A Bad Century

Tinker, Evers, and Chance (left to right)

Ever have one of those days? You know the one I mean, the one where nothing goes right no matter how hard you try. One of those? Yeah, of course you have. Well, baseball has a team with an entire century of those kind of days, the Chicago Cubs.

It wasn’t always that way. Chicago won the first ever National League pennant all the way back in 1876. On the centennial of the Declaration of Independence, it was seen as an omen to a number of Chicago city boosters. For a while it was. They won again in the 1880s, picking up a postseason championship along the way. There were down times in the 1890s, but they bounced back in the early 20th Century with a pretty good team. The 1906 version still has the highest winning percentage in Major League Baseball. But it was the 1908 team that represented the peak of Cubs baseball.

The 1908 Cubs won the National League pennant, one of the most famous of all pennant races, by a single game over Honus Wagner’s Pirates (I wonder if Wagner walked around going “aargh” or not. Probably not.) and John McGraw’s Giants. Although defending world Series champs, the Cubs faced a formidable opponent in the American League’s Detroit Tigers and Ty Cobb. The Tigers featured Cobb and fellow Hall of Fame inductee Sam Crawford in the outfield with Bill Donovan, Ed Killian, and Ed Summers on the mound. They’d won the American League pennant by a half game and had won it with hitting. Their pitchers records reflected their hitters abilities as much as they did the individual pitcher’s skills.

The Cubs, on the other hand, could both pitch and hit. Three Finger Brown, Jack Pfiester, and Orval Overall were superior hitters and the infield of Frank Chance (who doubled as manager), Johnny Evers, Joe Tinker, and Harry Steinfeldt was one of the best in baseball. The outfield was good with Jimmy Sheckard, Wildfire Schulte, and Solly Hofman patrolling the grass. Johnny Kling was considered one of the finest catchers in the NL.

Games one through three were high scoring, particularly for Deadball Era games. The Cubs and Brown won the first game 10-6 by plating five runs in the top of the ninth. Kling, hitting eighth, drove in the winning run with a clean single. Game two ended with a Cubs 6-1 victory. With both teams shutout going into the bottom of the eighth (game one was in Detroit, but games two and three were in Chicago) when the Cubs bunched together all six runs, highlighted by Tinker’s two-run homer. Detroit won game three in an 8-3 shootout. Again Chicago scored all its runs in one inning (the fourth), but this time Detroit also had a big inning. Down 3-1 in the top of the sixth, the Tigers strung together four singles, a bunt, and a double to plate five runs and put the game away.

Games four and five were back in Detroit where Chicago pitching took over. Brown and Overall both threw shutouts, Detroit got seven total hits, and the Cubs scored three runs in game four and two in the fifth game to capture the World Series. 

The Cubs hit .293 (Chance hit .421), had an OBP of .343 (Chance also led in walks with three), slugged .360 including the Series’ only home run (Tinker’s in game 2). That game them an OPS of .702 (Chance’s was .921 and Schulte’s .950. Detroit hit all of .209 with Cobb leading the team at .368. Their OBP was .272, with a slugging percentage of .241 (OPS of .512).

Cubs pitchers Brown and Overall each won two games (Pfiester took the loss). The team ERA was .260 and Chicago gave up only 33 hits and 13 earned runs. Detroit’s pitchers wern’t nearly as good. Donovan and Summers each took two losses (Mullen got the win). The team ERA was 3.68 and they gave up 48 hits and 18 earned runs.

The Cubs won another pennant in 1910, but lost the World Series to Philadelphia, then the team began to slide. It won the NL pennant again in 1918, but lost to Boston and Babe Ruth. Futility has reigned since. As it turned out, 1908 was the last World Series Chicago won. Bad century, indeed.

The Crab

Johnny Evers

Some players have careers that are easy to evaluate. Whatever criteria you use, whatever stats you emphasize, whatever stats you make up, Babe Ruth is going to be pretty clearly marked out as a player. Others aren’t so easy to define. One of those is Johnny Evers.

