game from the concession stands, which are varied. It has the Yankee Museum which is free to fans and wonderfully curated. I like that fans can circle the park, discover the bleachers, party there. The original two stadiums kept the fans locked out [or in] the bleachers.

Melesky: How was the Yankee Stadium field in terms of hitting and fielding?

Sax: Yankee Stadium was well known for the “slope” from the infield to the outfield, so the batters were hitting somewhat “downhill.” The character and structure while beautiful and nostalgic was not as polished as Dodger Stadium, which is impeccably groomed and pristine.

Sample: [Yankee Stadium] had corners in left field where the ball can roll in the corners forever. [It] can give the ball in the corner the “hockey rink” effect. Hal McRae hit a curving drive into the corner. I knew I had to get there in a hurry because if I can’t beat the ball to the sidewall, then I’ll never be able to keep McRae to a double. Well, I got to the sidewall and threw my body up against the padding to keep the ball from kicking out of the zone. It looked a bit awkward, but I did what I had to do.

Scala: It was a huge ballpark to hit homers in except to right field. Left-handed pitching always had the advantage in Yankee Stadium. The Yankee batters from 1978 to ’86 were line-drive hitters and drove the ball in the gaps to score many runs.

Melesky: Is there a memorable game that stood out for you when you played and worked there?

Appel: Mickey Mantle Day was a perfect tribute as I have ever seen, before or since. It was odd that there were no presents, it was just Mick surrounded by his life story, and then the golf cart ride around the field. Beautiful. The most memorable game that I saw was Chris Chambliss’s walk-off home run to beat Kansas City (7-6).

Scala: [In 1984], Dave Winfield and Don Mattingly both were exceptional hitters with power [and battled each other all season for the American League batting title]. Dave Winfield had such a quick bat, was athletic, fast, and a fantastic outfielder. They were raking that year. As you know the batting title race went to the last day. Both were class guys and rooted for each other. I remember Winny saying on the last day … “May the best man win this thing.”

Mmahat: In my first game on the mound at Yankee Stadium, I was in relief against Milwaukee. In the bottom of the sixth inning, their pitcher threw at Luis Polonia. The benches emptied. In the top of the seventh, I knew I had to earn the respect of my teammates. I did not intentionally throw at batter Charlie O’Brien. I just wanted to come up and then it just so happened the ball wound up hitting him and he charged the mound. I was able to hold my own in the brawl. That night, we flew out and my teammates were extremely proud of my efforts and treated me with respect the rest of the season. It’s unfortunate that injuries plagued the remaining three years of my career, and I was not able to get off the disabled list to pitch again in New York. My cup of coffee tasted delicious even though it was a small cup.

Sax: Yes, there were several. I remember one of my first games at Yankee Stadium. We were playing the Twins the second week of the season and it was freezing cold which I do not like at all. It was a rough adjustment for me in 1989 and especially that game since I really do not like cold weather at all and especially not to play in cold weather. The press gave me a pass in the beginning as I was new in the American League, but I definitely had to earn their confidence. I hit a bloop hit that day into center field and from that moment on, the press and the New York fans warmed up to me and those years in New York were some of the best years ever for me. The fans in New York held you accountable and I loved the banners [and] support from the fans.

Sax: There was another memory that really stands out that is hard to forget. We had a day game scheduled to start at noon and we had a rain delay until 8:00 at night. Some fans stayed around during the rain delay and at around 3:00, a fan had fallen from the upper level and in the fall impaled himself on the fence below where he perished. The police came into the clubhouse as the players were just hanging out waiting for the rain to pass and asked us if we wanted to see a “dead body” so some of us went out to see it and as we arrived there was someone in the Bronx who was stealing the shoes off the impaled body. Only in New York.

Melesky: Thank you everyone for sharing your insights and stories about your time at Yankee Stadium. It is a very special place that has benefited from all your contributions to it.

SCOTT MELESKY has been a sports journalist for over 20 years. He graduated from Syracuse University with a bachelor’s degree in history in 1995. Melesky earned his master’s degree in education from Pacific Oaks College in May 2021. He has worked as a sports editor and writer for 18 publications and websites, including the Los Angeles Daily News, the Quincy Patriot Ledger, and the Syracuse Herald Journal. Melesky has also worked in four collegiate sports information departments highlighted by Marquette University. Melesky has contributed to four baseball books and is currently co-authoring Take Back Your Power with Marla McKenna and contributing to Nick Del Calzo’s My Baseball Story: The Game’s Influence on America and SABR’s book on the 20th anniversary of the 2004 Boston Red Sox’ World Series championship.

NOTES

1 Irvin Cohen, “Chat with PR Maven Marty Appel,” Jewish Press, July 7, 2010: 1-4.

2 Ray Negron, “Disco Era Begins at Yankee Stadium,” New York Sports Day, November 18, 2019: 1-2.

3 Negron, 1-2.

4 Negron, 3-4.

5 2013 Hall of Fame Roster – 1988-Billy Sample, JMU Hall of Fame, https://jmusports.com/sports/hall-of-fame/roster/billy-sample/2201, Accessed September 5, 2022.

6 Billy Sample, A Year in Pinstripes … And then Some (CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2016), 116.

7 Alan Cohen, “Steve Sax,” SABR BioProject, https://sabr.org/bioproj/person/Steve-Sax/.

8 Kevin Mmahat statistics, BaseballAlmanac.com, https://www.baseball-almanac.com/players/player.php?p=mmahake01.

9 Adidas, Fresh Cut Grass, June 1989. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8GBD3T5P7mc. Accessed September 6, 2022.

The full track during the early years of Yankee Stadium was a precursor to the “warning track” that is now a ballpark standard. (Library of Congress, Bain Collection)

Yankee Stadium was built for baseball, but it turned out to be an exceedingly versatile structure. Football was played there. Championship boxing, concerts, religious revivals. Popes visited. And, it turns out, track meets, beginning the year it opened, in 1923. A dozen meets were held at Yankee Stadium over the next 11 years, the last on Columbus Day 1934, a day on which the police were called to break up a riot.1 There were also a few exhibition footraces, ending in 1938 (by 1942 the track was gone) as well as motorcycle racing, a rodeo, and a marathon, all 26 miles 385 yards of it.

The starting line was in the left-field corner. From there came a 120-yard, five-lane straightaway, between the third-base line and the stands, the finish line near home plate.2 Was there room? Until 1937, home plate to dead left-center was 490 feet!3 It was a 400-yard cinder track, 20 feet wide, along the perimeter of the outfield. There was a sharp turn to the left just past home plate. The track was 40 yards less than regulation, so for longer races, the starting line was adjusted. Instead of a mile relay, at times that race was 4×400 (yards, not meters).

The track wasn’t added to the stadium. It was built that way. It was there on Opening Day, April 18, 1923, and three weeks later the first track meet – between two Bronx high-school teams – took place.4

Sometimes track meets and ballgames were held on the same day. In 1925 a track meet was held in the evening, after a doubleheader, under the lights, two decades before the Yankees played a night game at home.

Some meets were fundraisers. In the Olympic years – 1924, 1928, and 1932 – track meets previewed that year’s Olympic Games, giving New Yorkers a chance to see America’s Olympians in person.

The 1934 event drew some 25,000 fans, making it the best-attended one-day track meet in the city’s history to this day.5 That was one of the reasons to hold track meets in the stadium. There were other track venues in the city, but none with 60,000 seats.

There have been a few other American stadiums that accommodated baseball, football, and track and field – most famously the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, which also opened in the spring of 1923. The Coliseum hosted the 1932 Olympic Games, was home to USC and UCLA football, and, when they moved west, the Dodgers. But Yankee Stadium may have been unique as a building built for baseball that handled so many other activities.

When Triborough Stadium opened on Randalls Island in 1936, the city finally had its own signature outdoor track facility. On that stadium’s Opening Day, Jesse Owens ran, qualifying for the Berlin Olympics.

MAY 7, 1923: MORRIS VS. EVANDER CHILDS

With 10,000 people – many of them students at the two schools – in the stands, Evander Childs beat Bronx rival Morris High 9-3 in a baseball game, immediately followed by a dual track meet, won by Morris, 32-30. The first-base stands were taken up by Evander students wearing their orange and black, while the third-base side was Morris maroon, including the school band. The events were the 100, 220, 440, 880, mile, and a relay.6

MAY 20, 1923: DAILY NEWS MARATHON

With some 30,000 people in the stands, a men’s marathon was held, sponsored by the New York Daily News. The starting gun was fired by the Wild Bull of the Pampas, the Argentinean heavyweight Luis Firpo, who had championship fights in Ebbets Field, the Polo Grounds, and Yankee Stadium.7

The race was almost 116 times around the 400-yard circuit and was won by a 28-year-old toolmaker from Stamford, Connecticut, Albert “Whitey” Michelson. He ran the distance in 2:48:23⅘ and thus was credited with a world record for a marathon run on a track, rather than on the roads. (The previous best had been indoors, at Madison Square Garden, in 1909.)

As the race neared its conclusion, thousands of overly enthusiastic spectators poured out of the stands, flooding the track. The 13 finishers – 31 started – had to fight their way to the finish line.

Two years later, Michelson set the world record for the regulation marathon, running 2:29:01 in Port Chester, New York,8 and he made the 1928 and 1932 US Olympic teams.

Unless you count a long doubleheader, it was also Yankee Stadium’s final marathon.

MAY 30, 1923: FORDHAM UNIVERSITY GAMES

With 4,000 fans in attendance, the feature race was the mile, where the veteran Joie Ray was taking a shot at the world’s record of 4:12.6, set in 1915 by American Norm Taber.9 The athletes used the baseball clubhouses to change; Ray stored his clothes in The Babe’s locker.

Thanks to a 25-yard handicap advantage, the first finisher was a runner from Columbia, Walter Higgins, who came across in 4:15⅗, half a second ahead of Ray.