Evers was born in upstate New York in 1881, and began his minor league career in 1902. That same year he was the “throw in” guy in the purchase of a pitcher by the Chicago Cubs. Evers was short, weighed barely 100 pounds, had great range, could throw well, and made a lot of errors because of his range (he got to a lot of balls then couldn’t make the play). Initially the shortstop, he was moved to second base after about a week. There he was terrific by Dead Ball Era standards. He teamed with Joe Tinker at shortstop and Frank Chance (later his manager) to form the most famous, if not necessarily the best, double play combination of the era. The team won 116 games in 1906 (a number equaled once, and that with eight more games on the schedule) but lost the World Series. They won the Series the next two years. Evers hit well, but this was a team built on pitching and defense and his play at second was, perhaps, more significant than his hitting.

He was also a pain, which is a nice way of saying few people liked him. It helped earn him the nickname “The Crab”. He and Tinker didn’t speak off the field for years. You get a lot of reasons depending on the source. Evers own version has Tinker firing a ball to record an out that hurt Evers hand. When Evers complained, Tinker laughed and that destroyed any brewing friendship. And with Evers there don’t seem to have been a lot of friends. To say he was “high-strung” is to understate the measure. He alienated teammates with his criticism of bad plays, opponents with his hard play. In fact, he alienated almost everyone (I guess his folks liked him, but that’s a guess). In 1911, he had a nervous breakdown that cost him most of the season. Again there are a lot of  stories of what happened, but Evers own account says he lost money in a business venture and was broke.

Evers also had a habit of not going out with the guys in the evenings. With his personality, would you want him along? (A Dale Carnegie graduate he wasn’t.). He used his spare time to read, including the baseball rulebook. He became something of an expert on the more arcane rules, which led to his participation in the most famous of all Dead Ball Era plays, the “Merkle play”. With two out in the bottom of the ninth of a tie game in 1908, Giants baserunner Fred Merkle failed to advance from first to second on a single while the winning run scored (there are a lot of places on-line where you can get the details). Evers retrieved a ball (probably not “the” ball), stepped on second, and demanded the umpire declare Merkle out and the run void. Apparently Evers and umpire Hank O’Day knew the rule. O’Day called Merkle out, the game ended in a tie, the season ended in a tie, the Cubs won the replay, and their last World Series to date.

In 1913, Evers became manager of the Cubs. Think about that. Here’s a high-strung guy that fights with everyone, that no one likes, and you make him the team manager (and you wonder why the Cubs don’t win often). Despite all that, the Cubs still finished third, but Evers managed to alienate everyone, including the beer salesmen and the owner, so out he went. They sent him to Boston where he took over the second base job for the Braves. His leadership skills (“Play hard or Evers will scream”) and his getting hot with the bat during the last half of the season were considered reasons why the “Miracle Braves” moved from last to first in the final three months of the season to capture the National League pennant, then win the NL’s first World Series since 1909 in a four game sweep of the Athletics. Evers won that season’s NL Chalmers Award (the early version of the MVP).

It was his last good year. He was on the downside of his career anyway and his nerves began really fraying. His did poorly in 1915, worse in 1916, and was cut prior to the 1917 season. He did some managing after his retirement, skippering both the Cubs and the White Sox. He did reasonably well, but never won. He  got into one game in both 1922 and 1929, drew two walks and had no hits, then retired for good. He ran a sporting goods store in Albany, New York (wonder how he was with customers), had a stroke in 1942, made the Hall of Fame in 1946, and died in 1947.

For his career Evers hit .270, slugged .334, had an OBP of .356, for an OPS of .690 (OPS+ of 106). He hit all of 12 home runs, had 216 doubles, 70 triples, and 1659 hits for 2051 total bases. He scored 919 runs and knocked in 528. He had 324 stolen bases.  He never led the NL in any major hitting category but finished as high as second in both walks and stolen bases. In World Series play he hit .316, scored 11 runs, knocked in six, and stole eight bases. He hit .438 with an OBP of .500 in the 1914 World Series victory. As a fielder he led the NL in assists twice and also in errors twice, doing both in 1904 (now that’s a neat trick). He also led the league in putouts and fielding percentage among second baseman once each.

So those numbers don’t sound all that great, do they? Even for Dead Ball Era players they’re not that spectacular. But Evers seems to be one of those guys that is more than the sum of his stats. He’s bright, he’s aggressive, he’s also a pain. Those are things difficult to evaluate. He’s a good second baseman, a lousy teammate. He’s a good glove man, not so great with the bat. He’s knowledgable about the game, but he can’t stay healthy. He’s certainly a mixed bag. I like him because he’s fun to study, but I don’t think I’d like to have known him. And maybe that’s the fascination with Evers. He’s all those things listed above and that makes for an interesting character.

Opening Day 1911: NL

Christy Mathewson

Last year I went into a detailed (perhaps overly detailed) look at the 1910 season. I don’t intend to repeat that with 1911, but 12 April was opening day in 1911 and I think we should celebrate the season 100 years later. It was, if not as significant as 1910, still a very interesting year. First the National League.

The old Cubs dynasty died. Both Frank Chance and Johnny Evers spent much of the year on the bench and in Chance’s case it was to be permanent. For the rest of his career Frank Chance would play only 56 games. Evers, on the other hand, would bounce back and have several more productive seasons, culminating with a Chalmers Award (and early MVP  Award) and a World Series championship in 1914.

The Giants took Chicago’s place as the reigning dynasty. John McGraw’s team won the pennant despite seeing their stadium burn. They spent most of the season as guests of the Highlanders (now the Yankees), but returned to their own stadium in August. They managed to go on a hot streak in August  and took the championship by 7.5 games.

A number of players had superb seasons. Honus Wagner hit .334 and won his final batting title for the Pirates. His OPS also led the league at .930. Chicago’s Wildfire Schulte led the NL with 21 home runs, the most by a player since 1899. Schulte and Owen Wilson of Pittsburgh tied with 107 RBIs. Schulte would walk away with the NL’s Chalmers Award (and the new car that went with it).

The biggest news was among the pitchers. Grover Cleveland Alexander had what was arguably the finest rookie season of any pitcher in the 20th Century. He led the NL in wins with 28, shutouts with seven, and pitched 31 complete games. Giants ace Christy Mathewson put up 26 wins and led the NL with an ERA of 1.99. In 307 innings he walked a total of 38 men. As good as that sounds, he would do even better in 1912. His teammate lefty Rube Marquard led the league in strikeouts with 237.

Unfortunately, the pennant was all the Giants could manage, dropping the World Series in six games. Mathewson and Doc Crandall got the two wins with Mathewson and Marquard taking three of the losses (Red Ames took the loss in game six). the team hit .175 for the Series with Larry Doyle and Chief Meyers managing to hit .300 with Josh Devore leading in both RBIs and strikeouts.

It’s a year to look back on and celebrate. We can look at the greatness of Honus Wagner, the genius of John McGraw, and the pitching prowess of Christy Mathewson. That’s worth celebrating, even if the NL lost the World Series.

Why 1910 Matters

Since April I’ve spent an inordinate amount of time running all over the 1910 baseball season. Part of that is simply because it was 100 years ago and a centennial is worth remembering. It’s also because the season is interesting in itself. But primarily I’ve been focusing on the 1910 season because it is a watershed season for Major League Baseball. There are a lot of reasons why. Here are some in no particular order.

1. The appointment of Hal Chase as manager of the Highlanders (Yankees) is not, for managerial purposes, all that important. What is important is the ability of the owners and the National Commission (which ran baseball before Judge Landis) to look the other way when it came to gambling in the big leagues. Failure to crack down on this sort of activity meant that it was going to get worse and that eventually something like the Black Sox scandal was bound to occur. The players likely to participate in this kind of thing now had proof that not only were the powers that be not going to do anything about gambling,  but might actually reward a player if the situation was right. I don’t want to compare it directly with the steroid situation of the 1990s, but it does seem that Malamud was right, we really don’t learn from our mistakes (The book “The Natural”–not the movie–has this as one of its central themes.).

2. During the 19th Century the National Association, the Union Association, the American Association, and the Player’s League had all existed, as had the National League. By 1892 they were all gone. Only the American Association survived 10 seasons, and by the tenth was on life support. By contrast the American League, founded in 1901, was now ten years old and flourishing. The 1910 season marked a decade of success both as a business and on the field. Frankly, baseball had not had this kind of stability in its history. Ban Johnson had managed to create a new Major League and made it work. By 1910 there was no question the AL was here to stay and that the National League finally had a partner co-equal to it. 