SEPTEMBER 8, 1923: WILCO PRE-OLYMPIC GAMES

With the Yankees leading the American League by 13 games, a meet intended as a preview of the Paris Olympics – scheduled for the summer of 1924 – was held on a cool, wet, windy Saturday afternoon.10

In addition to running events, four field events were contested – the broad jump, high jump, pole vault, and shot put – scattered throughout the stadium.

The Yankees were on their way back from a road trip, comfortably in first place, headed to a rematch with the rival Giants in the World Series, sore from being swept the previous fall (there was one tie) when all five games had been played at the Polo Grounds, across the Harlem River in Manhattan. There were individual contests dominating the Yankees’ headlines that month as well. Sam Jones was coming off a no-hitter – he was scheduled to pitch again on Monday against the A’s – and Babe Ruth was battling Harry Heilmann of the Tigers for the batting crown, Tris Speaker of Cleveland for the RBI crown, and Cy Williams of the Phillies for the major-league lead in home runs. All three would come down to the final days of the season.

The track meet was held in a drizzle. The event, sponsored by the Wilco Athletic Association, drew a respectable crowd of 8,000. A portion of the gate receipts were to be donated to the Red Cross relief fund for survivors of the Great Kanto earthquake that had devastated Japan a week earlier.

For those fans who hoped to see stars of those coming Olympics, they got their money’s worth. Most fans sat on the third-base side, along the straightaway.

Five American men who were to win Gold Medals in Paris – the Olympics of Chariots of Fire fame – competed that day. (There was also a women’s relay race.) There was an international flavor to the meet, as Finland’s Willie Ritola, who resided and trained in the New York area, won the 5,000. Ritola eventually won three lifetime Olympic Gold Medals, including a victory over his legendary countryman Paavo Nurmi in 1928.

The other gold medalists competing that afternoon were DeHart Hubbard in the broad jump; Harold Osborn, double Olympic champion in the high jump and decathlon; Alan Helffrich, anchor of the winning 4×400 for the Americans; and two members of the winning 4×100 team, Lou Clarke and Loren Murchison.

The big race of the day was the men’s mile, where Joie Ray ran 4:14⅘.

The ballfield was then quickly reassembled overnight for baseball. The Yankees had been on the road (or the rails) – a 6-3 win over the A’s in Shibe Park on Wednesday, September 5; a 10-4 defeat of the Yankees farm team in York, Pennsylvania, in which even the big man, Ruth, played, hitting two home runs; then south to the nation’s capital, where they were shut out by the Senators, 4-0.

As Sunday the 9th dawned, The Babe was two behind Williams in home runs, with 33, and one point behind Heilmann in batting average, at .393. The Yankees swept the Red Sox that day, 6-2 and 4-0. Ruth hit number 34, an inside-the-parker, and the two games were played in a combined 3 hours and 30 minutes.

The next day, Jones pitched six more no-hit innings, extending his streak to a record 15 consecutive no-hit innings, and for the second day in a row, Ruth homered – again inside the park.

Ruth finished the 1923 campaign with 41 homers, 130 RBIs, and a .393 batting average but did not win the Triple Crown. He tied with Speaker – player-manager that year for the Indians – in RBIs, equaled Williams, the NL leader, for HRs, but lost the AL batting crown to Heilmann, who hit .403.

In the World Series, in spite of two game-winning home runs by the Giants’ Casey Stengel, the Yankees prevailed, four games to two, their first championship.

JUNE 7, 1924: EASTERN OLYMPIC TRIALS SECTIONAL TRYOUT

With the final selection meet for the 1924 Olympic team one week away in Boston, there was an excellent turnout of Olympic hopefuls. In the stands, the biggest noise came from the right-field bleachers, where an enthusiastic crowd of students from Stuyvesant High School in Manhattan came to cheer for a fellow student, Frank Hussey, that year’s city schoolboy sprint champ. Grantland Rice covered the meet for the New York Herald Tribune.11

Running against veterans, Hussey did not disappoint, finishing a close third behind two future Olympians, Jackson Scholz and J. Alfred LeConey. Scholz won the Olympic 200-meter Gold Medal that summer in Paris, defeating the legendary Brit Eric Liddell, while Hussey qualified for the US relay pool and led off the American 4×100 team that won the Olympic championship and broke the world record.12

Some of the event winners that day included Sabin Carr, a 19-year-old prep-school student who later became the first man to pole vault 14 feet;13 45-year-old Pat McDonald, the 1912 Olympic champion in the shot put who directed traffic in Times Square as a New York City cop, and Leroy Brown, a Dartmouth grad, who had some good tries at 6-7¾ in the high jump, just shy of the world record.14

MAY 26, 1925: FINNISH-AMERICAN A.C. MEET

Yankee Stadium was a busy place on Tuesday, May 26. Thousands of baseball fans showed up early to watch Ruth – who had yet to play a game that season – take batting practice. He was released from St. Vincent’s Hospital that day after a seven-week stay during which he lost 30 pounds and showed he might be able to play baseball again.15 At 1:30, the Yankees and Red Sox began a doubleheader, each winning a game, The Babe a spectator. The ballclubs needed to get off the field, because there was a track meet at the Stadium, that night!

It would be years before the Yanks, or any other major-league team, played night baseball – the first night game at the Stadium was in May 1946 – but Yankee Stadium was outfitted for an evening track meet. It began at 7:45 P.M. and lasted until 10, with some 20,000 in attendance.16 Floodlights that had been set up in 1924 for a rodeo were used to illuminate the track. Night events began there with boxing, using a lighted ring, in 1923.

The big draw was the Flying Finn, Paavo Nurmi, who was wrapping up a monthslong tour of the United States. He took on and defeated all comers, at all distances, rushing by overnight train from city to city, in a lucrative grand tour, but on this night, he ended the stay in defeat, losing the 880 to New Yorker Alan Helffrich, a star runner in his own right, who ran 1:56⅘ for the win.

Miller Huggins’ Yankees, meanwhile, had a disastrous season, finishing next to last. Ruth played 98 games and hit .290 with 25 homers, the last time he would fail to win the home-run crown until 1932.

SEPTEMBER 14, 1925: KNIGHTS OF COLUMBUS MEET

Some 5,000 people attended on a Monday afternoon. The Yankees were in Philadelphia playing the A’s.

The feature race, the 880, was won by Pincus Sober, captain of the City College of New York team, who defeated a powerhouse field of Philip Edwards of New York University, George Marsters of Georgetown, and the Olympian Alan Helffrich in 1:57⅖.17 Sober went on to a lifetime in the sport in New York, as an administrator and meet announcer.

JULY 7, 1926: ST. JOHN THE DIVINE BENEFIT

A meet was held to benefit restoration work on the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, in Upper Manhattan.18 The feature event was the shot put, with competition held with 8-pound, 12-pound and 16-pound implements. John Kuck, a student at Kansas State, won all three – 68-75/8, 57-9¼, and 48-3½. World records were claimed for the smaller weights. Two years later, Kuck became Olympic champion and set the world record.19

It was an international show, including wins by Pierre Lewden of France in the high jump, Ove Anderson of Finland in the 3,000, and Sweden’s Sten Petterson, a three-time Olympian, in both hurdles.

After the disastrous 1925 season, the Yankees turned the corner, winning the AL in ’26 but losing to the Cardinals in seven games in the Series. Ruth returned to form – 47 home runs and 153 RBIs but was again denied the Triple Crown when he lost the batting title to the Tigers’ Heinie Manush .372 to .378.

JUNE 16, 1928: EASTERN SECTIONAL OLYMPIC TRYOUTS

The final US Olympic Trials were three weeks away, in Boston. For some competitors, this was a final tune-up; for others, a hope that they had a shot at the team. Commuter trains stopped at the Stadium. The fare was 5 cents.

Four events were held elsewhere a day later. “One reason the steeplechase has been transferred to Travers Island,” the New York Times slyly wrote, “along with the hammer, discus and javelin, is that the Yankee ball club objected to having a big hole dug in the outfield to provide a pond for the water jump.”20

A number of athletes who would make the 1928 team competed that day, including Boston’s Lloyd Hahn, fifth in the Olympic 800; Leo Lermond, fourth in the Olympic 5-K; New Jerseyan John Gibson, 400 hurdles; and Penn State’s Alfred Bates, bronze in the broad jump.21

Paying little heed to the Olympics in Amsterdam the Yankees and their stars – Ruth hitting third and Lou Gehrig fourth – were on a tear, sweeping the 1927 Series from the Pirates and 1928 from the Cardinals.

JUNE 17, 1929: WINGATE FUND BENEFIT

On a steamy summer night in front of 5,000 spectators, Lermond came close to the world and American records in the mile, running 4:13.0. He was paced by Brooklyn’s Gus Moore, who ran 440-yard splits of 61-2:09-3:11 before finishing a close second in 4:15, the fastest mile of his career.22

JUNE 11, 1932: SENIOR MEETS

The local AAU Association meet, a major annual event on the New York City track calendar, was held at Yankee Stadium for the only time in its long and storied history, with 4,000 in attendance.23

Some historic meet records were broken, including Pete Bowen running 48.4 to break Maxey Long’s 1897 record in the 440, and Otto Rosner running 1:54.4 to break Mel Sheppard’s 880 record from 1911. Both Long and Sheppard had been Olympic champions in their day. In the triple jump, Sol Furth, a graduate of NYU and New Utrecht High School in Brooklyn, jumped 48-3 to break Platt Adams’s 1914 record.

In baseball, the A’s dominated the game in 1929-30-31, winning two World Series, but Joe McCarthy’s Yankees ballclub won 107 in 1932 and swept the Cubs in the Series.

SEPTEMBER 10, 1932: VICTORY TRACK & FIELD GAMES, SPONSORED BY THE WETHERED J. BOYD COUNCIL OF THE KNIGHTS OF COLUMBUS

A month after the LA Olympics had ended on the West Coast, New York fans got the chance to see some of the stars of those Games in person.