3. The Athletics had created the first successful AL dynasty. From league founding in 1901 through 1910, four teams won all the AL pennants: Chicago (1901, 1906), Philadelphia (1902, 1905, 1910), Boston (1903-1904), and Detroit (1907-1909). None of the pre-1910 teams created a dynasty. OK, Detroit won three years in a row, but was defeated in all three World Series matchups, which is kinda hard to call a dynasty. Let’s be honest, dynasties work, especially if they happen to be your team. Baseball seems to do best in attendance and popularity when there is a dynasty. They give fans both a hero and a villain (depending on whether you like the team or not) and 3500 years of drama tell us that nothing  in entertainment sells like heroes and villains. On top of that, it was easy to like the A’s. Connie Mack was a nice enough human being (except when it came to paying his players–a common problem in the era). You hear very few negative comments about Eddie Collins, Frank Baker, or Stuffy McInnis. And in the case of  Chief Bender, he was a sympathetic figure to many fans because of all the racial riding he took (he was an American Indian). All those things went together to help boost attendance and cash.

4. The Cubs dynasty had come to an end. If one dynasty was born in 1910, another died. The “Tinker to Evers to Chance” Cubs had their last fling in 1910. Between 1906 and 1910 the Cubs dominated the NL. They won four of five pennants (losing in 1909 to Pittsburgh) and two World Series’ (1907-8). But 1910 was the end. In the Cubs Postmortem post I detailed what went wrong, so I don’t intend to do it again. But the loss of the Cubs dynasty is signficant because it allowed for a more wide open NL. If having a dynasty is good for baseball, having two isn’t. One league has to remain open for fans to believe their team has a chance to win. With the death of the Cubs dynasty hope could rise for other teams in the NL, notably John McGraw’s New York team, but also in the next ten years Boston, Philadelphia, Brooklyn, and Cincinnati would also win pennants (as would the Cubs in 1918). The end of the Cubs dynasty also ushered in the beginning of the Cubs mystique as the “loveable losers.” With only sporadic exception, the Cubs have been non-factors in the NL since.  After four pennants in five seasons, the Cubs have won the NL title exactly six times (1918, 1929, 1932, 1935. 1938, 1945). They are now a synonym for “loser”, a tradition that began with the end of the 1910 season.

5 The AL became the dominant league. I said earlier that the reasons 1910 mattered were in no particular order, but this one is last on purpose because it’s the most important. Between 1903 and 1909 there were six World Series matchups. The NL won four (1905, 1907-09) and the AL only two (1903, 1906). By 1910, the AL hadn’t beaten the NL in four years. All that changed in 1910. Take a look at the next ten years, actually 11 because I’m going to ignore the 1919 “fixed” Series. Between 1910 and 1920 inclusive the NL wins one untainted World Series, 1914. And it took a team known as the “Miracle Braves” to do that.  The AL won everything else: Philadelphia in 1910-11, 1913; Boston in 1912, 1915-16, 1918; Chicago in 1917; and Cleveland in 1920. And that kind of dominance continues in some measure all the way to 2010. Here’s the World Series wins by league by decade since 1910 (going from the zero year to the nine year to determine a decade, thus 1920-29, 1940-49, etc.) 1910-19: AL-8, NL-2 (including 1919), 1920-29: AL-6, NL-4, 1930-9: AL-7, NL-3; 1940-9: AL-6, NL-4, 1950-9: AL-6, NL-4, 1960-9: AL-4, NL-6, 1970-9: AL-6, NL-4; 1980-9: AL-5, NL 5, 1990-9: AL-6, NL-3 (and no series in 1994): 2000-9: AL-6, NL-4. In each decade except the 1960s, when the NL actually wins more World Series championships and  1980s when the each win five, the American League has won the more often. I think this is much more significant than the results of the All Star game which saw the NL have along period of dominance in the 1960s and 1970s. I’m not really impressed with winning an exhibition game. So the American League has been the superior league in most of the last 100 years, and that began in 1910.

I’ve enjoyed going over the 1910 season. I learned a lot, some significant, some trivial. I’ve begun to celebrate the players of the era more by having done this, and I consider that a good thing. Hope you enjoyed it.