Philip Edwards, a 1930 NYU graduate, and Alex Wilson, who between them won five medals in LA for Canada, ran individual and relay races. Edwards won the mile while he and Wilson teamed up to run an odd relay distance, 4×400 yards – because the track at the Stadium was 400 yards. The Canadian squad won in 3:01.7. Another unusual relay, the 4×800 yards, was won by the German AC, in 7:04.7.24

Wilson was upset in the 400-yard dash by Milton Sandler, a graduate of Townsend Harris High School in Queens and NYU, in 45.5 seconds. Sandler went on to dental school and served in the Pacific in World War II.

Edwards went on to medical school at McGill University in Montreal, specializing in tropical diseases. He won a Gold Medal for his native British Guiana in the Commonwealth Games in 1934 and made three more finals at the Berlin Olympics in 1936.

Ralph Metcalfe, double LA sprint medalist, won the 100 meters (10.6) and 150 yards (14.5), and New Yorker George Spitz took the high jump (6-4). The shot put was won by the Olympic champion, Leo Sexton (52-5½), a Georgetown graduate.

The Yankees were in Detroit, where they swept a doubleheader from the Tigers, to increase their lead in the American League to 13 games, on their way to the World Series victory over the Cubs, their first in four years. An aging Babe Ruth missed the games in Detroit because of an attack of appendicitis.25 For the first time in seven seasons, he failed to win the home-run title, despite hitting 41. He did however hit two homers in Game Three against the Cubs, including the famous “called shot” off Charlie Root.

OCTOBER 12, 1934: AMERICAN-ITALIAN UNIVERSITY GAMES

Before a raucous Columbus Day crowd of 25,000, the United States beat an excellent Italian team, 8-5.26 But it was action outside the Stadium that got the headlines.

The biggest race of the day was the 1,500, where the reigning Olympic champion, Luigi Beccali, defeated the American Joe McCluskey by 30 yards. McCluskey came back to win the 3-K.

By 1934, Benito Mussolini had been in control of Italy for a decade, and Adolf Hitler was taking over Germany. In New York these developments produced an outcry as some 3,000 anti-Fascists surrounded the Stadium in protest. While inside Yankee Stadium some fans wore the notorious “black shirts,” outside signs read, “Down with Fascism!” Eventually, the police were called and three people were arrested for civil disorder.27

The Yankees did not make the Series that year, bested by the Tigers in the AL after finishing second to the Senators the year before. With the arrival of a young Joe DiMaggio, New York returned to dominance, winning every Series from 1936 to ’39. And by then, another world war was on the horizon.

EXHIBITION EVENTS: JULY 5, 1930

With the Yankees on the road in Washington, several footraces were held during the intermission of a Negro Leagues doubleheader between the Lincoln Giants and the Baltimore Black Sox. The activities, before 15,000 fans, were a benefit for the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters. Philip Edwards ran the 880 and NYU teammate Sol Furth the 100.28

SEPTEMBER 7, 1937, AND SEPTEMBER 7, 1938: PARADE OF STARS

Parade of Stars fundraisers were staged at the Stadium by the Police Athletic League, broadcast by WOR Radio and attended by 35,000 to 40,000 people, many of them children from local hospitals, orphanages, and children’s homes.

In addition to some track races, in 1937 there was a scrimmage between the Fordham University and Brooklyn Dodgers football teams, while Yankees stars including Lou Gehrig and Joe DiMaggio took batting practice. Baseball, football, running – a busy day at the ballyard.29 As part of the activity in 1938, New York City’s finest had a tug of war.30 This is believed to have been the final time the Yankee Stadium track was used for competitive races.

When the track was pulled out, it was replaced by grass that went all the way to the outfield wall. The “warning track,” now standard in ballparks, became mandatory in parks in 1950, especially as a result of collisions the Dodgers’ Pete Reiser had with the left-field wall in Ebbets Field.31

JACK PFEIFER, an Orioles fan since childhood, is president of the Track and Field Writers of America and a retired editor for the New York Times.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The author is indebted to Brian Richards and his former assistant, Danny Cohen, of the Yankees; Cassidy Lent and Jim Gates (retired) of the Hall of Fame; Bob McGee, author of Ebbets Field: The Greatest Ballpark Ever; and SABR colleague David S. Johnson, of Philadelphia, for their invaluable research assistance.

NOTES

1 Correspondence with Brian J. Richards, museum curator, New York Yankees, and Danny Cohen, November 1, 2022.

2 Jack Masters, “Joie Ray Will Try for Record at Yankee Park,” New York Tribune, May 14, 1923: 14.

3 Philip J. Lowry, Green Cathedrals: The Ultimate Celebration of all Major League and Negro League Ballparks, fifth edition (Phoenix: Society for American Baseball Research, Inc., 2019), 213.

4 A photo of the Stadium before it opened, showing the track, is available at this Getty Images link: https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/general-view-of-yankee-stadium-the-new-ballpark-for-the-new-news-photo/73495008. Accessed November 21, 2022.

5 George Currie, “Joe McCluskey Wins Race He Wanted to Pass Up after Bowing to Beccali,” Brooklyn Daily Eagle, October 13, 1934: 8.

6 “Evander Nine Wins Before 10,000 Fans,” New York Times, May 8, 1923: 15.

7 Jack Masters, “Albert Michelson, Stamford Runner, Shatters World’s Record in Winning Marathon Race,” New York Tribune, May 21, 1923: 16.

8 Richard Hymans and Imre Matrahazi, Progression of IAAF World Records (Monaco: IAAF, 2015), 370.

9 “Higgins Beats Ray in Handicap Race,” New York Times, May 31, 1923: 19.

10 “Ray Runs Fast Mile in Meet at Stadium,” New York Times, September 8, 1923: 124.

11 Grantland Rice, “Scholz Flashes to Victory over Leconey and Hussey at Stadium,” New York Tribune, June 8, 1924: C1.

12 Hymans and Matrahazi, 164.

13 Hymans and Matrahazi, 164.

14 Rice, C4.

15 “Ruth Is Discharged from the Hospital,” New York Times, May 27, 1925: 19.

16 Richards Vidmer, “Nurmi Beaten by Helffrich Before 20,000 in Farewell Race,” New York Times, May 27, 1925: 18.

17 James P. Dawson “Michelson Takes 15-Mile Title Run,” New York Times, September 15, 1925: 21.

18 “Kuck Smashes Two World’s Shot-Put Records in Meet at the Yankee Stadium,” New York Times, July 8, 1926: 23.

19 Hymans and Matrahazi, 184.

20 John Kieran, “Sports of The Times,” New York Times, June 16, 1928: 22.

21 “Hahn and Gibson Set Track Marks,” New York Times, June 17, 1928: 139.

22 Arthur J. Daley, “Mile Run in 4:13 by Lermond in Wingate Fund Meet at Yankee Stadium,” New York Times, June 18, 1929: 42.

23 Arthur J. Daley, “New York A.C. Team Wins Track Title,” New York Times, June 12, 1932: 105.

24 Arthur J. Daley, “Meet Honors Won by Canadian Stars,” New York Times, September 11, 1932: S1.

25 “Ruth Much Better, Escapes Operation,” New York Times, September 11, 1932: B7.

26 Louis Effrat, “Beccali Captures 1,500 by 30 Yards,” New York Times, October 13, 1934: 17.

27 “Cracked Skulls Are Remembrances of Columbus Day,” Brooklyn Daily Eagle, October 13, 1934: 21. An 11-minute film clip from Fox Movietone News resides in the University of South Carolina film archive and is viewable at this link: https://digital.tcl.sc.edu/digital/collection/MVTN/id/1422/rec/13.

28 “Lincoln Giants Split with Baltimore Team,” New York Times, July 6, 1930: 117.

29 “Children Dazzled by Stars’ Parade,” New York Times, September 8, 1937: 25.

30 “40,000 Youths See Police Sports Fete,” New York Times, September 8, 1938: 25.

31 Peter Morris, A Game of Inches: The Story Behind the Innovations That Shaped Baseball (Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 2010), 388.

“In all due respect to Henry Aaron, Stan Musial and Willie Mays, the best hitter I ever played against was Roberto Clemente.”— Pete Rose, recipient of the 1976 Roberto Clemente Award1

The baseballs are signed by Bob Gibson, Steve Carlton, Ton Seaver, Ferguson Jenkins, Don Drysdale, and Sandy Koufax – each one a Hall of Fame pitcher against whom Clemente hit .300 or higher. (Photograph by Duane Rieder.)

Roberto Clemente’s offensive accomplishments should leave zero doubt as to the merits of his special election to the Hall of Fame in 1973: a career batting average of .317; four National League batting titles (1961, 1964, 1965, and 1967); the 1966 National League Most Valuable Player Award (he batted .317 with 29 home runs and 119 RBIs); the 1971 World Series MVP; the 11th player to have 3,000 regular-season hits; and only the second player to hit in every game of two consecutive World Series appearances (1960 and 1971).

Despite these achievements, Clemente’s offensive talent could be viewed as underappreciated by those who have cited his 240 regular-season home runs as a somewhat muted offensive record compared with other elite players of his era. He topped the 20-home-run mark just three times, for instance. Clemente for his part acknowledged this criticism throughout his career. “I can hit with anybody,” he insisted. “I believe I’m as good a hitter as Willie Mays or Henry Aaron. My only drawback is lack of home run power.”2 (Aaron hit 755 home runs and Willie Mays hit 660.)

A closer examination of Clemente’s offensive production reveals that he was arguably one of most intelligent hitters of his era. He demonstrated raw offensive power and was able to adjust his batting approach according to in-game circumstances. Simply put, Clemente could not only hit, but hit with power.

THE EARLY YEARS

Clemente’s first playing experience occurred when he joined his local slow-pitch softball team in 1942, and taught himself the basics of hitting with a guava tree limb that served as his first bat.3 He quickly fell in love with the game and spent hours on the neighborhood softball field, noting in his diary that he once hit 10 home runs during a marathon game.4 Clemente next progressed to fast-pitch softball, where in 1952 his strong fielding skills and ability to consistently pull the ball led to an invitation to a tryout co-hosted by the Brooklyn Dodgers and the Santurce Cangrejeros at Sixto Escobar Stadium in San Juan, Puerto Rico.

Of the 72 players attending the tryout, Clemente was the only one to attract the interest of Dodgers scout Al Campanis. Impressed with his defensive abilities, Campanis invited Clemente to hit batting practice. Clemente did not disappoint. “The kid swings with both feet off the ground and hits line drives to right and sharp ground balls up the middle,” marveled Campanis. “He was the greatest natural athlete I have ever seen as a free agent.”5 Campanis also rated Clemente’s hitting power as “A+” in his scouting report.6 Despite this strong interest, major-league rules dictated that Clemente could not sign with the Dodgers until his 18th birthday. However, the Dodgers’ co-host, the Santurce Cangrejeros, wasted little time signing Clemente to a contract to play in the Puerto Rican Winter League.

Buster Clarkson, as the Cangrejeros’ manager and Clemente’s first skipper in professional baseball, recognized his raw offensive talent and made sure he was offered a similar amount of batting-practice pitches as his teammates.7 Clemente credited Clarkson with helping him improve his batting stride toward the pitcher, thus increasing his offensive production. Of Clemente, Clarkson noted, “[His batting stance] had a few rough spots, but he never made the same mistake twice. He was baseball savvy.”8

Clemente signed with the Dodgers a year later for a $10,000 salary and a $5,000 signing bonus. The Dodgers sent him to their International League affiliate in Montreal for the 1954 season, which meant that he became eligible to be claimed by another organization via a supplemental draft at season’s end.

Clemente saw limited playing time during the first half of his only season in Montreal. His manager, Max Macon, claimed this was due to Clemente’s free-swinging nature at the plate. “If you had been in Montreal that year, you wouldn’t have believed how ridiculous some pitchers made him look.”9 Despite limited playing time, Clemente showed flashes of offensive power. On July 25 he slammed a pinch-hit home run in the bottom of the 10th to win the first game of a doubleheader at home vs. the Havana Sugar Kings. The ball sailed over the 340-foot left-field fence and left the ballpark. “Clemente is a player with potential greatness,” wrote one reporter. “His clout over the left field wall … won the opening game Hollywood style.”10

FROM A YOUNG “BUC” TO “THE GREAT ONE”: 1955-1972

After being claimed by the Pirates in the November 1954 supplemental draft, Clemente made his major-league debut the following spring. The 1955 season also showcased Clemente’s unorthodox batting style, which was partly in response to a back injury sustained in an offseason car accident in Puerto Rico.11 This approach at the plate quickly caught the attention of teammates and reporters. “He stood at the batting cage, his head rolling as he jerked his neck in a series of exercises.… The posture was awkward. The swing was sudden and appeared unpremeditated.… Only after the bat strikes the ball is it obvious that this is a good hitter.”12

Clemente hit his first big-league home run on April 18, 1955, against the New York Giants. He hit the ball 450 feet to left-center field off the bullpen at the Polo Grounds (which was located in fair territory), and legged out an inside-the-park home run.13 A few weeks later, on June 5, while facing the Cincinnati Reds at Pittsburgh’s cavernous Forbes Field, Clemente hit a triple to dead center field that “must have traveled 450 feet in the air and would have been a homer in any National League park except Forbes Field and the Polo Grounds.”14

Clemente’s willingness to hit almost any pitch proved to be one of his strongest offensive abilities. He had only 18 walks in 501 plate appearances in 1955 and just 13 walks in 572 plate appearances in 1956. This led Clemente to develop a reputation that “he hit everything that didn’t hit him first.”15 Indeed, opposing managers told reporters they instructed their pitchers to give intentional walks to Clemente, but on many occasions he would swing at the pitches for base hits.16 Los Angeles Dodgers pitcher Don Sutton once remarked of Clemente, “Anything between the on-deck circles was a strike to him. I’ve seen him double on knock-down pitches.”17

Interestingly, 2,154 (or 72 percent) of Clemente’s 3,000 hits were singles. That high a percentage could be considered a misleading indicator of a lack of home-run power, as Clemente showed he could crush hits that didn’t clear the outfield wall at Forbes Field. During a game against the Cincinnati Reds at Crosley Field on June 13, 1963, Clemente launched a pitch more than 400 feet; it was hit so hard to the wall that it quickly bounced to Reds’ center fielder, Vada Pinson, who quickly relayed the ball back to the infield, “restricting Clemente to a laser single.”18

On occasion, however, the baseball gods granted Clemente a trip around the bases for his line- drive efforts, such as on May 11, 1957, when Clemente scorched a hit over the head of Philadelphia Phillies center fielder Richie Ashburn. The ball rolled to the batting cage, which was stored in fair territory in deepest center field. When Ashburn finally got to the ball, Clemente was already at third base, and he scored easily for an inside-the-park home run.19

While Clemente is perhaps best known for hitting bullet line drives, he also hit monstrous home runs that left his fellow players speechless. In the first game of a doubleheader at Wrigley Field on May 17, 1959, Clemente hit a moon shot off Cubs pitcher Bob Anderson to deep right field, estimated at a minimum distance of 500 feet in negligible wind conditions. The Cubs hitting coach, baseball legend Roger Hornsby, remarked that it was the longest home run he had ever seen.20

Neither the daunting dimensions of Forbes Field nor the pressure of facing one of the National League’s greatest pitchers intimidated Clemente. On May 31, 1964, he led off the bottom of the third inning by launching a pitch from Sandy Koufax that hit the light tower in left-center field, an estimated 450 feet from home plate. Koufax said the ball was still rising when it hit the tower, which suggests it would have gone even farther with no resistance.21 Koufax later summarized his career facing Clemente as a sort of puzzle: “There is just no way you can develop a pitching pattern for him.”22

Clemente also harnessed his power to carry the Pirates offense when necessary, such as on May 15, 1967, vs. the Cincinnati Reds. In one of his best run-producing games, Clemente had three home runs and a double and drove in all of Pittsburgh’s runs in an 8-7 loss. “It was almost like Roberto Clemente playing the Reds all by himself and coming so close to wrecking them single-handedly,” a sportswriter observed.23 Clemente, much to his modest nature, downplayed his performance. “Yes, my biggest game, but not my best game,” he said. “My best game is when I drive in the winning run. I don’t count this one, we lost.”24

When Clemente arrived in the big leagues, Willie Mays encouraged him to never be intimidated by pitchers. “Get mean when you go to bat,” advised Mays. “And if they try to knock you down, act like it doesn’t bother you. Get back up there and hit the ball. Show them.”25 Clemente made good use of this advice during a game at Dodger Stadium on June 4, 1967. After Clemente hit a home run in the fifth inning, Don Drysdale threw a “duster” at him in his next at-bat, sending him to the ground.26 With the count 3-and-1, Clemente drove the next pitch an estimated 430 feet over the center-field wall. For his efforts, Clemente was greeted with a loud round of applause by the Dodgers faithful as he rounded the bases.27

Clemente’s power production was so consistent that offnights at the plate attracted attention. In the All-Star Game in Anaheim on July 12, 1967, he struck out four times for only the second time in his career. Clemente’s National League teammates were shocked by what they saw, prompting Atlanta Braves catcher Joe Torre to deadpan, “Did everybody take notes on how to pitch to Clemente?”28

Perhaps one of the most overlooked of Clemente’s home runs came in the second game of a doubleheader on June 27, 1971, at Veterans Stadium in Philadelphia. He belted a pinch-hit homer off Joe Hoerner to become the first of only seven players to hit a home run to Veterans Stadium’s upper decks in its 33-year history.29 Clemente’s feat was underappreciated at the time because of a newspaper strike in Pittsburgh but has since been validated by multiple witnesses, including the Phillies players.30

On September 30, 1972, Clemente became only the 11th player to reach 3,000 career hits. His landmark hit came at home off the Mets’ Jon Matlack, a leadoff double in the fourth inning. Clemente dedicated the hit to Pirates fans, the people of Puerto Rico, and Roberto Marin, the Puerto Rican businessman who originally invited Clemente to play on his softball team and became so impressed with his performance that he recommended that the Brooklyn Dodgers sign Clemente.31

CLEMENTE’S APPROACH TO HITTING

Through the years baseball fans and historians have offered several possible reasons for why Clemente, a perennial challenger for the National League batting title, rarely set home-run records. Clemente, for his part, claimed it was due to the deep dimensions of Forbes Field: 365 feet in left field, 406 feet to left-center field, 457 feet to deep center field. “I would hit more homers if I were playing anywhere but in Pittsburgh,” he said. “Forbes Field is the toughest park to hit home runs. If I played in Wrigley Field, I’d be a power hitter. I could hit 35 to 40 homers a year with my home games there.”32 Said longtime teammate Bill Mazeroski, “Don’t let anybody kid you he can’t hit for distance. When he wants to, he can power one as far as anybody in baseball. He’s smart enough to go for line drives at Forbes Field. That’s no park for home run hitters.”33

Pirates manager Danny Murtaugh offered his own rationale for Clemente’s offensive results. “I have always said that everybody expects too much of Roberto. He’s batting in the third position and in my style of play his job is to set up runners as well as drive them in. If you were to take Roberto’s runs set up, you’ll come up with a tremendous plus in his favor. Everybody always mentions the RBIs, but nobody ever mentions the runs set up. That’s equally important.”34

A potential clue to the origin of Clemente’s raw offensive power likely lies in the mechanics of his swing. According to Clemente biographer Bill Christine, “No kid on a sandlot will ever be taught to swing a bat like Roberto Clemente. The batter’s box was never deep enough for him. He had reflexes which enabled him to wait until the last fraction of a second before whipping the bat around. His hands, those strong hands and powerful wrists, he kept them close to the midsection. He felt that there was no pitch that was impossible for him to attack.”35

Generating power off his left foot, Clemente “would never swing the bat at the baseball, he would always throw the bat at the baseball.”36 His unique lunging motion meant that “Clemente made his charge at the pitchers like a mad man.”37 Interestingly, during his 1966 MVP season, Clemente’s offensive numbers rose to career highs in home runs and RBIs, which he attributed in part to improved field conditions at his home ballpark that helped him enhance his swing. “For years, I have been pleading with somebody in charge at Forbes Field to put clay instead of sand in the batter’s box,” he said. “Suddenly, this year, they put clay in the batter’s box. Now I have firm footing. Now I can get a toe-hold.”38

Regardless of how he did it, Clemente demonstrated incredible offensive ability to hit virtually any pitch for power to any part of the ballpark. As Jim Murray of the Los Angeles Times noted, “They didn’t make the pitch Roberto Clemente couldn’t hit. All he required of a baseball was that it be in the park. He was the most destructive World Series player I ever saw outside of Ruth and Gehrig.”39

Acknowledgments

The author would like to thank David Speed and Bill Nowlin for their helpful feedback on an earlier draft of this article.