1910: Cubs Postmortem

This marks the beginning of the final three posts about the 1910 season (Is that cheering I hear?). The other two will sum up the Athletics season and explain why I think 1910 matters. I’m not going to do a blow-by-blow of the World Series. You can go to Retrosheet and see for yourself  how and why Philadelphia won. Or you can wait a few weeks and Kevin at DMB will run the 1910 World Series for you and you get pick up a taste of it then (and maybe root for an upset).

The year 1910 saw the end of the Chicago dynasty that had dominated the National League since 1906. They participated in four of the five World Series’ (missing 1909) during the period, winning two (1907 and 1908). But the run ended with the loss in the 1910 Series. If you look at the team at the end of 1910, you might figure that Chicago will compete for a long time. It turns out that the next time the Cubs made the Series was 1918. So what went wrong?

To start with, three-fourths of the infield and the starting catcher went by the way in 1911. Frank Chance was effectively done as a player. For the entire rest of his career, he managed to play exactly 46 games.  Johnny Evers played only 46 games in 1911 (talk about statistical coincidences). He did come back in 1912 and 1913, but was sent to Boston in 1914. Boston promptly won the World Series and Evers won the Chalmers Award, an early version of the MVP award. In 1911, third baseman Harry Steinfeldt went to Boston, got into 19 games and was through. By 1914 he was dead. Finally, catcher Johnny Kling started slowly, was traded, and finished his career in 1913. In short, half the everyday players of 1910 were unavailable for 1911, three of them permanently. That’s half the starting lineup that has to be replaced. Doing it with quality players is unusual, and Chicago didn’t have those quality players. The following people replaced the 1910 starters: Vic Saier, Heinie Zimmerman, Jim Doyle, and Jim Archer. Ever hear of any of them? If you’re lucky you may know Zimmerman who won a home run and batting title in 1912 an RBI title in both 1916 and 1917, and was banned for throwing games in 1920. The drop off is both stunning and quick.  

The pitching was aging. Three Finger Brown was 34 in 1911. It was his last good year in the NL (he did OK in the Federal League). Harry McIntire was 33. Orval Overall retired with a bad arm. That left King Cole (who ended up dying in 1916) and third starter (or fourth, depending on your viewpoint) Ed Reulbach. It’s kind of difficult to rely on your third starter.

Having said all that, Chicago still finished second in 1911. But in 1912 they fell to third, stayed there in 1913, then dropped to fourth and finally fifth by 1917. I doubt anyone saw this coming at the end of the 1910 World Series. So Chicago maintained high hopes at the end of 1910. Those hopes were a mirage.

1910: Tinker

Joe Tinker

He is one of the most famous shortstops in the history of baseball, primarily for a piece of bad poetry that begins “Tinker to Evers to Chance.” Despite not having played a game outside baseball’s Stone Age, Joe Tinker is still known, if only vaguely, because people know that single line. But today marks the centennial of Joe Tinker doing something no other Major Leaguer had ever done. On Tuesday, 28 June 1910, in an 11-1 romp over Cincinnati, Tinker became the first big league ballplayer to steal home twice in a single game.

Over a career lasting from 1902 through 1916, Tinker played 1806 games, all but 267 with the Chicago Cubs. He managed to hit .262 with 2273 total bases, 263 doubles and  114 triples. His OBP was .308, his slugging percentage was .353, giving him an OPS of .661. He stole 336 bases (including the two on this date one hundred years ago) and walked 416 times. In 1914 and 1915 he played in the Federal League, hitting about what he hit for his career. He managed the Federal League Chicago Whales to second place in 1914 and then won the Feds pennant in 1915. In 1916 he took over the Cubs manager’s role and led them to fifth place, a spot down from their 1915 position. He was let go and the Cubs remained in fifth for 1916.

He played in four World Series’, all with the Cubs. He was part of a winning team in 1907 and 1908, and suffered losses in 1906 and 1910. He didn’t do particularly well in World Series play, hitting .235 with one home run, seven stolen bases, and 21 total bases. His best Series’ were 1908 when he hit the home run, slugged .421, and had four RBIs; and 1910 when he hit .333, slugged .444, and had two doubles.  

Over the years, because of the poem, he’s become most famous for his fielding. It’s also become common to deride his fielding as nothing special.  His fielding numbers certainly aren’t bad for the era, but Honus Wagner he isn’t. It is, however, wrong to deride his contribution at short. He finished first in assists by shortstops three times and second another three. He was also first in errors once and second a further two times. His range factor was consistently in the top four shortstops and led the league three times (plus once in the Federal League). He still ranks 38th in defensive games as a shortstop.