Sources

In addition to the sources cited in the Notes, the author consulted B​aseba​ll-Re​feren​ce.​com, R​etros​heet.​org, N​ewspa​pers.​com, and Clemente’s file at the National Baseball Hall of Fame.

Notes

1 Associated Press, “Pete Rose Given Clemente Award,” Wilmington (Ohio) News Journal, May 13, 1976: 16.

2 Associated Press, “Clemente Claims He’s Best in Game,” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, April 21, 1964: 23.

3 Bruce Markusen, Roberto Clemente: The Great One (Champaign, Illinois: Sports Publishing, Inc., 2013), 22.

4 Markusen, 23.

5 Markusen, 26.

6 David Maraniss, Clemente: The Passion and Grace of Baseball’s Last Hero (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2006), 27.

7 Bill Christine, “Roberto! A Self-Made Hitter,” New York Daily News, April 3, 1973: 146.

8 Markusen, 29.

9 Stew Thornley, “Roberto Clemente’s Entry into Organized Baseball: Was He Hidden in Montreal?” Accessed April 7, 2022, h​ttps:​//mil​keesp​ress.​com/c​lemen​te195​4.​html.

10 Lloyd McGowan, “Rookie Roberto’s homer, Lasorda Win, Revive Hopes,” Montreal Star, July 26, 1954: 28.

11 Markusen, 52.

12 Jimmy Cannon, “Clemente Still Wonders: Who’s Stranger in Field?,” Orlando Evening Star, March 21, 1972: 30.

13 Les Biederman, “Roberto’s Bat Softens Rivals for Buc Raids,” The Sporting News, September 17, 1966: 6.

14 Les Biederman, “The Scoreboard,” Pittsburgh Press, June 6, 1955: 22.

15 Jim Murray, “Roberto’s Revenge,” Los Angeles Times, July 1, 1964: 1.

16 Murray, “Roberto’s Revenge.”

17 Associated Press, “300-Win Hurlers History?” Rome (Georgia) News-Tribune, January 7, 1998: 3B.

18 Les Biederman, “Bailey in Fast Company,” Pittsburgh Press, June 14, 1963: 28.

19 Les Biederman, “Phils Blast Friend Early, Turn Back Pirates, 7 to 2,” Pittsburgh Press, May 12, 1957: 69.

20 Les Biederman, “Tape Measure Homer Belted by Clemente at Wrigley Field,” The Sporting News, May 27, 1959: 10.

21 Sandy Koufax with Ed Linn, Koufax (New York: Viking Press, 1966), 220.

22 Frank Finch, “Bucs’ Clemente Toughest NL Hitter,” Los Angeles Times, June 24, 1965: 50.

23 Les Biederman. “Clemente’s ‘Biggest’ Game Wasted,” Pittsburgh Press, May 16, 1967: 34.

24 Biederman. “Clemente’s ‘Biggest’ Game Wasted.”

25 Biederman. “Clemente’s ‘Biggest’ Game Wasted.”

26 Charley Feeney, “Veale Gets 7th Victory with Help,” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, June 5, 1967: 34.

27 This Day in Baseball, “Roberto Clemente Hits 2 Home Runs off Don Drysdale,” Accessed April 22, 2022, h​ttps:​//thi​sdayi​nbase​ball.​com/r​obert​o-cle​mente​-hits​-2-ho​me-ru​ns-of​f-don​-drys​dale-​accou​nting​-for-​all-o​f-pit​tsbur​ghs-r​uns-i​n-a-4​-1-vi​ctory​-over​-los-​angel​es-cl​ement​es-fi​rst-b​omb-t​ravel​s-400​-feet​-to-t​ie-th​e-s/.

28 Les Biederman. “Reds’ Perez Lives Like a King, Plays Like One,” Pittsburgh Press, July 12, 1967: 62.

29 Gene Collier, “Of Veterans: One Spit On, the Other Knocked Down,” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, September 26, 2003: B-2. This home run has often been misquoted as the “Liberty Bell Ringer” that hit the decorative Liberty Bell attached to the center-field upper deck at Veterans Stadium. Clemente researcher David Speed has noted that while the home run did not hit the bell, it was nonetheless an excellent example of Clemente’s raw offensive power.

30 David Speed Facebook post: June 27, 2018, Accessed April 30, 2022, h​ttps:​//www​.face​book.​com/p​hoto/​?fbid​=1021​53422​2137​6250.

31 Charley Feeney, “Roberto Collects 3000th Hit, Dedicates It to Pirate Fans,” The Sporting News, October 14, 1972: 15.

32 “Clemente Claims He’s Best in Game.”

33 Al Abrams, “Sidelights on Sports: Clemente Not Appreciated?,” Pittsburgh-Post Gazette, February 26, 1965, 20.

34 Associated Press, “Clemente Sparks Late Rally, Pirates Win, 6-5,” Monessen Valley Independent (Monessen, Pennsylvania), May 18, 1971: 9.

35 Bill Christine, “Roberto! A Self-Made Hitter.”

36 Markusen, 168.

37 Les Biederman, “Clemente Sinks Feet in Clay to Mold Stout Swat Figures,” The Sporting News, July 2, 1966: 8.

38 Biederman, “Clemente Sinks Feet in Clay to Mold Stout Swat Figures.”

39 Jim Murray, “Clemente: You Had to See Him to Disbelieve Him,” Los Angeles Times, January 3, 1973: 49.

Fat Cats catcher Eitan Maoz leaps for a ball. (Michael Gauthier, Freedom Photography)

Professional baseball in Ottawa has had a turbulent existence and at times, a bitter heritage. From 1898 to the present, Ottawa professional baseball has been a race between sporadic success and crashing failures, featuring eight professional franchises.1 As a semiprofessional team, the 2010 arrival of the Ottawa Fat Cats represented a significant departure from the minor-league teams that had stitched together Ottawa’s baseball legacy.

The rural sounds of pro baseball were absent from urban Ottawa in 2009.2 Ottawa considered attracting a minor-league franchise while concurrently examining alternative uses of the Ottawa Stadium ranging from a multi-use facility for events to building a casino and a retail and/or residential complex. However, Duncan MacDonald saw a semiprofessional short-season baseball franchise in the Intercounty Baseball League (IBL) as the path to Ottawa baseball success.3

Duncan MacDonald grew up in Eastern Ontario playing baseball for the Brockville and Waterloo, Ontario youth teams. MacDonald was a player at Ithaca College. He participated in the NCAA Division III College World Series in 1985 and 1986. He was a regional scout for the Toronto Blue Jays from 1990-2002.4 He tried to make baseball work in Ottawa focusing on the intimacy of semipro baseball over operating a minor-league team. His style was in the tradition of Bill Veeck. He was co-owner of OSG and General Manager of the Fat Cats from its inception until he left the organization after the 2011 season.

Local tour operator David Butler and MacDonald formed the Ottawa Stadium Group (OSG), developing a plan to bring baseball back with an IBL semipro expansion franchise with all-year events at the stadium. “The stadium’s paid for, it’s beautiful and kids want to play there. It would be a shame if it did happen to get knocked down and sold off,” MacDonald said.5 They requested the city give them a 10-year lease with renewal options and renovations to the stadium to make the facility attractive to other non-sporting events.

In January 2010, the IBL board voted 6-2 to approve OSG’s pitch for a team with a C$30,000 fee.6 As the team situated furthest from the other IBL teams, Ottawa was required to pay for the visiting teams’ travel costs. OSG signed a one-year lease with the city in February with a rent of C$108,000. “People will come,” MacDonald bravely predicted. “We understand this is a follow-the-leader-town so we’ve just got to get the first few people through the turnstiles and once … people are having fun, we think the corporate side will support it.”7 MacDonald warned the team had no commitment beyond 2010: “We have a one-year lease. Let me say that again: We have a one-year lease. And we have a semi-pro franchise.”8

With MacDonald as general manager, the team hired a former pro player with experience in coaching and scouting as manager, Bill Mackenzie.9 Mackenzie had been in baseball since 1967. Prior to the team’s inaugural game against the Guelph Royals on May 8, Mackenzie received a letter from former Montreal Expo general manager and friend, Jim Fanning. Fanning warned Mackenzie “[D]on’t manage like I did … Manage more like Connie Mack or Casey Stengel.”10 With seven doubleheaders scheduled and only 11 home dates in a 36-game schedule and a hastily-formed roster, a daunting task was ahead.