I think a lot of the problem people have with Tinker is that he’s in the Hall of Fame. His numbers aren’t bad, but to single him out for the Hall is a bit much for most people. He was elected to Cooperstown in 1946 by the “Old Timer’s Committee” (We now call it the “Veteran’s Committee”, which has a nicer ring for us old timer’s.). Prior to his election he’d not gotten a lot of support among the writers, but was steadily climbing the ladder, peaking at 27.2% in 1946, the year the Veteran’s Committee put him over the top.

I’m not sure Tinker really deserves enshrinement in Cooperstown. Maybe he does; maybe he doesn’t. And I guess that says a lot about what I truly think. It seems to me that there should be no question about whether a player is in the HoF or he isn’t, so if you have a question, then he’s probably not someone who should, in your opinion, be there. Now I don’t mean to imply by that comment that all of us will question the same people or agree on the same people, only that if you have a question in your own mind then you probably deep down inside don’t think the guy ought to be honored. For me Tinker is one of those. Having said all that, I’m still glad he’s remembered.

Tom, Dick, and Larry: Larry

Larry Doyle

Like a number of players from the Deadball Era, Larry Doyle came out of the mines. His mines were in Breese, Illinois. He hated the mines, loved baseball, was better at the latter than the former and after a couple of years in the minors ended up in New York with the Giants in 1907.

Doyle was a third baseman in the minors and the Giants had a third baseman (Art Devlin). What they needed was a second baseman, so Doyle was handed the job. He was awful. Eventually he got better, but was never considered a first-rate second baseman. He seems to have never gotten the knack of coming in properly for a slow roller  and many of his errors were of the glove, not arm, kind.

What he could do well was hit. He moved quickly into the two hole in the Giants order and spent most of the next ten years as a reliable two hitter. He had good bat control, speed, and a good eye, all critical in a bunt oriented one-run-at-a-time offense. He led the National League in triples once (1911), in hits twice, and in doubles once. In 1915 he won the batting crown. In 1912 he won the NL’s Chalmers Award, the 19-teens version of the MVP award, setting career highs in both average and RBIs. His reward was a Chalmers automobile, which he managed to wreck in 1913 causing him to miss several games toward the end of the season.

During his tenure with the Giants, the team won the NL pennant in 1911-1913, but lost all three World Series’ to the American League team. In the 1911 Series Doyle led the team in hits (7) and average (.304). In 1912 his Series performance was much worse, and got even worse in 1913 when he managed to hit only .150 with three hits.

Doyle stayed with the Giants through 1915, managing to room with Christy Mathewson for most of the period. The two men became good friends and were very good at coming up with joint investments, which left Doyle with a nice nest egg for his early retirement years. He also became great friends with first baseman Fred Merkle and always supported him against detractors after the base running blunder of 1908.

In 1916 Doyle was traded to the Cubs with nine games left in the season (the Giants got Heinie Zimmerman). He stayed with Chicago through 1917, then came back to New York for the final three years of his career, retiring after the 1920 season. After his playing days he worked with the Giants as a minor league manager, scout, and sometime coach. He managed to go through most of his money and by 1942 was in bad shape both economically in healthwise. He got tuberculosis and ended up, with help from the NL, in the same sanitarium where his old roommate Mathewson had lived his last years. He outlived the sanitarium. It closed in 1954. He died at home in 1974.

For much of his career, Doyle was the finest second baseman in the National League, rivalled only by Johnny Evers (both Eddie Collins and Nap LaJoie in the American League were better). For his career he hit .290, slugged .408, had an on base percentage of .357 (765 ops) with 2654 total bases. He averaged 21 stolen bases a season (which includes two seasons when he did not play 100 games). He wasn’t much of a second baseman. HIs career .949 fielding average isn’t very good, even by the standards of the era (although there are worse).

Doyle was one of those players who is absolutely necessary for a team to do well, but who is not the big star on the team. He won an MVP but was usually lost behind the great names of the era. He was the best at his position in his league, but the other league was stronger at the spot. There are a lot of those types in baseball history.