The team signed players and held tryouts. A former Blue Jays prospect was the first player signed by Ottawa. Drafted twice by Toronto, pitcher David Steffler was seen as the team’s needed mentor to the younger collegiate pitchers and a “veteran arm who can beat anybody in the league,” according to Mackenzie.11 At 34 with a nomadic career including the IBL and Spain, he was vice president of client experience for MD Physician Service.12 Steffler was unavailable for the team’s first game as his wife gave birth to twins.13 The team was composed of a myriad of players from college and university teams as well as men who had been drafted by major league teams. Several players lived in the Ottawa community, with many employed in real jobs. Mackenzie saw a squad with talent, but he had perspective: “You can win, or you can lose, or it can rain.”14

MacDonald determined the team moniker. He used focus groups to create a list of 10 potential names but none seemed right. He was inspired by Ottawa’s reputation in Canada: “As soon as Fat Cats was on the list, it was the name everyone chose. And I mean everyone. I think we had one vote against it once it was an option.”15 The nickname was a “gentle poke” at Ottawa’s role as the seat of power.16

The logo, a grinning cat with red-and-black team colors, was unveiled on March 24. The organization promised to focus on the fan experience with reasonable ticket and food prices and fan-friendly entertainment as a means to success. “There isn’t going to be a more family-affordable ticket that is going to give people more value and entertainment for their dollar,” MacDonald boasted.17

The team implemented marketing efforts designed to make the game attractive. Incentives to buy tickets online to avoid long box office lines included free transportation to the ballpark from another site. Current and past members of the Canadian military got in free. “We just want people to come out, have some fun…” MacDonald proclaimed.18 “We know what not to do. We know what doesn’t work.19

The Fats Cats’ 2010 home schedule began on May 15 with an 8-6 loss against the Mississauga Twins. Paid attendance was 3,724 but estimates were higher. Facing long box-office lines, fans were ushered through the gates for free. The local liquor license regulations allowed fans to buy beer but one could not drink it in the stands or seats, only in the concourse. Instead of watching the game in their seat, one drank a beer and was able to watch the long concession lines grow longer as “no one was prepared for the volume of people that [showed] up for the game.”20 “It’s pretty amazing. Overwhelming. It just goes to show you how much the community missed baseball and enjoy family fun entertainment,” said MacDonald.21 According to press accounts, “[F]ans waited in line for up to 30 minutes to get a peanuts or Cracker Jacks, as the old song goes.”22 With a chill in the air, there was a dearth of coffee and hot chocolate. The lack of parking contributed to the long lines to enter the stadium, a familiar problem. MacDonald promised a better performance: “We’ll be prepared a little better (Sunday). Nobody expected this crowd. Nobody wants this facility to rot and I think we got that message out there.”23

In their first season, the Fat Cats went 11-25, in last place in a nine-team league where eight teams made the playoffs. MacDonald was named IBL Executive of the Year. The team led the league with an unheard attendance of 2,328 per date.24 To make the Fats Cats profitable, the team requested a long-term lease from the city and elimination of the above-noted travel subsidies that the team was required to pay other teams, with no success.

OSG contemplated its future by seeking an affiliated team for Ottawa and asked the city for a lease extension beyond October 2011, preferably five years, to attract a team. Other groups including OSG were interested in having a Toronto Blue Jays farm club in Ottawa. A faction of the public, political leadership and media believed baseball was on the decline and Ottawa was a hockey and football town. The Ottawa City Council published a 51-page report prepared by city employees that recommended selling the stadium parking lots and transforming the stadium into a concert venue.25 The Council did not act on the report. An air of uncertainty permeated. OSG was committed to operating the stadium and paid its C$108,000 rent for 2010. OSG noted that baseball brought revenue, and social, environmental, and cultural benefits to the community.26

In early January 2011, an editorial in the Ottawa Citizen was blunt in its assessment: the IBL was a sandlot league, where attendance is secondary. The city must not grant a lease longer than one year for the Fat Cats for a ballpark designed for minor-league baseball: “Maybe the Fat Cats are the best baseball Ottawa fans will support…so the municipality keeps its options open.”27

On March 10, 2011, the team secured a one-year lease. Mackenzie resigned as manager: “You could say philosophical differences, sure.”28 He remained in the organization in a public relations role. Tim Nelson was named manager. “Tim is local and has a great reputation with Canada’s junior team,” MacDonald said.29

Born in Calgary on May 10, 1978, Tim Nelson was a seventh-round pick out of high school in the 1998 amateur draft as a third baseman by the Baltimore Orioles. A career minor leaguer, he retired in 2005. Nelson was a coach with Ottawa local teams and the Canadian National Junior Team. He managed the Verona Knights in the Italian Premier League. Serving as manager of the Fats Cats in 2011-2012, he worked full-time in finance with the Canadian government at Human Resources and Skills Development Canada while coaching baseball at night. “Being in Ottawa and being able to coach a team like the Fat Cats works out well for me and I enjoy it,” Nelson said.30

OSG informed the city it had sold 4,200 season ticket packages. It paid the $108,000 rent by the March 14 deadline with a chance for extension for the 2012 campaign. The team announced a partnership with Great River Media who purchased 1,000 season tickets that would be given to employees and advertisers.31

The schedule had 17 home dates commencing May 21 against the Kitchener Panthers. The 2011 Fat Cats had three Americans with the remaining players all from the Ottawa region, returning 13 from the 2010 squad. They opened the season with a 7–4 win over the Burlington Twins on May 7. Starting 1–2 before the May 21 home opener, the team anticipated a crowd of over 6,000. “What we have on paper is very good” and “[T]he beer will be flowing and the people will be yelling,” Nelson quipped.32 The team won 5–2 before 4,617.

Though finishing 16–18 and in sixth place, the Fat Cats’ second season resulted in astonishing postseason success. All eight teams made the playoffs. It was not enough for Nelson: “Our goal was not just to be in the playoffs, but finish up the season and do well in the playoffs, and hopefully win a couple of rounds and see how far we can go.”33 The playoffs gave fans a chance to root for an underdog.

Ottawa won two playoff best-of-seven series: against the favored London Majors in five games and sweeping the Barrie Baycats. They reached the finals, losing to the more experienced Brantford Red Sox in five games.34 During the playoff run, fans filled Ottawa Stadium to near capacity, a sight that had not been seen since the early Lynx years. The franchise set a IBL postseason total attendance record, as well as a single game record in Game Three of the finals with 7,355.35

The improbable playoff run saw interest in the team escalate. OSG hoped that a long-term lease was in the offing from the city. “Is that the best way to go? No. We weren’t thrilled to have a one plus one year lease,” MacDonald said.36 Ottawa needed to determine whether the city wanted affiliated minor-league baseball and whether the stadium had a long-term future. The Fat Cats were important to the equation and could work with a minor-league baseball team. The team provided the opportunity for local players to play at home. “I’ve never had so much fun playing on a team,” said pitcher Josh Soffer, a Kanata native.37

As the city pondered a lease extension for 2012, it put out bids to attract a full-season minor-league baseball team. The Fat Cats’ lease was set to expire in March 2012. OSG requested a year extension in October but was met with silence. At a November 11, 2011 meeting with the Ottawa City Council finance committee on the future of Ottawa Stadium and recruiting a Double-A team, Fat Cats CEO Brian Carolan said two teams could easily share the stadium. Any concern on the field conditions would be alleviated if astroturf were to be installed as part of any planned upgrade. But the IBL generally played on weekends and the question of scheduling was an issue. Any minor-league team would not willingly give up weekend dates. Minor League Baseball had the final say on any team moving to an available market.38 The Massachusetts-based Beacon Sports Capital Partners (Beacon) expressed an interest in bringing a Double-A franchise to Ottawa.

The city government dawdled as it reviewed the bids. A final decision was delayed a few times. Speculation focused on the Binghamton Eastern League franchise. Any recommendation by the city that occurred in early 2012 would be a problem said Eastern League president Joe McEachan. A team needs time to set up shop, establish community roots and develop relationships with the community before a game is played.39

On February 9, the city council approved Beacon’s bid. On February 22, the city announced that a new team would be lured to Ottawa for 2013. A plan for C$5.7 million in renovations and upgrades in the stadium was put in place. The proposed team and the city would sign a 10-year lease with two five-year options at C$257,000 annual rent. The target team was the Binghamton Mets with an affiliation agreement with the Toronto Blue Jays. There would be no lease extension for the Fat Cats. In fact, with the construction there was no certainty the Fat Cats could play at the stadium in 2012.40

Ottawa Mayor Jim Watson on March 25 announced that Double-A ball for 2013 was not occurring, with 2014 still a possibility. Beacon had told the city there was not enough time to move and set up a team in Ottawa. The Fat Cats could play their regular season and the playoffs without having to look for an alternative site.

The players enjoyed playing in Ottawa while hoping for the opportunity to play professional baseball. North Carolina outfielder Kevin Dietrich exemplified this attitude: “Ottawa is great, everything about it. The city is great, the fans are great, I love it up here.”41 They also adjusted to the team’s tenuous existence.

During the 2010 and 2011 seasons, OSG had an arrangement with St. Paul University for the players to reside in dorms in exchange for advertising. But the 2012 season saw no such deal, leading to unusual player living arrangements. When not staying at a local hotel, four American Fats Cats became squatters as they slept in the stadium VIP boxes several days a week.42

Frustrated with the city’s efforts to attract professional baseball and renovate the stadium, the local media became critical. Elizabeth Payne, a member of the Ottawa Citizen’s editorial board, questioned the importance of baseball and the need for the stadium: “So why does the same city that has just voted to close a municipal equestrian park still own a white elephant baseball stadium?”43 Sell the stadium, reduce the stadium to rubble, and stop investing taxpayer funds, she recommended.