Old Longings

A day or so ago SportsPhd put up a little post on four things in baseball he wished he had seen, but wasn’t around for. It was a great list and I don’t disagree with any of it except for Don Larsen’s perfect game in the 1956 World Series. I got home from school in time to see the last couple of innings. I’m going to shamelessly borrow his idea and give you four baseball moments I wish I had seen.

I’m going back to a period either before I was born or when I was so small I didn’t know what was going on. That makes me leave out things I heard on the radio, like Sandy Koufax’s perfect game, but didn’t actually “see.” It also leaves out those things that happened while I was watching something else and have now seen a dozen times on TV. So with those caveats, here we go.

4. I’d have loved to have been in Fort Wayne, Indiana in 1871 to see the first ever major league game. Fort Wayne beat Cleveland 2-0 in a game that sounds as if it was well-played. There’s something about being there at a birth that is so special. If you have a child, you know the feeling.

3. I’d like to have been around in 1908 for the Merkle Game. It’s arguably the most famous regular season game ever played. It was apparently a heck of a game prior to the chaos of the ninth inning and might have been worth seeing anyway. Knowing what was going to happen (remember this is time machine stuff so I know who’s going to win already) I could now stay in the stands and watch the ball to see what really happened between Solly Hofman, Joe McGinnity, and Johnny Evers. And this is a two-for-one special. I also get to see the replay a few weeks later.

2. As I told SportsPhd I would like to be in Wrigley Field in October 1932 for game 3 of the World Series. That’s the game that featured Babe Ruth’s “called shot.” I don’t know what he did, but apparently he did something just before crushing the ball. I’d love to know exactly what he did. You can argue about the greatest player ever in the game, but Ruth is easily the greatest showman ever to put on a uniform (with apologies to Reggie Jackson). 

1. Here I agree with SportPhd. I want to be in Ebbets Field in April 1947 to see Jackie Robinson take up his position at first base. It was one of baseball’s finest hours and I’d love to be there to see and participate.

So that’s four things I missed and wish I hadn’t. Your own list?

Opening Day, 1910: Chicago (NL)

King Cole

The 1909 Cubs were three time defending National League champion and two time World Champion when the season began. With basicially the same team, they finished 6.5 games behind Pittsburgh. Injured manager-first baseman Frank Chance played only 93 games in ’09 and catcher Johnny Kling, considered the finest defensive catcher of the era, left the team and it plummeted. By 1910 Chance was healthy again. Kling was also back. He had won the world pocket billards championship in 1908 and used the season to earn money at pool (no idea if he played in River City), but lost the title in the following tournament. So he was back with the Cubs, although minus a $700 fine for leaving the team.

The team that finished first, first, first, and second in the previous four seasons made, as you would expect, few changes. Chance stayed on as manager, first baseman, and clean up hitter. Johnny Evers still led off and held down second base. Joe Tinker was at short and hit seventh. Third base was Harry Steinfeldt country. He hit fifth. The outfield was the same as the previous season; Jimmy Sheckard in left and hitting second, Solly Hofman in center and moved to third in the order, and Wildfire Schulte in right and dropped from third to Hofman’s old sixth spot. Kling was back catching and hitting eighth. The bench saw Heinie Zimmerman as the backup infielder. Jimmy Archer, last year’s starting catcher, was now the backup, replacing Pat Moran (now with the Phillies. Ginger Beaumont came over from Boston to take the backup outfield slot. As it turned out, it was Beaumont’s final season.

There were some changes on the mound. Mordecai “Three Finger” Brown was still the ace, coming off a 27-9 season, and Orville Overall was back after leading the NL in strikeouts with 205. Ed Reulbach and Jack Pfiester were still there, but  two new pitchers were added to the mix. King Cole was a 24 year old rookie who had pitched one game for the Cubs the previous year and Harry McIntire had been acquired from Brooklyn. The addition of these two was to prove fortuitous. 

For the Cubs things looked good when 1910 started. Their three time pennant winning team was intact, with all major components healthy. Age again should have been a bit of a concern. The hitters were tied with Philadelphia as the oldest team in average age at 29, and the pitching staff was the second oldest (to Pittsburgh) in the league. But everyone was healthy, Kling was back after a year off, Cole was only 24, and they knew how to win.

Tomorrow: McGraw’s Giants

1908: Bonehead

Fred Merkle

This is the first of three posts on the 1908 baseball season. It became the most famous of Stone Age baseball’s years. It had drama. It had wonderful pennant races in both leagues. It had a perfect game. It had a pitcher with 40 wins. It had one of the all-time greatest single season performances by any player. And it had Fred Merkle.

The National League put up a tremendous three team pennant race in 1908. The New York Giants, the Chicago Cubs, and the Pittsburgh Pirates all stayed within a few games of the lead until the very end of the season. In fact the season had to go an extra day because there was one tie between the Giants and the Cubs. To this day the tie is known as the Merkle Game.

On 23 September the Giants and Cubs squared off  in New York. Through 8.5 innings the score was tied 1-1. The Giants, with two outs, put runners on first and third, when a clean single seemed to end the game. But the runner on first, Fred Merkle, only went about halfway to second before turning to head to the clubhouse to celebrate. What happened next is full of controversy, there are a half dozen versions, and I’m not going to weigh in on which is correct. Ultimately Cubs second baseman Johnny Evers ended up with the ball (and there’s some controversy about it being the real ball) standing on second shouting to the umpire that Merkle had not touched second, it was a force out, and the run didn’t count. The ump agreed. Due to fans on the field, the lateness of the hour (there were no lights yet), and the inability to get players back on the field, the game was declared a tie to be replayed at the end of the season if it mattered in the standings. Because I’m talking about it, you’ve figured out it mattered, right? The Giants and Cubs ended in a tie and replayed the game October 8. The Cubs won 4-2 and went to the World Series, winning in 5 games. Merkle was villified in the press and among the fans as the man who cost the Giants the pennant. The nickname “Bonehead” was hung on him and persisted until his death in 1956.

Now a few comments on the incident and its aftermath:

1. Merkle went on to have a decent, if unspectacular career. He played through 1926 hitting 273 with 272 stolen bases, a slugging percentage of 383, and 1580 hits. He played in 4 World Series (1911, 1912, 1916, and 1918) losing all and played one game for the 1926 Yankees who also lost the World Series. So not a bad career for a “Bonehead”.

2. John McGraw, Giants manager and a man known to be very critical of his players, steadfastly stood by Merkle never blaming him for the Giants failure to win the pennant.

3. Johnny Evers never gets enough credit for the play. Evers understood that no run can score on a force out that ends an inning (he’d run into the problem a little earlier in the season) and insisted the rule be followed. A lot of people argue that Evers should not be in the Hall of Fame. Maybe, but they can’t argue he wasn’t a savvy ballplayer.

4. The Merkle Game is famous because of what happened afterwards. The Giants had 16 games left (1 with Chicago, 4 with Cincinnati, 8 with Philadelphia, and 3 with Boston). They went 11-5, beating the Cubs, splitting with the Reds, going 5-3 against the Phillies, and sweeping the Braves. So you know, in 1908 the Reds finished 5th, the Phillies 4th, and the Braves 6th in an eight team league. The Cubs in the same period went 8-2 (they had less games remaining), losing the one game to the Giants, dropping one of five against the Reds, beating the third place Pirates in the last game of the regular season, and sweeping Brooklyn (who finished 7th) in three straight games. Merkle matters because those records gave the two teams identical records of 98-55-1. Change those records by only a game or two and the Merkle Game becomes an interesting footnote in baseball history explaining how a pennant winning team ended up with a tie.

5. The play became the most famous of Deadball Era plays. It’s still well known, perhaps one of the 5 or 10 most famous plays in baseball history, and maybe the most famous regular season play ever. See if you can name a half dozen regular season plays more impactful and famous. I can name a number of World Series moments (Alexander striking out Lazzeri in 1926, Mickey Owen dropping the third strike in 1941, Cookie Lavagetto breaking up Bevens’ no hitter in 1947), and a couple of playoff hits (Bucky Dent, Lou Boudreau) but not a lot of regular season moments like the Merkle play.

Having done a dumb thing or two in my life, I’ve always had a bit of empathy for Fred Merkle. It must have been tough knowing that your name was always going to attached to a moment that made you look like a fool. I understand he carried it well and lived his life without a lot of bitterness. Good for him.