A record of 18-18 and a fifth-place tie resulted in a playoff opportunity. However, the postseason magic was gone as Ottawa fell in the first round against the Guelph Royals in six games. Nelson was unable to manage Game Six due to a work commitment. Ace pitcher and 2011 playoff MVP Matt McGovern, with ongoing shoulder issues, pitched only two innings all season and started Game Six with a six-inning four-run effort.44 Unbeknownst to the players, the last game in Fat Cat history was over.

The Fat Cats became the “latest casualty of the Ottawa Stadium graveyard.”45 The lease expired on September 15. The team “was ordered by the city to have its stuff packed and out of the stadium by 11:59 P.M. Tuesday,” September 18.46 The Fat Cats were caught off guard: “Why not work our schedule around the renovations (next summer)? It’s all pretty confusing,” Assistant GM Jonathan Trotter said.47 “A team like us has clearly been successful and we’re told to leave. There really is no option for us. A lot of people thought maybe we could play at Heritage (in Orléans). But we’d only be talking about getting a couple of hundred fans and we wouldn’t be able to make it work. In my opinion, the city is taking a big risk (with Double-A).”48

On December 20, 2012, the IBL released its 2013 schedule. Ottawa was not included. IBL Commissioner Stuart Smith said that with the city’s desire for professional baseball, the pending renovations to the stadium and the OSG interest in non-baseball events, it was time to pull the plug and cease operations: “It would almost be a miracle if the Fat Cats were to play in 2013 and we don’t do our work based on miracles.”49 The players were to be dispersed to the remaining eight teams.

The Ottawa Fats Cats tweeted their demise on December 22: “Dear Fans: It is our deepest regret to announce that the Fat Cats have ceased operations for the 2013 baseball season.”50

“It’s a tremendous loss for the league. I’m not really (surprised) because these guys basically had to beg to stay on that field every year,” said Toronto Maple Leafs owner Jack Dominico who wanted Ottawa to remain in the league.51 Returning in 2014 was mentioned. Despite being larger in population with more fans than most of the other eight IBL teams, the city wanted the Fat Cats gone. The Fat Cats’ existence was an impediment to bringing minor league baseball to Ottawa Stadium. The city was in never-ending talks with Beacon to bring Double-A baseball to Ottawa for 2014. Ottawa desired an affiliated minor-league team in a renovated stadium. It never happened.

Fan support was not the problem, due to the creativity and innovation of the team management. The Fats Cats’ popularity was clear, achieving previously unseen league-leading attendance numbers in the IBL. The attendance numbers were aided by the fact that most of the players were local. Despite a limited number of home dates and several scheduled doubleheaders in their initial season, the Fat Cats averaged a better-than-expected 2,328 per home date for a total of 25,611 for the 2010 season. In the 2011 campaign, the Fat Cats made it to the IBL finals only to lose to the Brantford Red Sox. The team drew a total of 38,491 during the regular season. In the playoffs, the Fat Cats averaged 4,120 fans per game and drew a total of 28,483 in only seven home games. A franchise and IBL record crowd of 7,355 attended Game Three of the finals against Brantford. With playoffs included the season attendance total was 67,334. The team led the IBL again in attendance for the 2012 season.52

MacDonald was ousted as general manager when his contract was not renewed after the 2011 season. The Fat Cats succeeded and were building a foundation with the short-season summer schedule. As he noted: “You won’t find me at the ballpark in April. On Tuesday night, if it’s the Senators playing the Bruins, I’m not going to be at the baseball field when it’s six degrees outside.”53 He sees baseball as a summer gate attraction with a focus on short-season ball. Selling the innocence of baseball and making the game an event was the right path. MacDonald is still an advocate for Ottawa baseball. In 2019, he proposed a new multi-use stadium at LeBreton Flats in the heart of Ottawa.54 MacDonald became the director of growth and development for EXIT Realty Eastern Ontario and a licensed real estate agent.

Why has affiliated minor-league baseball failed to return to Ottawa when the game should be as popular as in Toronto? Part of the problem was the indecisiveness of the city. MacDonald strongly asserted it is a multi-dimensional problem stemming from arduous leases and lopsided financial arrangements with the city, the harsh spring weather, and the large number of home games in a minor-league full season. To demonstrate his point, MacDonald recalled a conversation he had with Ottawa Lynx owner Howard Darwin who bought Triple-A ball back to Ottawa in 1993. Darwin stated he would not have bought the team if he knew about the problems he would face dealing with the city: “the revenue-sharing model under which the city received points from parking, concessions, signage, suites, ticket surcharges, naming rights and more made baseball a tough proposition in Ottawa.”55 The Fat Cats combatted these same obstacles, facing a precarious future from the first day.

In June 2013, a person could walk into Ottawa Stadium and be overwhelmed by its decay and nature’s immutable reconquest. The pristine infield had been stolen by weeds. The grass grew high. Rodents managed the concourse.56 Adult summer leagues were scheduled but the games were put on hold until the field was made playable once again. The Fat Cats could have played in 2013. The city’s quest for affiliated minor-league baseball has been an illusion.

LUIS A. BLANDÓN JR., a Washington, DC native, is a producer, writer and researcher in video and documentary film production and in archival, manuscript, historical, film and image research. His creative storytelling has garnered numerous awards, including three regional Emmys®, regional and national Edward R. Murrow Awards, two TELLY awards and a New York Festival World Medal. His writing has been published in several platforms. He was Senior Researcher and Manager of the Story Development Team for two national television programs. He served as the principal researcher for several authors including for The League of Wives by Heath Hardage Lee and her current biography project The Mysterious Mrs. Nixon: The Life and Times of Washington’s Most Private First Lady. Luis has a Masters of Arts in International Affairs from George Washington University.

Sources and Acknowledgments

Many thanks to the Black Lion Cafe in Travilah, Maryland where I researched, conceived, and wrote several iterations of this article.

In addition to the sources cited in the Notes, the author consulted the National Baseball Hall of Fame Giamatti Research Center, Baseball-Reference.com, the United States Department of the Interior, the Library of Congress, YouTube.com, mlb.com and Dr. Michael L. Lawson of MLL Consulting, LLC.

To my patient wife, Teri, as always for her nonpareil thoughts and input.

Notes

1 Professional baseball arrived in Ottawa when the Rochester Patriots of the Eastern League moved in early July 1898 and became the Ottawa Senators. The eight professional baseball teams that have called Ottawa home are (a) Ottawa Senators (1898) in the Eastern League, (b) Ottawa Senators (1912-1948 in various incarnations in several leagues), (c) Ottawa Athletics/Giants (1951-1954) in the International League, (d) Ottawa Lynx (1994-2007 in the International League), (e) Ottawa Rapidz (2008 in the Can-Am League, (f) Ottawa Fat Cats (2010-2012 in the Intercounty Baseball League), (g) Ottawa Champions (2015-2020 in the Can-Am League), and (h) Ottawa Titans (2022 to present in the Frontier League)

2 After 15 years, the Triple-A Ottawa Lynx moved to Allentown, Pennsylvania after the conclusion of the 2007 season and the Rapidz folded after one year at the conclusion of the 2008 Can-Am League season.

3 The IBL is the oldest baseball league in Canada formed in 1919. It was previously known as the Intercounty Major Baseball League and the Senior Intercounty Baseball League. Teams compete for the Jack and Lynne Dominico Trophy, which is awarded to the league champions, named for the late owners of the Toronto Maple Leafs baseball team. A few of the notable players who played in the IBL include Baseball Hall of Famer Ferguson Jenkins, Pete Gray, Jesse Orosco, John Axford, Rob Ducey, Denny McLain, Chris Speier, NHL goalie for the Minnesota North Stars, Ottawa Senators, Toronto Maple Leafs, and Washington Capitals, Don Beaupre, and former Canadian Prime Minister Lester B. Pearson.

4 “Bio for Duncan MacDonald,” Exit Reality. Accessed April 2, 2024. https://exitrealty.com/agent/Duncan/MacDonald/259168. See https://www.baseball-reference.com/bullpen/Duncan_MacDonald, accessed March 30, 2024.

5 “New Ottawa Baseball Pitch Lands at City,” CBC News, August 24, 2009. See https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/new-ottawa-baseball-pitch-lands-at-city-1.829101, accessed June 4, 2024.

6 The IBL formerly announced on March 10 that it had awarded its newest franchise to the OSG.

7 Darren Desaulniers, “Fat Cats Dressed for Success,” Ottawa Citizen, March 25, 2010: B3.

8 Mark Sutcliffe, “Sutcliffe: Incentives to Target Buying Tickets in Advance,” Ottawa Citizen, March 28, 2010: D4.

9 Mackenzie was born on July 27, 1946 in Pictou, Nova Scotia. He was a catcher in his playing days in the Detroit and Montreal organizations never climbing above Class A. He retired after suffering a broken shoulder. As a scout for the Expos, he signed Tim Raines, Matt Stairs, and Larry Walker.

10 Don Campbell, “Fat Cats Will Try to Manager in Year 1,” Ottawa Citizen, May 7, 2010: D1.

11 Tracey Tong, “Former Blue Jays prospect becomes first player signed by Ottawa Fat Cats,” Metro US, April 19, 2010, https://www.metro.us/former-blue-jays-prospect-becomes-first-player-signed-by-ottawa-fat-cats/, accessed on April 24, 2024. Steffler was a 51st-round pick in the 1994 Major League amateur draft and a 67th-round pick in 1997,

12 Martin Cleary, “Fat Cats Signed Veteran Intercounty Arm,” Ottawa Citizen, April 9, 2010: C4.

13 Don Campbell, “Cats: Perspective Required,” Ottawa Citizen, May 7, 2010: B2. This was not an uncommon scenario in the IBL.

14 Campbell, “Cats: Perspective Required.”

15 Ron Colbert, “Football Moniker Hits the Mark,” Ottawa Sun (online), December 16, 2012. See https://ottawasun.com/2012/12/16/football-moniker-hits-the-mark, accessed April 3, 2024.

16 Desaulniers, “Fat Cats Dressed for Success.”

17 “Fat Cats Aim to Succeed Where Others Have Failed,” Centretown News, March 26, 2010 (Ottawa, Ontario). See https://capitalcurrent.ca/archive/centretownnews/1997-2016/2010/03/26/fat-cats-aim-to-succeed-where-others-have-failed/, accessed April 3, 2024.

18 Desaulniers, “Fat Cats Dressed for Success.”

19 Sutcliffe.

20 Darren Desaulniers, “Fat Cats Draw Mixed Reviews with Opener.” Ottawa Citizen, May 16, 2010: C6.

21 Desaulniers, “Fat Cats Draw Mixed Reviews with Opener.”

22 Desaulniers, “Fat Cats Draw Mixed Reviews with Opener.”

23 Desaulniers, “Fat Cats Draw Mixed Reviews with Opener.”

24 Don Campbell, “Campbell: Team a Hit with Fans,” Ottawa Citizen, December 21, 2012: B6.

25 Keith Reichard,“Fat Cats Owners may seek Affiliated Team for Ottawa,” Ballpark Digest, April 14, 2011. See https://ballparkdigest.com/201104143748/at-the-ballpark/the-front-office/fats-cats-owners-may-seek-affiliated-team-for-ottawa, accessed February 5, 2024.

26 Reichard, “Fat Cats Owners May Seek Affiliated Team for Ottawa.”

27 Our Views, “Editorial: Small League, Big Park,” Ottawa Citizen, January 15, 2011: B6,

28 Don Campbell and Joanne Chianello, “Fat Cats Lose Manager, Score One-Year Lease,” Ottawa Citizen, March 11, 2011: B6.

29 Darren Desaulniers, “Fat Cats Ready for 2011,” Ottawa Citizen, March 17, 2011, B5.

30 Darren Desaulniers, “Nelson Finds Baseball Balance,” Ottawa Citizen, June 8, 2012: B7.

31 Desaulniers, “Fat Cats Ready for 2011.”

32 Desaulniers, “Nelson Finds Baseball Balance.”

33 Darren Desaulniers, “Cats Hungry for More,” Ottawa Citizen, July 27, 2011, B3.

34 The Red Sox had 15 players who played in the minor leagues while the Fats Cats had none.

35 Darren Desaulniers, “Down To Their Last Lives,” Ottawa Citizen, September 5, 2011: C1.

36 “Fat Cats Hope Playoff Run Leads to Stadium Deal,” CBC News, August 9, 2011. See https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/fat-cats-hope-playoff-run-leads-to-stadium-deal-1.993346, accessed on April 3, 2024.

37 “Fat Cats Hope Playoff Run Leads to Stadium Deal.”

38 Keith Reichard, “Fat Cats: We’d Love to Share Ottawa Stadium with AA Team,” Ballpark Digest, November 2, 2011. See https://ballparkdigest.com/201111024309/minor-league-baseball/news/fat-cats-wed-love-to-share-ottawa-stadium-with-aa-team, accessed February 5, 2024.

39 David Reevely, “Baseball: Watson ‘Very Optimistic,’” Ottawa Citizen, January 13, 2012: C4.

40 Neco Cockburn, “OK for Stadium Upgrade Bring Double-A Closer to City,” Ottawa Citizen, February 23, 2012: C3.

41 Darren Desaulniers, “Capital a Hit with Fat Cats’ Dietrich,” Ottawa Citizen, July 7, 2012: C3.

42 “Fat Cats Players Living Part-time in Ottawa Stadium,” CBC News, July 9, 2012. See https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/fat-cats-players-living-part-time-in-ottawa-stadium-1.1174057, accessed May 23, 2024.

43 Elizabeth Payne, “Time to Wake Up and Sell Field of Dreams,” Ottawa Citizen, July 12, 2012: A1.

44 McGovern led the team in 2011 with a 1.83 ERA and striking out 49 while walking 15 in 59 innings of work. McGovern’s 2011 postseason pushed the team to another level with five straight nine-inning starts giving up only five earned runs. That season, he led the team in the regular season with three homers in 69 at-bats playing first base when not pitching. McGovern was hoping a major-league team would offer him an opportunity.

45 Baines, “Fat Cats Booted Out of Ottawa Stadium,” Ottawa Sun, September 18, 2012. See https://ottawasun.com/2012/09/18/fat-cats-booted-out-of-ottawa-stadium, accessed February 5, 2024.

46 Baines, “Fat Cats Booted Out of Ottawa Stadium.”

47 Baines, “Fat Cats Booted Out of Ottawa Stadium.”

48 Baines, “Fat Cats Booted Out of Ottawa Stadium.”

49 Don Campbell, “Fat Cats Won’t Play in 2013,” Ottawa Citizen, December 21, 2012: B1.

50 See https://x.com/ottawafatcats/status/282356122650824707?s=43, accessed March 4, 2024.

51 Mike Koreen, “Ottawa Fat Cats Forced Out of Intercounty Baseball League for 2013 Season,” Ottawa Sun, December 12, 2012. See https://ottawasun.com/2012/12/21/ottawa-fat-cats-forced-out-of-intercounty-baseball-league-for-2013-season, accessed February 3, 2024.

52 Campbell, “Campbell: Team a Hit with Fans.”

53 Tim Baines, “Only Jays Double-A OK in Ottawa,” Ottawa Sun, February 9, 2012. See https://ottawasun.com/2012/02/09/only-jay-double-a-ok-in-ottawa.

54 Duncan MacDonald, “Op-ed: New Stadium at LeBreton Flats Could be a Ball for Ottawa,” Ottawa Business Journal, November 20, 2019. See https://obj.ca/op-ed-new-stadium-at-lebreton-flats-could-be-a-ball-for-ottawa/, accessed March 1, 2024.

55 MacDonald, “Op-ed: New Stadium at LeBreton Flats could be a Ball for Ottawa.”

56 David Reevely, “Ottawa Stadium in ‘Deplorable State,’” Ottawa Citizen, June 14, 2013: C2.

I had an extraordinary experience at the end of the 2014 baseball season. I attended Derek Jeter’s last game at Yankee Stadium. The extraordinary thing wasn’t merely Jeter’s unbelievable, Hollywood-scripted storybook ending, but that it came at the end of an unbelievable storybook career. All throughout, Jeter has given us moments that have made us in the stands and press box turn and ask each other, “Did you see that?” “Can you believe that?” You literally don’t believe it sometimes. “He did what?”

But we’ve been here, bearing witness to these moments, his whole career. We try to leave a written record for the historians who will come in future generations, who didn’t see him play, trying to explain what he was like—not “how good” he was or “how bad” he was, but how he was.

Simple, right? No. It’s difficult to strive for accuracy when a player continually defies belief. We find ourselves constantly swept into the realm of emotion—of course, because if we didn’t care we wouldn’t bother to research, analyze, and write about him. But when belief comes into the equation, now we’re talking about faith. It was a Tinkerbell moment in the ninth inning at Yankee Stadium on September 25, 2014. The fans were there to say goodbye to their idol regardless of the game’s outcome. The Yankees had been eliminated from contention the day before.

In the seventh inning we thought we saw the last of Jeter, in a broken-bat, RBI-producing at-bat that gave the Yankees the lead. Kinda clutch. But David Robertson, the closer, coughed up two hairballs in the ninth. Two homers let the Orioles tie the game and let the Yankees bat again in the bottom of the inning. With Jeter due up third.

So here’s a piece of history. I saw it. It happened like clockwork: Jose Pirela led off with a hit, was replaced by pinch-runner Antoan Richardson, who was sac-bunted to second by Brett Gardner. Up came Jeter. I call these moments “Tinkerbell” moments because it feels like if the fans clap loud enough, the magic will happen. It doesn’t always; sometimes Mighty Casey strikes out. But this time, with his classic inside-out swing, Jeter laced the first pitch into right, for a completely Jeterian walk-off game-winner. What happened in that game is not in question: the world witnessed it. Yes, that really happened.

But we witnessed Jeter’s whole career. And yet the debates about him are only getting started. At the very first SABR convention I attended (2002 in Boston), one of the first presentations I attended was about who was the better shortstop: Jeter or Nomar. (Results were inconclusive at the time.) I don’t think it’s a coincidence that the elements we debate about Jeter-as-player represent the things we debate most hotly in sabermetrics overall. Was he a “good” or “bad” fielder? We’re still trying to figure out the best way to answer that question for all players. Advanced defensive metrics—that’s the cutting edge.

Jeter was often knocked for not being a power hitter. But how much weight to give to power in overall player evaluation metrics like WAR, total player rating, et cetera—that’s the stuff that top sabermetricians are tinkering with right now, not just in Internet debates, but in the Decision Sciences departments of MLB front offices.

One thing that no one ever knocked about Jeter was his sportsmanship, his demeanor, his “intangibles.” Can psychological “intangibles” be made tangible? Can they be measured? I predict that’s the frontier in player evaluation and development that will be bushwhacked next.

As historians and sabermetricians, our role is dual: both record and interpret. We don’t just write down numbers and names. That doesn’t tell the story. We tell the story.

Sometimes we re-tell the story in light of new information or new insights. In this issue, Bryan Soderholm-Difatte looks back 100 years to how George Stallings eked a championship from the 1914 Braves. David E. Skelton, meanwhile, looks at how the events at the end of the regular season in 1966 might have cost the Dodgers the World Series.

At the other end of the spectrum we have several papers on the subject of predictions and probability itself. What were the odds that Douglas Jordan, Stanley Rothman, John A. Richards, and Matt Haechrel would all have their papers ready for publication at the same time? Slim odds. But sometimes that’s how things work out.

Sometimes amazing things happen. I’m honored to bear witness.

CECILIA M. TAN is SABR’s Publications Editor. She can be reached at ctan@sabr.org.

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Photo credit

Moose Skowron, National Baseball Hall of Fame Library.

Notes